Sealed

by Naomi Booth

  She’d left things behind that were worse than our boiling city, I knew that much: she was born to Methodists in the north of that little grey island half-way across the world. Born into cold skies and punishment, she said, and not much else. I asked her, more than once, about her folks. About why we never saw them, why they never visited or wrote. About why I’d never met my grandparents. In my memory of one of these conversations it’s summer, a weekend day. She’s been working in the yard and has grilled mackerel fillets on the barbecue for our lunch. I’m young, young enough to still ask these questions about her family without realising they might be painful; or without caring if they are. We sit on the garden wall, the wall that she built herself with sand and cement to make a raised-bed for her veggies, she sits there in the sunshine wearing a dirty pinafore, and I say, ‘Why don’t your mum and dad come to see our yard? Why don’t we know them? Don’t they want to meet me?’ That last question would have cost me something, even that young, to say out loud. I can’t remember what prompted it that day. Maybe I could hear other families in their own backyards, maybe I could hear kids playing with their siblings, or their cousins, kids who had aunts and uncles and grandparents. Kids who had fathers. Kids who had a proper family, instead of this claustrophobic twosome; kids who came from somewhere they knew about, instead of seeming to appear, like I did, immaculate, out of nothing.

  My mother pauses a while to think about my question, turning the idea of her folks over in her mind. She was ever so pretty, my mother, in a way that I often used to resent, because it made her vulnerable. She was small and soft, and she got more beautiful as she aged, because she was crumpled and spoiled in a picturesque way, like an old silk dress that had been screwed up in a corner; or a flower, flattened to silk between the pages of a book, that looks like it might turn to dust on your fingers. Her eyes were bright and fringed with skin as soft as moth’s wings, closing when she smiled; her cheeks were high and pink and blotched all over with sun spots; her hair was bleached to baby fluff. She wore exhaustion ever so sweetly. I got to realise that a certain kind of man liked this look: the kind who liked to have already won a fight before it happened; the kind who never did have time to come into the house to meet her daughter or stick around long enough to help build a wall; the kind who disappeared, like my father.

  ‘They aren’t bad people,’ my mother says, still chewing on the idea of her folks. ‘I don’t want you to think that. Your grandmother,’ she says, ‘worked in a carpet factory all her life. First female foreman. She was ferocious. Supported the lot of us. Your grandfather,’ she says, ‘is riddled with arthritis. They aren’t bad people. It’s just, your grandma fought so hard for what we had, it made her mean-spirited. Made her treat everything like a fight, every little thing. She was terrified we’d lose the house that she’d worked so hard to buy from the government, that front step that she scrubbed every Saturday, the hospital bed that she’d managed to get for Dad to sleep on in the front room. If she stopped working, or cleaning, or guarding us all for a moment… It’s hard to explain it,’ Mum says, looking at me. ‘They’re not bad people, but it’s better for us not to be near them.’ She blows her fringe out of her face, looks away from me. ‘Once, your grandmother beat me for laughing. I’d run home from school along the canal in the valley bottom, and the air was warm, the first bit of spring sunshine, and the magnolia flowers were forking in the branches of the tree on the corner of our road and I felt giddy, and I burst through into the kitchen and laughed and laughed. I must have been about twelve years old, just a little older than you. “What’s funny?” your grandmother said. “Tell me what you’re laughing at?” And I had no reason, so I just carried on laughing in her face. And she looks at me in horror, and she says, “You’re hysterical, Margery,” and then she goes to find a gooseberry cane and she comes back and she whips me with it, across the backs of my legs.’ My mother leans her head back, trusting her weight to the wall that she built herself, letting her face catch the sunshine. ‘I cried like a dog and I was marked for weeks. But the marks didn’t last,’ she says, and she laughs, her face creasing up, her eyes disappearing. ‘Magic skin, remember?’ she says, and she tries to hug me. I shrug her off.

  Mum would have loved the garden out here at Mountain View. In the end, when the heat kicked in, despite her careful ministrations, only the hardiest, ugliest things survived in her backyard: a scrubby little wormwood and some pale green cacti that never flowered. But she kept at it. My mother’s kindness, the softness that I used to hate, that I used to think invited cruelty; it really was something. In all my life, she never was mean-spirited.

