Cassandra

by Kathryn Gossow

  Lisa smiles at her once, but mostly everyone else ignores her or calls her psycho slut or stunned mullet.

  She only has to put up with it for two weeks. Two weeks. She only has to convince her dad. A new school, no one will know her. She won’t tell any fortunes or make any predictions and she will be normal Cassandra Shultz. Normal, normal, normal.

  If the dreams would stop, she could almost relax. When she sleeps, she dreams. She dreams of plane crashes, earthquakes, tsunamis, bloody coups. She dreams of the stallion sweeping down the hill and wiping out everything in its path. She dreams the house is gone, her family gone. She dreams of the shadows fighting on the garage wall. She dreams of a man with fiery fingers shooting orange sparks. A door opens and she cannot close it. She wakes shaking and crying. A scream close in her throat. But they won’t let her go away to boarding to school if they know the dreams are still coming on thick. So when they ask with concern in their eyes if she has slept well, she says, yes thank you.

  Sometimes the dreams pry into her when she is awake. In class, or during tea-time. I was just daydreaming, she tells Poppy and Ida when they notice. If she tries hard enough she can forget what she sees. She can. If she tries hard enough. And she does try. And try.

  She doesn’t go to school on the last day of term. Instead they drive to her new school. Her father dressed in his best clothes, his face like a funeral; her mother, red hair, shoulder pads in her dress, belted tight at the waist.

  ‘Where did you get that dress?’ her father asks in the car.

  ‘It’s old. I’ve had it for ages. You just don’t notice what I wear.’ She grins at Cassie, her lips vermillion. ‘I always thought you should go to a better school.’

  Her father grunts. ‘You always wanted her out of the way.’

  Her mother shoots him a hot look. ‘She wants to go.’

  ‘She’s been sick.’

  ‘This will be good for her.’

  ‘Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,’ Cassie interrupts.

  The school welcomes them with sturdy wrought iron gates. The principal shows them a classroom with computers. ‘The first school in the district to teach computers as part of the maths curriculum,’ he says.

  Cassie watches the girls with green ribbons in their hair and tartan skirts. I can be one of them, she thinks. They will like me.

  ~ 28 ~

  Shears

  Cassie wakes to a room humming with quiet. Her dream washes over her like muddy water. A dream without substance. Without words. A dream that leaves only its texture—a hollow airless bubble. She tries to shake it from her mind but as she turns her head the bubble follows her, slow and precarious, her head full of air, floating separate from her body. A cue to delve into her mind, into the dream, to examine, to search, to upend answers. She refuses. She looks instead to the pile of old uniforms on the floor and the new uniforms hanging on the cupboard door ready for name tags to be sewn onto their collars. Cassandra Shultz. Ordinary, plain old black-haired, bony elbowed Cassie Shultz.

  She pulls back the sheets and meets a swarm of the dream, flying around her like moths, thick dark wings veiling her from reality.

  She pushes them aside and stands. She piles the new uniforms over her arm and slumps through the door into the hall.

  The floorboards stretch from end to end, disappearing into shadows. A bumping noise comes from Poppy’s room. A drawer closing maybe. She drifts down the hall to the lounge, a mist swirling around her head, her ears swaddled in cotton wool.

  ‘Aunty Ida,’ she whispers.

  ‘Cassie,’ is her weak reply.

  Cassie leans on the end of the bed. ‘Do you want me to help you up?’

  ‘I’ve been up. Had a nice cup of tea and breakfast. Tired me out. I need a rest now.’ Ida stretches her hand towards Cassie. Cassie walks closer and takes the leathered hand in hers.

  ‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone,’ Ida says.

  ‘I’ll be back every holiday. And on weekends sometimes. Did you see my uniforms?’ Cassie lifts the uniforms aloft.

  ‘Very smart,’ Ida says.

  ‘Better than those other poxy things,’ Cassie replies.

  ‘Let me rest now, Cass. It’s a weird sort of a day.’

  Weird yes, Cassie thinks.

