Something Special, Something Rare

by Black Inc.

  She can feel her temperature rising, a headache beginning. They have been looking for twenty minutes. Matthew is still standing at the bin, hands on hips, his back to her. She is beginning to feel a panicky pain beneath her ribs. But Matthew is quite calm, standing there watching the bin as though it were a view.

  It is her fault. This fact makes her angrier.

  ‘Where the – ’ she lifts a pile of heavy books and then lets them fall from a height, slamming on to the table ‘–fuck are they!’

  She falls into one of the chairs, grabbing shoes from the floor, shaking each one.

  She looks across at Matthew. ‘What if we don’t find them?’

  She hears her voice, the sound of her own panic. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t answer.

  ‘What are we going to do, Matt?’

  Then as she watches him she sees his hands in his pockets. He turns around slowly. She stares at him, and he smiles.

  He’s got them.

  ‘It’s OK babe, calm down, we’ll find them.’ He takes his hands – carefully, it seems now – out of his pockets, steps towards her across the orange carpet that reminds her, suddenly, of pubic hair. He leans down and puts two hands on her shoulders. She feels her body stiffen, her head is hot.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t put them in your pocket accidentally?’ she asks slowly, keeping her voice even, looking him in the eyes. He rears back, making a face. ‘Course I’m sure!’ But his hands stay on her bare brown shoulders. She glances down at his pockets, trying to see any possible shape, but he moves off, soundless, back into the kitchen, and bends to open the fridge door. ‘My flatmate once put keys in the fridge,’ he says, squinting into the square of light, reaching in to shift jars and bottles.

  Mandy goes to the bathroom. She feels sick. She remembers the possums, his stroking her arm.

  Breathe. It’s ridiculous; of course he doesn’t have them.

  They have just gotten married.

  She hears the fridge door close and then another noise, his voice. She runs into the kitchen.

  ‘Ah, shit. Sorry, nope. My car keys.’ He holds them up.

  But he’s still smiling that odd little smile. She sees him glance back at the rubbish bin.

  Mandy’s heart begins to jolt in her chest. She walks to the bin.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Matthew says, but he stays where he is, running a hand lightly along the top of the fridge.

  She feels all the blood has gone out of her somehow, she is suddenly exhausted. ‘It’s OK,’ she murmurs. ‘I lost them, I’ll do it.’

  He says, ‘Babe, don’t be like that.’ But he doesn’t move.

  She hauls the heavy, thin plastic bag out of the bin, across the carpet and over the sharp lip of the metal frame of the sliding door. The bag tears and liquid oozes out. She grabs newspaper from the outdoor table and crawls around the deck, spreading the pages about. She does not care that Matthew is standing there, watching her.

  On the hot boards of the deck she crouches, upends the sweating black plastic and the thick, foetid smell springs up at her as the chicken bones and rotten fruit and oyster shells and nameless bits of sludge slide out. She lifts the bag away and a last wad of prawn shells falls wetly on her bare foot. The pink shells, and now her foot, are covered with tiny crawling ants.

  She kneels then, in the rubbish, not bothering to flick off the ants, picking through the sodden remnants of the garbage with her fingers, knowing she will not find the glint of metal there in the coffee grounds and onion skins and Band-Aids, among the screwed-up tissues and the black plastic trays dripping with red meat juice.

  She thinks of her father’s warm, rough hands over her own seven-year-old ones, holding the whirring kite spool. She thinks of all his disappointments.

  She does not look up when she hears Matthew cry out triumphantly from the living room. He appears in the doorway, holding up the keys on their huge blue and yellow plastic glob. ‘Would you believe it, under the bloody magazines! I’ll just have a piss and then we can go.’

  And smiling his smile, he tosses her the keys where she kneels.

  She catches them in her two hands, cupped against her chest. She feels the sharp edges hit her breastbone.