  I select a couple of the gardening books and take them over to the sofa. The pages are crinkled with water and sun, and bear annotations in her careful hand from what now seems like eons ago. ‘Back pot – mist foliage’ ‘Front of border, cut back in winter’ ‘Try on trellis?’ I leaf through, trying to find the little pink snowflake-flower, but I can’t get comfy. Every time I sit down, the weight in my stomach shifts and seems to press against something new inside me. Plus, something weird is happening with my feet today. They’ve swollen up and the flesh on top looks like it’s separating away from the bone: under the stretched skin, there’s a layer of something rising up, like cream at the top of milk. It’s fluid, of course, I can feel it as I walk, a kind of sloshing around inside my own skin as though I’m wearing water-logged boots. I try to arrange cushions on the sofa so that I can elevate my feet but, as I lean back, the weight of the baby pushes up against my lungs, and I then I feel like I’m choking. I’m no gardener; I don’t have the patience or the optimism. By the time I’ve leafed through the first book properly, finding no sign of that little bugger of a flower, I’m almost looking forward to the barbie.

  * * *

  I take a shower and try to enjoy getting ready, like I used to. I listen to tinny music from my laptop, curl my hair under my chin, paint my face with organic blush and a tangerine-coloured, protected lipstick. When I was younger, I used to get such a brilliant feeling before a big night out in the city. I wasn’t always this dour. ‘A catastrophist,’ Pete says, ‘you’ve turned into a catastrophist, babe, but I still love ya.’ There was a time, when I first left home and started exploring the world, when I knew how to enjoy myself. Back at college, we’d do shots in my digs to get things started, excitement fluttering in our bellies, anticipating the heat of the dance floor, the shouted conversations with strangers, the instant camaraderie struck-up in washroom queues, the friends of friends who’d be like family by the end of the night, the after-parties, the intimate confessions, the madcap excursions to the beach and the numb, blissed-out kissing in the cold sand, the insane drives to the edges of the city, to scrubland, to derelict factories, where we’d dance to car stereos and then peel off in twos and threes, holding hands, starting to run, rushing into one another, fingers, tongues, broken glass, amphetamine flutter, pooling, pleading eyes, ‘Can, can I just…’ Every big night started with that feeling, that feeling that the night was opening up, expanding away from you like accelerating matter, and you were tumbling into a widening darkness; the feeling that the world was getting bigger, that tomorrow there would be new things in it, new people and places, new marks on your skin, new places inside you that ached from laughter and falling on your knees and hooking-up. There was a time when I loved that feeling: in fact, there was a time when I used to think it was the most important feeling of all – to want the world to be bigger, to learn not to be afraid of it.

  But that was a long time ago. Before the world started to contract, and everything became more dense and started hurtling back towards me. Before Pete broke me up, before people started to seal themselves in, and before this dead weight in my stomach. Right on cue, my bump palpitates, a painful jab in the ribs, and Pete calls up to me, ‘Nearly ready, babe?’

  We drive through Lakoomba and I try to relax, but I can’t help scanning the streets, searching for anything amiss – a strange expression on some
one’s face, a clear sign of something being wrong. It’s quiet. There’s hardly anyone about even though it’s Saturday night, but there are no obvious clues of anything untoward. Paulie and Mara’s place is right across on the other side of town, at the edge of a dilapidated, redbrick estate. We park-up on the street. Pete carries two large packs of beer down the street and I’ve stashed a couple of bottles of protected apple juice in my bag. The party’s in the backyard: we can hear it a little way off and I can already smell the sizzling meat. I try, for Pete’s sake, to make my face look more enthusiastic than I feel. Pete grins at me when we get to number 24, excited to be out, already enjoying the music. He hammers on the front door and it takes a while for anyone to hear us. When the door opens, it’s the other guy we met in the bar. He’s unshaven and he’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Choke Hazard’ in yellow lettering, with an arrow pointing down to his crotch. He grins, widens his arms.

  ‘Pete, good to see you mate. And this is your wife, Alice, right, the fire-cracker?’

  ‘We’re not married,’ I say. Pete winces; it’s almost imperceptible, a tiny tightening through his stomach. I notice it though and I feel like a dick.

