Slights

by Kaaron Warren

  "Don't you think you're a little old for playing in the mud?" It was Sandy Boyle, standing behind me, blocking my sun.

  He was very hard to upset. I'd scuff my shoes, kick them off without undoing the laces; he'd just tell me I was hurting a piece of art.

  "Don't you think you should shut up?" I said.

  He sat down on the back step to talk. He gave me a little compass as a bribe. I threw it up the back.

  "Stevie, you have to accept the fact that you're growing up. Your body will be changing in the next year or so. You shouldn't be parading around the yard in your underwear."

  I had mud up to my elbows; my legs were covered with it. My singlet was loose and my underpants had nearly lost their elastic.

  "You shouldn't be staring at me, then," I said. He reddened. He continually made the same mistake; because I acted like a child, he assumed I was childish. He forgot how adult my brain was. And he didn't know about Eve, my garden lady. No one really knew about her.

  "Trying to see if I've got boozies yet? Well, I haven't, see?" I lifted up my singlet, showed him my chest. When I lowered my arms he was gone.

  Mum and he had sex that night. I went into Peter's room and we got the giggles, listening to his grunting, his whimpering. Peter told me a terrible story he'd heard at school, about a man who had sex and got dirty, and had to have a spiky umbrella inflated in his penis and dragged out, and it dragged out all the stuff inside so there was only skin left.

  "Mum isn't dirty, though," he said, and we nodded.

  I fell asleep in Peter's bed, and that's where Sandy Boyle found us in the morning, when he came to perform his little task, wake the kids for school.

  He threw the covers back, waking us with a jolt. I had been dreaming about swimming in a nice warm pool and suddenly the water turned cold.

  "Get lost," Peter said, and reached for the covers.

  "This is a disgrace. A disgrace!"

  We giggled at him; he couldn't shout without his voice shaking and spittle flying.

  "Get out. Get out," he spat.

  Peter squeezed my elbow. "It's time for school anyway."

  At breakfast, Sandy Boyle said to Mum, "Heather, they'll have to stop sleeping in the same bed. It's disgusting."

  Mum said, "Oh, really?" which he stupidly took for interest.

  "They're of an age, now. It's an established fact that children of their age are giving birth in some countries, so don't talk to me about innocence. There's nothing innocent about either of them, I don't think anyone would argue with that. And I don't think you should be sending Steve out with torn underpants. What if someone should see?"

  Mum made our lunches, drove us to school, kissed us goodbye, all without speaking. She made good lunches, lunches the other kids envied. Always three layers; a boiled egg or piece of kid's cheese, then a fat sandwich, ham, or chicken loaf, or something else which didn't go soggy. Then a treat, chocolate slice or cream cake. Never fruit. We never had to eat fruit. Dad didn't eat it and Mum told us it just wasn't worth the fight. She always packed a throw-away toothbrush, with the toothpaste all ready to go. Peter used his every day; I kept mine in my desk and used them for swaps. He got clean teeth; I got Superman pencils, lollies, answers and, once, a kiss.

  On the way to school I said, "How come Sandy doesn't wear any pants when you're not home, Mum? Why does he show us his willy like that?"

  "Peter?" Mum said. "Is that true?"

  Her voice was very quiet. I had to lean forward against my seat belt to hear. This was a test for Peter; how much did he really want to get rid of the shoe man? Or did he just say that?

  "Yeah, he gets his pants off and follows us around the house. He won't let us have a bath with the door shut. Once he hit me because Steve was late, he tells me off all the time, he doesn't like anything I say."

  It was more than I had hoped for.

  That night the shoe man was gone.

  "We'll get our shoes from somewhere else from now on," Mum said. Peter and I cheered, we had lemonade and fried chicken and pretended to be the shoe man all night.

  It was the best night of my life.

  Mum said one day, years later, as we drove past the special shoe shop, "I wonder whatever happened to that sick bastard."

  It was one of the few times she surprised me. I had imagined she had killed him and knew exactly where he was.

  We sold these little puzzles in the foyer, along with his tapes, books, photos (none of me, or Mum, or Dad. I could never figure out why he would be ashamed of us).

  This puzzle was made of graphite, carved, polished, and linked. If you pulled and twisted, the perfect sphere would fall into a still-connected, impossible mess. Push and twist to click it back to its seamless, round state.

  They really were beautiful puzzles, and you could fiddle at night, in the dark, when you couldn't sleep, because you would never lose a piece and it warmed so gently in the palms of your hands. I don't need one; I can never stay awake more than a few minutes once I reach bed.

  Maria and Peter came out of the lecture hall with their hangers-on. I had been seen, so there was no point running away. I wanted to see what she'd do. If she'd snip me off and get rid of me, or if she wasn't clever enough to do that in front of everyone without looking bad. Oddly, it became the one time Maria and I fell into a sense that we would be friends. I should have known it would be erroneous.

