An Uncertain Grace

by Krissy Kneen

  ‘Are you mob comin’ in?’ There’s a lilt to L’s speech when the family are around, a shortening of the words, a little slip into the dialect or a language that is mostly forgotten.

  ‘Nah. Gonna head home.’

  ‘M&M.’ I assume Grace is pointing to my boat tied up against the rail. Someone makes a kissy noise and there is a chorus of laughter.

  ‘Jealous?’

  And more laughter, this time competing with Grace’s emphatic ewww. They are still laughing as they paddle off into the current. Then L climbs over the balcony and inside. The light shines on one side of L’s body, the dark cliff face of a cheek, the sweet pillowy lips. L is asexual but there is a definite hot curl in my belly when I step into those soft dark arms.

  ‘Missed you, M,’ says L.

  ‘Missed you, L,’ I say.

  ‘Eaten?’

  I nod, thinking about how rude I have become, eating a cold bowl of leftovers, standing up, with the fridge door swung wide. I feel a small pang of regret. Olivia and I used to at least sit down at a table to eat our leftovers together.

  L kisses my hand and sniffs. She is picking up the acrid reek of bleach.

  ‘Mould again?’

  I nod.

  ‘Might have to move upstairs soon.’

  We stand and look out at the incremental creep of the river, the moonlight reflecting off its turbulent surface. People used to live here. People had houses and pets and shops and cars. We found wet photographs in an album abandoned in another unit, the images almost washed away, just the trace of things, people swimming in a pool that must now be deep underwater. A park and someone stepping into a kayak on a cute little beach. An elegant Burmese cat stalking some unseen prey across a stretch of perfectly mown lawn.

  We should be taking pictures of our own life in here. L and I hugging on the balcony, L and I making dinner on our tiny cooker, L and I wrapped in each other’s arms, blissful in our enjoyment of each other’s physicality. L and I snuggled together at the centre point of the alphabet.

  Olivia’s computer is the newest and the fastest. It takes up most of her office wall and when it goes into sleep mode it shifts through various wallpaper designs from the 1970s. I am watching the patterns fade into one another. When Olivia walks past the door I quickly wave my hand at the wall and the pattern of red fans disappears, replaced by a list of available positions. I pretend to be studying the listings. Graphic designers, printmakers, animators. I lean forward, pointing to one that is just over in Cannon Hill.

  ‘Do you need a snack, darling?’

  I turn towards her. She is a peacock. Her hair is a deep azure blue and sticks up in a fan around her pale pinched face. Her cheeks glitter with red jewels. I am just lounging around the house in tracky dacks. I can’t believe she has gone to so much effort.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Later. I have a quick appointment. I won’t be long if you were planning on having dinner here.’

  She is always primping and preening. She’ll be going to fix her nails or re-dye her hair.

  ‘You want some crackers and pickles?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Want me to pick anything else up for you while I’m out?’

  ‘No. Honestly, Olivia.’

  It hurts when I snap at her. I see her flinch and I am not sure if I am sorry or happy to see that my little slap has landed on target. Her face becomes a blank canvas, the fake smile slips, the eyes lose their faux sparkle.

  She turns quietly and she leaves and it is only after I hear her footsteps on the stairs that I can allow myself to feel remorse. She is irritating, but she isn’t really bad. I turn back to the job listings. All the programs you need, a different one for each job, and of course there’s nothing for someone who draws freehand. No one does that anymore, not even the art students. All the paintings are augmented. All the sculptures are 3D printouts. There’s something to be said for old-fashioned artisans, my mother always says. Sure. That something is: What a fucking waste of time and effort.

  I knock on the table and the wall resumes its exotic patterns. Even these are generated by an algorithm, although it’s based on retro designs.

  I’m hungry. I would have loved some crackers but there was no way I was going to give Olivia the satisfaction of making them for me. I stand and stretch and the wall comes back to life in response to my movements. I do a little jig and it scrolls through its list of recently viewed sites. Handbag warehouse, times for the mall, gender gene therapy—I furrow my brow. I hate that she is looking me up in my absence, tracking my transition along with me. Then the wall hits on a site for experimental cancer treatments and I stop it dead with the palm of my hand.

