by Pip Adam
‘What about chippies?’ Jane took a packet off the shelf.
May looked at her list, and they both laughed.
‘Well, I want some chippies,’ Jane said and grabbed a couple more packets. ‘And some dip.’ She put the chips next to the strawberries. ‘Don’t let me forget dip.’
In the baking goods aisle, while she was looking for lemon essence, May realised she’d lost her mother. Jane had gone to get some olives – they were on the list but they’d missed them at the deli. She’d been away too long for just olives. May looked around, holding the small bottle of yellow liquid. She put the lemon essence in the trolley then went to the end of the aisle; her mother was looking at basmati rice. ‘It’s really cheap here,’ she said. ‘I might start coming to this one.’ Her mother was carrying a small plastic container of olives and a white plastic bag. ‘This is cheap, do you need rice?’ May shook her head. Her mother put the rice back on the shelf and put the olives in the trolley. She held the plastic bag close to her and whispered, ‘Some ham – for your dad’s lunch.’
‘I was going to make lunch,’ said May.
‘I know.’ Jane jumped a little bit without leaving the ground. ‘It’s just extra. I can put it back.’
‘Don’t put it back.’
‘I’ll put it back, eh?’
‘Nah, put it in the trolley.’
‘But you’ve made lunch.’
‘I haven’t made lunch. I was going to make lunch. We’ll have sandwiches.’
‘I’ll put it back.’ Jane walked away.
May watched her talking to the man behind the deli counter. She handed the plastic bag over. The man shook his head and frowned. Jane smiled and waved and, as she turned toward May, laughed and said, ‘No problem.’
May looked at her list as they joined the check-out queue.
‘Dip!’ her mother said, raising her hand. ‘I wanted some dip.’ She darted off toward the fridges. May looked at her watch. They’d been gone nearly an hour. May had used the eight thousand dollars to finish her degree. Gavin hired a suit to wear to her graduation. Jane had stood in front of her, fiddling with the collar of her shirt, trying to get it to sit under the strap of the hood, then over it. Her mother looked down through the bottom of her glasses, concentrating only on the collar. Finally, she patted it and said, ‘That’ll do. That looks okay.’ Jane tried to look down at the collar, then touched it. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
Daisy
Daisy liked to push the trolley. She would push it forever if she could – to the coast. But her mother or father would always pick her up and turn her back on her path. She would keep pushing, and walking her little side-to-side steps, thinking she would push forever in the new direction, but soon she saw the gate and home. Her mother or father would open the gate and she would turn the trolley in a banging, scraping arc, up the path to the steps that led to the door. Her mother or father would lift her into the house, Daisy still holding the trolley, and she would push it some more, up and down the hall, into the bathroom and behind the curtains that hung to the ground.
The trolley had been built by someone else’s grandfather in a workshop lit by a single bulb. He’d purchased the wood from a small store he could walk to but he’d had to catch a bus for the wheels. Yellow plastic wheels that rattled, and wobbled slightly. When he found them he held them up and said, ‘These are them.’ On the bus home he took them from the bag and held them again and thought, ‘They’re as close to perfect as you get.’ The nails that held them on were rusting now from puddles and rain. The tray lay low to the ground and the handle came out at a forty-five degree angle. Daisy’s mother bought it from a shop full of old things, along with a bucket and a wooden chair, but Daisy had found it – tucked away between an old bath and a rusty bike. She pulled and pulled and the trolley popped out. She’d fallen to sitting, a hard fall that stopped abruptly and clamped her teeth together, but she wasn’t down for long. There was dirt in the corners of the tray, crushed as fine as sand. Daisy pinched at the grains with her tiny fingers, then wiped at them swiftly with a flat hand, but they never went away. She pushed the trolley a little from her sitting position and it rolled away, so she got up quickly and began pushing it, both hands on the handle, laughing in a ‘huh-huh’ way. Daisy thought it had been left there for her. She didn’t know about giving things up or getting taller. She was small, not two years old, and everything was there for her.
At first, in the confines of their small house, Daisy got the trolley stuck constantly. She would push it forward a few steps and its corner would catch on a chair leg or the edge of something bigger. She would push and push harder and sometimes the back wheels would leave the ground and Daisy, still holding the handle, would fall face first, then kneel to save her face and she would cry – cry out. Her mother would wipe her hands on a tea towel, saying ‘It’s okay,’ and as she lifted Daisy and put the trolley on a clearer path, ‘sometimes these things happen when you’re pushing a trolley, but it’s okay, it’s all part of pushing a trolley.’ Daisy’s mother, Alice, was always busy.