  One of those dinners evolved which appear to be spontaneous but which have been planned meticulously by one person. Where you all just pile into cars and end up somewhere, but that person had it all in mind. This was the only one I ever went to, but I know enough about them. Maria wanted to eat out; she's in her element in a restaurant. She somehow manages to take credit for the food and the wine, she lords it over the waiters and helps everyone order. She glows in the candlelight.

  Peter could barely control his tongue. The table was full of hang-alongs.

  "I can't describe the exhilaration of helping people who need help. Just this evening, did you see that poor lonely fella, shuffled in early, sat on his own in the middle of the room and waited for it to fill around him, you know, already fulfilled because there were people around him. And all I had to do was talk to him, mention him, say, 'That man there,' and point to him, did you see him? He lifted. He lightened. My God, I could see it. I could actually see the black cloud rising above his head."

  Peter had a chopstick in either hand; he played the air like it was a set of drums. The hang-alongs had not eaten a bite; Maria and I got most of the prawns and fished out the best bits of chicken, the bits without grey worms of gut. We reached for the same bit of tofu, clicked chopsticks. I could feel the waiter hovering behind me, wanting to ask me for my dessert request. I kept talking, blah blah, because I knew he was hanging about, that he wouldn't leave until I acknowledged him, and I hate being hassled.

  "Waiter," I said, "come here and do what you're paid to do."

  The shrimp tasted rubbery, gritty, like the ones you get at all you can eat chain restaurants. Maria thought they were wonderful; I began to realise she has no taste.

  "I hate restaurants," I said.

  "This isn't really a restaurant," Maria said. But it was.

  "So, when are you going to launch your backyard?" she said.

  I had a sudden vision of how it should be: pagoda, soft grass, tiny flowers, jasmine, shade, laughter, glasses clinking, white dresses. But you can't make that happen with bones and graves.

  "I went off the idea," I said.

  Peter said, "His face, the cloud, before us all."

  Maria rolled her eyes. I said, "His wallet, his money, dinner for us all." Maria cracked up. It broke Peter's spell, and everyone began to scrape at the bowls. Maria and I laughed, laughed. I was nearly sick, I'd eaten so much, and I'd been throwing down the beers so felt pissy, and Maria's lips were swollen from sucking too hard on her wine glass.

  I thought then we may even get along. If she could laugh at Peter with me, I thought we'd be friend
s.

  One of the guys at dinner was cuter than the others, and actually laughed when I made jokes. He asked me out.

  It was a disaster.

  I was having sex at his place, and he got up to get us a beer and I wriggled about to get comfy and somehow smashed his bedside lamp. I didn't say anything, he didn't hear anything, he walked all over the cut glass in the dark and had no idea.

  "Something sharp," he said. We were numb with drink; the sex was a failure.

  "Wonder what it is," I said. I left before he woke up. It has a hot night; we'd only had a sheet covering us. The sheet near his feet was stained with blood; he'd notice that when he woke up. I was thankful I hadn't told him my real name or given him my home phone number.

  Later, I was reading the personals, as I do, because I put odd messages in the personal columns. "Pookie, please call Nookie" – that sort of thing. I get responses sometimes, but they're all crazy. I was reading see if any of my stuff was there and I saw, "Miss Cut Glass, please contact Blood Foot for mutual satisfaction." I didn't call, of course. He had nothing I wanted. I had left my jumper behind but I didn't care. It was only one my Grannies knitted for Peter. I've always got at least a couple of messages in the paper. It amazes me how many people respond, just in case they are Pookie. There are some bloody mad people out there. Desperate. The personals are like an astrology column; you can make everything fit if you want it to.

  When they asked for a photo, I'd send them one of me clearly in disguise. A terrible blond wig, glasses, I don't know. The ones who wrote back always told me how pretty I was.

  I went back to my digging. I got the yard cleaned up. I found half a child's handkerchief, a scratched gold locket, a smooth pebble and the stub of a grey lead pencil. It looked like the sort Auntie Jessie used.

  I found a shoe marked with red crosses, a brass lighter, a book spine and a club badge.

  • • •

  Dougie Page called me. He'd found out some things. I loved Dougie. He was the one Dad saved, the one Dad died for, and it was like he thought he had to take over Dad's spot. Mum didn't seem to mind. He always told me gruesome stories when Mum wasn't listening and brought presents, like old bullet casings.

  He was the one who got rid of unwanted visitors for us. Well, for Mum, anyway.

  I had a guy over to stay when I was seventeen. I didn't tell him Mum would be at home. I took his hand and squeezed it about my breast, squeezed hard, so his fingers sank into my flesh.

  "Come home and look at my veggie garden, Nick," I said. "I've got all sorts of goodies out there."

  I didn't tell him it was a junk-yard, full of stories.

  I took him straight to my room and didn't keep him quiet. He shouted my name – he said "Steve" at first, but I think it embarrassed him to be calling a man's name. He called me Steph. He tickled my ear with sibilants. We fell asleep entwined. He woke me with kisses and a morning glory and we made love quietly. It was a beautiful morning, and my room is very sunny.

