no songs or stories or interesting facts spilled out of joey on the way to the scout hall. but he crackled with strange electric energy. pedalled hard and fast with my dancing slippers tied to the handlebars and me on the parcel rack, legs out wide. wide like they used to be when i was a little girl. when the only thing you had to be careful of was not getting your feet caught in the spokes. joey’s straw curls, bunched with string and feathers and beads, bounced between his bare brown shoulder blades. bear ran beside us and for a little while our separate hearts seemed one again.
‘we’re too early for ma cassidy,’ joey said.
propped his bicycle in
the square black shade
behind the hall
showed bear her place
leaned his head
over the gully trap
turned the tap and
opened his mouth
the water went
in him and
over him and
when he straightened himself his
sunburnt hair was scattered
with diamonds.
he was dazzling and for a heartbeat i wished he could be mine forever. then tilda came.
when she saw joey her eyes grew wide and her lips came apart. but mrs cassidy was at her side. eyes like lizard slits. mouth a red gash between nose and chin. joey went to meet them. stood tall and straight.
‘i’ve come to join beginners’ class,’ he said. his voice deep and cool as the river. he took more money out of his pants and tilda took the skin-warmed notes from his hand. mrs cassidy said nothing. but i saw joey’s sweet, cruel smile. watched perfect tilda trying not to laugh.
when the seven beginners lined up at the barre, it was tilda’s job to teach them. joey was the only one taller than her. the only one with hair on his face. the only boy. when he dropped his shorts i went outside and crawled underneath the porch. i lay in the dust beside bear who was transformed by the slats and the sun into an odd striped beast.
i wondered if i could learn to like tilda even though she was so perfect. or if she could like me. could mrs cassidy ever learn to like joey? perhaps she’d once had a brother like mine.
a boy so much part of her
that there was no you or i, only we.
had they left their clothes on a bank somewhere and
dived into the river like wild things?
had he cared enough
to explain the whereabouts of crickets’ ears, or
steal books and paper and pens for her? was he
the sort of brother
who used hammers and chisels as tools
of tenderness to carve private promises
in public places?
was mrs cassidy’s mouth a thin straight line because she had lost a boy like mine? or was it because she was afraid of never being loved by perfect tilda? did she worry that tilda might love a boy whose sister had crazy wiring? maybe hattie fox had filled her ears with gossip about my papa, charles patrick garfield nightingale. or the things that happen to girls who don’t keep their knees together. i never had to think about these things when joey loved me best.
bear rumbled. i opened my eyes. she rumbled again. a shadow fell on my face. and the stranger was there. tall and dark with french-knotted hair, looking between the cracks. looking at me.
27 MANNY
The Sound of Anon
Alice climbed out from under the porch, holding the dog by its collar. It was the closest I had ever been to her. There were cobwebs and leaves in her hair. I stood still and let the dog smell me. When it was satisfied, Alice beckoned me come and I followed her. We sat in the sand near a swing made from a truck tyre. Our feet were bare. Our shoes hung around our necks on laces and ribbons. The sun was hot on our heads and her hair was like fire.
‘I am Manny James,’ I said, and she nodded and smoothed the white sand with the palm of her hand. She wrote slowly and carefully with a stick:
i am not a bird
i am not a mermaid
i am alice.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the poems. I did not expect to hear what came from Alice when she saw them. It was the strangest sound, thick as porridge and shapeless, like the speech of someone who had never heard a human voice. That is what it was like. Or something far worse. She looked away and I hoped that my surprise had not shown on my face. I held the poems in front of her.
‘Did you write these?’ I said.
Her eyes flicked over them and she reached for the writing stick.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
I wanted her to speak. I did not care what she sounded like. I wanted to see inside her mouth. I needed to know she had a tongue. That is when I made a very big mistake. I put my hand on her arm. It was not a smart thing to do. I heard a warning rattle in the dog’s throat and then it bared its teeth. Alice touched its flank and it sank quietly to the ground beside her. Their eyes never left me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I did not mean to scare you. I know that you wrote these poems but I just wanted you to tell me.’
Alice frowned as though she was confused.
‘I want to hear you say the words,’ I said in case she misunderstood. The seconds ticked slowly by and lines of her poem ran through my head.
my soul is filled
with songbirds
but when i open myself to
set them free
they shit
on my lips
I remembered the nightingales and the silence they left behind them when war came. I remembered the brave silence of my sister, the sounds of soldier’s lies, my mother’s screams and my baby brother’s cries. I saw my sister’s open mouth and the pool of blood as she lay at the soldier’s feet, forever silenced.
Now this girl was in front of me. Alice, with my fingers still wrapped around her arm. The tendons in her throat pulled tight, I saw her lips, her teeth and tongue and I knew what was happening. Alice Nightingale was opening the cage to set her birds free. Trusting me to understand, that is what she was doing.
‘I am Anon,’ she said and still she watched me. Her eyes were green like new rice. She was waiting for me to look away, expecting me to. But I did not. I could not look away from this girl. Then she smiled at me.
