by Van Badham
Viewed another way …
I saw my mother, in the dream I’d had, touching my mermaid tail. Then I remembered the two of us on a street in the city, when I was little; she saw something, someone; she grabbed my wrist and started running down the street, and my wrist buckled in her grasp, and my feet didn’t touch the ground, and on a sunny day, black clouds of a storm came out of nowhere. A white bolt of lightning shot across the sky so suddenly that people shrieked in the crowds we pushed through. Rain came – driving rain. Water was all around us. My mother pushed me into a shop and said, ‘Safe. We’re safe.’
Sophie, were you frightened by the storm? If you’d been home by six, you would have missed it.
Dreams and coincidences, I told myself – my overactive imagination made them horror movies and nightmares. This was not real life.
I hit ‘Send’ and the email disappeared, but I sat in my bedroom in front of the computer and, for a solid minute, I trembled.
54
‘Nikki told me what happened with the glass – are you okay?’
Those were Michelle’s first words when she joined me on the bus the next morning.
‘Yeah, fine,’ I said as she sat down. ‘Brody was the one who—’
‘You know they took him to hospital?’
‘They what?’
‘Ms Dwight took him at lunchtime.’
‘Did he come back to school?’
Michelle shook her head. ‘He was going on like it was nothing, but everyone who saw the blood said it looked pretty bad.’
I realised I was gripping the seat handle in front of me. ‘He’ll be okay,’ I said, but it sounded like a question.
‘Soph, they had to make him go,’ she said, prying my hands from the handle. ‘That indicates he’s pretty tough. Poor Ms Dwight. You know Nikki’s asked for a transfer out of her class?’
‘Will she get one?’
‘Not if she keeps saying it’s because the classroom’s cursed. Idiot. All the classes in there were moved to the library yesterday. It was a mess. It’s amazing that he got you out of there, though. Did you get cut?’
I shook my head. ‘Nurse is praying for me anyway.’
‘That’ll help,’ Michelle said. Her expression was suddenly thoughtful. ‘One minute he’s putting someone in hospital, the next he’s hurting himself to keep you out of it. Maybe his psycho days are over.’ Michelle nodded. ‘I’ve gotta say, I think it’s a sign.’
‘I don’t believe in signs,’ I said darkly, and stared ahead.
55
English was the first subject of the day and it was a library period. Ashley Ventwood was back, looking even paler than usual; but, maybe because she lacked the strength, she didn’t target any glowers at me. When she picked a table in the far corner of the library, I took Michelle’s hand and guided her to a table in the opposite corner, near the partition. It stung a little when Michelle, who realised what I was doing, shot Ashley an assessing glance and said to me, ‘You know she’s coming to Belinda’s party?’
‘Ashley Ventwood?’
‘She’s RSVP’ed on Facebook,’ Michelle said with a shrug.
‘Gonna be big then,’ I said, trying to sound neutral.
‘Gonna be huge,’ said Michelle.
According to the handout, Michelle and I were supposed to be researching the domestic world of Jane Austen. She was a little surprised when, amongst The Regency Kitchen and Three Centuries of British Costume, I plonked a copy of What Makes Children Kill? on the reading table.
‘Uh, Soph—’
‘Just look for a picture of a little boy with dark eyebrows.’
‘There are heaps of little boys,’ said Michelle, flipping the pages. ‘Wow, did these kids all murder people?’
‘You can’t miss this one,’ I said. ‘It’s black and white, a whole left page. Stabbed a woman forty-nine times.’ I couldn’t bring myself to look.
‘When he was nine?’ asked Michelle, reading the caption.
I nodded. ‘Who do you think he looks like?’
‘He looks totally like Brody Meine! I’m going to borrow this and show it to Nikki.’
I paused, in actual fear of her answer. ‘Do you think it could be him?’
‘If Brody Meine’s one of the undead,’ said Michelle. ‘Read the caption: this kid was born in 1964.’
She held up the book with the picture in it. The child’s face, examined properly, did look a lot like Brody’s – but infinitely less than it had on Wednesday.
A smile broke across my face.
