‘Can you see the four moons?’ Grandma’s voice was eager. ‘The Galilean moons? Now you can imagine how Galileo felt when he discovered them!’
I managed to nod, and keep my eye glued to the lens at the same time. Grandma’s voice was like background music for the theatre I was watching.
‘Galileo, you know, made his own telescope. At that time everyone believed the earth stood still while all the stars and planets travelled around it. Galileo expected to prove everyone wrong.’ Grandma chuckled. She obviously liked that bit. ‘Just think, Cally—until then everyone believed that our moon was the only one. But when Galileo focused on Jupiter, what did he see? Three strange dots of light in line with it!’
Galileo, I thought, couldn’t have been more excited than me. Even though four centuries separated us, I felt intimately close to him, as if our souls lay side by side, somewhere up there between the moons.
‘Well, soon he had proof that the dots were moving around Jupiter. He could prove that some objects in the sky don’t circle the earth. Would the telescope lie?’
‘No!’ I cried.
‘No!’ echoed Grandma Ruth.
‘So what happened to Galileo then?’
‘He was put in jail like a common criminal.’ Grandma spat out the words angrily. She began to pace around the garden, as if she were still trying to work off the rage caused by the infamy of human beings four hundred years ago.
‘But no one could destroy the moons of Jupiter,’ she concluded when she came back.
‘Tell me about them,’ I said. ‘Tell me about mine.’
Grandma Ruth smiled. ‘Callisto—it comes from the Greek, Kallisto, or kallistos, meaning the most beautiful.’
I made a face, but I looked at Callisto again.
‘Gosh, I’m everywhere!’ I said. I hugged the knowledge to myself. Somehow, having my name up in the sky, in that precious place, strengthened my claim there, making it more complete. My name was like the flag that mountaineers put up on the summit after a long climb. It made the language of the universe seem peculiarly my own.
Then another thought fell like a shadow. ‘Did Mum know all this?’
At that moment, the porch door slammed like a pistol shot, and Caroline came out of the house. We heard only her footsteps in the darkness, and then she emerged so suddenly, her face swimming up to us out of the deep, that we both jumped back, startled.
‘Jeremy’s asleep,’ she said. Her mouth was calm now, and composed. ‘You’d better be getting to bed, Cally.’
Grandma Ruth looked at her watch. ‘Heavens, it’s ten o’clock. I didn’t know it was so late.’ She ruffled my hair. ‘You’re all right then, Caroline?’ Ruth’s voice was soft and she reached out to touch my mother’s hand.
Caroline folded her arms. ‘Fine,’ she said.
I heard the full stop that came after it. Mum still hovered there, tense, like a rubber band stretched tight. The night was silent, out in the clipped, smooth garden, but I could feel the swarm of words buzzing in my mother’s head. She seemed electric with feelings. She was staring at Grandma Ruth, but she said to me, ‘So, did you thank Grandma for her present, Cally? Do you think you will enjoy exploring the skies?’
‘Yes, Mum. Thank you, Grandma, it was lovely, it was all … great.’
‘Good,’ Caroline said briskly. ‘Your grandmother always spent more time looking at the sky than she did at me. It’s a very nice telescope, Cally, top of the range, so make sure you look after it.’ And she nodded at her mother as impersonally as if she were saluting the postman, and went back inside.
ISTARED AT the swinging porch door.
‘She’s just tired,’ said Ruth, peering through the mulberry leaves at the moon. ‘You get very emotional when you’re sleep-deprived, you know. Jeremy wakes her up all through the night. Caroline will have to stop breast-feeding soon.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s not getting enough milk, in my opinion. And if he’s hungry, he won’t sleep well. The bottle would make things more regular. This family needs a bit more order in it.’ She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders. ‘But try telling any of that to Caroline …’
I glanced back at the wire door. It had stopped swinging, but I could feel a presence, ‘a spirit’, as Caroline would say, that was as strong as my mother’s real flesh. Clinging in the gaps of the wire was another Caroline, almost speechless, hardly there. I could just catch her outline if I joined the dots of her words, rough in the soft night air.
