Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life

by Maureen McCarthy

‘I’m . . . no. I’m . . . er, just off to the shower,’ I stammered, ‘perhaps in a minute . . .’ I turned away and walked towards the bathroom door.

  ‘What time do you start today?’ Katerina called out sharply. I almost jumped, but turned back and saw them both staring at me, waiting for my reply.

  ‘How . . . how do you mean?’

  ‘At your college or uni or wherever it is you’re going?’ Katerina snapped.

  ‘Er . . . ten I think,’ I mumbled.

  ‘So after you’ve showered you’ll have time to have a talk to arrange things then?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so . . .’ I heard my voice, soft, far away from myself.

  ‘Good. I’ve got a set of keys for you. We’ll have to talk about locking up and all those kinds of boring things.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They continued to stare at me. I suppose they were waiting for me to go. But the oddest thing was happening. I’d caught the sound of next door’s radio up loud. Beethoven. A string quartet. Which one? The loveliness of it took me out of myself for a few moments. I’d known that piece so well only a couple of years ago and hadn’t heard it for ages. It was amazing how music stayed inside you like that, and then when you heard it again years later you just knew it, something inside just sat up and reached out to meet it.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Katerina asked loudly. I started, but managed to switch back again. Both of them were watching me with blankly curious faces.

  ‘Sorry . . .I was . . .’ I didn’t want to explain. Neither of them had even heard it. That made standing there, probably with a dumb faraway look on my face, seem all the more ridiculous. Blindly I turned away and pushed at the bathroom door.

  ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get into your course . . . the one you wanted . . .’ The voice came after me. I turned around. It was the dark one, watching me from where she sat at the table. The deep brown eyes looked straight into my own. I felt my lip tremble slightly but didn’t have a clue what to reply, so I simply nodded.

  ‘It’s rotten the way that happens sometimes with exams,’ the exotic girl went on conversationally. ‘Did you get nervous and mess up?’

  I gulped and nodded again. Jude got up and went over to the cupboard for a plate to indicate that she had nothing more to say. In relief I went into the bathroom and shut the door.

  The water pressure was fierce. I stepped into the warm steam, gasping as the hard, hot spray hit my face and shoulders. At home the showers were lukewarm and feeble, and the shower recess was usually greasy with dirt. This was blissful. Home. I would be helping to get breakfast at this time. There would be noise and arguments. Not those two looking at me as though I were a strange species. I soaped myself thoroughly and tried to think of all the reasons why I’d come to the city.

  With a jolt I remembered that there might be limited hot water, and the dark girl obviously hadn’t showered yet. I reluctantly turned off the taps, stepped out of the shower recess, and stared at myself in the long, foggy mirror on the back of the door, slowly rubbing myself dry. My big creamy-white body stood before me, full and shapely with splotches of pink from the warmth of the shower. The heaviness of my breasts and shoulders, belly and legs made me want to cry out in despair. There were no long mirrors at home so I’d rarely even seen myself unclothed like this. It was the sheer bigness that struck me. This body, this place I’d been forced to inhabit all my life was so far from the accepted ideal of beauty that I knew I would never in a million years measure up.

  I heard the radio go on in the kitchen. The news. There had been a fire overnight in some outer suburb. Three people had died. I tried to care as I moved in closer so that only my head and shoulders were in view. These parts I could handle. I hardly dared admit, even to myself, that my face and neck were pretty. I’m fair-skinned with a smattering of light freckles over the bridge of my nose. There are definite cheekbones and a rather pointy chin. My eyes stared back at me, large, and clear grey-brown with long lashes. My nose is rather long, but straight. I pulled a handful of hair up at the back, letting my neck show, and the small curls spring around my face. I consider my hair to be my one plainly positive feature. It falls to my shoulders, loosely curled and coppery-brown.

  When I emerged from the bathroom dressed in my skirt and T-shirt, a gust of steam poured out behind me into the kitchen. Katerina looked up from where she was writing a list at the table and frowned.

  ‘Didn’t you turn on the fan?’

