I turn the music up. And sing, ‘Guess what? I’m having more fun. And now that we’re done, I’m going to show you.’
I heart Pink, I tell Alex, picking up a belt and kajinking silver studs along the edges. You know why? I feel like I know her. Don’t you feel like you could hang with Pink? She just lays it all out, and she doesn’t care what people think.
Alex has his head in his hands.
What? he says.
I dunno, I say. Sometimes I feel like I have no control over anything, you know? Like Julia. I don’t know why I care. We’re not even that close, but I wanted her to like me. I enjoyed the Whoolia high-five, air-kiss thing. It made me feel like I belonged somewhere.
At last my mother goes away. I open the door a crack. The upturned plate is still there on the carpet.
Are we going to clean it up? I ask.
He shrugs. He is more worried about what will happen when I go to school tomorrow. Maybe they won’t even care.
I tap compose again and I write, hey you, pressing send quickly before I can change my mind.
Then I stare at the screen for the next ten minutes. Ok, two minutes, but it feels like ten minutes.
Nothing.
That was stupid, Alex tells me. Isn’t it worse knowing that she doesn’t want to speak to you?
Twenty real minutes later Amina still hasn’t answered.
I feel awful in my guts, as if I have eaten a bad hotdog. Because we’re really alone, Alex and I. At least I used to have my fantasies about Amina to keep me company.
I hold up my ka-jinked jacket against my chest.
Alex snorts. That’s so lame. It’s pathetic. It’s like something a five-year-old would do.
Maybe he’s right. You know what it looks like? I say, giggling. It looks exactly like I have attacked my clothes with bedazzler’s cheap-arse cousin!
Alex looks away from me. He’s embarrassed because he’s crying.
23
WE’VE DECIDED THE best thing to do is get to school early, and that way I can sit there with my back against the wall, instead of walking into a situation all exposed.
I stomp all the way to school in my steel-capped boots. My fists are clenched. Because if someone gives me shit I’m going to punch them in the eye.
My arm is really itchy. I pull up my sleeve and there is a red rash there.
When I arrive, Sierra is sitting by herself in the empty quad. She watches me approaching. Her face tells me nothing.
‘Are you always this early?’ I ask.
‘My mum,’ she explains. Sierra travels with the lady from the front desk, of course.
I sit on the bench next to her, slipping my bag down between my feet. We are silent for a moment, and then I figure I should just say it.
‘So, umm, do you have a problem with me being’— there is only the slightest pause—’gay?’
‘What? No!’ Sierra says, blushing. ‘No! Not at all. As long as…’ Then she giggles.
‘As along as?’ I raise an eyebrow.
‘Don’t worry, I was just teasing.’ She waves her hand at me. ‘Never mind.’
‘What were you going to say?’
As long as you don’t hit on me. That’s what she was going to say.
‘Actually I think you’re pretty cute,’ Alex says, and he holds Sierra’s eye contact for a moment too long.
What the hell are you doing? I ask him.
You don’t think it would make her feel good? Thinking someone had a little crush on her? Her name is mountain, for chrissake! And I watch her. Alex is right. She’s embarrassed, but I think she’s also flattered.
You could pash her. She’s not ugly, Alex says.
I don’t want to pash Sierra. We can’t have this argument right now.
‘It’s a bit gross for me,’ Sierra confesses, and her nose wrinkles just a little bit. ‘No offence. But you’re into what you’re into, I suppose.’
I nod. Alex runs his eye over her. ‘Which part is gross?’
Stop it! I warn him.
What? We can make her say it, Alex grins.
Don’t make her say it. What the hell is wrong with you?
‘It’s ok, I’m not going to umm…’ I sigh. ‘Well, it’s like you’re into boys, but you’re not into all boys. You know?’
Sierra narrows her eyes.
That was the wrong thing. Now she’s pissed at me, because you’ve said she’s not attractive enough. You should have left it, Alex says.
You were making her uncomfortable, I tell him.
I was making her hot.
We don’t want to make Sierra hot.
Why not?
This time I bump her knee with my knee.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she asks.
I lean across and put my arm on the wall behind her, so now she’s trapped. I lean in and lick her earlobe.
‘What the hell, Alex?’ She pushes me away. But I can see gooseflesh running up her arms.
I laugh and then I stand up and stretch. I do three cartwheels in a row across the empty playground.
This is the bit I’m not prepared for. You know what it feels like? This is like white-water rafting. If I don’t put my oar in at exactly the right moment I’ll get smashed on the rocks.
24
www.motherhoodshared.com
Alex is not eating consistently enough for the medication to work, so I have gone back to a strategy I used when he first went to school. We used to rub testosterone lotion onto his skin when he was asleep.
I’ve been thinking about what Vic has said, and I do agree on some levels that he is right. Alex is of an age now where he should be able to make his own decisions, but this is the thing—he needs to be a stable person first.