  CLOUD BUSTING

  TARA JUNE WINCH

  We go cloud busting, Billy and me, down at the beach, belly up to the big sky. We make rainbows that pour out from the tops of our heads, squinting our eyes into the gathering. Fairy-flossed pincushion clouds explode. We hold each other’s hand; squeeze really hard to build up the biggest brightest rainbow and bang! Shoot it up to the sky, bursting cloud suds that scatter escaping into the air alive.

  We toss our bodies off the eelgrass-covered dunes and down to the shore where seaweed beads trace the waterline. Little bronze teardrops – we bust them too. Bubble-wrapped pennies.

  We collect pipis, squirming our heels into the shallow water, digging deeper under the sandy foam. Reaching down for our prize, we find lantern shells, cockles, and sometimes periwinkles, bleached white. We snatch them up filling our pockets. We find shark egg capsules like dried-out leather corkscrews and cuttlebones and sand snail skeletons, and branches, petrified to stone. We find coral clumps, sponge tentacles and sea mats, and bluebottles – we bust with a stick. We find weed ringlet dolls’ wigs and strings of brown pearls; I wear them as bracelets. We get drunk on the salt air and laughter. We dance, wiggling our bottoms from the dunes’ heights. We crash into the surf, we swim, we dive, and we tumble. We empty our lungs and weight ourselves cross-legged to the seabed; there we have tea parties underwater. Quickly, before we swim up for mouthfuls of air.

  We’re not scared of the ocean, that doesn’t come until later. When we’re kids we have no fear, it gets sucked out in the rips. We swim with the current, like breeding turtles and hidden stingrays as we slither out onto the sand.

  We climb the dunes again, covered in sticky sand and sea gifts. We ride home and string up dry sea urchins at our window. We break open our pipis and our mum places each half under the grill or fries them in the saucepan, with onion and tomatoes. We empty our pockets and line the seashells along the windowsill. My mum starts on about the saucepans; she wants to tell us stories even though we know most of them off by heart, over and over, every detail. The saucepans she says, the best bloody saucepans.

  Billy and me sit at the window while she fries and begins her story. I’m still busting clouds through the kitchen pane, as they pass over the roof guttering and explode quietly in my rainbow.

  It was Goulburn, 1967, Mum would begin. Where’s that? We’d say. Somewhere far away, a Goulburn that doesn’t exist anymore, she’d answer, and carry on with her story.

  *

  Anyway, Goulburn, ’67. All my brothers and sisters had been put into missions by then, except Fred who went to live with my mother’s sister. And me, I was with my mother, probably cos my skin’s real dark, see, but that’s another story, you don’t need to know that. So old Mum and me, we’re sent to Goulburn from the river, to live in these little flats, tiny things. Flatettes or something. Mum was working for a real nice family, at the house cooking and cleaning; they were so nice to old Mum.

  I would go to work with her, used to sit outside and play and wait for her to finish. And when we came home Mum would throw her feet up on the balcony rail, roll off her stockings and smoke her cigarettes in the sun. Maybe talk with the other women, most of them were messed about, climbing those walls, trying to forget. It wasn’t a good time for the women, losing their children.

  Anyway, all us women folk were sitting up there this hot afternoon and down on the path arrived this white man, all suited up. Mum called down to him, I don’t know why, she didn’t know him. I remember she said, ‘Hey there mister, what you got there?’ A box was tucked under his arm. He looked up at all of us and smiled. He come dashing up the stairwell and onto our balcony. I think he would’ve been the only white person to ever step up there. He was smooth.

  ‘Good afternoon to you
ladies. In this box, I am carrying the best saucepans in the land.’

  Mum sucked on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the tin. ‘Give us a look then.’

  The suit opened up the box and arranged the saucepans on the balcony, the stainless steel shining and twinkling in the sun. They were magical. All the women whooped and wooed at the saucepans. They really were perfect. Five different sizes and a Dutch oven, for cakes. Strong black grooved handles on the sides and the lids, the real deal.

  ‘How much?’ Mum said, getting straight to the point.

