Sister Moon

by Kirsten Miller

  Two

  I waited at the door with my hands at my sides. Inches from my face the wood pushed against the grain and my fists clenched to echo the knots. I closed my eyes and the patterns repeated themselves in the dark.

  ‘Come away from the door, Catherine,’ my mother said. ‘He’s not coming home.’

  I unfurled my small fingers and moved to the oak sideboard. He would come home. He would come later, before the morning was born, with a grin on his face and his blue pullover hanging to the middle of his thighs. I would go to him laughing and feel the wool rough against my face.

  The drawers of the sideboard were level with my eyes. I pulled on one with both hands and asked my mother how many candles would be enough.

  ‘Take one for your bath and another for the bedroom,’ she said, and I went to the kitchen to fetch the white saucers that were stacked on the shelf.

  When I returned there was a wide-toothed comb in my mother’s hand. My sister kneeled on the floor in front of her, her slender shoulders gripped between my mother’s knees. The comb moved down in jerks like a furrowing plough, and where it met the knots it pulled, but Devin’s head was bent in submission and she bit her lip, not crying out at the force that raked through her curls. I was glad of my short hair, glad to escape such rituals of control.

  I placed the two saucers beside my mother, leaned over to light the candles from the flame in the middle of the table. I tilted them at right angles to each other and allowed the wax tears to drip onto the saucers. Before the puddles hardened I placed a candle in each, and the room glowed to push back any shadows that lurked within our home.

  ‘I’m scared to bath alone,’ I whispered.

  My mother’s lips tightened between her clenched teeth, but her attention stayed on the battle with Devin’s torrent of hair.

  My sister looked at me, narrowing her crescent eyes. ‘There are monsters in the bathroom. They’ve got three green heads and they eat insect freaks like you.’

  ‘Shut up, Devin.’

  My mother raised her brows at us, to warn us to watch what we said to each other. She sighed and stood and moved to put the comb away. I took two candles from the table and climbed the stairs, and the small flames swallowed much of the darkness waiting to surround me.

  The bath was lukewarm and shallow, and through candlelight I played with patterns of light that landed on the bottom of the bath. The scent of soap clung to my skin after the lather had dissipated into the water. Afterwards I dressed in warm pants and the fuzzy top I used for pyjamas when the midyear nights were coldest. Before I blew out the candle, I studied my hair in the mirror. It was cropped short and stuck out against my head at angles only God could have calculated. A brush or comb would do it no good.

  Devin appeared behind me in the shadows in a halo of soft light like an angel or a princess from a dream. ‘Stare as long as you like,’ she said. ‘It won’t change anything.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do about that insect face.’ The vision dis­appeared, but her voice lingered. ‘The mirror will crack in half if you keep staring into it like that.’

  I blew out the first candle and followed her to our room, the back of my hand skimming the wall as the second flame lit my way. Our bunk beds were positioned against the wall and, after I extinguished our last light with my breath, I climbed the ladder to my place at the top. In the dark I heard Devin arranging her pillows.

  ‘Dev?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is Mom going to kiss us good night?’

  ‘I said good night to her already.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Don’t know. The dark.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Is Mom?’

  ‘Everyone’s scared sometimes. Mom’s used to it, Cat. She’s got candles.’

  I wanted to say what she wouldn’t want to hear. I squeezed my hands and said it anyway: ‘Maybe it’s not his fault.’

  ‘Maybe it is.’

  ‘Maybe he’s got no money.’

  ‘He’s got money. He just pisses it down the toilet.’

  ‘Don’t speak like that.’

  ‘He spends it on booze or he gambles it away. You know it’s true.’

  ‘Maybe he just forgot.’

  ‘Are you going to be mouthing off at me all night?’

  ‘I can’t go to sleep.’

  It was quiet for a bit, and still I broke it. ‘Dev?’

  ‘You can wait up for him. On your own.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  Silence fell on me from below, but her eyes were open and I knew she was blinking into the dark. ‘Devin?’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Will we have electricity tomorrow?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Will they fight?’

  ‘Maybe. Who cares? Go to sleep.’

  I wanted to go on talking, to pull the darkness from the surrounding air and consume it with endless words because I knew sleep would not come to me now. I wanted my father’s rough hands on my face, kissing me with the tips of his fingers as he gently stroked my forehead and sang on his soft outward breath. I wanted his blessing on my night.

  ‘Dev?’

  ‘Jeez, Cat.’

  ‘Do you want to go to the beach tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘After school?’

  ‘No. I have to do homework.’

  ‘After supper then.’

  ‘Not if there’s no electricity. Go by yourself.’

  ‘I’m not allowed. You know I’m not.’

  ‘I’m not deciding now. Go to sleep. You’re driving me crazy.’

  My mouth closed and I pressed my lips between my teeth to keep the words from escaping and flowing into the darkness to find Devin’s ears. I wanted to be quiet, but I couldn’t bear the solitude that rode in on our shared silence. I still needed the light of her voice to find me, to tell me I was real.

  ‘Devin?’

  ‘I’m not talking any more.’

  ‘Do you think they love each other?’

