Maddy took a handful of biscuit crumbs and dropped them in her cup – both Nana’s biscuits and her tea were improved by mixing them together. They turned into a sweet sludge you could eat with a teaspoon.
She offered Grace the biscuits, who took two, then two more and dropped them in her cup. Nana nodded happily. She dunked her biscuit in her tea and took her false teeth out. She placed the teeth gently on the bench and put the biscuit in her mouth. Her lips shut tight.
“Where’s your nana?” asked Maddy.
“In Sudan,” said Grace.
“Didn’t she come with you?” Maddy asked Grace as they watched Nana Mad suck the biscuit.
A ripple passed over Grace Wek’s face, disturbing her calm.
“No,” said Grace. “Mum says she was too old. She couldn’t keep up.”
Maddy lowered her eyes and concentrated on her tea sludge. In the silence, Nana made a particularly loud slurp.
“You’re lucky,” said Grace, and they grinned at each other.
“Did you have any friends there?” Maddy asked to change the subject.
“Mum says I had friends, but I don’t remember.” Grace said, “I remember laughing with somebody. That’s all.”
“What were you laughing about?” Maddy said.
“I don’t remember that either,” said Grace.
“But how?” said Maddy. “How could you laugh? There?”
In Maddy’s mind, the camp children never did anything but crouch in the dust and cry. She saw them on television. She had to look away every time.
“I don’t know,” Grace said. “Sometimes I couldn’t help it. I’d start and just keep going. You know?”
“Yeah,” said Maddy.
Up at The Deviation, Ellen and David were still making those stupid jokes about plenty of this, plenty of that. They’d started and now they just kept going. And they spoke in new false-bright voices or new cold, exasperated ones. And they laughed and laughed. They couldn’t help it.
“It’s so terrible here,” Maddy then told Grace in a quiet voice.
Grace looked sad for her.
“It’s not so bad,” she said. “It’s just different. You’ll get used to it.”
“Do you like it here?” Maddy asked.
“Yes,” said Grace. “But I just wanted to leave the camp. I just wanted to go somewhere. Somewhere they’d let us in.”
“But why here?” said Maddy. “I mean why did your mum and dad choose Australia?”
“They didn’t,” Grace said. “They wanted to go to Canada.” Grace shrugged and finished her tea sludge. “This is where they let us come. So this is where we came.”
She didn’t say it like it was anybody’s fault. She didn’t say it in a tone. She said it like it was just true.
“Is there really a pizza place out here?” said Maddy Frank.
Chapter Eleven
Glasshouse
The pizza was good. It was Saturday evening, and for the first time since she left Jermyn Street, Maddy Frank was eating everything on her plate. The pizza was good, but everything else was bad.
Grace had come to The Deviation for dinner and Maddy’s parents were hovering like flies. They beamed like clowns, laughing too loud and spitting accidental pizza on the table. They talked in their new high loud voices. It was like listening to glass shatter. They were developing a tone all of their own, actually. If grown-ups could do that.
“All right,” she told them once. “Calm down.”
When she said it, Mum took a slow breath and rested a soft hand on Dad’s arm. Dad’s face grew pale. He didn’t stop smiling but now his eyes were cold and his mouth looked like it belonged to somebody else. Like it didn’t fit.
In fact, thought Maddy, the whole evening had been a bad fit. She had waited for Grace all day, but now she was here, it felt wrong. Maddy and Grace were too small in this big house. Their voices sailed up into the roof space where Dad had taken down the old ceiling. The new lino hadn’t been glued to the floorboards yet and slipped about as they walked. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling at home here.
Outside, the backyard was now mown to yellow stubble. The huge new sky stretched over the house. Who are you? this sky asked.
And she told it, I used to be Maddy Frank. Indigenous to Jermyn Street. Now, I don’t know. I didn’t used to be like this. I’m different here.
