About a Girl

by Joanne Horniman

  I glanced at the girl making up her face. She was outlining her lips carefully with dark lipstick, working with an intensity I imagined reserved for works of art. Surveying herself critically, she set to work on her lashes. I wondered whether she was making herself beautiful for someone, or simply for her own satisfaction.

  So taken was I by the girl, I’d almost forgotten why I was there, so Laura’s arrival was something of a surprise. Her face had a fresh-scrubbed look to it, and she was dressed casually in trackpants and singlet, as though she’d been working out and had just had a shower. She swiped her card to let us both into the building.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ she asked. I hadn’t, so she offered to show me round. Downstairs, we peered into spacious common areas facing out to courtyards, but I was only interested in looking at Laura. She often wore her fair hair loose, but today it was pulled back from her forehead into a thick plait that shone under the fluorescent lights.

  It was a self-catering residence, and there was a whole basement floor dedicated to rows of identical kitchen units made up of bench, sink, stove, fridge and table. Students, singly and in groups, clustered around preparing or eating food. Laura showed me the unit she shared with three people; they all cooked at different times, and she hadn’t really gotten to know them. ‘I’d like to find someone to cook with,’ she told me. ‘It’s lonely eating on your own.’

  I followed Laura into the lift. Her trackpants sat low on her hips and her singlet was tiny, revealing a strip of tanned skin around her narrow waist. When the lift stopped and I stepped out, I had to dodge a cluster of black balloons hung from the ceiling. A board was filled with notices about formal residence dinners, and groups and activities to join in with. It looked like a good place for joiners. But what if you weren’t? I imagined Michael or me in this place. We would be curled up in our individual rooms like snails in their shells.

  We went down a narrow corridor; almost every door had cartoons and signs and messages on it, and there were more balloons clustered here and there. Laura stopped at a completely bare door, opened it, and stood aside to allow me to enter.

  Inside, it was cramped and tidy. There was a single bed, a desk, built-in cupboards, and a small hand sink with a cold-water tap.

  ‘It’s horrible, isn’t it?’ she said.

  I couldn’t help smiling my agreement, and because it did feel so claustrophobic, I went over to the window and peered out.

  I looked down into the car park, and saw the girl in the diaphanous dress, finished with her make-up now, a velvet drawstring bag dangling from her wrist. She was clearly waiting for someone, with an air of impatience. As I watched, she went over to the window of one of the parked cars and checked her face, obviously liking what she saw, because she threw her reflection a kiss and turned back to waiting with immense self-satisfaction, swinging her hips and her make-up bag.

  Laura said something to me, but I was so absorbed with watching the girl that I didn’t hear what it was.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Could you say that again?’

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  I watched as she filled a kettle with water from the tap, and spooned coffee into two cups. Then she sat on her bed to wait for the kettle to boil. I sat in the one easy chair, regulation university issue. The room was filled with photographs of Laura’s family (a little brother and an older sister) who lived in a town in New South Wales, her pet cat and two dogs, her school friends who had all gone away to different unis. I had already heard about all of them in our coffee-shop conversation.

  The truth was that I had not known what to expect from this visit, but now felt a little bored by Laura. She was such a nice girl, a girl obviously destined to be popular once she met a few more people. She was so pretty, and sociable, and eager to please. Even Laura’s clothes – the pale green trackpants, and the stretchy little top – announced her normality. I was dressed in an old tartan dress two sizes too big, and lacy, patterned stockings with a pair of tartan sneakers, and was clearly barking up the wrong tree.

  I thought with longing of the girl in the car park, and knew that what I wanted were the diaphanous girls, the ones who gleamed with light and danger.

  ‘Would you like to stay for dinner?’ asked Laura. ‘I was going to cook some sort of stir-fry.’

  But she didn’t look too disappointed when I declined and said that I should be getting home. I knew that what I ought to do, out of sheer decency and friendship, was invite Laura back to my place for one of my mother’s lovely meals, but I hadn’t the heart for it.

  Before I left, Laura reached into a drawer and showed me a picture of a boy. ‘This is Colin,’ she said. ‘I don’t put it out with the others because it’d make me miss him too much.’

  I took the picture and looked at it, and made the right kind of interested noises.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ she asked me.

  Before … before Michael had met the other Anna, I might have told a little white lie and said yes.

  ‘No,’ was what I answered truthfully. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Outside, it was almost dark. The girl in the car park had gone, and was no doubt now travelling inside a warm, purring car, her little velvet bag tucked up on the seat beside her. I unlocked my bicycle and switched on its light, and rode the few blocks to home, the light making a little wavering gleam in front of me.

  Chapter Nine

  I LOVED MY sister Molly.

  Though there were countless times when I felt that I hated her. But the only time I ever said it aloud was once, to Michael. ‘I hate her! I hate her!’ I said childishly, pounding my fists on his bed.

  Michael listened with a meek expression on his face. He didn’t try to persuade me otherwise, he just listened.

  Because the truth, and we both knew it, was that I loved her. I had a fierce protectiveness towards her that knew no bounds.

