Hating Valentine's Day

by Allison Rushby - Hating Valentine's Day

  There’s another flash then. The harness disappears and something else appears in Tony’s hand. Another type of kiddie harness, but this time it’s the kind with the long curled plastic cord that Velcros onto the wrist.

  ‘That’s not much better,’ I say, eyeing it, but I hold out my arm anyway.

  ‘Right, then?’

  ‘No.’ And I’m not being snarky this time. I really don’t think I’m ready for this—whatever it is.

  He looks up and winks. ‘Tough luck, kiddo.’

  There’s a pull on my wrist, upwards, and then everything turns black.

  Y Y Y Y

  It’s still black when I work out my feet are standing on something other than the balcony tiles. Slowly it starts to get brighter, and I begin to recognise shapes around me. ‘But…’ I squint in the bright sunlight of day as I look at the chicken wire fence, the play equipment, the cream wooden building.

  Tony takes my arm and rips the Velcro undone.

  ‘This is my primary school. What are we doing here?’

  He shrugs. ‘Not up to me. You brought us here.’

  ‘Me?’ I look down at him, confused.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  I brought us here? So I am controlling what’s going on.

  ‘Primary school, you say, eh? Damn. Guess I can’t take this in,’ he says with a sigh, looking at his fag. He takes one last drag and then stubs the butt out with his foot. For the first time I notice he’s wearing white suede shoes. My eyes widen. Whatever turns you on, I guess.

  Without being told, I move forward and open up the latch on the gate that leads inside the school grounds. I let us both in and close the gate again behind Tony. Stepping off the concrete footpath onto the parched grass, I start to turn slowly, looking around myself, remembering.

  ‘This is so strange,’ I say quietly. ‘It’s like I’m really here. It’s exactly the same.’

  ‘It is the same. You are here.’

  I glance down at Tony as the words leave his mouth, but I don’t really take in what he’s saying. In a daze, I walk over to the slippery slide and run my hand down the length of it, stopping when I get to the bottom, amazed at my ability to touch things. I’ve never had a dream like this before. I shake my head and keep looking around me.

  ‘Leanne Johnson knocked two teeth out on that rock.’ I point to the lump that’s sticking out of the dirt at the end of the slide. ‘She went down headfirst and couldn’t stop in time.’ As I finish saying this I spot the painted cement pipes a few metres away and run over to them, leaving the slide behind. I bend down and look inside, smiling as I remember. ‘I kissed Ben Smart in there,’ I say. ‘My first kiss.’ I stop then, thinking, and turn to look at the other pipe. ‘Or was it that one?’

  ‘This one,’ Tony says, leaning on the pipe I’m still holding on to. ‘I was there. Saw it all.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I say, giving him the eye as I stand up. I wonder just what else he’s seen throughout the years.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

  ‘You…dirty little Cupid.’ I try to sound cross, but can’t help laughing a touch. Despite the trappings, there’s something about Tony that you can’t help but warm to. Pity Mrs Batty-Smith wasn’t the same.

  I catch sight of the school building that contains so many of my old classrooms.

  ‘Want to go inside?’ he says.

  ‘Inside the building? Can I?’

  Tony nods.

  ‘OK.’ I move quickly towards the steps I’ve run up and down a thousand times. Tony follows close behind me. We make our way across the bitumen, with its hopscotch stencils, and I run my hand up the worn-smooth railing as I climb the stairs. At the top, I open the silver-coloured handle on the door and let us both inside.

  I know the smell as soon as it hits me. Vegemite and cheese sandwiches, spilled red and green cordial, disinfectant. Everything is as I remember it, down to the faded lino and the wooden bag racks along the wall. I stand still for a moment and breathe it all in before I cross over to the racks themselves.

  ‘I used to put my bag right—’ I stoop down and then stop cold. ‘Wait.’ Recognising it, I pull out the bag in front of me hurriedly and then sit down cross-legged on the floor, letting it thump into my lap. I unzip it and pull out the contents. I look up at Tony, who’s standing by the door, entertaining himself by flipping the lid on and off his lighter. ‘This is my lunchbox. This is my folder. This is my bag.’ I hold the items up.

