by Sofie Laguna
We got into the truck. My stomach rippled and bumped.
‘You won’t be gone long.’ Was he telling himself, or me?
‘Where am I going, Pop?’
He turned the key and didn’t answer.
Five and a half months pregnant. It was like it was happening to somebody else and that other person knew and understood what it meant, but I, Justine, did not. Something was between me and knowing, like the veil that covered Stacey’s face when she married Brian Chisholm. I put my hand on my gut. I didn’t want there to be anything in it. I only wanted it to be me.
When we got home, Pop put the papers from the doctor on the kitchen table. I saw a picture of a brick building with a cross on top and two nurses walking along the path in front smiling. Underneath that was a picture of a woman holding flowers and a baby. Pop said, ‘You need to sign these, Justine.’ He picked up one of the papers and took a pen from the jar on the window sill. ‘Here.’ He put his finger on a line. Then he crossed the kitchen to fill the kettle at the sink.
Without Pop’s finger to keep it still, the line moved. I couldn’t do it. I left the pen and papers on the table.
Pop set the kettle on the stove. ‘That’s the girl,’ he said, pushing the papers into the shelf under the knives and forks. ‘Come and get the eggs.’
49.
The trip to Dr Manning was the last one. Nobody saw me after that, not even Steve; Relle and him never came over anymore. I stayed at Pop’s and I didn’t even go with him in the truck to do the shopping. When I stood up to fix the aerial on the television I could feel Pop staring at my gut. It pushed out my jumper like a white balloon. Later I found a checked shirt of Dad’s in the laundry, long and wide enough to hide it.
The rain fell as my stomach grew and the Murray rose higher between its banks. The news said it was the highest rainfall of the winter. Pop looked at the radio and said, You don’t need to tell me, mate.
I built a truck outside my keepout at the river. I made the sides and the cabin with branches, and built a bed in the space behind the steering wheel. I brought down all the clothes that wouldn’t fit and made them into pillows and a roof and a mattress. I hung a green-and-red lorikeet feather from my mirror. I watched from the cabin as the rain fell. Emus moved through the trees, lifting their feet over the roots and pecking at the grass. I’ve a mind to kill. I raised the Smith and shot my dinner.
I made a spear and stood in the shallows, watching for the cod. I saw one moving more slowly apart from the others, as if it wasn’t as strong, as if its body wouldn’t do what it needed. I took aim, my spear hovering over the slow cod that couldn’t even make its own body do what it wanted. I held my spear and looked at my target, the thing I wanted to kill—only one of you will die today, which one will it be? I stabbed the cod with my spear. I didn’t know what to do with it when I pulled it from the water. I put it on the bank. It wriggled and jumped and flapped. Tears came from my eyes. It was a long time before the fish was still. Dirt covered its scales. I tried to gut it but I tore the meat.
The Murray flooded. The water spilled over and came up higher over the red gums that held on and held on and didn’t break, weren’t washed away, weren’t even scared. I was always wet, my socks damp inside my sneakers, my pants soaked, my jumper heavy with rain and river.
I stayed with my river-truck at my keepout home more and more, coming up to the house later and later. I knew the path in the darkness. Silver came with me. John Wayne on the Miracle Horse followed behind. Pop never asked where I’d been. He drank beers inside and didn’t light the fire. He told the chooks about me. Silly bitch. Our Justine. Even her. Sometimes I wonder. I should be laying in the jungle alongside the bloody sleepers, a train over my head.
At night it took me a long time to roll over. I tucked clothes under my gut so it didn’t fall to the side and tear my skin. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t do cut-outs. I closed my eyes and made pictures of my truck and the Murray at The Choke. I watched the banks trying to touch. I watched the water flowing faster the longer it rained. I only spoke to the chooks. I said, Hey, chook chook chook. I changed their food and raked and gave them new straw. Hey, girls! I sat in the chook run and let them come around me. Hey, girls; hey there, I said, hey there. I said, My behaviour, Madame; hey, Missy, my behaviour, my actions, and Missy came right to me and sat in my lap against my gut and she rested there and her warm body under my hands was the only thing dry.
50.
