I didn't speak much to anyone in my house the next day. There were several messages on my phone from people who didn't know you and I ignored them. I didn't call you before I came over and when I arrived you were attempting to eat breakfast. You said you hadn't slept last night and I could tell. Your face was the colour of the faded fruit loops that were swimming in the grotesque soy milk below you. The soy milk was a gesture towards healthiness by your mum. I wondered if that was how we would look when we got fulltime jobs; pale, frail and distraught. I worried about the fact that I had been accepted into university but you had no plan and then worried more about why that even mattered. I hoped you would get that job at the surf store.
You didn't finish the cereal but you didn't throw it up either. We got in my car and headed for the beach. The streets where we had spent all our lives flew by faster than they ever had before. We had started out walking, then we could ride bikes and get buses and now, finally, we drove. Just like our older siblings. I always drove because the majority of the time your ’76 Falcon wouldn't go.
When we pulled up to the beach we checked the surf as a matter of habit. You sat on the grassy dunes not looking at anything in particular and I sat next to you. You told me you were nervous about tonight and I said I would be there with you and would do anything you asked. I didn't really mean that as I was unsure what I could actually do, but it felt like the right thing to say at the time and I didn't regret it. I wanted to know how you were feeling about everything that was happening. I didn't have the courage to ask. It felt like trying to talk about a sexual disease with an old person.
You must have known what was on my mind because you began to describe it. You compared it to one of those sandpits you dig when you're young. No matter how hard you try, the sand on the edges keeps falling in because of forces you can't control. I asked about your girlfriend and you said that it was only friends who mattered now. We left it at that and sat in silence for a period of time, something that I wasn't used to. You looked out at the still ocean and I looked at you and wondered about the pimples on your skin, about you could move your toes and how your eyes still squinted in order to see the horizon properly.
Several hours later we sat in my room and wondered how to tell our friends what was going on. The last time we had all met in such a formal fashion had been Year 12 muck-up day when we filled our water guns with blue paint. We shot the paint all over the deputy principal's car, sure she wouldn't press charges, until the next day when she did. We all talked it over and decided that it was better if only one person took the blame. No-one wanted to do it because it meant forgoing the HSC and being expelled from school. At the time it seemed fair to me that those of us who were hoping to go to university shouldn't have to come forward as we were the only people who would be affected. No-one else agreed. It seemed I was the only person hoping to go to university. We decided to flip coins and narrow it down by a process of elimination. Out of the eight of us, it came down to me and another of our friends, Tyler. I was scared shitless. You'd been the first person to win and were safe. I tossed the coin up in the air and knew that it was probably my future lost. When the twenty-cent piece landed on my hand I looked around nervously at the group and noticed you were missing. I didn't bother to look at the coin. You were already in the deputy principal's office. That afternoon your dad yelled at you but we knew he loved you more for it. I had no idea how my dad felt.
I was snapped from this memory when my dad walked into my room without knocking. He was still in his suit but had removed his jacket and looked quite casual. He gave you a pat on the back that wasn't condescending like most pats from older people. It was heartfelt. My dad had a way with sincerity like that. You got a New Testament Bible out of the back pocket of your jeans and asked my dad what the correct passage was for a moment like this. He shut your Bible and got a joke book from my bookshelf and handed it to you, saying, ‘Any of these ones.’ It was the first time in my life I had seen him without the armour of a Bible verse and he looked naked and powerless and just like us.
A stone hit Ada above the ankle. She lifted her chin, tightened her grip on her leather school satchel and marched on, refusing to look back. Another pebble smacked her lower back, a third bounced off her dark plait. She was sweating in the late afternoon sun, but home wasn't far. It lay beyond the railway line and once she crossed over, she'd be free—they never followed her past the train tracks.
Another stone, larger than the others, hit the sharp bone of her elbow and she sucked in a breath. Spinning around, Ada glared at the three boys. ‘Don't you have anything better to do?’
