Black Warrior

by Tiffiny Hall

  ‘Breathe,’ Mum reminds me.

  I breathe in and slowly extend my leg to the sky. Art sets up a mini easel and begins to paint. He notices the colour in the leaves and the blossom on the wind. Whereas Mum sees the degree in an angle of a kick and the position of the pinkie in a block. They don’t notice the same things. Maybe that’s how they can be together.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ Elecktra whines, holding a side kick.

  Mum adjusts the angle of her foot. ‘Where?’ she asks.

  ‘Are we at Enlightenment?’ Lecky huffs.

  Mum smiles and Art catches it on the tip of his paintbrush and madly paints something on the canvas.

  ‘Enlightenment isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind,’ Mum says. She’s wearing her ninja pants with a cool puffer jacket. ‘It could take us a lifetime of practice to arrive there.’

  Elecktra drops her leg. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘It’s so you can be happy without stuff, I s’pose,’ I say. Mum squeezes my shoulder as I move through the fluid motions of punches, blocks and kicks in the pattern my instructor, Sabo, taught me.

  Elecktra pouts and fiddles with the flower garland around her head.

  Mum stands on one leg and twists herself around it like a vine. ‘Enlightenment makes the soul rich,’ she exhales.

  ‘Rich? I’m rich already,’ Elecktra says, lunging forwards into a lazy leg stretch.

  ‘You are?’ Mum exhales into the next yoga pose.

  ‘I’m wardrobe rich. It’s Fashionomics.’

  I laugh. ‘How so?’

  ‘Wardrobe rich is when one’s fiscal worth is invested in their wardrobe, resulting in a net wealth of style,’ Elecktra says.

  Mum and I smile.

  ‘Here in the park it’s about abandoning your connection with things and embracing a connection with the self. Concentrate on your breath, Elecktra,’ Mum says. ‘Follow me in the warrior pose and try to think of nothing but your feet connected to the earth and your breath connecting to the universe.’

  I follow Mum into the warrior pose and close my eyes. Elecktra abandons her practice to talk to a Gate One friend. I overhear her: ‘You’re back from exchange in France! I miss my E-pal! Long time no CC!’ I concentrate on the grass spiking between my toes, the wind licking my cheeks, the sounds of children yelling with their punches and playing. A flash of those diamond-blue eyes startles me. I fall out of the pose and collapse onto the grass.

  ‘Roxy, what’s wrong?’ Mum’s hair slides in the halo of sunlight beaming from behind her. Her hair looks like liquid sunshine and I hide my eyes. Mum gently pulls my hands away. I slowly blink my eyes open to see her beautiful face. Those walnut eyes melt into me. They look down at me lovingly, surrounded by freckles on cheeks that seem to sparkle.

  ‘It’s the dream. The dream that something is coming for me, like that tiger dragon. I’m sure I didn’t dream it, Mum, I swear!’ I say, feeling myself break out into the hot sweats.

  Mum’s eyes harden above my head. She helps me to sit up. ‘We’ve been over this a thousand times,’ she starts, then silences.

  ‘Mum?’ I whisper, but the intensity of her stare stifles me.

  I slowly follow her gaze up and behind me to see a man across the park. He looks Asian like Mum and me and his chocolate-brown hair reaches his chest. He is wearing ninja pants with a singlet and he is sweaty from his practice. His brilliant blue eyes shine towards us. A shadow of recognition wisps across Mum’s face.

  ‘Who is that?’ I ask, but she shakes her head.

  ‘Warrior pose,’ she says and pulls me up. She lunges into the position.

  I look back at the man, but he has disappeared, leaving behind his shining blue eyes in the darkness of my mind.

  SEVEN

  I don’t know what’s eating Elecktra. I thought she would rock the bald patch and everyone would be shaving their heads at school once we go back, but she’s really self-conscious and now I’m sitting at Moist Hair in a broken swivel chair, waiting for her to have a hair treatment she thinks will accelerate hair growth.

  Lecky’s gravy eyes stare out from under a helmet of silver foils. She’s decided if she has to be a bit bald, then the rest of her is going to be really blonde. She nagged Mum all yesterday until Mum couldn’t take it any more and gave her the money to have a full head of foils.