  Her mother sits at the kitchen table doing a crossword. The kitchen clock ticks a steady slow beat.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Cassie.’

  ‘Can we sew name tags on my uniforms today?’

  ‘Not now. Go and get out of your nightie and into some clothes.’

  Cassie plonks herself into the kitchen chair.

  ‘Where’s Alex?’

  ‘Gone to help your father. There’s some cows got through the fence and ended up on the road,’ her mother says, chewing on the end of the pen.

  ‘I coulda gone.’

  ‘If you got up like everyone else you could have gone. I’m sure Alex would have preferred to give it a miss. What’s a word for divine intervention, seven letters, ends with a y?’

  ‘You could have woken me,’ Cassie says.

  Her mother looks up from the crossword, one eyebrow arches in disbelief. ‘Wake you?’

  ‘You could have. I’d have gotten up,’ Cassie says. She wants to say, I feel funny today.

  ‘You’ll have to make your own breakfast,’ her mother says.

  ‘Destiny,’ Cassie says.

  Cassie takes her toast into the lounge room. Ida snores, her mouth wide open and gummy, her teeth in the glass beside her bed. Cassie pulls the curtain across the bed and turns on the television. She sits close so she can have the sound down low. Car racing is on one channel, and a black and white movie on the other. Rubbish, but noise and pictures might help to chase away the hollow, fuzzy dreamscape that encases her. Instead it builds into restlessness, like swarming ants, busy building a nest in her belly and travelling through her veins into her chest and down to her fingertips and toes.

  Cassie turns off the television. It pops into a dead silence.

  Ida’s snoring has stilled. The outdoors thrums against the windows.

  She wanders into the kitchen. The crossword, half-finished lies across the table. The tap drips, thunk thunk, into the hollow of the metal sink. Cassie twists the knob tighter. A tiny globule of water collects on the end of the tap and then falls fast onto the shining metal. A new drip begins to collect. Cassie wipes it off with her finger. Cold water spreads down her fingertip.

  Her feet take her down the hall. She stops and looks into her room. The curtains pulled closed, her bed a mess of nightmares: it seems to her a dark unwelcoming cave. Black stalagmites and stalactites should be growing from the floor and the ceiling. She continues down the hall and knocks on Poppy’s door.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s me, Poppy. Can I make you a cup of tea?’

  The door opens. Poppy’s few hairs stand askew on his head. Behind him the smooth bed is made with military precision.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ Cassie replies. ‘I was just bored. Thought I’d make a cup of tea.’

  ‘Is Ida up?’

  ‘She was. She’s having a nap now.’

  Poppy rubs his face, the red patches of skin damage stretching to pinkness. ‘You go and do your homework. I’ll make myself a tea later.’

  ‘It’s the holidays,’ she says, but the door is already closed.

  She retraces her steps back down the hall. Stops at the door of her room. She does not feel in control. She feels like a person in a dream. A person that is no longer herself. As if she is part of a game show made up by someone else and things just happen to her. She breathes a shallow breath. Remember to breathe.

  She finds herself next on the veranda. She leans on the rail. Dead frangipani leaves smother the garden bed. The untrimm
ed plumbago claims the base of the tree in stealthy frenzy.

  The barrier between the real world and her dream world is breaking down, the membrane between them getting thinner, the dream world forcing its way through and then she will no longer be herself. The rules will be different and she won’t know what they are.

  The unmown grass strains in the breeze.

  The sweet sickly smell comes next. It smells, she realises for the first time, a little like when she bleeds during her periods. But not quite. When she bleeds, she smells like birth, like life. This smell she has always called the ‘death smell’. The smell that first came when the snake bit her. The smell that she thinks will welcome her, welcome all of them when their last breath comes.

  Her mother appears at her shoulder. Cassie feels her like a shadow. She turns. Her mother’s face is pale, white as a sweet smelling jonquil, the sunlight shining through it.

