by Van Badham
I listed the names of the streets on my left as we rambled down the hill. After Boronia came Neirbo, Carler, Montgomery and Cawlish, and train tracks ran under the intersection where Frankston met the highway at a roundabout. Mum and I crossed the intersection via a pedestrian bridge – on the other side, Frankston became Yarrindi Road, the town’s commercial district. On the corner of Yarrindi Road and the highway was a petrol station.
It was a Sunday, and back in Baulkham Hills that meant that most people were in church or coming out of it. Here, though, I noticed that there were heaps of people making use of a public park that lay north of the town centre. The park was dotted with trees, and had an old-fashioned rotunda with lattice balustrades. ‘The park leads onto the beach,’ Mum said, ‘Do you want to walk down there?’
I got the feeling that the beach would be a place I’d encounter soon enough, no matter what kind of friends I made at school. ‘Let’s look at the shops,’ I suggested, so we continued down the street.
I’d felt uncomfortable in my warm, sweaty clothes and my silly hat before we saw any people, but on Yarrindi Road I now felt acutely self-conscious. I guessed that the town attracted a lot of tourists, but surely some of the teenagers walking in and out of shops were locals? Mum pointed out homewares shops, and the supermarket, the post office and a tiny arts centre converted from the old fire station. Other shops hung bright kites and windsocks from their frontages in an obvious attempt to lure tourists. Amongst a fruit market, a couple of cafés, Tea’sers (where Mum would start work tomorrow), some restaurants and a toy store, I registered the presence of surf shops and boutiques with some relief. As we passed racks of reduced clothing displayed on the street, with girls my own age sorting through the bargain bikinis and tank tops, I slyly removed my black hat.
Mum stopped in her tracks. ‘Put that back on.’
‘We’re under cover!’
‘Sophie,’ she said in a commanding voice, ‘I don’t want you to burn.’
Blood rushed to my cheeks but I was terrified that she’d say my name even louder, so I replaced the hated hat immediately and cantered a few quick steps ahead. Had the girls at the racks heard my name? Were they from my new school? Was I seared into their memory as the mummy’s-girl loser in the hat? I broadcast a prayer to all major religions that this wasn’t the case.
That feeling was rising again, the feeling that my mother was overstepping some kind of newly established territory marker in my life. The hat – that stupid hat – seemed to scorch the crown of my head with its significance of her control. My brain made rapid, defiant decisions: I was going to stand up to her, I was going to be independent, I was going to make my own life and my own future and here, here in Yarrindi, I – not her – would mark out the person I was going to be.
Mum said, ‘In here.’
A shop bell rang and I half-noticed we were walking through the glass doors of an ice-creamery. As we were confronted by a glass counter filled with tubs of fluorescent frozen sugar, she added, ‘You’ve been a good girl with this move, so you can have whatever you want.’
I grimaced, but my eyes rolled hungrily over the tubs of chocolate, double chocolate, chocolate lime and the twenty other flavours.
I’d almost decided on jaffa and cherry when there was another ring of the shop bell and my attention was distracted from the ice-cream – more or less permanently.
A boy had walked into the shop. He had pale skin and broad shoulders. His light brown hair fell to below his ears with a fringe that flopped into his eyes. He wore black jeans, green Adidas trainers and a grey T-shirt. He tossed back his fringe with a careless flick of his hand. For a second – even less – the tiniest sliver of a second – his green eyes shone at mine.
My heart raced, and a voice deep in my blood hollered: I want that, I want that, I want that.
7
Maybe it would have been embarrassing to keep staring at him. It was vastly more embarrassing when my mother barked, ‘Sophie! Sophie, stop looking!’ into my ear.
Under the brim of my hat, my face was purple. I stared at the floor in shame. I hoped the sounds of the street outside, a transaction at the counter and pop on the radio had been enough to drown her out.
‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ I mumbled, shrinking into my ugly snowball shirt. I was too scared to look past the brim of the hat, lest the whole shop – and that boy, that gorgeous boy – were laughing at me.