  ‘What?’ I was immediately flustered.

  ‘There’s a fan there next to the light switch . . .’

  ‘Oh . . . I ’m sorry.’ I turned back and shut the door to the bathroom properly. To my dismay the steam then wafted up from under the door.

  ‘Try to remember, if you can, otherwise the rooms will be filled with mildew,’ Katerina went on, still frowning as she ticked things off on her list. I nodded and wondered where I should sit. Was the meeting to be here or in the lounge room? There didn’t seem to be enough chairs in the kitchen and Katerina had spread a lot of papers out over the table.

  Jude sauntered in from the other door, dressed now in tight jeans and a boy’s white shirt. Her hair, brushed and shiny, was hanging in dark waves to her shoulders pulled back from her face with a thick rounded clasp that fitted snugly to her head. She was carrying a canvas bag full of textbooks and eating an apple. She looked so fit and easy, so together, that a stab of pure envy sliced through me before I’d had time to ward it off. ‘So, we all ready then?’ Jude smiled at me, squeezing onto the chair between the wall and table. ‘Pull up a chair why don’t you?’ I nodded and began to drag the rather rickety cane chair from the corner to the table. Trying to affect the same kind of easy nonchalance that I’d just seen Jude display, I sat down too quickly and heavily. The chair wobbled. There was an awful sound of splitting wood. Then a crunch as the chair crumbled, and finally collapsed outright beneath me. I fell heavily in an ungainly heap on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Oh I.. . . I ’m sorry,’ I gasped, trying to get up. One leg was caught painfully beneath me. The others were staring down at me with open mouths. Then Katerina gave a shrill giggle and covered her mouth. My skirt had flown up over my fat knees, showing part of my plain white underpants. There was a nasty scrape at the back of my knee where a piece of broken chair-leg had stuck into me. Within a few seconds my shock gave way to intense embarrassment. I could feel the heat begin to creep up my neck into my face. It was too awful.

  ‘Oh shit! Are you okay?’ Jude asked, trying to cover her amusement by standing up and grabbing my elbow. I pulled away and brushed down my skirt. Almost blind with humiliation, I could nevertheless see that the other two were on the verge of bursting into laughter. Inside I raged as I acted concerned about the chair.

  ‘Who does this belong to? I’m sorry . . .I should have known . . .’ I was staring at the broken pieces on the floor. I hate them both. If only I weren’t here. If I could just leave . . . walk out now! Biting my lip I picked up a couple of the pieces and tried hopelessly to fit them back onto the chair, all the while trying not to cry. To be laughed at was bad enough, but to break down and cry in front of these two would be much worse.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Katerina said, getting up grandly, ‘I should have thrown it out ages ago.’ So why didn’t you . . . you horrible little bitch?

  ‘No I.. . . I shouldn’t have sat on it. I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘You are rather large, aren’t you?’ said Katerina, going over to a cupboard and pulling out a packet of Band-Aids. I stared after her in astonishment. Then I was filled with a powerful urge to punch her.

  ‘Here, take these and I’ll find some antiseptic.’

  ‘I’m all right . . . really, it’s nothing.’

  ‘It looks a bit painful,’ said Jude. All trace of amusement was gone from her expression as she held out a damp face-washer. A thin dribble of blood was heading towards my ankle. I dabbed at it and took the Band-Aid from Katerina, fitting it over the scrape
.

  ‘You’ll probably have a bruise there by tonight,’ Jude added kindly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You sure you feel all right?’ Katerina asked as she carted in a strong chair from the lounge room and settled it at the table next to me. I nodded, hating their solicitous questions more than their laughter.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Katerina, settling herself down at the table, ‘I think we should get on with this because we’ve all got to get going.’ To my relief neither of them referred to the chair again.

  ‘This is my father’s house,’ Katerina began, smiling at us both primly. ‘He’s given me the responsibility of making sure it’s looked after . . . so each of us has to remember to lock up if we are the only one home . . . okay?’

  I nodded and Jude grunted her assent.