  ‘Shht.’

  ‘But do they?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  ‘Do you love Samuel?’

  There was no answer now. If my sister was not asleep then she would be soon, and she’d had enough of me.

  I waited until her breathing slowed and softened into her pillow, until the night stole the world and encased me in loneliness. Sleep came to Devin so easily then. It devoured her and took her away from the world while I resisted, clinging too tightly to what I feared.

  The window was open and the onshore breeze lifted the curtain and found me, softly touched my face in the absence of Samuel’s fingers. When I was sure that my sister was dreaming, I went to the end of the bunk and leaned down, pulled myself through the window and onto the chilled corrugated roof just below.

  The roof was sloped, and between the buildings the sea was flat and the moonlight turned them all to silver. I shivered and shifted to find comfort on the small undulations of the corrugation. Cars straddled the gutters, parked on either side of the street, waiting with frosted windows for the morning. The road was silver too from the rain that had come earlier. Buildings staggered the street, some tall and some a storey high, the bakery and a café and a shop that sold everything from fishing rods and buckets to weighed sweets. It was late and it was cold and Samuel was not yet home.

  Later my father wobbled round the corner, one hand lightly on the wall to keep him upright. I saw him before he knew I was there. He whistled to himself beneath the shadow of his cap, the constant tune that accompanied him home, evening to evening, night after night. When he entered our street I wanted to shout for him to see me. Instead my eyes followed him until he was close enough and I said his name in a forced whisper.

  He looked up and grinned as he spotted me on top of the house. ‘Sea Monkey,’ he said.

  I went to the edge of
the roof where the ladder leaned up against the wall and scrambled down.

  He lifted me up, held me close, and I could smell the beer on his breath and the smoke of endless cigarettes between the fibres of his clothes and in his hair. When he spoke, his voice rumbled in his chest, vibrating through the wool of his thick jersey.

  ‘There’s no electricity again,’ I told him. He held me up midway, eye to eye with his face, and I touched the stubble on his cheek with the flat of my palm.

  ‘So you ate by candlelight?’

  ‘And bathed and dressed and went to bed.’

  ‘But you didn’t go to bed.’

  ‘No.’

  He put me down and my bare feet scraped the rough surface of the pavement. ‘Do you want to go to the beach?’

  ‘Now?’

  I had no answer for him and he had no need of one from me. He took my hand in his and we turned to the road. No cars passed and we crossed over, my feet skipping double time to keep up with his. Samuel was my father, and as rough as he smelled this deep in the night, it was the scent that filled the whole of my world.

  The sea was black as we walked on the colourless sand and I thought that we might as well be on the moon. His palm was rough and warm against mine and I smiled as the knit of his sleeve brushed my wrist. ‘Listen, Monkey,’ he said, ‘you really should be in bed.’

  He took me away from our house, away from my bed and the small village to the other end of the small beach just stitched onto the ocean. He looked beyond the bay and the village at something that might have been anchored in the deepest sea, a secret or a dream he’d held before my sister and I existed.

  ‘How’s your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘Okay.’

  My father squeezed my hand and I quickened my step to keep up with him. ‘You didn’t pay the electricity,’ I said.

  ‘Things are a bit tight, Monkey. Business isn’t doing too well. I’ll get the money soon.’

  ‘What is your business?’

  He lifted his head and stuck his chin towards the sea as though he could find an answer there. ‘Business is the way that life flows, like the tides in the sea,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t.’ His giant fingers spread through his hair. ‘Sometimes your ship comes in and sometimes … well, you show up at the airport instead.’

  ‘Do you work on the ships?’

  He guffawed loudly, lifted me high and swung me skywards.

  We reached the wall that marked the end of the beach where the road arched above it. Samuel leaned against the dappled concrete, his arms folded across his chest. ‘Want to be a dolphin?’ His mouth lifted in a grin. He kicked off his shoes and I knew what it meant, that smile and that movement. I tried to back away. I ducked down beneath his arm when he came for me, but he was strong and powerful and I was small as a flea in his hands. He plucked me from the sand and carried me to the waves, waded in until the water covered his jeans to his knees and he held me above the dark water by my feet and threatened to drop me as I felt my cheeks pulling downwards, wanting to escape my skin through gravity. But Samuel was there and he would never let me fall.

  I swung upwards with the muscles of my stomach taut and grabbed at his hands. They were big and warm and furry at the top; I always knew what they would feel like. I hung there like a monkey from a rope and, laughing, he walked me out of the sea.

  His arm weighed heavy across my shoulders as we made the journey home. His shoes dangled from the tips of the fingers of his other hand. ‘Do you like living here, Monkey?’

  ‘I think so.’ I had lived nowhere else. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Anywhere’s good for me.’ He ruffled my short hair. ‘What’s for breakfast?’

  I giggled; my father had not yet had his dinner. ‘Cockroach eggs and mashed banana.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, who’s going to eat that?’ The look he gave me was sideways, fleeting.

  ‘Mom didn’t make supper. The electricity, remember.’

  ‘What did you eat?’

  ‘Bread and apples.’