‘Why were you reading a book like this?’ asked Michelle, not expecting an answer. She tapped our growing pile of books with the rubber end of her pencil and got to work.
56
My next period was Maths, and I entered the classroom with my smile still attached. Kylie and Fran were both there, their Maths notes in front of them. I wondered as I took my seat next to Kylie if maybe it was the stress of changing schools that had warped my perception of my first few days at Yarrindi. Light came in from an (unbroken) window and I actually relaxed as I began reading the problems on the board.
Then a small piece of paper, weighted by folding, landed in the middle of my notes. I looked to Kylie. She smiled.
The note read: Heard about yesterday. Glad you’re okay. Brody’s away today, in case you were wondering. He wasn’t in English.
And at the bottom of the note was a large smile.
Knowing that the Maths teacher was buried in a book of his own, I scribbled back on the piece of paper.
Why the smile?’
Because you LIKE HIM, came Kylie’s response. In a quick glance I saw she was grinning.
I froze. After a second, I wrote, He saved my life. I totally LOVE HIM.
Kylie’s pen scratched under the line I’d just written. Yeah, yeah, yeah …
Now I wrote: Do you know something I don’t know?
I’ve got my sources …
Who’s been telling stories?
Kylie wrote the letters out slowly. F-R-A-N appeared on the page.
Blood shot to my cheeks and my face was instantly hot. I stopped. Stared at the letters on the paper. With all the slow cool I could muster, I looked up to Kylie and saw Fran on the other side of her, staring at me with a patronising smile.
I rolled my eyes and gave a theatrical smirk. I wrote, Yeah, nice one, ladies, on the piece of paper, shook my head, and refocused on the Maths problem in my notebook. I heard Kylie scrunch the piece of paper into a ball, and she tossed it towards a bin at the front of the room. It bounced off the corner of the wall, but fell in.
My hand was wrapped around my pendant so tightly that my knuckles were turning white.
57
Kylie’s source was Fran. Fran’s source, obviously, was Michelle. As I walked – barely walked, more like sloped – down the corridor to Modern History, my heart rattled against my rib cage with betrayal. I played cool in front of Kylie, farewelled her and Fran at the end of Maths with a bland, ‘See you at recess,’ but the second they were gone, I grappled in my bag for my mobile phone, slumped against the corridor wall and frantically dialled Lauren.
It rang but she didn’t answer. Stupid junior boys buffeted against me in the corridor. I didn’t care. I dialled Lauren again. It rang out.
As sweat started beading on my face, my phone beeped. Lauren had texted: What? What?! Am in class!
Traitor Michelle has told Fran I like Brody and now everyone knows. What do I do?
One second … Two seconds … Waiting for a response was agonising.
The phone beeped. Deny. Deny. Deny.
My thumbs were frantic at the number pad. What if they tell Brody?
Laugh it off. I reckon they’re probably the ones with reputations for being bimbos, not you.
I took a deep breath, launched myself from the wall and slipped my phone back into my bag. I tried to cheer myself up by thinking of Fran finding dead mice in her schoolbag or having cockroaches crawl over her shoulde
rs in class – problem was, Michelle’s image kept appearing next to Fran’s, whispering about me and Brody.
I was so distracted by these fantasies that I wandered absently to Room 150, where I usually had Modern History, and wondered for a moment why the door was locked and where the other students were. That I’d managed to forget the literally shattering events of yesterday proved just how preoccupied I was.
I turned on my heel and headed in the direction of the library, where I remembered Michelle saying classes had been moved. Kylie had said Brody wasn’t around today, and somehow I knew that it was true. The heavy, hypnotic awareness I usually felt before Modern History was absent as I turned the corner to the library. A sense of loss at this was tempered with the fear that if Brody heard the new girl liked him he might be embarrassed and avoid me. Or, worse, feel sorry for me.
These thoughts evaporated the moment I saw who was standing next to Ms Dwight, just beyond the library entrance.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said, the blood draining from my face.
‘I’m sorry to take you out of school, but you have to come with me,’ said my mother, ‘there’s been an accident.’
