When Dad came home, I handed him the card from the Sogeri Show. ‘I didn’t go behind her back. I entered the show before I stole the paints. She’s punishing me for something I didn’t do.’
‘What’s the difference, CP? Your mother banned art as punishment for stealing. If you’re not allowed to paint, what does it matter that she’s taken your gear?’
‘She said I couldn’t be trusted but I can. I haven’t done any art since she told me not to.’
He waved his hand like he was batting a fly. ‘Small beer, CP. Drop it.’
‘It’s not small beer and I won’t drop it. It’s not fair.’
‘Nothing’s fair.’
I stormed to my room and slammed the door so hard the house rattled. I waited, willing my mother to come in and have another go at me. If she wanted a fight, I’d give her a fight – I’d tell her she was a bloody liar.
I set my alarm for three o’clock in the morning and stuffed the clock under my pillow. When it burbled in the darkness I crawled out of bed, took the torch from the kitchen and went to the bottom of the garden. The bin was battered and dented, its metal lid jammed on tight to stop dogs getting in. The sound of scraping metal as I began to ease it up was unbearably loud in the quiet night. When I finally got it off, the stink of rotten meat hit me like a cloud of flies. I turned the torch on the contents and went to work, plunging my hands into sodden paper bags and rummaging their contents. The pad of my thumb hit the jagged edge of a tin can and I gasped. Blood ran down my arm. I swapped hands and groped among three days’ rubbish for anything my mother had taken, going deeper and deeper with mounting desperation. I was half inside the bin, when I felt a hand on my back.
I nearly fainted.
‘Shhh.’
Josie. I sagged onto the ground.
‘What you look for?’
‘Art things. Mama took everything – brushes, pencils, paints. I’m sure she’s thrown them out.’
Josie picked up the torch and shone it down the front of my pyjamas. ‘You dirty, piccanin’. Make plenty trouble. Go wash up, kwiktaim, now go to bed.’
‘I have to clean up this mess.’
‘I fix.’ Josie shooed me to the tap beside her boi-haus. I cleaned myself up and crept back to bed. My thumb throbbed.
Morning revealed no evidence of my raid. The bin looked normal. When I came home from school that afternoon my mother was at her typewriter. Josie was in the kitchen, cleaning the fridge. She dipped her head towards the boi-haus. I wandered outside and a few moments later she came out and handed me a roll of newspaper. Inside was a pathetic mound of broken pencils. Nothing else except an inch-long shaft of my best brush, sable hair still intact. I put the stump in my pocket and rested my head on Josie’s shoulder.
Someone was looking out for me.
I did my homework, kept my room tidy and at school I drew pictures with ordinary HB pencils on pages torn from exercise books. I drew caricatures – of my mother, Dad and her. When my exercise books looked thin, I asked Mandy for pages from hers. When hers got thin I nicked pages from other kids.
One Saturday morning I was sprawled on the sofa with Tim’s Superman comics, idly stroking the brush-stump in my pocket while Josie swished a mop over the floor. My mother came from her bedroom in a swimsuit with shorts over and sandshoes that made tracks on the wet timber.
‘I’m going diving with Doug,’ she told Josie. ‘I’ll be back by four. Can you keep an eye on Roberta? Sorry, not Roberta, Lindsay. Quite different.’
Keep an eye on Roberta, or Lindsay, whoever. What vile thing might she do next?
‘Okay, Sinabada.’
My mother left and the house settled into silence except for the rhythmic sweep of Josie’s mop. It had been quiet more often lately. Since the funeral, my parents seemed to have run out of fight, or perhaps their disgust with me gave them something in common. Not that Dad was around much, he was too busy trying to fend off Konrad Breuer’s latest offer. One of Dad’s largest debtors had gone bankrupt and the pressure to accept Breuer’s money was mounting.
I returned to the comic. Lois Lane was trying to give a piece of kryptonite to Clark Kent. He’d gone sweaty and weak and was trying to back away. How could Lois Lane be so dumb that she didn’t know Clark was really Superman? Didn’t she recognise a hero? Or maybe Lois was smarter than I thought. Maybe there weren’t any heroes.
