Vaughan placed the earpiece so hard to his ear that he nearly pulled the flimsy wiring away. Come on, be careful. Gentle. You’re like a bull in a china shop. Vaughan giggled at this, and stared out his sister’s window, across the grey picket fence that divided the quarter-acre blocks, at Joel’s window, which was a precise replica of his sister’s but with the entire flywire panel removed. Both windows sat in a pale blue sea of painted asbestos.
Joel’s head appeared in his window, with earpiece and mike at ear and mouth (his were a little more sturdy and looked as if much more love and care had gone into their making), and he waved his hand, which was followed by a crackling sound in Vaughan’s earpiece and then a HELLO! so loud from Nina’s room that it was heard four houses away.
I can hear you, Vaughan – no need to yell. This is sensitive ’quipment.
And so it began. They gibbered for hours. About nothing. They played their transistor radios ‘over the line’ for hours. Nina, wary and slightly disgusted, as if this kid boys’ stuff was in some way contaminating, nonetheless talked stiffly with Joel’s younger sister about nothing. Mrs Scalpini got on the line to talk to Joel’s mother about the next P&C meeting. On Sunday just after lunch, Mr Scalpini asked Joel’s dad if he wanted to go down to the session together; they were drinking mates who didn’t fraternise at all outside the pub.
On the first night, Joel switched the system off because the batteries were running down and he wanted to save enough juice for talking on Sunday. But on Monday after school he went to the co-op and spent his remaining money on a bunch of new batteries.
School had been something – Vaughan, who was much more popular than Joel, had bragged to all the farm boys about how cool the phone was. Some of them said they’d like to give it a go, and Vaughan invited them, until Nina got wind of it and squashed it fast. As she was in second year at the District Junior High School, she scared even the tough twelve-year-old boys shitless. They gawked over her and made lewd jokes to her brother, which he encouraged, but if she actually spoke to them, which was rare, they quickly melted away. Grubby little sods, she said, they’re not going into my room!
They talked after dinner. Joel switched the exchange on and heard Vaughan saying, Breaker, breaker … You there? … Breaker, breaker … How long have you been on there, Vaughan? Ten minutes. Nina said she wants me out of the room asap, whatever that means.
Come off it, we’ve just got on. Hey, you’re using CB language when you say breaker, breaker.
Yeah, it’s what Dad says during harvest when he’s driving the truck. Citizen Band Radio. Ten-eight. Or is it ten-nine? Whatever.
Gee, Vaughan, you’re getting pretty smart in your old age.
Think so? Hey, did you see Jenny Harris fall on her bum today and flash-a-gash?
You’re disgusting, Vaughan!
Yeah, I am, ain’t I? Whoo, I can hear Nina heading this way. Vampire alert! She’s yelling at Mum about the dishes and homework.
That transducer …
That what?
That mike is pretty good, pretty receptive … I mean, I can hear her carrying on. It picks up everything.
Neato! Anyway, I’ve got to scoot. Hangin’ up now! Catch you on air after school tomorrow. Be good when you get more wire and it reaches my room. Then we can talk all night. It’ll be grouse, mate, grouse.
Joel went to say, Right, but heard the phone clunk to the ground and get pushed aside – sounded like a shoe across the carpet. Jeez, Vaughan, be careful! But Vaughan was gone with a Scram! from Nina. And then there was walking and a click, and crappy music started playing. Joel listened for a while, then worried about the batteries and switched the set off. He messed with the set a bit, wondering about improvements, and wondering why Vaughan used words like ‘grouse’ when he was going on about nothing. But Mr Scalpini spoke like that. Little wonder, Joel’s mum would have said.
Late that night, Joel woke to yelling and carrying-on from next door. It wasn’t unusual. Mr Scalpini had come in from the pub and was telling everyone what was what. Sometimes at school, away from the ears of their homes and street, Joel would quietly ask Vaughan what his old man’s yelling in the middle of the night was about, but Vaughan would say, Ah, nothin’, really … just Dad lettin’ off some steam. He always gave the same response.
And if Joel mentioned it to his mum or dad, they said in their curt voices, Mind ya business, Joel, and others will mind theirs. But it keeps me awake, he’d complain. And they’d say, Put the pillow over your head. Or, Invest in some cotton wool.