At the moment, while he is off his medication, he can’t make the right choices. It’s like asking a drunk person to research their superannuation. They’re not interested in the long term, they’re not thinking clearly. Super is actually really important, and the choices you make now can change your life, but you can’t get someone to focus when they’re drinking.
Alex is just like that, except instead of alcohol it’s hormones. We want to get him levelled out first and then we can have a proper conversation. Bascially we’re trying to sober him up, if you like.
I do have Alex’s best interests at heart.
I’d like to share with you something that happened when he was younger. He was about four. We’d been to see many specialists. They all wanted to see his private parts and usually they were sensitive about that, but we went to see this one specialist. He was an a**hole. We made an appointment and when we came in he had five medical students there, and they all went around saying how glad they were to be involved with a rare case study. One of them actually had a camera.
The specialist propped Alex up on the bed and then he started to use all these medical terms like androgen sensitivity and karyotypes and Goldberg Maxwell syndrome. I knew what some of them were, but he wasn’t talking to me.
Anyway after a while he asked Alex to stand up and drop his pants. Alex looked so scared. So I said no.
The specialist was sighing and rolling his eyes and talking to me as if I was the four-year-old. He said that it was important to give the students this opportunity because these cases came along so rarely, and that I was being hysterical.
He was trying to bully me because all these people in the room wanted to gawk at Alex’s noodle—for medical reasons, but gawking all the same.
I have said, from that moment on, he shouldn’t have to show it to anyone. No one. Not even us. No one had a right to his privacy, and I am proud that I have always stuck to that. From then on when we went to these appointments he hasn’t shown his privates to anyone.
Heather
COMMENTS:
* * *
Cheryl wrote:
This is the thing, kids don’t come with an instruction manual, and yours is even more tricky than most. But at the bottom of it all, if you have love between
you then you can’t go wrong.
* * *
Dee Dee wrote:
Cheryl is right. There’s always going to be hard days and hard decisions. Parenthood is a constant test of your metal. It’s clear that you love him and you want the best for him. It’s hard to know what that is in a situation like this.
* * *
Vic wrote:
*mettle
* * *
Georgeous wrote:
Goddammit, Vic, why are you so obnoxiouis?
* * *
Vic wrote:
*obnoxious
25
AFTER THE DRESS rehearsal, Lien asks me to stay back.
‘We’d like to take a couple of shots of you for the promo material,’ she tells me.
Lien riffles through the clothes on rack. She has me in a golden glittery skirt, and a linen shirt. While we’re talking she adds a cravat, and a camel-coloured cape-thing. It’s not my style, but the soccer mums are going to go nuts for it.
‘The boutique is going to pay you for this shoot. They will probably make up some posters, or even a billboard. Are you ok with that?’
‘I guess so.’
‘This is Givenchy, you know.’
I look down at the clothes. ‘Nice fabric,’ I say.
Lien is giving me a look, and I know I’m ignorant. I like clothes, but I haven’t really paid much attention to labels.
The photographer is draping purple material over the wall behind the hemming dais.
‘How long will that take?’ Lien asks the hairdresser, who is running her fingers through a handful of blonde extensions.
‘It doesn’t need to be perfect. We can do it while the makeup is going on,’ she replies.
They surround me. The hairdresser is tugging at my hair. The comb slides along my scalp horizontally.
‘Do you know about weaves?’ she asks me.
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ I bluff.
The makeup artist starts dotting foundation over my face.
‘You should really try to come to these things photo-ready,’ she tells me.
‘I didn’t exactly know I was going to have my photo taken today,’ I explain.
‘A girl that looks like you? You should always be photo-ready,’ adds the hairdresser.
‘You need to apply a foundation from your hair line down to your décolletage,’ the makeup artist continues.
Your what? Alex asks.
‘A little blush and a neutral gloss to your lips. With your colouring you need smoky eyes, but you should use a grey or brown rather than a black.’
‘Ok,’ I say.
‘You don’t want to look cheap, or angry.’
Lien is sliding shoes onto my feet.
‘She has huge feet,’ she says. ‘What are you, a nine or a ten?’
I don’t know what my shoe size is. Not in girl shoes. But the shoes fit, so I don’t need to answer.
The photographer has a light monitor, and he’s holding it up.
‘Close your eyes,’ the makeup artist instructs.
I sit there with my eyes closed and I can hear them all moving around me. Someone is stacking bracelets along my arms. They are all touching me on my face and on my head. They’re so close I can feel their breath and I feel like a giant doll, but I also feel special.
‘Her ears aren’t pierced,’ someone else murmurs.
Once they are finished they prop me up against the dais. I have no idea what I look like. My head feels heavy and tight from the weaves. My face is tight and heavy too. The photographer, Simon, starts giving me instructions. ‘Turn your knees this way’, ‘soft hands like a ballerina’, ‘long neck’, ‘tuck your chin’, ‘smile as though you have a secret’.
That’s not a hard one to do.