  My eyelids are heavy, drooping like fitted sheets on the line. I can’t keep awake and listen to Elecktra order the hairdresser around. This Thursday is never-ending; it feels like one of those school days where all you do is watch the clock tick. I feel sleep tugging at my sleeve as I slip deeper into my chair, which has a seat that moves in hula circles whenever I move suddenly. I readjust Lecky’s flower garland that I’m wearing to keep safe while her head is occupied in the space-age foils. The man’s face from the park circles my mind. He gave me that déjà vu feeling, like I’d seen him on TV or something. I’ve never witnessed my mum look so worried. Not even when she was fighting a thousand warriors. She never looked that scared. Frozen. But there was also softness there, under the hard surface. The softness that she wears when she’s in Art’s arms, when she’s playing with Elecktra and me, when she holds her ninja knives in her hands. I sit up in my chair; it circles and I almost fall off.

  ‘Love,’ I say, then trap the word in my cheeks. Mum looked at that man with love. My heart races. I glance at Lecky. She stares at me, not hearing the word I said, but seeing my reaction. I grab a pair of scissors and study the ends of my hair. I find a split end and snip it, find another and snip it too. A meditative act. As I work away, I think about Mum trying to cover something up at school, to call to something or someone with the bonfire, the tiger dragon and the man at the park, then the thick snaking tracks through the earth. The tiger dragon’s tail slashes through my mind. Was it the tiger dragon’s fire breath that caused the fire pit and all those people to disappear? I remember Mum’s face searching the sky, the way she searched that man’s face. Did she know it was coming? Clicking fingers distract my thoughts.

  ‘Oi? Are you listening to me?’ Lecky asks.

  I shake my head and put down the scissors.

  ‘I said it would be perf if Mum bought that bag I’m dying for. Then I could inherit it, don’t you reckon?’

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘You could inherit it too.’ Lecky snuffs. ‘BTW, the flowers in your hair look fab. You can keep the headband. It’s yours.’

  I smile. ‘Thanks, Leck,’ I say as an alarm goes off on the heat machine encasing her head. The hairdresser arrives to check the foils.

  ‘Now just to confirm the toner will be rose tinge, not silver. I want to be a creamy blonde, not ash white. Think beach not bottle, okay?’ Elecktra orders.

  ‘Got it,’ the hairdresser says, her blue eyebrows twitching.

  Elecktra pulls a duck face in the mirror and takes a selfie, then holds out her magazine to me. ‘Can you swap my mag? I’ve read this one.’

  I walk over to the coffee table and swap it for a fresh one. My feet are heavy with sleep. I yawn as I hand the new magazine to her, then sink back into my chair. I think of walking home from the dojang with Jackson yesterday. He slipped his arm around my waist and when we reached my place he turned me in a slow circle in the fading light. I close my eyes to trap the memory. I wish he was here. Right now. My mouth goes dry.

  ‘You should get foils too,’ Elecktra says, snapping my eyes open like elastic bands.

  ‘No thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, like auburn streaks or a red fringe?’

  I couldn’t trust someone with blue eyebrows and lavender roots to dye my hair, even if this is meant to be one of the coolest salons in Lanternwood.

  ‘Hey, Jackson just texted me. He’s looking for you,’ Elecktra says.

  I sit up straight and pat down my pockets. I must have left my phone at home.

  ‘What’s he say?’ I ask. Elecktra raises an eyebrow at my eagerness, then smiles. I smile back. Okay, okay, she’s got me. It�
�s no secret how much I like this guy.

  ‘He wants to meet us.’ Elecktra watches my anticipation and takes her time. ‘Says he and Art had an idea. Something us girls would appreciate.’

  ‘Cobra juice?’ I ask. This is so not the romantic date I had in mind.

  ‘Art says it will help us to heal any negative energy,’ Jackson explains.

  Of course this was Art’s idea. Apparently, while reclined in his hammock in the living room, listening to the rejuvenating sounds of mating dolphins on a New Age track, he told Jackson about this time he rubbed cobra juice into his skin and all the knives in his back stabbed there by frenemies over the years were extracted. I think he was talking metaphorical knives. He’s always going on about people stabbing him in the back and while he forgives them, Art never forgets. Now I haven’t been stabbed in the back and don’t need any more strength, but Jackson thought it would be worth checking out to help us all release some tension and perhaps heal Lecky totally. She’s almost healed except for a fine wound from my ninja star on her chest. I’m hoping it won’t scar and maybe cobra juice is the answer.