  ‘Related recent searches,’ I say, clearly enunciating each word and there is my mother’s trail, like breadcrumbs in a fairytale leading to the terror of a witch’s house.

  Gene therapy and cancer.

  Liver cancer metastases.

  Life expectancy for liver cancer stage 4.

  If my cancer has travelled through my lymph nodes what are the treatment options?

  Why have we not cured cancer?

  Side effects of gene therapy for cancer.

  CRISPR and cancer, how long till we find a cure?

  What is stage 4?

  Stage 4 treatments. Cancer.

  I erase the list, rubbing at the air as if I could scrub the memory away with these vigorous hand motions, but it is still there when I shut my eyes.

  Not a nail appointment, then. I refused her crackers and pickles. Her blank face, all the joy gone out of it, the fake smile, the make-up so early in the morning, the elaborate hairdo, the jewels. Beneath all this there is a pale, drawn face. My mother’s face has become gaunt over the last few months.

  I associate my mother with fad diets, thigh-shaping pills, plastic surgery and body modifications.

  My world feels like it is narrowing down to a point like the eye of a needle. Everything is all about my mother. Again. I feel a rush of resentment, sadness, resentment. It’s the hormones. I know I have become unnaturally irritable, L teases me about it all the time. Till I reach true centre I will be racing around like a silver ball in an antique pinball machine. I’ll be bouncing off the walls of myself.

  I stand up. I sit down again. I want to see L but L will be at the archives, working. Weekends, night shifts, double shifts. The ceaseless grind to get the money for the meds. I just stretch out my wrist and my mother’s money says a cheery electric hello to the chip reader of any teller machine. Olivia’s money. My mother’s money flows under my skin.

  I will not tolerate the possibility that there will be a time without Olivia.

  The door rattles. I stand quickly.

  ‘Mum?’

  I don’t call her that. The word sits strangely in the empty house.

  But it is just the parcel delivery, a new package sitting on the floor inside the door. I run to it. It might be some kind of clue, a package from the medical centre, a book on her illness. I check the label. Handbag Warehouse.

  I want L. I need L. I pick up my jacket, kick the package to one side and hear it thud against the wall. I can’t go to the archives. I look both ways and there in the distance is the dome of the arborium. I reach back to pull my hood over my head, thrust my hands into my pockets. I aim my body in that direction, one thunderous footfall after the other.

  The old lady is there. She looks fragile, like a dandelion clock ready to blow out in the wind. Her skin is so very pale. Her veins run like garden hoses up her stick-like arms.

  She grins when she sees me, and waves her arm vigorously enough.

  ‘Do I look different?’ she asks me. I squint but I can’t really remember what she looked like in the first place.

  ‘You started the therapy?’

  She grins. There is that smile.

  ‘I feel like I have more energy.’

  ‘Yeah, and people treat you different.’r />
  She shrugs. ‘Not yet. I am still invisible. Don’t ever get old, M. You disappear.’ She pinches her fingers together then stretches them, waving them like fireworks exploding into the air.

  ‘My breasts hurt, though. Did your breasts hurt when you started?’

  I nod. ‘You knew I was a girl?’

  She shrugs. ‘You don’t look much like a girl, but you feel like one. You feel like me. Like I’m looking at myself a long time ago, if that makes any sense.’

  She is sitting on the steps and there is a sprawl of apple-mint cascading over the garden bed beside her. I wonder how she got down onto the steps. She looks like if she stood up she might snap in two. I climb up beside her and our boots rest on the same step. Hers look heavy, like they’re welded to the concrete: mine are more modern. Flexible with fluorescent soft tread. I wonder how long ago she bought hers. They look like they are right out of last century. The boots don’t completely cover her ankles—there is a gap big enough for me to see the fish printed on her socks. Big solid pockets at the bottom of her apron dress bulge with her possessions. I peek in past the elastic at the top of the near pocket and I can see her phone glowing in there, lighting a—what, a paperback?—and something metal…a set of keys. I don’t own a phone, I’ve opted in with the chip. L opted out and still carries an old handset around. They are handy sometimes. The torch function is good for when it’s overcast and the solar batteries haven’t charged enough. I stare at Liv’s pocket wistfully. I would like to opt out too, but the chip is linked to my mother’s bank account and there would be all the awkwardness about the money. I’d rather not have to think about it at all.