She didn’t know how to be Maddy Frank, Queen of The Deviation. She didn’t know how to be anybody. The greenhouse was the only place she felt like somebody. There she knew who she was. It wasn’t much. But it was better than nothing. In the greenhouse, she was Maddy Frank, Mistress of the Project and Keeper of the Orchids.
And it was in the greenhouse that she seemed to have also become Friend of Grace Wek.
Grace was a good friend, although she was very different to Sophie-Rose. Grace never scowled and she listened properly to what Maddy said. She was usually smiling, always calm and agreeable. The adults loved her. She was laughing right now at one of Dad’s plenty jokes – even going so far as to join in. Mum asked if she’d had enough salad and Grace said she’d had plenty, thank you.
Her parents nearly died laughing.
The pizza had lost its taste. Maddy ate the two pieces on her plate quickly and silently. She watched Ellen and David enjoying themselves with her friend. Grace covered her mouth when she laughed but her eyes were open and shining.
Maddy took another piece and put half in her mouth at once.
Ellen’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed. She kept turning these laughing eyes on Maddy. It was like being invited to a party she was too sick to attend. She didn’t feel like going – but she didn’t want anyone else to either. Not without her. Not until she was better.
She was reaching for the last piece when her mother gave her the look.
That’s enough, the look said. But then, while gazing straight and stony into her mother’s eyes, Maddy Frank took the last piece and ate it.
Her mother’s eyebrows shot up in shock. Dad froze with his mouth full of pizza. The kitchen was suddenly very still and very, very quiet. There was only the wet sound of Maddy chewing.
Maddy had never done such a thing. She was never rude on purpose. Sometimes she got excited and forgot to ask properly or talked over other people, but that was different. This new Maddy was being rude and didn’t even care. It was like being somebody else. Her body slouched down in the chair and her arms folded across her chest. From this position she stared up at her father with cold, hard eyes.
He took Maddy by the shoulder. He shook it a little. Not angrily.
“Madeleine Jean!” he said.
“David Jacob!” Maddy shot straight back.
He stopped and searched her face for something he didn’t find. He was so close, Maddy could see his cheek bones. The lines around his eyes. Every sure and certain angle.
“That is more than enough,” he said.
His face had never been so hard to read. Maddy had never felt so far from him. Part of her wished she could just fall into his arms. But the other part, the new hard part wouldn’t give in.
“Is it plenty?” said Maddy Frank.
She had wanted to see the shock in his face and she wasn’t disappointed. He looked like she’d slapped him. There was a moment she didn’t know what he was going to do and then he got up and went to the window.
Maddy saw Grace was embarrassed. She couldn’t look at anybody. She stared at the table and kept wiping her mouth. Somehow this made Maddy even angrier.
“Want to come see my chooks, Grace?” said Maddy’s mother, suddenly.
Grace got up with relief. Maddy’s parents gave her rather shaky smiles as she thanked them for the pizza. And then she followed Ellen Frank out the back door. Halfway out, she turned back.
I’ll be outside, she signed to Maddy.
Maddy watched them out the window, walking across the stubble together towards her mother’s new chook run.
The kitchen was silent.
Her father breathed deep. Right down to his stomach.
“Listen to me, Maddy,” he said as quiet and certain as she had ever heard him. “We love you but we are not moving back to Jermyn Street. I’m sorry you’re angry – I am – but you can’t change this. Mum and I think this is the right place for us. For now. And you belong with us.”
Maddy tried to kindle words in her mind. Words that would sear into her father and burn away the last weeks. Words that would burn the whole thing to black stubs and ash.
But it was no good.
All her words were cold and small; they couldn’t burn anything. These people were her parents. They did whatever they wanted.
“I’m going to stay at Grace’s,” she told him.
“Good idea,” he said, getting up.
Then Maddy was running barefoot out the back door, raising dust. And Grace was next to her, falling into step without a word. Maddy’s legs burned and pounded down the hill. The Deviation slipped and skidded under her feet.
Her father didn’t follow. Her mother didn’t move. They did something they’d never done.
