‘Gross!’ screeches Jenelle, but smiles her approval as she plops down onto Ricky’s lap.
* * *
Maggot catches on quickly. The boys yell it at her from a distance as she crosses the playground. Sometimes she doesn’t hear them and just continues walking. Sometimes she turns her head and waves enthusiastically. After a while they lapse into calling her Maggot even in class, and stop being disappointed at the lack of reaction.
The girls call her Maggie to her face.
‘It suits you more than Margot,’ they tell her. ‘All of us give each other nicknames.’
* * *
On Thursday afternoon, Jenelle grabs Carmel by the elbow outside the girls’ toilets.
‘You’re wagging PE with me.’
Jenelle shows Carmel her hideout on top of the high-jump mats in the PE storeroom. They sit in silence and spy on their classmates through the open door. Heat rises and hangs under the metal roof. Carmel’s thighs are slippery with sweat against the vinyl mats. Jenelle tells her about a man who flashed her in the park before school. As they climb back down, Carmel’s head hurts.
‘Wanna come round to my place after school?’
‘Okay,’ says Carmel and follows her as she glides past the other girls.
Sharon comes, and Ricky and two form three boys. Through the lounge room door they glimpse Jenelle’s mother lying on the floor eating Cheezels. Jenelle leads them out into the backyard and under the house. They duck their heads and follow her to the far corner, between shelves of jam jars filled with different-sized nails, screws and bolts. The bricks lining the ground are mossy and the air is chilled and smells of petrol and mould. Jenelle reaches over grease-blackened oil cans and pulls out a bottle of raspberry lemonade and a half-empty bottle of Gordon’s gin. She raises the gin bottle, gulps down a large mouthful and passes it round the circle. Carmel is nauseous but drinks when the bottle reaches her. They finish with raspberry lemonade, which stains their lips but hides the smell.
Afterwards, Jenelle gets Carmel to sing ‘Nutbush’. Sharon tells her she has a really good voice. Jenelle says she’d be really sexy too if she had tits. The boys laugh. Ricky unbuttons Jenelle’s top and gives her a lovebite.
When Carmel leaves to go home, huge cold drops of rain begin to fall. They hiss and explode when they hit the ground. By the time she arrives, she is soaked through and shivering.
* * *
Monday afternoon in Needlecraft, Carmel looks up from the gingham apron she is embroidering. She leans her forehead against the window and watches two form one boys on the steps outside the doors, banging chalk-filled blackboard dusters against the grey wall. Their faces are obscured by a cloud of white dust. One of the heavy green doors opens and Maggot emerges. Head down, she hurries to descend the stairs. The smaller of the boys jumps up and balances on the metal handrail running along the middle of the stairs.
‘Hey, Maggot!’ he yells.
As she turns, one duster hits the side of her face, followed by another across her left breast. The third misses and hits the wall behind her. She stumbles and hits her knee against the corner of the wall. A puff of white rises from her hair. The boys laugh and head back into the building.
Maggot sits down on the bottom step and examines her bleeding knee. Carmel watches for a minute, then tells the teacher she needs to go to the toilet.
She goes down the steps to Maggot, taking a piece of gingham with her to stop the bleeding. She holds her by the elbow and helps her hobble back up the stairs and along the corridor to the sick bay. She leaves her there in the cool antiseptic air and goes back to her classroom.
* * *
The second week of March is still stifling. The swimming pool is a clammy snarl of chlorine-red eyes and stiff hair. Boys run despite the teachers’ threats and flick sodden towels. Before the last race, most of the form one girls slip away back to the change rooms. Carmel wraps her towel around her chest and edges her bathers down over her thighs. She can’t help gaping at Maggot struggling to pull a thin white singlet over her chest as it clings to the bulges of damp skin. A group of girls approach Maggot. She backs into a corner and drops down onto the bench that runs along the wall. Jenelle sits down beside her.
‘Hey, Maggie. You know I reckon you’d be really pretty if you lost a bit of weight.’
Maggot blushes and smiles uneasily, focusing on the wall behind Jenelle’s shoulder.