One day Pop looked at the calendar on his wall and said, ‘We leave Monday.’ I didn’t know what day it was anymore; I never asked.
I said, ‘Where are we going?’ I was on my way down to the keepout; I had supplies in my backpack for the truck: bread and a can opener and bottle tops for bullets.
He said, ‘Bloody hospital. It’s time.’
‘Where is the hospital?’ I asked him.
‘Don’t you listen to anything I tell you? Geelong,’ he said. ‘Bloody miles away. I want you to have a bath before we leave.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you stink.’
Two days later, in the morning, before I’d left the house, Pop filled the bath.
I said, ‘Is it Monday?’
He said, ‘It is.’
‘I don’t want a bath.’
‘And I don’t want you covered in river dirt when you get to the hospital. Pregnant is bad enough. Get your clothes off,’ he said, and left the bathroom.
I undid the buttons on Dad’s shirt. It was hard to step over the sides of the bath; my gut took my balance, and my breath. I didn’t want to look down. I pushed the water in the bath around my sides with my hands, and rubbed the soap over my arms and neck and across my swollen chest. The Murray dirt made a ring around the bath the same as the one around the house. I traced it with my fingers, smudging the dirt, and wrote words. Erad ot wonk. My gut wriggled as if there was a lizard trapped inside. I wished I could pull open a lid, like the one in Pop’s can of beer, and let it out.
There was a dress and coat on the sink in the bathroom with tags from a shop. The dress had flowers on it, a yellow collar and long sleeves. Pop must have bought it for me. It was a dress Mrs Turning might have worn.
‘Hurry up, Justine, let’s get moving,’ Pop said from the other side of the door.
I held on to the taps as I pulled myself up from the water. After I was dry I put the dress Pop had left for me over my head and pulled on the coat. When I bent over to put on my sneakers, I could hardly breathe.
I went out and got in the truck with Pop.
‘I’ve put some of your things in a suitcase,’ said Pop. ‘It’s in the back.’
I didn’t know what he would have packed. I didn’t do my cut-outs anymore. I didn’t fit any other shoes or clothes. I didn’t have Aunty Rita’s numbers anymore. Everything I wanted was at my keepout.
‘Pray she makes it,’ Pop said. He turned the key and the truck coughed. ‘Christ, not today.’ He tried the key again and the truck started. ‘Thank God,’ said Pop.
We drove for hours. The highway didn’t end. I leaned against the seat and slept, the acid in my throat rising from my gut. When I next woke I saw tall buildings in the distance and a long, high bridge. Pop said, ‘When you’re done you can come home.’
My gut cramped as if it was being stuck with the same spear I used to catch the cod. When you’re done. I knew what those words meant, didn’t I? I was going to the hospital to have a baby, and then I would be done. I knew what the words meant, but they belonged to somebody else, not to me. My back and legs ached.
After we crossed the bridge Pop checked his map. ‘Where the hell?’ He looked up at the road ahead, then at his map again. He wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Where the hell is the place?’
We drove in a circle past the same shop, the same bus stop, the same fence. He took another road and there was the sea.
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Stop, Pop!’
‘What is it, for Christ’s sake?’
‘S
top, Pop. Park there.’ I pointed across the road at a car park on the cliff. ‘Then you can look at the map.’
‘Alright, al-bloody-right.’ Pop pulled over into the car park and stopped the truck. He looked up through the window at the sea and shook his head, then turned his map upside down, holding it back from his face.
I got out of the truck, my hands around my gut, and walked to the rail. I breathed in the clean, salty air and looked out to the ocean. It was as wide as the sky, and moving. This was where the Murray led, where all the rivers in Michael’s map book led—this was the way to Antarctica. I breathed in deep. My gut wriggled and kicked.
‘Justine!’ Pop called. ‘I found the place on the bloody map.’
This was what surrounded the world. I breathed it in one last time.
‘Justine, get a move on!’
He drove us down a quiet street with houses on both sides. At the very end was a building with two levels. I recognised the building—it was the one on the papers Dr Manning’s nurse had given to Pop.
‘St Jude’s,’ Pop said. ‘Saint of the bloody hopeless is right.’