  The crushing across Cassie’s chest pushes all the air out of her. It explodes in one huge gust from her mouth. She falls to her knees. Her mother is trying to pull her up, as though pulling her up will pull her away from the crushing, save her life. She hears the bones in her chest crack, splinter into a million pieces, and she knows they can never be fixed. They are broken beyond repair. In her mind’s eye she sees her heart burst open. Splatter inside her shattered chest. Blackness swallows her and she knows there is no point fighting it.

  ‘Cassie.’ Her mother’s hand trembles as it drags on her sleeve. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Alex.’ The name splutters from her mouth and grief takes hold of her. She is grief. Every hurt before this has merely been practice.

  ‘What?’ her mother demands.

  The wind ruffles the frangipani leaves.

  Her mother pulls her up, strains to hold her on her feet, Cassie’s legs like a rag doll. Her face slack.

  ‘Cassie.’ Her mother’s voice comes from the ceiling, from the sky, from the heavens. ‘I’m going out there.’ Her mother drops her and she falls to sit.

  Her mother appears again, tapping the car keys against her thigh. ‘Poppy is watching Ida. You help.’

  ‘Too late,’ she whispers, but her mother is down the stairs and striding towards the garage. What is going to happen will happen. There is no changing this. There is no changing anything as important as this.

  Cassie pulls herself forward and presses her forehead against the railings. It is like looking through the bars of a jail.

  She closes her eyes and begins to count.

  She counts to a hundred.

  And then begins again.

  Poppy lifts her into the chair, his fingers digging into her sides as he struggles with her weight. ‘There’s no need to get worked up over nothing,’ he says, but she can see the nervousness, the trembling in his fingers, she can hear the quaver in his voice. He knows. The same as her mother knew. Somehow they are all infected with knowing.

  She counts. If she can count every raindrop that ever fell …

  Every raindrop that will fall …

  Poppy brings her cups of tea. He brings her lunch. The tea goes cold. The bread goes stale.

  They help Ida to the toilet.

  Eternity passes through the garden.

  Poppy leaves her to feed the chickens. Cassie helps Ida go to the toilet.

  Dusk settles like a shroud. Wraps its cloak around the house.

  The sound of the ute reaches her ears. Distant, but it snaps her from her numbness. Her stomach lurches.

  ‘Poppy,’ she cries. The sound goes nowhere.

  He reaches for her hand. His grip firm and clammy. ‘He’ll be all right.’

  She hears the ute turning on the circular drive. The tyres crunching on the gravel. Passing through the doors of the shed. They will both come round the corner. Dad’s work boots heavy on the grass. Alex skipping to the kitchen. To eat and turn on the TV.

  Alex doesn’t come. Her dad doesn’t come. They wait.

  Her mother’s car sounds on the drive next. Racing. Spitting the gravel and sliding. It flies into the garage and the brakes slam.

  Her mother does come. She stands in front of the garage wall. Face full of murder.

  Cassie stands and leans over the railing.

  ‘You bastard!’ her mother screams.

  Cassie’s father materialises then, sheepish, his hat between his hands. Her mother launches herself at him. She thumps his shoulders with her fists.

  Her father falls to his knees. Her mother pushes his shoulders and he nearly falls but catches himself, his hands behind his back. Then he slumps forward, his face in his hands. Her mother starts to kick him. Cassie loses her balance and Poppy is there catching her.

  It’s like watching shadow puppets. A play she has seen a hundred times before, sitting here on the veranda, walking past with her schoolbag, sometimes out of the corner of her eye, sometimes as clear as day. Played out a hundred times on the wall of the garage. Shadows dancing.

  She just never saw the first act.

  She goes inside and crawls into her bed.

  Her mother comes later. The room is dark but she doesn’t turn on the light.

  Alex had an accident, she says. He fell off the back of the ute—your dad was reversing, her breath wobbles, her words shake, he fell under the car—under the tyre. It wasn’t your dad’s fault, she says. You mustn’t blame him. They took him to the hospital. It was too late. It was quick, she says. The doctors said he didn’t suffer, she says.