‘You’d just need to get rid of a few pounds around the middle,’ she continues, with a poke at Maggot’s still-exposed gut. ‘If you could just get rid of this,’ she says, grasping one of the rolls that obscures Maggot’s navel. She squeezes till it dimples and reddens beneath her fingers. ‘I could show you some of the exercises we do at calisthenics, if you want.’
Jenelle rises from the bench and proceeds to demonstrate jumping jacks. The girls watch on in silence as the triangles of sky-blue bikini slide up and down, and her thighs flex with each jump. She pauses with her hands on her hips.
‘You have a go, Maggie,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you if you’re doing them right.’
Maggot rises slowly and assumes the starting position.
‘Jump!’ yells Jenelle.
Maggot executes a first uncoordinated star jump, her feet barely leaving the ground.
‘Yeah. That’s good. Keep going!’ Jenelle urges.
The hard rubber matting on the floor smacks the soles of Maggot’s feet and sweat dampens her scalp. The form one girls scrutinise the quivering rolls of Maggot’s gut as it judders with each attempted leap.
‘Go, Maggie!’ they cheer.
Carmel backs into the far corner, slips her uniform over her head and buttons it up before letting go of the towel from around her waist.
* * *
Just before lunch on the last day of first term, a whisper goes round the form ones.
‘Maggot’s been hit by a car.’
Someone’s brother saw the ambulance and the cops. Apparently, a car came around a corner and clipped a Mr Whippy van and it hit her.
‘That’s pretty awful about Maggot,’ suggests Jenelle.
‘Nah. She probably wasn’t even hurt bad,’ pronounces Ricky. ‘They would’ve told us.’
‘Probably didn’t even hit her hard.’
‘Would’ve bounced off her gut anyway.’
There is laughter and then a pause.
‘Oval?’
‘Nah, too hot. Bike shed’s cooler.’
Carmel runs to fetch her lunch. She hides her head behind the locker door and hurriedly eats two triangles of her curry sandwich before running to join Jenelle and the boys.
* * *
Geoffrey heads for the boys’ toilet. On the floor by the urinals he spies a dried-out condom. He slowly peels it from the concrete, pockets it and makes for the bike shed. On the side of the basketball courts, he squats to inspect a squashed vanilla slice. With an old Sunnyboy wrapper, he scoops up and crams the rancid yellow custard into the condom. He ties a knot in the end and, with his texta, draws eyes and a downturned mouth on it.
Geoffrey saunters around the corner of the bike shed and slides into the centre of the group. He holds up his condom puppet and a broken red brick on which he’s scrawled Mr Whippy.
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to be?’ shrieks Jenelle.
‘Maggot!’
‘Give us it!’ demands Ricky and starts squeezing the condom. Maggot’s rubber face swells, distorting her texta features. ‘Oww. My guts hurt!’
Jenelle rolls her eyes and giggles. Ricky props the condom puppet up against the back wall of the bike shed. Jenelle and the boys make a tight semicircle above the scene. Carmel is squeezed in among them. Ricky’s elbow presses against her right nipple.
Geoffrey steers the van towards Maggot. There are sounds of squealing tyres and screams as he aims the out-of-control brick towards the sad-faced condom.
Carmel blinks on impact. The puppet’s pallid guts erupt from the burst condom. Spewed custard oozes, see
ping down the peeling weatherboards. No one moves for several seconds. A blowie buzzes and settles on the putrid discharge. Jenelle steps forward and slides Geoffrey’s texta from the pocket of his shorts. She crouches slowly down and pulls the lid from the texta with her teeth. She leans forward and writes GET WELL SOON MAGGOT on the weatherboards.
Carmel’s legs feel heavy. Her mouth is dry and her eyes feel like they’re sinking down into her cheeks. She backs out of the circle and heads for the breezeway to get a drink of water. As she rounds the corner, a girl from 1C, whose mum is the home ec teacher, comes running wide-eyed down the steps from the admin block. Carmel trails a small group who follow her to the square of benches that serves as the form one lunch area. She has a side view of the girl as she yells at everyone to shut up.