He parked the truck on the road outside the building. There were no other trucks; Pop’s was covered in Yolamundi dirt, tied with twine, its mesh tray full of straw and hardened with chook shit. As we stood on the street looking up at the brick building, Pop seemed to shrink. He held my suitcase in one hand and gripped my arm with the other.
We walked up the steps to the doors.
‘Bloody Geelong,’ he said. ‘Better than the bloody city, I suppose. Leave that to bloody Ray. Pentridge, for Christ’s sake. Jesus!’
Pop pushed open the doors at the top of the steps and we went inside. There were women in white uniforms behind a desk. They didn’t smile at my pop as we crossed the tiles. The biggest one said, ‘I am Matron Carting. Your name, please?’
Pop said, ‘This is my granddaughter, Justine Lee.’
Matron Carting checked her book. ‘Here she is. Justine Lee. You’re late—you were due here on the fifteenth. My notes say Justine is past her due date.’
‘Thought I’d keep her out of trouble as long as I could,’ said Pop. He sounded like he was scared of getting in trouble himself.
The matron frowned. ‘If you’d like to say goodbye to your grandfather, Justine, we can take you to the ward.’
My pop turned to me. ‘When this is done you can put it behind you. Start fresh.’
‘Okay, Pop.’
He squeezed my hand. He was brown and lined, marked with the tracks that ran between the jungles. Everything here was white and smooth. ‘I’ll come and pick you up when it’s over.’ I watched as he turned and walked out the doors.
51.
Matron Carting took me into a room with six beds. There were girls lying in four of them. The girls lay on their sides or up against the pillows. They were reading or sleeping and one was knitting a scarf. All their guts were big like mine. They looked up at me.
‘This is your bed,’ said the matron. ‘This is your cupboard. You can unpack your things. The nurse will come around and examine you before dinner. The bathroom is through that door.’ She pointed. ‘Dinner will be brought in at six.’ She left the room.
Another girl came through the bathroom door. She held her gut with her hands. ‘I can’t stand this,’ she said.
‘Should have thought of that nine months ago,’ the girl knitting the scarf said.
‘Too busy enjoying myself, wasn’t I?’ the girl said, lying down on her bed.
The knitting girl snorted. ‘Weren’t we all?’ She turned to me. ‘My name is Leslie. And that’s Mona. Over there, snoring her head off, is Lucy, and that’s Debbie.’ The girls said hi and I looked at the ground.
Leslie said, ‘You’re a bit young to be here, aren’t you?’
I sat down on my bed. I didn’t unpack the suitcase. I lay on my side and wished I was done and could be in the keepout with a pouch of Pop’s White Ox.
‘How old are you?’ said Leslie.
I didn’t answer.
‘Don’t be shy, we’re all in the same boat.’
‘Some boat,’ said Mona.
‘How old?’ Leslie asked.
‘Fourteen,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Leslie.
‘Are you kidding?’ said Mona. ‘Did you say fourteen? I thought seventeen was bad.’
A woman in a white dress and white hat came into the room.
‘Hi, Nurse Patty,’ all the girls said at once.
‘Hello, ladies,’ said the nurse. ‘I hope you’re all being good.’ Nurse Patty checked the clipboard at the foot of my bed. ‘Hello, Justine,’ she said. ‘I’m Nurse Patty. I’m a trainee.’
‘Our favourite trainee,’ said Leslie.
‘That’s only because I spoil you.’ Nurse Patty smiled.
‘And because the others are horrible,’ said Leslie. ‘Nurse Undine…horrible.’
‘Nurse Withers,’ said Mona. ‘Now there’s someone who needs to be spoiled.’
‘Shhhh,’ said Nurse Patty. ‘Don’t scare Justine.’ She started to pull the curtain around my bed. ‘Behave yourselves.’
‘Bit late,’ said Mona and they all laughed. Nurse Patty rolled her eyes at me.
She looked at the clipboard. ‘Your history says you were due…yesterday, could that be right?’ Nurse Patty’s face was smooth with white skin and pink on her cheeks. Her hair was dark, each strand as thick as cotton, and shining. It was tied up with a blue ribbon like a strip of sky. ‘Can I have a look at your belly, Justine?’ She lifted my dress. My gut rose up white and round as the moon. ‘Sorry, my hands are cold,’ she said, rubbing them together. ‘Nothing worse.’ Nurse Patty put her hands on my gut. I watched it move. ‘You’ve got a live one,’ she said.
