by Sofie Laguna
But when I got to the end of the street there was no shop. The shop was missing, melted away with the toxic acid.
‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!’ My blood moved around me too fast, too fast! ‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah!’ I was going to explode! ‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah!’ I was losing vision, my realities were blurring. ‘Ah ah ah ah!’ Then the bomb exploded, sending me spinning across the earth, my legs rotating faster and faster until there it was! There it was at last! The house with the brown roof, the slit instead of the box, the cracked driveway of Emu Street! Home!
I ran through the door. Where was crying to release me?
‘Mum! Mum!’ I called. ‘Mum!’ I ran panting and pounding down the hall into the kitchen – oven, sink, cupboard, fridge, table, bench, curtains, but no mother.
‘Mum! Mum!’ Where was she? Bedroom one, sewing room, bathroom, bedroom two and there she was, the white land of her spilling from her violet corner chair, eyes closed, her skirt pulled up and showing her legs, calves dotted with a thousand holes, the ends of tiny pipes in a pattern, all leading down to her network. ‘Mum! Mum!’
Her eyes opened. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, in a half-whisper.
I threw myself against her and felt her body, warm as a day on the beach.
‘Careful, love. Your mum’s a bit tired.’ She moved me back and tried to sit up straight in her chair. The telephone rang from the kitchen. Mum shook her head. ‘No, Jimmy, just leave it.’ Her voice was full with wing dust, as if the moths were taking over and speaking through her. Let us out.
‘Puffer, Mum?’ I asked, going to her dressing table and picking up the puffer. ‘It’s a full one, Mum. Do you want it?’
‘It’s okay, love, got one here.’ She tapped the drawer of her side table.
‘Suck it, Mum,’ I told her.
‘Thank you, Dr Eric,’ she said. ‘But I know when to use the stupid thing.’ She sat up and looked at me. ‘What’s wrong, Jimmy? Why are you out of breath? How were the shops?’
‘Shops were good, Mum.’
‘How long have you been back?’ she asked, checking her watch.
‘I’ve been back ages, Mum! Running around the yard warming up. Warming up and out of breath.’
‘Did you talk to anyone on the way?’
‘No one, Mum.’
‘Oh good, now I can make myself a cup of tea.’ She put her hand over her mouth and coughed – the moths were multiplying. ‘I can’t believe I fell asleep. I just popped in here for a quick sit-down. I was waiting for you to come back. I was worried . . .’
‘Only one problem, Mum.’
‘What’s that, Jimmy?’ she asked.
‘No milk, Mum. No milk for your tea.’
‘But you just went to the shops! What do you mean no milk?’ Her face fell. ‘What did you do with the money?’
‘I did have milk, Mum. I did have. When I left the shop. Mr Lee Sam gave me milk and jam supremes, but Mum! Mum!’
‘Yes, Jimmy, what? What? Where’s the milk?’
I opened my mouth in case there was a stray word for me to say, but none came.
‘Oh God, Jimmy,’ she sighed. ‘I’d kill for that cup of tea!’ She shook her head. ‘What happened to the money?’
Mum, Mum, I gulped like a fish.
‘Well something must have happened to it, or you can give the money back to me.’
I reached into my pocket. ‘Change, Mum! Change! See! I had the milk. I did have it, Mum!’
She huffed loud and breathy. ‘Well that’s great, love, I’m happy for you, but there’s no milk now.’
I looked at the floor. My first solo journey and no milk.
She patted my head. ‘Oh well, love, that’s alright. I’m glad you’re home safe.’ She came close. ‘Just have to be powdered.’ She coughed again.
I took her hand and led her to the kitchen for tea with instant.
We were two when there used to be four. We were in half and the house was changing. There were little red splats of food up the walls, baked beans hid in the corners, porridge hardened in the cracks, the cups grew rings inside. I counted them to see how many days since Dad left but each time I finished counting more rings came up from the bottom.
