How to Grow a Family Tree

by Eliza Henry Jones

  ‘He’s feeling awful,’ Mum says.

  ‘So what?’ Taylor stays sitting in her camp chair.

  ‘Stell?’

  Our eyes meet and Mum’s are watery and bloodshot.

  I sigh. ‘Alright.’

  Taylor groans and follows me. We slip on our shoes at the entrance of the annex and head into the sticky night. Dad’s sitting under the empty clothesline and smiles a little when he sees us.

  ‘Be a good place for a hammock. I think I’ve got one in the shed . . .’ he trails off. A cicada starts chirping in the long grass by the road.

  ‘It’s a stupid place for a hammock,’ Taylor says.

  ‘Oh,’ says Dad and frowns, rubbing between his eyebrows like he always does when he’s thinking.

  ‘We’re going for a walk,’ Taylor announces.

  Dad stands up and we walk slowly out onto the cracked, gravel road. ‘The fairies are a nice touch,’ he says. ‘Did you two see the fairies painted everywhere?’

  Taylor gives him a look and starts walking behind us.

  ‘Stell?’ he says, his voice almost pleading. ‘Did you see the fairies?’

  ‘Just the one at the gate,’ I say and wince as Taylor kicks the back of my leg.

  ‘The giant chipped one? It’s tacky as hell,’ Taylor mutters.

  ‘They’re everywhere,’ Dad says. ‘It’s kind of nice, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘What do you mean, everywhere?’

  ‘Well, look!’ He stops and points into someone’s narrow garden. There are angel statues propped in amongst the pot plants, and fairies cut from soft-drink cans hanging from their tiny porch.

  Taylor sniffs. ‘Tacky.’

  ‘And there’s a big fairy statue by the tennis court, and fairy stickers on some of the houses.’

  ‘Caravans,’ Taylor snaps.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re caravans.’

  Taylor stomps ahead and Dad and I walk more slowly. The stars are starting to come out.

  ‘Someone’s smoking a lot of cigarettes,’ I say as we walk past a place with music throbbing through the broken flywire.

  ‘That’s not cigarette smoke,’ Dad says.

  ‘Oh.’ I walk a bit closer to him.

  ‘You both used to love fairies and stuff,’ Dad says very softly.

  ‘That was just me. Taylor, not so much.’

  ‘It was both of you!’

  ‘No. It wasn’t.’ My voice comes out harder than I mean it to.

  Dad clears his throat and points at something that I don’t bother looking up at. ‘The fairies. They’re everywhere.’

  ***

  When we looked around our new home, there was a little bedroom with a double bed and a little bedroom with a bunk bed. It had seemed pretty obvious that Mum and Dad would take the double and Taylor and I would be in the bunks. But we hadn’t properly considered the fact that they hadn’t shared a room in weeks and that the little cane two-seater in the living room was never going to be big enough for Dad to sleep on.

  ‘I am never forgiving them for this,’ Taylor informs me for the five-hundredth time.

  ‘You’ll have to eventually. It takes too much energy to hold a grudge forever. Anyway, they’re your parents.’

  ‘Our parents.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, getting into one side of the double bed. ‘That’s what I said.’

  Taylor puts her earphones in and closes her eyes. She sleeps with her Discman under her pillow. It’s been rescued from Dad’s black bag four times. I wonder if he realises how much Taylor would flip out if he successfully pawned it or sold it or whatever. That Discman is the first thing she’d rescue if the house was on fire. Including us.

  I realise I can’t hear any music. She’s just put the earphones in without turning on the Discman. We stare at the shells that have been glued to the ceiling. The place is decked out in a jungle theme. Jungle prints on the wall, vine wallpaper in the tiny bathroom.

  ‘What if we never get out of here?’ Taylor asks very quietly.

  ‘We will,’ I say, thinking of Taylor and me. But Mum and Dad? I try not to think about it too much. The idea of them working for as hard as they did for so many years only to end up here forever is too depressing to think about. But I can help them. I know I can.

  Taylor clears her throat. ‘So, there’re a lot of little kids around here.’

