Cassandra

by Kathryn Gossow

Her new friend Natalie has long hair, not curly, but frizzy like a wild lion. She comes to school with it brushed and tied in a ponytail, but by the time the first bell rings, it is tangled and loose. Cassie catches the bus with the other farm kids. Natalie, a townie, walks to school so it is her job to keep a swing for Cassie.

  Each morning, Cassie crosses the parade ground to where Natalie stands, a hand on each of the swings. As she gets closer, Natalie lets go of one of the swings. ‘Are you ready?’ and they both leap into the seats and step back onto their tippy toes and start the countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7 … The counting had been Cassie’s idea. 4, 3, 2, 1—Blast off! and they let go and swing counting upwards to ten. Cassie leans far forward and pulls back, knowing the faster and harder she twists the higher she will swing. At the end of the countdown, they leap off their swing onto the ground, mostly running with the momentum, sometimes tripping up into a giggling tangle on the ground. Then they do it all over again.

  One morning, as they stand up from their tumble, a grade two girl tries to steal Cassie’s swing.

  Natalie jumps forward and tendrils of frizzy hair spring from her ponytail and drape around her face. Her top lip curls up, and her teeth bare and Cassie knows Natalie is about to get fierce. ‘The swings are mine and Cassie’s.’

  The girl pushes Natalie aside and takes hold of the swing. ‘You have to share,’ she says back.

  ‘I do not,’ screams Natalie and pushes the girl’s face with the flat of her hand.

  The girl covers her face with her hands, her eyes wet. ‘I’m telling,’ she cries and runs in the direction of the office, her friends trailing behind her.

  Natalie doesn’t get in trouble. She tells Mrs Bryant the grade two girls pushed her off the swing the day before and shows the bruise on her elbow to prove it. Later Cassie asks Natalie how she got the bruise, but Natalie won’t say.

  The grade two girls play on the slide from then on.

  During little break, Natalie and Cassie sit together under the school building. Theirs is the bench seat close to the drinking troughs. The teachers says they aren’t allowed to share their food, but Cassie has Aunty Ida’s homemade patty cakes with chocolate icing or her spongy lamingtons with coconut that end up in her lap and down the front of her dress.

  Natalie has fruit, an orange or an apple. It doesn’t seem fair for one of them to have what the other doesn’t, so they share everything, eating to the halfway mark on the food and then swapping.

  After eating they play hopscotch or at the water trough, spraying the grade two girls with water when they try to come in for a drink.

  Monday morning, Cassie climbs onto the school bus, her stomach churning with worry. Natalie’s arm is broken. The bone across the side of her wrist cracked like the windscreen of Cassie’s dad’s ute. Not in pieces but painfully broken. Will Natalie be able to play on the swings? Most likely not. Natalie fell off her bike. Saturday morning she flew down the hill to her house, her feet off the pedals, her hair twisting and knotting when the bike’s wheel hit a stone and Natalie used her arm to break her fall.

  Cassie slides her port onto the port rack, inhaling the soggy smell of Vegemite sandwiches. Natalie’s port sits in the port rack, as usual. Cassie walks slowly down the long stairs. Across the parade ground, Natalie stands at the swing. Strange, her arm is not in a cast. Energy pulses through Cassie’s legs as she runs across the bitumen. They aren’t allowed to run across the bitumen. Not since one of the grade four boys fell and grazed his hands and knees. He went to the doctor to have the tiny stones picked out. One by one. With tweezers.

  ‘Cassandra Shultz, are you running?’ Mrs Bryant’s voice booms from the veranda above her. Cassie slows to a fast walk.

  ‘Natalie! Where’s your cast?’ Cassie arrives at the swings, panting.

  ‘What cast?’

  ‘For your arm. You broke your arm. You fell off your bike.’

  Natalie’s nose crinkles, her freckles squashing together, like just before she gets fierce, or just before she laughs.

  ‘I did not. Who told you that?’

  ‘No one told me.’ Cassie sits on the swing, looks at the dust around her feet. Under her feet is a ditch where everyone’s feet dig into the dirt to slow themselves down. One time it rained and the hole filled with water and became muddy. Cassie and Natalie were not allowed into the classroom with their muddy shoes and spent the day sitting at their desks in socks. She searches her mind. How did she know Natalie had broken her arm? ‘I saw you … I saw you break it. You were riding your bike down the hill near your house.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Saturday?’ Cassie swallows the word, unsure.