  ‘Now I don’t know about you two, but I won’t be in every night to make dinner,’ she went on, ‘so what shall we do about buying things? Shall we have a kitty?’ She looked at me and I started a little and looked back blankly. A kitty? Have I heard wrong? What have cats got to do with making food every night?

  Katerina seemed to sense my bewilderment. ‘A kitty,’ she said with a condescending smile, ‘is a pool of money, which we each contribute to every week, and which is used to buy things so we can all use them. I suggest some small amount, just for coffee, tea, milk, fruit and breakfast things, because I won’t be in most nights . . .’

  ‘Sounds a good idea,’ I mumbled, looking away and trying not to let my face heat up all over again.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jude added, ‘that’s all right by me.’

  I looked up. Jude’s voice was low and interesting and she was tapping her fingers on the table as though she was bored. She looks shrewd, I thought, sort of knowing in some way. I wonder what she’s thinking.

  So it was decided. We would have a kitty and we’d share the cooking when we were in. And they decided many other things too, like how we’d pay our bills, what kind of food we’d buy. They discussed what time they liked to eat, sleep and shower. I tried to join in, to have an opinion so I wouldn’t appear utterly stupid. But I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of it. What was the difference between real coffee and instant? I had only ever had instant at home, which was apparently a no-no. But the other two seemed quite passionate about this so I decided to keep quiet. When they agreed that they’d ask people not to smoke in the house, I felt vaguely disappointed. I’d been half-intending to take up cigarettes. Apparently everyone got used to the horrible taste after a while, and I’d heard girls at home say it made them lose weight. But after hearing their strong opinions I didn’t dare tell them mine.

  When Katerina became coy about overnight visitors, their showers and whether they would be welcome at breakfast, my mouth literally fell open before I could stop it. This girl had surely just stepped out of a magazine! Jude also seemed a little taken aback by Katerina’s easy allusion to lovers and boyfriends. I guessed that she mightn’t have had much experience in that area either.

  At last the meeting was over. Katerina had noted down all the decisions and promised to write up some of the more obvious things (like when the garbage went out) and pin it on the notice-board in the kitchen that night. With that she was out, running up the hallway to collect her things and be off for her first lecture. Jude and I were left looking at each other.

  ‘Don’t be too intimidated,’ Jude said, smiling at me, ‘she obviously thinks she’s the boss, but we’ll put her right about that . . . hey?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose . . .’ I was almost sick with relief at Jude’s joking tone.

  ‘So what was the convent like?’ Jude asked.

  ‘Well, all right, I suppose . . .’ I said softly. ‘You were at the secondary college weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Boy was I glad to leave.’

  ‘Were you?’ I was slightly surprised by her strong, impatient tone.

  ‘Of course. Why? Weren’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Glad to leave? The convent would have been awful, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I guess so. Well . . . in a way I was glad, but . . .’ My voice trailed off. I looked away from the steady gaze of the dark-eyed girl sitting opposite me and wondered how I could explain that I’d been sorry to leave; that I’d loved school. Most of my teachers had been wonderful. Only a few old nuns were left, but they’d singled me out because of my music. I’d been invited into their private parlour to play on their shiny grand piano any time I felt like it. Compared to home, school was blissful. How could I explain that although I’d been too dreamy and lazy to make a good student, I’d loved the place?

  IMANAGED, WITHOUT ANY MAJOR HICCUPS, to find the right building. The tram ride was enjoyable, but once I’d got inside the funny, rundown red-brick building the sense of doom resurfaced. There were people everywhere. Young people, my own age mostly, chattering, giggling, lining up in queues and studying handbooks and bits of paper. Older people, I supposed they were the teachers or lecturers, sat at tables marking off names and handing out more bits of paper. Everyone seemed to have something to smile about.

  ‘Please pay fees over at that counter . . .’

  ‘Sorry, but Developmental Psychology is a second-year subject.’ They all looked so sure about what they were doing. I stood for a while watching, having no idea what was expected of me. Eventually I tacked myself onto the end of a queue and waited to have my name ticked off. The woman peered up at me through enormous round glasses and handed me a couple of bits of paper.