  ‘If you’re thinking Lecky and I will be scared, bad luck. We actually love snakes,’ I say to Jackson as we enter a dark shop, unsure how I feel about reptiles but confident I can fake courage. I’ve done it before.

  There are glass windows lining the left wall like bank tellers and the rest of the space is filled with racks of jackets, shelves of shoes and cabinets of handbags — all snakeskin. Elecktra flies straight to a snakeskin jacket and tries it on.

  Jackson runs to the first glass window, where a man in jeans, a T-shirt and gardening gloves opens a tank and flings a cobra against the glass. The cobra spits venom at us, rising up on its tail. I jump back. The man presses his chin down gently on the top of the snake’s head and smiles.

  ‘You crazy, man?’ Jackson asks.

  The man shakes his head, still with his chin connected to the swaying snake’s head. The snake spits at the glass.

  ‘Lecky, come see this!’ I call to her.

  ‘S’cuse me? Do you have these in a size seven?’ she asks the man with his head on the snake.

  ‘We’re here for the juice, not to shop for shoes,’ I say.

  ‘I’m here for that bag.’ Lecky points to a purple snakeskin bowler bag with gold hardware.

  ‘You’re the one who needs the healing,’ I remind her.

  ‘Nothing heals better than retail therapy. Snake belt, loafers, gloves, how about this cap?’ She twirls, laughing.

  Jackson is begging the man to have a go with the snake.

  ‘It looks domesticated,’ he argues with me.

  ‘As if!’ I say.

  He smiles at me, that smile that says I’m right and makes me steady myself against the tank.

  We wander over to the counter, where shelves are lined with miniature glass test tubes labelled ‘skin’, ‘speed’, ‘muscles’, ‘strength’, ‘soul’ and ‘healing’. The snake man joins us.

  ‘We’ll take one “soul” and two “healing”,’ I say, handing over the money Art gave us. He put in an order for ‘soul’.

  ‘Only rub it on the skin,’ the snake man cautions. He holds out the tubes and Jackson flinches as he takes them. The man’s hand is covered in scarred dots.

  ‘Love bites?’ Jackson asks.

  The man says nothing, a smile growing on his face.

  ‘Well, I think it’s been worth the trip,’ Elecktra announces. She is wearing a turquoise snakeskin vest, black snakeskin sandals and a mustard snakeskin visor that traps her two gold plaits as thick as vines.

  ‘Rub a bit on your chest,’ I order, passing her the ‘healing’ test tube.

  The snake man takes out a guitar with a snakeskin strap. Jackson asks him if he can have a go. He plays a few chords, but they sound too skinny and way too flat. Jackson isn’t very good.

  Elecktra rubs the ointment under her shirt. ‘Can I keep the visor now? You can feel the power of the snake through the garment. You need guts to wear this. It’s saying I’m strong. Stronger than fashion.’

  We argue until the snake man tells her about Steve. Steve enjoys long slithers in the grass, sunbaking like Elecktra does and dances to the harmonica. She realises Steve will become a pair of fingerless gloves. Taking his venom is fine because he donates that, Elecktra says, but taking his skin is ‘inanimal’.

  The snake man cups one ear and sways side to side like a cobra enchanted by Jackson’s terrible tune. I laugh, but there is a burr of sadness. Maybe it is Jackson’s off music, the minor melody, but that feeling that something really bad is about to happen won’t budge. I’m brimming with prickly ‘what ifs’ and no matter how hard I rub the healing cobra juice into my arm, I know there is a wound no magic can heal: my missing father and the biggest ‘what if’ of all. What if the other night I wasn’t dreaming?

  EIGHT

  Mum and Art sip chai tea to the music of Mum’s wind chimes outside. Mum leans against the bench, her buttery hair cascading onto the granite, unbrushed after her morning run. Art is still in his pyjamas. They share quinoa and berries for breakfast, one bowl, two spoons.

  ‘What are you girls doing today?’ Art asks.

  Elecktra flashes him a coy smile beneath her leafy eyelashes.