  He nods, but says nothing. Flip, flip, flip.

  I stare at the items in my lap one by one. How can this be? It’s as if I’m really back at primary school again. As if…

  I begin to hear voices as I think this. I start to crawl back up, using the bag rack to pull myself upright. When I’m standing again, I run the few steps down the corridor so I can see in the window of the classroom.

  My eyes swing quickly to the right spot. And there I am—second row from the back, third seat on the right.

  Me. With pigtails and a tiny uniform, and a pencil with one of those triangular rubber ‘I’m learning how to hold a pencil correctly’ things.

  Me in Grade One.

  I press my face up against the glass to get a better look at what’s going on inside. I’m cutting something out, something red, my tongue peeking out slightly between my lips. Seeing this makes me smile, as it’s something I still do today when I’m concentrating hard. My eyes move around the classroom, trying to work out what’s going on. All the children are cutting, gluing and glittering away.

  It doesn’t take long for me to remember the day.

  I’m still looking around, amazed at what I’m seeing, when the teacher says something at the front of the class, diverting my attention. Miss McClusky. I liked her. She was one of my favourite teachers. Dad’s too. I smile again at this, realising that, now I’m seeing Miss McClusky from an adult’s point of view, the reason he’d liked her so much might have been to do with the type of parent/teacher relations the school would have actively discouraged. She’s very young and pretty and her skirt is—well, short. She glances over at the window while I’m thinking this and, worried, I take a step back, remembering what I’m wearing—my pyjamas. I hadn’t even realised this until now.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Tony says, beside me now. ‘They can’t see you.’

  Oh. ‘Can I go into the classroom, then?’ I ask him.

  ‘Knock yourself out.’

  I walk down the corridor, past the windows and towards the classroom door. When I get there, I open it slowly, looking around carefully before I enter. A few steps inside I stop again and scan the faces around me just to make sure. They really can’t see me, I think to myself.

  ‘Nope—and can’t hear you, neither,’ Tony says, squeezing around behind me. He goes over to one of the children in the front row’s desk. Julie Brodie, I think. ‘What are you guys up to?’ he says, moving his head up and down, above and below what she’s cutting out.

  ‘We’re making Valentine’s Day cards.’ I start down the first row, heading for my desk. Everything seems so small. So tiny. The desks, the chairs, everything.

  At the back of the classroom I stop in front of myself. In front of myself. I can’t believe this.

  I bend down so I’m kneeling, and rest my arms on the desk. My small self, myself twenty-two years ago, is still cutting out. Halfway through the outlined red heart, she looks up, glances around at the other children to see what they’re doing, and then gets back down to business, her tongue peeking out again.

  I smile and move my head around untiI I spot Tony…

  He’s standing very close to Miss McClusky, at the front of the class. Too close, I realise when I work out what he’s doing—looking up her skirt.

  ‘Get away from there,’ I say, standing back up again. ‘You are a dirty little—’

  He jumps and steps away. ‘Hey, I can’t help it if I’m spatially challenged, can I? And her—’ He jerks his thumb up at Miss McClusky, accidentally
making her skirt lift higher. His eyes widen and he steps away. ‘Oh, sorry, love,’ he says, looking up at her before he turns his attention back to me. ‘What I meant to say was that it’s her fault too. Materially challenged.’ He winks at me. ‘If you know what I mean.’ He tugs on her skirt with one hand and motions up and down his own legs with the other, suggesting that her skirt’s not quite as long as it could be.

  ‘Yes, yes, I get it.’ I try to give him a disappointed look, but the truth is as he was giving his sad little explanation I was thinking that at least I could handle this guy. At least he didn’t scare me, like Mrs Batty-Smith. Having brought it up, I then try to lose the image of Mrs Batty-Smith, of her poking her finger into me. Staring at me.

  ‘Yeah. Not exactly a looker, is she, that Batty-Smith chick? But don’t you worry about her,’ Tony says. ‘She’s harmless enough.’

  Harmless? I think. It wouldn’t be the word I’d use to describe her. On my one-to-ten scale of pants-wetting scariness she rated a solid eight and a half.