One Monday, Daisy turned the trolley for the first time. It got stuck and she pushed and pushed and then pulled and it came free. She shook it then pushed it again and all the sticking places disappeared.
Daisy sometimes stopped pushing to watch her mother being busy. Eventually, as the busy-ness went on, she would raise her arms and call out. Alice would hand her down a piece of pumpkin, slimy at one end and tough at the other. Daisy would play with the pumpkin for a moment; pushing her finger as far into the slimy end as possible, then she would look at her mother and go to the wooden chair her mother had put beside a Formica table. Daisy would drop pumpkin on the rented carpet, leaving another orange thumbprint, and hit the seat of the chair with both hands, saying, ‘Ah, ah.’ Alice would try not to look up. If she could just finish cutting the pumpkin for the soup for her friend who had twins who both wanted feeding at the same time but could only be fed one at a time. Then she would play with Daisy. Alice tried not to look up and chopped the pumpkin on the board with the seeds caught in a slimy, orange net. ‘Ah, ah.’ Alice chipped at the green skin like a sculptor working limestone. ‘Ah – ah!’ Alice looked up.
Alice would fill the sink with bubbles and plastic cups and Daisy would eat the bubbles and spill the water, but she wanted the knife. Alice would chop on the glass chopping board and it would make high-pitched bangs like something was about to break. Of everything on the bench that she could have and everything on the bench she couldn’t have, it was the knife Daisy wanted most. Alice dreamt when she was awake and in one dream she would, in some strange mind, hand Daisy the large chopping knife, put her on the floor to play, and turn back to her cooking. Daisy would run away up the hall and trip on the threshold to her room. The knife, at an impossible angle, would puncture her cheek and her skull and somehow her heart, and she would not call out. Her mother would sauté the onions and garlic, add nutmeg and stir the pumpkin into the sizzle at the bottom of the big pot. She would think, it’s calm and peaceful – the way it used to be – and add the stock. When it came to a boil and she’d put the pumpkin skin, green and chipped off, in the bin and cleared the bench, she would see the knife was missing and think, Where is Daisy? Alice would see the trolley in the lounge and think, that’s odd, and look up the hall and see the fallen girl. She wouldn’t see the pool of blood until she was standing over her. She made it all in her head; her stomach was a knot of fear as she did. So Alice stopped chopping, filled the sink, pulled the wooden chair to the bench and stood Daisy up on it, putting the chopping knife well out of reach.
Later, after they took the pumpkin soup to the friend, and Daisy had seen the twins and tried to roll her trolley over them both, one at a time, she found the pumpkin under the Formica table and put it in her trolley with the two potatoes, the plastic bottle full of rattly chickpeas and the plastic keys she took to her bath each night – in the morning too, if she got porridge in her hair. She could hear the gate
from anywhere in the house. When the metal bolt slid it squeaked, and Alice would shout, ‘Who’s that?’ with equal excitement every night. ‘Daisy? Who’s that?’ Sometimes Alice would cover her mouth with both hands, like she was praying, and open her eyes as wide as they would go. Daisy would run to the front door, she would reach for the key inside and try and Alice would call from the kitchen, ‘Don’t stand too close, Puss. Stand back.’ The door would open and it would be her father, Lucas. He lifted her up so she could play with the headphones that hung on cords from the collar of his jacket. He would kiss her and kiss her and kiss her again. His cheeks would be cold. Daisy would smile but not look up, as if the smile, like everything else, was there just for her. Lucas would take her to the bedroom and put her on the bed and she would crawl over and reach for the remote and turn on the television and laugh, ‘Huhuh.’ Lucas would change out of his suit and shout, ‘How was your day?’ Alice shouted back, ‘We had fun, we visited the twins and Daisy pushed her trolley, we had a good day.’ Then Alice would come into the bedroom, wiping her hands on a tea towel, and Lucas would kiss her and say ‘Nice to see you.’ Alice would say, ‘What are you watching, Puss?’ and Daisy would look up and smile so wide her nose would scrunch and her eyes would squint. Lucas would look at her and giggle. He was glad it was over.
