All I Ever Wanted

by Vikki Wakefield

  ‘Geez, just park anywhere and we’ll walk, Mum.’

  ‘All right for you, bones. Anyway, I didn’t even want you to come, so shut it, will you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if we have to wait for hours I’ve got to sit and watch you looking down your nose at everyone.’

  ‘I do not,’ I say, peeved.

  ‘Yes, you do. You do it to me, so what hope have the inmates got?’

  She spots a woman with jangling keys and follows her at a crawl. The woman looks behind, frowning. She lights a smoke. Mum waits patiently. The woman takes long, luxurious drags and looks around her, ignoring us.

  ‘What’s her problem? Is she going, or what?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s razzing you. Sick her, Mum.’

  Mum slings a sideways look. ‘That’s not necessary.’

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ I mimic in a posh voice. ‘Who are you and what have you done with my mother?’

  ‘Shut your pie-hole.’

  ‘Oh, there she is.’

  ‘I mean it. And when we see Matty you put a smile on your face and stay off your soapbox. Got it? Or you’re not going to see your next birthday.’

  ‘What about Dill?’

  ‘Dill’s not here. He’s been transferred until his hearing. Apparently they want to keep the boys separate because they do too much collaborating.’ She lets go of the steering wheel and curls her fingers into inverted commas.

  ‘Do you think they’ll get out soon?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. This time somebody’s given a statement against them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Shit, Mim, if I knew, don’t you think I’d do something?’ Her voice is tight as wire.

  I shut my pie-hole. The woman finally gets into her bomb and reverses out.

  Inside we wait our turn in the administration area. I flick through a magazine with impossible people and improbable products while Mum fills out forms.

  There are only two types of people here. Criminals and their kin, and starched people with qualifications. I look at my purple toes and Mum’s eighties half-perm and I know exactly which type we are.

  Mum hands me a visitor pass and tells me to pin it on. She gives me a nudge when I stare too long at a man with no shoes and no hope and that slack-jawed look of a heavy drinker.

  It’s not that I hate poor people. Or people who are having shitty luck. I hate being poor. In my experience, poverty makes people do things they don’t want to do. The ones that don’t get out stay aimless and teach their kids to do the same thing and the cycle goes on and on. I hate that I have to fight to get out because nobody holds the door open and wishes you a good trip. That would mean there’s a way out. The fact is, the poverty line is just a rung on a ladder that some people can’t be bothered to climb. There’s nobody above with a foot on their head.

  For two hours, we wait. The walls are bare and grey. I get a cup of water from the cooler but it tastes warm and plasticky. I check my phone every minute in case the ring-tone isn’t working, but there’s nothing.

  Tahnee must be really pissed off at me. Phone silence is torture. I can’t bring myself to send her a message first, and anyway, I don’t know what I can say that will fix us.

  We’re called through into another room. One of the starched people takes our bags and tells us to empty our pockets. We step through a metal detector, like the ones at the airport.

  All this compliance can make you feel guilty. Mum says nothing. She knows the drill.

  Finally, we’re shown into an area with scattered tables and chairs. When Matt comes in, it hits me how small he looks. He’s a big guy, meaty like Mum and well over six foot. Dill’s even bigger, although he’s younger. The grey rooms have shrunk Matt and sucked the colour out.

  ‘How’s my girls,’ he says, and it’s not a question. He sits, spilling over the edges of the fold-out chair.

  ‘Good, good, we’re all good,’ Mum says, and it’s not a real answer. ‘And you?’

  ‘Can’t complain. Food’s crap but we have an ironing lady.’

  It’s like they’re conversing in code. This isn’t how we speak to each other. At home, especially when the boys are around, it’s more like a series of grunts. Slang and slander, heckling and haggling.

  ‘How long do we get?’ I ask, for lack of anything else.

  ‘Half an hour.’

  I don’t think I can stand half an hour of this. Watching them skate around each other. Usually there’s so much personality banging around our house I half expect the walls to fall in from the reverb.

  ‘How’s the kid?’ Matt asks.

