Affection

by Krissy Kneen

  Now I touched her shattered cheek and stroked her hair. I remembered the transaction, a scalp paid for in full, but I could barely remember my friend at all.

  I walked through the grounds of the schoolyard, such a little place, a few portable classrooms, a permanent building, a little stretch of asphalt for the kids to play on. The school only held classes up to grade ten. I noticed the bored teenagers clustered around the park, sneaking cans of beer under their sweaters. They scowled at me distrustfully. New kid, city kid, fat kid. It reminded me of the kids at Blacktown, watchful creatures waiting for their opportunity to strike.

  My mother told me that most of them just dropped out after grade ten. There were jobs on their parents’ farms. Plenty of work to be done. I noticed the groups of older boys, their predatory glances as they leaned together on the balcony of the pub.

  I sat in the middle of our yard and there was something settling over me that I couldn’t shake, a sense of dread, a tight feeling in my chest, a howling loneliness like wind through a gutted building. We were all crammed into a little space and there was no time for privacy. There was always someone waiting for the bathroom. There was my sister on a twin mattress on the floor. There were dogs edging me out of my blankets. I had no space and no alone time and my body was edgy from lack of release.

  My sister found me sitting amongst the dry grasses. She noticed the mood I was in, and I was surprised when she chose to sit beside me as if we were friends.

  “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. I feel horrible.”

  “Sick? ”

  “Not exactly. It’s like I’m empty and there’s no way to fill it. I’ve never felt like this before. I can’t make it stop and that’s all I want. I want it to go away.”

  She seemed pleased by this. She settled closer.

  “Finally,” she said. “You’re always like Pollyanna. Looking on the bright side of everything. But life’s just not like that. There is no bright side. Everything is horrible and then we die. I’m proud of you for finally recognizing this.”

  I was confused. I was grateful that at last she approved of me. It made me feel more adult, like I’d shed my childish skin and crawled, pale as a new insect, into the world. Still I wanted to crawl back into the safe cocoon that had shielded me from this gnawing emptiness.

  “If I died then at least I wouldn’t feel like this anymore,” I said.

  She leaned over and hugged me. My sister never touched me; for a moment I’d thought she was going to hit me, but her arms were strong and comforting and I sank into them with relief. I let myself cry into her shoulder and she squeezed me so hard that some of my tears were from pain.

  “Welcome to reality,” she told me. “You’ve finally grown up.”

  The loneliness did not disappear, but my sister and I shared a tenuous friendship.

  “Resign yourself,” she said. “You will never be successful. Look at them.” Them, the others, that lot : her way of referring to our family. “Look at them. Pathetic. Wanting to be successful. Happy. There is no such thing as happiness.”

  I looked at them, my family. The house was still being built. Dragonhall was still being built. Their dreams were still brimming with potential, but inside this hormonal sulk we shared I began to doubt the possibility of success.

  We lay for hours on the front lawn of the rented house, my sister and I, side by side in our swimsuits, trying for a tan. My sister pinked up quickly, but I had inherited my grandfather’s swarthy skin and my plump limbs turned to charcoal in the sunlight. A yellow truck rattled by and the back of it was filled with young men in tank tops and khaki work pants. My sister raised her roasting body up on her elbows and stared combatively straight at them. The truckload of workers broke into spontaneous cheering.

  Under the darkness of my tan I could feel a blush sweeping across my skin. They were cheering for her, for us. I had never been looked at or whistled at by boys before. I was the fat weird girl who reads too much. I was the one they laughed at, never to be cheered for.

  We waited for another truck to pass and when it did we both rose up to challenge it. Another cheer, and whistling this time; I felt as if the speed and the distance had disguised the hideous puffiness of my flesh. My sister held up her middle finger and this defiant gesture earned her an excited round of applause.

  “I’m going to take my top off,” I told her.

  I knew she didn’t believe me, but when the next truckload of workers passed I lowered the top of my one-piece swimsuit and the cheers were explosive.

  We lay back, giggling and breathless.

  “If you could see ten years into the future, who do you think you would be with? Would you have a boyfriend? A husband? ”

  She snorted, turned over onto her front to scald her back in the sun. “No. I think we’ll both be sad and alone.”

  The yellow truck stopped. The nameless men vaulted over its railings, ran toward our garden. They were all tight arms and shining sinew. They were ripe with heat and strength and sweat and when they were close enough to cast a shadow over me I felt afraid. My legs were shaking. I wanted this. I pulled down my swimsuit and exposed my breasts to them. I had wanted them to stop for me, but now that they had I felt afraid. The fear was a shiver that vibrated the muscles under my skin. I crossed my legs coyly and the pressure of this movement created a wet warmth in my crotch.

  In the dream they circled me and I felt their shadows dark and cold like sharks brushing against my legs. My fear silenced me. The first man to break this circling standoff was slick with sweat. He kneeled, straddling my crossed legs, and it was at the encouragement of the others that he slipped his hand between my legs and his finger, rough from work and smelling like soil, dragged the crotch of my swimsuit aside and I felt the scratch of it entering me. I was trembling by then and my fear was like excitement.