‘Piccanin”. Josie leaned on the mop. She’d stopped calling me Bertie when I asked her to, but wouldn’t call me Lindsay. ‘You want to come Koki with me? Dave take us.’
I scrambled off the couch.
Sandwiched between Josie and Dave in his old blue truck with the sun streaming in and the south-easterly gusting through the window, I felt better than I had since we came back from Canada. The market was buzzing. A breeze rattled the palm fronds and swept the smell of fish and mud out to sea. The ground was dotted with grass mats piled with taro, yam, sago, coconuts, breadfruit, fish and shellfish. Josie haggled over prices and gradually her bilum filled. Dave found friends and sat with them under a mango tree, chewing betel nut dipped in lime and spitting streams of blood-red juice into the dirt. When Josie finished her shopping, she took my hand and led me over a trail of rocks sticking above the water. I took off my boot and we sat with our feet dangling in the sea. From the folds of her dress she produced a pin and from her bilum, a flat-bladed knife. With lightning speed she slid the knife under a small cone-shaped limpet clinging to a rock and tipped it upside down. She skewered it with the pin and popped it in her mouth, chewing with such noisy enjoyment I figured it must taste better than it looked.
‘You turn.’
The idea of eating the glistening flesh made me feel queasy but I couldn’t refuse. Josie slid the knife under another limpet, flipped it and held it out, belly up. I jabbed it with the pin, screwed up my eyes and shoved it in my mouth. Not bad. Kind of springy and sea-tasting. Josie continued flipping limpets before they could stick, one for me, one for her. Then she handed me the knife.
‘You now. Be quick. Slide under, turn ’im fast.’
I took the knife and jabbed it beneath a cone but it stuck like cement. Josie took the knife and showed me once more, a lightning-quick flick and over it went. I tried again and again but every limpet clamped fast to the rock before I could flip it.
‘You too slow,’ she said.
‘I know.’
She put the knife down and we sat looking out over the water. Lakatois twirled slowly as their heavy sails caught the breeze. Babies played in the mud. Some wore little singlets but most were naked. Their mothers watched them, swatting flies and picking up the kids when they fell over. The tide was coming in and a wave splashed against our rock. If the seventh wave doesn’t knock you over, nothing will.
‘Do you know Dad’s girlfriend, Josie?’
She nodded.
‘Do you like her?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. Dad might be leaving us.’ I felt my stomach tighten. ‘If he does, Mama will take Tim and me back to Canada.’
‘You daddy don’t leave you.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know. Em tasol.’ She waved her hand as if it didn’t matter and handed me the knife. A limpet clung to the side of the rock. I reached down, gently slid the knife under, and flipped it.
Josie smiled. ‘See?’
After school on Monday I caught the bus to Boroko. I had a sketch with me that I’d done on lined paper with ordinary HB pencils, of Josie sitting on the rock flicking limpets. Everything was round. Josie’s hair, her stomach, the rocks, limpets, the sun.
Helen Valier was sitting behind the counter, writing something. When she saw me she slid a book over the writing, screwed the cap on her fountain pen and twiddled it.
‘I need paper,’ I said, pushing my drawing across the counter. ‘Anything’s okay; scraps, as long as they aren’t lined. I haven’t got any money but I’ll bring you some as soon as I can.’
She drew my picture cautiously towards her and looked at it, tugging on a curl beside her ear.
I fumbled with the brush stump in my pocket, my good-luck charm.
‘Hmm,’ she said, letting go the curl. It shot back and sat like an orange spring beside her cheek. She stood up and turned to a wide bank of drawers behind her. I’d assumed Mrs Valier would give me scraps from her personal stash but now I saw that the drawers were full of paper, pencils, paints and brushes. Art supplies. I hadn’t known she sold them!
She pulled out a thin sketchpad and slid it across the counter. ‘Any bigger than this won’t fit in your bag.’
My bag . . . did she know?
‘Pencils?’ she asked.
She must know, Dad must have told her. Or was I that easy to read? She chose three pencils and held them out for my approval. I nodded. ‘I’ll pay you. I promise.’
‘No rush.’
I moved towards the door.
‘Lindsay . . .’
I paused.
‘Nice drawing.’
My face burned. ‘Thanks.’
‘And, Lindsay . . .’
I stood in the doorway, squinting into the sun.
