Slights

by Kaaron Warren

  "I beg your pardon," she said. Her shoulders were pulled back and her neck swayed.

  "Will that be all, Mrs Adder?" I said. I giggled about that one all the way home.

  Mrs Gibbs said, "Unfortunately, she was some sort of something high up in the public service, and she kicked up a bit of a fuss."

  "If she's that high up, why's she such a tight arse? Her arse is so tight she needs a straw to shit through."

  Mrs Gibbs found me funny. She liked the fact I was rude and cheeky; she got too many crawlers. She spluttered. "God, you're awful, Steve," she said. I smiled and shook her hand.

  "It's a fair cop. I'll go quiet," I said. One of those stupid lines you pick up in your life. I had an immediate fantasy; Mrs Gibbs asked me out for lunch, a farewell lunch, and when I got there the whole staff had turned up. Crying because I was leaving, giving me personal little presents, each with a private story I'd think of every time I looked at them.

  That's what should have happened. This is what did happen; I got changed into my street clothes, walked out. Said, "Bye, Luke," to one of the guys.

  He said, "Yeah, see ya, mate," and I was gone.

  I didn't want to find another job. I hated the process; dressing up, getting your hair just right, wearing pantyhose, all the pretence which makes them love you.

  I could have left, then. Moved overseas, gone to another state. But there were the bones. I was trapped.

  I went home after getting the sack and started to dig in my backyard. I thought, "More jasmine. I'll dig further up the back, plant more jasmine."

  I found the bones on the fourth day of digging. I dug up my backyard with the intention of planting a sea of jasmine but found bones, instead, and relics. Remnants, reminders, mementoes and rubbish. I hadn't planned to dig so deep.

  I was out there early in the day, feeling the sun move across my body, sweating, breathing that dust smell, and I didn't have any music blaring to destroy my concentration. My train of thought. The yard proved a goldmine of memories. I piled all the things by the back door, until it began to look like a child's stall at a make-believe market. I found chicken bones bitten white and some slightly larger; then I found bones too big for us to have tossed there as meat detritus. I found bones in a shoebox with "MUFFY" written on it. Snails had eaten most of the letters. She never did dig her way out of the cave, where Mum told me she'd gone. I left her in the shoe box and buried her again. I had my own special service. I loved that cat. I tried to say the right things but I'd never heard them said before. Somehow I'd missed all the family funerals.

  I kept digging, and I began to pile the bones by the tree in the middle of the yard. It didn't occur to me to stop. For three more days I dug and discovered bones. Two hundred and twenty-three that week.

  There were more the next week.

  There are clumps of old jasmine left still, a legacy from my grandparents, and I remember it as a smell from childhood; I can close my eyes when it is in bloom and still picture the backyard clearly. I can close my eyes at the end of the street, stumble along blindly, and still know where to turn into my place. The rest of the street had carefully groomed roses. I can smell jasmine everywhere, even in the smell factory that's the kitchen.

  While my bedroom was often warmer, being right over the kitchen, it often filled with secondhand cooking smells. Something happens to the smell of food when it travels away from the source; it becomes sickening, rancid. When you're in a fish and chip shop the smell is wonderful, hot fat, vinegar, sea smell of the fish. Three steps away and you wonder why anyone would eat there.

  It made me feel sick, early in the morning, or late at night, when Dad would cook up some fatty feast. I'd have to breathe through my pillow and that didn't work, so I'd poke my head out the window and suck in the jasmine in the backyard, if it was in bloom.

  When I'm on my own in the place I can be surprised by smells. I cook cheese on toast downstairs and by the time I go to bed, hours later, my room smells like curdled milk and a house burnt down. And the jasmine saves me again.

  I was digging down deep to find things, it was dark, but always the jasmine led me back to the surface with a scent trail.

  I found a piece of coal carved into a panther and a scissor blade. I could smell the shit pile when the wind blew right, but it was the smell of home.

  Peter called to ask me to the movies, but the movie was crap so we walked out. We tried to get into another movie, get our money back. The woman behind the desk said, "The show is sold out."

  "What show?" I said.

  The woman had not left her seat. She preferred to keep her seat. Her eyes were squinting because her hair was pulled into such a tight bun. "The show now playing. You won't be able to see it."

  She seemed pleased by this; as if I had offended her and she wanted me to be punished.

  It was astonishing how much she hated me.

  Peter had been quieter than usual, and I'm not the type to fill in the gaps, so neither of us spoke. We went and had a beer, then Peter said, "So what happened at the supermarket?"

  I rolled my eyes and punched him. "Is that what's been bothering you? My job? It was crap, I hated it, they sacked me. That's what happened."

  He pinched my cheek. "I'm not having a go, Steve. It's just that I've got this new idea, and I'm wondering if you could help me set it up."

  Turns out he wanted to use his skills at telling people what to do and start running self-motivational courses. Though how they can be called 'self' motivational, when you're paying someone else to motivate you, is beyond me. I would be helping with the boring stuff – mail outs, listing names, all the stuff Maria couldn't be arsed to do. She used her pregnancy as an excuse, as she'd use motherhood as an excuse once the baby arrived.