The girl’s mum told her that it was a really bad accident and that Maggot was pinned against the brick wall on the side of the milk bar by the ice-cream van. It took the ambos and the firemen ages to get her out and they took her to hospital, but she’d lost too much blood and she died before they could operate on her.
The group is still. No one speaks. They all continue looking at the girl. The pungent dampness of the form one boys is suddenly repulsive. Carmel’s uniform sticks under her arms and her cheeks are cold.
She gets up from the bench and takes a breath. She turns and starts off towards the bike shed to announce the news to Jenelle and the boys. Behind the shed, the accident scene is deserted. The brick has been kicked aside and the custard is crawling with ants. The boys are in the distance, heading for the basketball courts, wrestling with a footy. Carmel hears a thud from inside the shed and bends to squint through a gap in the weatherboards. Jenelle is straddling one of Ricky’s legs. His hand is jammed between her thighs. She leans her head on his shoulder and moans.
Carmel’s jaw tightens. Her scalp feels scalded. She straightens up and leans back against the hot weatherboards. Curry-spiced vomit rises up and burns the back of her throat. Her mouth fills with bile and she gags. She leans forward and heaves up onto the concrete. Her eyes and nose are running. She pinches a thread of brown saliva hanging from her chin and wipes it on her uniform. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine lying alone on the damp-cool pillow in the silence of the sick bay after lunch.
She opens her eyes and sees Miss McKendry hurrying across the asphalt. Carmel wants to tell her she’s not well, that she needs to lie down, but she looks up and realises that she’s already too far away.
Down
He’s finally down. She leaves the fan on low, turns up the monitor and backs out of the room. Lowering herself onto her side and curling her legs up on the cool vinyl couch, she thinks don’t wake up, and there are tears way back in her throat. She tries to close her eyes, but they prickle dry and won’t stay shut. With every blink, there are flashes of colour. Jerking. Jumping erratically. Olive green shaking by her shoulder and a dark yellow weighing down above her forehead. Harsh and nauseating. Still she blinks again and again. The air in the house is heavy and falls flat on her skin no matter which way she lies.
There’s a blowie trapped between the sliding door and the flywire. It bashes up against the glass, frantic and determined. With her head on the cushion, she tracks its movements with her eyes and feels the pity start to grow. Shhh, she thinks, wishing it’d just stop panicking and rest. But it keeps bashing, buzzing and bashing, till it drops down to the bottom, soundless and finally dead.
The pile of washed laundry on the armchair topples as she pulls out a pink-and-white-striped beach towel. She heaves the glass sliding door open and pushes her feet into a pair of purple thongs lying just outside. The concrete slab behind the house thumps white.
She crosses it quickly, one hand pressed into her forehead above her squinting eyes, and wrestles the umbrella from the hole in the middle of the green plastic table. As she turns towards the garden, it hits the wind chime hanging limp from the pergola rafters and sends it into a frenzy. She heads down the slope as the jangling dies away, the umbrella pole dragging through the grass and raising a thin trail of yellow dust. The muscles around her knees twitching and flicking her feet out—left, right, left, right—without any real thought of movement.
* * *
The big cement fishpond was the first thing they’d put in when they moved out here. With not enough money for landscaping, the bare dirt the builders left behind had hardened and baked and even the weeds hadn’t really taken hold. But the fishpond had felt cool and soothing in the haze of that first summer. They’d installed a small water feature by the edge with rivulets and bubbles cascading over flat stones.
When the pump broke down that winter, they’d been too busy with the little one to fix it. And then the algae set in and the fish started dying off. Not enough oxygen, she’d read. That wasn’t so bad. She wasn’t keen on them anyway. The way they lurked with needy eyes just beneath the surface and gulped at the air. Now it’s not so much the trickling water she misses as the droning of the pump, like a mother’s absent-minded lullaby, calm and reassuring. Like a soft conversation through a thin bedroom wall.
By the edge of the fishpond, the air feels a little lighter, damp when she breathes in deep. But the odour hangs in her nostrils like rot. The water has shrunk away from the sides and the last fish is long dead. The surface, though, is such a gentle shade of emerald, and so still and intense, like a Monet painting. She drops the towel on the grass and opens the umbrella against the sun. She lies down in its rainbow shadows and curls up on her side. From somewhere nearby, a soft ringing starts up and stops, starts again and stops. I’m not here, she thinks and closes her eyes.