I felt my mother’s fingers sink into my shoulder like talons, dragging me towards her. I heard her reach for the pendant at her neck. Its silver chain tinkled.
‘Please let go of me,’ I said.
She didn’t move. Her fingers twitched in my shoulder.
‘Mum, please—’ My face was burning. I felt like screaming but I kept my voice low. ‘If you want to leave, let’s just leave!’
I heard a door swing behind us and the shop bell ring. Pop on the radio. The room seemed suddenly less crowded – and I knew the boy had gone.
At the sound of the door closing, my mother’s hand flicked from my shoulder to my chin, forcing me to look at her.
‘You’re embarrassing me!’ I said, rubbing my shoulder.
‘You ever see that boy again, you are to stay away from him,’ Mum said. ‘You don’t even look at him, you understand?’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, risking a glance around the shop. No one seemed to be looking at us, but I couldn’t be sure.
Mum straightened her spine and released the pendant from her hand. The sapphire bounced against her chest. ‘You’re too young for boys,’ she said. ‘Please make a decision about your ice-cream. I don’t want to be here all day.’
8
When Mum and I got home, I discovered that Dad had set up my computer and the internet for me while we were gone.
In the end, it had turned out to be only half a walk. Mum’s behaviour in the ice-creamery had sent me into some kind of wordless shock. I didn’t want to argue in public; it would have been pointless anyway – if Mum was prepared to grab my chin like I was five years old, I knew she wasn’t going to listen to anything I said, rational or not. I staggered out of the shop like a zombie, barely noticing the vanilla ice-cream melting in my hand (it was the only flavour I could remember when it came time to actually place an order). Mum decided I was too dehydrated to last the walk home, so we caught a taxi back to Boronia Road.
‘Now, make sure you start unpacking your stuff,’ Dad said as I disappeared into my room. My cheeks were still burning. I didn’t speak, just nodded stiffly and closed my door. I’d thank Dad later. Right now, shock had given way to anger and I needed to let it out.
I wasn’t going to shout at my mother. Long ago I’d learned that shouting at Mum only resulted in cold stares and a mutual bitterness so acrid it made water taste stale. I was going to deal with Mum’s hat.
In amongst the garbage bags of clothes and unpacked boxes of books, I found my wastepaper basket. It had my alarm clock, an old teddy bear and a threadbare hoodie packed inside it – all of which I tipped out onto my bed. I stuffed the hat into the bottom of the bin and shoved the bin under my desk, then I smiled. I felt like I’d completed my first act of real defiance in my life. Now I wanted to brag about it.
I opened my Gmail account and started writing an email to Lauren when a chat window popped up. Lauren was online.
Thank God, I wrote, I was just beginning to email you.
Miss me already? Aww. How’s the place?
Near the beach. You have to come visit.
And leave the Western Suburbs? Are you crazy?
My mother’s driving me crazy.
What happened?
This amazing guy walked into the ice-creamery while I was there.
A real live boy?!
Light brown hair … green eyes …
Did you TALK to him?
Right, so my mother LOSES it and tells me I’m too young to even look at him.
I didn’t think your mother had problems
with you and guys … ?
I guess it’s never been an issue before.
Does he go to your new school?
Don’t know.
Sigh. At least you know you’ve got hormones. Congratulations. Lauren, I wrote, hitting the return key for emphasis, do you think my mother dominates my life?
How honest do you want me to be?
Totally. Do you?
YES.
I was taken aback. Why?
Have you ever bought your own clothes?
Of course!
When your mother wasn’t there?
I thought about it. No. No, you’re right. What else?
Does she ever give you any privacy? She’s always … hanging around. Every time I ever went to your place, she was there. I mean, she’s nice, really generous, but—
What?
No reply.
But what?
I reckon if your mother didn’t like someone, she’d find a way of keeping them away from you.