  Hands on both my legs, hands around my wrists. Four men stretching me taught as a skinned roo and the fabric of my swimsuit gave way so easily when he wrenched it to one side. The heavy chest pushing the air from my lungs. The scent of sweat and hay and diesel, the tugging of the hands around my limbs. I was acutely aware of each of these sensations and if I woke before the first man had finished with me and zipped up, stepping aside for another man to take his place, then I would be disappointed. I would crush my fist between my legs and roll over hoping to regain the rising tide of excitement before the last fragments of sleep drifted away.

  It was a recurring dream, and when it didn’t recur of its own accord I sought it out. I made it happen again and again and again.

  SCHOOL AGAIN

  Somehow my mother had negotiated for me to hitch a ride with the special school bus that would pick me up from the Turkey Road turn-off and drop me at the Boyne Island stop. From there, the Gladstone bus would take me to school. We hauled ourselves into the consumptive Kombi and my mother bunny-hopped the hulking thing across the corrugations of the access road.

  “If the bus doesn’t connect with the second bus then you stay with the driver,” my mother fretted. “Don’t let her leave you on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.”

  “She’s not going to leave me, Mum, she’s got a bus full of special kids. She’s not exactly going to leave them on the side of the road.”

  “You’ve got your lunch?” she asked me. “Some money just in case? Change for the phone?”

  “I’ll be all right, Mum,” but I was not sure if this was true. I wondered what kind of first impression I would make—fat, nerdy girl from the western suburbs. I imagined the other students all fresh off their farms, fit and healthy and competent at ball sports, already capable of navigating their way through thick bushland, adept at wood chopping and fence building, up and milking the cows before setting out their school uniforms.

  All of my references to country kids had come from old musicals, Paint Your Wagon, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Annie Get Your Gun. When the bus arrived I kissed my mother quickly.

 
She talked to the driver, a round, happy woman with curly hair who waved to me and listened closely as my mother recounted her plan for a breakdown “—she can call me from your place, if that’s all right. It won’t happen, but just in case.”

  “We’ll be fine,” the driver winked at me. “Won’t we, Krissy?”

  “Kris.” I wanted to be taken seriously. At Toolooah High in Gladstone I would be arriving with a clean slate. I would remain cautious, speak when spoken to, pretend that I was popular at the last school, leave behind the reek of the nerdy girl. The next three years had the potential to pass with relative ease. Or not.

  There were three other kids on the bus, all younger than me. Two of them sat quietly rocking into their reflections on opposite sides of the bus. A Down syndrome boy named Toby grinned from his seat beside the driver. He told me his name and asked for mine. He tried to unclip his seatbelt and shake my hand. The driver grabbed him by the waistband of his shorts and made him sit back down next to her. He grinned and waved and when I waved back he made faces and stuck out his tongue in a way that made me laugh.

  There were other kids to collect on the way, a couple of sullen young boys kicking their bags to the back of the bus with all the force their attitude could muster. The bus stopped and a blond girl with a big smile clambered aboard and grinned almost as broadly as Toby.

  “Well, hello there,” she said and held out her hand for me to shake.

  She was pretty in a slouching, wholesome girl-next-door kind of way, and her name was Emily. She was two years younger than me but she drove a truck on the farm and she was just like Annie in Annie Get Your Gun. She chatted away to me about her brothers and the farm and the rodeo that was coming up. The rodeo ball was something that I shouldn’t miss, apparently; she talked about the boys smelling of bulls and sweat and winked at me as if it was a secret we shared. She had a list of rock stars that she loved, and she was very fond of television. I had nothing in common with her, but she made me laugh and when I told her about Dragonhall, about my family, she said she was dying to meet them and I believed her.

  “You should come over for a sleepover,” she said.

  “I’m not allowed out of the house except for school.”

  She thought about this and then shrugged. “Well, you’d better invite me over for a sleepover instead. You’ve got a video player?” We did. “We could have a movie night. I’ll bring some vids. We’ll make popcorn. I can meet your folks.”

  She continued on in the special school bus, which would take her right past the Catholic school that she was enrolled at. I waved goodbye as I clambered onto the larger school bus, waiting at the Boyne Island turn-off.

  I had made a friend. Already. It seemed impossible, but as I watched her waving to me out of the back window of the minibus I felt that it must be true. My first Queensland friend. A sleepover planned and I hadn’t even set foot in the schoolyard.

  The school was little, low set, sprawling over hilly lawn. It was very green and there were trees. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone, but they all seemed to want to smile or wave at me. I distrusted their friendliness out of habit and I sat on an empty bench near one wall. A tall, skinny girl with big teeth and the edgy frightened energy of a rabbit sat at the other end of the bench. Another new girl. I knew this because she was wearing a different uniform, a blue check dress from another school.

