Fine

by Michelle Wright

  * * *

  For five nights Ajanthi lies next to an older woman and her family in a vast tent made of rice sacks and sarongs, although she does not sleep in the dark. These people have been good to her in the week since her husband’s death, even though the woman is herself a widow and has lost two of her sons. They make her eat though she feels no hunger, and they keep Ajanthi and her daughter close by at night.

  Although the dawn is still many hours away, she needs to go outside to urinate. She lifts her legs like a dancer over the sleeping bodies and bends forward under the tied-back flap of the tent. She must walk far to reach an area of thick scrub away from the rows of tents. Three soldiers sitting on the ground at the side of a dark green truck watch her go, then rise and follow in her steps. They come up behind her as she is crouching down. One of them puts his hand over her mouth and the other two hold her by the arms and ankles. In the back of the army truck they beat her until she’s still. When the vehicle starts to move, she opens her eyes just a little. Through her tear-blurred lashes she sees the full moon between gaps in the truck’s canvas canopy. As they move away from the beach, her eyes follow the white globe as it swings round to the left and then disappears behind the thick crowns of tall palmyra trees.

  When the truck pulls up in front of the abandoned police station, they carry her out and lay her down on her back on the bare cement floor. Her head is heavy and angled to the left and her gaze falls on a wooden door. A silver bar of moonlight is glowing underneath. She watches it unblinking while the soldiers come and go, one after the other, on top of her. When they finish they stand over her, calling her Sinhalese names she doesn’t understand. As they open the door to leave, she sees the sun has risen. There is a dog lying in the shade of the truck and a crow stalking in the dirt, and then the door slams shut. When she’s sure she is alone, she allows the tears to come, thinking it will soothe, but all it does is drain her. She lets her eyelids close and finally falls asleep.

  She is woken by the heat of the late afternoon. Her legs are numb and her face is pulled taut like a mask. She lies without moving, her tongue swelled with thirst, and listens for the sound of the men. As the sun drops low, a long thin strip of sunlight rolls under the door and towards her. She can only see shadows through her swollen eyelids, but she feels the shift in temperature as the sunbeam meets her skin. It climbs the side of her forearm and circles up over her wrist like a fine gold wedding bracelet.

  * * *

  The sun through the light blue UN tent heats the air inside and makes the canvas bulge and billow like a downed hot-air balloon. Ajanthi waves a fly away from the corner of her baby daughter’s lips and searches the new faces for familiar eyes. From the far side of the lagoon, another shell explodes and rains down jagged fragments on the sand. Low screams travel towards her from all sides of the tent. They are muted by the stagnant air, barely more than white noise now. Ajanthi holds herself still, her back upright and her legs straight out. She picks up the plastic doll she found this morning on an abandoned pile of cloths by the entrance to the tent. She blows the sand from its pale pink face, but the grains have made their way into the eyes and jammed them open. It is clothed in a faded pink dress, but is missing one of its legs. Ajanthi adjusts the dress to cover the hole where the leg had fitted in and places it on the woven palm leaf mat next to her daughter. A sticky breath of air seeps in from off the surface of the water and leaches under the open tent flap.

  Ajanthi pulls the frayed fabric of her purple skirt down over her dust-streaked calves. Without lifting her face, she scans the tent once more but sees no familiar faces. She waves away a fly and picks at an unhealed cut above her ankle. Another shell bursts, in the lagoon this time, and drops fall heavy on the tent. Ajanthi doesn’t blink. The noise no longer makes her shoulders flinch. She leans forward to pick up the doll and slips it under her daughter’s arm, folded loose across her chest. She looks around again at the others in the tent, but none of their eyes meet hers. Still, she keeps her movements small. She lifts the hem of her dress in both hands and her fingers find a fraying edge. She holds the fabric taut and tears away a long thin strip. She leans over her daughter, raising a knee to form a screen with the fabric of her skirt. With one finger, she pushes the child’s slack jaw shut, passes the strip of purple under her chin and ties it in a knot on top of her head.

