One Foot Wrong

by Laguna, Sofie

  When Harrison was visiting Norma I made a painting without paint on the toilet floor of Norma, Harrison and me. We were under the water. We had a house there in eternity. Harvey was with us; he had wings and a fin and he nipped the devil when the devil tried to visit.

  After I counted the hands around the clock eight times Norma came back from the visiting room. Her face was white with a grey shadow. A blue shoes told us to go to dinner. ‘Stay close to me,’ said Norma when we stood up to go. ‘I can feel him coming.’

  I stayed close. I could smell him too – sour milk and cat bone. I sent a picture down the rope of a circle around Norma. In the circle were Harrison, Harvey and me. A vine of green leaves and purple grapes was wrapped around us. When the black-scaled hand of the devil came around a corner I said, ‘Go away.’

  Norma kept her hand on my knee through dinner. It shook. She only ate one piece of bread and she drank her pink tea and she drank my pink tea too. She didn’t talk. She was asleep in her bed before the lights went off. From my bed I listened to the air being dragged in and hissing slowly out. I stayed awake to see if the devil came for Norma. Sometimes I smelled him and that’s when I watched the closest.

  It was morning in the smoking room. ‘The devil never came last night.’ Norma blew out smoke.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘I can’t live without you.’ Norma smiled and sucked. ‘My brother is leaving a car for us five nights from now. He didn’t ask questions. Just like me; I’m not asking too many questions either. I have to get a key first, from a blue shoes. If I don’t get a key then we can’t go.’

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘I am taking you home.’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘You won’t have long in there. Do you realise that? Is there going to be enough time?’

  ‘What for?’

  Norma looked at me. ‘I don’t know. To find what you want.’

  I painted a picture for Norma with Alice Plow’s brush and toothpaste with water for paint on the end of Norma’s bed when blue shoes couldn’t see. I painted Cat, Norma and me living in a house of pencils and brushes. The lady beetle was our chariot and she took us back to One Cott Road.

  Norma, me and the ladies were in the pool. The tall blue shoes with the snake on his arm was standing on the edge watching over the wet ladies. Norma got out of the pool and went to him. She stood close to him, water dripping down her legs and face. She touched him on his chest and laughed as if she shared a secret with the blue shoes. He laughed too, as if the secret felt good to know. When Norma got back in the water she winked at me. ‘How long can you hold your breath?’ she asked, before going under.

  Alice Plow was at Renton again. Pebblinghaus came into the games-without-the-games room. The glass on her fingers sparkled. ‘What do you want to do with them today, Alice?’

  ‘I want to try painting again.’ Alice didn’t look at Pebblinghaus. She looked at the ladies sitting at the big tables.

  ‘Painting? That had some interesting results last time.’

  ‘Not quite the results we were hoping for, but today we might have more luck.’

  ‘Luck’s not a word synonymous with Renton, Alice, but you’re the boss.’

  Alice Plow looked into all the ladies’ eyes around the edges of the tables and into my eyes too. ‘I’m going to ask you this time – who would like to do some painting today?’ She had brushes in her hand. Even the people who were always talking to friends nobody could see went quiet. ‘Anybody? You might enjoy yourselves.’ The room was very, very quiet. Nobody wanted a needle in the bone. ‘Anybody – does anybody here want to paint? I’m not going to force anyone into this, but I do think some of you might enjoy yourselves.’ There was only the sound of the television telling us to eat cheese and insure the household. ‘Anybody?’ She held out brushes. Pebblinghaus watched. My body with its arms and legs and feet and neck and head leaned towards the brushes in her hand. Alice Plow looked happy. ‘Do you want to paint?’ she asked me. Pebblinghaus shook her head but Alice Plow put the brush in my hand. ‘Now you need some paint.’ She held up three bottles – red, yellow, white. Blood, the sun and an egg. Alice Plow shook the bottles. ‘Which one?’ I pointed to the egg. Alice Plow poured shiny wet white on a tray, then she spread brown paper. ‘Dip the brush in the paint,’ said Alice Plow. She didn’t need to; I was already dipping.