  ‘You weren’t at my house. How could you see me from your house? Your house is miles from my house.’

  Cassie looks at Natalie’s pale freckled arm. It is obviously fine, in one piece. No cracks. She sits on her swing and backs it up and stands on her tippy toes. ‘It must have been a dream. Are you ready?’

  Natalie backs up onto her toes. They count down, but they aren’t as loud as usual and when they jump to the ground, they don’t laugh like they usually do.

  By the end of the week they are normal again, except for the grade two girl, Michelle, who joins them to play at big lunch. She talks all the time, making all their games into stories with dragons and pirates. Cassie decides two friends is better than one, even though her heart stops beating when Michelle and Natalie huddle together and she can’t hear what they are saying.

  Monday, as Cassie climbs the stairs to her classroom, two boys follow, talking.

  ‘Did you see that Natalie girl? She’s broken her arm.’

  ‘Wow, is it bleeding?’

  ‘Not now, on the weekend. She fell off her bike. She’s got a cast from her thumb to her elbow. I wrote on it. You can probably write on it too.’

  Cassie races down the stairs. A swarm of kids hang around the swing, with Natalie in the middle, her plastered arm stretched out while a grade six girl writes on it in felt pen.

  Cassie pushes her way to the centre of the circle. ‘Natalie, Natalie, I told you. Look, your arm is broken.’

  ‘I know that,’ Natalie says.

  ‘Can I sign it next?’ Cassie holds out her hand to take the pen but Natalie turns away and gives the pen to another kid.

  Cassie’s hand falls to her side. The felt pen passes to every other person until the bell rings and Natalie walks to class surrounded by kids, Michelle by her side.

  By little lunch the excitement around Natalie quietens. Cassie sits beside her friend and opens her lunch box. ‘You see, I told you, you’d break your arm.’

  ‘You wished it, you mean.’ Natalie turns her shoulder away from Cassie.

  ‘No I never. I just dreamed it before it happened.’ Cassie reaches out and touches her friend’s back.

  Natalie turns, her eyes burning, her golden eyebrows arched. ‘You wished it and now it’s broken and I can’t go swimming or do anything.’

  ‘It’s winter,’ Cassie says quietly.

  ‘I don’t care. I can’t be your friend anymore. Friends don’t break each other’s arms.’

  Natalie picks up her lunch and walks over to the grade two girls. Michelle puts her arm over Natalie’s shoulder and they both look up at Cassie.

  Cassie turns and faces the drinking trough, her chest aching. Was it a dream? Dreams could be tricky. Sometimes you couldn’t tell them from real life. Like when she dreamed her grandma was still alive, or that Miss Kelly was their teacher instead of Mrs Bryant. Or when she dreamed the snake slid into her bed and licked her ear. She rubs the scar on the back of her hand and the smell fills her nostrils. The sick, sweet, bloodlike smell she can’t place. They told her she nearly died. Mum tried to suck the poison out, but that was the wrong thing to do and Poppy came and wrapped the bite up tight with a bandage and saved her life. She only remembers counting
and the smell. It was like the snake was talking, hissing in her ear, making her see things and count. But she only learned to count this year. She never thought this way before. It was like when the snake bit her she could see into the future to when she would be able to count. And when she dreamt about Natalie on her bike, she had seen the future too. She should have told Natalie not to ride her bike. Then it would never have happened. Natalie wouldn’t be mad at her.

  But … if Natalie didn’t ride her bike and didn’t break her arm she would not have been able to prove she was going to break her arm. So what would make her stop riding her bike if she didn’t believe she would break her arm? It made no sense. What was the point in seeing that something bad was going to happen if you couldn’t change it? Or prove you had changed it.

  Natalie’s loud laugh rises above the chatter of kids. Cassie picks a corner from her sandwich and holds it limply between her fingers.

  ~ 6 ~

  drought - 1980

  Cassie pulls the dress over her head, the cotton still new and stiff. The dress is pink with red strawberries the size of fingernails splattered like sores over it. She tugs on its side seams and stomps flat-footed into the lounge room.

