she handed me a small blue jar and held up her singlet while i rubbed eucalyptus ointment on her back.
i stoked the fire and got into bed with her, my chest against her back, arms around her shoulders. bear lay on our feet. sometimes i wished i had the sort of grandmother who went out like other women did. to country women’s meetings, or the supermarket, or to have a cup of coffee with friends. sometimes i could hardly stand to be in the same room as gram, listening to her trying to suck oxygen into her stuffed-up lungs. but i couldn’t picture the house on stilts without her.
after a while her breathing grew quieter and i thought she’d gone to sleep. i eased away, ready to step out, go to my own bed. bed was the warmest place in the house on nights like that. then gram spoke; her voice was drowsy, dreamlike. a voice from the past. like the one she’d used to tell me stories when i was little.
‘there’s things i never talked about before, birdie,’ she said. she used joey’s pet name for me. she never did that. i was frightened. maybe gram was dying. right now. damn joey. where was he?
‘i never knew when was the proper time or if i was the right one to tell you. but i haven’t got forever,’ gram went on.
‘don’t talk now gram,’ i said. ‘go to sleep.’
‘it’s gotta be said,’ gram gripped my arm. ‘i’ve been wrong about a lot of things. maybe i was wrong not sending you to school. you don’t talk so good, but that’s not your fault. doesn’t mean you’re not smart,’ she said, and i relaxed a little, pleased with gram’s praise. what she said wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
gram began to cough then, as though something was caught in her throat. perhaps it was the cold, star-spangled air or the words she’d kept from me for so long. i pulled the blanket over our heads, pressed myself closer, willed her lungs to keep working. lay in the tartan dark wishing joey would come.
when at last gram’s breathing steadied, i slid off the bed, fed the fire and tucked the blanket in. gram rolled over on her back and reached for my hand. i could not leave. i waited, hungry for more words of praise, hopeful gram would tell me other things. tell me how my mother loved me. how she held me, words she used to comfort me, songs she sang, looks she gave me, gifts that only a mother can give her child. i was wrong to wait.
‘those boys done you wrong, alice,’ gram said. ‘hurt you bad and took what wasn’t theirs to take. but they never took all of you. you’re more than what people can see and feel and hear.’
i should have stepped away. should have snatched my hand from hers and covered my ears before her words opened my tight-locked door of forgetting.
‘you’re more than what’s between your legs. a lot more, girl.’
truth, suffocating as a river of tar, flowed from my grandmother’s mouth. i knew what had happened to me in words. the reality had been locked away. when gram spoke of it, i lived the nightmare again.
jelly-legs stumbled me to the sink for a dish-cloth. i tried to stuff it, grey and sopping into the pit that was my grandmother’s deep and horrible mouth. she clawed at my hands and ravens dashed their wicked beaks against the panes and flew down the chimney. soot devils. bear would not be quieted or consoled. she leapt at their battering wings and i swung the broom. around and around i whirled, scarecrowing the demon birds, scrubbing my grandmother’s words off the walls. walls that eddied and fell and me with them. the ravens pick-picked at my herringbone stitches until muck oozed between my thighs and i crawled between the lion’s paws and cradled my crazied head in my hands.
joey’s arms were around me when i came back. the tartan blanket gathered us in the bed by the fire. gram in her chair, rock-rocking. her shut eyes, blind as teddy’s angel, turned towards the red glow of the stove. no sodden rag in her mouth. just slow breath. rasping in, rasping out. joey stroked my mad red hair. smooth were his strokes, smooth as butter, and wet were the shadowed planes and angles of his face. deep in the valley of his nightingale throat he crooned a lullaby. never forsaking. never forsaking his troubled sister. never. my let-me-go brother. my let-me-go watch-me-fall brother. watch me fall he did that night. then cradled me. golden boy. brother.
‘why did she?’ said i to him. ‘why did she think i would want to remember?’