* * *
He holds his mobile to his ear and pictures the sound of the phone ringing in the kitchen, skidding across the sticky laminate benchtop, rattling the unwashed glasses and chipped coffee mugs tumbled like a rockslide in the sink.
He counts the rings—twelve, thirteen, fourteen—and then hangs up to dial her mobile. It goes straight through to message bank. That’s not unusual. It’s never charged. Always dead.
Half an hour later he calls again in case she was in the shower. He counts to fifteen this time. Enough time to get off the toilet and answer. Enough time to get out of bed. But she might be changing a nappy. It’s not enough time to finish changing a nappy.
The third time he calls he counts to ten and hangs up. He tells his boss his little one’s sick and his wife needs his help. It’ll take him an hour to get home on the freeway at this time of the afternoon.
* * *
She’s been slipping towards sleep and away again. Her mind like a windscreen on a rainy night … blurry … clear … blurry … clear. And her scalp is burning hot. And then, when she opens her eyes, it’s not so much a noise that’s woken her. More a tiny slit in the silence. She raises her head from the sun-dry grass, her cheek etched deep with crumpled blades. The umbrella has rolled away and is on its back, swaying wearily in the heat. The sun on the surface of the fishpond is angled now and glistening on the green, smooth and cool as satin sheets. But she notices a tear in the skin—one small dark patch just near the edge. She leans forward to peer into the hole and sees a small child’s face, its skin like polished jade, silent and unblinking, disappearing down.
Before she can even think, she’s walking into the water, thongs and all, her arms sliding down through the green film. She grasps the child’s head in her two hands and pulls and out it comes. Its whole body greeny blue, with long soft strands in its hair and in the corners of its mouth as well. The bottom of her dress, her legs and arms are green with the silky slime. She lays him on the grass and looks at him. He doesn’t move; just stares back up at her, his eyes hard and pale like cherry pits. She can’t tell if he’s breathing. She wishes he would cry like a newborn just to let her know he’s alright. She picks up the towel and wraps it around him. He’s heavy in her arms like a woollen jumper that hasn’t been wrung out and his skinny heels jolt against her thighs. She looks around, but there�
�s no one there to claim him. She staggers up towards the house, her thongs slipping sideways and sucking at the soles of her feet, screaming, ‘Whose child is this? Whose child is this?’
As she pushes through the gate, she sees a tall man in dark grey pants and a pale blue shirt. He looks a little like her husband, but his face is more twisted, less gentle. He’s looking at her and at the child. She looks down at herself. Her fingernails are painted green with slime and water seeps between her legs. She knows she must look mad, but he’ll understand once he sees the child. She’ll wash it off once they’ve taken care of the child.
The man screams, ‘Kelly?’ and waits for her to answer, but she just stops and closes her eyes against the blinding sun behind him. She wonders how he knows her name. She softly shakes her head and presses her eyelids tight, but the flashes of colour have returned, swirling now and making her sway. She lets the child slip down onto her feet and bends over him to stop her head from spinning. The man’s footsteps come closer on the grass, thudding through her soles, heavy and serious, closing in fast. He stumbles towards her, his arms like question marks above his head, and screams her name again. And this time, even without opening her eyes, she knows who he is.
Breakdown
Nearing the end of his evening commute, he pulls the car over, removes the key and steps onto the road.
He lifts the creaking bonnet for the first time in years and surveys the built-up grease coating the once-gleaming surfaces.
He removes his tie, undoes the top buttons of his shirt and pulls it over his head. He folds it into a wad and wipes the grease from the top of the engine block. His neat nails catch on the metal ridges and fill with black.
He pulls off the leads, unclips the distributor cap and discards them on the pavement next to a yellow skip, overflowing with domestic debris.
Running his grease-black fingers through his hair, he peers over the edge of the skip. He picks up a rusted power drill, missing its drill bit, and holds it against his temple.
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