Staying

by Jessie Cole

  In those days we had a parade of visitors. My parents’ old city friends who’d come to stay, or new neighbours who’d drop around unannounced. Shy and sweet, with bottomless brown eyes, Jake was loved by every passing adult. But when a stranger broke into our imaginary world, he backed away in fright.

  ‘What are you kids playing?’ someone would ask.

  Stepping forward, I’d explain our game, chatting and bouncing about, distracting them from my brother’s startled face.

  ‘So, Jakey, what have you been doing?’ the intruder would say.

  Jake looked down at the ground, but in small moments of bravery he glanced up at me, his eyes imploring, and I knew to try to rescue him.

  ‘Jake’s been playing with me, and yesterday we went to the beach, but he didn’t swim out past the waves like me. He likes the little waves and the shells that look like open mouths. Jake loves those pipi ones.’

  The eyes of the intruder slid from me to Jake. ‘I asked Jake what he’s been doing, Jess. You shouldn’t talk over your brother.’

  I’d step aside then, all my bounce gone. Jake would peek at me from behind the intruder. I could see he felt pinned to the wall. My brother whispered a few stray words and the adult would move on. Stepping back within the circle of our own private world, my brother and I were silent, our certainty ruffled. We stood a minute, deflated, until finally we fell upon the next game and raced off, united and forgetting.

  Standing between Jake and the world, I was an interpreter for my delicate-hearted brother. Jake was my shadow, and I his voice. Probably I was smothering sometimes, but unlike the little bush-mouse, my brother never did bite.

  ≈

  Most of us are born into a family, however flimsy or strong. We form narratives of who we are, stringing our memories into stories, forever working to create meaning, a story arc of sorts. But memories are as slippery as fish, darting off, unreachable, or surrounding us in shoals, circling thick and fast. It’s easy to assume that families have a shared narrative—a basic truth we all agree on—but every person stands in their own particular place in history. Haunted, damaged or unhindered to varying degrees.

  When my parents moved from Sydney to northern New South Wales, they left behind my father’s daughters from his previous marriage. Billie and Zoe, eight and six, stayed with their mother, though they visited in the school holidays. These older sisters were born into a different family from the one I came to inhabit. I entered the world unaware that my father had tried this before. That when his first attempt fell apart, he’d tried it again. From the place where I began, in the middle of this melded family, I struggled to catch up with all the parts I had missed. My sisters’ lives without me—mysterious, beguiling.

  ≈

  Every school holidays my sisters flew up to Burringbar to visit. Quite often they would miss their flight. Waiting for their arrival at the other end, I imagined the rush to get to the airport, their mother yelling as they ran for the car, each one dragging bags behind her. The inevitable traffic jam on the way there. The madcap race through the terminal to the check-in counter, then the slump of their mother’s shoulders when the man at the desk told them they were too late. In my imaginings, their mother turned to them, their bags bursting at the seams with last-minute additions, and said simply, ‘Let’s ring your dad.’

  Straightening her shoulders, their mother walked off. She found a payphone, scrambled in her handbag until she found some change, and without hesitation made the call.

  They had missed the plane—again.

  And then the wait. The horrible wait on stand-by for the next flight. Their mother trying not to be cross because she had planned her day and now she was stuck waiting in the dirty airport with not enough money for lunch, and maybe there would be no space for them on the next plane anyway.

  But there was.

  And when my sisters arrived, we were waiting, sunburned and wave-tossed. Me and Jake—the little ones—hardly more than babies. By missing the plane my sisters had missed the beach, and they scanned our bodies, taking in the sand still sprinkled across our feet. We all stood a moment while our father collected up the bags and put them on a trolley. Billie yawned, looking out towards the car park. Zoe watched as I hid behind my mother’s legs, then ducked out and lifted my dress to show her my new frilly underpants. She laughed, but when Jake—who was two and a half already—put his hand down the front of my mother’s shirt to feel for her breast, Zoe looked across at Billie and I could tell they were embarrassed.