  The suit started up then on his big speech about the saucepans: Rena ware, 18/10, only the best, and this and that, lifetime guarantee, all that sort of stuff. The women started laughing. They knew what the punchline was going to be, nothing that they could afford, ever. Their laughter cascaded over the balcony’s rails as they followed each other back into the shade of their rooms. ‘Steady there Alice, you got a little one to feed there too!’ they said, seeing Mum still entranced as they went inside.

  Mum sat there, watching his mouth move and the sun bouncing off the pans. He told her the price, something ridiculous, and Mum didn’t even flinch. She lit up another fag, puffed away. I think he was surprised, maybe relieved that she didn’t throw him out, and he rounded off his speech. Mum just sat there as he packed up the saucepans, getting himself together to leave. ‘You not gunna let me buy ’em then?’ Mum said, blowing smoke above our heads.

  ‘Would you like to, Miss?’

  ‘Of course I bloody do, wouldna sat here waiting for you to finish if I didn’t!’

  He laughed. Mum told him then that she couldn’t afford it, but she wanted them. So they made a deal. Samuel, the travelling salesman, would come by once a month, when money would come from the family, and he would take a payment each time.

  Mum worked extra hours from then on, sometimes taking home the ironing, hoping to get a little more from the lady of the house. And she did, just enough. And Samuel would come round and chat with Mum and the ladies and bring sweets for me. He and Mum would be chatting and drinking tea until it got dark outside. They became friends after all that time. Three years and seven months it took her. When Samuel came round on his last visit, with a box under his arm, just like the first time, Mum smiled big. He came into the flat and placed the box on the kitchen bench. ‘Open it,’ he said to Mum, and smiled down at me and winked.

  Mum pressed down the sides of her uniform then folded open the flaps and lifted out each saucepan, weighing them in her hands and squinting over at Samuel, puzzled. With each lid she pulled off tears gathered and fell. ‘What is it, what is it?’ I was saying, as I pulled a chair up against the bench. Under one lid was a big leg of meat, under another potatoes and carrots, a shiny chopping knife, then a bunch of eggs, then bread. And in the Dutch oven, a wonky-looking steamed pudding. Mum was crying too much to laugh at the cake.

  ‘I haven’t got a hand for baking yet. Hope you don’t mind I tested it out?’ Mum just shook her head, she couldn’t say a word and I think Samuel understood. He put on his smart hat, tilting it at Mum, and said, ‘Good day to you, Alice, good day, young lady.’

  And when Mum passed, she gave the pots to me.

  *

  When my mother finished her stories she’d be crying too, tiny streams down her cheekbones. I knew she would hock everything we ever owned, except the only things we did – five size-ranged saucepans, with Dutch oven. Still in their hard metal case, only a few handles chipped. I run my fingertips over fingerprints now, over years, generations. They haven’t changed much, they still linger patiently. They still smell of friendship. I suppose that to my grandmother, Samuel was much like a cloud buster. Letting in some hope from the sun. Their rainbow had been their friendship. And I suppose that to my mum, Samuel was someone who she wanted to stay around, like a blue sky. To Samuel, my mum and grandmother, I don’t know, maybe the exchange was even, and maybe when those clouds burst open, he got to feel the rain. A cleaning rain and maybe, that was enough.

  WHITE SPIRIT

  CATE KENNEDY

  The woman artist, Mandy, tells me on the Tuesday they need another day to finish the clothing in the foreground of the mural. She’s leaning against the table telling me this, rolling a cigarette. She’s got a look I would call high-maintenance – hair with lots of startling colour, stiff with gel and arranged to slope here and there, multiple earrings up her ear, lace-up combat boots. It’s a look designed to suggest she’s impoverished yet bohemian and individualistic, and nobody round here wears anything like what she’s got on. She and her boyfriend, the other artist, drive in each morning from another part of town, a suburb where you can get a double latte early in the morning sitting on an upturned milk-crate outside a café.

  The residents of this estate took a few surreptitious looks at this pair when they first arrived, and have chosen to stay out of their way since. We’ll have to invite some in specially, over the next couple of days, for the photo documentation we need. Some casual shots of the artists chatting and interacting with residents, facilitating important interchange. Community ownership. An appreciation of process. It’s all there in the grant evaluation forms.

