Tin Heart

by Shivaun Plozza

  ‘We’re going,’ I tell Pip.

  ‘But Mum . . .’

  ‘She’ll catch up.’

  I pull Pip away, not even looking back once.

  Imagine a dolphin born in an aquarium, raised to perform tricks for snot-nosed kids before someone – probably my mum – kicks up a stink about her being abused for human amusement. So Flipper’s set free but the second she hits open water she’s like, ‘Does this swimming pool never end and how come these fish don’t just land in my mouth like they normally do and what the hell is this giant dolphin-like creature with razor-sharp teeth swimming towards m–’

  R.I.P. Flipper.

  Well, that’s me: bred in captivity.

  As I scrape into first period seconds after the bell, I almost get my head knocked off by a football. I hover near the door, unsure what to do, where to go. Students pour in around me, sucking me into their riptide of yelling, sweating, laughing, jostling.

  ‘You look like you’re about to puke,’ says Zan, appearing beside me in her black cap, jeans and oversized singlet.

  If I wasn’t already about to puke, I am now because Zan Cheung is talking to me. Again.

  She looks bored or maybe angry or tired or indifferent. ‘These are new shoes,’ she says. ‘So vomit in that direction.’ She waves a hand at two boys who crash past us, laughing and elbowing.

  Wouldn’t that be awesome? Hi, new classmates, my name is . . . blergh!

  I guess I would no longer be The Dying Girl or The Transplant Girl, I would be Vomit Girl. Which is much worse. But not as bad as That Girl Who Vandalised the Butcher Shop.

  Ugh.

  ‘Seriously,’ Zan says. ‘Are you okay?’

  I surprise myself with words. ‘I’m not really myself today.’

  Zan blinks at me. ‘Er, okay. Want to sit?’

  ‘You mean with me? Really?’

  She shrugs. ‘Or whatever.’

  ‘No. I mean, sure! I’d love to!’ Next to Zan, all my words sound very exclamation-marky.

  She surveys the room for spare seats. Cerberus waves her over, but Zan points to two empty seats on the opposite side of the room. ‘Over there?’ she says.

  I nod at her to avoid the abundance of exclamation marks my answer would hurl at her. Like a hailstorm of little punctuation swords. She frowns before she swivels, thudding off towards our seats. I hurry after her, dumping my books and sliding in beside her.

  Zan lifts her cap to ruffle her hair, before leaning back in her chair.

  She has Photoshop-smooth skin and she’s not even wearing make-up. Her face is the kind that you look at and go, oh, there really are people with heart-shaped faces. But I don’t think it’s how she looks that gives her confidence. To borrow one of Vivienne’s phrases: Zan gives zero fucks. Like, if she had fucks to give she would handcuff them to a slab of concrete, toss them off a bridge and flip them off as they sank to the bottom of the river.

  Exhibit A: I once witnessed her key a car because it had a racist bumper sticker.

  Exhibit B: I heard she turned up at another school’s formal wearing a ‘Girls just wanna have fundamental human rights’ t-shirt and handed out pamphlets explaining why the school’s policy that ‘you can only bring a date of the opposite gender’ was a load of bollocks.

  Exhibit C: She is Zan Cheung.

  Case closed.

  A forty-something guy in too-tight jeans and long thinning hair bounds in. He tries for a fist-bump with the kid closest to the door, a stoner with ratty hair and the smudged look of someone who hasn’t washed for days.

  The guy – I’m guessing he’s our teacher – slopes to the front desk, dumps his things and says ‘Media’: the answer to a question nobody has asked. ‘I’m Mr Sneijder. But you can call me Rusty.’

  No one shuts up. In fact, it gets louder. Across the room, Eddie Oro yawns and it’s so loud and so moose-mating-call-like that I jump in my seat. He stretches and I get an eyeful of freckly skin, a snail trail and Calvin Kleins. Gross.

  Eddie Oro is literally the last guy on earth whose underwear I want to be looking at. So it’s really crappy that this is the moment that Cerberus decides to notice me. To notice me noticing Eddie Oro. To notice me noticing Eddie Oro’s crotch region.

  The three heads lean in to one another and whisper.

  I look away.

  ‘You’ve got that puke face again,’ says Zan.