After the big clean Mum didn’t clean again. She ran her cloth over the top without rubbing. The dust left behind by the moths in Mum’s tubes piled up around the house. She coughed it onto the statues and photo frames, the chairs and books and lamps and shoes. It made a bed for mites and other living things naked to the invisible eye. The vacuum cleaner leaned against the wall, mouth closed, network empty. The crumbs of lemon softies and fruit pillows and cow chips gathered in the slits of chairs and couches. They cuddled Mum’s stray hairs and reproduced.
Mum let me wear the same thing every day. She said, ‘We’ve stayed indoors, love; no mud, no wash.’ How many days in my green stripes, my tractor socks, my red skivvy? She read and read. She let me lie and trace. I kept my eye on the line between objects. When the telephone rang Mum said, ‘Oh leave it,’ and sometimes I heard her crying. Then the crying would stop, then start again, then it would become the song of Doris. Oh distant man, Beyond the clouds, Rest your cheek by mine, Dance to me through the falling rain, And be my love in time. Then it would turn into crying again.
The supermarket delivered. Mum opened cans and tipped beans and spaghetti and peas into pots, then she flicked on the heat and said, ‘Presto, there’s dinner!’ We ate with our feet up in front of the television; me on the recliner, Mum in the brown flower. News, police shows, murders, investigation and crimes. Every two days came another bottle of milk and there was Samantha Billmore, still missing.
Every day I was getting faster. Mum knew, didn’t she?
‘At last, no school. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, Jimmy?’ she asked. ‘Can’t you find a smile for your old mother today?’
I couldn’t find one. Dirty towels and underpants and dresses and trousers and singlets spilled out of the laundry and piled up around the house – maybe my smile was under one of the piles.
One night I heard Mum talking to Robby on the telephone. ‘No, Rob, love, we’re fine. They changed the medication . . . Oh, it’s getting better all the time . . . Yes, well, you’ll be able to save a bit that way . . . Oh, he’s the same, a bundle of trouble, keeping me busy . . . Oh, that’s nice . . . Yes, he’s well too . . .’
He’s well too? Wasn’t that Dad? She didn’t mean me; I was the bundle of trouble. She meant Dad and she said he was fine, but how did she know he was fine when he wasn’t here? Why was she telling Robby he was fine? Didn’t she want Robby to know that Dad was gone?
‘Yes, love . . . You just get on with the job . . .’ She laughed. ‘Yes, love. Oh no, never been better – Dr Eric is making sure of it. Goodbye, Robby.’ She hung up the telephone. ‘I love you,’ she said, as if Robby was still there.
I walked into the kitchen. ‘Why did you say Dad was fine, Mum?’
Mum swung around. ‘What?’
‘Why did you say Dad was fine when he isn’t here and we don’t know how he is? We don’t know if he’s fine or not. He could be fine, but where is the evidence? Why did you say that to Robby, that Dad was fine?’
‘Oh God, Jim, I didn’t say anything about Dad,’ she said, sounding cross.
‘You did. You said he was fine, but Dad’s gone so how would you know if he was fine? How would you know, Mum? How, when he isn’t here and you never answer the telephone?’
‘He is gone, Jimmy. He is gone.’
‘Then how would you know? How would you know?’
‘He is gone! He is bloody gone!’ she shouted.
‘But Mum, how –?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, your father is gone! He’s gone!’ She fell to her knees – the mass of her before me, crying. The air grew damp with her sobs. The crumbs and the dust and the mites and me couldn’t escape her crying. It enveloped us. There was nothing I could do.
She stopped and looked up at me. ‘Oh, little Jimmy, my little
Jimmy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, my love.’ The skin of her face was in patches of red and white. Wing dust sprayed from her nose and mouth in tiny dots.
‘Help me, love,’ she said, reaching for me. ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ she said, leaning on me as she pulled herself up. ‘What would I do without my Jimmy?’
‘I don’t know, Mum, what would you do? What would you do without your Jimmy?’
We walked, slow and wheezing, to her room.
‘Just a little rest,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll be up to get your tea ready . . .’
Her hand in mine was cold. She got on her bed and I pulled the covers over her legs. ‘Puffer, Mum?’ I said.
‘No love, no puffer. Just open the window a little. I won’t be long . . . just a bit of a rest . . .’ She closed her eyes.