  ‘Isn’t he too old for that?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘He’s just a baby.’ My mother’s voice was mild. She smoothed Jake’s wispy hair and leaned forward to kiss the top of his head. ‘What do you think? Has he gotten big?’

  ‘Does he still poo in a nappy?’

  My mother laughed, and I climbed up onto the trolley with the bags, squashing them and giggling.

  ‘We ready?’ our father called, his gaze shifting from his half-grown daughters, searching out my mother’s eyes. She nodded, absently kissing my brother’s head one last time, and we all turned to walk towards the car.

  We were grouped in twos, these sibling sets. The big girls and the little ones. I tended to think of my big sisters as a homogeneous duo, when of course they were very singular people. Billie: tall from early on, sensible, contained, frighteningly articulate, precociously intelligent. Zoe: vibrant, impulsive, expressive, pretty in a way that never went unnoticed. I was fascinated by them both, but I watched Zoe more. She was unpredictable—I never knew what she might do.

  Back home—after the stifling heat of the car—my sisters raced to put on their swimmers and skipped down the uneven steps to the waterhole. My mother followed, her pace slow and careful with us little ones in tow. Our father scooped me up as he passed, carrying me to the bottom. My sisters jumped nimbly from rock to rock across the rapids to the darker water of the round pool. They had come to Burringbar often enough to be fearless of the deep unknown of the water, and without pause they plunged in, laughing.

  ‘Throw me a board, Dad,’ Billie called. ‘I just want to float.’

  Still carrying me, my father tossed a boogie board across the water. Billie lay on the board, belly down, her face to the side, eyes closed, the water lapping at her cheek. I watched her from my perch on my father’s hip, wondering what she was thinking.

  Zoe swept underneath the water, her body sleek. Resurfacing, she looked across at us, our father and me.

  ‘Do you want to go in, Pygmy?’ he asked me.

  Ignoring him, I wriggled free of his arms. ‘You’re a good swimmer, Zoe!’ I called. Jake and I were always naked, and I stared at Zoe’s bikini. ‘I can swim too!’

  ‘Show me, then.’

  Zoe watched as I entered the water and proudly paddled about. She smiled across at me, and then looked up at our dad. ‘Why do you call her Pygmy?’

  ‘Pygmy Fats.’

  ‘Pygmy Fats?’

  ‘She’s like a little pygmy with a big round tummy—aren’t you, Jess?’

  Scrambling out of the water, I stood on the bank, pushing my stomach out as far as it would go. ‘It’s big. It’s bigger than Jake’s.’

  Zoe turned away and plunged back under the water. Swimming out past Billie still floating on the board, she clambered up onto the grassy bank on the other side of the waterhole. Our father dived in after her, his body making a whacking sound as it hit the water. I wandered up the sloping bank and plunked down into my mother’s lap. Sliding against her body, I nestled in beside Jake, who suckled distractedly at her breast, and my brother reached out a hand to swipe at my scraggly hair. I watched the girls and our father in the water.

  Our father swam to where Zoe was crouched on the bank, his body long and straight across the water, only the top of his head peeking out. When he neared, he slowly lifted his eyes and then his mouth and growled in a deep, low voice, ‘The crocodile is coming to get you …’

  Zoe smiled then, her lively big-toothed gri
n.

  ‘I’m not scared of the crocodile!’ She launched herself onto our father’s back and he went under with the weight of her. Resurfacing, he pulled Zoe off, and with a tussle pushed her under the water. She came up spluttering and laughing and he wrapped his arm around her in a dripping, easy embrace.

  ‘I’ve missed you girls,’ he said, squeezing her shoulder. ‘What’s been going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Zoe jerked out from beneath his arm. ‘Dad, why don’t you ever call?’

  Billie raised her head, looking across at the two of them. She touched her feet to the bottom, letting the board go. Zoe’s question hung there in the air.

  Our father didn’t answer, lying flat instead. ‘The crocodile is coming to get you …’

  ‘Come on, Dad—we’re too old for that game,’ Billie called from across the creek.

  I jumped up from my mother’s lap and raced down the bank. ‘I’m not scared of the crocodile, Daddy! Come and get me!’