Sometimes it felt like Daisy had been awake the whole first year. It felt like no one had slept and all three of them had gone a special kind of crazy. Crazy like they were too tired to be sane. He’d broken a couple of his fingers when she was three months old. He was in a hurry and he’d slipped on grass growing through paving stones. Grass wet at lunchtime because it was August and there was no sun to dry it. He stood up and his hand ached and his arm ached and he felt dizzy and sick with the pain. An ambulance was called. He’d pleaded with them not to call an ambulance but an ambulance had been called. His little finger was dislocated and the two next to it were broken. They gave him nitrous oxide and said, ‘Are you ready?’ He said, ‘Is it going to hurt?’ and they said, ‘He’s not ready.’ At the same time one of them dropped a book. Lucas jumped as the book hit the floor and the doctor cracked it back and Lucas jumped again at the pain of his smallest finger being snapped back into its socket. He’d called Alice when he could. They were going on a plane that night. Not a long trip – it was for Alice’s birthday, to visit her parents. He’d been getting her a present when he fell; he was late for a meeting. He thought he could make it to the shop and back but he was late for the meeting and he ran and he fell and he’d broken two fingers and dislocated one and could she come and pick him up from A & E? They decided to go anyway; Alice’s parents could help. Daisy cried the whole way up in the aeroplane and someone complained. Alice got angry at the complaining person and at Lucas, who was in too much pain to get angry and should have got her present earlier and not been running. Lucas sat in the seat in the plane, wishing with everything he could muster over the pain and the exhaustion that he could go back and not run and not fall and not let Alice down on her birthday. He was glad it was over and Daisy was smiling her scrunchy-faced smile. Alice tried to do one too and Daisy laughed and soon all three of them were scrunching their noses up and squinting their eyes and smiling as hard as they could.
On Saturday mornings it was all three of them for a while after breakfast. Daisy would eat her porridge and her toast and put her banana beside her on the high chair. If no one was looking she would put porridge in her hair and in her ears and in her eyelashes and brows. She had a bath. If she was quick she could get the banana back before her chair was tidied away and walk around in just her nappies, eating banana and squashing it in her hands. Sometimes she would help clean up with the yellow and white cloth that she could suck and suck and sometimes get the taste of bubbles out of. She would go to her trolley, take out the potatoes and the chick-pea bottle and put them on the floor beside it, then go to the bath and fish out the plastic keys and put them in her trolley. Daisy would check the level of the dirt in the corners of the tray and if it was low she’d go to the large potted plant beside the bookshelf, put her hand flat on the dirt, then pull her fingers into a fist and take some dirt back to the trolley. She’d rub one hand on the other and wipe dirt into the tray of the trolley until the grains were fine. Then she would put the potatoes into the trolley, one by one, and finally, shaking it to make the chickpeas rattle loudly, she’d put the bottle back, always at the top by the handle. If it looked underloaded she reached up and grabbed whatever came to her hand on the Formica table to put it in the trolley as well. Daisy pushed her trolley to the door and reached for the key and looked behind her for Alice or Lucas and if no one was there she would reach harder for the key and shout, ‘Uh, uh,’ until someone came and said, ‘We’re not going out at the moment.’ Daisy would say, ‘Uh, uh,’ as if she felt they didn’t understand her. When they walked away, she would stamp her feet and cry out as loud as she could, ‘Uh – Uh!’
This Saturday Lucas came back, holding a cardigan knitted in light blue wool with a hood and large buttons. Alice came next, her jacket on, holding a pair of outside shoes for Daisy. Daisy leaned on Lucas’s legs while she lifted one foot then the other to be shod, like a horse.
‘You need to go backwards so we can open the gate,’ Alice said. She had a bag on her back. Daisy had the trolley pushed right up to the gate. Alice’s bag had a bell on it and a zip and Daisy had put a small plastic Alsatian in it last night before her bath.
Daisy loved to push her trolley. She stopped under a large gum tree and looked up at tui playing in the branches. The bark on the trunk peeled like a potato. Daisy squatted, picked up a piece of bark and put it in her trolley next to the water bottle Alice had added as they left. Then she stood, leaned back and watched the birds again. This is what it would have looked like from the road. A tall man, a short woman and a toddler, all heads leaned back looking up into the branches of a gum tree. The tui flew away and Daisy took up pushing again. She felt like she could push forever. Just past the shops, Alice started saying, ‘Bye, bye, Daisy,’ and Daisy stopped and looked up at her from under the brim of her hat. The sun was out but there was no heat in it yet. Alice leaned down and kissed Daisy on the cheek. ‘Bye bye,’ she said. Lucas leaned down and kissed Alice on the cheek, ‘Bye bye.’ Alice turned and walked away. Daisy stood, both hands still on the trolley, watching Alice walk away. She looked up at Lucas and pointed at Alice. Lucas said, ‘Bye bye, Alice.’ She looked back and Alice was gone. She was standing around the corner of the dairy waiting, crying a little; her throat and eyes filling. This time, like every time, feeling like the last time she would see her daughter. Alice peeked around the corner and Daisy was looking up at Lucas with one hand on the trolley handle and the other held out, opening and closing, into a fist, saying, ‘Eye. Eye liss.’ Then Daisy turned and pushed her trolley towards the park.