No Stars to Wish on

by Zana Fraillon

  I don’t care about being tired, or doing jobs before and after school. I can’t wait. I love school. At home, Janey walked me to class on my first day. She couldn’t keep up with me, I ran so fast to get there.

  Being at school is like peeking through a window at all the stuff that’s out there. All the things that have happened in the world, all the discoveries. School is like one massive spiderweb, weaving together everything that’s already happened, and everything that could happen, and laying it in your lap.

  Samson reckons school’s not much use. But at least it’s a change. And he smiled when he saw how excited I was. Sometimes at night, when I’m crying because I miss my mum and my sister and my three cousins and my gran and my great-gram and my three great-great-aunts, then Samson reaches out and holds my hand.

  He lets me know I’m not alone. He lets me know that even though he isn’t my family, he’s my friend, and will look after me all the same. He holds my hand until we hear Sister Alberta, the Night Nun, charging down the hallway with her torch and her cane.

  Sister Alberta is a seven. She has a mole right on the tip of her nose, which makes her look like a witch. And because she’s the Night Nun she acts like a witch as well. Some of the little kids think she actually is a witch, and you never know, they could be right. But by the time she gets here I’ve stopped crying, so I don’t get whacked like some of the other kids who haven’t stopped in time.

  They should hold hands like me and Samson.

  Why do bees buzz? Because they can’t sing!

  What is the unluckiest kind of cat to have? A catastrophe!

  What do you call a fish with no eyes? A Fsh!

  Ha ha!

  THAT last joke doesn’t really make much sense, though, because really it should be: What do you call a fish with no eye? But that sort of gives the joke away.

  I wish I could crawl into Samson’s bed and sleep next to him the way we did sometimes at home, crawling in with Mum after a bad dream. It’s cold here, and it feels colder not being next to anyone. Maybe the Nuns think shivering at night will help us work harder or be more Nunish.

  Being Nunish is what being here is all about. And the Nuns are cold. When they come up behind you, you know they are there without even turning around. You get the same feeling you’d get if a bucket of icy water had been thrown over you. And sometimes it has, for real, and then you’re really cold and have to shiver in wet clothes until your body heat dries them. That happened to one of the kids when the Nuns found out he had wet the bed. ‘We don’t do that here,’ the Nun told him.

  I tried not to sleep after that. Just in case it happened to me too.

  Body heat is pretty amazing, when you think about it. Maybe some day people will work out a way to use their body to heat up the space around them. We could all walk around in little heat bubbles.

  I could use my heat bubble in the shower sometimes, when it’s cold.

  Sometimes the shower is too hot. And then you have to hop in out in out in out, trying to get all the soap on and off. If you run out of time, the soap is stuck on you until the next shower, and it itches. But even if the water is burning, it’s better than when it’s icy cold. You never want to be last in the Shower Line, because you always get a cold shower. Then the cold eats up all your heat, right down to your bones, and your body can’t do anything about that.

  These beds have fleas, too, which are just as bad as bedbugs. And every night I go to bed hungry, even though I eat everything on my plate. Sometimes I wonder if the police will come again and take us all in their big trucks to another Home, where different Nuns will tell us we weren’t being looked after properly and we’re going to be better off now. And then the whole thing will start all over again, going round and round in circles, from Home to Home to Home. Oh well, they’ll say, that didn’t work. You were better off here after all. Next time, you lot should tell someone! Ha!

  Samson didn’t think that was funny. He didn’t even grin a little bit. I haven’t worked out his humour yet. Mum says everyone has a different sense of humour, but I should remember that some jokes just aren’t funny.

  Samson has been here for a long time. He wasn’t brought here by the police, though. His mum brought him here. He said she couldn’t look after him and his big brother any more, and wanted them to be safe and well fed and educated and looked after. She obviously got the places mixed up, because none of those things happen here. Maybe that’s why he didn’t find my story funny. Because if they took him back home, his mum would only bring him back here. It would be like a carousel ride you couldn’t get off. I can see why that isn’t funny.