  Stretching out along the water, our father glided towards me. He eyed me ominously from the shallows and I slipped a toe into the water. He waited till I stood with both legs in the creek, then reached up a hand and grabbed me. Squealing as he pulled me out into the water, I thrashed about trying to escape him, but in a minute I gave up and hung my arms about his neck. With a nudge he slid me onto his back.

  Standing on the bank, her arms limp at her sides, Zoe watched as we floated together around the creek. I glanced across at Billie, but she was floating again on the boogie board, not paying us any heed.

  ‘You tired, Zoe?’ I heard my mother ask. ‘You want to go up? Come on.’

  Detaching Jake from her breast, my mother set him on the ground. My brother smiled at Zoe, a sudden, open, goofy grin, as though he’d only just realised that he knew who she was.

  Jake reached out a hand towards her.

  ‘He’s got something for you,’ my mother said.

  Zoe took the rich blood-red leaf Jake held in his hand, and he smiled again—his sweet, dark-eyed smile.

  ‘It’s beautiful. Thanks, Jakey.’

  ‘It’s a quondong leaf,’ my mother explained. ‘They’re lovely, aren’t they?’ She tousled Zoe’s cropped hair. ‘Are you hungry? I’ll make you a sandwich when we get up.’

  My mother called to me to come up too, but I clung to my father’s shoulders and shook my head.

  ‘She can stay down a bit longer, Janny. She’s with me.’

  As a little girl, it was hard for me to conceive that my relationship with my father might be difficult for my sisters. I could only understand their connection to him from what I myself had experienced: the ease, the confidence, the love, the trust. It is always tricky to stand in another’s shoes, and perhaps as a child it is even harder. I didn’t see that I was flaunting an intimacy my sisters found painful, though in hindsight it is all there, in plain view.

  ≈

  I never visited any of the houses Billie and Zoe lived in with their mother. I knew almost nothing concrete about their other life, but I collected all the details I could scrounge: their mother’s new marriages, all the times they moved, the names of their pet goats, the uneasy sibling rivalry between them, and all the wrangling with their assorted exotic-sounding schoolfriends. I was endlessly curious about this world my sisters flew in from and flew back to. Billie and Zoe brought with them a kind of glamour, a cool. They wore different clothes, had different belongings and knew slang words we’d never heard. But it was their attitude to us—an aloof detachment—that made them most alluring. Billie, eight years older than me and generally in charge, didn’t even bother bossing Jake and me around, we were that unimportant, whereas Zoe usually set me some kind of test.

  ‘Here, Jess, I’ll draw a picture and we’ll see how much better you can colour inside the lines.’ I still remember the exact outline of the little girl she drew. ‘Let’s see how grown-up you are.’

  I was attentive, wanting to show progress. I started off carefully, but closer to the end I got tired and my texta slipped.

  ‘That’s pretty good,’ Zoe conceded. ‘Still a bit messy in this part, though.’

  When my sisters visited they always fought over who got to sit next to my brother, and the loser was stuck with me. I didn’t understand why I was so second-rate, though I loved my brother as much as they did. Jake didn’t have to try to be kind—he just was. I was resigned to my sisters’ favouritism, but it still stung. When the big girls came to stay I went from being the oldest child, with all the accompanying advantages, to the third child, disempowered and overlooked.

  Unlike Jake and me, the big girls had been trained by their mother in manners and propriety. They knew how to use a knife and fork. They thought us barbarians—of course—with our unbrushed hair and dirty fingernails. Sometimes my parents would leave my sisters in charge and head off somewhere for lunch. Billie and Zoe, forced to take an interest, took these opportunities to give us lessons in all the things we’d missed. They set the table, elaborately, and then made us sit down and eat. We thought it a game. They prowled around us, rulers in hand to whack us with when we made mistakes. No elbows on the table. No knees up. Chewing with your mouth closed. Fork in left hand, knife in right. It was fun at first, but after a few whacks it seemed a punishment. And what was wrong with elbows on the table anyway?