  What I hated was the way people looked at her when they realised she wasn’t normal. She was slow, and had difficulty learning, and was like a child years younger. She often started crying at inappropriate moments. Or smiled at inappropriate moments.

  She’d applauded at the funeral of one of my mother’s close friends, who’d died of cancer. I could have died myself when she did that. As we walked out of the church my mother told me that people understood. Why do you have to take her everywhere? I wanted to ask. I stood and glowered, my arms crossed in front of my chest, as the hearse pulled away. There was a lot that I wanted to say to my mother, but didn’t.

  I hated the way Molly was my mother’s first priority, always, the way she assumed that I didn’t need her because I was so bright and capable. I’m not all right! I wanted to scream. Look at me! I have no friends! And I am absolutely and horribly abnormal! I am …

  And here, even in my own mind, I stopped and did not allow myself to think the word.

  The day Molly had her accident, it was a mid-semester break, and I was meant to be looking after her while our mother went out.

  It was a crisp, sunny day, too lovely to stay inside, so I took Molly out to rake up leaves in the garden. I used the large rake and Molly her small one. We mounded the leaves into a heap, and jumped into the pile, scattering it, then raked and jumped, raked and jumped …

  After that we wanted something cold to drink – apple juice was what Molly fancied – and with nothing in the house I decided on a quick trip to the convenience store up the road. Out we went, happy, hand-in-hand. For a while I forgot that I had to be careful with her, that Molly’s hand had to be held at all times as my mother always warned me. The streets were almost empty, and as we crossed a road, I neglected for one moment to hold her hand. A car swung round the corner, and screeched to a halt. The sound went through me like a razor. I heard Molly land with a thud, where she lay, frighteningly sile
nt.

  I went ice-cold. For a moment there was silence, and stillness.

  And then people came running out of the houses. Soon we were surrounded by a crowd, as Molly lay with blood all over her face and arms. She held out her arms to me, and started to whimper.

  Someone was screaming; it was the old woman who’d been driving the car. She kept repeating that Molly had come out of nowhere, that she simply hadn’t seen her.

  Afterwards, I wondered how any of us managed to get through it. There was the ambulance, the hospital, the arrival of my mother, and then my father. We sat, not saying a word, a family but not a family. There was the waiting, the endless waiting, and my mother’s endless questions about how exactly it had happened. And I found that I didn’t know exactly. It had just happened.

  And it was all my fault. No one told me that, but I knew.

  Thankfully, we found out that Molly had not been too badly hurt. The car had glanced off her, and the cuts on her face and limbs were from the gravel when she’d fallen down. The doctor had to pick dirt and stones meticulously and painfully from her skin. She had stitches on her face.

  For weeks afterwards my mother had to dress the wounds with special stuff several times a day to prevent as much scarring as possible. It seemed that no sooner was the dressing completed than it needed to be done again. My memories of that time were of my mother sitting at the dining-room table with Molly’s face turned towards her, dabbing away at the wounds.

  And it was all my fault. I hated the continual ritual of the dressings, the frown that creased my mother’s forehead as she examined Molly’s face. I wanted to scream, Why worry about a little scar on her face when she’s not right inside the head? Shouldn’t you be worrying about that? But of course, I knew deep down that that was what worried my mother most of all.

  I wanted to yell at my mother, for everyone to hear, Worry about me! I’m not right inside, either. But you don’t see, it, do you? Is it because you’re blind, or just that you don’t want to?

  Molly’s wounds had almost healed when I received my first major essay back. There was a murmur of anticipation in the room as the tutor walked around, placing the marked papers in front of each student. People who knew each other compared what they’d got. I received my paper, turned to the back to check the mark, and stowed it away in my folder. For the rest of the lesson I seethed.

  At the end of the class I stalked around the building for a while. Then, with fury making me uninhibited, I walked with determination up the stairs and knocked on the lecturer’s door.

  ‘I’d like a re-mark,’ I said abruptly, handing over the paper.

  The lecturer took it with a puzzled smile. She looked at it, flicking through the pages. ‘I remember this essay well,’ she said. ‘But, Anna, you’ve received a high distinction – almost full marks. I don’t think you can do much better than that.’

  I snatched the essay and turned on my heel without a word, high on anger and injustice.

  The point was, I didn’t deserve a high distinction! I didn’t want the essay marked up, but down. The lecturer had made a big mistake. I knew that I, of all people, didn’t deserve to do that well!

  I stormed home and threw the essay into a corner of my room. That night I shouted at my mother about something trivial, making Molly cry.

  In the middle of the night I got up and switched on the light. I retrieved the offending essay, and with an energy that made me feel as though I was flying, ripped it into shreds until it was a pile of tiny scraps, like confetti. How exhilarating it felt!

  I thrust the confetti into a plastic bag.

  Early next day, with a feeling of heightened, glorious power, I marched to the lecturer’s door again and knocked loudly. The corridor looked especially narrow that day, the fluoro lights especially bright. There was a girl sitting against the wall beside the door, writing a note. It was the girl from the Fenner car park, the one who’d so assiduously put on her make-up. She wasn’t wearing the diaphanous dress, or make-up, but I recognised her lovely face.