They let her go.
Grace’s brothers were at the basketball hoop in the front yard of their house but nobody was playing. It was almost dark and the hoop was in shadow. The Wek boys were just hanging about, waiting for the sun to go down: talking, scuffling, drinking Pepsi.
The grass was crackling and grasshoppers dragged through it on slow legs – it was too hot to jump. Maddy’s anger had turned to a sort of sweaty hopelessness.
Grace got two almost-frozen Pepsis from the fridge and she and Maddy sat on the back step, sucking splinters of the sweet black ice. The sun set. The night came. The dark settled between the hills, spread over the hilltops and fell at last into the Weks’ backyard. The Milky Way flowed across the sky.
Maddy couldn’t think of anything to say about the fight with her father. Luckily, Grace didn’t seem bothered. She hadn’t asked any questions on the way over, and now she sat happily, quietly beside Maddy.
“Boo!” said one of the Wek boys, having crept up behind them.
Grace jumped and her brother laughed.
“Every one of those stars is a dead person,” he told her. “A ghost.”
“It’s a river, actually,” Maddy said in a flat voice. Then she added in her best Maddy Frank Know-it-All tone, “The Wurundjeri said so and they should know. They lived here for ages before you came. ”
She was in no mood to play boys’ games.
In the north, the Karatgurk stars were gone. It was time for them to travel. Time to be moving.
“Maybe they’re not dead,” Grace said gently. “Maybe they’re just lost.”
Chapter Twelve
A Ring of Paperbarks
In the morning, Maddy woke sweating in Grace’s room. It was only seven o’clock but already the room was too hot to sleep. Grace sat up and said she wanted to go down to the creek. Maddy said she didn’t know. Grace said there was an island in the creek. It was overgrown and full of deserted birds’ nests. So Maddy said she didn’t have her bathers. Grace said she could swim in her T-shirt and shorts. Then Maddy said she didn’t have her sandals. And Grace smiled and said they wouldn’t be any good in the bush anyway and fetched her some old sneakers.
So Maddy said all right.
They went into Wilam and past the school. Grace made straight for the milk bar, but just before they reached it, she turned. There was a lane hidden between the shops that was thick with blackberry. When Grace pulled the heavy canes aside though, Maddy stopped. The lane was more a track and would lead them out of Wilam. It would lead them away from the town and deep into the bush – deep into the grey scrub and dirty light. She couldn’t see or hear any creek. She didn’t want to go any further.
But Grace was holding back the blackberry and waiting. Her expectant face looked through the thorns. Maddy stepped through the gap and onto the track. The old sneakers curved like kayaks, and her feet slipped around inside them.
There was some low scrub. Then a few tall trees casting shadows. Then the white gums were swaying overhead and there was more shadow than light. And then all around them were she-oaks and red gums. The sharp smell was everywhere.
She was in the bush.
Straightaway Maddy thought of everything that might go wrong. The gums that might drop branches. The dry leaves that might catch and burn. The black stubs of Mount Disappointment. She stopped moving. Her legs felt rooted to the ground like she was one of the trees.
She really, really didn’t want to go any further.
But ahead, inside a ring of paperbarks, Grace was waiting for her again. The bark was hanging in strips, making rough curtains. Grace was parting the white strips and silver light was falling on her face, on the beads in her hair and on her ear hoops. She was glittering in the shadows – saying, “Come on!”
Maddy stepped into the ring.
“Ants,” said Grace, pointing.
There was an ants’ nest. It rose tall as Grace, a clay mountain in the middle of the paperbarks. The nest was swarming. The ants were moving in and out, tracking a single dark line into the scrub. They left the nest empty and came home loaded with beetles, seeds, small grasshoppers. A piece of worm. A corner of leaf. They were unstoppable, marching over whatever lay in their path.
“What is that?” Maddy said, kneeling to look closer at one ant. “Is that a biscuit?”