  ‘Do I have to wear this?’

  Her mother doesn’t look up from combing Alex’s hair. ‘Yes.’

  ‘The pink makes me want to vomit.’

  ‘It’s just pink.’

  ‘It makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Not another word. Go brush your teeth then come and I’ll plait your hair for you.’

  ‘Next time you make me a dress, I don’t want a pink one.’ She thumps down the hall, her feet not making as much noise on the floor as she would like. ‘I’m too old for pink,’ she shouts behind her.

  ‘You’re only eleven … she’s only eleven, isn’t she, Mum?’ Alex shouts back.

  Cassie pokes out her tongue, though no one is in the hall to see it.

  The colour really does make her feel sick. When she wears it, a smell fills her nostrils and her breakfast gurgles from her stomach to her throat.

  Later they cram into the car; Alex sits in the back between Aunt Ida and her mother. Her father drives and Poppy sits in the passenger seat. They pull down the middle console for Cassie, which, even though it has a lap seat belt, it isn’t a seat at all. It wobbles and her legs get in the way of the gear changes. Cassie enjoys the wobble and sitting in the front.

  The wind stretches the trees sideways, their leaves dancing wildly. Occasionally a gust buffets the car like a giant kicking a toy.

  ‘Windy enough to blow a dog off a chain,’ her Poppy says.

  ‘Early wind. I can’t remember a windy Show Day for a long time,’ Aunt Ida says.

  ‘1965,’ says Alex, ‘then a dry summer.’

  Poppy nods.

  Her father turns and glances back to Alex. ‘How did you remember that?’

  ‘It’s kind of a pattern. I remember the pattern.’

  Poppy’s favourite story is Alex’s story. He tells the story to whoever will listen. ‘Alex looked up at the clouds, sniffed the air and said, “rain tonight, Poppy”.’

  Poppy said no, these westerlies never brought rain like that. Not that time of year. Alex, apparently, stuck his finger in his mouth, wet it, and lifted it in the air like a wind vane and said again, ‘Rain tonight’.

  And blow Poppy down if the wind didn’t change and they got half an inch. As unexpected as snow in the jungle, he said.

  That wasn’t when Poppy started to listen to Alex’s predictions. He was only four and it was probably a fluke. But it happened again and again, a late frost, thunderstorms predicted a week away, and Poppy started to listen.

  Cassie crosses her arms over her chest. Then Alex learned to read and started spouting dates and weather events. Ever since she learned to read she has tried to read Poppy’s notebooks, but they were boring. Alex is only in grade two. How did he even understand Poppy’s running writing?

  The people in the car are quiet again, which is more usual than their talking. At this time Cassie might begin to chatter, and her father would tell her he can’t concentrate on driving. But she doesn’t want to talk. The wind has blown the chatter from her. Her stomach churns. The dress doesn’t help, or the new car smell of carpet and chemicals. She prefers the ute’s smell of hay and grease.

  ‘Can we wind the windows down?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ her mother and Aunty Ida gasp at the same time. ‘I just had my hair set,’ Ida continues.

  Cassie scratches the tiny scar on her hand. ‘I’m hot,’ she says.

  Poppy opens the quarter window.

  ‘Gus,’ Aunt Ida complains and he closes it again.

  The dress smell … the car smell … the smells invade her body, sweet like burned sugar, sick like rotting fruit, and she knows she is going away. Sticky sweat rises out of her pores. It is going to be a hot one. The hot ones always start badly. She clutches Poppy’s sleeve and senses, in the distance, his hand on her knee. The dash of the car stretches into the distance, too far away to touch. The trees flash past, banging at her eyes, and though she closes them tight, their shadows still whiz past behind her eyelids. The heat wraps around her shoulders like the bloody fur of a skinned animal. Suddenly, someone is pouring hot liquid down her chest and stomach and she hears Aunt Ida scream. The scream bounces around her head and the burning stings like a million needles. She screams and screams and screams, her skin burns, but the people wearing their best taffeta dresses dance around her, the Pride of Erin, and then a waltz, and she screams and screams throughout the dancing.