‘Like what?’ Thommie, a dark-haired boy, poked his friend in the side. ‘Scrub the church floor and sip leftover communion wine? What should we be calling you…Holy Mother Ada?’ He laughed and his two friends joined in. He was the same age as Ada, but at thirteen he already stood tall and broad like his father who worked on the great underground pipes of the paper factory.
‘Get home, Thommie,’ Ada said. ‘Help your ma and brother with the chores.’
Thommie flushed. ‘Shut your mouth. Me and Pa, we're the only men in our house now.’
‘Kevin?’ Ada bit her lip. ‘I'm sorry—’
‘Why? Because my pa isn't a white-shirt like yours? You don't be speaking about my brother or you'll be meeting your Jesus sooner than expected.’
‘We'll all meet Jesus one day, doesn't matter to me when it comes.’ Her soft voice wiped the leers from the boys' faces. Thommie turned away and Ada watched him go, his head down and his shoulders hunched like an old man's.
It was Friday, the third best day of the week. The close of her favourite day, Sunday, meant another Monday, waiting for her like the thorns of a bramble bush. It didn't matter—she had plans—just three months and counting.
Ada crossed the railway tracks and followed the single road that travelled through her village. She was alone now, and as she followed the road's gentle left turn, the air changed, bringing a new scent of smoke and pine. Her footsteps slowed.
At the iron fence she stopped and stared through the bars at the paper factory. Its looming facade of soot-stained brick shut out the sun, leaving her in shade. The chimneys lining the flat roof of the factory sighed clouds of vapour. She could hear the stuttering cough of machinery from somewhere deep inside. She thought of the church, of the graves beneath goat willows and silky catkins, of the silences that lived among the headstones.
Ada's eyes dropped to the bodies of trees lying naked at the factory's feet. They were discoloured from an earlier rainstorm and stacked on top of each other, their pale sides showing deep gashes from the lumberjacks' saws, their sap staining the ground underneath them black.
Ada didn't see the man and the little girl until they were well past the pyre of trees, walking toward the factory's entrance. It was Mr Terry, dressed for his shift on the factory floor, and Esme, his daughter. They lived on the ground floor of Ada's building—only recently arrived. Mrs Terry was young and sweet but Mr Terry was always unshaven. Sometimes at night, while watching the forest sleeping from her bedroom window, Ada would hear him muttering to himself as he returned from his shift. Slight and timid, Esme watched life through the kitchen window and usually only ventured outside if clinging to her mother's skirts. Ada watched as they reached the factory and disappeared inside and then she released a hard breath. She stared at the factory door, knowing they wouldn't reappear but wishing they would, and realised she was gripping the bars of the gate with both hands. She stepped away from the fence and walked slowly the rest of the way home.
The forest sprawled on one side of the road. On the other side sat the paper factory and the village, its apartment blocks tall and tired, made of the same dull brick. Ada's home was on the top floor of one of the six buildings that housed the factory's workers and their families. The apartments were built around a large pebbled lot and a grassy patch, filled with row after row of communal washing lines.
Friday was washing
day for the second floor, and rows of the dark uniforms belonging to the factory workers hung limp in the afternoon heat. An empty clothesline, standing separate from the communal one, was reserved for those living on the top floor. Unlike the other families, Ada's mother could wash and hang wet clothes whenever she chose.
The door to Ada's apartment block stood open and she stepped out of the heat into the cool gloom of the concrete landing. The wooden staircase leading to the top floor stood to Ada's left but she paused as voices reached her from the basement. The washroom, with its shuttered windows and roar of old washing machines, was down there. Ada hated going into the basement and sometimes dreamed of its spiders working in corners where daylight couldn't penetrate, spinning lucid webs.
‘…only been here three months.’ Ada recognised Mrs Davis's voice from the second floor. ‘But she can have more children.’