  ‘He has a name,’ Mum bites.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’

  ‘He’s back with her, for now. She’s not coping too well, though.’

  ‘She wouldn’t. She’s screwy.’

  ‘Not too screwy for you to screw, obviously,’ Mum snorts.

  ‘Lay off, will you, Mum. I don’t even know if he’s mine.’

  Before Mum can belt him, I say, ‘He has ears like yours.’ And fingers. How my brothers can replicate themselves and not fall in love with their clones is beyond me.

  ‘Butt out, Mim. What would you know?’

  ‘Bet I’ve wiped your kid’s arse more times than you,’ I snap.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Go play with your dolls or whatever it is you do, princess,’ Matt says. ‘Get knocked up or something. Fuck.’

  Rage sparks through me. ‘Who do you think is dealing with your shit while you’re stuck in here, Einstein? Show some fucking appreciation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He turns to Mum. ‘What does she mean? You said you wouldn’t move anything until…’

  ‘I haven’t. And stop fighting, both of you,’ Mum says. ‘You’re not children any more. Shit. I’m losing my whole family in one fell swoop.’ She shakes her head and puts her face in her hands, her big body jiggling. When she looks up, her eyes are wet.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I put my hand on her arm. A look passes between them, loaded and unreadable. I feel more useless than ever before.

  ‘Just shut up, Mim.’

  ‘You shut up.’

  ‘Both of you shut up,’ Mum says wearily.

  ‘I want to help,’ I say. ‘All this shit is going on and nobody tells me anything.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t need to know, princess.’ He leans back in the chair.

  I will the legs to snap so he can crack his pig head against the grey wall.

  ‘What if I could do something?’

  ‘You can help by cleaning up the shed for me. Mum doesn’t fit.’ He winks.

  I get it. Clean up the shed. Move the gear. Except there is no gear.

  ‘Yeah, sure, whatever,’ I say. I wonder if I look guilty, if guilt can reflect in your eyes like sadness or exhaustion or humour. I blink a lot and look around the room but there’s nothing to look at in here. ‘I’ll meet you outside, Mum. See ya, Matt.’

  I sit out the front on a low brick wall. I wish I smoked or bit my nails so I had something to do with my hands. Instead, I tear a palm frond into strips, pin it between my thumbs and whistle.

  The hopeless drunk with no shoes wanders out of the main entrance, leading with his left leg and dragging the right. His coat pockets are lumpy. He stares at me too long.

  I look away first. Stupid old drunk.

  I keep whistling, a low note, because the strip is wide.

  The man whistles back, exactly the same note, then steps closer.

  When I tear the strip in half, the note is high like a pinched balloon.

  He matches it.

  I waggle my cupped hands and the note wavers at the end. A harmonica.

  He does the same. Steps closer.

  We blow together. People stop and gape at our wailing. If I had a hat, I’d put it down on the pavement and listen to the coins clink.

  I start to grin and all that comes out is a puff of air. He grins too. We stand there, two strangers, smiling, b
lowing air at each other. Soundless whistling.

  His breath smells like toffee.

  He pulls a booklet from one of his pockets. Twisted old hands smooth the cover, reverently. He hands it to me. A Watchtower magazine. On the front there are dark-eyed children with pot-bellies eating watery rice.

  When Mum comes out all flustered and sweaty, I jump down from the wall.

  ‘Where did I park the car?’

  I point.

  ‘What’s that?’ She nods at the magazine.

  ‘An old man gave it to me.’ I tuck it under my arm.

  ‘What have you been doing?

  ‘Busking.’

  She glares, then looks down. ‘Where are your bloody shoes?’

  My feet are bare and brown with pale wishbones. I point again.

  Waiting by the pedestrian crossing, there’s an old man in a lumpy coat wearing pink thongs.

  FIFTEEN

  When we get home I sit out on the back lawn, or what’s left of it, listening to Kate’s music through my iPod dock. The grass is short and stubbly like a shaved head and the sharp blades poke through my beach towel.

