‘I’m not nervous with you,’ she said. She made this sound both beautiful and as if I was the opposite of her dad. I wished I could go home and tell Mum that I’d found her. I looked at Carmelina and saw gold light bounce from the egg and onto her face and it was as if she had brought in light from someplace else.
*
I didn’t go straight home. I walked across the oval to the vacant block of land between school and Jubilee Street. There was a swing, a turntable and a see-saw. I sat on the downward side of the see-saw, so low to the ground that my knees were up to my face. I opened the Easter egg and started eating it. I thought I would leave some for Eden but I also thought that I might eat it all myself. I didn’t want to walk into our house holding it.
I pushed a piece of the egg out. The chocolate was soft but it still held its shape. I put too much of it in my mouth, as if over-eager, and then followed it with a lot more. It had the creamy sweetness of condensed milk and usually I’d suck on and savour chocolate in the hope that it would last. Now though, I did the opposite. I rushed the chocolate egg down as if it was a chore. Soon I had so much chocolate stuffed in my mouth that my gums felt sticky and clogged. And yet I pushed in more. When I saw that I had eaten well beyond half-way I suddenly felt guilty and sad. We were twins but I could still be a bad brother and that day I was.
I curled the wrapper around the remaining chocolate and put it in my bag. I started for home. I had never enjoyed chocolate so little. I rubbed at my teeth with a finger and fingernail. I thought that the merest smear would be a terrible thing to show. I saw a bin in a driveway and without thinking I reached back and put what was left of the egg into it. I shouldn’t have started on the egg; I should have taken it home and shared it.
Bobbie sat scratching at a sticker on an apple when I eventually came in. ‘The fingernail is the world’s most undervalued tool,’ she said. Eden came and stopped at the hallway door. Hemi was at his feet. Eden stretched his hands above his head and tried to touch the top of the doorframe. He looked at me as if waiting for me to report. Bobbie looked over at us and for a moment she seemed to have nothing to say. Finally she looked at me. ‘Did you get a pressie?’
*
Later that night I picked up the green wine bottle Bobbie had finished and went to take it to the recycling. ‘Is that finished already?’ she said. She looked tired and glassy. I’d only taken a few steps when she added, ‘Do whatever you want. But don’t ever be a smart-arse with your own life.’
*
‘There has to be a bus,’ I said. Carmelina lived in Altona and I was in Newport. We didn’t know where we’d go to high school. We’d go to one of three campuses of Bayside Secondary College, though she might go to Altona High or Mount St Joseph or even to Gellibrand, the girls-school wing. I asked Bobbie where we’d go and she said, ‘You boys are self-saucing puddings anyway.’
‘It’ll suck if you don’t go to Altona,’ Carmelina said.
We didn’t go on the oval in the winter months but when spring came the ground warmed and we headed onto it again. Beyond the school and Jubilee Street there was a train line, an industrial estate and the sea. We only ever thought of the railway line when we heard the bells of the railway crossing or the sound of a train coming. Carmelina always reacted to the trains more than I did but her dad had worked for the railway before they’d bought the shop.
‘Do you have a bike?’ she asked.
‘Why?’ I replied.
‘I’m just asking,’ she said.
‘Just one for The Warmies,’ I said.
‘My brother has a girlfriend,’ she said.
‘It’s too small for me,’ I said.
‘I saw them in the back of the shop,’ she said.
‘Werner reckons we should do longer rides to build up our legs,’ I said.
‘Mum doesn’t know,’ she said.
*
Our primary school celebrated its Foundation Day near the end of each year. As part of it everyone in Grade 6 had to dress up in a funny or unusual costume and act as a servant for a designated teacher. It was the price we paid for an end-of-primary-school party. Most of the kids were dressed up by their mum or by their dad. Some of the other boys wore the school dresses of their older sisters. We were riding down Champion Road the morning before Foundation Day when Eden asked, ‘Have you asked Bobbie?’
‘I don’t want to tell her that we have to be servants,’ I replied.
‘We should,’ he said.
We rode along and then he said, ‘We’ll just get something from the drama box.’