I had a sudden memory of Gina Hershott, a girl I’d befriended for the few short months I’d spent at Bowral High in Year 9. Mum thought Gina was too boy-crazy for a fourteen-year-old. If I spent time with Gina, she stipulated it always had to be at our house. Gradually, Gina stopped coming over. Even more gradually, she stopped speaking to me at school. Not long after that, we moved.
You disagree? wrote Lauren.
Why didn’t you ever say this before?
Are you angry with me? I don’t want to slag off your mum. She’s always been nice to me. I just think – you know, you’re almost seventeen. Stand up for yourself.
Why didn’t you ever say this before? I repeated.
There was a pause.
Your mum, Lauren wrote, she scares me.
9
After my chat with Lauren I unpacked my books onto my bookshelves. I set up my stereo next to my computer on my desk. My moisturisers and what few items of makeup I owned were in open baskets on my dresser, in front of a mirror. I plugged in my alarm clock, and I sentimentally tucked the old teddy bear into my freshly made bed.
The four bags of clothing, however, sat like swollen toads in the middle of my room. I knew it would be sensible to sort them out now, but Lauren’s words kept typing and retyping themselves across the blank screen of my brain.
Have you ever bought your own clothes?
When your mother wasn’t there?
I was going crazy. My mother was a strong and kind woman who loved me more than all the world. But here, in this new room, those green bags seemed to give off the uncomfortable stench of her control. Lauren was right. Not a single article of clothing in them had ever really been my choice.
I like my body. It’s not a supermodel’s body but it’s a body that has a healthy shape. It occurred to me, thinking of my clothes, that I didn’t own anything that flattered my curves. All my tops were high-necked and shapeless. All my pants and jeans were boxy and square. I’m not particularly tall, and all the skirts I owned reached just below my knees, long enough to make my hips look wider than they were and my legs look stumpy.
It was a strange realisation. It made me feel clever and stupid at the same time; clever because I felt the pieces of a puzzle coming together under my hands, stupid because I realised I should have solved the puzzle long ago.
I was almost seventeen and had been living my entire teenage years as some kind of social misfit in square jeans. Tomorrow, I decided, I was going to walk out the door and start a life out of my mother’s shadow.
I liked the black blouse I had meant to wear on the walk earlier today; I liked the cotton trousers. I took them, one comfortable pair of blue jeans, a plain black T-shirt and some underwear and dropped the lot into a single drawer of my dresser. Everything else I hauled, with the help of my desk chair, onto the top shelf of the built-in wardrobe.
Too irritated to focus on anything but my own tiredness, I stretched out on my bed and fell asleep.
10
That night, I had difficult dreams.
One dream was a memory of when I was a little girl. We were at the beach and I was playing in the water when I got caught in a rip. I still remember floating out further from the shore, my head bobbing in the green water as I gasped what air I could amidst wet bubbles of confusion. At the point where I started to sink into the darker depths of the water, a white hand shot through the water, grabbing my polka-dot swimsuit and dragging me from water to air. I swallowed oxygen and my mother, my rescuer, cried, holding my tiny body to her own. She was – I’ll remember this always – completely dressed, and soaking wet.
The dream replayed this scene, exact but for one exception. When my mother held me in her arms, out of the water, out of danger, I looked down at myself and saw, not legs, but the silvery tail of a fish. ‘Little mermaid,’ my mother cooed, and held me tight.
In the next dream I was back in our old house in Baulkham Hills. I had a book in my arms and was climbing the staircase to the bedrooms. A dark shadow crossed the top of the stairs, blocking my path. Without seeing his face, I knew it was the boy from the ice-creamery.
Here’s the difficult part: in the dream, the boy hugged me and his embrace was soaking wet. He said, ‘Little mermaid,’ into my ear. Then I woke up.
Again, I woke sweating in a sunbeam; I had to start rolling down the blinds before bed. I found my dressing-gown on the floor and hurriedly scampered towards the shower.