Ruth and I looked back at the moon. It was round and full tonight, a circle of silver. Grandma breathed out with pleasure, and smiled. ‘The Greek philosopher Plato said that the sphere is the most perfect geometric shape because it contains the largest possible volume within a given surface area.’
I gazed at perfection. It was a relief. I agreed with Plato.
Grandma gave a sudden chuckle. ‘Did you hear the one about getting fat? Well, a scientist once said that you shouldn’t worry about becoming rotund, because it means you’re approaching a more perfect shape!’ And she patted the gentle hill of her stomach. For someone who was so taken by the skies, she didn’t look very ephemeral. Her two legs were planted firmly on the grass, as solid as tree trunks. Only her hair looked a little wild, the way it sprang out of its pins as if pulled furiously by some invisible alien force.
I grinned politely at her joke. But I didn’t want to think about human flesh right now. I wanted to stay on the moon. It was like watching a movie that you never wanted to end. Up there, I’d have a different address, different parents. They’d be powerful and perfect, without flesh or gravity. Tomorrow night I’d point my telescope at the moon, and have a good look at it. I’d fly toward that cool shining place, unstained by earthly words or mysteries of feeling. I knew that no matter how long I looked, no matter what storms or explosions occurred around it, the moon would remain itself, untouched.
And that was something to rely on.
We drew the black canvas over the Eye of the Universe, and walked back into the sleeping house together.
It was years later that I remembered my mother’s words that night. Your grandmother always spent more time looking at the sky than she did at me. When I found her diary, and sneaked into her bedroom to read it, that remark was like a footnote, helping me to make sense of things.
YOU NEEDED FOOTNOTES, or maybe ‘A Guide to the Living Dead’, if you wanted to understand my mother. She told me once I was just young and cynical, and if I focused on my spiritual life, I’d understand. I told her that if she thinks I’m cynical, she should meet old Caligula. I got the dead bird gaze, so I quit.
Luckily, I had my own language. When I was fifteen, I decided that Caroline was made up of dark matter. She was no longer a moon. The particles of her skin and heart were derived from foreign substances which were unable to absorb or emit light. She held up a shadow to the world.
On the Friday night following my discovery at the doctor’s, I decided not to go out. I felt so sick. Just the thought of green ginger wine could make me vomit. I remembered when we were kids we’d sometimes chant greasy pork chops fifty times, and see if it would make anyone throw up. The nausea was worse at night, strangely enough. Weren’t you supposed to have morning sickness? It figured, though—of course I’d be different from most women, wouldn’t I.
The other reason I didn’t go out was that, if a quiet moment came, I thought I might tell my mother. It was only a strand of a thought, but the urge to tell someone was becoming overwhelming. The roar of the undertow was deafening, What will I do? What will I do? and I wanted someone else to hear it, this awful thing, and tell me everything would be all right.
But Mum had a friend over to dinner. Beth. They were huddled up on the sofa, deep in conversation for most of the night. Beth cried over coffee. Mum patted her hand. At around midnight I came out of my room to speak to Mum. She shooed me away, with a finger on her lips. ‘But I need to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I’ve just had a terrible dream. I saw a
ghost.’ I thought that would get her in. The friend began to cry again. My mother looked at me in a scathing way, and said ‘Go back to bed, Cally. I’ll come in later.’ But she never did.
That Friday night, it was very hard saying no to Tim (borrowers never say no). But I just couldn’t face going out. I said I was coming down with bronchitis again. I was so anxious anyway, it was quite easy to sound breathless. He looked annoyed, and some of the light cooled in his eyes. I almost changed my mind then. It was terrible to see him look away from me, with that disapproving frown. I knew he was wondering who else he could take to the dance. His mind was flicking over girls at our school. He was standing there in front of me, but he was absent. Far away. I couldn’t bear it. I felt like I was dying. I grabbed his hand and told him I’d see him on Saturday night, and weren’t his parents going out again? I managed to smile provocatively, my lips promising a banquet of sensual delights.