  ‘No cockroaches?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘You’d eat them if you were hungry enough.’ His face was serious, like the surface of the sea. There was another whole world below.

  ‘No I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You would. You’d eat anything to live,’ my father told me.

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Of course. Anyone would. Survival is everything.’ Our feet had found a rhythm. The sand was taking us home. He told me that there was once a plane crash and the survivors had no food. The first guy that died was eaten by the others. I tried to picture human bones on a plate.

  ‘No ways!’

  ‘It’s true. It was in the papers.’ He shrugged, shoulders like mountains. ‘Maybe they weren’t friends. Maybe they ate the guy nobody liked.’

  ‘It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Humans are not nice. We’ll do anything to stay alive. To stay on top. Survival, my Monkey. It’s all that counts, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘Did they go to jail?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people who ate the other people.’

  ‘I doubt it. They did what they had to do. Anyone would.’

  The sea was black and we turned. Our faces pointed away from the water and towards our home. The night had to end.

  ‘Would you eat a cockroach if you were starving?’ he asked me.

  ‘No,’ I answered. ‘Never.’

  That was when I could still believe in anything.

  When I opened my eyes the dark had receded but the light still waited outside the window. My mother stood at the side of the bunk and her eyes met mine as I woke. I thought she might lean in and kiss me, but her head stayed upright, weary of the rituals of parenting. ‘Get up, Catherine, you’ll be late for school.’

  There was an ache in my head, like a brick or a lump of lead. I rolled over and covered my face against the light, against her. I didn’t want the morning or the chill that it brought.

  ‘Why is all this sand on the floor?’ she asked.

  ‘Where’s Samuel?’ We had a conspiracy, he and I. I couldn’t answer her questions without him.

  ‘Your father’s sleeping, he came in late. Devin’s already eating breakfast. You’d better get a move on, and clean up the sand when you’re done.’

  I rose and dressed, went to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water, but I kept my eyes from the mirror to keep my secrets inside.

  In the kitchen my sister was already sitting at the table, her elbows splayed out at angles on the wood. She put a spoon of instant cereal into her mouth without lifting her arms and the metal hit her teeth as it entered, then she swallowed. ‘Milk’s warm,’ she said. ‘Fridge isn’t working.’

  ‘I hate warm milk.’

  ‘Then have water.’

  ‘Not on cereal, you nut.’

  ‘You’ll have to have milk then. Mom will whip your ass if you don’t eat.’

  ‘Mom can kiss my ass.’ I cocked one hip into the air as I said it. The silence between us was as long as the space between here and school.

  ‘You were at the beach with Dad,’ she said eventually. She said it as an accusation, as though I’d stolen something from her.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Sand on the floor, dummy.’

  I sat down at the table but ate nothing. My sister stirred her bowl of warm milk and the cereal circles floated on top, small islands swimming. I shrugged. ‘Must have been a cat,’ I said. ‘Maybe a cat came in.’

  ‘Ja. A Cat. You.’ She put the spoon down and tilted the bowl up to her mouth, drank the last of the milk straight from it, but when she put the bowl down again some of the cereal islands stayed behind, soggy and stuck to the bottom.

  ‘If Mom sees you do that she’ll whip you,’ I said.

  Devin looked at me and held my gaze without melting. I got up and took my wrapped sandwich from the counter beside the kettle, and some coins fo
r my bus fare from the windowsill.

  ‘Why do you never tell the truth, Cat?’ Devin asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t. You always act so innocent. And why do you always call him Samuel?’

  I looked back at her, aware of the light of immunity in my eyes. ‘’Cos that’s his name,’ I said.

  I opened the door and walked out into the fresh, sea-fragrant air of the morning.

  Three

  The sky was clear and blue, a moonless day. A surface so smooth that if you believe the heavens are solid, they could have been cut with a knife. That’s how I remember it anyway.

  He walked to the rocks with a screwdriver in his hand. Devin asked to go with him, but when he turned around and saw her follow, he shooed her back. ‘Devin, come here,’ my mother called from the sand where she sat beneath a big umbrella. It was the last time I ever saw my mother on the beach.

  I lay on a towel beside her, gangly as a shrimp after a growth spurt, sheltered from the sun by the pink umbrella. I watched Devin run after my father and follow him back to the rocks while my mother turned away and focused her attention on the book on her lap. My sister must have felt the sharp rocky edges against the soft underside of her foot. The unsteady eagerness of a girl only ten years in the world, still too young to know her own boundaries. She followed him, balancing on the balls of her feet while he squatted and stabbed at the rocks, prying mussels and oysters to have for lunch with wine. I sat up on the towel and watched my sister. Devin was caught, transfixed by the blue, by the edge that was the end of the rocks and the beginning of the wide sea. I remember the edge. I remember her moving forward, one step at a time to where Samuel chipped away at the rock. And suddenly I saw her taken by a wave, swallowed whole by the fluid creature that caught her and sucked her in and spat her out again and again in a whitewash of water and foam and salt. She couldn’t have heard our mother scream beside me. She couldn’t have seen how that scream jerked me onto my feet or how I ran, shouting her name.