  ‘Alright, alright, baby girl,’ she whispers low, so no one else will hear.

  Prey

  The afternoon warmth has drifted away, so you roll your sleeves down over your wrists. It was a good idea to stay on at the library after class. Got it all done. Leaves you free. An evening of stillness and peace.

  Crossing the train station car park, you start at a flapping of wings. A crow scrabbles on the slick surface of a car bonnet, eating a hardened crust of bread. Raps it against the metal till it breaks into beak-sized pieces. You look away from its chalk-white eyes and take out your keys. Another week till your dad comes home. You’ve been cherishing the independence, eating what you like, walking around the house naked. You think you might call Sean tonight. Think you might like to see him.

  As you hit the car park asphalt, the air is punched out of your lungs, and before you can take a full breath in, he’s on top and has pinned you down. His knee pressed so hard on your back that you can’t even gasp. And even when he pulls down your underpants and rapes you with his fingers from behind, all you can think is: air … air … air.

  It’s over in a minute, you’ll tell the policewoman later, though it might have been two or three. When you hear him running off, you open your eyes and see the bright yellow soles of his sneakers flash away. You lie where you fell, not able to move. Your arms are wrung-out towels and the brain signals jolt and sputter. The cold of the ground has turned your lips blue, or maybe it’s the shock, and your scalp pricks and tightens. You breathe deep through your nose. Asphalt smells like petrol when your face is up this close. Who else has smelled this smell? Who else has been down here? Your right arm is pinned under you. You pull it free and bring it to your face. You push a tuft of tomato-red hair away from your eyes as the streetlight glints on something not far from your cheek. This close up it looks like a diamond. You heave yourself up onto your knees and see it’s a shattered beer bottle that’s been lying in wait for unprotected flesh.

  * * *

  He’d pressed so hard that the doctors have to cut deep to take out the crumbled jags of glass embedded in your cheek and chin, and one in the front of your shoulder. They say the scars will be small, but you know that’s all you’ll see in every reflection, in every glimpse in a window or mirror. The nurses worry about you taking a taxi home. There’s no one can stay with you tonight? they ask. You’ll be fine, you assure them, feeling sick, not wanting to picture telling your dad.

  * * *

  In the laundry you stuff your skirt and underwear into the poppy-covered tote bag. You’d been so pleased to find it at the flea market just last week. You open the laundry door and bury it all down in the bottom of the wheelie bin.

  Under the shower the water pricks then soothes and you simply let it flow. The bathroom fan has broken, so when you turn off the taps there’s an abnormal silence without the rattle of the plastic cover. You step out of the shower as if into a cloud, lulled and breathing thin. You dab your skin dry and put on fresh pyjamas.

  So many doors to check in the house. Windows and doors to cover and lock. Your bedroom window is low to the ground; so easy to break and step right in. It takes you an hour to drag the wardrobe in front of it. After, your arms and legs tremble and sweat with the effort. It’s easier to move the television cabinet in front of the wide bay window, and then all that’s left is to double-check the laundry door.

  Sitting on an armchair in the silence of the lounge room, you call your sister. Hey, leave a message, is all you get. The cat is on edge and won’t come near you. You pick it up and put it on your lap, but it takes off, digging its claws into your thighs and leaving rows o
f red dots behind that soak up through the cotton and stain your white pyjamas.

  As the light begins to fade, you get up to adjust the curtain. The cat has brushed against it and there’s a slit of window showing. You lie down flat on the carpet and slide towards the wall. The cat jumps up on the couch and watches, its whiskers twitching. With two fingers, you take hold of the bottom of the curtain and gently move it to the right. Not a brusque movement. Just slowly closing the gap. Then you slide and back away till your shadow’s out of sight and pull yourself back up on the armchair. You take a long sip from your drink and the cat pauses, watches, waits. ‘Stop staring!’ you whisper and hide behind your mug.