  ‘Marlowe?’ It’s Sneijder. His gaze is sweeping the room, half bent over the desk, pen in hand. ‘Marlowe Jensen?’

  The roll. He’s taking the roll. And my name is Marlowe Jensen.

  ‘Here!’ I say it too loud. There’s laughter. Sniggering.

  ‘What a dork,’ says Eddie.

  I shrink behind the computer and wonder if the coroner will record ‘extreme embarrassment’ or ‘a catastrophic lack of coolness’ as my cause of death.

  Sneijder starts calling out instructions, but I only catch every third word: ‘Let’s . . . shall . . . you’ll . . . on . . . can . . . program . . . icon . . . now.’

  I look around. People have pulled their chairs into circles – talking, laughing, not computering. I accidentally make eye contact with Eddie across the room and he winks at me.

  I pull out my sketchbook and draw a calm, soothing depiction of Eddie being tortured in horrifically creative ways. I’m so engrossed by my drawing of Eddie being ripped in two by a three-headed dog-beast that I don’t notice that Zan is watching me until she speaks.

  ‘Shit you’re good,’ she says. ‘And angry.’

  If you asked anyone to find a bunch of adjectives to describe me, ‘angry’ wouldn’t normally make the list. Quiet, awkward, anxious, shy, introverted and short, but not angry.

  Maybe I’m some kind of Hulk and I don’t know it. Or maybe this is the new me.

  Zan leans closer and, instinctively, I lean my arm across the drawing but she grabs the corner of my sketchbook and tugs. Her nose crinkles as she appraises my drawing; it’s the most expressive I’ve ever seen her.

  ‘Give him exploding zits,’ she says. ‘And devil horns.’

  A laugh breaks free before I can cover my mouth. I make the devil horns twisted and a teensy bit phallic. One of the exploding zits squirts him in the eye.

  ‘Brutal. Yet fair,’ says Zan and almost, kind of maybe smiles. Well, it’s a lip twitch but it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling so it totally counts.

  Is this making friends? Proper friends, not you’re-dying-so-I’d-better-be-nice-to-you friends.

  Sneijder keeps calling out instructions but his voice gets eaten up by the noise. I think about at least turning the computer on, but no one else has.

  Zan taps her pen against the table and frowns. ‘If I had an ex-girlfriend that I wanted an unflattering and extremely violent drawing of so I could, you know, vent or whatever, would that be within your realm of expertise?’ she asks.

  I nod. ‘Decapitated, drawn and quartered, burnt at the stake, it’s all possible. Just say the word.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asks, pointing to the drawing of Leo I’ve added to the corner of the page. He’s being spit-roasted on a trident by a herd of carnivorous cows.

  ‘Just a guy.’

  She narrows her eyes at me.

  I don’t think a second conversation with someone you’d really like to be friends with is an appropriate time to spill all your problems in a big, messy word vomit, but I do.

  I tell Zan everything about Leo and how he called me a freak. And about my mum and the protest and what I did last night. And, finally, to make sense of all that, I end up telling her about the unanswered letters and my donor’s family.

  ‘That really sucks,’ she says, and even though her face doesn’t change I think she means it.

  ‘The family don’t want to know me,’ I say. ‘But I want to know them. At the very least, I just want a name. Why is that against the law? It’s just a name.’

  And it’s only after I say this that I realise the shape of my words perfectly fit
s the burning, aching hole inside me. There’s an empty space that can only be filled with a name. Because not knowing feels like I’m trying to pretend that this heart didn’t have a life before me. But it did. I know it did.

  ‘What do you know about Mongolia?’ I ask Zan.

  ‘Literally nothing,’ she says.

  ‘I only know one thing. They believe that a person’s spirit is in every part of them, so if you get a blood transfusion you get the spirit of that person too. Do you think that’s true? I don’t believe in ghosts or possession or anything, but do you think my heart could change me? If you get a whole organ, how much of that person do you become?’

  ‘Unless this is the beginning of a bad eighties horror film, I think you’re fine,’ she says.

  I scrunch up the corner of my drawing, the edge of the paper presses uncomfortably against my skin from inside my fist. Not enough to hurt or cut, but enough to make me aware of it. Like an itchy tag on a brand-new t-shirt.

  The class only goes for forty-five minutes and the bell goes right in the middle of Sneijder writing up homework on the board.

