How to Grow a Family Tree

by Eliza Henry Jones

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Always trying to fix everyone. It’s weird.’

  ‘It’s not weird!’

  ‘It’s weird. Reading all those self-help, voodoo, wishywashy magazines at the library. Like you’re having a mid-life crisis.’

  I glare at her and start rummaging in the grocery boxes. My friends say it’s weird, too, the helping thing. But they say it sort of affectionately, not how Taylor says it. Like there’s something wrong with me.

  She grabs my arm.

  ‘Ow! What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she says.

  Matthew Clarke walks by with Richard, talking about how Carl and his mates had pulled up all the flowers from outside the cabin Richard shares with his mum.

  ‘Are you hiding from Matthew?’ I ask, pulling my arm free. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not hiding from anyone!’ Taylor snaps, stalking out into the yard. ‘Richard just doesn’t stop talking.’

  I go out after her, watching as she walks slowly down the gravel road towards the front gates, as though there’s someone up ahead she really doesn’t want to catch up to.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It’s not like I’m avoiding opening my letter. I’m way too in touch with my inner emotional world to do something as basic as avoiding opening a letter. Clem says I’m a massive wuss and need to just get it over with, but Clem doesn’t understand the nuances of emotions like I do. I’ll open my letter at the perfect time and waiting for that perfect time is not avoidance.

  It’s not.

  Richard gets yelled at in front of the whole school for getting Carl’s undies stuck up over his head. Apparently, Carl had to go to the hospital but was expected to make a full recovery.

  School finishes for our year on Friday. I walk home by myself with this weird feeling of time moving too quickly. How can I be about to turn eighteen? How can we be faced with Year Twelve and licences and buying our own drinks? At least Lara, Zin and Clem are a bit older than me. It makes it all feel less scary, somehow.

  I stop in at a couple of pubs on the way home, but don’t see Dad. Not that I really expect to. When I stop at the River Pub, I notice a familiar white-blonde head peeking over the bar. ‘It’s a disgrace – having pokies so close to the caravan park. You should be ashamed of yourself!’

  The man behind the counter blinks up at Taylor.

  ‘I reckon you’re going to tell me that it’s just a bit of fun and I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I do, alright? My dad’s gambled away our house and we’re up to our eyeballs in debt. This is him!’ She waves the printout of Dad’s face over the bar. ‘If you let him in, you’re basically stealing food out of my and my sister’s mouths. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Ah, no.’

  ‘You know what? I . . . Oh! Hi, Stella!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say to the man. ‘Taylor, I think you’ve made your point. Let’s go.’

  ‘Stick it up!’ Taylor bellows as I drag her towards the door. ‘Stick the picture of our dad up behind the bar with a big cross through it so all your staff know not to let him into the pokies!’

  The man stares after us.

  ‘Taylor! You can’t do that!’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Abuse the pub staff! Far out – you need to be a bit more polite to get your point across.’

  ‘Polite doesn’t work.’

  ‘Of course it does! It’s better than yelling at people!’

  Taylor rolls her eyes like she knows better and sags into a camp chair when we reach the annex. I start making a salad for dinner.

  ‘You could give me a hand,’ I say.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You’re such a pushover, Stell.’

  ‘Arsonist.’

  Taylor sighs and cranes her neck towards the door. ‘What’s with everyone wandering around out there with Tupperware?’

  ‘Oh. The garden night, I guess.’

  ‘Garden night?’

  ‘Richard was talking about it. One Friday night each month people get together in the pavilion, have some food and then head out and do some gardening.’

  ‘I see,’ says Taylor in her lightest voice. I glance at her, but she’s staring out at Fairyland with a very peaceful look on her face. I turn back to the salad, feeling uneasy.

  When Mum and Dad come in, Taylor smiles at them very sweetly. ‘Excited about the garden night?’

  Mum frowns. ‘What garden night?’

  ‘The one in the pavilion.’