58
‘I know it sounds callous,’ said my mother as the blue Getz took another curve on the highway, ‘but in a way I was almost relieved when I found out.’
We were travelling at maybe a hundred and ten kilometres an hour and my mother’s smooth driving was strangely lulling. This was hilly, coastal country and the roads rose, fell and twisted, but my mother was always in perfect control of the car. ‘I’ve been anxious for days,’ she continued. ‘I was sure that something was going to happen to you, or to your father. This horrible tension in my blood – it meant it had to be a relative.’
‘Is she okay? Will she be okay? Why won’t you tell me what happened?’ I asked. In my hand my mobile phone buzzed: Kylie and Michelle wanted to know if I was okay. I thumbed back: Nanna in hospital. I didn’t have the information to tell them anything else.
‘I curdled the milk the other morning I was so worried,’ Mum continued.
‘Mum,’ I said, ‘you cannot curdle milk.’ The lush green hills dotted with dairy cows that we sped past were a poignant contrast to the anxiety in the car.
‘With your nanna, at least – she’s an old woman now, these things are going to happen,’ said Mum, her eyes focused on the road. ‘We all have to accept as she gets older, they’ll happen more and more. Maybe this is good timing, maybe this has happened to teach us how to be prepared. At least we know she’s all right. I just hope they’ve made her comfortable.’
‘Will you just tell me what happened? Please?’ I begged. If Nanna was all right, it was something of an overreaction for Mum to drag me out of school and race me to the hospital to see her.
‘There was a bird,’ she said as the road rose again and the ocean revealed itself to the east, ‘a bloody bird got into the house and it was trying to get out through the bathroom skylight. She was trying to bring it down and it attacked her.’
My mother’s mother was a tiny old Finnish lady whose silver hair had an almost lavender glow. She wore pastel shirts and jeans and sneakers and the idea of anything attacking her was inconceivable. ‘A bird put her in hospital?’ I asked, outraged.
Mum shook her head. ‘Not quite. Her neighbour, Graham, heard this terrible noise and your nanna shrieking and he jumped his back fence and let himself in through the sliding doors. He went up the stairs and got a towel over the bird. Your nanna was out of the bathroom by then, standing by that window at the top of the stairs,’ said Mum, and I could hear the anxiety in her voice as she described it. ‘Graham was trying to get the bird out of the window in your nanna’s study, but it escaped and flew straight for the window on the landing, hit your nan and she fell.’
‘Fell?’
‘Poor old Graham – he saw the bird clip her, and he says she twisted on her ankle, snapped it and fell down both parts of the stairs. Apparently, she broke her fall with her head – it went straight through the wall next to the kitchen and she was knocked out cold. He got down there and she was all grey and shaking and sweating, so he called an ambulance straight away.’
‘At least he was there,’ I said.
‘If he hadn’t’ve been there it may not have happened. Your grandmother has survived many things – I’m sure she could have handled a bird.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘They think it’s just bruising, not a serious head injury, but her ankle’s broken.’
Mum fell silent. I thought of my beloved nanna, grey and trembling, and I shuddered. I was glad that Mum had come to fetch me, whether Nanna’s condition was that bad or not. I hoped she knew that I was coming; I had a feeling that would cheer her up.
‘When did it happen?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday,’ Mum said.
‘She’s been in hospital all that time?’
‘Graham was really in a state – he didn’t know how to contact me. Finally, he tracked me down through my old job at Flower Power. I hate hospitals. Horrible places. I packed up some things to make her more comfortable, threw them in the car and picked you up as soon as I could.’
I looked over my shoulder at the shallow box on the back seat. In other families, a comfort package for an elderly relative in hospital would probably consist of slippers, a nice nightie and a box of chocolates. There were slippers in our box, and a clean cotton nightie, to be sure. They were nestled next to a lemon balm plant in a pot, a bouquet of leafy eucalyptus twigs, blue candles set in square wooden holders, and a large canister of peppermint tea. I turned back towards the windscreen with a sigh.
‘When did it all happen?’ I asked. ‘Yesterday morning?’