‘Don’t get caught.’
Midnight. My parents were at it again. I crawled out of bed and went down the passageway. My mother was saying: ‘She this’ and ‘She that’, but sounding exasperated rather than angry and after a minute I realised she was talking about me.
‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Not boarding school. I’ve already missed nearly a year of her life. Anyway, I only meant for a couple of weeks.’
‘Oh,’ my mother said. ‘Well, Magda would take her for a while.’
‘And leave her with that prick Konrad?’
‘His argument’s with you, not our daughter.’
‘I suppose so.’ I heard Dad drumming his fingers. ‘All right.’ His chair scraped and I hurried back to bed.
The next day I was packed off to the Breuers with a bagful of clothes and the happy news that I would be going to Coronation School with Stefi for the next few weeks.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
‘Nothing that concerns you,’ said Mama.
‘Nothing ever concerns me,’ I said, ‘but I’m the one who gets pushed around.’
‘Poor you. I thought you’d be pleased to stay with Stefi and go back to Coronation.’
‘I am pleased, but I want—’
‘I’m not interested in what you want, Lindsay. The world doesn’t revolve around you.’
Mrs Breuer stubbed out her cigarette and gave me a hug. ‘It’s lovely to have you with us, drágám.’
‘Thanks, it’s nice to be here, but I’m not sure why I am.’
‘Your parents need time alone to work out their problems.’
‘Me being one of them.’
She patted my cheek. ‘No. Not you. You just got caught in the middle.’
Stefi pranced around like a puppy. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, you’ve got no idea.’ She dogged my footsteps and chattered non-stop. Only when her father ran his cool gaze over me did she become quiet. I did too. There was something in Mr Breuer’s pale eyes that reminded me of Charlie; he made me feel undressed, like a rabbit caught in a spotlight. I did my best to avoid him.
My mother had phoned Coronation School to arrange for maths lessons instead of art but she needn’t have bothered. There were no art classes during the Scholarship years of grades seven and eight. The school was like an old skin, with everything the same apart from a few kids who’d left and some new ones who’d arrived. One of these was Christopher Bright.
Chris was tall with golden hair and eyes like the sea and he made my insides as slippery as oil. I felt horribly and brilliantly visible, not helped by the new bumps under my smock.
‘You’ve got an awful crush,’ said Stefi.
‘No . . .’
‘You have. But watch out, Diane Rudge has her eye on him too.’
Blow Diane Rudge. What was so special about her? Yes, she had two perfect feet and was good at schoolwork, but nothing wonderful to look at and, I reckoned, boring. If I tried not to limp . . .
Time and again I tried to draw Chris but I wanted him to look exactly as he did in real life and my drawing skills let me down. I had to have his photo. I asked Stefi if I could borrow her camera.
‘What’s wrong with yours?’
‘My mother will develop the pictures. I don’t want her seeing Chris.’
‘Crikey, you’ve got it bad.’
‘Shut up, Stefi. Just lend me the camera.’ As soon as I got his photo back from the developers I put it between the pages of an exercise book. When I wasn’t staring at it, I followed Chris with my eyes and my pencil, sketching him buried in a book or stroking the leather skin of a softball. I wondered what his hands would feel like on mine. A few times he caught me looking at him and smiled. I felt my blood run hot. One day he asked me why I didn’t play softball. ‘Anyone could run your bases for you, Lindsay. It’s hitting the ball that counts.’
I stared at him. No-one had ever suggested such a thing. Chris offered to coach me at lunchtime provided I could practise at home. I didn’t care about playing softball but the chance to have his undivided attention was too good to pass up. At first when he pitched the ball I couldn’t concentrate but when I finally stopped staring at him I found batting came easily, like marbles and guns. I got permission to take a bat and softball home and roped in Stefi to toss balls. One afternoon I lobbed a whopper into the bush next door to the Breuers’ house.
‘Lindsay,’ Stefi wailed. ‘How are we going to find that?’
‘We have to. It’s not mine.’ We went into the scrub and thrashed around making a racket to scare away snakes. The undergrowth was thick and the ball could be anywhere. After a while I realised Stefi was not with me. I called out but there was no answer.
I picked my way back to where we’d started and saw her, standing absolutely still, like a hunting dog frozen mid-step.