  ‘The weird hall thing, you mean?’ Mum’s frown deepens.

  ‘It’s for everyone in the park. They take food and then go out and do some gardening. You’ll both come, right?’

  ‘Not really my thing . . .’ Dad starts to say.

  ‘We’ll come,’ says Mum, glancing at him.

  ‘Great!’ says Taylor. ‘Firstly, do you both have your self-defence corkscrews? Because we can’t possibly be expected to get so close to Fairyland people without our self-defence corkscrews.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ says Mum, but she looks a bit worried, like she really does want us all to have our self-defence corkscrews on hand.

  The pavilion – which I guess is a remnant of the time when the people who built this place figured it might be a holiday destination – is set up with plastic tables and mosquito zappers and camping chairs. I blink. The group is nearly entirely made up of older women and families with little kids. I hadn’t expected that. I also hadn’t expected Matthew Clarke to be sitting in one of the chairs. He sees Taylor and me and he flushes.

  ‘Welcome!’ says a lady a few years older than Mum with a shock of red hair and wrists covered in metal bangles. ‘I’m Cassie. You must be lot twelve.’

  ‘I’m Judy and this is Charlie. And our daughters, Taylor and Stella.’

  ‘And what brings you to Fairyland Caravan Park?’ Cassie asks, and it seems a bit of a rude question under the circumstances. I mean – obviously nothing good.

  I feel everyone’s eyes swivel around to us, including Matthew Clarke’s.

  ‘Termites,’ says Mum. ‘We had a termite problem.’

  ‘Actually, our dad gambled away everything we had and we lost our house and we’re in debt up to our eyeballs,’ Taylor says. I step away from her. I mean, I’m mad at Dad, too, but some things are still off limits.

  Mum gives Taylor such a dark look that I know she’ll be punished later and I’m sort of glad about that. I see Dad start to shake – the way he does before he cries – but the people in the room just nod. ‘My Darryl was a gambler – loved the track,’ says Cassie, her voice fond. ‘He could have a dollar to his name and he’d bet ten. Cordial?’

  ‘Outside, please,’ Mum says to Taylor. ‘We need to have a talk. Outside.’

  I watch them go. I sit down against the wall with my weak orange cordial and put my backpack down next to me. If I had my own room, I’d definitely flounce back to it now, slam the door and read my books and look up at the ceiling until I’d calmed down. But I don’t even have my own bed, I only have the books I can fit in my backpack and the ceiling above our bed is encrusted with so many seashells that I’ve started having dreams about plucking them all off. So I stay in the pavilion. I look around for Richard, who waves and makes his way over.

  ‘Cool, huh?’ he says.

  ‘Aren’t you meant to be in detention?’

  ‘Can’t keep me past five,’ he says. ‘Anyway, the garden night. It’s cool, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, even though it’s probably the least cool thing I’ve ever been to.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’

  ‘Being yelled at by her mum,’ I say.

  Richard looks at me a bit oddly and I wonder if I should’ve said our mum.

  I think about telling Richard how I’ve decided to help everyone at Fairyland to get back on their feet, but I sort of like it being my own secret plan, at least for now. Not that I’m using it as a distraction from my letter. That would be very basic.
Much too basic for someone who’s read every single book in the ‘Make Good Choices: Make a Good Life’ series.

  Richard tilts his head. ‘Wanna sort some seed packets?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We get a discount from that nursery down by the river – mostly seeds just past their best-before dates. They still grow really well, there’s just a lower germination rate.’

  ‘That means nothing to me.’

  He snorts. ‘Just put any for summer planting in this pile, okay? It’s written on the back. I’ll do the others later.’

  ‘They have to be planted at certain times?’

  ‘Yeah – of course. Wow, you’ve really never grown anything before, have you?’

  ‘Nah. We had lawn at our last place. And magnolias.’

  ‘Oh. Wow.’ He looks at me like he feels sorry for me. ‘Well, lucky you’ve ended up here. It’s pretty great learning about growing food.’