  It sounded okay, and better than working in an office.

  "It sounds okay," I said.

  I found a curtain ring and a bead I recognised from Grampa Searle's well-used abacus.

  My Grampa Searle was always a quiet one. He never lost his love for figures and sat like an addict adding up anything.

  "Did you know that if you bought every sale item on this page you'd be up for $4,281.85?" he said. There was no response; there rarely was to his announcements. He tried to make me and Peter add and subtract.

  "Start with 400. Add 80. Subtract this. Multiply by that."

  We stared at him, and my Dad said, "Leave them alone, Dad. They're not interested. Steve's not even at school yet." Grampa Searle always went quiet when his son spoke. My mum was impressed by it at first, thinking it showed respect. She thought the dad looked up to the son. I always liked Grampa Searle when he wasn't testing me with maths. He gave me private winks, like we shared a secret which didn't need to be discussed. He was the most gentle man I ever knew. For my fifth birthday he gave me an abacus of my own.

  My fifth birthday was the greatest. The Grannies were there, with presents, and Peter swore at Dad in the morning – he said damn, but he said it rudely, tried to make Dad look silly. He got in so much trouble. Then he was quiet for the rest of the day. I laughed at him. He said, "You'll get a belting one day, then see how you like it," but Dad didn't give beltings.

  He didn't tan your hide.

  I wore my favourite trousers. Mum had presented me with my first dress, a cornflower blue thing with yellow lace. I hid it in my pillowcase and they couldn't find it, so I got to wear my trousers. And a jumper one of the Grannies knitted for Peter; he hated it. The pattern on the front was supposed to be a teddy bear asleep in bed; Peter screamed, said, "He's dead, he's dead." He knew more about death than me. He had been at the funeral in the backyard of our little cat, Muffy, who had gone to live in a cave, I was told. I knew she was gone; I couldn't understand where to. I watched from my bedroom as Dad dug the hole and then put the cat in. Peter said some words. After Peter stopped talking they all came inside and we had ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. The whole Muffy episode made death mysterious, fascinating, some magical thing. I always expected little
Muffy the cat to appear once she'd dug her way out of the dirt. We never got another cat, or animal of any kind. Once I lived alone I thought about going to a pet shop and bringing a new cat home, but was concerned the creature wouldn't like me.

  I forgot about Muffy until I saw a white cat on Play School. It must have been a few months later. Around my birthday.

  "When's Muffy coming out of the cave?" I said to Mum.

  "Who?" She had forgotten the cat ever existed. I think she had that ability; things, people, vanished when they died. She wiped them from her memory so she didn't have to suffer. This helped me to understand all the fathers Mum bought home. The boyfriends, uncles. She wasn't being disloyal to Dad; she had simply forgotten him. She could have as many lovers as she wanted

  I wanted to tell Peter but he was busy and didn't deserve to hear.

  Peter gave me the jumper. I loved the teddy on it; he never woke up to yell and always stayed the same. And even at five I knew this would happen;

  "Peter! Isn't that the jumper I knitted you? Didn't you like it?" said Granny Walker. It was a great jumper.

  We had bowls and bowls of potato chips, nothing else at my fifth birthday party, though I think the adults ate sandwiches in the kitchen where I couldn't see.

  Auntie Jessie was there; we told jokes on the front step. She wouldn't come out to see my roads in the backyard; she would never go into the backyard. All the kids in the street were there, although I hated them. The little weak girl from next door, Melissa, and a little girl with red hair and pink ribbons who I only remember because she hit me for taking the last cake.

  I had four more birthdays like that, and then Dad was killed. Birthdays weren't the same, after that.

  On my eleventh birthday Eve gave me jewellery for the first time, and I found a new jumper folded by the swings. It was a black jumper, a colour much sought-after but often forbidden.

  "Black is nice, though," I said to my mother. "The fairies left it as a birthday present."

  "You had your birthday presents," Mum said, but I hadn't. All I had was my first present from Eve. Mum lost track of time after Dad died. She didn't remember things.

  "Anyway, it isn't a school colour," she said. She wore the softest colours, pale pink, mauve, baby blue. She thought it made her look younger. And after a year in mourning she would never wear black again.

  I wore my new black jumper to bed, to school, at home. It became encrusted, stiff with filth, but I would not let Mum wash it. Then, a month or so after I found the jumper, I tired of it. The boy who had left it in the park had already been punished for his loss, and did not want the ruined gift back. I didn't want it anymore. I was done with it. I left it where I had found it. It became a football, and a soak for blood, and a pirate flag. It stayed in the playground for two years, part of the playground equipment, unrecognised and left alone by adults.

  After my Dad died, Grampa Searle changed. He was lighter, and he'd lost his fear. Dad used to tease him, make taunts about his quiet life. His boring life. Mum would get mad, because her dad was dead, but my dad had never concealed his disinterest in Grampa's life. When my Dad died, Grampa became silly, he laughed a lot, talked and joked and everybody else loved him too.

  I had the fantasy that we were not popular in the suburb we lived in, which is why the families refused to come to our birthday parties. The other children in the street avoided us. Peter and I played together most often at school, and would fight anybody who wanted the exercise. That's what should have happened.