‘Stefi,’ I said, going towards her.
Then I saw him.
Naked. Tugging on his penis. White and stodgy as a maggot, he sweated and panted as he pumped. I’d seen him before, hanging around the school; an uncle of one of the kids. I tumbled forward and grabbed Stefi.
‘Move.’ But she was stuck to the spot.
The maggot edged towards us, hissing and moaning and thrusting. I picked up a branch and poked it at him. He snatched it and chucked it away. I fumbled around for another one, swung wildly and this time I got him. Blood spurted from his ear and he fell to the ground, groaning.
‘Stefi!’ I slapped her. She blinked. I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her along, feeling shudders run through her tiny body.
As we came into the yard her parents hurried down the stairs.
‘What’s going on?’ said Mr Breuer.
Mrs Breuer held out her arms. ‘Drágám, what’s wrong?’
‘A man in the bush,’ I said. ‘Naked.’
‘Naked? My God, are you all right?’
‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘It’s just Stefi.’
‘Did he hurt you?’ Mr Breuer asked, squinting at Stefi.
She didn’t answer.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He didn’t . . . he was just revolting.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Mr Breuer. ‘No harm done, then, is there?’
A few days later, Chris got me on to his team. I batted and Stefi – who couldn’t bat to save herself – ran my bases. Between us we were one good player.
‘Great strike rate,’ said Chris.
‘Thanks.’ I ticked off my fingers. ‘Marbles, shooting and hitting balls; things I’m good at.’
‘Drawing, too.’
So, he’d noticed. ‘Do you like drawing?’ I asked.
He tossed the bat in the air and twirled it, smiled and passed it to me. ‘It depends what I have to draw.’
What did he mean by that? I wondered.
That afternoon Stefi and I came ou
t of class to find Mrs Breuer waiting for us beside her car.
‘Hop in,’ she said. ‘Good news, Lindsay. We’re taking you home. Your mother and father are back together.’
My legs went weak. Together? Really? No more Canada, no more divorce?
‘Wonderful, yes?’ said Mrs Breuer.
Wonderful. Yes.
Over.
Em tasol.
Bye-bye, Mrs Valier.
I fingered Stumpy in my pocket. I’d given the brush stump a name. I figured it deserved one after what it had been through.
Mama made me a cold drink while Dad carried my bags to my room. He came back and stood behind my mother with his hands on her shoulders as if posing for a photograph. His eyes were unreadable. Perhaps there was nothing to read. Mama looked brisk. Done and dusted, as she might say, when something was finished. I stared at them: my parents looked about as ‘back together’ as a jigsaw done by a blind man.
Mama stepped forward and touched her lips to my cheek. ‘I’m sorry for everything that’s happened, Lindsay. It’s been a difficult time but it’s over now. We’re looking to the future. You’ll be pleased to know we’ve bought a house in Boroko and you can continue at Coronation School.’ She nudged Dad.
‘You and Tim,’ he said, as if she’d pressed his ‘go’ button. ‘This family . . . it’s more important to me than anything else. I’m sorry I risked it, CP.’
He put out his arms and I went to him. His chin rested on my head. I must have grown; he didn’t seem so tall any more.
The day we moved, a truck came for the furniture. My mother and I were loading clothes and smaller bits and pieces into the jeep. I dumped a pile of Dad’s shirts into the back and an envelope fell out. It was soft and creased as if it had been handled over and over. I picked it up and saw that the envelope was slit at the top. I looked around; Mama was in the house. I pulled out the letter.
Dear Ed,
The tide has swung. Your daughter came to the shop today looking haunted – like you do when you contemplate losing her and Tim. It’s clear that you mustn’t. Neither of us could cope with the consequences. I watched my husband die. It took two years and I never thought I’d love anyone again, let alone as I love you. I couldn’t bear to lose you as I lost Claude, piece by piece, and I surely would because part of you will always belong elsewhere. Anniversaries, Christmases, birthdays, sooner or later you’d wonder if you’d made a mistake. I’m vain enough to imagine if it were just between Lily May and me you would choose me, but it’s not, so I’m stopping this now, before suffering overshadows all that was good. I will love you always and wish you nothing but happiness.
The Beloved Page 17