A Woman of the Future

by David Ireland

  He lay in agony in the still small puddles, both hands between his legs. His first yells were brief, the pain took his breath away, he said.

  Why do boys’ bicycles have a bar, when they have testicles to come down on—and girls’ bikes have no bar? I wonder if they really hurt that much or if males can’t take pain as well as we can.

  Poor old Challenger’s dead

  He died last night in bed

  Put him in the coffin

  He fell through the bottom.

  Two Compositions

  1. My Best Friend

  My best friend is Glenda Rabic because she is so friendly and she talks about interesting things all the time.

  Glenda and I like each other, so I asked Glenda to come to my place, and she did and we had a wonderful time climbing trees, playing hide and seek and eating cookies too.

  Sometimes we make daisy-chains, they’re so big that we can hardly carry them or put them round our necks. Glenda and I are very good friends.

  Glenda and I wished we lived together.

  2. School Inspector

  One day at school when we were at our desks, the teacher said, “Now listen children Mister Worth is coming to our class next, so I want your very best manners, especially you Neil Catt and Wayne Overton because Mister Worth is very important.”

  That moment Mrs. Grantham the headmistress opened the door and showed Mister Worth the way. We showed him our books and we did some plays for him and he talked a lot about Queens and Kings and Princesses and Princes and castles.

  Mister Worth is a very kind and busy man, we liked it very much at school that day.

  None of these things happened: I made them up. The names, too. I didn’t have a best friend. Actually I didn’t get on really well with anyone, but I wasn’t unhappy. I knew I was different.

  Sir Boof

  They said at school that animals don’t know they’re going to die. It wasn’t true. One afternoon, after I’d snapped at Boof for jumping up on me, he came round later and said, “I’m not feeling the best lately. Hope you don’t mind me making a bit of a fuss when you come home each day, more fuss than I used to. I know I’m sick and one day soon I won’t be here among the living. Don’t cry. I know I jump up a bit and bark a bit more than I did, but it’s just gladness. It’s sort of relief that I’ve lasted another day and here you are home again and you won’t be going till next morning. And on Saturday you’ll be here two whole days.”

  Remember when Boof rescued me in the flooded creek, and wouldn’t take a more dignified name?

  I got round that in a ceremony attended by my father. Mother said she was watching from the dining room where she sat at the table. I lifted up a plastic sword, given me by a relative who thought I was a male child, and knighted Boof.

  “I dub thee Sir Boof.” And brought it down gently on both Boof’s narrow shoulders.

  I guess he didn’t mind the “Sir,” because he didn’t growl.

  When he went to sleep for the last time, one Friday morning, I had to wait for my father to come home in order to tell him, to ask him if Sir Boof was really dead, and how we should bury him.

  The Burial of Sir Boof Hunt, a Good Runner

  My father dug the hole at dawn next day. I didn’t hear him get up. He came and woke me in my yellow room. I tried to cry when I remembered why he had woken me, but the world itself was yawning, and it was impossible to weep.

  Sir Boof was in the laundry, on the cool concrete. I daresay any fleas he had were getting nervy. I had worried, the night before, about flies getting at him, but there were none alive there. Several lay in the sill behind the shut window, legs in the air; when I blew at them they were carried away, they were so light. They must have died a funny sort of death: seeing the big world outside and wondering why they couldn’t get past the invisible wall. Actually it wasn’t all that invisible; father often forgot details like cleaning windows.

  We made a stretcher from two branches of the prunings of the pittosporum that had the worm, and put some old shirts’ arms over the branches. It was a good carrier. Sir Boof was quite stiff, and seemed a bit lighter, easier to pick up.

  I went first as we carried him, and father behind.

  When we reached the corner of the backyard, father said, “Squad halt!” When I looked round, I found he was more upset than I was. Perhaps it was because of me.

  We put down the body beside the open grave, chocolate brown and moist. A worm showed a shiny part of itself, about a centimeter, where it curved over and pointed down into the earth again. More of its rings showed, then its tail, and it was gone.

  We decided not to put him in the ground just as he was, and wrapped him in the shirts that formed the stretcher, until I decided that wasn’t good enough and crept into the house and stole from mother’s stock an old baby blanket of mine and wrapped Sir Boof in something that once kept me very warm and comfortable. It was blue, with miniature trains and cowboys in red and orange.

  Father was all for leaving him as he lay there at the bottom of the hole, perhaps fearing my reaction when the dirt was put on him, but I wanted to do the whole job in one go, and started to put the dirt over him with my hands.

  In all the years of his life, Sir Boof never once ran. I never saw him run, mother and father didn’t either. I asked neighbors, but no.

  I think, though, that if he had wanted to run, he would have been a good runner.

  There was a storm that afternoon. Someone behind the world, over the hill to the west, lit a match that flamed suddenly high into the air. Many seconds later, the noise-crash came like a bomb. Dribbles and threatenings of rain came down, and stopped. Showers fell steadily, fine slanting silver strands against the sun, but only for a minute or two; they eased off, came again, then with a beautiful show of the finest drops drifting down and across and whirling round in a faint breeze, gleaming tiny and lazy with the sunlit trees behind, closed off the performance.