  I was always excited about school holidays when my sisters came to visit, but deep down I was also relieved to see them go. They had high standards, and I felt myself always judged wanting.

  ≈

  At home, the 1970s morphed into the 1980s. It was a time of fresh starts. My parents believed they could leave the past behind, that they could sculpt a world they wanted to live in, freed from the shackles of extended family or outdated rules. And in many ways they did. We barely saw our grandparents, aunts or uncles—they were very distant figures—but my parents had frequent extended Sunday lunches with old friends and new. Car wheels scraped against the white pebbles of the driveway, signalling arrival, and Jake and I ran out the front to greet the guests. Wandering down the walkway, bottles of wine in hand, the adults went straight up to the pavilion while we sped off towards the garden.

  Many of my parents’ friends had children around my age. In those days we all seemed part of a chaotic kind of family. I had real cousins, out in the world, who I never saw, though I had memorised their names—but these other children felt cousin-like. Sometimes even sibling-ish.

  ‘See the cubbyhouse me and Jake made?’

  A haphazard structure built of chairs, an overturned table and several umbrellas all covered in multicoloured rugs sagged slightly sideways in the front garden like a tropical igloo.

  ‘Did your mum let you use the good blankets?’ one of the kids piped up.

  ‘She always does,’ I chirped. ‘We don’t even have to put them back!’

  The boundaries between us were blurry.

  ‘Let’s go into our room and play,’ someone would say, pointing to the island bedroom my brother and I shared. Our toys were theirs and theirs were ours. There was a collectiveness to everything.

  Ours.

  At these lunches, my mother cooked in the kitchen, bringing steaming saucepans full of spicy-smelling curries up to the pavilion, while Jake and I ran about with these other wild children. Playing and fighting, screaming and laughing, we were left to our own devices—but hourly, with raucous voices raised in a communal singsong chant, we approached the adults as they lounged in the pavilion.

  ‘We want to go down the creek! Are you ready yet?’

  ‘Not yet. Soon.’

  After eating and drinking their fill, and chatting for hours, the adults wandered about the garden together, tipsy and hot, to view the paradise being sculpted by my father’s hands.

  Then, finally, they began the descent to the waterhole.

  The whole party trooped down the forest steps and picked their way awkwardly across the rapids. Standing on the bank, milling about, the adults laughed while all
the children stripped off and jumped in. My mother, who drank little, was on patrol, and she sat on the rock and silently counted heads. The children leaped and cavorted, squealed and splashed, and called and called for their parents to watch them.

  ‘Watch me stand on the boogie board, Mum!’ Jake’s legs wobbled as he balanced on the board.

  ‘I can swim under the water for twenty seconds, Dad!’

  ‘Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!’

  My mother watched and watched while the adults’ uproarious laughter rang out across the water. Sometimes the men got in and played—tossing and yelling and dunking—and when everyone was cool again we all crossed the sliding rapids and tramped, dripping, back up the hill to rest awhile after the breathless pleasure of the water. The visitors, sobered by the freshness of the waterhole, drifted back to their own green worlds tucked away in the surrounding hills.

  And then there were the parties, the slow glide into night while the house filled to bursting. People seeping out the open doorways and into the garden sea, unconcerned by the darkness lapping at their feet. Sometimes my father hired a band, setting them up in the pavilion, and the adults danced and danced until the place shook with stomping feet. Everyone brought a plate and there was endless food and a bathtub filled with alcohol and ice. Jake and I snuck in with our co-conspirators and stole ice from the bathroom to suck between our teeth. Together with the other kids we traversed the terrain of the party, a labyrinth of infinite paths. Crawling beneath the action, we weaved between the unsteady legs of our parents, spilling into the blackness of the night, brimming with infectious giggles. We took torches into the garden and played games outside, the torchlight making tunnels of brightness in this otherwise dark world. Playing and playing, until, finally exhausted, we curled up in some hideaway and fell asleep. Late in the night, the mothers searched for us and found us sleeping in our rumpled party clothes. Bundling us up, dirty and dishevelled, they slid us into bed.