‘Poor, wee thing.’ Mrs Howard's low croon sounded muffled, as though she had her hands over her mouth. ‘It won't matter about other children. Your mind always returns to that firstborn.’
‘No need to get emotional now, it's the way of it. She'll make her peace, we all did.’
‘I know, I know…it's just…’
‘She's going to need us tonight, no doubt about it. Her man won't be able to cope, might even go back on the bottle.’
‘Terry'll be all right. If he does, the factory'll take good care of them.’
Then came the sound of the women's footsteps. Ada turned and ran up the stairs to the top floor, cringing as she tripped and nearly fell in her hurry. Once she was inside the apartment, she leaned against the front door. She thought of little Esme, her fingers clutched in her father's hand and she pressed her hand against her chest, felt its rise and fall.
In her bedroom, Ada threw her school satchel onto her single bed, which was pushed up against the wall. A small student desk with her Bible resting on top sat in the corner. She went to the window and looked out on the rows of trees across the street. The view from her window would change soon as the trees grew tired and thin, but first the leaves would burn.
She changed, climbing out of her blue skirt and cardigan. She kept her black stockings and exchanged the skirt for a dark green pinafore with a black shirt underneath. She glanced at the small mirror on the back of her door. Her dark eyes stared back at her but they did not sparkle eloquently like her mother's. Hers were spaced too far apart, they were wide and direct and made people uncomfortable. Her skin was brown from spending time outdoors, caring for the graveyard or sweeping the church steps.
Ada left her room and stood outside her parents' bedroom. She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. Lifting her head, Ada stared at the figure of Jesus fastened on the outside, the remains of her father's religious upbringing. He had no time for church now.
‘Ada.’ Her mother stood in the door to the kitchen, watching Ada and wiping her hands on a dish towel draped across her shoulder. ‘Why so late today?’
‘Where's Pa?’
‘At the factory of course, silly.’ She untied the strings of her apron and pulled it away from her, throwing it and the dish towel onto a chair. ‘I've got washing. Change into something more comfortable and help your ma outside.’
‘I have changed.’
‘Oh.’ Her mother blinked. ‘Well, come on then.’
Ada followed her mother downstairs. She went barefoot, balancing the basket easily with one hand, keeping the other outstretched, trailing the handrail with long fingers. Ada stared at her mother's back, her slim-cut dress, the dark strands of her loose hair and the skin of her neck and arms. The light coming through the narrow windows of the staircase picked out the tiny hairs on her lower arms and the diamond in her wedding band winked. Ada grasped her own plainness like a comforter.
Her mother used to be a dancer. She used to sing. She used to laugh and smoke and let men kiss the back of her wrist. Ada had found a picture once, slipped between the silk slips and corsets in her mother's drawer. Whoever had taken the picture must have wanted to fill the camera with her because her mother's face crowded the frame. It was smooth and plump with health. Her eyes shimmered with laugher on the cusp of tears. The joy of that moment, at once foreign and disturbing to Ada, had left her with the faint aftertaste of her mother's sins.
‘Is church work taking too much of your time, Ada?’ her mother asked over her shoulder. ‘You've missed dinner this whole week. Your father's not happy.’
They stepped outside. A group of women stood huddled around their baskets of wet washing, chatting with flaccid hose in their hands. Ada spotted Mrs Davis and Mrs Howard from the basement, their thin headscarfs damp from sweat. When they saw Ada and her mother the women took up their baskets, preparing to scatter.
‘Fine afternoon to all,’ Ada's mother said stiffly.
‘And to you,’ came the reply, but there was no eye contact. The women filed past Ada and her mother and disappeared into the buildings.
Ada worked alongside her mother, the clothes pegs rattling in their basket. The sun rested like a warm weight on her head. They were already in the first days of autumn, her least favourite season. It was the end of walking barefoot in the forest, and of dinners outside with Father Patrick and the sisters. It was the season of things dying, of long shadows and the first stirring of the cool winds from the north.