He kissed me then and I saw that his eyes were lit up and warm. I was so relieved. I felt like someone who’d had a reprieve from the gallows.
I DIDN’T KNOW what my mother thought about sex. I didn’t know what she thought about a lot of things, I suppose. I have always collected most of my information about life from books. Like my grandma, I’ve usually borrowed twelve (the maximum amount) each fortnight from the library. I learnt about the mechanics of sex from a book when I was seven. In the photos I saw toads and birds and rabbits humping. Around that time my uncle Dan came down to visit us from up north. He told us they were having a terrible time there with tropical pests—they multiply like nobody’s business. Take the case of the cane toad, he said, spreading his hands. He gave a wicked grin and told us how every night, around eleven o’clock, he’d take his bow and arrow out into the garden to hunt cane toads. ‘Jackpot!’ he’d yell, if he got two cane toads mating. They’d be stuck together like glue, and the arrow would go straight through them. ‘Two for the price of one!’
My mother made a ghastly face at this story and changed the subject. Mating always seemed to me such a dangerous thing to do after that. Especially if you were a cane toad.
I didn’t know what my mother thought about sex. She wasn’t my primary source of information. When I was ten, uncle Dan’s daughters came down to stay for a week. They were a lot older than me, and at night I would listen to them talking about boys. Lisa, the blonde one, had let a boy ‘do’ it to her. She said it was ‘beautiful’, and he’d loved her so much that he’d kissed her all night. In the morning her lips were all puffed up to twice the size.
Alone in the shadows, I shuddered. I didn’t want to have puffy lips. It seemed that this sex business always had some scary consequence. But I rather liked the thought of being held all night. Like someone’s precious jewel.
The first time I made love with Tim was like that. He held me tightly, kissing every inch of my skin, as if he wanted to lap me up. We were slow like treacle, our tongues tasting each other, gentle as kittens. Minutes were drugged, we flowed into some other time, into each other.
It wasn’t like that at all, actually. I make up a lot of things, lying on my bed. It was all over in about five minutes. It was a terrible disappointment, if you really want to know. I felt empty afterwards, like I did on that Christmas Day without the present.
We’d only gone out together twice. On our first date we went to a movie. It was full of big-breasted women with startling cleavage. He kept gawking and digging me in the ribs. But afterwards we kissed in his car. It was lovely, the kissing, all wet and soft and generous. He kissed my hair and my nostrils and my chin and my neck and everywhere he kissed, I felt alive. I wanted that part to go on forever. That’s all I wanted to do.
But you’re not allowed to do that. If you kiss that way, then you have to go further. Otherwise the boy suffers terribly. That’s what Tim said. When it was time to go, he groaned a lot and acted as if he were in pain.
On the second date, we went back to his place. His parents were asleep. We tiptoed into his room. The doona on his bed was a startling white. I wondered how his mother got it so sparkling. She must have been very Organised. On a small square sofa on the other side of the room, the cushions were lined up one after the other like soldiers. There were surfing posters on the walls, with blue-eyed bronzed gods looking out of them, just like Tim. My heart lifted a little—after all, here was I, picked out of the masses by one such god. I smiled at him, and sat down on the bed.
‘No, not there,’ he said.
He pointed to the polished timber floor, where there was today’s newspaper spread out. He took my hand and pulled me down. ‘If it’s your first time,’ he explained kindly, ‘you might make a bit of a mess.’
He began to take off my jeans. I helped him with the zip. I felt like a puppy he’d decided to train. Maybe I’d get a nice bowl of meaty bites if I performed well.
He didn’t kiss me first. He put two fingers straight inside me. I hoped I didn’t smell down there. His nail scraped against me. I winced. I was so dry. ‘Sorry,’ I whispered. He said nothing and took them out.
I didn’t know how he would get anything else in there.
I was clamped shut like the Reserve Bank.
He persisted. Our bodies moved against the newspaper, which crackled like nobody’s business. I thought of uncle Dan’s cane toads, and wondered if Tim’s mum, so efficient with her washing, could get both of us with one arrow. Over Tim’s shoulder I kept my eyes on the door. At any moment I was sure she’d hear this tremendous crackling and burst in.