28 ALICE
things i wrote
on the pages of alice’s book of flying it is written:
once upon a time, a boy with no yesterdays asked a girl with no tomorrows for something no one else wanted. the sun was high and bright and the almonds had burst their mouse-coloured vests when the boy came.
there was nothing at all to remind the girl of long ago when she was twelve years old. this boy did not come like a thief in the night to steal what was not his to take. he stood before her but did not touch the hidden parts of her; the little hills of cream beneath the folds of her clothes, the things that made her girl. all that his hands held, on that shining day, were her words.
then he told her what he wanted, not knowing it was the hardest thing of all to give. he wanted the sound of her.
29 ALICE
things i did not
i did not write what happened next. did not spoil the pages of my book of flying with the dark things joey said to me and manny james when he and perfect tilda came running and running with bear’s early warning rumbling in their heads. alarm drumming too loud in joey’s ears to hear my heart’s calm, blinding him to bear relaxing at my feet, misunderstanding manny’s hand around my arm, not knowing he held me soft as a velvet cuff.
i am glad now that i did not write about my brother, fierce as he was, that day. trying to allow me to be fifteen, but not being able to break the habit of protection. remembering the night we never spoke of. and me so slow to make words to tell him it was all right to leave me and manny alone. angry he wouldn’t give me time to find out if i could be fifteen. afraid i’d never discover if a boy like manny james could want to know a girl like me.
when joey was at last out of words, manny introd
uced himself and said, ‘i am sorry if i have offended you. i am still learning the customs of your country. i only wanted to speak to alice.’
he spoke clear and plain and when he’d finished, reached out his hand to joey. it seemed to take until forever till my brother unclenched his fists. three times their palms met. three soft smacks. i counted each one in my head then let my breath loose.
before their hands cooled, i heard other voices. voices that reminded me of the smell and sound of a football team up close. i remembered the panic, the falling, and worst of all, the memory of manny being there, watching my body jerking out of control on the grass outside the hall.
suddenly afraid i couldn’t explain my crazy electrics, even to a boy who didn’t turn away when i spoke. i called bear and ran away as fast as i could.
30 ALICE
old charlie’s table
when i was in danger of coming unstuck, it sometimes helped to think about old charlie’s table. i read somewhere that when a cyclone or an earthquake or some other act of god is about to happen, it’s safer to get underneath something. i didn’t know if you could call a person an act of god. gram said god made us. joey said bullshit, only sex makes people. i did not know or care who made manny. he came with no warning. stepped stealthy as a cat on the powdery dust of the long dry summer. bear and me, curled as peach leaves on the ground under the scout hall steps, had no chance to run, to hide. home is where i ran when the bombers came. home to papa’s table. that is where i went and where i held myself in my arms. i didn’t know what else to do.
my grandfather built his table square so no one would ever be too far from the others around it. it was his gift for his children, he said. but no child of his would ever claim it. the timber was sawn from a river red gum that washed loose from its moorings one spring, when the sky let go and the river rose up and seeped through the timbers of our living room floor.
the floodwater found its way to the sea. the mud crusted over and old charlie called in a favour from hattie fox’s brother, who trucked logs for a living. he towed old charlie’s tree to the sawmill. years went by till the wood was good and dry. then they milled two slabs for the tabletop, squared four posts for its legs. dave williams rounded their corners off with his lathe. old charlie carved lion’s paws on one end of the legs. dovetailed the joints, fastened them together with dowels instead of screws. when his table was built, my papa carved his name and the names of his family on its surface: charles patrick garfield nightingale, gloria nightingale, lola nightingale and sunny james nightingale, and the dates of their birth. he rubbed it smooth as glass with a wad of steel wool and polished it with beeswax and turpentine.
my name and joey’s were added when we were born. and when his face was all gullied with sorrows, old charlie carved the dates of the deaths of his children. lola’s five months to the day after she was born. my daddy, sunnyjim’s, when he was thirty-two.
gram said the table looked like a tombstone. took to slicing bread on it; sawing away hard and fast as though the bread was a month old. pretended not to notice when the knife’s serrated blade chewed into the wood underneath. she screwed the mincer onto the table’s edge, grit her teeth and turned the wing-nut till the metal plate bit savagely into the timber.
when she wasn’t using it, gram covered the table with an old curtain. by the time i came home from hospital, the curtain was gone. replaced by lino glued to the table top, fastened tight with tiny tin-tacks that old charlie used to mend the soles of his boots. the lino was brown, patterned with red and orange leaves. left over toilet lino. joey begged gram not to do it. said it would break old charlie’s heart. i was lying on the divan they’d dragged into the kitchen. my words all taken away.