‘She’ll find out,’ I said.
‘Bobbie thinks,’ he said, ‘taste is an acquired taste.’
We never told her. At the start of Foundation Day we went straight to the school drama room and raided the costume box. We didn’t have much to choose from. Eden found a dress with a wild floral pattern. It had straw hanging from its pockets in tufts. He might have looked okay except that the shoulders of the dress were so tight that it made his arms pop out at an unnatural angle; as he walked he looked like a pelican airing its wings.
He had it better than I did. All I could find was a pair of bright yellow shorts and a crimped red crop top. I didn’t know what a halter-neck was but this top left my shoulders comically bare. Because of this I wrapped a light scarf about my neck. My legs were just starting to grow a thicker cover of hair and with the bright yellow of the shorts and the slash of red I looked like something you’d spray with Mortein. I did not feel comfortable as we changed into these costumes and the feeling got worse as we walked from the drama department and along the corridor to find the teacher we had been assigned to for the day. I said to Eden, ‘I wish we weren’t doing this.’
‘I’m glad we didn’t tell Bobbie,’ he said.
‘I’m changing at lunchtime,’ I said.
‘We have the shoulders of swimmers,’ he said as we looked at ourselves in a window.
We had only just begun to perform our servant duties when I started to feel sick. My clothes had a smell. It wasn’t of mothballs, dust or sweat but instead they smelled intensely sweet, as if the clothes had been soaked in Turkish delight. At first I thought I was imagining it but as the morning went on this sick feeling grew like a slow-moving wave.
For lunch we made sandwiches for the teachers in their staffroom. We used combinations of chicken loaf, egg, lettuce, tomato, ham and avocado. We used the kind of white bread that tasted like Clag in a good way, though the smell of the bread and more especially of the egg made me feel worse. I held my breath as I worked with the food and tilted my head upwards to breathe in and out. I tried to ignore the smell of egg, white bread, Turkish delight and fake chicken. It was a warm day and there were watermelons in the staffroom fridge, so we cut them up and passed triangles around. The watermelon tasted cool and refreshing and unlike the sandwiches it felt as though my body wanted it. I had a second slice. I itched to be out of there and to be changed but we had to clean up first. The dirty plates were easy to wash and I counted them down. Eden and I were at the double sink in the staffroom with rubber gloves on our hands when we heard Bobbie’s name spoken.
I don’t know exactly what he said or whether he really said anything. But I know that I heard Bobbie’s name and it made me swing in the direction it came from and as I did Eden swung just as violently, as if the sound of her name had cut into him too. The thing was that Bobbie’s name had been spoken by Mr Colt and the tone he had said her name in was a laughing or mocking one, derisive even, as if he had looked at us with our stupid drama-box clothes and had made a joke at Bobbie’s expense.
We were in the final weeks of primary school. The routine of this school life was a buoy we’d held tight to but it was almost at an end. We were not yet there but school work and learning had already wound down. It was all about high schools and the future of a sudden. Those final weeks of primary school already felt slippery and out of control; like a car, like a night, like things would happen whether we liked it
or not. This loss of control might have started the moment Carmelina asked whether I’d thought of kissing her but everything really started to wobble the moment in the teacher staffroom when Eden turned to face Mr Colt.
There were many teachers and students in the room but the force with which Eden and I had swung around seemed to snap the room to silence. We stood with soapsuds on our gloves. The silence was such that when a blob of soap dropped from Eden’s gloves you could hear the soapy water land on the floor. Eden took off one glove then and as he did I had no idea what he was thinking or what he might do. I couldn’t think what any of our classmates had ever done in a situation like this because we were in the teacher staffroom for the first time and I wasn’t sure but it looked as though Eden was going to take on Mr Colt, and no one took on Mr Colt, or not that I could imagine.
Eden was just a Grade 6 boy but he looked at Mr Colt as if he had the right. Eden let go of the glove he had taken off and allowed it to drop to the floor. He had not thrown the glove down and had barely even moved; all he’d done was release his fingers. And yet as we all heard the glove splat on the floor it seemed like there was nothing more electric or aggressive that Eden could have done.