When it was finished I stood up and put my jeans back on. I looked at the newspaper. There was only one drop of blood, like a fingerprick. It made me think of Snow White.
Maybe some girls bled hugely. They might have covered all the newspaper, dripping over the weather section and into Sport. You could hardly even see where I’d been.
He could have told his mum he had a nose bleed. He could have washed the spot himself. I could have told him cold water takes blood stains out. It could have all been different. But it wasn’t. That is how it was, if you really want to know.
WHEN I ARRIVED home after that first time with Tim, I went straight to the bathroom to look in the mirror. I looked into my eyes, at my mouth, I ran my fingers down the sharp bones of my rib cage. I looked at all the places that had been touched. I bit my lip in disappointment. Nothing looked any different. I was still the same.
In bed, I hugged my arms. I touched my nipples, the softest circles on my body. Pushing my breasts together, I forced a faint line of cleavage in between. Invisible ink. I kept searching for signs of change, my entry into womanhood. But there was nothing.
After a few more outings, I decided that after all, I was relieved. Seeing as I felt so little with Tim, it seemed only natural that it had no lasting effect on me. We progressed from the floor to the soldier sofa. I never did get to lie on the bed. It frightened me now anyway, all that saintly white. It was a marital bed, I thought, suitable for grown women with big busts who felt something.
When I took off my clothes with Tim, I settled into waiting mode. It was like being at the dentist’s, reading about other women in magazines who were having glamorous sex. Women with breasts. Those women had wild cleavage, the kind of deep cleft between valleys that could hold a pencil, a diamond, something useful.
When Tim put his hand on my breast, I always felt a hot flame of shame. What must I feel like to him, the kitchen table? Empty space? Grandma Ruth would have reminded me that space is not empty at all, but I couldn’t imagine Grandma had ever spent much time agonising over what men thought of her.
I read once that the human female had breasts purely for sexual attraction. They were for the man. All other females of the animal species had tiny teats, just for their babies. It made me feel ungenerous, that piece of information, like coming empty-handed to a birthday party.
Tim never did much with my breasts, anyway. He tweaked my nipple, a bit like a shopper at the greengrocer’s, testing for ripeness. But h
e always passed over that half of my body, as if I were not yet juicy enough. It wasn’t his fault, I knew, because I lay there straight and clenched like a post, waiting till that part of the examination was over. Often I’d whisper words from the language of the universe to myself, words like isotropy, or inertia, or cosmic microwave background. The words were a comfort, like a soft toy or a piece of silk.
What I did like, was the attention. During that brief time on the sofa, Tim was thinking about nothing but me. I knew it. He looked at me with such hunger, as if he could eat me, as if he could stuff all the flesh on my bones into his mouth.
I’d have done anything for him then. It made me feel so important, lit up like gold, the way he looked at me.
‘I adore you,’ he whispered as he unzipped my skirt.
‘Really?’ I’d whisper into his shoulder.
I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t hungry, like him.
I wondered if I ever would be.
I began to think of it as a kind of contraception, this peculiar lack of excitement I had. It was like a world without sound, or smell. Like a planet with no atmosphere—everything floated, nothing made an impression. I supposed that was how moons like me had sex. All reflected heat, nothing of your own. There was no atmosphere on the moon, either. I decided the only benefit about being a moon in this situation was that it allowed all kinds of things to happen to you, without any consequences occurring. Nothing was left behind after these surface episodes, nothing moved, as if I were a sailing boat becalmed on a windless sea.
I imagined that all my life I would be trapped on this same sea, without the weather. Other people had weather in bed, I didn’t. It was immutable, I decided, as having brown eyes or crooked toes.
But it seemed now you couldn’t even rely on the weather.
I DID AS I was told, that Friday night, and went back to bed. But I couldn’t close my eyes. For three nights now I hadn’t slept. Anxiety must be a stimulant, like speed or cocaine. I felt as if there were liquid caffeine running through my veins. I was trying to think, really I was. The trouble was that I just still couldn’t believe it.
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