  I nod in the same patient way I’ve seen Mum nod at confused residents at the nursing home where she works. A few people head outside with gloves and gardening tools that I can’t name. I see Matthew from a distance, moving between people. A little later, I see him through the pavilion window, knocking on people’s cabins and talking to them with his arms crossed.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘Oh.’ Richard shakes his head. He’s absolutely clobbered me at darts, but he keeps muttering about it just being good luck. ‘His dad’s work,’ he says, his voice distasteful.

  When Richard rolls up his sleeves, the word Rahim is written up and down one of his arms in neat, black ink.

  ‘Is that a tattoo?’

  ‘What? Of course not! It’s pen! Jeez.’

  ‘What’s Rahim mean?’

  Richard glances down at his arm. ‘My name.’

  ‘You’re Richard, though.’

  ‘No. That’s just the name Mum gave me when we got here. People couldn’t get their head around Rahim.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s no big deal. I just like to remind myself sometimes, you know?’

  ‘It’s a great name,’ I say. ‘Rahim. People are pretty dense. Does anyone call you Rahim still?’

  ‘Just my mum, sometimes.’

  ‘Would you go back to it, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He rolls his sleeves back down. ‘Maybe. But it’s hard when you get older. There are parts of me that are Richard now, you know?’

  ‘I dunno.’ I glance down, ashamed. ‘I mean, I’ve only ever been Stella. I’ve never thought about it before.’

  Across the room, I see Cassie grunting as she lifts up a tyre painted vividly with flowers and vines. ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Oh.’ Richard puts spinach seeds in the summer pile. ‘She has a tyre business.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She steals them, I guess. Turns them into things.’

  ‘She steals tyres and turns them into things?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I fiddle with my cup, thinking. ‘How’d she come up with that?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty creative, isn’t it? Who’d think of that? Turning tyres into things that are beautiful.’

  ‘It’s not creativity,’ he says. ‘It’s survival.’

  ‘Still. It’s cool. She could make a lot of money from them. Move out of here.’

  He picks up another seed packet, checking the edge of it with the pad of his thumb. ‘You really think it’s as simple as that?’

  I blink. ‘I don’t know.’

  He tosses the packet into the summer pile. ‘Right. We’re ready to plant.’

  ***

  Richard coordinates the whole thing. He’s very organised. He’s even set up a little perspex lean-to out the back of the pool and this is where we take the summer seed packets. Muriel tags along, stopping to talk to people as we walk. Muriel is about as tall as Taylor, with long hair in a very neat plait and a huge, crooked smile. She’d be in her eighties, I guess. Maybe nineties. She runs her finger along the branches of a rosemary bush and I think it’s so sad that she’s here and not in a nursing home, where old people are meant to be.

  ‘This is where you grow everything?’ I ask. Every available inch of the lean-to is filled with little plants in pots.

  ‘I just start them off in here. Then they harden off out there.’ Richard nods to a little shelf set up outside. ‘And then they get planted.’

  ‘I organise most of the planting,’ Muriel says. ‘I work out what we’re going to plant where. Some plants are thirstier than others and some need more sun. You’ve gotta be clever about it. Make sure you put the needy plants near lots where people will check on them.’

  ‘Right.’ Muriel should be sitting watching game shows on television with a nice soft blanket over her knees, not poking around outside in the dirt and heat. It’s a travesty, really. Maybe I can talk to Mum about getting Muriel into the nursing home where she works.

  Muriel reaches up to prod my shoulder and she’s much stronger than she looks. ‘What about you folks? In lot twelve? Can I trust some of my needy ones with you?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I say. ‘We’re not good with gardens.’

  Muriel nods sombrely. ‘Alright. Disappointing, but I appreciate your honesty.’

  ‘The ones for around lots six and eight are out in the wheelbarrow there.’ Richard indicates the area outside. I wipe my sweating face on the back of my hand. Richard smiles at me and hands me some gloves. ‘Alright. Let’s get planting.’