I opened the window then I went back to her and stood by the bed. Every breath she took in she coughed when she got to the top. I put my ear to her chest and listened to the moths fluttering against her passages. Her eyes stayed closed. I kept watching, as if somebody had said, Don’ t leave, Jimmy. Stay and keep watching. Soon I saw a light around the room, like a halo. It circled the walls. Mum kept breathing, her chest rising and falling, the ins quicker than the outs. The light hovered over her, thickest at the head. Outside the sky was grey without sun.
Mum’s eyes opened. For a moment she looked at me as if she didn’t know me. Then the knowing came back, shining specks of it in her visions, and she said, ‘Go into the kitchen, Jimmy. Leave Mum for a bit. Go and get yourself something to eat.’
I went into the sitting room and turned on the television and it gave the house some friends. I took a bag of chicken chips from the cupboard. I sat on the floor in front of the television and ate so many chips my mouth burned. Then I went back into Mum’s room.
Her head was back, but the breath wasn’t going in. She was covered in water.
‘Mum! Mum!’ I called.
Her eyes opened to narrow passes. I couldn’t see the light. I pressed my fingers to the rims.
‘Mum! Mum!’ I called again. She pulled back from me, shaking her head, gulping at the air. Her mouth was wide open but the passage was blocked as the moths flocked to the entrance.
‘Mum! Mum!’ I shouted.
She grabbed at my clothes, trying to speak, making the sounds of a donkey calling and calling, her face white, eyes frightened, her body wanting the air, longing for it, needing it. Seconds were passing. There was nothing I could do but be her little man, watching as she tried and tried. Then she closed her eyes, and her body, so big and wide, arched like a bridge. Hard and stiff, her head went back and her eyes opened again but this time there was no light and no eye, only whites. Her eyes had rolled over to the other side, looking for a way to let in the air, searching for what was blocking the opening, then seeing the moths, thousands, swirling in clouds, wings beating as they struggled for space. Then her body dropped, slumped into the bed, soft and spent, her eyes closed, then it arched again, the eyes opened, and she made the sound of the donkey once more as it was squeezed and squeezed.
I called for her over and over. ‘Mum! Mum!’ but there was nothing I could do. Nothing I knew to do.
She arched her back one more time, her mouth opened wider than it ever had before, so wide I thought it would tear her face in two.
‘Mum! Mum! No! No!’
Out rushed the moths, up in swirls. Clouds of moths flew over her, their wings beating them upwards from her mouth, each with a tiny eye in the centre of its wing, shining with light. I stood back as the room filled with light from the eyes in the moths’ wings, then they flew towards the window, bunching at its open space, before flying out into the sky. They were gone. The room was empty.
‘Mum, Mum!’ I said, ‘It’s alright now, it’s alright! They’re gone!’
She didn’t wake up.
‘Mum, Mum! You can wake up now, they’re gone, they’re gone!’ I pushed her shoulder. ‘Mum, Mum, you can wake up now,’ I said. ‘You can wake up!’ She didn’t move.
I climbed onto the bed and pressed myself to her, as I had pressed myself since I was a baby, to feel her, the land that was mine, but it was still. I held on as if by holding I could suck the life up from the earth’s network and give it to her. I held on, myself growing damp as she was, mixing with the wetness of her, as if it could make us one person and not two – not two.
I held on as the light in the room faded to darkness, and then I closed my eyes and kept them closed as if I could become a dream and in the dream there she would be and there I would be. It wouldn’t be earth, it would be another place, somewhere we’d never been before. It would be a story without pages or pictures and it wouldn’t end, it wouldn’t be over. I woke up, feeling her cold against me. I could feel crying in my cogs but it was caught, trapped. I couldn’t let it go; the force would destroy me.
When I next opened my eyes I watched the room turn from grey to pink to yellow to grey again. Night came and went, mixing with day until there was no difference. I pulled Mum’s blankets over me and lay close to her. I let myself slide back to where the sheep’s light began, where it was always shining. I heard the telephone ring. ‘Leave it, love, it won’t be anyone. Wrong number.’ I watched the light change again; pale orange, black, yellow. I was slowing down, setting myself to the clock of Mum. When I breathed I only took in the tiniest puffs, just enough for the smallest rise and the smallest fall. With each breath I took in less. The telephone rang and rang. ‘Oh, just leave it, Jimmy, we’ve got each other, we’re alright on our own, aren’t we, love?’