‘and what about my heart?’ gram said. ‘i don’t need no words scratched on a table to remind me my babies are lying in the ground.’
that’s what she did, our gram, covered things over.
didn’t talk about them
pretended they weren’t there
linoleumed the table
painted over
the pencilled-in
markings that measured
my father’s height
on the door jamb.
but outside
under the rainwater tank
two pairs of handprints pressed
into the concrete slab
old charlie’s doing
minding kids
mixing concrete
he pressed baby lola’s
pink and perfect hands
then sunny’s into
the soupy, half-set concrete,
precious reminders like
fossils from another time,
a time when
the nightingales sang.
old charlie’s table was too big for three, gram said. she had joey push it hard up against the wall. as if the lino was not enough, she began to cover it with other things. piles of old newspapers, skeins of knitting wool, empty cereal packets, odd socks and canned food. she took her meals on her lap in the rocking chair by the stove. joey and me sat on the verandah steps when the weather was fine, or at the kitchen bench by the window where we could see the glint of the river between the tepees of climbing beans and corn rows.
while i was under the table i tried to remember if i ever ate a meal in someone else’s home. ever sat at a table that wasn’t old charlie’s. and i wondered if manny’s people had built a table. did his daddy make it big enough for family and friends? and small enough, so people never felt too far away from each other? did manny watch patient hands smooth and carve and polish? did his little boy fingers trace letters on its surface, learn how they looked, how they sounded, what they meant? did he feel safe between the lion’s paws planted firm on the floor of his grandfather’s house?
as i lay wondering, a thought came unexpected. an idea, sweet and sudden as a blackbird’s song. i crawled out from between the lion’s feet. went to the kitchen window. rows of empty jars were lined up on the sink. through the window i saw gram in the garden picking milky-green tomatoes, last of the season. gram picked them slowly, tumbled them gently, by the apron-full, into polystyrene boxes. later i would help her make pickles. should have gone to help her harvest, but didn’t. wanted to start on my idea before anyone could stop me.
quiet as a thief i worked. took everything off the table. levered tacks loose, opened the door to the stove and stuck the blade of the carving knife into the firebox. summer and winter gram kept the fire burning. without it we had no hot water, nothing to cook on. i waited till the knife glowed red hot, then slid it under the awful toilet lino. the glue stank and melted. again and again i heated the knife. bit by bit i uncovered the top of old charlie’s table. piece by piece i stuffed chunks of lino in the stove and watched them burn through the window in the firebox door.
while i worked, i planned what would happen when i’d finished. after i’d polished the table with beeswax, i’d run my fingers around the curves of my father’s name. feel his days. we would sit together around my grandfather’s gift: manny and me, joey and gram. elbows touching. no one would be too far away. ever again. we’d share our table and our food. and fill the silence with names: old charlie, sunnyjim and aunty lola. i don’t know why i thought manny might be able to help me do all that.
gram saw the smoke from the garden, stinking black clouds of it.
‘what do you think you’re doing?’ she hollered from the wash-house door.
‘fixing papa’s table,’ i hollered back.
she shuffled into the kitchen and leaned on the door, catching her breath. looked at the table. shook her head and said nothing and i did not care. it was too late. the lino was gone and i was fixing things.
31 MANNY
A Fisherman’s Table
In poor villages, like mine, there were no books. The only stories that we knew were the ones our fathers told us. These stories were the ones that our grandfathers had told our fathers when they were boys. Their stories
were not written on paper. They were memories; that is what they were. When the war came, it took everything that was good from my country. The only things that I brought with me to the house of Bull and kind Louisa James were the stories that my father told me and memories of my own.
Sometimes Louisa James invited me to tell my stories.
‘Tell me about your country, Manny.’
That is what she would say. For a long time I could not. I would ask myself, what would a fine lady who lives in a house of glass make of my stories? What would she think of the house where my family lived? What would she think of the sleeping mats and the fire-pit, the windows with no glass and the table that my father made?
My father made his table from pieces of driftwood that washed onto our beach after a storm. The wind and waves had worn it as smooth as sharkskin. The salt and sun had bleached it silver-grey and pieces of sea glass had lodged themselves in cracks and bolt holes. The sea glass looked like tiny rock pools. That is what it looked like. The timber came from a shipwreck, my father said. I remember how hard he worked dragging it from the beach to our village. He built his table outside under the branches of the cotton tree and that is where it stayed. My father’s table was very big. It was long enough for twenty people and wide enough for many bowls of food to share. That is how big it was.
We lived in a small coastal village, not so far from Freetown, the capital city of my country. My father was a fisherman. My mother worked for a rice farmer. She planted and picked and threshed and cooked, then served it with my father’s catch to me and my brother and sister. When war came to our part of the country, there were others who sat with us at the table. They did not have to be asked. Cousins and neighbours, strangers and travellers – they all came. Some were searching for their families or safe passage to another country and they needed a place to sleep. Other people came because they were hungry. Some of these people brought mangoes or pineapples to share. Others had nothing to give. They came with empty hands and tales of burnt villages and stolen children. My mother fed them all. Some nights, after they had gone, my father would sit alone at his table and weep. My grandmother said that her son sat with the ghosts of the lost and cried for the living. All grandmothers have sad stories to tell.
The Stars at Oktober Bend Page 7