  I painted one white egg then I painted me and Norma inside the egg. It took up all of the paper. Alice Plow looked at my egg and she smiled. Then she looked at Pebblinghaus, pointed to the egg and said, ‘Beginnings.’

  Every night I lay in my bed and counted another finger. Every day Norma said to me, ‘The devil doesn’t come because of you. I owe you something and this is going to be it.’ My friends from One Cott Road called and called. The black birds flew over the Renton all day and all night, waiting for me to speak. The only time I tried to speak was with Norma.

  When I got to the thumb she came to my bed after lights out. ‘I will be back in an hour with the key. Tonight is the night. The car is waiting for us.’ I could hear Jesus beat the drum inside her beat beat beat and then he beat the drum inside me too so I couldn’t tell what was Norma and what was me. ‘Wish me luck,’ she said and then she was gone. I lay in bed with my eyes wide open. Tree, spoon and handle were quiet; they knew that I was coming. I sent a picture of Norma and me and the egg down the rope to Norma in the nurses’ quarters where she was stealing a key that hung from a branch in the trousers of a blue shoes.

  I counted the beats of my drum and when I ran out of numbers Norma came back; she smelled of hot skin and toilet. ‘Hurry, Hester. Get up and come with me.’ She took my hand and led me down between the rows of beds.

  Annie woke up. ‘Where are you going?’ she called, sitting up in her bed.

  ‘Shut up, go to sleep.’ Norma pulled me along past the sleeping ladies. She undid the door at the end of the rows of beds with the key and we walked fast down the hall. It was bright light but we didn’t see any blue shoes and Nurse Clegg was home with her feet up. We turned a corner at the end of the hall and went through another door. I heard sounds of metal and wood and the voices of ladies in the hanging room that I could never find. It was somewhere over our heads. ‘Don’t slow down, Hester.’ Norma pulled on my hand and our fast walk became a run. Handle was calling to me, and just behind his voice was the voice of back door. ‘Come on, Hester, come on.’ I heard them as I ran through the halls and across the shining floors of Renton with my hand tight in the hand of my friend, Norma. We ran past windows cut into doors and the windows cut into doors ran past us, but they ran backwards into the before, while me and Norma ran into the next.

  We turned into a hall that took us to the kitchen doors. Norma undid the doors with another key. ‘Through here, quick!’ Inside the kitchen was dark and smelled of old butter and chops. We had to feel the way to go with our hands. Norma knocked against a bench and then I did too. Hard metal trays hit the floor with a crash. Norma and me stood in the middle as the crash bounced off the walls around us, growing louder. If the river of blood that flowed inside me burst, there would be nothing to hold it, no ocean for it to flow into. It would pour out over the world and all the people and animals would drown in it the way they did when God brought the mighty storm. Noah was the only one to get away. He packed a giraffe, his wife and a horse and only he made it. He made it – he was free to start the new world, to grow the new wheat and chaff and breed sons and see the sun again and all of it began with him who got away. Before there was Noah, the water was deep and dark in a time of trouble. I swallowed, and wrapped my arms around my body tight. The kitchen went quiet again; I could only hear Norma breathing hard.

  ‘Careful!’ she whispered. ‘We have to be careful. Come on.’ She got to the doors at the back of the kitchen. ‘I hope this does it.’ She tried the key. I heard it shaking in her hands then I heard it hit the floor. ‘Oh God, oh shit.’ Norma went on her hands and knees and felt fo
r the keys. ‘I can’t find them.’ She crawled across the floor. ‘I can’t find them, Hester. Oh God, where are they?’

  I got down too. I felt with my hands under the shelf and I touched the cold scared keys. I passed them to her. ‘Here, Norma.’

  ‘Thank God,’ she said, and took them from me. She tried to put the key in the door again but the door said no. ‘Wrong key, I think it’s this one …’ she tried another one and the door opened yes. ‘Down these steps and then one more door.’ We went down some steps and I heard the hanging room table. ‘Not much further now,’ she said. There was no time to stop and talk to table. If me and Norma stopped we would turn as hard and salty as Lot’s wife stuck on the cliff, not going or coming, only looking back for more of us that we would never see.