  ‘Carmel McCaffrey. Here’s your subject list. Now, do you know what to do next?’

  ‘Er . . . no.’

  ‘Well,’ said the woman, trying not to sound as bored as she looked, ‘get yourself registered over there, then choose your subjects and join the end of that queue . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  I went and stood where she had pointed and stared at the lists of compulsory and elective subjects. Titles like Cognitive Development and Psychology for the Disabled Child made my hands go cold with panic. How could I possibly choose? I went over and joined the enquiries queue. The bearded man sitting at the desk looked nice. Perhaps he’d be able to explain. As I waited my turn I tried to work out some sensible questions. I even started writing a few words down next to the subjects to remind me of what I must find out. Slowly the queue inched forward. I couldn’t help staring around. Everyone else seemed to know each other. The place was buzzing with chatter and high-pitched laughter. The two girls in front of me were talking excitedly of what they’d done the night before. I glanced down at the old watch Mum had given me. I’d been waiting in the queue for over twenty minutes.

  At last it was my turn. The bearded man stood up and smiled. I thought he was going to introduce himself formally, but he was pushing his chair in.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said, smiling through gleaming white teeth, ‘but I’m going to have to disappear for a few moments and make an important phone call. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said stupidly, ‘that’s all right.’

  It made no sense, but his going made me feel desperate. I stood at the desk. Two people who’d joined the queue behind me groaned impatiently and wandered off together. I was the only one left waiting. That was when I began to feel very strange. The noise in the room seemed to have risen to a deafening pitch. I felt my body beginning to teeter where I was standing. I’d never fainted in my life, but at that moment it was all I could do not to fall over. All around me people were yelling out, screaming, laughing and hugging each other. Groups of them with arms interlocked, some grinning maniacally, passed by on their way in and out of the huge room. I caught snippets of their conversations, none of which made any sense.

  ‘I’ll catch you later in A block!’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Did you get into Psych 1?’

  ‘Wanna have lunch?’

&nbs
p; Disconnected words ebbed and flowed around me as I waited for the man to come back. He would take care of me. I clung to this idea like a drowning person clinging to a life-raft. He would tell me what everything meant. He might even sense that I shouldn’t be doing this course at all and work out a way of getting me into a more suitable one. He looked so kind and friendly. Everything would be okay when he got back.

  But he didn’t come back. I kept waiting, telling myself to count to ten, to fifty. More minutes rolled by. The crowd was gradually thinning out. Around me other students were walking off in groups, their business finished. I looked at my watch and decided to give him five more minutes. By then he’d surely be back and I wouldn’t have to stand there any more feeling like such a geek.

  In the end I gave up. There seemed only to be some teachers left, sitting at their tables chatting to each other – not noticing me – and a few groups of dawdling students. My cheeks were flaming as I sidled over to a chair by the wall. I pulled a pen out of my bag and filled in the elective-subjects list any old how. Then I hurried over to one of the desks and handed over my bits of paper.

  ‘What do I do now?’ I asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of my voice. The woman didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at me as she took the sheets of paper – and studied them. It was about a minute before she looked up.

  ‘That all seems fine,’ she smiled. ‘Now what was it you wanted to know?’ So she’d heard my question, but hadn’t bothered answering until she was ready. Humiliation and anger burned inside me. I loathed her well-cut orange dress, her styled hair, her stupid, expensive, too-big earrings and her bland smile. But at the same time I felt completely, chillingly intimidated by everything about her.

  ‘What do I do now?’ I said again. The smile disappeared, replaced by a slightly amused frown.

  ‘Well, now,’ she said in a maddeningly gentle voice. She might have been addressing an imbecile. ‘That depends on what you want to do . . . I suggest you buy some lunch in the cafe over there,’ she pointed to the door leading out, ‘then go down to the lawn outside. I believe there is a rock band playing . . . the third- and fourth-year students have arranged it as part of today.’ I stared at her and she stared back.