  Something catches my eye. ‘Oh, look,’ I say, stepping up to one desk in particular as I pass down the aisle. ‘It’s Louise.’ I glance back at Tony, getting excited. ‘I haven’t seen her for years now.’

  When I turn around again, the boy beside her is leaning over and whispering something in her ear. ‘Snotty Scotty!’

  ‘Snotty Scotty?’

  ‘He used to wipe his nose on his sleeve all the time,’ I explain, engrossed in the children’s faces around me. They all look so familiar, but I can only remember a few of their names.

  ‘Everybody?’ Miss McClusky claps her hands together at the front of the classroom, startling me. I whip around on the spot. ‘Everybody!’ She claps again. ‘That’s all the time we have.’ Her gaze moves around the room until it settles on a child in the second row. She moves forward, closer to the girl, and holds something out. ‘Maria, could you take this plastic bag around the class, please, and collect the rubbish?’ Maria stands up, takes the bag from Miss McClusky and starts off around the classroom obligingly.

  I look back at my small self, who is feverishly gluing something onto the red heart she’s cut out. She keeps gluing and gluing, stuffing her brush back into her gluepot every few seconds. Maria turns up for her scraps, but she doesn’t look up. Maria waits and waits, until finally she reaches over and grabs the scraps herself. Still, there’s more gluing to be done. Then, with one last stripe of glue, she sits up and the tongue goes back in.

  Done.

  I laugh at the importance she’s given to the project. The importance of every last dab of glue, every tiny piece of paper. The all or nothingness of it.

  ‘What?’ Tony says, beside me now.

  ‘Oh, I just miss that about being a kid,’ I muse, still watching her. ‘Knowing where you stand. Remember how you always knew your position on things? I hate this, you’d say. Or I love that. There was no in between. No shades of grey. I hate purple. I love licorice.’ That’s funny, I think as the words come out of my mouth. I’m still not that partial to purple, and there’s no way I can resist a good bag of licorice.

  ‘Couldn’t say, myself. I’m just over two hundred years old.’

  ‘Just over two hundred?’ I know from my Valentine’s Day research that Cupid is supposed to be slightly older than this.

  ‘We stop counting after two hundred. It’s like your twenty-one, you know?’

  Ah, now I get it. I’m deciding whether or not to ask Tony his age directly when the bell rings and, startled, I pull my hand away and turn around to look at Miss McClusky.

  ‘Home-time,’ she says brightly, looking the most relieved out of anybody in the classroom. ‘Don’t forget your reading books. And I hope those tidy boxes are tidy.’

  Suddenly there are kids everywhere. Pushing past me, running down the two aisles. And noise. Rattling tidy boxes. Chatter. I make my way up the aisle to the front of the classroom.

  ‘No running in the corridor,’ Miss McClusky calls out. ‘That means you too, Stephen.’ She grabs a child passing in front of her lightly by the shoulder.

  I laugh as I watch him race out through the door and down the corridor to his bag. It’s only when he’s gone that I remember my small self up at the back of the classroom. I turn around to see what she’s up to and why she hasn’t left.

  She’s still sitting at her desk. This time with a smile slapped right across her face.

  She has a Valentine’s Day card.

  ‘Look,’ I say to Tony. ‘I remember this.’ I go over behind her chair and look at the card over her shoulder. ‘There should be one from Louise and one from…Hang on.’ I glance up again. ‘I thought that—’ As I say the words, I see him coming.

  Stuart.

  ‘Here he is. Oh, how cute,’ I say as Stuart comes over and shyly gives my small self a card before turning and sprinting out of the classroom.

  My small self giggles and looks at Louise, sitting a few desks away, who giggles back.

  ‘Liv loooooves Stuart. Liv loooooves Stuart,’ Snotty Scotty sings out beside her.

  Louise whips around and gives him a good punch in the arm. ‘She does not!’

  ‘But I did,’ I say to Tony. ‘I had a bit of a crush on old Stuart.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know. Who do you think works these things out, eh?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologise. He seems quite offended.