  Norma opened the last door and the smell of garbage from the bins hit me in the nose as we stepped into the forbidden outside. I looked up into eternity to where Sack sent my paintings – lost paper birds flapped around the stars looking for me. I watched them circling. The hook of the moon hung in the black. I wanted to sail through the neck of the bottle to God the Bird where he waited, soft wing outstretched, eyes shining.

  ‘Come on, Hester, we have to hurry.’ Norma pulled me down a small street between walls. ‘He said he’d leave the car down the side lane … just down here …’ Buildings leaned in over Norma and me and, at the top, between them, eternity beckoned. A white chariot waited for us on the narrow road. Norma ran her hand over the roof of the chariot. ‘Get in,’ she said, as she opened the door where the wheel was. I opened the door behind her. ‘What are you doing, Hester? Get in round the other side, next to me.’ I did what Norma said and climbed in beside her. ‘The key should be under the mat …’ Norma reached down to where her feet were. ‘Got it.’ She put the key in under the wheel and the chariot rumbled the way Boot’s did. ‘So far, so good.’ Norma turned to me. ‘Are you ready for this?’

  ‘I am ready for this,’ I said, steam curled around my words. A black bird thumped against Norma’s window when I spoke. Norma turned the wheel and the chariot turned into the road.

  Two lights at the front of the chariot lit up tiny knives of water falling from the black sky. On both sides of the road trees stood like tall guards waving with their silver leaves. The road in front disappeared underneath us. I looked behind, into the darkness, but the road was gone, eaten by the chariot. Black birds cut through the chariot lights. Cold came off the window to sit on my nose, knees and hair, but inside me, where Jesus beat the drum, I was hot.

  ‘You never told me what you are going back to find, Hester. Are you going to tell me?’ I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. ‘What are you going back to find?’ Norma’s question floated around the warm dark space of the chariot looking for an answer but the answer was a secret that nobody knew kept hidden down in the deepest part. The question was sucked out through the crack at the top of the car window and disappeared beneath us along with the road.

  We drove for a long time without speaking. The only sound was the low growl of the chariot. Then Norma’s voice came out with tears mixed through, the way milk runs through dough when you make the bread. She kept her hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road as she spoke. ‘I never loved anyone but my brother. He had short legs and apple hands. He sat on my back when we walked through the paddock on our way home from the shop and fed me lollies. He’d reach around with a purple jelly baby in his fingers because he knew they were my favourite and say, one for Norma. I dressed him and he slept beside me at night and made the bed warm even in winter. I only loved him; there was nothing and nobody else that I loved ever. I never loved my mother and I never loved a dog. I never loved anything I owned, there wasn’t a dress I loved, or a doll, a special thing … A grandmother. I met my grandmother. She scared me. Her teeth were brown and she said, why you? I never loved my father; when he was at home his door was closed. My mother brought him in food on a tray. When she went into the room she was smiling, when she came out she cried. There was never any money for anything. One day my father brought a man to the house. He said to the man, “Pay first.” The man wanted my brother but I said, “Take me, take me,” because my brother was the only one I loved. The man turned me inside out so that my blood, heart and brains were on the other side of my skin. I had nothing holding me together. Everywhere I went I dripped. I left a trail. That’s how the devil knows where to find me; he follows the trail.

  The man came whenever he wanted and so did his friends. After that everything frightened me. I did things, I worked and lived in a proper house, but I was always scared. I wanted to die.’ She looked across the dark chariot at me. ‘Even smoking I don’t love – I just like.’ We drove for a while more in silence then Norma said, ‘I never knew if I was meant to be here. Who put us here?’ Norma’s question curled around our faces like smoke. It floated up in changing circles, it spread, it became thin, too thin to see. The question drifted into all parts of the chariot, thin enough to pass out the windows and into the sky. Norma and me were quiet – held inside the question as it spread out over schools and hospitals, houses, gardens, ladies and fathers and blue shoes and grandmothers lying in cemeteries. Soon she sniffed. ‘I’m not scared now. I could go anywhere with you.’