  ‘Yeah. I noticed that.’

  ‘And old ladies. Lots of old ladies.’ Taylor props herself up on her elbow. ‘I didn’t expect kids and old ladies.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t think our corkscrews are going to get much use.’

  ‘We need to watch Dad really closely. I feel like we got side-tracked with all the packing and everything. We need to keep a proper eye on him. We should set up a roster.’

  We’d started checking his black bag, but we hadn’t found anything incriminating. Either he’d cottoned on to us prying, or losing the house had shocked him enough to stop him in his tracks – at least for the time being.

  ‘I guess,’ I say. It’s not like I’ve got a better idea.

  ‘Plus, it’d be good to keep the manager at the River Pub on his toes.’ Taylor yawns. ‘Dad won’t know what hit him. We’ll make his life hell.’

  I lie there long after Taylor’s gone to sleep with her earphones still in her ears. Eventually, I get sick of lying on my quarter of the bed and get up and head into the annex, where I sit down in one of the camp chairs and stare at the unpacked boxes stacked next to the camp table.

  The thing is, I’m mad at Dad, but I don’t really want to make his life a living hell; I just want him to stop gambling. I want to live in a place with an inside kitchen and be able to leave my things in my room and know they won’t have disappeared the next time that I reach for them. I steel myself. I might be adopted and I might be furious about the whole thing, but I’m with Taylor on this. If Dad can’t help himself, we’ll help him. Whether he wants that help or not.

  ***

  When I wake up in the night, everything feels too stuffy. I shove Taylor’s leg off me and kneel up on the bed so I can lean out of the open window and breathe the outside air.

  I see something move outside and for a moment my whole body tenses. I notice the raggedy shirt and ripped shorts. I breathe out. It’s just Dad, sitting by the road, smoking something that may or may not be a cigarette.

  My dad’s changed since he stopped work. It was in little ways at first: the ironing board being put away because it no longer mattered if his shirts were creased. Dishes left on the coffee table and newspapers stuffed into all the dark corners of the house with the racing section ripped out.

  He grew quieter, he slept more. He’s always been a crier, but his crying has changed. He cries less, but for longer. The sound is sort of gut-wrenching and much harder to block out. What I noticed most was that he stopped asking us questions. In our family, my mother’s always been the one who tells you who you are and what you like, and I think both Taylor and I have found a certain comfort in that. My father has always been the questioner – always asking us what our opinion was on things, even if it made Mum roll her eyes and say we were too young. He always asked us what we liked; what we were thinking. He asked us, endlessly, what we were doing.

  There’s a sort of emptiness without his questions. It feels as though he’s stopped caring.

  I asked Taylor about it once, whether his sudden quietness bothered her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d be so mad if he pretended we weren’t mad at him.’

  I don’t really understand how asking us things – talking to us – is pretending, but it seems to make perfect sense to Taylor.

  ***

  I wake up to the sound of voices. I can hear Mum and Taylor talking in the annex. ‘There are no crocodiles,’ I hear Mum saying in her quiet, soothing, you-can’t-take-your-books-to-Fairyland voice. ‘I promise there are no crocodiles. Go back to bed, love.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Put down the frypan. There are no croco
diles.’

  ‘Crocodiles!’

  ‘No crocodiles.’

  I yawn and sit up. ‘Mum? Need a hand?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Mum says, but I get up anyway.

  Taylor is crouched on the floor with a frypan clasped in both hands. ‘We need more birds!’ she says. ‘The crocodiles! Birds!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mum says, unclenching Taylor’s fingers from around the frypan handle. ‘That’s a very good idea. We definitely need more birds. I think I saw some in the other room.’

  Taylor lets go of the frypan and bounds into the bedroom. By the time we’ve got in there, she’s passed out across the bed with her arms thrown up above her head.

  ‘Bless her,’ says Mum, and pads off back to her bunk.

  ***

  ‘Why crocodiles, though?’ Taylor asks the next day as we slide on our T-bar shoes without doing up the buckles. It’s lame to do up the buckles, even though I itch to, every single time.