It went on and on. Normally, when he was woken and couldn’t sleep, he thought up new inventions, or what he would hint at for birthday or Christmas. And then, when it all went deathly quiet, which it always did, he strained his ears to listen. To what, he wasn’t sure. Sometimes he could hear a fox bark, and imagined it running through the shining crops that came right up to the back of their house. He could identify all the living sounds of the dark. One day, he’d record them.
Joel wasn’t a stickybeak by nature. He kept pretty much to himself, other than mucking around with Vaughan, and that was only because they were neighbours and had a kind of deal whereby Joel helped Vaughan with difficult schoolwork and Vaughan kind of kept the farm boys off his case. Actually, Vaughan always let them go at Joel a bit, and giggled if they wedgied him. But eventually he would step in and say, ‘Nuf’s e-nuf, boys. Vaughan was huge. Mum says I’m overgrown for me age, he said fact-like to Joel.
Not a stickybeak, but for some strange reason, suddenly curious. Scientific-like. Investigative. He reached up for his torch, his ‘faithful companion’, slipped quietly out of bed and went to the phone set, switched it on, heard the low crackle of electric current and the workings of magnetism and coiled wire loud in the speaker, in the earpiece, then held his breath knowing the same sound would emerge across the fence in Nina’s room. He placed the earpiece to his ear and a hankie over his mike to muffle the sound of his breathing and listened.
He could hear murmuring and rustling. He put the phone down gently, lifted out his seat, flicked the torch off, carefully pulled the corner of his curtain out, and looked across to Nina’s window. There was a dull glow coming from around the curtain. It was a sickly orange colour. That’ll be her bedside light. Maybe she’s reading. He let his curtain fall back into place and with the torch, searched his desktop for his watch. It was one a.m.
Jeez, that’s late to be reading, he thought. Maybe she’s as good as Vaughan at reading and pronounces each word with her finger following underneath. Then he felt ashamed and shook his head.
He went back to the phone and almost switched it off, but heard a little cry and a clear Don’t!, kind of sharp but quiet. He listened close. It’s such a grouse patch of fur, it’s so soft … it’s lovely. It wasn’t Nina speaking. Joel felt sick and then just stopped himself yelling out, Leave her alone, Vaughan, you sicko! When he heard Mr Scalpini say loud and clear, Stop trying to block me, you silly little slut! Joel instantly switched off the phone, turned off the torch, and slunk towards his bed where he shivered, wide-awake, owl-eyed, through the rest of the night.
*
When Joel dismantled the phone because the batteries didn’t last long enough and it wasn’t a very good phone anyway, he didn’t even ask for the wire and the handset to be returned from across the fence. Nah, Vaughan, you have them. Mementos. Vaughan looked disappointed and nonplussed, then grinned and said, Like souvenirs?
Yes, Vaughan.
Well, neato. Thanks – you’re a real friend. A mate. I’ll stop the boys giving you a wedgie, next time.
Joel was sitting alone in a shady, dull corner of the quadrangle eating his lunch as usual, yet not as usual, reading a comic book instead of an electronics book from the library, when Nina came up to him. She stood close, looked around to see who was watching, and said quietly, He heard that phone of yours crackle when you turned it on to eavesdrop on me.
Joel wanted to protest but his tongue wouldn’t work proper
ly.
He’s got ears like a dog, even when he’s drunk, she spat. I whispered to him, You better watch out because they’ll know now, all of them will know what you’re up to. I said to the old pig, Don’t you know Joel tells his little sister everything and she tells her mum and dad everything. And then he tried again but I stopped him and he started to throttle me, Joel … you didn’t hear that, did you? You’d gone, hiding.
And with this she lifted a velvet band around her neck, which Joel had thought she wore because it made her look sexy, and he saw a livid purple ring going right round. I call it my halo, she said, laughing, smarter than her brother by a mile. Anyway, he’s stopped, he’s stopped everything. He got off me and went out and hasn’t been near me since. He just grunts when spoken to. Oink oink! I know he won’t be back.
Nina kicked at a bit of stone that had eased from the asphalt quadrangle during the summer and settled into no-man’s-land over winter. She said, I know you think I’m a slut, but I’m not. Joel started to splutter fragments of sandwich over his book, his lunch box slipped out of his lap, and he stammered, No, never, no, I don’t, I am really sorry.