  We went back to quiet and then Norma started to sing a soft song, ‘Dance then, wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the dance said he and I’ll lead you all wherever you may be and I’ll lead you all in the dance said he.’ I listened and then I made a small hum. Norma sang louder. ‘Dance, then, wherever you may be … Sing, Hester!’ Her tooth gaps showed through the dark. ‘I am the Lord of the Dance said he.’ I remembered my teacher with her smile that made a bridge for walking. I remembered the sting of Boot’s night visit and I remembered the Lord of the Dance. I tried to sing but my voice was stuck behind a door. ‘Sing!’ said Norma. ‘Sing!’

  I pushed, ‘Dance then … ’ but the door was shut tight.

  ‘Come on, Hester. I know you can sing. ‘I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black … Sing! Sing!’

  I opened my mouth but still no sound.

  ‘It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back! Sing!’

  My teacher stepped forward and pulled open the door. The sound flew out, ‘They buried my body and they thought I’d gone, But I am the dance and I still go on.’

  I sang loud and so did Norma. She opened up the window and the cold wind and the knives of water blew in and we sang our song loud together, ‘They cut me down and I leapt up high, I am the life that’ll never, never die, I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.’

  When I saw lights out in the blackness we were quiet. ‘Smoke, Hester?’ Norma passed me the box that was hidden in the top of her pants. I pulled two white sticks from the box, lit them both with Norma’s lighter, then I gave one to Norma. We sucked back the smoke. Norma kept the window open and the wind blew our hair, getting under our green suits, cooling our skin while the inside kept burning and the drums kept beating. Outside of the chariot, eternity spread over our heads, all wide and black with tiny white holes that were the mouths of tunnels leading to the other side, to where God the Bird lived in the light. The smoke from our cigarettes rushed out the open window, curled up to the holes and travelled down the tunnels. God the Bird cooked his worms over our smoke.

  Norma picked a book up from the ground at my feet. ‘I need to look at this,’ she said. ‘We’ll be there soon.’ She turned on a small light above her head and opened the book. She leaned forward and stared out the window at the roads leading off. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  Soon I saw streets and houses that I knew from when I went to school and caught the bus. ‘This is your street, Hester – Cott Road.’ When we turned into the road my arms hurt from a hanging, my ear ached from where it was pulled, I stung down below, a tree grew through me, my knees were cracked from the floor, my hands burnt from the hot bucket water. I was home.<
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  ‘Stop,’ I said to Norma.

  ‘Where is your house?’

  ‘Stop.’

  Norma stopped the car. ‘There’s nobody around. That’s good. There’s so much empty land here. Why are there so many vacant lots?’ Norma was asking questions but I didn’t know what answers she wanted. ‘So where is your house?’

  I pointed to the end of the road.

  ‘Alright.’

  I put my hand on the chariot door, to open it. Norma reached across and touched my shoulder.

  ‘You know you haven’t got long. Do you know you haven’t got long? We have to get back.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How will you know when to come back?’

  ‘I will know.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘By counting.’

  ‘Counting what?’

  ‘I will know.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I will know by counting the time. Boot taught me on the clock.’

  Norma looked at me like she was deciding something. ‘Alright then. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  I opened the door.

  ‘You are coming back, Hester?’

  ‘I’m coming back.’

  ‘Please come back. If you don’t come back I don’t know what I’ll do. Promise me you’ll come back. Promise me.’

  ‘I’m coming back.’ When I was at school I said to Mary, I don’t know you, the same as Jesus’s friend with his black hood in The Abridged Picture Bible, but it was a lie. ‘I am coming back, Norma K.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I need you.’ What is need? Norma was crying. Need was Hester coming back to Norma. She reached into the back seat and pulled out a dark blanket. ‘Take this, wrap it around you. It’s cold out there.’ I wrapped the blanket around me as I stepped onto Cott Road. ‘Hurry back,’ she said through the open window.