‘No,’ Mum said. ‘Around noon.’
The same time as the glass had shattered in Room 150.
The car swooped around another corner. Mum gripped the steering wheel of the car so anxiously that I decided to keep tales of shattering glass to myself.
59
We made it to Sydney, navigated the streets around St George Hospital and found parking. We made an enquiry at the hospital reception desk, shuffled down some hallways into an elevator and then followed an infinite corridor lined with swinging doors. Finally, we found the desk that administered the ward to which my grandmother had been admitted.
‘I’m Louhi Salainen’s daughter,’ said my breathless mother to a pleasant, thin-faced ward sister behind the desk. ‘I spoke to someone on the phone.’
‘You’ll be pleased to hear she’s awake,’ said the ward sister, rising from her seat. ‘And she’s remembered how to speak English. I’ll take you in.’
My mother and I followed the nurse towards Nanna’s room. I could tell by my mother’s pinched gait that she was a lot more worried than she was letting on. I saw the leaves of the lemon balm plant shaking in her hands.
Nanna’s room contained four beds. At first I didn’t even think she was in there. One of the beds closest to the door had its curtain drawn and the other was empty. Beyond the empty bed was a thin, shrivelled-looking woman whose brassy blonde hair was only a few shades yellower than her jaundiced skin. Opposite her was a pale blue lady, with an ankle in traction, whose face I hardly recognised.
‘Mutsi!’ gasped Mum, dashing towards the side of the blue lady’s bed, dumping her box of hippie treats on a bedside table and grabbing Nanna’s hand. Nanna hardly moved.
‘You’ve got some visitors, Louhi,’ said the ward sister in a crisp voice, before saying to me, ‘She’s a lot tougher than you’d think, your nan. Go sit with her. You’ll know if she’s not up to talking.’
Nanna’s head rolled towards Mum as I walked to the other side of her bed. ‘Taika …’ she said.
Mum grabbed a chair with one hand, clearly not wanting to let Nanna go. ‘Sophie’s here,’ Mum said in a weak voice.
Nanna’s head rolled towards me. Her ice-blue eyes gave a determined sparkle. ‘Hello, Little Bear,’ she said sweetly.
It was what she had called me since I was a baby.
I leaned over the bed and kissed her on the head. ‘Hello, Mummi,’ I said, pressing the extent of my Finnish. ‘I heard you forgot how to speak English.’
She waved away my concerns with a limp hand. ‘I was just pretending,’ she said in her musical Finnish accent. ‘They’re all very nice to me but hospitals are so silly.’ She spoke very slowly and I could see that was another worry for Mum.
‘Did they drug you?’ Mum asked.
‘Nothing too bad,’ Nanna replied.
Mum’s frown was very dark, but she distracted herself. ‘I brought some things,’ she said, dropping the slippers and the nightie into the bedside drawer. She brandished the lemon balm plant and the canister of tea at Nanna before setting them down. Then she tied the bouquet of eucalypt twigs to the bed frame. I glanced across the aisle and saw the jaundiced woman looking curious.
‘What kind of candles?’ asked Nanna when Mum started to set them in their holders on the bedside table.
‘The sandalwood’s buried in the candle holder,’ replied Mum, a lighter in her hand.
Nanna smiled approvingly. ‘They won’t like that,’ she said as the blue candles were lit and a soft, woody scent filled the air.
‘What’s that?’ asked the jaundiced woman with a croak.
‘Bark-box candles. My daughter makes them,’ replied Nanna, with, I thought, a slightly false smile.
‘They won’t like this, either,’ said Mum in a low voice, removing from the carry box something I had not seen in the car. It was a pendant, but it could not have been more different to mine. It was on a thick chain; the metal holding the stone was black and heavy, and the stone itself was a dark red.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Something that’s for the old and not the young,’ said Nanna, her eyes shining. ‘It’s not for being pretty,’ she added mischievously, a little colour coming into her cheeks. I watched her take a deep inhalation of the aroma from the candles. Mum, I saw, was rubbing lemon balm leaves on Nanna’s hands and humming something that sounded like a folk tune.