  Sometimes, Samson’s mum comes to visit. I’ve seen her twice since being here. The last time she took Samson out for an icecream. That night, I had to hold Samson’s hand. He couldn’t stop crying, even when the Night Nun came. He was really quiet for a few days after that. I guess once you’ve been out, coming back is even harder.

  Samson said she used to come every week. He doesn’t tell her what it’s really like here. He did once, but it made her cry, so now he makes things up to keep her happy. Last time he told her that the Nuns had taken us to the museum and bought us all popcorn and milkshakes, and after the museum we went to the park in town. That made her really happy. Samson said could I help him think of something to tell her next time she comes.

  I asked Samson about the real Number 49. I wondered if Samson used to hold his hand when he cried. But Samson doesn’t want to talk about him. His face goes all funny and scrunched up, and he starts talking about something else instead. Maybe he’s thinking of the same secret the spider knows. Maybe he misses the real Number 49 as much as I miss my family. Missing them makes my face go funny too, I can feel it.

  Last night, I drew my first clue under the bed. I drew the babies laughing. My picture was pretty good. Not as good as the real Number 49’s, but you could certainly tell that the babies were laughing. And if the next boy is clever and follows the story told by the pictures, like a comic, then he’ll understand about playing peek-a-boo. And maybe then he’ll think about spreading smiles. I hope he has a good sense of humour.

  Babies are easier to cheer up than kids. I still haven’t cracked a single smile from the kids in here if you don’t count that half-smile from Samson. He reckons he had an itchy nose.

  I’ll keep trying. Maybe it will work if I tell a joke right after cleaning the bathrooms. The cleaning stuff we have to use has a horrible smell. It burns the hairs in your nose and makes you dizzy. Maybe if I tell a joke then, the other kids might laugh.

  AMREI hadn’t sucked her thumb since she was three. But suddenly she found it migrating into her mouth of its own accord. She curled up between the roots of an overgrown boab tree, her head tilted towards beams of moonlight that filtered through the clouds, her thumb firmly in her mouth.

  Baby Sal’s blanket was folded neatly on top of Jack’s book of jokes, inside her bag. Janey’s cricket ball and Phin’s football were shoved on top.

  Her legs ached from six days of walking. It had been hard going. She was too frightened to travel along the roads, keeping instead to the riverbank. Her final destination was clear in her head, even if the route wasn’t. It was as if a giant thread was slowly pulling her forward. The thought of a thread made the spider-mark on Amrei’s shoulder itch, and she shivered as though an unseen finger had trailed along her spine.

  At night, Amrei waited for her Visions to come back. To show her the way properly. And she hoped they would show her what to do when she found the children. Although she had images of scooping them back into her arms, of arriving home all together and escaping the police and social workers who trawled the streets, she knew it was merely her hopeful heart sending images to her brain. Nothing would work out that easily.

  There had been one last Vision – a Vision which had flashed in front of her eyes as the last truck disappeared around the corner. In it she could see herself running through a grassy field, Jack trailing behind her. While
this felt like a Vision of hope, Amrei worried. Why was Jack the only one she could see?

  Amrei told herself that perhaps this Vision was just the beginning. The first step. Perhaps Jack’s escape would set the ball rolling, as Gran liked to say. But whatever the Vision meant, Amrei had little choice but to follow it as far as it would take her. It was all she had.

  What goes zzub zzub? A bee flying backwards!

  Which bird is always out of breath? A puffin!

  What do ducks like to watch on television? The Feather Forecast!

  Ha ha!

  THERE are advantages to being deaf. When people don’t know you can read lips, they say things they don’t want you to know, but you do know because you can read their lips and find stuff out.

  I was on kitchen duty, clearing the Nuns’ table. Two of them were saying there’s no bus to take us to school this term. They were all hunched over like tortoises, with their necks stretched out and their heads close together. I didn’t know these Nuns very well, so I hadn’t given them a rating. It’s hard to rate a Nun unless she has whacked you. At a guess, I’d say they’d be about a six.