  This is what did happen; I played alone, elaborate fantasies, while Peter excelled at football. He had friends all over the place. We weren't friends. We rarely spoke, had nothing to say to each other. Peter, Mum and I sat at the table for every meal, but when we learned to read we brought books to the table and Mum allowed it, bringing her own magazine or book. Never the newspaper – she didn't want to know the news. My dad was the news bringer. He read it to her, analysed it, told her the opinion she should hold. With him gone she did not feel she had the filter necessary for the news. After he died, she never read it again. Peter and I did not bring newspapers into the home; newspapers were not read.

  It was months later Mum asked where the black jumper was.

  "I gave it to a poor kid," I told her.

  She nodded. "That's good. We don't like black around the house," she said. She cut large pieces of the meat pie she had spent the day cooking, and watched us pick out the mushrooms and eat the rest. I heard her say to Auntie Ruth, "I doubt if they've ever tasted mushrooms, but they saw their father always quietly leave the mushrooms aside." My dad never criticised her food. When she gave him mushrooms, and she did it every few weeks, he never asked why she persisted in giving him the fungus he despised.

  "They used to grow in the hole we called a bathroom," he told her. "More than once, when Dad wasn't working and we had no food, we ate those mushrooms. I really don't want to see them again."

  But she couldn't help it. Maybe it was a small power she had over him, because the struggle for power was definite if subtle. Now we put our mushrooms aside. "Eat your mushrooms," Mum said.

  "Mushrooms grow in the shower," I said. I realise now Dad was probably lying about eating mushrooms out of the shower. Mum loved them.

  Dad commented often on Mum's cooking, making sure Peter and I were aware of how lucky we were, when delicious dishes arrived on the table.

  Mealtimes were always pleasant, because we enjoyed food. We loved good food; I continue to enjoy bad food as well. Dad told us terrible stories about his mother's cooking; how she made fried sandwiches using rancid lard, how her jelly never set, how her casseroles were soups and her soups stews. When the family went to visit Granny Searle, sometimes we got the giggles just thinking about it. Dad loved it the most, and that always made me happy. Dad trained me to ask, "Excuse me, Granny, what's for lunch?" and my tiny child's voice being so rude cracked them up every time.

  Granny Searle knew what the joke was, and she provided lots of shop-brought goodies; pies and sweets, bread, all things nice. We liked going to Granny Searle's the best, because everything she had was bought. She didn't even make her own custard or scones.

  She sang to us, sat us on her knee and sang her beautiful songs. We sat there, rich with shop food, and our Granny gave us shivers of pleasure with her songs. Our Mum tapped her foot, danced sometimes, smiled. Our Dad sat across the room and stared, fingers steepled. Every song he said, "That's enough, Mum," but it never was.

  Peter and I never gave ourselves to it completely. She was old and she smelt funny. We watched our Dad. We fought on Granny's knee. "You're too big to sit there anyway," our Dad said, and we waited until it was time to go home. I sometimes wondered who did the belting in that house; Granny and Grampa Searle both seemed so weak. Granny had a flat hard hand, though, and her eyes could go mean and scary if she wasn't happy.

  Sometimes Mum, Peter and I would stay with one of the Grannies for a holiday. Dad didn't come with us, and we didn't stay away for long. A weekend, usually, so we didn't miss a minute of school. Not that it made any difference; Peter would get As and I would get Cs no matter how many hours we spent at school. I liked to pack my own suitcase. Once Peter gave me the bear jumper, the granny knit, I packed that.

  Mum said, "Good thinking, it can get chilly on the beach," when she saw my jumper. She didn't know I only had Dad's spare uniform in my little case. Peter immediately ran upstairs to get a granny-knit, of which he had hundreds and I had only one.

  "Stevie ruins clothes so," Granny Searle said once, as if that explained why they never knitted for me.

  One thing no one ever explained to me was why Dad didn't come with us. Shift work wasn't the reason; he didn't work when we were away. I knew because of the clothes in the dirty clothes basket. No uniforms. Sometimes a going-out suit, or muddy, sloppy clothes, sometimes just pyjamas. Mum and Dad always seemed happy to see each other after a short holiday.

  We liked Grampa Searle, hated Grandpa Wal
ker until he died when I was five, and Peter and I could never love the Grannies very much. They were too old. Their skin was loose and scary. They wore ugly clothes. They smiled with false teeth. I didn't mind the things they gave us, but I didn't care for them much. There must have been a time when they were younger, not so ugly, but we could not imagine it.

  Peter did cruel mimicries of them, which Dad found hilarious but Mum didn't like.

  "If it wasn't for them you wouldn't be here," Mum said.

  "Yeah, we'd probably be rich," Peter said. He used to be naughty. Then he wasn't. I don't know what happened. One day I'll ask him.

  As if.

  I'd sit on Granny Searle's old knees, hearing her sing, but watching Dad, because there'd come a moment when he'd scratch his index finger on his knee. I'd leap off Granny, run across the room, throw myself at his chest. He'd hold me like a rope, all wound up, and I'd breathe in the smell of his throat.