  ‘How should I know? It’s your subconscious.’ I’d gone through a phase of trying to analyse Taylor’s dreams. I’d borrowed books from the library on theories by Jung and Freud, but they’d been too dense for me to properly understand. I’d read up all sorts of articles and books on how to prevent sleepwalking, but nothing really seemed to stop it. It happened when she was stressed, although sometimes it happened for no reason at all. Once she’d become stuck in our garbage bin and another time she’d ended up on the neighbour’s porch.

  ‘Who have you told about moving here?’ I ask.

  ‘As if I’d tell anyone about moving here,’ says Taylor. ‘Except Adam. Obviously.’

  I’m surprised, but I just nod. I would’ve expected Taylor to be loudly whining about the whole thing to anyone who’d listen. But maybe this feels different to her than anything else.

  ‘You?’ she asks.

  ‘No one.’

  She nods. ‘Good.’

  We actually don’t need to go for another half-hour, but Dad’s sitting out in the annex and Mum’s reading an old newspaper on the worn-out cane chair in the small living room and there is a thickness in the air between them. After their response last night, I’m too indignant to bring up marriage counselling again.

  Taylor and I trudge side by side across the caravan park. It’s a weird place. It’s almost pretty, with the river and stuff. But then you look closely at the caravans and cabins and there’s this air of decay around most of the places that makes me feel unsettled. Although, when you’re close enough to really see the gardens and cabins, you can tell that many of them have had a lot of effort put in to making them homely. Pots of flowers and wind chimes; cheerful paint and wonky paving stones.

  There’s another kid leaving the caravan park, wearing the Sutherbend High uniform. He startles when he sees us and then beams like we’re the best things he’s ever laid eyes on. He’s broad and tall, and I’ve seen him around, I think, but in that blurred way that you see kids in lower year levels.

  ‘Hey! I’m Richard.’

  ‘Stella.’ Oh, God. It’s the guy from detention.

  ‘You’ve moved into lot twelve,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the best places in Fairyland – you must be rapt.’

  We both stare at him. I wonder which caravan he’s living in. Some of them are pretty rotten. It hasn’t occurred to Taylor or me that we should be grateful for our place-in-the-caravan-park-that’s-not-a-caravan. We’ve only looked at it as the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ I ask.

  ‘Pretty much all my life.’

  Taylor tugs her skirt down and heads off along Booran Road. ‘See ya.’

  ‘Where’s she going?’ Richard asks.

  ‘Catching the bus to Ascott.’

  Richard’s eyebrows go up. ‘Oh. You go to different schools?’

  ‘We didn’t until she set half the library on fire,’ I say. That stunt had felt particularly personal.

  ‘She set half the library on fire?’ He glances after Taylor, who’s stopped to tie her jumper around her waist. ‘That was her? People still talk about that.’

  ‘We had five fire trucks roll up.’

  ‘Did she do it on purpose?’

  ‘Taylor doesn’t do things by accident. Not things like that.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Ever.’

  Richard gives Taylor one more worried look and then we pass the intersection and he begins to talk. He talks for the entire fifteen-minute walk to school. He tells me about the time the river flooded and two of the cabins got washed away. He talks about swimming in the pool in summer and how he’s going to string up a tyre over the river. He tells me about Muriel, who lives in the cabin that looks empty, and Marky, who lives in the one covered in flowers. He tells me how some of the people at Fairyland have to share the toilet and showers in the block by the pool. By the time we’ve arrived at school my head feels too full.

  ‘I saw you in detention the other day,’ I say.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘With Carl?’

  ‘Oh! Right. Yeah. He comes to Fairyland at night and does dodgy crap – eggs the cabins and rips up people’s gardens. Hopefully he’ll stop now.’

  ‘Right. Fair enough.’

  ‘I’ll see you,’ he says. He seems so happy that I figure Fairyland can’t be as bad as we’ve been imagining.

  We’ve finished exams for the year and school is in that strange place where we’re still expected to turn up, but there’s really no important work for us to do. Although, being Year Elevens, we’re being treated to class after class on preparing for the following year. Sutherbend High isn’t a particularly great school, but they take self-care pretty seriously.