The ant was struggling under a crumb ten times its own size. And the following ants were doing the same. In fact, the ants themselves couldn’t be seen. Now there was only this line of crumbs emerging from the deep bush.
It was so hot. The air was thickening. The leaves were curling. Maddy considered the track. Imagined the creek. She took a couple of steps through the paperbark ring. A couple of steps more towards Grace.
And that’s when she saw the greenhoods.
There were so many. Glowing green in the blue shade. Poking fresh through dead leaves and dry moss. In the warm breeze their heavy hoods nodding and nodding.
In the week tending the greenhouse, it had never occurred to Maddy that she would see orchids growing wild like this. The way Nana talked, she’d thought that seeing an indigenous orchid would be something like seeing a griffin or a basilisk. But then she remembered. Greenhoods were not like some of the indigenous orchids. They were okay. They still survived.
Something about the new leaves and hoods made Maddy’s jaw ache and her eyes fill with tears. She kneeled in the dirt. She raked at the dead leaves around the orchid’s roots. But Grace touched her hand.
“I think we should leave them,” she said. “Remember what the orchid website said. About disturbing their habitats.”
Maddy lay eye level with the orchids, and Grace lay on the other side. They grinned at each other through the greenhoods. Maddy grinned because of the greenhoods. And Grace grinned because that’s what she always did.
And then Maddy felt it. Twitches and tics. Tiny fires all over.
“Ow,” said Maddy. “Ow, ow, ow!”
She jumped up, dancing, kicking at nothing. She kicked until her sneakers flew off. Her first thought was of fire. She looked up into the trees, expecting embers. But she just had lain across the ant trail.
Ants won’t change their trail for anything, even huge girls lying right across it. While Maddy lay by the greenhoods, they had been tracking thick over her legs and ankles. They’d filled the kayak sneakers, and now were stinging even between her toes.
And Grace was jumping too. She was skipping around the ring, half-dancing and flip-footed. Laughing. They were slapping their own legs and then each others’, screeching like cockatoos, sweating and panting.
When it was over the whole paperbark ring smelled of squashed ants.
There was no question of going back now. The end of this track meant the end of sweat rash and biting ants. It meant cool water.
The track led them down into a gully where the thick paperbarks flapped t
heir white bark like sails. When Maddy looked, there were no houses to be seen. There was only the heat, the creak of the gums and the smell.
And the ants still trailing alongside, carrying the crumbs.
At last Grace said they were nearly there. Maddy said good. Then Grace asked if she could hear it.
And Maddy said yes.
She didn’t know how she hadn’t heard it before. The bush was filled with it: the sound of water washing over stone – the sound of coolness. And as the track opened on the creek, she smelled it too. The smell of fresh water and clean sand – the smell of coolness.
Then she saw the crowd on the sandbar. She hadn’t heard them and there was a reason. The crowd was silent.
Everybody was just standing there, still as the rivergums.
Everybody crowding in a curve, turning towards the creek.
There was a rope still swinging, empty, slow, over the water.
There was a pile of lamingtons being carried off by ants.
And there was Nana Mad in nothing but her slip, up to her knees in the creek.
Chapter Thirteen
Small Things
Nana Mad was in the creek with her back to the sandbank. Her white hair glowed silver in the redgum shadows – and she was singing. As Maddy stood wondering what to do, Nana’s thin voice suddenly pierced the thick heat and warbled even above the birdsong. Her song was full of strange trills, swoops and drops. Some teenagers started to copy the sound of her song – and then everybody on the sandbank was laughing. When she heard them laughing, Nana stopped singing.
She turned and saw the people laughing. She tried to smile. Then she rocked on her knees and sat down hard in the water. Her eyes blinked around the crowd like a child who thought she might be in trouble.
And then she saw Maddy.
“Koukla,” she called, trying to get up. “Come here.”
There was something wrong with Nana. Her hands were gripping the air. They flapped at her sides like she’d forgotten what to do with them – forgotten how to get up. The people on the sandbank had stopped laughing and gone back to their normal day.
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