I rubbed my hand up and down her arm as if I could transmit life through my cells into hers, over the elbow, up to the shoulder and down again, her skin hard and cold beneath my fingers. ‘Pop down the shops, love, be a good boy.’
‘Yes, Mum, yes. For jam supremes, Mum. Supreme surprise.’
‘Funny boy. Don’t be long, love. I’ll miss you.’
‘No, Mum, I won’t be long.’
‘We’re alright, you and me, just the two of us, hey?’
‘Yes, Mum, just the two of us. Milk for your tea? Milk for your tea?’
‘My good boy, my little man, I’ll miss you, little man.’
‘I won’t be long, Mum. I won’t be long!’
‘I know you won’t be long, my love. I know.’
‘You know, don’t you, Mum?’
‘I do, Jimmy.’
‘Good, Mum. Good.’
‘I love you, Jimmy.’
‘I love you, Mum.’
I never went to the toilet; I don’t know what came out of me or where it went. I never left her side at all.
I heard knocking on the door: knock knock knock. Knock knock knock. I tried to push in underneath her while I waited for the knocking to stop but she was stiff and heavy. At last the knocking ended and it was just the two of us again.
Sometimes I got out of the bed and went to her bathroom where I drank from the tap, putting my face close to the spout, holding out my tongue like the lambs, feeling the cool and living water entering my parched tubes. Then I went back to the bed and climbed in under the blanket. I held on as the land of her turned to winter.
Part Four
‘Wake up, Jim, wake up!’
Men lifted me into the air. I looked for my mother in the bed but she was gone. I saw the shape where she had been; the full round valley, the low dips and gentle rises. I opened my mouth to call for her but I couldn’t make any sound. I turned in time to see men carrying a narrow bed through the door with a body beneath a sheet. I tried to follow but it was too late.
‘Haven’t you been able to contact anybody? What about the father?’
‘We’re trying. Apparently he left a couple of months ago.’
‘Keep looking. And didn’t the neighbour say there was a brother?’
‘Yes, and she also said he was off the coast of Kalbarri somewhere on a fishing boat.’
‘That’s just great. There’s an uncle too. Up north. Has an
yone tried him?’
‘We’re trying.’
When I opened my eyes I saw that I was in a bed with a policeman standing on either side. Their words floated over my feet.
I closed my eyes and rolled them back so I could look inside. I saw the skin sac that enclosed my network, but the network itself was gone. There was only empty space; I couldn’t see the boundaries.
A man stood beside the bed. He said, ‘Jim, are you awake? Can you hear me?’ The man’s voice was warm, like a small fire of twigs and coal. ‘Jim? Can you hear me?’ I opened my eyes. I was in a bright white room with a row of beds. Above every bed was a window. I tried to swallow but my throat felt dry. The man passed me a glass of water and I took a small sip.
‘Do you think he might be ready for something to eat?’ A woman in a white dress put a tray with egg and baked beans and a glass of milk and peaches in syrup beside the bed.
‘We’ll see how we go,’ said the man. He looked down at a notepad in his hands. ‘Your name’s Jim, right? Jim Flick?’
I nodded.
‘I’m Andrew,’ he said. ‘I’m here to help you.’
I listened to him, but it was as if he was talking about somebody else. Here to help who?
‘Jim, do you know what happened to you?’
What happened to me? What did he mean? I opened my mouth to ask but I was prevented; something was blocked.
‘Jim, you’ve been through a tough time. The good news is your uncle is coming down to get you. Rodney – you remember him, don’t you? Rodney?’
I nodded. Rodney was from another time.
Andrew put his hand on my arm. ‘I am sorry about your mother, Jim.’
Sorry? What did he do?
Andrew stood up. ‘You don’t know where your father is, do you, Jim? We don’t know where to look.’
The smell here was like Blitz floor cleaner. I looked at the tray of food and I didn’t want any of it. I lay back, the pillow cool beneath my head. I was on my own; Andrew must have left.