  ‘I left this till the last minute, didn’t I?’ She sighs and stretches out first one boot then the other.

  ‘Cool shoes.’

  ‘Docs,’ she says. ‘Never throw them out. Just keep adding new rubber to the soles. You can do it at home with your printer. There are patterns on the net.’

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ I say, although I have never heard of Docs and I doubt they make them anymore. I want to ask how old she is but I am afraid that will seem really rude.

  ‘You know when I was a kid there were trans people. Transgender. But there wasn’t a centre place. No concept of a twilight. No ungendered box to tick on your passport.’

  ‘It’s new,’ I tell her. ‘There aren’t too many of us around.’

  She laughs. I am probably telling her something she already knows. She would have seen the first twilighters when they marched down the streets at sunset fifteen years ago. Maybe she was in the crowd watching. She might have seen people throwing bottles, the police intervention, the scuffle. She’s old enough to be a witness to history. She is old enough to be a part of history itself.

  ‘If there was an ungendered option when I was your age I think I would have tried it.’

  ‘As a choice?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, do you feel like you have always been ungendered? Just didn’t have the technology to do it? Or is it like a choice, like you might do it for a bit then go one way or another?’

  ‘Oh. I see what you mean. Choice. Definitely. Nothing is fixed in life. There are no absolutes.’

  I frown. I think about L. Everything is absolute with L. The landscape seems solid and unchanging even during the floods. Family is a part of that landscape. Uncles and sisters and elders are like the steady burn of planets and stars for L to navigate by. Time seems to exist all at once in L’s universe. When I am with L there is no beginning and no end times. It is only in L’s company that I stop being afraid. I think of my mother. How insecure she has always made me feel. How frightened I am now that I have discovered her secret.

  ‘One absolute,’ I tell her. ‘We all die.’

  She shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ she says. She holds her hand out in front of her and admires the pale skin as if it is a delicate lace glove. ‘When I was your age I couldn’t imagine being this old. But…’ she shrugs. ‘I guess the only constant is that there is no constant.’

  ‘L’s at work,’ I tell her. ‘I was hoping you two would meet.’

  ‘Well you’ll just have to invite me back to visit you.’

  I nod.

  ‘I’ve got a question for you,’ she says. ‘A million questions, but this one to start with. Is there still desire? Even when you are at the centre?’

  ‘I’m not quite there yet.’

  ‘So close you might as well call it, don’t you think?’

  I grin. I still have another week to wait before I am at balance but I have been impatient. It is nice to have her think of me as complete.

  ‘Desire,’ I say. ‘Huh. Do you mean sex?’

  ‘Oh yes. Absolutely. I’m sure your desperate longing for that vintage lamp doesn’t dissipate with gender fluctuations.’

  ‘Yeah. You still want sex.’

  ‘And there’s no problem doing it?’

  ‘Sex?’

  She nods.

  I can feel my cheeks heating up. I am blushing. She has jumped straight back to the question of genitals but she’s not to know. She’s just old. Old people just barge in. I lick my lips and take a deep breath.

  ‘Well I don’t, but…’

  ‘I thought with your friend L?’

  ‘L’s asexual.’

  ‘Really? We had people who called themselves asexual when I was younger but I never got my head around it.’

  ‘We kiss and we hug but L doesn’t feel like doing any real sex stuff.’

  ‘But you do.’

  I shrug. ‘It’s okay. I just love L.’

  ‘But you love him or her or…them?’