  ***

  My nails are black with potting mix. I scrub at them, but they stay stubbornly dirty. Later that night, Mum’s sitting on the wicker couch with the television turned down low, frowning at a list that I suppose is something to do with money and budgeting. It’s all she does now, budget and fret and work. The other parts of her have slipped away and I hope they’re just hidden. I hope they’re not lost. I wish I knew how to find them. I think about telling her about my plans to help people at Fairyland – I know she’d approve. But it still feels like a secret that’s just mine. Besides, I need to sort out my own family, first. It’s amazing how little they’ve learned from me over the years. Sometimes it feels as though they ignore everything I tell them about how to live their best life, just to spite me.

  ‘Mum? You shouldn’t have coffee so late. It interferes with your sleep patterns.’

  She gives me a blank stare. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Chamomile would be better. I can get you some.’

  She looks on the verge of telling me off for being a know-it-all bossy britches, then she softens. ‘Thanks, love. But I quite like my coffee. Never could stomach that rotten herbal stuff.’

  I fidget for a moment. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says, eyes still on her list.

  ‘How did my mum . . . my birth . . . my biological mother get pregnant?’

  Mum drops her pen and looks up at me. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve just been thinking about her, that’s all.’ I imagine them. My birth parents. They’d be happily married. They’d just had me too young, that’s all. Too young to be parents, but madly in love. And rich, too. They’d have a house bigger than Clem’s; bigger than Lara’s, even. Bigger than any of the houses in Sutherbend.

  Mum gives me a searching look. ‘It’s very out of the blue, Stell. Asking that.’

  ‘Not really. I think about her all the time.’

  Mum slides off her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What do you mean by all the time?’

  ‘Just a lot, that’s all.’

  ‘Is this about Fairyland? Is it about living here?’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘I’m too tired to get into it all, Stell. She was young and silly and she was taken advantage of. Let’s leave it at that.’

  I frown. ‘What do you mean by young and silly?’

  ‘Nothing.
It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Taken advantage of,’ I say the words slowly, weighing each of them up. My heart begins to beat faster and faster.

  ‘Yes.’

  I know what ‘taken advantage of’ means. I stand up, feeling dizzy. But there’s nowhere for me to go, no place that’s just mine. I go into the bedroom and sit down on the floor with my back against the side of the bed.

  ‘Stell?’ Taylor looks up from her laptop and pokes me in the back with her foot. I force myself to breathe. Taken advantage of.

  Taylor keeps kicking me. I go outside and Dad’s still out there. I close my eyes. ‘You know, Taylor wouldn’t give you such a hard time if you tried to help yourself more.’

  He startles. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Tried to help myself?’

  ‘Like, if you joined a sports team or something. Or took up running. Or did more around the house for Mum. Or actually went to counselling. Just stuff that’s going to help you, you know?’

  ‘I’m not talking about this with you,’ he says, his voice quiet.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Look,’ he says, pointing at a carving of a fairy on the trunk of one of the trees. ‘Aren’t they great?’

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘They give it a bit of character, don’t they? The fairies. Much more character than that boring old house we lived in before.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I say, sounding like Taylor. Except my behaviour is much more acceptable because I’m much more in tune with my inner emotional world than Taylor is. ‘Stop trying to make this okay. We all hate it here.’

  He keeps staring at the fairy carving, but his voice carries in the still air. ‘Don’t you think I know that?’

  ‘But why can’t you help yourself? And why can’t you just gamble with things that aren’t money? Why can’t you gamble about who does the dishes or giving someone massages for a week? Why does it have to be money and things?’

  ‘Stell. It’s complicated.’

  ‘It’s not, though. I gave up gluten! Remember when I gave up gluten? If I can do that, you can do this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. I just . . . I don’t get how you can still do it. It’s destroying everything that’s meant to be important to you. And you don’t even care.’