40 ALICE
still alice, still
what french-knotted boy would come now to my door? would sit at my grandfather’s table, warm elbows nudging? who would lay his back in the everlasting arm and twine his legs with mine on the narrows of the heavenly couch? what boy now would smooth my skirt, would fetch me back from where i’d gone with soft talk and stroked arms? what boy would walk me to my door if he knew the reasons for my strangeness? would carry my poems against his velvet skin like love letters from my soul to his?
i stepped out. out of my self. out of my window onto the balcony, into the night. looked down to the place where no boy would ever stand and wait. for me. bear beside me. i climbed where she could not follow. onto the roof i went. up the steep of it where it jutted black against the cheese-wheel moon. joey followed. never forsaking. quiet he stayed beside me. i kept my silence beneath the stars. asked for nothing and was given nothing in return. no roof-top poems came to me. i was noah in his ark. floating in a sea of dark. no land in sight. no island of refuge. no tree, no branch, nor twig; no place for wrens to perch to sing their songs. time was no more. when i turned, joey breathed a column of pure white smoke and his hand reached out to me. frost had cast a crystal cloak on the rippled tin. we slipped and slid. on bellies, thighs and palms we came down, but i felt nothing. joey led me to my room and i lay down and he beside me with bear at our feet. nearest and dearest both. and gram downstairs as unpicked as me by what she had done and undone. hemmed in by love i was. unforsaken, although i did not feel it then.
mornings later, while all the world still slept, i stole the canvas bag down from its peg behind the wash-house door. i checked for the tobacco tin full of hooks. bright, sharp, hooks. made sure my grandfather’s fine-pointed scissors, his heavy-pointed scissors, his clippers and dubbing needle were all inside the soft leather pouch. i put the strap of the bag over my head, crossed my heart with it. then i walked towards oktober bend. river songs in my head. hooks in the bag on my hip. constant companion left behind closed doors.
the sky was bruised, dirty yellow and grey. i stopped at the elephant rocks where my grandmother and i had laughed about her chest. i lay down, spread me thin and close to the ancient grey beast to feel if an imprint of our laughter was pressed into its skin. a curling, rippling fossil of sound, captured forever for anyone who cared to stop and listen. perhaps seekers of that elusive thing called joy, recorded in days past by scribes and scholars, lovers and poets. but the river drowned its secrets and the stone remained silent. i cushioned my head on my grandfather’s bag. thoughts came to me of the book and the two glued pages. i remembered fish with rainbows on their skins, bloody red gills and gaping mouths. i saw the pure white coat of the man holding them and his face; his eyes closed as though he couldn’t stand to look at what he’d done. i saw the coat of the surgeon who sewed me up with his needle and his thread, his mouth was covered so i could not read his lips, but the spell of twelveness was in his eyes. then i remembered my grandmother’s face after she spoke the words that called down ravens. her eyes, red-lidded, tight shut.
i raised my cheek from its canvas pillow and unscrewed the lid of the tobacco tin. opened its mouth full of bright sharp hooks. careful, my fingers unfastened the leather bag and laid bare the scissors and the needle. i laid them side by side; the hooks, the scissors and the needle. forgotten were the silks, the linen threads, silver tinsel, peacock plumes, the furs and fleeces. forgotten were the muddler minnow, the priest, the demon, the damsel fly nymph and the micky finn. before me were instruments to cut and slash, to probe like doctors’ tools. cold and steely.
in the morning mist, under the cold new sky, i took off my clothes. peeled off my watermelon jumper, with pips and rind and soft pink flesh
all knitted by lumpy grandmother hands. red pants next. do-not-go-with-hair-like-that pants. underpants last. made to keep privates private. off i took them. the river whispered siren songs and i stepped quickly into its icy embrace. greedy, it lapped at my thighs, circled my waist, fingered my breasts and raised them up. weedy fingers touched me. gentled me. cleansed me. took me under. held me down with the silent stones and the darkling fishes. and i, at that moment wishing, wishing to be unborn.