  If she counts to a thousand the burning will go away. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 … She gets to 56 and the dresses begin to shine like flashing lights and they are all red and blue, flashing and wailing like sirens. 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 … The dresses are all white now, hushed white, with bright white, blinding lights, and she is lying on her back and flying backwards around bright white rooms, she screams and screams and help arrives, a woman, or a girl with white hair, and then it is red and she is not sure whether to trust her or not. It will be fine, she says, don’t worry, and her red hair glows in front of the white lights. It is cooler now and her skin ices over like a river.

  A sweet smell fills the kitchen—Aunt Ida’s grape jam, with the grapes from the black Muscat vine. Her favourite. There is a jar of jam, sitting on a blue ribbon.

  ‘Wake up, Cassie, we’re here.’ Poppy nudges her and she lifts her head from his shoulder. She opens her eyes to the rough car park of the showgrounds. Her limbs heavy, she steps out of the car. The wind sprints around them, picking up white sandy dust. Her heavy body is rooted in the dirt, while her mind lifts and twirls up in the dust and she watches her family from a place in the sky. Her mother gets the coats and bags out of the boot. Her father checks the car is locked. Poppy and Alex wait. Aunty Ida tries to keep her hair in place. She wears a purple dress, the colour of grapes, and Cassie remembers. Her mind finds her body again.

  ‘Aunt Ida,’ she says excitedly, ‘you are going to win a prize with your jam.’

  ‘Really? Well let’s wait and see. What about your mother? Is she going to win anything?’ Her mother steps in beside them and hands Cassie her coat. She raises her eyebrows at Cassie.

  Cassie wants to say something true. ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs.

  Her mother walks around the two of them and takes Alex’s hand. Alex pulls his hand away.

  They all join the line at the ticket gate. In front of them stand Mr and Mrs Krechmar. They turn and the men shake hands and the women smile at each other.

  ‘Been dry, need some rain,’ says Mr Krechmar, his words sounding fat and sticky, as if he also needs a drink.

  ‘It’s been dry all right,’ her poppy replies, looking at the sky. There is not a cloud in sight.

  ‘Never known it to rain with a westerly wind lik
e this,’ Mr Krechmar continues. ‘We’ll be waiting till it turns. What do you reckon, Shultzy, you’re the expert in these matters, aren’t you?’

  Poppy shrugs. ‘Reckon we should ask young Alex here. He’s been studying the weather a bit.’

  ‘So, young Alex.’ Mr Krechmar laughs. ‘What do you think? When we going to get a good rain?’

  Alex looks at his feet. The line moves forward and they inch closer to the entrance.

  The mangled music from the show rides creeps through the fence. Will her mother give her money to go on the Octopus? Who will go on it with her? Not Alex; he hates rides.

  ‘Come on, Alex, the cat got your tongue?’ Poppy says. Alex remains quiet.

  He doesn’t know the answer. Cassie grins to herself.

  Alex glares at her as if he knows why she is smiling. He looks at the grownups. ‘Not for a long time,’ he says. ‘There will be a drought.’

  ‘Well he’s an optimistic bugger, isn’t he?’ Mr Krechmar is now at the front of the line. ‘We’ll see you at the bar later, hey.’ He turns to the ticket booth.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Poppy asks. He and her father stare at Alex.

  ‘How would he know?’ Cassie frowns. ‘He’s only in grade two.’

  ‘Cassie, don’t be cheeky.’ Her mother takes her arm and walks her forward in the line.

  ‘I think so,’ says Alex. ‘It’s the wind, I think, the wind. It’s changing things.’

  Cassie rolls her eyes. ‘Aunty Ida, let’s go to look at the jam first.’

  But Aunty Ida stares at Alex. They all stare at Alex. None of them even notice they are at the front of the line.

  ~ 7 ~

  Tea Leaves

  Inside the showgrounds, the men and Alex head to the cattle judging yards and Cassie, Aunty Ida and her mum walk to the cooking and crafts pavilion. Aunt Ida’s jam sits, as Cassie knew it would, alongside a blue ribbon: ‘Best Jam of Show 1980’.

  Her mother entered her jam drops and a knitted scarf, but they have not won anything. She pretends she doesn’t care and Cassie wishes she saw something in her dream for her mum to win. But it doesn’t work that way.