  ‘Well, I am offended. This is my job, you know.’ He stalks off.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Outside.’

  I’m about to argue and say I want to stay and watch my small self for a while longer, when she gets up and leaves the classroom, with Louise and Snotty Scotty following close behind. I follow the three of them out into the corridor, where Snotty Scotty leaves them. The two girls both grab their bags and run down the front steps.

  ‘Now what?’ I say to Tony, who’s looking into the mirror above the handbasin near the door. He’s fixing his comb-over.

  ‘It’s good, this kids’ stuff,’ he says, giving the porcelain bowl an appreciative slap. ‘All the right size.’

  ‘If you’re six,’ I point out, and this time it’s me who’s on the end of the withering look. ‘Well? Now what?’ I ask again, taking a step forward to the top of the steps so I can see outside into the playground. The sun hits my eyes and I close them for a second…

  When I open them again, I’m at home.

  ‘Hey!’ I say, as my eyes adjust to the darker surroundings.

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist. It’s just a change of scenery.’

  I consider telling him I don’t wear knickers under my pyjamas, but then decide it would definitely be a bad idea. Knowing Tony, this is probably information he’s already made sure he’s acquainted himself with in my dossier. It doesn’t need to be brought up.

  My eyes having adjusted fully, I start to pick up on things around me. A couch. A lounge chair. We’re at my small self’s home. The home I lived in when I was six. The house we lived in when my mother was…still around.

  Tony and I are standing in the living room amongst the brown velvet lounge furniture. Even though I haven’t seen it in years, I remember it now for its softness, for how I liked to lie my cheek against it and would fall asleep on its cushions within seconds. Looking at the shadows around me, I guess that it’s late afternoon. It’s still sunny outside, but cool, and there’s a breeze moving through the French doors that lead onto the front balcony.

  When I don’t see Tony for a moment I swivel around, looking for him.

  ‘I’m here,’ he says, and I finally see him sitting in Dad’s easy chair, his tiny frame engulfed by cushions.

  ‘Liv?’ I hear a voice and my breath catches in my throat. ‘Olivia?’

  ‘Here!’ I hear my small self’s voice call out. ‘I’m in my room.’

  ‘I’ve got something for you!’ my mother says. There’s movement in the beaded curtain that separates the living room from the kitchen, and then
she’s there.

  My mother.

  I haven’t seen her for twenty years.

  And though I always thought the first thing I’d do when I saw her was yell—yell and scream at her for the pain she put both me and Dad through when she disappeared without a trace, leaving nothing for us bar divorce papers at a lawyer’s office—I can’t yell at all. The only thing that comes out of my mouth now is a croak.

  ‘Mum,’ I say, my voice drying up.

  ‘What is it? What is it?’ My small self runs into the room like a whirlwind at the slightest hint of a present.

  My mother bends down, with something behind her back, nose to nose with her daughter. With me. ‘Pick a hand,’ she says.

  ‘Um, that one,’ my smaller self says, pointing to my mother’s right hand.

  ‘Right the first time!’ my mother says as my small self and I mouth the same words. That was our joke—mine and my mother’s. We always both knew whatever it was would be in her right hand, because right was—well, right. Somehow that saying made a lot more sense at six than it does now.

  My mother produces something and passes it over.

  ‘What is it?’ my small self asks, taking it from her.

  ‘It’s a gingerbread heart. For Valentine’s Day. There were some ladies selling them at the shops. Aren’t they pretty?’

  My small self nods, inspecting the gift.

  I go over and take a look for myself. I don’t need to see the heart to remember it, however. I recall that gingerbread heart in perfect detail. Peering from above my small self, I study the piping, the soft pink iced roses. It’s beautiful. Someone put some real love into that piece of baking. A lot of time and effort. And I remember now how, even though I didn’t like gingerbread back then, it didn’t matter. I was hardly going to eat the thing—I was entranced by it. It wasn’t of this earth; it was obviously some kind of fairy gingerbread heart from the bottom of the garden because it was so beautiful. In the end I kept it till it went mouldy and my dad had to secrete it out of my bedroom with a pair of tongs and hand it personally to the garbage man on bin day.