  * * *

  The clicks and coos increase as the night slips on. From one to two in the morning you sleep, not meaning to. You wake, angry at yourself, your jaw sore from clenching. You chain-drink coffee till four, willing the sun to rise. The darkness is crushing and you wish for the day, but you can’t speak it into existence and you can’t chance turning on a light. Like wartime blackouts. Just a chink of light between the curtains can give it all away.

  * * *

  Your life has gone into black and white, but when you look in the mirror your flame-red hair is on fire and it’s saying: Here I am … it’s me … I’m the one. You know you’re so visible, so easy to spot. To find again and finish off.

  To make the trip to the shops, you take precautions and cover yourself. An old grey parka with a hood, with your hair tucked right in and your mother’s huge round Jackie O sunglasses. The supermarket opens at six, so you set off at five forty-five. You scurry from doorway to doorway, to limit your exposure, like a grey mouse with its bulging eyes. The old rational part of your brain can see you’re being crazy, but the new connections are strengthening with every crazy thought and you’re losing the will to be anything else.

  In the beauty aisle you spend too long choosing, knowing you’re standing out. You keep your eyes down, scanning the shoes. Sneakers hustle past and skirt you—white soles, blue, orange, green. Finally you find the right hair dye: a blend-in brown—the dullest shade—like your dad’s overcooked roast beef.

  * * *

  The sky is light caramel when you arrive back in the yard. A shadow flows across the lawn and ripples over your skin. You follow it as it slips over the neighbour’s fence. From a tall tree next door—Has it always been so tall?—a massive bird of prey observes its realm. You open your mouth and think: Since when do you live here? I’ve not seen you before.

  Once inside you go straight to the bathroom. The instructions say thirty minutes, but it’ll take longer to cover your last Electric Lava dye job. You sit on the edge of the bath and count, dye seeping down your neck and colouring your temples. When you wash it out, the water runs brown like dirty dishwashing scum.

  When you’ve dried your hair, you curl up on your dad’s bed, closing your eyes to rest. When you wake the day is gone and over. Your head is light with hunger and, walking down the hallway, you skim against the walls. In the lounge room you stop and hear a cat outside. It belongs to one of the neighbours, or did. Now it just roams the yards, pacing back and forth, whining by the front door, sniffing for food or females. Through the peephole, you spy it on the lawn, turning its ears and licking at a dead mouse held down in its claws. Still positioned in the tree, the bird of prey peers down. Its dark brown feathers shiver in the breeze. The cat continues. No idea it’s being watched. It pulls at the mouse, detaching a strip of flesh and lifts its head to swallow. As it lowers its neck to continue, the bird springs off from the branch. Light and fluid like a diver from the ten-metre board, but with not a twinge of self-doubt. It swoops, its wings held tight against its body, stocky legs tucked under its tail. It doesn’t screech or squawk, doesn’t make a sound. Just the whistle of the air—or is that in your head? In the short distance from the tree to the lawn, it works up a startling speed. Before it hits, its wings swivel and brake, and it extends its talons forward, like a jumbo jet coming in to land.

  The cat is pinned down by the neck and one leg and it screams—more in protest than in pain. The bird thrashes and scuffles to firm the grasp of its claws. Its neck curves down, and the sun catches a copper ruffle. Wings and legs—brown and black—flap wildly, and feathers and fur come out at the roots. The cat turns its head searching for a target. The bird jumps and the cat is flipped onto its back. It hisses at its attacker’s chest, but the bird manoeuvres its talons to keep the teeth at bay. Its beak hooks and tears and flesh comes free. Fur, blood and sinews fly and land, and long pink strands are pulled. And then, with one deep wing beat, it’s off. No change in its expression, just the self-possessed frown of another job done.

  When it disappears behind the neighbour’s roof, you unlock the door and step out onto the landing. The death scene is deserted and fur blows in the breeze and catches on the rosebush thorns. The half-eaten mouse is still on the lawn. Above the trees the bird reappears without its catch. It must have dropped it or stowed it safely. Where would it stow it? Where’s its safe place? The bird climbs then banks, then climbs still higher, till the earth flattens out, making a map of homes and parks and people.