  At first I was worried we wouldn’t be allowed to go to school. But there must be some law saying we have to, because one of them said, ‘Well, they’ll just have to walk. The exercise will do them good.’ I must have smiled in relief, because they frowned extra hard. Then one of the Nuns muttered, ‘Stupid boy,’ and started on her meal. She didn’t spit when she said it, though.

  Being deaf also means you don’t have to listen to the Nuns yelling. Samson says that’s what he hates the most – the Nuns’ voices. They send claws running through his blood.

  But the best thing about being deaf is when your sister suddenly arrives one day in the back of a police car, and even though the Nuns say you can’t go see her, your sister who you haven’t seen for two whole months, you can sign to each other across the Eating Hall and have a whole conversation with no one even knowing.

  That’s what happened to me today. Janey arrived. She’s here, with me and Baby Sal, even though I haven’t seen the bub since the night we arrived.

  The minute I saw Janey being marched to the bathroom to get washed down, my stomach was just about jumping out of my chest. I was supposed to be cleaning the boards along the wall with a toothbrush, but I leapt to my feet. I didn’t even notice when the Nun swooped down on me. I pointed to Janey, and Janey pointed back at me, and I saw her lips as she called out, ‘That’s my brother!’

  I knew that for my plan to work, the Nuns mustn’t know I could talk. Deaf and Dumb and Stupid and No Cause for Trouble, that’s what they think of me. They will never suspect, when people start to smile, that it could be me causing it all. But not calling out was the hardest thing to do just then. I had to tell myself that it wouldn’t make any difference if I spoke. From our same eyes and even our feet, because Janey wasn’t wearing shoes either, the Nun could see we were brother and sister and meant to be together. And she still didn’t care. That’s an important part of being Nunish. Not caring. They try to make you not care. About family and friends and how you feel and everything.

  The Nun who marched my sister away without letting her speak to me was Sister Phyllis. I gave her a six.

  But nothing could make me feel unhappy today. I guess I’ve turned a bit Nunish, then, because I don’t care about the Nuns being mean! Does that mean that they are winning, or I am?

  Today my heart is singing. I can feel it flying about my chest, thumping into my ribs and rolling around my stomach. All because Janey is here. Maybe if I wait long enough, the whole family will arrive. And then the Nuns will have something to deal with. I can’t imagine the Greats taking much of this Nunish behaviour.

  What looks like half a book? The other half!

  What is black and white and read all over? A newspaper!

  What flies around your light at night and can bite your head off? A tiger moth!

  Ha ha!

  TWO good things happened to me today. The first was that I worked out Number 49’s clue about the spider. At least, I think I did.

  I was up a big ladder, dusting all the cobwebs off the ceiling, and I found a spider’s egg sac, no bigger than a twenty-cent piece. It was lovely. The silk was so soft and the sac so light I almost couldn’t feel it in my hand. I knew the little spiderlings inside would be killed if I brushed them away, or if the Nuns saw them. So I carefully took the sac and hid it inside the cuff of the real Number 49’s too-big pants.

  I wasn’t even thinking about the clue then. I was thinking about how Mum always says not to kill spiders when we find them in the house. She says to catch them and put them outside. Except she never goes near them herself, because she’s scared of them, like Amrei. Even the harmless ones, like huntsmen.

  I had a huge huntsman who lived in my room for a while. Amrei never came in the whole time the spider was there. We kept trying to trick her to come in, but she wasn’t going to be tricked. She’s clever like that. Sometimes she lets herself be tricked, just for fun, but not if there’s a spider.

  I called my huntsman Eensy Weensy. I didn’t know, but Janey thought he was hers, and called him Hunty. She shared the bedroom with me. It was funny when we found out we both had the same pet spider. One morning he was gone, though, and then we didn’t have any pet. That was before GurrGurr came.

  I’d just finished hiding the egg sac when Mother Superior marched in. She’s the scariest and meanest and most vicious person alive. She should even be ranked more than ten, but my scale doesn’t go that far. Even her face makes me frightened. She must be at least part monster, because no human person I know can look like that.