  ‘She’s not in,’ she said, leaning over and shoving her note under the door. She leapt to her feet and stood eye to eye with me. ‘You’ll have to come back another day.’ With a smile, she turned and walked down the corridor without a backward glance.

  My furious energy had almost dissipated. But as the girl disappeared around the corner, I remembered why I was there. I whipped out the plastic bag from my backpack and scattered the wreckage of my essay all over the floor.

  Chapter Ten

  I REMEMBER ALTERNATING bouts of angry energy with fits of inexplicable crying.

  ‘Don’t patronise me!’ I shouted at Morgan, on one of the occasions when I couldn’t avoid visiting my father – it was his birthday, and I did not feel like celebrating with him. I stormed from the house and found myself in a park an hour later, crying my eyes out, my head against the rough bark of a tree.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m really like!’ I yelled at my mother, before taking myself off to the bookshop one Saturday. I cried angrily in the back room of the shop for a while and then went out to serve with a stony face.

  Customers were such idiots! They insisted on buying crap like vampire books instead of brilliant stuff like Crime and Punishment.

  ‘Has this anything to recommend it?’ I wondered aloud, tossing one such book into a paper bag and throwing in the obligatory promotional bookmark.

  ‘Anna, I’m giving you a warning,’ said the manager, when the customer had gone.

  So I perfected looking down my nose while maintaining a tight-lipped tact. I knew it merely made me look grumpy, but perhaps people expected that of the young.

  I skipped classes at uni, staying home to weep in my room. I got into Josh’s stash of Southern Comfort, and did find it comforting, for a few hours. I was sick into the toilet during the night and woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache. How could he regularly drink such vile stuff?

  I taunted him. ‘You’re just a layabout. Do you ever go to that Mickey Mouse course you’re meant to be doing?’

  ‘Do you ever go to yours?’

  I flagrantly refused to hand work in. When a tutor asked where was an essay I replied, ‘Nowhere,’ and walked off, though I had it right there in my bag, and had in fact laboured on it far into the night.

  My mother asked me to help clean up the kitchen one day and feeling suddenly angry for no reason, I swept the whole contents of the bench onto the floor, and laughed and laughed at the expression on her face. I didn’t find it funny at all – I was appalled and ashamed at what I’d done, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  If I had a thought, no matter how stupid or hurtful, I blurted it out at once. It was as though I had no control over my actions anymore.

  That was why I stopped going round to see Michael, and when he visited me, found excuses to ask him to leave. I knew if he stuck around for long enough I wouldn’t be able to stop myself hurting him.

  I found myself waking at three in the morning and crying into my pillow, night after night. I was sad and confused, and I wanted it all to stop.

  My grandmother took me aside one day. ‘Anna, I’d like you to see a friend of mine. I think you might be depressed.’

  Depressed! Didn’t depressed people have no energy? Sometimes I had so much energy I shone with it; I could have lit up suburbs!

  ‘I hate myself,’ I sobbed to the woman my grandmother took me to see. ‘Everyone hates me, and it’s all my fault.’

  I came out with a prescription for some antidepressants and a referral to a psychologist.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to take the tablets.

  That was when I went round to see Michael at last, to tell him what the doctor had said.

  ‘I’m a loony,’ I told him in what I imagined to be a humorous way, holding ou
t the tablets for him to see. ‘If I start taking these, I’ll be on them for years and years, and I’ll turn into a zombie. What do you think? Maybe I should just throw them down the toilet.’

  ‘Anna, I can’t tell you what to do,’ said Michael sorrowfully. ‘But maybe the doctor knows what’s best.’

  My anger flared up. ‘So you think I’m crazy too? I thought you’d be on my side!’

  ‘It’s not a matter of being crazy. And of course I’m on your side; I always have been.’

  ‘I tell you what! I am crazy, and I have been all along! I’m such a loser! I’ll tell you how big a loser I am – my only friend for years and years has been you! How pathetic is that?’

  I saw with glee and dismay that I had hurt Michael at last.

  ‘Anna,’ he said, sadly. ‘That’s not you saying that. It’s the depression talking.’

  I flung myself from his room, thumping my shoulder deliberately against the door frame on the way out. And it didn’t hurt, it didn’t hurt at all. I could have flung myself from the top of a tall building and it wouldn’t have hurt, compared to the way I was feeling inside.

  In the end, I did take the tablets. It scared me, because what if they made me worse? There were all sorts of warnings on an information sheet that came with them, and some of the side effects sounded awful. I started keeping what I called my ‘Mood Diary’, noticing every little thing I felt, keeping it tucked under my mattress so no one would find it.

  And after a few weeks, I did start to feel better. The tablets helped me to sleep. I could easily have kept going at uni, but I just didn’t want to. I kept up my part-time work in the bookshop, though, and over time, as my mood improved, I started to work full-time. Once a fortnight I went to see the psychologist. I learned new ways to think about my life and interact with people. ‘You should try to do things that give you pleasure,’ she told me. So I did.