  ‘Well, this is a nice change,’ Mum says, meaning the music. She hangs a few tatty tea towels on the line. ‘I hope you’re wearing sunscreen.’

  ‘One day, this girl will be famous,’ I say.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Nobody you know.’

  ‘Is that what you want? To be famous?’

  ‘No. Of course not. It’s not that simple.’

  ‘So, what do you want?’

  She’s not usually concerned with fuzzy things like dreams or goals or ambition. Intangible stuff. Mum can only deal with things she can fix, or break.

  ‘I’m serious. What would you do if you could do anything?’

  ‘Now you want to talk?’

  ‘Yes. I want to talk.’ She lowers herself to a squat, bracing herself with the washing-line post.

  This is hard. We just don’t do deep and meaningful. When I was young, if I had a splinter, she’d poke and gouge at it until there was a huge, bleeding hole. I’m sure she kept at it even when the splinter was out. That’s what it feels like now. Her digging at me. Me waiting for the pain but not allowed to flinch.

  ‘I can’t explain what I want.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘I just want to know that there’s something else besides this.’

  ‘This being…’ She waits.

  ‘This. I’ve sat in this same spot a thousand times with you hanging washing over my head. Every summer, it’s the same. Nothing ever changes around here.’

  ‘Well, here.’ She slings a wet tea towel at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Change. You hang these up and I’ll slob out on the lawn,’ she says, like it’s a great idea.

  ‘No thanks. I’m fine here.’ I crook my arm over my eyes and hope she’ll go away. ‘I don’t know what you want to hear.’

  ‘Well, you could start by telling me why your world globe has my skewer stuck through it,’ she says.

  ‘Do you want your skewer back?’

  ‘No, I want to know why you impaled an innocent globe with it.’

  ‘I wanted to find the furthest point from you, okay?’ I snarl.

  ‘Well, you miscalculated. You landed in Paris, France. The furthest point would be Tenerife, or something like that.’

  I stare at her. She would have had to stand on my bed, put her glasses on and read a map to know that. ‘Actually it would be in the middle of the ocean. France is far enough and it has better coffee.’

  ‘France is pretty far,’ she says, and she rubs her eye with a fist. ‘Mim, do you honestly think life’s any different for other people? This is it, babe. Mostly mundane, boring stuff.’

  ‘Well, your life sucks.’

  ‘No, you just think my life sucks. I like it. Maybe there’s more, maybe there isn’t, but I’ve had a whole lot less before and my life is pretty good right now.’

  ‘I don’t want your life.’ Translation: I don’t want to end up like her. Fat and forty. Sometimes I can’t stand to look at her.

  ‘You don’t have to stay here. Nobody’s forcing you,’ she challenges.

  ‘Good.’ I know I sound like a child. I stick out my bottom lip for good measure. ‘Because as soon as I can drive I’m out of here.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ she says, trying to stand. Her knees squelch. ‘Change is coming.’ She puts up a hand, a visor against the light.

  ‘You say that all the time.’

  ‘Did you take a bitch pill or something? I don’t know what’s going on with you.’

  ‘I hate it here.’

  ‘You say that all the time,’ she says over her shoulder, giving me her back.

  I lie down on the grass and turn up the volume. I hate it that I hate her. I feel cheap and mean. Discontented. The summer of my discontent. It sounds profound but it still doesn’t quite capture my itch.

  I’m so still that the wood pigeon family land nearby. They peck at the hard ground, heads bobbing. The babies still have that big-eyed, spiky-feathered look. They forage about, waiting for the danger call. Soon they’ll be on their own.

  I close my eyes and float about in la-la land.

  ‘You’ll get burnt,’ Kate says, somewhere above me.

  I open one eye and squint against her halo.

  ‘Hi. What’s up?’ I sit and stop the music. I feel embarrassed, like I’ve been caught going through her drawers.

  ‘I know you said you were busy. I started walking and I kind of ended up here. I heard my music,’ she says.

  ‘I was busy,’ I say. I sound defensive. ‘I had to see my brother in jail.’

  ‘Oh.’ She blushes.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m not busy now.’