  I was too late, she says. All I saw was the ute going towards town. I knew something, she says.

  I followed, she says.

  I wish I could have been with him, she says.

  I was there, thinks Cassie. I was with him. He suffered.

  ~ 29 ~

  Funeral

  His body is actually in there, Cassie thinks. Inside the coffin at the front of the church. The klutzy, living, breathing boy who was her brother is inside that box. Not breathing. Not breathing because she didn’t save him. Tears prick her eyes like needles. She presses her fingertips into her sinuses and breathes deeply. She doesn’t want to cry while people are still coming up to them in their front row pew. They come and kiss her mother’s cheek, shake her father’s and Poppy’s hands. Some of them lay a hand on her shoulder and tut to her in sympathy, you poor girl. Most of them pay no attention to her at all.

  The organ music drones above the whispers as people enter behind them. The wooden arches of the church skim gracefully under the ceiling. Light bounces cheerfully off the white stone walls. It is a church built for weddings and christenings, she thinks, not funerals. Not for funerals for little boys.

  She breathes in and pulls at the waistband of her too-tight skirt. Her mother always says she is too young to wear black. She has nothing black for a funeral. The old blue skirt barely fits and the dark green top doesn’t even match. It was the most sombre she could find in her cupboard of pinks and yellows. She remembers a story she read in the newspaper about a woman who bought a black dress for her husband’s funeral—before he died. That was how they caught her for murder. On the shop assistant’s evidence. Or maybe she had a premonition. Maybe she knew his death was inevitable and wanted to be prepared.

  Death is inevitable. A funeral outfit should be compulsory in everyone’s wardrobe.

  Ida with more black dresses than any of them is in the care of Mrs Lever. She wasn’t up to the funeral. That’s what they said.

  Beside her, Poppy strangles the folded piece of paper in his hand. Alex’s life in Poppy’s even writing from one edge of the paper to the other. No space wasted. The same as he always wrote. If he squeezes it any more he will rub the words off and not be able to read it. How will he read aloud without breaking down? Cassie sneaked a peek at it, only saw the first line before Poppy came back into the room. It read: Alex was a prodigy. A wonder who changed our lives.
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  The truth of it carved into Cassie. Like a potato peeler slicing another layer of skin from her.

  Those fighting tears stab at her again.

  ‘It’s all right to cry, my darling,’ Poppy whispers. He wraps his arm over her shoulder and pulls her close. The tears scald her cheeks. Her mother grips her hand and squeezes it. The organ music gets louder and everyone stands. The priest floats onto the dais and nods to the family.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he begins.

  The sound of high heels spring from the back of the church. Heads turn. Cassie turns.

  Athena. Athena followed by her father. The mourners, except Cassie, politely turn towards the front, close their eyes to pray. Athena’s father whispers to Athena and indicates a pew. They place their hymn books on the ledge in front of them and bow their heads.

  Cassie turns to the front. Her mother is still watching Athena. Her grip on Cassie’s hand slackens. Cassie squeezes her fingers. Her mother turns and smiles a grimace.

  Athena wears black, a black dress. Long and sleek. She is prepared for a funeral.

  Cassie sighs with relief. Athena is here.

  After the funeral, the house smells of sandwiches. Mrs Lever welcomes people into the house as though it is her own family’s wake. Cassie sits on the floor by the dining room door. The ladies’ stockings swish swish as they walk from the table to the outer walls where they cling like bats dressed in black. The china clinks and rattles. Mrs Heinrick says not many people have come. She says they should have had the wake in the church hall; it’s too much to expect people to come all the way out here. It’s for Ida’s sake, says Mrs Lever; poor Ida’s not long for this world. That fall has taken it out of her. She couldn’t make it into town, poor dear. It won’t be long and they will have to find somewhere else for her. They can’t keep caring for her here. That fall … such a sad life, losing her George, then the thing with her boy and now this. We don’t expect the children to go before us. They murmur in agreement and chew their cake. She is making her peace with God, Mrs Lever says to finish.