the last of my breath was a string of pearls. my face an underwater moon. there was no angel in the dirty morning. no jesus walker on the water, no brother waiting on the bank to haul me in. no dog to remind me with tongue and tail what it is like to be loved, dirty or clean, whole or broken. no everlasting arms to carry me home. no anthem. only me. alice.
and in me a seed of hope. enough to draw me up towards the crack. towards the light.
i dragged my clothes on. took my pen and inks from old charlie’s bag. set them all upon the elephant rocks beside the silver hooks and the scissors. then i took out my book of flying and turned its pages until i found one that was empty. on it wrote.
i am alice
still i am
alice
no less
no more
just different
alice
i left the book unshut, beneath the pale sky for all to see. or no one. or for me alone. alice. alice with the seed of want. wintery sun fell on my watermelon shoulders and on my moss-green words. while they dried, i took old charlie’s fine-pointed scissors, his dubbing needle, a reel of silk and a peacock quill and prepared to tie a lure.
41 MANNY
Running to Alice
I had promised to help Tilda Cassidy find Joey and I had not. But they found each other without my help. I saw them often at the scout hall. I had been afraid for nothing. It was clear that Joey trusted Tilda. But no matter how I looked for Alice, I could not find her. And I could not speak to Joey about Alice, not while Tilda was with him.
Could I go to the house? Was that permitted? I was fed and clothed. I had shelter. I was in need of nothing. What were the customs of need and want in this country? Could I visit uninvited? Could a person knock and ask for his heart’s desire? Was that an acceptable reason to knock? These were the things I wondered while I searched for signs of Alice.
When I ran at night, I stopped on the bridge to watch the windows of the house where Alice lived. I hoped that she would step through her window and climb onto the roof the way she did that first night. I wanted to see her again, sailing through the stars, that is what I wanted. And in the early mornings I looked for her. I thought that I might see her disappearing through the hole in the fence behind the railway waiting rooms with that very large dog beside her.
My thoughts were more often of Alice and less often of the places and people of my childhood. When I ran, I told myself that I was running towards the future. Towards Alice. That is where I wanted to be.
It was morning when I found her. She came out of the river, so pale that I thought I might have dreamt her. I was afraid to turn away in case she vanished. I saw her twist her hair into a rope and squeeze the water out, onto the smooth grey rocks. Then she dressed herself in bright clothes and I knew then that she was real and not a dream. That is when I thought that I might be able to stop running for ever.
42 ALICE
a decent thing to be
an elephant is
a creature large
enough on which to rest
an open book
a girl
a boy
materials for making
fishing lures and fire
made of sticks and stalks.
down to the river came manny james. through the wilderness where we nightingales hid ourselves away from the rest of the world, he came. he lit a fire for me. quiet he did it, without asking or telling. without any saying at all he gathered twigs as thin as wren’s legs, grass stalks and leaf litter. like a bower bird, he built a tiny tepee of his gatherings on the rocks where gram and me had laughed.
i was surprised to learn that manny knew how to build a fire. one night joey and me had walked past the big houses on the other side of town. joey showed me where tilda lived, and manny. he told me there were no fires inside houses like theirs. people had only to press a switch to make warmth come up through the floor. manny took a cigarette lighter from his pocket. warmth came into my body even before his fire was built on the rock. his being there was better than the sun.
when the fire was well alight, we went in search of bigger sticks to feed it. under the bridge of never-forsaking we went. manny’s eyes lifted up to joey’s lettering and i saw questions in them that he did not speak. we dragged little logs back to the fire. my legs perfectly happy in their red pants. even in winter, watermelon warms the heart.
joey and bear were waiting when we got back. bear wrapped herself around my legs. inhaled my happiness and licked my hands. joey kept his surprise inside. i never saw anyone else do it so well.