  Sitting in the science building, listening to how we need to eat lots of dark, leafy green vegetables and wholegrains next year – which is all stuff I’d been planning on doing anyway – I write on a piece of paper and toss it across the table to Clem.

  I do this to all my friends, but Clem’s always been the one I have the most to say to. The most shared memories. My notes always start the same way. Do you remember.

  Do you remember the time you got chased across the whole suburb by a huge dog that turned out to be a goat?

  He reads it and smiles and scrunches it up into his pocket before the teacher (now talking about the evils of processed foods) notices.

  As we leave the room half an hour later, he’s picking at his tie again, and I take it off him and stuff it into my pocket.

  Later, it’s just Lara and me at our lockers. It’s weird to think that next year we’ll be out of the regular student lockers and up on the hallowed third floor that is reserved solely for Year Twelves. Legend has it that you can see the ocean on a clear day. Clem says that it’s bull because the ocean is way too far away, but I hope he’s wrong. I love the idea of seeing the sea.

  ‘I found this website,’ Lara says, passing me a printout from a website about adopted families and reuniting.

  I look away and hand the paper back to her.

  ‘Just something to think about.’

  ‘I really don’t want to talk about it, Lar.’ I’d thought about those services a lot over the years, but I didn’t think I needed them. I use a lot of ‘I’ statements and have muesli for breakfast. I’m fine with being adopted.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Just drop it, okay?’

  Lara shoves her books back into her locker. ‘Alright,’ she says stiffly.

  I look at her bowed head and sigh. ‘Sorry, Lar. It’s not you. Thanks for looking the stuff up.’

  She half smiles, although I can tell she’s upset. I open my mouth to say more, but she strides off. I watch her go and then I put Clem’s tie in his locker, snap the door shut and head out of the school gates.

  Clem falls into step beside me, but it’s different now. I don’t live in a house anymore. It was hard enough when my house was crappy and loud and his was quiet and lovely. I don’t know how it works now. What if he wan
ts to hang out at my house?

  ‘Want to come over to mine?’ he asks, as though he can tell I’m panicking about what to do.

  I feel my shoulders relax. ‘Your parents home?’

  ‘This early? No way.’

  ‘Alright. Cool.’ I reach down and buckle up my T-bars because only Clem’s here and it’s okay to be lame when it’s just Clem.

  ‘You right?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah. Just all the family stuff. You know.’

  ‘Alright,’ says Clem, but I can tell he’s still mystified. He’ll leave Sutherbend and be the sort of guy who sends his parents a card on their birthdays and sees them once a year for Christmas lunch at a bistro somewhere. I’ll be the sort of person who spends her life living with her troubled parents in a caravan park.

  His house is cold and quiet. I shiver and we head upstairs to his room. I sit down on the floor in front of the window and stare out at the quiet street.

  Behind me, in the reflection of his open laptop screen, I can see Clem lift his hand, like he wants to stroke my head, then put it back down in his lap.

  I glance around at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing, Price. You opened your crunchy letter yet?’

  ‘No. I haven’t opened my crunchy letter.’

  ‘It’s not going to make it easier.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Because procrastinating doesn’t help anything.’

  ‘Where’d you get that crap from?’

  ‘You.’ He reaches for the laptop. ‘You got really obsessed with procrastinating after you read that book with the rainbow cover.’

  ‘Oh! The Happy Doer! I loved that book!’

  We go down to the living room, drink cola, eat carrot cake and watch video clips online. His mum comes home and smiles at me.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Sarah,’ she says.

  ‘Um . . . you too.’

  ‘Her name’s not Sarah. It’s Stella, Mum.’ Clem runs his hands through his hair. ‘It’s not like I’ve got so many friends that it’s confusing.’

  She doesn’t say anything to Clem, but that steeliness appears in her expression. She gives me a quick look, as though I’ve tricked her somehow, and then she gets something out of the fridge and pads away in her stockings, and I hear a door quietly close because everything in Clem’s house is quiet. Except Clem.