And then Nina leant down, kissed Joel on the top of the head, turned, walked off, and did not speak to him again.
Growth
Mirandi Riwoe
It lies on the crisp hospital sheet, absolutely grotesque. Dr Arnold tells us it’s called a fetus in fetu. Our son’s unformed twin. Most likely joined via the umbilical cord in gestation, now just a jumble of elephantine bone and skin, about the size of an apricot. Three canines – there’s no denying they’re teeth – protrude in a jagged line across its circumference. When we first saw it after the operation there was a shock of hair pressed to its side, still moist from having Thomas’s stomach juices washed away. It looked like the slick of hair and scum drawn from a shower’s plughole. I gagged, felt nausea water my mouth. But the hair, the colour of wheat and nearly ten centimetres long, is dry now, almost glossy. It looks like her hair. Like Hannah’s.
‘It’s been living in Tom’s abdomen,’ says the doctor, glancing over to where Thomas lies asleep, in recovery. ‘He should be good to go in a couple of days. No more tummy upsets. No more vomiting.’
‘What do you mean “living”?’ asks Paul.
Dr Arnold purses her pale lips, considers what to say. ‘It’s been growing inside Tom’s stomach, growing with him.’
‘Like a parasite?’ The distaste on his face the same as when he changes nappies.
Dr Arnold bobs her head side to side, a little like the bobble-head dog we used to have on the dash of the Holden. ‘Yes. I guess so. A parasite.’
‘What will you do with it?’ I ask her.
The doctor bends down, scrutinises the small mass. ‘They’re extremely rare, you know.’ She’s far more interested in it now than in our son. Her blond hair is in a high ponytail, has a navy blue ribbon tied in a bow. I wonder if she has a neat row of ribbons arranged on her dresser, a rainbow to choose from according to her outfit. She says, ‘I don’t think it’ll be destroyed. I’m sure the research team would like to have a gander at it.’
‘But I’d like to keep it.’ I haven’t given the words any thought. I watch surprise lift the doctor’s brow, the recoil of my husband. ‘It was part of Thomas. You said it yourself.’
‘Yeah, as a parasite, Shelly. Get it together.’ Paul smirks towards the doctor.
At least it survived, I think.
*
I’m wrapping salad sandwiches in the school tuckshop when I get the call to say I can finally pick up the twin. That’s what I’ve started to call it in my head. But not to Paul. He’s already joked that he wouldn’t be surprised if I gave the parasite a name. He was only half-joking, though. There was contempt in his voice, too, like when he points out the flab that mushrooms over the waist of my jeans, or when he catches me watching Home and Away.
I want to peel off my disposable gloves, shove the squares of sandwich paper over to the next mum, but it’s nearly eleven o’clock, time to deliver the baskets of food. The other mums already think I’m a bit of a cow, a bit stand-offish, but it’s just that I don’t have the time or money to hang out with them. I listen to their talk of trips to Fiji or Sydney, and the packages they receive from stores in the USA, but what do I have to add? The only reason I’m here is to see Thomas’s smile when he hands me a sticky coin for a fluorescent ice-block.
I have to pick the twin up from the hospital’s pathology centre. The woman on reception pulls the jar from a zip-lock bag, and the twin is awash in formalin.
‘What a gruesome little creature, huh?’ She laughs. ‘I bet your son was glad to be rid of it.’
I’m sorry that it’s not dry anymore, that the length of wheat hair is no longer glossy. The hair is darker in the jar, like seaweed, floating around its host.
When I arrive home I’m not quite sure what to do with it. I place the jar on the deck table, and the formalin takes on the bottle-green of the table’s surface. Thomas is delighted with it when Paul brings him home from school. He shakes the jar, so that the teeth clank against the plastic. I want to stop him, but Paul’s with him, and they are both studying it like it’s a science experiment. I watch them through the kitchen window as I prepare a salad for dinner. I follow the recipe I found in a magazine. I have the rocket and haloumi, but not the pomegranate. My salad looks a little bereft without the gleaming ruby seeds, but who on earth can afford a pomegranate at four dollars a pop?
‘Can I take it to school?’ asks Thomas.