  Nick climbed out of bed, stretched, leaned on the windowsill.

  "You never did show me your garden," he said.

  "I don't actually have one."

  "You're kidding," he said, but so was he.

  Mum heard us in the night (heard him, anyway; I was as quiet as a sock) and she showed her displeasure by throwing her weight around in the kitchen, singing at shouting level, calling my name.

  "Who's that?" Nick said. "I thought you lived alone."

  "That's just Mum," I said, and a change came over his face. He stopped smiling, but he wasn't angry. He was on his best behaviour; he was determined to win my mother over.

  He was first into the kitchen. "Let me do that, Mrs Searle," though all she was doing was shoving food down the insinkerator.

  Mum continuously improved the kitchen. It was the most modern room in the house; everything else was left to suffer.

  She made magnificent food in there, mousses, cakes, soufflés, pies, then we had nowhere to eat it but at the kitchen table.

  Nick was twenty-four, five years younger than Dad when he died. I thought, wouldn't it be funny if he was my brother, and they adopted him out when he was born. They say, now, that plenty of adoptive children who find their natural parents as adults enter into a sexual relationship with them. I don't know if it's true. They don't know why it is; perhaps the natural closeness is mistaken for physical attraction. Often their ages are close, because the mother was young when the child was born. And the father. Sometimes I wonder if I was adopted. That would explain why I don't share Peter's weaknesses and frailties.

  Nick said, "Mmm, that smells great." He was piling our dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

  Mum always liked to have technology first; she was bored with things by the time everybody else had them.

  She had not spoken a word; he didn't seem to notice. She hadn't stabbed him with the bread knife, so she must have liked him.

  "She's making bread," I said. "The secret is, she kneads it with her feet."

  "Sounds tasty," he said. He rinsed and stacked, rinsed and stacked. He looked outside at the view he'd seen from my room.

  "Y'know, that garden's got a lot of potential. I've had a bit of experience with that sort of thing – I'll have a go if you like. Fix up the mess a bit."

  Mum stood behind him. A hissy breath and she said, "Don't touch it. There's no need to touch it. We like it as is, don't we, Stevie?" She held her hand out without looking, summoning me to support her.

  "We like it looking like a tip," I said.

  "It reminds us of Dad, doesn't it?" she said.

  "Yep."

  "Oh, well, whatever," he said. He sniffed the air again. Mum fed him thick slices of brown bread, with butter and honey. He swallowed them as he swallowed me the night before; the same grunts of satisfaction.

  We sat in the kitchen and talked. He told me about himself, blah blah, and I discovered he was nothing like Dad, or Rick, my babysitter's boyfriend. He didn't really have anything to say.

  That was when Dougie arrived. Mum ushered him into the kitchen and pointed at Nick; she later confessed she had called for help, unable to handle him alone.

  "I don't like interferers," she said.

  Dougie stood and stared at my boyfriend. Nick said, "G'day, mate."

  "Do you know how old she is?"

  "Old enough, isn't she?"

  "Old enough for high school."

  "I'm old enough," I said. I wasn't a child; I was seventeen. I wasn't sure what the problem was; if Mum was bothered, she should have stopped it while it was happening last night.

  "Do you know who her father was?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "It does when you figure out who his mates are."

  My boyfriend plucked and played with the etchings in our table.

  "I don't want any trouble."

  "Nick!" I said. "I told you trouble was my middle name and you said you loved getting on top of trouble."

  "Ssshhhh," he said. "Leave it alone. It doesn't matter," and he gathered his things and left. I didn't see him again.

  To cheer me up, Dougie told me a revolting story. "You've got to have a strong stomach for my job…" We were sitting in the lounge room. He had a bottle of beer and he gave me sips.

  "I have. I was the one who put the ginger cat in a bag after it was squashed flat. You should have seen it. It was like some floor rug, orange, red, grey, all splattered on the road. The person didn't even stop." I pictured a car-load, one nervous driver, only invited because he drove, all of them pretending it had been a bump in the road.

  I hoped no one could hear me lying. I hoped my invention was believable.

  "That's good. Good. You'll need that. Some of the things you'll see if you do make it as a cop…"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't want to give you nightmares."

  "Nightmares are only horror movies in my brain and I love horror movies."

  "Well, one time, we were called out to a scene, in the country. I
solated. I was working as a country cop, then, one of my first postings. Ya gotta go where they send ya."

  "Yep," I said.

  "So we get called out there. Seems one of the dogs was found miles away, limping, whimpering, mad with fear. He had been badly beaten. People tried to call the farm but no answer. There was only a small family living out there, husband, wife, teenage boy. People wondered about the boy; he'd been to school for no more than a year, and done so badly family and teacher had conspired to keep him home. You find out these things when you're a cop. People get nervous, talkative, and they didn't know me. I was the new kid, and they all wanted to be the first to tell me."