‘I’ve packed your bag, and your uniform’s ironed,’ I heard Mum say as I scurried between doors. In the shower, my brain replayed more of last night’s chat.
Your mum, she scares me.
Showered, dried, I came into the lounge room, where Mum had set up the ironing board, and I snatched up the pieces of my uniform – the white blouse, blue blazer and blue skirt of Baulkham Hills Girls. I had decided this kit would make do until I got the Yarrindi uniform. In front of the mirror, I brushed my hair until it was thick and shiny and put it into a ponytail. For luck, I scraped some black mascara onto my eyelashes and smeared a little pink lip gloss onto my lips. Ignoring my nasty black school shoes, I slipped on the black canvas shoes from yesterday and hoped Mum would be too rattled with her own preparations to notice.
‘The first day of the rest of your life,’ I said to the mirror, and forced myself to smile.
11
Mum drove me to the school – which I didn’t want. It wouldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes to walk, but Mum was convinced I’d have to be early to sort out ‘paperwork’ and I didn’t – yet – have the energy to fight her.
When she had parked in the school car park, Mum reached for her bag.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked her.
‘Making sure your enrolment’s in order.’
‘Do they know I’m coming?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Mum had a lipstick in her hand and was adding a chocolate-coloured shine to her mouth in the rear-view mirror.
‘Then I’m enrolled,’ I said. ‘And you can go.’
Mum smacked her lips. ‘Don’t be silly. What if there’s a problem?’
‘If there’s a problem, I’m sure they’re not going to kick me out on the street.’ I summoned as much positivity as I could and said, ‘I can do this alone. I’ll be fine.’
Mum rustled for something in her handbag.
‘Mum, I really am fine. You get ready for work.’ And, because I thought it would help, I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, taking only a nanosecond longer to snatch my bag and tumble out of the car, slamming the door behind me.
I was halfway to the front office when I heard a window roll down and Mum cry out, ‘I’ll call you later.’ Smiling with victory, I waved at her only over my shoulder. I felt ten kilos lighter as the car drove away, and I was convinced it was going to be a brilliant day.
12
‘This is Sophie, she’s from Sydney,’ said the teacher in my first class at Yarrindi High.
The other kids could not have looked more bored if they
tried. The woman from the front office who’d brought me to the classroom disappeared, and the colourless Maths teacher (Mr Garbing? Mr Garden?) ushered me to a seat to the left of the outer horseshoe of tables – the class was only small and I was sitting next to no one. I looked to my right and smiled politely at a girl with pale blonde hair who smiled politely back. The teacher said, ‘Open to page seventy-one,’ and everyone did. The day’s brilliance dimmed.
While everyone worked, more or less silently (there were a couple of girls in the corner trying to have a written conversation with pens and margin notes), I stole some glances around the room. The girls in the corner could have been the same kind of girls I’d shared many classes with at Baulkham Hills – the Restless Girls who were more interested in socks and pens than in the teacher and the blackboard. There were a couple of boys with blank faces, the obligatory shy girl (the pale blonde), a nondescript girl who was muttering to herself while she wrote, and a guy with long hair who clearly wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.
All wore the pale green shirts and black pants or shorts of the Yarrindi uniform in their own subcultural variations. The Restless Girls wore their tops and trousers tight, with their hair out. The shy girl and the muttering girl wore their shirts loose and their hair pinned back.
Only the guy with the long hair showed even a flicker of interest in me.
With his long black shorts and band T-shirt, he looked like the most interesting person in the room, but a silent Maths class wasn’t really the place to start up a conversation. I put my head down and got on with my work.
Before the bell rang, the Maths teacher asked what my next class was. ‘Modern History,’ I said, referring to a printout I’d been given in the office.
‘Who’s got Modern?’ he asked the room, and the pale blonde girl put up her hand.
‘Joanie will take you to Modern,’ said the teacher, adding, as the bell rang, ‘Enjoy your first day …’ with a slight pause ‘… Sophie.’