‘Of course, mate,’ says Paul. ‘How cool will it be to tell everyone this is the twin you gobbled up in Mummy’s tummy?’
Paul grabs Thomas’s stomach, wobbles it, until Thomas squeals. But then Paul sees my face.
He comes to my side, rests his hand on my shoulder. It’s reassuring, but has weight too. ‘It’s not real, you know. It was never a real … You know.’
I shrug off his hand, slice the haloumi. ‘I think we should bury it.’
‘Bury it?’
‘Yeah.’ I think of the flat grounds of the crematorium. The straggly rose bushes, the square plaques. ‘Yeah. In the backyard maybe.’
‘Like the guinea pig?’ He’s grinning at me now.
‘Yeah. Maybe.’
Paul calls Thomas in for a bath, and while the chops are in the griller, I return to the deck, pick up the jar.
I stare at it for a long while and, not for the first time, wonder if it was a boy or a girl. Its hair is not as dark as Thomas’s, so for that reason alone I think maybe it was a girl. Another daughter I’ve been robbed of.
*
For a few months after Hannah was born I didn’t want her. Before that, when I was pregnant, I thought I was ready for children. Thought life with a baby was going to be like in those nappy advertisements, full of a carefree love as soft and sweet as talcum powder. But then the pulsing wound that surged against stitches, the sore bosoms as taut as balloons. Splinters of resentment lodged under my skin for that poor baby, whose cheeks held the blush of a seashell, whose earlobes were as velvety as a peach. I wasn’t prepared for how truly potty I became from lack of sleep. It took a while for my skittling thoughts to gather, to grasp the fact that I wasn’t Shelly anymore. I’d shifted. I had become Hannah’s mum.
*
I can’t sleep well again. I listen to the clock tick, to Paul’s snoring. I lie still, let sweat prickle my scalp. But at least I’m not in pain anymore, not physical pain like after the car accident. I should ask my doctor for more sleeping pills, but I’ve always felt like that’s cheating, like I’m trying to shut out memories of her.
I also spend hours wondering what the twin would have looked like had she survived. Would she have had Hannah’s thin face, or Thomas’s more sturdy features? Hannah’s hazel eyes or Thomas’s blue ones? And I fret about what to do if we ever move house. Will we dig up the twin from where we buried her in the yard?
After Thomas had his day of show and te
ll, Paul took me to Bunnings to choose a plant to bury the twin under. He wouldn’t let me get a citrus, said it was gross, said he wouldn’t eat the fruit from the parasite’s tree. And anyway, it was too expensive. So I chose something called a plectranthus that had little bell-shaped flowers in angel pink. I thought that was appropriate. It was on special for eight dollars.
The soil in our yard is dry and stubborn. I chose a spot behind the mulberry tree, and my little garden spade chiselled against rocks and roots, but I couldn’t ask Paul for help. Finally, I had a hole deep enough. I inspected the twin one last time, a swirl of flesh and hair, and then nestled the jar deep into the ground. I pushed the dirt back into the hole, leaving enough room to plant the plectranthus. And then I leaned over it, my palms resting against the ground. I didn’t cry.
*
We take Thomas back to Dr Arnold for a check-up. She’s wearing a purple ribbon this time, to match the pinstripe in her blouse. She’s pleased with Thomas’s progress, pleased he’s finally put on a little weight.
‘Did you ever pick up the specimen we found in his stomach?’ she asks us.
I nod.
‘Did they tell you it was just a teratoma, after all? Not a fetus in fetu.’
I can only stare. It’s Paul who asks her what she means.
‘It can be difficult to tell them apart, you see,’ she says. ‘A teratoma is a tumour. It’s made up of various tissues, which is why it can resemble a fetus in fetu. But when pathology had a look at the mass we found in Thomas’s stomach, they couldn’t detect a spine or other organ matter. So they think it was only a teratoma.’
My mouth is open, but no words come. The doctor pushes her hand across the surface of her desk towards me. ‘Don’t worry, Shelly. It was benign. Nothing to worry about.’
‘But the teeth? The hair?’
Her head bobs from side to side. ‘Yes. Common.’
I smile. I don’t know how to respond. There’s an uncertain frown on Paul’s face. Thomas flicks through a Thomas the Tank Engine book.
The Best Australian Stories 2017 Page 13