  She grinned shyly in my direction and her whole face was overtaken by the darkest blush. I smiled back, but I refused to speak to her. At my old school she would be the girl that I would sit with, the awkward, intellectual type, prone to being picked on. I cruelly hoped that someone more ordinary would come up to talk to me, someone with the potential to raise me up into a more popular crowd. I was sick of clinging to the rejects and the nerds. Surely I could sneak up the social ladder if I played my cards right. Not the most popular group of course, but just something in the middle ground, a group of kids less likely to get beaten up at lunchtime.

  The bell rang and I followed the milling herd into a large auditorium. They seemed to know where they were going and I let them lead me. We all sat cross-legged on the cold concrete floor and the toothy girl sat herself beside me.

  “Sheep,” she whispered and I noticed her accent, a pinched New Zealand twang on the vowels. “Have you ever wondered what would happen if you got a group of kids to walk the wrong way when the bell rings? Everyone would just follow them. We could make them all walk out into the carpark, sit down next to the cars.”

  Oh dear. I grinned; of course she was going to be my friend. Cynical, witty, smart as a tack. She was perfect.

  “We could herd them over to the Catholic school,” I told her. “Get them to sing morning hymns.”

  “The pool,” she whispered, only with her accent it sounded like “pull,” and as a teacher climbed up onto the podium and the kids began to settle into silence she added, “Synchronized swimming,” which made me splutter into my hand. She was blushing terribly, a beacon, a flare to direct the attention of the unkind kids in our direction, but I resigned myself to it. I would never be with the cool kids but I would enjoy this odd New Zealand girl’s company so much more.

  Her name was Jenny; we met for recess and lunch and the other kids circled but no one actually threatened us, and I was surprised. There was no confrontation. We survived the first day intact and when we parted company at the front gate I knew that she was just as surprised as I was that we had escaped without the anticipated abuse.

  “I might get through the rest of high school without getting my head beaten in,” she said. “Imagine surviving till university without thug-inflicted brain damage.”

  CRUSH

  I told Emily about John. I sat next to him; we both played clarinet in the band and there were his beautiful, delicate fingers on the keys. His clarinet case was always neat and perfectly ordered. I threw my reeds in, split and stained with chips knocked out of the finely shaved wood. He cleaned his metal keys until they shone. I hid the crusty verdigris under sweaty fingers. I was a mess.

  We sat in class and listened and I could see him following the rise and swell of the music with that intensity that still moves me in a lover. The kind of monofocus that obliterates the real world for the duration. There was also his shy humor, the delicate arrogance of youth. And then there was the weight of my virginity.

  I’m not sure when my daydreaming tripped over from the thought of him leaning across my shoulders to help me with my fingering, to the thought of him naked, prizing my virgin panties down over my thighs. This was the pre-sex kind of sexual tension, ripe with possibilities that can never eventuate in any physical beginning. I stopped sleeping. Refused to eat. I lost four dress sizes in six months. Sex rumbled in my belly like a tapeworm and I knew myself, at sixteen, to be capable of obsession. By the time I asked him and he turned me down there was barely anything left of me at all.

  In the meantime I told Emily about him and she told me about the roadhouse where she worked and the truckers who stopped there and how sometimes she met them after work and the things they did. She was younger than me. I counted back the years and realized that I would have been assembling the plastic model of the Millennium Falcon when she was climbing into trucks with people’s fathers. She talked about muscle and hair and, in the way she told it, these attributes became desirable. She talked about sweat and the smell of diesel and about men, real men, not the kind of clarinet-playing, Dungeons & Dragons boys that I liked.

  Every day when Emily climbed onto the bus I would shuffle over and we would lean into each other and there would be my stories of longing and her stories of consummation. She was brave and bold and adventurous. I was all dreaming. When she placed her hand on my knee the heat of her palm burned up and into my groin.

  I invited her to my house. I would never be allowed to visit hers. She had a father and a brother and my family would not let me stay in a house where there would be men. Strange men that could not be trusted. But she was welcome to
visit, to sleep over. She brought some videotapes and we dragged a mattress into the lounge room and shuffled across to let the dogs curl around our feet. She had taped Video Hits off the television and I watched and listened. At first I didn’t like the music, which was poppy and jangly and brash, but when Emily sang along, the songs gained a kind of exuberant energy. We pressed rewind and I learned how to sing the choruses and we stood up on the mattress and danced and she held my hand.

  We lounged back against the pillows and I whispered about my longing for John the clarinet player, but with her beside me the longing seemed less directional, more general. She commiserated with me. She touched my hand and I relaxed into the joy of this new kind of sharing.

  She slipped another video into the player; a musical. I had my own musicals to watch, I liked Singing in the Rain, but I watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes more. I sometimes practiced being Marilyn in front of the mirror, holding her pose, enjoying the generous curves of my body in the way Marilyn might have done, posing, moving, leaning, blowing myself a kiss.