  ‘Good as,’ Pete says, and puts his arm around me.

  ‘Seems like some bugger needs to make a proposal,’ the bloke says, elbowing Pete and jostling him into the house. Pete laughs, and we follow him through a small living-room – empty cans on a low table, tobacco spilled across the carpet, abandoned games consoles – and into the kitchen.

  ‘Help yourselves to anything in here,’ the bloke says, ticking his head towards a large table loaded with plastic bottles and tinnies. An untouched chocolate gateau sits at the head of the table, glossing like fresh excrement in the heat. ‘We’re all set up out here.’

  We head out the backdoor and onto a verandah. The garden sinks away 20 feet below us. It’s surprisingly lush out here: there’s a long backyard, a good bit of lawn, and beyond that there’s the start of wild land – a parched, yellow bit of scrub leading towards a swathe of silver eucalypt. I linger on the step for a moment: the trees are moving ever so slightly, the pale leaves lifting as though they’re riding a thermal. Behind the eucalypt, a darker section of the forest cuts up dramatically: the beginning of the mountain crags.

  Pete is already down there in the fray, greeting people, clapping Paulie on the back. Paulie’s mauling the peak of his cap: he catches it between his thumb and the rest of his fist, lifting it off his head then settling it back down, lifting it up and settling it back down, again and again in quick succession. The gesture seems compulsive and vaguely rabid.

  ‘Alice, babe,’ Pete calls. ‘What you doing up there? Come and say hello.’

  Paulie squints up at me. ‘How ya going, Alice,’ he says, ‘come and get some food in that belly.’ He claps Pete on the back and guffaws, congratulating him on the magnitude of my stomach, I guess. I must look even bigger from below.

  Paulie seems to be in charge of the barbie. When I get down to him, he introduces me and Pete to some of the guys who are sitting around. There’s a sharp-eyed bloke called Jonny who nods a curt hello from his deckchair. There’s a bloke in a retro suit who gets up to shake our hands. ‘Nice to meet you both,’ he says. ‘I hear you’ve moved from the city? To this backwater? What the fuck is wrong with you?’ He looks from me to Pete and smiles broadly, evidently waiting for an answer. ‘So, seri’sly, why’d you do it?’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Paulie says. There’s a girl in the corner of the garden turning mal-coordinated circles to the music. ‘That’s Vicky,’ he says. ‘She’s a right laugh when she’s less fucked. Best leave her be just now.’ There are several other people sitting around, smoking spliffs and flicking ash onto the grass. I can smell the weed burning, I can taste it even: earthy and synthetic at once, dirty and greenly clean. I must be breathing it in, I can’t not be. I shut my mouth and try to breathe through my nose. My hand flickers towards my bag – if I put my face-mask on Pete will go ape. Paulie turns back to the barbie, which is smoking blackly. The whole thing stinks of burning toxins. The charcoal for one thing is giving off poisonous fumes: carbon monoxide. It’s a little-known method of suicide, burning charcoal in a confined space. What a bloody national irony it would be if we were all painlessly barbequed to death in this garden. And the smoke’s just the start of it: I can see a black crust forming on the unprotected meat. Hydrocarbons, totally fucking poisonous. Paulie grips some sangers in his tongs, turns them over, and fat drips through the grill, making the flames spurt up around the diabolical tucker.

  ‘Smells delicious,’ Pete says.

  ‘We’ve got chooks, we’ve got shrimp, we’ve got grouper, we’ve got steak,’ Paulie says, ‘hope you’re both hungry.’

  I’ve got to get away from the smoke and the chemicals. I turn back towards the house, covering my mouth and nose.

  ‘You ok, darl?’ Paulie says, leering again. ‘Mara was like this too, queasy with food. You’ll be fine once you get something in ya.’ His laugh is like a grim little cough. ‘There she is.’ He gestures with the tongs. ‘Mara,’ he yells, then he wolf whistles. ‘Get your sexy fat arse up here.’

  Mara is at the bottom of the garden, cradling Iluka. She lifts her face away from the child and towards us: she shakes her head at Paulie, gives him the finger, then waves at us. She turns back to the child, pointing at us and trying to get him to wave too. He just stares up at her, open-mouthed and filthy-cheeked. We all stand and watch her as she walks up the garden, slowly, murmuring to the baby the whole time. The child is beginning to giggle into her face. Whatever she’s saying, it’s working.