I looked at Mr Colt then, sure that he would react, and when he did not I took a half-step forward myself. I did not do this on purpose; it was a reflex, but I wished that I’d meant it, I wished that I’d reacted exactly like Eden. I knew just like him that what he was doing was right. Mr Colt shouldn’t have said anything about, and especially not laughed at, our Grandma Bobbie. I felt a fury rise in me and then recede just as quickly, as if a latch to a deep harbour of fear and sadness had lifted and then slammed back shut.
Eden though did not take any half-steps. He placed a gloved hand on my bare arm, soapsuds and all, as if to hold me back, and then strode out ahead of me. As I watched him I felt water drip down my arm. He walked towards Mr Colt, who was sitting at a long table alongside Ms Schneider and Ms Shire. Mr Colt had on a blue suit, royal blue almost, and a tie. Ms Schneider and Ms Shire had their chairs turned slightly towards him and the combination of the way they sat and how their hair fell affected how the window light landed on him. It gave Mr Colt’s face both too much highlight and too much shadow and this made him seem more menacing than ever.
Eden walked the half-dozen steps to where Mr Colt sat without saying anything, and without any sense of hurry or tantrum. He could have been powering his way against the current in the channel at The Warmies; he moved across the lino of the staffroom floor with that kind of sure, methodical control, as if what he could or would do was in precise focus. I tried to think ahead of everyone else in the room; I tried to predict what he would say or do, because I was his twin and I liked having that special insight. But I could think of nothing. I was certain though that I would support whatever it was that he chose. If Eden had half-turned and waved me on then I would have charged forward with the light step of a unified brigade. I was afraid of Mr Colt but in that moment as I watched my brother take sure brave action in defence of Bobbie’s name, I would have followed his lead in the way that one heartbeat leaps to follow another.
‘Yes, Eden,’ Mr Colt finally said. And Mr Colt smirked then in the way that he did, as if he was back in control. He turned a little to Ms Schneider and to Ms Shire but because they were on either side of him his rapid glances made him look shifty. ‘Travis,’ Ms Schneider said to Mr Colt, her voice frosty, as if he’d talked when it was someone else’s turn, again. Tellingly though, when Eden reached the table and climbed straight onto it, Mr Colt quickly wiped one hand down his face as if he’d suddenly imagined there were flies or ants bothering him there and he needed to brush them away.
What Eden did then was so outside expectation that it was like a one in one-hundred-year flood. It had the effect of magic. It was a creative thing to do, it was daring, it was silly in the cool light but it was warm and stuffy in the staffroom anyway and the air in that room was part of it. Eden climbed onto the table as if it was a dais and it belonged to him. He planted his feet so close to Mr Colt’s resting hands that his shoelaces must have touched them, because I saw one of Mr Colt’s hands seize briefly, as if it had been bitten. Eden stood on the table in a wild floral dress, his arms popping like a pelican.
‘Get down,’ Mr Colt said.
But Eden didn’t.
Instead what Eden did was undo the centre buttons of the dress. It was so tight through the chest and shoulders that even with the buttons unfastened the dress remained in place, though it spread open around his neck as his fingers worked and besides, as soon as the first button was removed it was clear where the scene would go. Eden was going to strip that stupid dress off in front of us all. There was nothing sexual to see; not in suggestion, not in fact. Eden had no weapon and no power and yet he wielded both. It was a revolution in whispers and mime. He used discomfort to maximum effect, as if the element of surprise had somehow raced him ahead of us. He’d rushed Mr Colt to a place where he did not want to go and in doing so Eden seemed to strike a blow. When all the buttons were undone, Eden looked Mr Colt in the eye and tugged at the waist of the dress. Every move was played in fast-motion and slow-motion at once, like tracking a fast-moving car with its background blurred. The dress flopped to the table. It covered Eden’s feet and Mr Colt’s hands.
‘Baby,’ Eden said. He did not say this word in a sultry way. He did not sing it, or lighten it, or coat it in muck; he didn’t call on a mob or call for a chant. He served the word baby like it was a piece of ripe cheese, its own hero, its flavour brutal, its effect simple. It was a signature dish with one ingredient. You are a baby, Mr Colt, was how I read it. You are a little baby.