‘How was school?’ her mother asked around the peg between her lips. ‘Anything new?’
‘We practised the typewriter,’ Ada took a deep breath. ‘Robert, Susy's brother, missed school today.’
‘Oh? Is he sick?
‘His tooth needed fixing. He got taken to the factory.’
Ada's mother stiffened for a moment, then she pinned one of Ada's skirts on the line. ‘They have the best doctors and dentists. He'll be back tomorrow, right as rain.’
‘If they're the best, why do I never see them?’ Her mother still hadn't turned back to face Ada. ‘Everyone goes to the doctor at the factory but Father sends me away—’
‘For your own protection.’
‘What about Robert's protection? They'll do things and he'll come back looking more sick than when he went in—’
‘He'll recover.’
‘—if he comes back at all.’
‘Stop it, Ada,’ her mother hissed the words under her breath, glancing towards the apartment door. ‘What's got into you? Your father works hard to provide for you. Very hard.’
Ada hung up one of her father's white shirts, bright as a flare in the sea of dark navy around them. ‘I never asked him to,’ Ada said.
‘Just be grateful.’ Her mother brushed back her dark hair and sighed, ‘He's made a way for you to live a comfortable life. The factory—’
‘I'll never work there.’ Ada turned away. She didn't want to keep talking.
‘Everyone works for the factory, Ada. Better a white-shirt than the factory floor.’
Ada shook her head. She recalled Mr Terry leading his firstborn to the factory doors again. ‘Not me. Father Patrick said he would let me study with him. The Reformed School has a place for me.’
Her mother turned and stared at Ada, her dark eyes suddenly sharp. ‘Father Patrick has no right to feed you such nonsense. He has no idea of anything, hidden away in that church.’
‘I asked him for help. This is my doing.’ Ada felt the sun's warmth slip away. ‘I want this.’
‘Adrienne…’ Her mother shook her head, confusion drawing lines between her eyes. ‘A nun? Think about this—don't you want to love, to have a family, to live?'
‘Like you?’
She drew back. ‘Yes, like me. After all your father's done to keep you…’
‘I never asked to be special.’ When Ada drew a breath it was wet with the tears at the back of her throat.
‘Ada, you're all we have.’ Her mother's hand brushed her long plait and settled on her shoulder. Against the bare skin of her neck, her mother's fingers were chill. She leaned in to speak and her breath tickled Ada's ears a
nd cheek like fine cobwebs. ‘You're my good girl, and when it's time, they'll give you a good life.’
‘But I hate it,’ Ada whispered. She stared over her mother's shoulder at the factory. ‘I don't want that life.’
‘Yes, you do, honey.’ Her mother moved close, blocking out the view of the factory. She laid her cheek against the top of Ada's head and sighed. ‘You're just lonely, love. It's hard for the kids here to be your friends, I know, but things will change soon, I promise.’ Ada stood within the circle of her mother's arms for a long moment, as the afternoon came to a close overhead. The spiders in the basement would be waking now, stretching their long, thin legs. They would search for the trapped insects in their web and then feed, leaving empty shells.
Ada straightened and looked to the factory again. She stepped away, breaking her mother's hold. ‘I don't want that.’
‘Ada, why are you talking like this? Your father will soon be home and—’
‘I have to go, Ma.’ Ada turned and walked away, breaking into a run as she passed the washing lines.
‘Ada, it's too late to go to the church now. Ada!’ her mother called after her but Ada kept running.
She went out to the road and crossed over, following a narrow path into the forest's heart.
Moist pine needles cushioned her footsteps and she walked until she could see the church through the trees. She stopped abruptly, sinking to the forest floor with her back against a tree trunk, wiping away her tears. She hugged her knees to her chest and listened to the forest whisper in a rising breeze. She watched the light, its fingers of orange and flame travelling across the pine needles, exposing roots and fallen branches, and waited until it died away before she rose slowly to her feet.
The Life You Choose and That Chose You Page 14