  ‘I love L.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Maybe I’m too old for all this after all. I don’t know how to tell anyone’s story without gendered pronouns. It’s going to be a bugger to write this up…’ She stares off into the sky beyond the dome. There are dark clouds there. It might rain. Or maybe it won’t. She shifts and shakes her head. ‘And anyway I couldn’t love someone like that, without the sex. I suppose that’s why I didn’t do this fifteen years ago. I always wanted to find someone. Years and years of being invisible, but I just wanted some guy to notice. Or some girl, I’m not too fussy. Thought my wrinkly cleavage might still tempt someone to touch.’

  I can see her cleavage just above the severe line of the apron, delicate as a flower after a late bloom, the petals ruching and browning and threatening to fall. In a few weeks that swelling, fragile as it is, will simply melt away. I wonder how long it has been since she touched anyone like that. I wonder how long I can live with this burning longing before I need to find someone who is interested in my indeterminate genitals. I never got to figure out if I was attracted to boys or to girls or both or neither. I met L and that beautiful twilight body precluded the rest of the world for me.

  ‘I don’t know if my body will hold out long enough for the transition.’ She sighs.

  Death. She is talking about dying, and not in a few decades or years. She is talking in terms of months or weeks. A transition should only be six to eight weeks. I realise suddenly that she is talking about dying right now. Any day now. I stare at her, wide eyed. She is gazing into a haze of lavender as if the date of her expiry might be detailed there.

  ‘Aren’t you scared that you’re going to die?’ I ask her suddenly. I didn’t even know I was going to say it. I can feel myself blushing again, her sharp eyes turned towards me. Maybe I have been rude to ask. Maybe that is a cruel thing to say.

  She considers the question for a long minute. Nodding as she thinks, so that when she finally answers I know she’s going to say yes.

  ‘Of course I’m scared. Who isn’t scared of change? I don’t know what it’s going to be like. I don’t know if my personality will change. It might be that our body is inseparable from our personality. If your body dies then you—the you that you’ve always relied on to make decisions, to appreciate art, the real you—might be gone fore
ver.’

  She can tell she’s lost me. She rests a hand on my knee and squeezes it and I can feel how strong she still is. Her touching me makes me sad. I wish I could sit like this beside my mother. I try to imagine my mother dead and the world just continuing on without her. My eyes prick with tears. I tip my head down to stop them running down my cheeks and I can feel a tear drop straight from my eyeball into my lap. I blink. Her hand is steady on my knee. I wonder if she knows I am crying. When I draw breath I make sure it is slow and easy without the catch of a sniff. The wave of sadness begins to subside. When my breathing settles I feel my eyes dry out again.

  ‘They said you were a doctor? At the clinic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So where are they at with curing cancer? They keep saying they are close to a cure.’

  ‘Oh, no. Not that kind of a doctor. And they’ve been telling us there is a cure for cancer just around the corner since my mother was a girl. Some diseases keep one step ahead of us no matter how clever medicine becomes.’

  I nod.

  ‘Does your friend, L? Does h—do they have cancer?’

  I feel a little rush of panic. Just imagining L sick is enough to make my heart race.

  ‘Oh god no. Not L. But I think my mother might be dying.’

  She holds her hands up to the light and we both stare at her translucent skin. I am reminded again of that jellyfish ballooning in its tank.

  ‘We are fragile bags of bones,’ she tells me. ‘Enjoy your skin while you can. When it’s gone…?’ She waves her fingers through the air. ‘So much to miss.’

  ‘So they won’t find a cure?’

  ‘They might. I’m sorry about your mum, M. Losing your mother is the worst.’

  She is so old; she must have lost everyone she ever knew. How would that be, outliving all your friends, alone with no one to love anymore. Maybe she really wants to die now. Maybe you would just be ready to go after all that.

  She squeezes my knee again and uses it to push herself up to standing. ‘So how about we go swim with the fishes?’

  ‘The ocean dome?’

  ‘Of course. How could you sit so close and not go say hello to a narwhale?’

  I stand beside her, hold out my arm so that she can use it to navigate her way down the small flight of stairs. I can almost hear her joints creaking.