  For a few minutes a thin thunder sounded far off on the rim of the world where the grey sky came down like a lid. Then that, too, stopped.

  I shivered as the sun came full on the yard. I opened the screen door and stood on the patio in the sun, warm. The mound marking Sir Boof’s bed was dark with wet. He would never wait for me out the front as I walked round the bend home from school, and it hit me then, after the rain, and I cried.

  “Will Sir Boof go to heaven, Daddy?”

  “Heaven! Good God! Where did you get that idea? What do you mean: heaven?” father said in a rush. He knew perfectly well.

  “Where God is.”

  “Which God?”

  “Well,” I said, doubtfully now, “which God do you believe in?” I hadn’t counted on getting a lecture, but one was coming.

  “Gods are different, from person to person,” father said. “Mine was created by me. Each has his own. Some are born with the individual, they are attributes of that person. Gods are sometimes born, sometimes made, sometimes patched together from shreds of other people’s gods. Gods are property.” He took a breath, and said more slowly, “Maybe they were the first property.”

  “Do they all live in heaven?” I persisted.

  Father looked at me as if I was a cheeky little girl.

  Composition: My Mother

  My mother is a nice kind and good looking mother. She has glasses brown eyes and black hair and likes waves in her hair. She is a writer.

  My mother is married to an actor.

  She is good at the housework, does all the washing and all the cleaning and all the cooking.

  My mother buys wool to make jumpers and cardigans and socks and trousers.

  She has a lot of money and she is a good mother.

  I like my mother.

  And the teacher wrote in red letters beneath: “Alethea, you are good like your mother.” But she must have known about mother: everyone did. Actually, I do like mother, but I can’t say straight out that I love her, like I love father.

  Even when she scratches hersel
f, I like her . . . (She does it in such a way that she looks as if she can’t see herself doing it, and wants not to notice.)

  Also, she doesn’t seem to get around the house so often now with no clothes, but that may be because of me. I’m nine now.

  I like mother best of all when she’s dressed up. She has smart shoes which cost a lot of money and beautiful dresses, but the most wonderful thing my mother wears is her leopard skin coat. My father said if anyone asked, it was made from a leopard that was bred specially for coats, not a wild one that someone shot in the jungle or trapped and later stuck a needle into.

  Mother looks like a princess in the leopard coat; looking at her makes me feel proud she is my mother, not someone else’s. I wish she dressed up more often.

  Alicia

  My mother was born in the year that the first generation of great human devices were exploded against humans.

  In the back of her first photo album, the one she had when she was a young girl, I found colored pictures of Great Men of History: generals like Montgomery, Rommel, Alexander; Winston Churchill during wartime; religious leaders; Caesar, and that sort of person.

  I tried to find out why she kept the pictures, but she was her usual evasive self, covering her dodging and weaving with words, words. Until I gave up and told her she might as well shut up, since I was no longer listening.

  (But you had to be severe with mother or you’d be there for ages, suffocating under a flood of words.)

  At nine I was beginning to be powerful; feeling that pride, that aggressiveness that was to set me apart from others.

  I feel sure mother wanted a boy. Yet in her album there was one photo of a beautiful young girl, dark, and on the back of it was the word Alicia. She had a Spanish look, and smiled out from the glossy surface like a princess.

  I think mother was in love with Alicia when she was young. Perhaps she never really wanted to be a mother.

  Why Do. Fish Swim in the Sea?

  Regularly we had to write answers; these are some:

  Because that’s the law of the sea.

  Because they can’t do anything else.

  They’re not smart enough to think of other things to do.

  Because anyone that didn’t swim would be unpopular.

  Miss King didn’t indicate whether she was pleased with our answers; we kept on thinking, often giving answers others had given, but she didn’t even tell us then what the right answer was.

  It irritated me that no one was either right or wrong.

  Last in Lousy!

  You could play it anywhere. Going in to school, into the school shop, the library, to the sports oval, the swimming pool. Or it could be Last out Lousy, Last up, Last down, anything. People still play it when they’re old. I’ve heard men running up the steps of a pub saying it, people leaving work and hurrying home saying it. Long after they’ve stopped playing hopscotch.

  In fourth class it was specially popular. “Last out, lousy!” It was the end of the day, just after three, and the whole class barged for the door, bags burst open in the crush, kids were trodden on, the door was kid-jammed and only the first few got out; the rest were trying to pull themselves, their legs, bags, books out past the rest. It was best to say it and dive for the door yourself, not wait for someone else to start it. That way you got out safely and could look back and laugh. They always rose to the challenge.

  What’s your name?

  Baby Jane.

  Where do you live?

  Cauliflower Lane.

  What’s your number?

  Cucumber.

  What’s your address?

  Watercress.

  The Female Christ

  I was in the Scripture class at school. It was Wednesday. The man sent along by the authorities was telling us as well as he could while the kids played up, about the Jesus of the Bible. (He didn’t like it the week before when after he said “Amen” I said “Gesundheit.”)