‘just checking the shrimp nets,’ he said, like it was normal to see me with manny at the river in the early morning dragging little logs to our fire, me first, him following. my brother walked to the river’s edge and hauled in a net. it was too cold to expect a good catch.
‘there’s enough for two,’ he said. ‘i’ve gotta get home to gram. i’ll leave bear here.’ i was too busy feeling the miracle of manny’s nearness to remind joey that bear answered only to me.
we threaded shrimps on sticks. cooked them over the coals till their shells turned orange. peeled them and ate the sweet white tail-meat. licked our fingers and wiped them on our clothes. then manny turned his eyes towards the unshut pages of my book of flying, curved like scrolls in the warmth of the fire. he saw my moss-green words and after i had nodded my yes to him, he read what i had written. many times he read it and the morning was quiet. fishes sipped gently at the damp grey air and water spilt like silk over ancient rocks. manny looked at me and asked, ‘what made you different, alice?’ the sound of his question was like longing on his tongue.
on my grandmother’s dressing table was a photograph in a small oval frame. the frame was silver as a fish’s skin with a border like barley sugar twists. two small feet at the bottom kept it from toppling over. it was the sort of frame a person would hold dear, not one to leave behind if they were journeying to the forty-ninth parallel never to return. in the background of the photograph was a water tank on its side filled with firewood. in front of it was a child wearing blue denim overalls and a striped tee-shirt. the little girl had bare feet. her right hand was on the handle of a small, wicker doll’s pram with wheels the size of biscuits. she looked away. away from the pram. away from the person who held the camera. perhaps her eyes followed someone who was leaving. perhaps even then she knew her mother would not stay.
i have looked many times
at the photograph in
the barley-sugar frame at
the side of the turned-away face
the small right hand
on the handle of the wicker pram
at the denim overalls
the striped tee-shirt
and the bare brown feet
and i have tried
to remember what it felt like
to be me
before
i was different.
it isn’t easy to tell someone why you are different when you are not sure exactly how different you are. a girl cursed with twelveness has no measure of herself because she cannot remember being three. doesn’t know what anyone else feels like when they are twelve or fifteen.
i looked at manny across the flames. i did not want to speak of what was past and done. but i had other things to tell. my frayed and fractured voice joined other sounds of morning. the small, near songs of frogs and bellbirds. more distant screams: cattle in the slaughter yards, the foundry whistle. the sounds of all of us mixed and stirred. the ordinary orchestra of life.
/> ‘the words are in me. but harder to say than write,’ i told manny james.
‘you are much better at writing than me,’ he said.
‘i’m slow . . . need time to get the words out.’
he nodded. answered, ‘i do not mind waiting. i will learn to listen like your brother does.’
so far, so good, but i wasn’t sure how much more i wanted to tell him.
‘you do not go to school?’
‘i used to. before my head injury. joey brings me books now. teaches me new things. looks after me.’
‘yes, i know. i saw him at the scout hall. that is when i saw him first.’
‘sometimes i don’t fall down for a long time.’
‘the falling down, is that because of the accident?’
‘no accident.’
‘i thought that you said . . . ’
i shook my head.
‘they meant it.’
‘i do not understand. what happened?’
i could not meet manny’s eyes. he had seen me come out of the water. that i did not mind. my body made me something like other girls, but i had things to tell that would let him see into the darkest places of me. i fixed my eyes on the flames. made a list in my head.
‘i was waiting for
joey and old charlie we
came every night i
sat on the hill with
the lamp and
counted stars while they
checked shrimp nets
no one ever
came before just this
one time.’
bear pressed herself close to me, put her chin on my lap. and i went on. spewed the words like dark ravens into the flames, crimson, marigold and rose. each one took more effort than the last.
‘two of them came crept
like robbers put
their hands over
my mouth
to keep my screams
inside while they did
what they did
to me and afterwards
the tall one afraid
The Stars at Oktober Bend Page 10