  ‘Give me a hand with this then, mate,’ Paulie says, chucking Pete a packet of grey burgers.

  ‘Alright there,’ Mara says, to me.

  ‘Alright,’ I say. I’m still trying to avoid the smoke, turning away as I speak and cupping my hand over my mouth. I guess I must look awkward, because she stares at me intently, as though she’s searching my face for illegible pain, working out what’s not being said. I guess that’s how you must have to read babies, when they’re dumb and suffering. She must be well practised at it.

  ‘Is the barbie bothering you?’ she says. ‘I remember what it feels like at this stage,’ she says, just like she did when we first met. And again, she doesn’t elaborate. Is it this choking feeling that she remembers from being pregnant? The feeling that the world is full of dangerous things that might at any moment suffocate you? Or the physical sensation of being pushed around from the inside, every bit of your body newly tender and terrible? The feeling of a fist in your rectum, a foot against your bladder? Just this afternoon, I saw something new rise up under the skin – not the baby, no, it was worse than that. It was some strange triangular edge of my uterus flexing, when I tried to get up off the couch. A fin of cartilage under my own skin, hiding there, prehistoric, inside me. Is it this feeling she remembers, of being terrified of her body, of what it might be about to do, of what it has already done? Or is she remembering the best time of her bloody life?

  ‘Shall we take a walk?’ she says. She pushes her mouth against the baby’s ear, whispers something to him, and then hands him to Pete. ‘You take care of him,’ she says. ‘It’ll be good practice.’ Pete grins and the baby starts to cry.

  ‘Let me show you the views from the edge of the yard.’ Mara loops her arm through mine. ‘Let’s get a break from all this.’

  When we get to the end of the lawn, Mara pushes against a place in the fence and two planks lift up. ‘We just need to squeeze through here,’ she says. ‘Might be slightly tricky for you, but there’s room if you get the angle right. I came down here the day before Lukey was born.’

  I push through the gap and follow Mara into the trees. There’s a slight breeze out here; it’s cooler and the air feels cleaner. I breathe a little easier. We’re under the eucalypt now, their silver leaves shivering above us.

  ‘Watch your step,’ Mara says.

  ‘So where’s the
view out here?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she says.

  We walk on for a couple of minutes more, until the sounds of the barbie have died back. I’m concentrating on my feet, on not misstepping, on not disturbing a funnel web or a snake or bull ants or any of the other poisonous creatures that might be out here. ‘This is the view,’ she says. I look up. She’s come to a stop at the fringe of the eucalypt and in front of her is the raggedy rock-edge of a sudden drop. We’re stood at the edge of a deep ravine, and on the other side, sheering all the way up to the sky, is a vast cliff of jungle green. I have to crane my neck back to see all the way up to the top of it, where the greenery gets sparser and the golden rock breaks through in pointed formations. Even then, there’s a tree that grows right out of the top of it, rising from a needle-point of stone.

  ‘Shout,’ she says. ‘Shout something.’

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Shout something!’ she says. She cups her mouth and leans towards the ravine. ‘Like this. MARA, MARA, MARA.’ Her name repeats downwards into the ravine, and I hear the sound fall, ricocheting between the sandy walls, echoing back to us. Mawa, Ma-a, Ma…

  ‘Echo Point,’ she says. ‘That’s what this place is called. Go on. You try it. Shout a name.’

  I’m not sure what to shout. I don’t want to shout my name: it feels like tempting fate or practising a suicide in sound. My mother’s name comes to mind. Is it wrong to shout it? I don’t know, and it’s all I can think of, so I shout, ‘MARGERY, MARGERY, MARGERY.’

  Mar-gry, Ma-gy, Ma… the ravine answers, and then swallows the sound. There’s nothing after that. Even the trees are quiet.

  ‘Eeerie, but?’ Mara says. ‘We used to come out here all the time. When we were kids. I can’t do it now, not with Iluka. This is going to sound weird, but I can’t bring him out here. I love Iluka more than anything else in the world, and I think if I bring him out here I might throw him off the edge, right into Echo Point. Weird, but?’ She laughs.