I didn’t want a live one. I only wanted to go back to my keepout home, back to my river-truck, my ammunition.
Nurse Patty pressed my gut from the bottom to the top. ‘Baby’s head is in the right place,’ she said. ‘Like they say, nice and low, ready to go. You came to St Jude’s just in time, I’d say.’
Baby’s head is in the right place. I knew there was a baby in there, but when Nurse Patty used the word it was a surprise. As if, at the same time as knowing, I didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.
Nurse Patty pulled down my gown and put the blanket back over me. She wrote something on the clipboard. ‘You are young to be here, Justine. Oh dear…I’m sorry this happened to you.’ She touched my stomach.
I looked away from her, towards the window too high to see through.
Nurse Patty sighed. ‘Whoever did this to you is a bastard. I don’t know if I’m meant to say that or not, but it’s the truth. Fourteen years old…’ She clicked her tongue. ‘They’ll find a home for it, that’s the only good to come of all this.’
A home for it. I hadn’t thought about it being something that needed a home. It was a lump in my gut that Pop said would soon be gone. It wasn’t anything.
Nurse Patty smiled. ‘It won’t be long now, Justine. Then all this will be behind you. You can start again. You can go back to school. You can think about what you want to do with your life.’
Her voice was smooth, without cracks or damage, as if it had come from another country, not Yolamundi. I grabbed her hand as she turned to leave.
‘Oh, Justine. I have to finish my rounds or I’ll be hung, drawn and quartered.’ She took my hand from hers. ‘Tell you what, I’ll come check on you first thing tomorrow morning, okay? I’ll make it my special mission.’ Nurse Patty pulled open my curtain and left.
52.
That night I woke with rag pain in my gut. Sour water rose in my throat. I rolled to the other side, and water leaked down between my legs. I closed my eyes and saw the Murray thick with cod, running through Yolamundi all the way to the sea. I wished I was there. Minutes passed. I heard the other girls snoring from their beds. I put my hand on my stomach. It bumped against me as if it was trying to push my hand out of the way. The
rag pain was gone. I slept on the wet mattress as the river flowed through me, pouring from my scar onto the hospital mattress.
I was woken again by a pain that moved across me like a wave on the Murray after a storm. I held my breath and rolled over. Acid bubbled in my throat from the weight of my gut. I heard nurses talking outside the door. I tried to sit up and more water came out from between my legs. Were my rags coming? I felt sick. I lay back down on the bed. My gut thumped from the inside as if one of Pop’s chicks was tapping on the shell. I lay and listened to the soft snoring of the other girls. I breathed in time to their noisy breaths, in and out, until I slept again.
When I next woke I saw the first light of day through the window. Behind it I saw a wave of pain rolling towards me; not made of water but of dirt. I groaned.
‘Justine? Are you alright?’ It was Leslie from the next bed.
I was bunched up tight, biting down against the pain. Then the wave passed over me and was gone. I took a breath.
‘Justine? Are you okay?’
I opened my eyes. In the distance I saw another wave made of ground, and stones and dirt rolling towards me. The wave was bigger than the ones before. I cried out and vomit burned my throat.
‘Justine, I’m going to get the nurse!’
I was underneath a wave made of mud. Could a wave be outside and inside? Could it be both? Like knowing and not knowing?
I heard Leslie leave her bed. ‘Matron! Matron! It’s Justine!’ she called. I wanted to stop her. I didn’t want the matron to come. I wanted to be alone, by myself at the river, empty of the thing inside me so I could lie on my back in the water, my gut flat.
I saw another wave coming towards me, rising out of the ground, as big as a mountain, then it came down hard, breaking over me. My mouth clamped shut. I was crushed underneath.
‘Justine? Justine, we need to move you. You’re having the baby.’
I lifted my head and saw a nurse I didn’t know. She was old with black wings on her head and the cross around her neck. She shook her head at me. ‘This is what happens, Justine. A baby. Never mind the pain.’