I was not sure this word made sense though I was also sure that it did not need to. It laid Mr Colt bare. It sprawled him on a pin.
I felt a rush in my stomach, in my chest. Eden had red marks about his shoulders where the dress had caught. His body, now revealed, was as sheer and flat as a sheet of paper and yet it was hard too, like a guillotine. You looked at him and wondered how fast he might swim. As I looked at my beautiful brother I dug a hole in my heart and buried a wish in it. I should have wished for Mum and Dad to be there to see this but instead I wished for Bobbie.
The rush continued, my stomach, it was coming. I took a backward step towards the sink, my eyes still on Eden. Maybe Mr Colt would have recovered, maybe he’d been dismantled, maybe I did everyone a favour. As I stepped back the sun coming in through the side window became blocked by Eden so that he was silhouetted for a second. Light, in starburst, flashed at the edge of his face, as if I was squinting. The flash distracted me. A sandwich fell from the other end of the table as if someone had gone to put it down but had missed. The smell of chicken loaf reared at me. I twisted towards the sink, turned back, a sea of faces, time now gone. I was still turning as I let go of my stomach. I sprayed vomit across the floor as if I was that sprinkler left on the lawn in our backyard. My vomit was pink and blobby and full of water. I was aware that Carmelina was in the room. I wiped at my mouth and looked around to spot her. I felt ashamed, keenly, and strangely proud too. I’d sealed Eden’s actions with an exclamation mark; I felt as though we’d teamed. I found Carmelina then and she was looking near me but higher, at the wall cupboards or similar, as if she’d only just managed to force her gaze clear.
Properly then she looked at me. She pursed her lips tight as if there was a smile behind them but she wanted to keep it locked. She remained like this for a moment or two and then her lips parted and she didn’t smile but instead she laughed, out loud. I realised then as everyone turned to look that it was the first time that I had ever heard Carmelina laugh.
*
It was a Friday. When the bell went at the end of the day we should have all dispersed but we did not. The scene in the staffroom had lit a fuse. Many of us from Grade 6 had energy or adrenaline to expel. We exploded. We ran as a group past the down-ball courts and the library wing and the canteen. Most of us had c
hanged back to normal school clothes and I didn’t feel sick anymore and as we ran I saw that Minh was there, Eden, Rena, Mahmoud, Manjit, Carmelina, Sunny, a gaggle of others. Someone kicked at a can of cola, left upright on the ground, and it sent cola spraying. We yelled, we laughed. Minh picked up the same can and threw it at the shelter shed wall. It graffitied brown bubbly liquid in an arc across the lemony weatherboard planks. The end of Grade 6 was near. There were schools, plans, arrows in every direction. It had been a day. It wasn’t yet over.
Seagulls had come in on the afternoon sea breeze. They roosted on the unfinished scoreboard, on the play fort, on the roofs of the portables, about the bins. As we ran gulls squawked and rose. We ran towards the oval and its bleached grass. I looked at Minh, at Rena running close by. He was just starting to push ahead. We all ran past the kitchen garden and I reached an arm out and ran it along a flank of tomato bushes and as I did this Carmelina ran the opposite flank and did the same. We were metres apart but we were in the breeze and on it.
And then as we reached the oval Minh picked up a rock and flung it hard at the air. He had a killer arm; I knew it from cricket. He flicked his wrist and the rock shot through the air. I thought nothing of it even as the rock burst high and away. It was just something to watch, like a rocket. We yelled. We watched that rock in the air. The birds squawked. And then quite incredibly the rock and one of the gulls collided and the bird’s wings skewed as it dropped straight down at the ground.
That the rock hit one of the gulls was both shocking and incredible. It hurried something along, something that had been coming but not like this.
Carmelina and I reached the gull first. The gull was on the onion grass there. Blood spread out across its white-grey feathers. There was flapping and squawking. One of its wings was torn so badly we could easily have prised it free.
We Were Not Men Page 14