  I was so scared I almost fell off the ladder. I’d be in big trouble if she saw me hide the spider sac. But Mother Superior was too busy being angry at someone else to notice me. I felt glad it wasn’t me getting into trouble, even though the boy was Anthony, who swaps bowls with me at breakfast when I can’t finish the porridge and who is never mean to anyone and even steps in when the big kids are picking on the little kids and gets a whack or worse for his troubles.

  Sometimes I wonder if the Nuns are right, if being evil is inside us. Otherwise, how can I feel glad at someone else getting into trouble instead of me?

  Anthony was crying as Mother Superior hit him with her cane and sent him outside to sit on the potato sack in the cold so the frost would stick on his nose and his feet would turn blue and he would have to stay there all day and night and wouldn’t even get watery porridge with weevils to eat, only bread and water. She must have discovered the wet sheets Anthony had hidden in the dorm. I guess he didn’t want to get hosed down or have the icy-cold bucket thrown on him, so he hid the sheets.

  That won’t happen in the future, when people work out how to do the body-heat-bubble thing. Then they’ll be able to dry all their clothes and sheets and everything just by using their bubble. Maybe I’ll invent it. And then I’ll find Anthony and tell him, so he can use it any time he needs to.

  As soon as I got back to the dorm, I carefully put the spider sac under my bed. No one looks too hard under the beds. Not for something small like that. And when I was under there and saw the real Number 49’s picture of the spider with his leg over his mouth, I realised what the clue was. If spiders are messengers to the Spirits, just as Great-gram says, then maybe, just this once, because I really need them to be, they could be a messenger for me. I think if I was a messenger for the Spirits, and a kid was in serious trouble and needed help, then I would definitely help that kid. Spirits don’t need help the way kids do. Spirits have power.

  When baby spiders come out of their eggs, they drop a line made of silk. My teacher told us this on our first day of school. That silk line is so fine you can hardly see it, and so light it gets caught by the breeze, and the spiderlings fly off on the wind. It made me remember a poem I heard about everyone knowing where the wind comes from, but no one knowing where it goes. Except the spiders would, wouldn’t they?

/>   So tonight, I’m going to whisper into the sac. Tell the spiders all about my home, and what it’s like, and how it looks and all the places it is near, so they can find my home and take a message to Mum, or Great-gram. I’m sure Great-gram has enough Knowing left in her to understand spiders. Or even Great-great-aunt Annie, who must understand spiders if she can understand potatoes and babies. Or Amrei. Amrei always understands. And the spiders will take the message for us: ‘Come get us – Janey, Baby Sal and me. We’re waiting.’

  Samson said I was crazy, and laughed. He probably thought I was telling one of my jokes, and even though I wasn’t, I was pleased because that’s the first time I’ve seen Samson laugh. No one else gave away even a twitch of a smile, but I have to start somewhere.

  I said two good things happened today. The second good thing is that school starts next week. When Sister Theodora (who’s a six, on the edge of being a seven) told everyone, I had to stop myself jumping up and whooping with joy. I don’t think I’ll get much sleep this week.

  And an even better thing is that Janey will be going to school as well. We already have a plan to meet in the playground at first break. She signed to me during lunch today. We had a great old chinwag, as Great-great-aunt Jess says. Although I guess it would be more of a fingerwag or a handwag, really. She asked me about Baby Sal, and I asked her about Phin. She said Phin got taken to a Home for Troubled Boys, which is really a jail, because he kept fighting and forgetting to smile. I hope he remembers soon. If my plan works, and I manage to spread the smiling around, then maybe my jokes will work their way to the Boys’ Home, and Phiny will hear them and that will remind him to smile. Phiny always smiles at my jokes.

  Just to touch Janey again, to feel her hugging me, would be almost the best thing in the world right now. I counted it up today. No one has hugged me in 71 days. It will be 78 days by next week. That’s a long time to go without a hug.