  She plonks down on the bottom of my towel and picks at the frayed edges. Long shorts, girly top, gladiator sandals. Ponytail. Back to her old style. Her toenails are clean and babyish. The hair on her legs is fine and almost invisible. No frightening regrowth, the kind that comes back after you rip them out.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ I lift her top at the back and peek under the dressing. The skin underneath is slightly bubbled, pink around the edges.

  ‘Not too much.’

  ‘Are you sorry you did it?’

  ‘No. It feels a bit strange, though.’ She screws up her face.

  ‘Like you have to re-invent yourself around it.’ I know what she means. That’s how I feel about the rules. Like they define me.

  ‘Yes! That’s exactly it! You know, I wish we were friends years ago.’

  ‘Nah. I’d have been a bad influence.’

  ‘What’s so terrible about that?’

  ‘Kate, don’t change,’ I sigh. ‘There are plenty of artistic weirdos. I don’t know any girl-nerds who can crank out edgy music like you do. That’s who you are. Just be yourself.’

  ‘You sound so wise.’ She crosses her legs like a preschooler.

  ‘I’m not wise. I just know that it doesn’t make any sense trying to be something you’re not. It doesn’t change anything. You are who you are.’

  ‘So, what are you going to do when you leave school?’ Kate peels her straps down and looks cross-eyed at her shoulders. They’re pink already.

  I have to think about how I should answer her question. How do you tell someone that you’ve been waiting for fate to give you a sign? How can you say that to someone who’s already got it all figured out?

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it. I’m not talented like you,’ I confess.

  ‘You get good grades. You like books I don’t even understand. I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.’

  ‘I get average grades and I’m not musical or good with numbers or anything. I read those books because they’re about different lives in different places. Other people’s lives are so much more interesting.’

  ‘Surely you have some idea?’ she presses.

  What can I tell her? That I dream of othe
r worlds, places I only know from books and documentaries. I read Lonely Planet guides until the pages are see-through. I cover maps with highlighter circles and push-pins. I have a top ten list of destinations that changes every time I watch Getaway. There are thoughts and smells and sounds in my mind, just out of reach, like echoes from a past life. I want to eat snow. I want to ride white water and go over a waterfall. I want to wear a mask to mardi gras and live in a kibbutz. I want to float in the Dead Sea. I want a stranger with dark eyes to tell me I’m beautiful in Spanish. I want to live in France, Egypt, Prague, anywhere. Any place but here. I want.

  ‘I’d like to travel one day,’ I say. There it is, everything in the world and nothing at all. It hangs there. Lame. Aimless.

  An afternoon commuter passes and the fumes hang like a poisonous fog in the backyard. We hold our noses and breathe through our mouths but it tastes almost as bad as it smells. The birds take off and don’t come back.

  ‘Come inside,’ I say. ‘I’ll get us a drink.’

  Too late, I remember Mum’s in there. She comes into the kitchen, a huge, waddling presence that makes me feel small. It wasn’t the grey walls that made Matt shrink. It was Mum. She can do that.

  I grab a couple of cans of lemon squash from the fridge.

  ‘This is Kate,’ I say, hoping that will be the end of it.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Dodd.’

  ‘Don’t call me that, love. Everyone calls me Mother.’

  Kate smiles and nods. She pops her ring-pull and slurps like a kid.

  ‘You’re not her mother,’ I say.

  Mum goes still.

  I wait for it. Putting me back in my box is one of her favourite things. Especially in company. But nothing. Her newfound restraint kicks in and she tells Kate how pleased she is to meet her, gives me the death glare and waddles back out.

  Three, nil. I could get used to this.

  In my room, Kate stands awkwardly while I clear a place to sit.

  ‘Your mum seems nice,’ she says.

  ‘Nice. That’s not a word we use to describe her.’ I shove books and clothes and paper into a pile in the ghost’s corner. I haven’t ever been a tidy person. I don’t notice mess until somebody else is there to see it.

  ‘You know what I mean. Cuddly. Like you could sit on her lap and tell her anything.’

  ‘We don’t talk much.’