He turns to Lien. ‘I love her look. It’s quite masculine, really. Striking. I’d like to see her in men’s clothes.’ He goes back to his gear to change lenses.
‘Hey! There’s a bowler hat back here!’ he calls out. ‘We could do a whole Charlie Chaplin thing. It would be quirky and fun.’
‘Yes!’ Lien clasps her hands together. ‘Now you’ve got me thinking!’ She flips through the rack and finds me some pinstriped wide-legged pants. The hairdresser has found a pair of braces. She ties my extensions back into a ponytail.
They’re all excited.
Simon puts the hat on me. It drops down over my eyes and they all laugh.
He gets ready to take the photo and then the makeup artist calls out, ‘Wait!’
She scribbles a little moustache on my lip with a brow pencil.
I tip the hat forward, tuck my thumbs through the braces and pout.
They go nuts for that.
Lien is looking through the pictures on the camera’s little screen. ‘This is great stuff. Can I have some of those head shots to send out?’
‘Sure, I’ll email them to you tonight.’
‘You’re going to be a superstar,’ Lien tells me, pinching my cheek.
Then they all pack up. They don’t even look at me. They are all talking to each other, discussing the next job, gossiping, so I go behind the rack and change back into my school clothes.
There is a mirror there and I can finally see myself, with long hair cascading over my shoulder. I turn my head to the side. She’s done shading with my foundation. She’s bronzed me. It’s lighter around my eyes, and across my cheekbones, but I’m almost olive. There’s a pink blush. The eyes are really dark. She’s put false eyelashes on, and drawn on lower lashes, and black tear stains, like a cheetah.
I rub off my moustache with spit and a tissue.
That’s better. I look all plasticky like a Barbie doll. I look smooth like a Clinique girl.
I look like a model.
I like it because you can’t even see my real face under there. People can look at my face and not see me at all. They will see what they want to see.
Lien peeks around the corner. ‘Who’s going to pick you up?’ she asks.
‘I’m going to take a bus,’ I say.
‘You don’t want me to drive you?’
‘I’m ok. It’s only a few blocks.’
She considers for a minute. ‘I’m going to drive you to the bus stop.’ She hands me a roll of notes. ‘You be careful with that. Pop it in your sock.’
She has an Audi, soft top. It has leather seats that stick to the backs of my legs.
We head out into the traffic.
‘You could use these images from today in your portfolio, if you were interested in putting one together.’
Our mother is really going to go for that, Alex says.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’
‘You should think about it. You could make good money. I did at your age. I bought a car before I was even able to drive it. It gives you a head start. Simon is willing to give these photos to you for free.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘They’re usually very expensive,’ she explains.
She’s giving me a look as if I should be really grateful. So I say, ‘Ta. That would be great.’
We pull up at the bus stop and she parks. ‘I’m going to stay here till you’re on the bus.’ Lien turns to me. ‘I could find jobs for you, if you want. People are always looking for girls with a strong work ethic, and you have a very versatile look. Any jobs I get for you would be legit. I won’t book anything weird. You need someone looking out for you in this business. How do you get along with your parents?’
‘Um, ok, I guess. Not so great, maybe,’ I mumble.
Her eyes narrow. ‘Open your own bank account,’ she instructs. ‘You’re going to make a lot of money. It’s going to look like easy money, but it’s not. Don’t let them spend it for you. Even if your relationship is fantastic, big money will be the end of your family. I’m saying it straight. I’ve been there.’
‘Thanks,’ I say again. ‘And thanks for the lift. That was really nice of you.’
She asks for my mobile number and
I give it to her.
I slip around the corner of the bus stop and count the money. I peep out again. She’s still there. I wave. She waves back.
Lien has given me a thousand dollars.
Rrrroxxannne!
26
IT’S FRIDAY AFTERNOON and the bus is chockers. There’s a lady next to me playing Angry Birds.
The bus lurches around the corner. We’re not going the way I expected. I don’t want to be going this way. This way will take me too close to my old school. I start chewing my nails.
The bus pulls in and the Angry Birds lady gets up. A boy in a Joey’s uniform is waiting. He was in the year above me. His name is Trevor. He stands back for the lady to disembark and then he jumps up the stairs. There are other spare seats. I stare out the window, willing him not to sit next to me, but he sits next to me anyway. I have my elbow on the sill and cup my chin in my hand. It’s awkward.
He’s looking at me. I can feel his eyes boring into the side of my cheek. Eventually I have to look back.
I give him a half smile and look back out the window.
‘I know you,’ he says.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say.
‘I’m trying to figure out where from. Did we go to primary together? What’s your name?’
‘You don’t know me,’ I say, quickly.
He shakes his head. ‘No, you look really familiar—even with all that makeup you have on.’
‘I’m a model,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve probably seen me on a billboard.’
That’s your method of making him less interested? Alex asks.
‘Really?’ he asks, wide-eyed. ‘Which one?’
I shrug. ‘Oh, there’s a couple.’
‘Like what?’
Alex as Well Page 8