  While he was running through the Sermon on the Mount, turning the other cheek, forgiving people seventy times seven and allowing the soldiers to whip him, I had my brilliant idea. Christ was a woman!

  This seemed such a good idea that I wrote it down. I remembered his forty-day fast—what was that but the ultimate crash diet? I wrote my idea on a piece of paper and passed it to the boy sitting next to me. He read it without interest, but passed it on. That paper went from desk to desk and shortly the man saw it. He let it go for a while, then as the kids paid even less attention to him, he went after the paper. He was comical, chasing up the aisles while the paper went across the aisles. He had no hope and had to stop, puffing. He walked as if he had nails driven through his feet.

  “Children! Now I’m trying to bring you the message of comfort and hope that is the Christian message.” And puffed some more.

  Why bring children comfort? That was the last thing we needed, healthy animals that we were. And hope?

  “Now I want you to give me that piece of paper,” and he fixed us, all thirty-five of us—two kids were away—with his eyes as if he could perform this miracle by an act of will. His will over ours.

  I decided to feed it to him. I stood up. “The paper, please, children,” I said, looking straight forward and standing rigid.

  Someone passed it along. Still rigid, I put the paper in front of me and let him take it. He read it. “JC was a lady.”

  “Who wrote this?”

  “I did.”

  “Oh. Well, at least you’re honest.”

  But the others spoiled it. More stood up. “No, sir. I did it. She’s just being a hero. She’s protecting me,” came from all sides. The man got miserable, facing a classful of rigid, forward-facing kids.

  “I give up,” he said. And gathered his things. “I’ll report this,” he said as he left.

  “What about the seventy times seven?” I yelled after him.

  The trouble is in the normal way of things, kids can’t speak up to adults.

  You know you’re you, you know you’re the same person as the big person you’ll be some day when these wrinklies are old and you are king; but they don’t seem to know it and wouldn’t accept it if you spoke as you feel; that is, as the adult you really already are, in those little clothes and small body.

  He was a meek man, and had to suffer for the others that we couldn’t trample on.

  What’s better than heaven?

  Nothing’s better than heaven;

  Jam tarts are better than nothing:

  Therefore jam tarts are better than heaven.

  The Terrible Knee Crunch

  Players stood face to face; they could nominate whether they were receiver or giver, or both could be givers. They then pushed their knees forward into collision so the kneecaps smacked together. They could have one knee or both. Anyone cheating was punished, unless he was too big; and some of the class six boys were as big as some men.

  If you hit the opponent’s knee just to the side, the inside of the knee, and slid off it, there was an area of vulnerable nerves that, when hit, could keep the loser out of the game for a week. Big boys limping were given cheek by anyone who judged they could get away if chased. Some of the injured were glad to get back into class after playtime, never mind the teachers’ voices edged with spite, or the dull anger so many of them displayed.

  Girls’ Games Are Different

  There was Sir. We got a stocking from Mum or the leg of a panty hose, put an old tennis ball into the foot, tied a knot and held it by the end. You stood hitting the ball against a wall. One hand had to be free all the time. The ball could bounce against the wall at eleven o’clock, one o’clock, seven, six and four; you could even bend over and bounce it over your head.

  The rhyme had the words, “Please sir,” and then we had different words, according to who was near us in the playground. Like, “Take me home, sir; Put me to bed, sir; Cover me up, sir; Kiss me goodnight, sir; Close the door, sir; Take my clothes off, sir;” and so on. If a good-looking teacher was on playground d
uty we’d have lots of looks at him, getting the joy of saying the words and thinking he was Sir and putting us to bed and so on.

  It was a lot of fun.

  It wasn’t much like the Corner-game or knee crunch, though, and often I used to be looking at their games when I was supposed to be listening to Kara Mitchell telling me secrets about Sandra Cunningham or Rachel Masselos or Miss Scanlon, who had everyone talking about her because different people dropped her off at school every morning, and all kissed her passionately, men and ladies.

  The Value of Being One of the Recorders of Your Time

  It’s funny to think that writing this puts me in a direct though distant line with the scribes of the ancient world, who used to write down the quantities of grain and slaves in stock, and later as civilization got underway, the amount of money owing; and in line with the kids of ancient Egypt who wrote their homework on clay tablets, the Greeks and their Mediterranean neighbors who did the same, down through the times when religious men were the only ones to value book learning and the art of writing. Others in the same line are the archaeologists who’ll come after us.

  I was an archaeologist once. We went in, us kids, to an old house in Cheapley set well back from the road, backing on to bush. It was empty, the developers had got the people out. The old place had once been the only house in about two hundred hectares of bush. Now it was the only house of grace and shade among two thousand houses of brick and paint and wrought iron fences and concrete driveways and variegated pittosporums and broom and castor oil plants and all the rest. Except that the old house had the fragrant pittosporums that bloomed in October—three of them—and jacarandas ten meters high and bottlebrush trees and eucalypts and looked like a mountain cottage. A bulldozer stood in the garden.