  ‘Secret squirrel business at Royal Central Mall,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t like secret squirrel business. It always ends up costing me,’ Art says.

  Elecktra holds out her hand. ‘You promised,’ she says in a voice as sweet as sorbet. ‘I said I’d style Roxy for the dance, make her look two million bucks, and you said you would fund the expedition.’

  Art slides his credit card across the table. Elecktra snaps it up. I smile.

  ‘Bingo!’ The card disappears into Lecky’s cupcake purse. ‘We’ll definitely be gone all day,’ she adds.

  All day! I grimace. I really hate shopping, especially with Elecktra. The fluorescent lights, chatty shop assistants, endless indecision making, the way Elecktra approaches shopping like the Grand Prix, racing around a mapped route with regular pit stops to do what she calls ‘bag drops’ at the holding area and competitive bargain revving of sales assistants, who she always manages to collude into discounting her purchases. The only place Lecky excels at economics and politics is in a shop where she must argue her way into a better financial position. She is never frivolous with money. Some of her purchases are questionable, such as her clutch purse that resembles a baked good, but at least she never pays full price. She has every loyalty points card on offer, she knows when all the sales are happening and she has mastered what she calls SPRIS — Successful Personal Relationships In-Store.

  I’m in my jeans and black T-shirt. Elecktra berated me for half an hour over my choice of shopping outfit.

  ‘You need to wear something that makes it easy to try things on. Observe my OTS — Outfit To Shop. It’s a simple floral fitted tank dress that slides over my head in one whomph and allows maximum time to devote to the new garment under consideration rather than consuming all my time undressing and redressing. You could try two or three things on in the time it takes to tie up your sneakers. Wear a slip-on flat for gawd sakes. Nothing with laces!’ she lectured, throwing a ballet flat at me. I still went with my sneakers. Lecky will do at least six kilometres walking back and forth around Royal Central Mall, so I’d like to power walk in comfort, thank you very much.

  ‘The mall is waiting,’ Elecktra calls to me from the front door. Art has run upstairs to change as he’s giving us a lift before he goes to the chiropractor. I can’t go with him ever because I giggle every time at his chiro’s car, which has registration plates that say ‘Adjustor’.

  Mum follows me to the front door and waves her spoon. ‘Have fun,’ she says.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  ‘Try to, Rox, it’s your dance dress. A big day,’ Mum says.

  ‘Cinnamon is meeting us there,’ I remind Elecktra.

  ‘Ooh, I know, it’ll be just l
ike a TV makeover. My very first client as a stylist.’

  Mum clears her throat and points to me with her spoon. ‘Second, if you count Roxy and casual clothes day.’ She smiles, enjoying the excruciating pain I’m in.

  I give her a kiss on the cheek, then turn and trip over my feet.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Elecktra holds a hand up to Art, who’s just joined us. He closes his mouth. ‘I couldn’t handle a trip joke right now.’

  Mum laughs. Art is the king of daggy dad jokes: ‘How was your trip? Next time send me a postcard?’ We hate them.

  ‘Oh, can I come?’ Mum asks. ‘I’d love to help you both pick out your dresses.’

  ‘Ahhh no,’ Elecktra says.

  ‘Yes, come!’ I say. I could do with the support.

  ‘No oldies. You’ll interfere with my youth interpretation of style trends,’ Elecktra says.

  I run back into the kitchen for a quick hydration fix before we leave.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Elecktra calls. ‘You’re wasting mall hours. There’s the cutest dress in the window of Stallini’s that I want Cinnamon to try on. She needs it!’

  I smile. Needs it. Like purses shaped like cupcakes. Fashion to Elecktra is like a human need, air in her lungs, food in her stomach. She’s always been a trendsetter, although she will tell you she despises the word ‘trend’: ‘Trends are for Fashionistas with no style, the typical mannequin-shopper who window-buys instead of creating an individual look that speaks of timelessness and style.’ Elecktra prefers to be called a Style Queen. Her fashion forecast for autumn/winter is Eskimo chic and ‘I just broke up with him — give me a break’ dishevelled boho for spring/summer. If I’m going to trust anyone with helping me to find the perfect dance dress, it’s my sister. She had me wear a cape to casual clothes day a year ago and now capes are the new trench coats — all the fashion-forward girls at school are wearing them over their school blazers.