  And you, with your blend-in hair, are a well-camouflaged form far below against the brown wooden planks of the landing. The bird glides and circles, taking it all in. Just the fluttering of air through the tips of its wings, it scans its domain. Lined basketball courts where schoolyard scraps blow up against the cyclone fence. Fleshy children’s fingers wrapped around the monkey bars where you used to swing. The tree-shadowed creek, where ducks drift downstream like drowsy commuters on the 6 am train, leaving silver arrows in their wake.

  The bird circles and climbs and dips its beak to look down again, and you follow it from way below. On the main street, the soft trace of a chalk Renoir is fading, scuffed bare by passing feet. A policeman gives directions to a man on a bike with a rainbow-coloured parasol attached. The bare liver-spotted scalp of the bag man on the bench you’d carved your name on one cold afternoon.

  The bird banks and takes in the glint of broken glass still lying in wait in the car park and the slick car bonnets parked nearby. It circles once more, and looks with pity on the tops of the cowered heads of all the careful people hastening home as darkness falls. You strain your neck to see it still. It is climbing higher now, moving out of human scope. There is a tremor in your chest that tells you to stand there and wait. For the stillness to settle in and for the light to die away.

  Photographs of the Missing

  The first photos I took with Aunt Jeannie’s old German camera were of my cousin Jacko the year that I turned ten. Jacko was two years older than me, but it felt like more. He was always doing freaky things like sticking his head through holes in walls and climbing up on bridges. The photos didn’t look like they were posed. Jacko was a natural. He had a way of looking like he was in his own galaxy and the camera wasn’t there. There’s not many people who can look like that.

  Later on, when we were teens, I saw him less and less. He was still around, but mostly by himself, looking slightly worrisome to those who didn’t know him. He let his hair grow long and thick and he got a tattoo on his hand like they’d peeled away his skin, showing all the veins and bones. I kept away from him at school, but after school I’d get my camera and watch him in the streets. I’d shoot him with his feral friends and he’d never catch on I was there. Those photos were the ones that worked the best.

  * * *

  I’m not at home the evening Jacko leaves. He takes a backpack he’s half filled up with food and cans of Coke and walks out of home, out of town, without an explanation. I’m taking shots along the train tracks, and I see him walking through the railway yard, so I follow him a way. When I take a photo from behind, he hears the click but doesn’t look my way. He walks down the slope to the old stationmaster’s house, doors and windows boarded up and barbed wire strung tight across the porch. He climbs down through a broken basement window and a minute later he’s
kicking the boards loose on a door around the side. He flicks a match and lights a candle. I see his shadow through the clouded-over window pane. Long and looming like a bogeyman in a kids’ cartoon.

  And that’s how he starts living in that old place. Just like that he makes himself at home. He doesn’t come back to Aunt Jeannie’s to pick up clothes or other things and no one hears from him at all. It’s like he’s gone to live in another country, even though he’s only half a mile away. Aunt Jeannie’s folded tight with bitterness, though she never lets it show. She tells my mum she knew this type of thing was on the cards.

  The next Monday after school I come past the stationmaster’s place. Jacko’s place now, I guess. Already it feels like his. I walk towards the porch and two stray dogs with pricked ears turn their heads. I’ve taken photos of them in the past, hanging out in the rail yards, hopping round on out-of-order legs. I call out … Jacko … Jacko … and it doesn’t sound like his name anymore. It sounds more like I’m calling to the dogs. In the shadows on the porch there’s hundreds of bugs, big crawling ones that I don’t know the name of. I push the front door open. It’s loose on its hinges and marked with gouged-out holes. I hear Jacko’s footsteps in a room off to the side. A small snivelling dog I’ve never seen before walks round and round in circles in the hall. I give him a wide berth. I put my mouth up to the slit between the door and the frame and say Jacko’s name through it. The footsteps stop and he talks back to me.