  Mandy flips open some of the books she’s brought and taps an illustration. It’s of a couple of women in Turkey, standing at some festival in regional costumes, the embroidery on their blouses and hats and vests achingly bright.

  ‘That’s what we’re after,’ she says, dragging on her rollie. ‘We’re focusing on getting that design right. All the details and colours. See the women there?’

  She gestures to the mural, where her partner’s painting in the figures of three women. They’re prominent, next to the four laughing Eritrean children, who are holding a basketball.

  ‘Should that be a soccer ball?’ I say, half to myself.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Should those kids be holding a soccer ball instead? They’ve actually formed a whole team; they play on the oval on a Sunday afternoon. I think soccer’s more their thing.’

  I might be wrong. That might be the Somalis. But a furrow of concern appears on her brow.

  ‘Do they? That wasn’t in our brief. But we’ll change it, don’t worry. We’ll just blank out the orange and make it black and white.’

  ‘I don’t want to put you out, or start telling you how to do your job.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she says, grinning. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Cultural appropriateness.’ She exhales smoke and calls, ‘Jake! The African kids – it’s soccer, not basketball.’

  He stops painting, stands up and stretches, and frowns at the mural.

  ‘Do you reckon we’ll have to change their singlets then?’

  They both stand silently for a few moments, considering the image before them.

  ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘Leave the singlets. Nobody’ll notice that.’

  *

  They’d said in their interview, these two, that meeting the local community was their chief interest in applying for the job. They’d done similar things elsewhere – one at the Koori health centre, one at the credit co-operative, a portfolio of photos from a wall mural at a community market up in Queensland – and they said what kept them doing it was the rich sense of connection you achieved working alongside the very people you were depicting in your mural, and the growing sense of community ownership through collaboration. When they talked about the celebration of diversity, and how excited they were about all the different cultural groups represented on the estate, I’d felt the centre director, on the interview panel beside me, mentally checking boxes.

  Now I look in, sometimes, on my way to teaching a class or driving the community bus somewhere and I don’t want to hang around. They don’t seem too excited now. There’s nobody there but the two of them, with their big paint-splattered tarps and their ghetto blaster, music echoing round the empty basketball court as the mural gradually takes shape. Even the kids who usually come in here to shoot baskets after school are givin
g them a wide berth. It makes me uncomfortable, like I’ve let them down somehow, like it’s our process here at the centre which hasn’t worked. It’s awkward, this silence; tainted with failure that nobody wants to claim. We skirt around it, the three of us.

  ‘You’ll be finished by Thursday, won’t you?’ I say. ‘Because the opening’s on Friday night and we can’t change it, there’s local councillors coming, and the minister.’

  ‘Yep. It’ll be done. We’re used to working through the night, aren’t we Jake?’

  He nods and grins back – easygoing, unthreatening, pleasant. And yet nobody’s come in here and expressed an interest in picking up one of those brushes and helping. Nobody.

  I’ll have to round up some of the primary kids in my after-school club tomorrow and get them in here. Take the photos then. We can give out some brushes and they can do some background, or something. Grass. Sky. Paint in those skin tones, all those larger-than-lifesize arms draped around shoulders. They’ll like that. At least, I hope they will. I hope they won’t bounce off the walls with hyperactivity; throwing paint, scrawling their names, going crazy.

  *

  I unlock the office to get my bag out and scrabble in it for money to buy material for the women’s fabric-painting class. I’m meant to use cash from the kitty but it’s such a business, writing out a request form and waiting round for the admin officer to open the cashbox to sign it off. Easier to just pay myself for the plain cotton pillowcases and white T-shirts they like to paint. I park outside Spotlight and race in, arriving back at the car just in time to see a parking inspector writing me a ticket.

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s only two minutes past.’

  ‘It’s a clearway after 4 p.m., just like the sign says.’

  ‘Look, I’m buying stuff for a class. For a group of refugee women.’ I hate trotting that out, and in any case technically it’s a bit of a white lie now, but this is my money we’re talking about, my free time, my goodwill.