  ‘So . . . you . . . completed . . . and . . . questions . . . maybe . . . topic,’ says Sneijder, over the din. He packs up, juggling his books and his keys and what’s left of his self-esteem.

  I hurry to scribble down the notes, but Zan grabs the pen out of my hand and I turn to find her watching me.

  ‘You shouldn’t let that whole letter thing get you down,’ she says. She drops my pen on the table in front of me. It rolls across my sketchbook and comes to a stop on top of cartoon-Eddie’s exploding zit face. ‘What’s knowing the kid’s name going to mean anyway?’

  I grimace: what’s it going to mean?

  It’s going to mean I can say thank you. In a way that means something.

  Like, if I knew a name then I could buy my donor a star. You get a certificate, but if I don’t have a name there’d be a blank spot and my star would be nameless. What kind of thanks is that?

  Or I could get a tattoo. A heart and my donor’s name and the heart could be broken but stitched up again. Maybe it could be stitched with the name? I run my thumb across the skin of my inner wrist and try to imagine what the tattoo would look like. Except I can’t. There’s just a blank spot where the name should be.

  Everything needs a name.

  When David Bowie died, Pip just about had a meltdown. He locked himself in his room for two days with ‘Starman’ playing on a never-ending loop. He ate the food Mum left outside his door but never showed his face. Mum started talking about grief counsellors and meditation retreats and herbal antidepressants, but on the third day we heard noises. Not just ‘Starman’ on repeat. Banging noises and sewing noises and stomping noises and even though we were happy to hear signs of life we exchanged worried glances every few minutes because there really was an awful lot of banging.

  On the fourth day Pip’s bedroom door opened and out came the Goblin King carrying a rocket ship. A two-foot, three-dimensional, psychedelic, honest-to-god rocket ship. It had a firework taped to it with gaffer tape.

  ‘Should we be worried Pip has the parts to build a rocket just lying around in his bedroom?’ I asked. ‘Fireworks are illegal. Where did he get them?’

  Mum just smiled at Pip and asked him what he had made.

  ‘See that?’ said Pip and pointed to where he’d written Major Tom on the side of the rocket. ‘That’s the name of my rocket ship.’

  And then he turned the ship around so we could see the other side, the side he’d been hugging tightly to his chest.

  There was a picture of Bowie taped to the side of the rocket. Underneath it Pip had painted: R.I.P. David Robert Jones, because Bowie was his stage name and I guess Pip wanted to thank the man behind the costumes and the music and the awesomeness.

  ‘We’re going to set it off in the backyard,’ said Pip in exactly the same voice you might use to say, ‘We’re going for a walk along the beach.’

  I looked at Mum. Because this was against the law and highly dangerous. But she nodded. ‘We certainly are,’ she said.

  So the three of us went out into the yard where it was fuzzy with dusk and still hot, and I whispered to Mum that I thought it was a total fire-ban day but she shook her head at me and told me that didn’t matter. ‘The rules don’t matter today,’ she said.

  Pip lit the rocket and it shot into the air so fast our necks snapped back to watch it. I always liked watching fireworks and this was kind of the same but with all of the noise and colour and sparkle and joy concentrated into just one.

  I didn’t have a new heart back then so I’d been thinking a lot about death. I’d done a ton of counselling at the hospital and Mum had booked me into meditation groups, but something about Pip and his rocket ship made me feel a tiny bit more okay about my own death. I mean, talking about death and visualising it and whatever else was okay – it was pretty helpful actually – but seeing Pip face grief head on with an honest-to-god rocket ship? Nothing beats that.

  I wondered if he’d build me a rocket too.

  ‘Goodbye David Robert Jones,’ said Pip, and I could hear the tears in his voice. It’s lucky my dodgy heart didn’t break then and there. Because Pip wasn’t supposed to cry. He was always the brave one.

  Mum and Pip started singing ‘Space Oddity’ and they kept it up until the neighbours yelled at us to shut up. So we went inside and Mum said it was Wheat-cheat Wednesday, even though it was really a Thursday. We had pizza and watched Labyrinth. It was a sad day but it was also a good day.

  Pip knew how to say thank you. He knew how important a name was.

  Zan stands with a shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she says. ‘You could just keep drawing angry pictures, I guess. My ex-girlfriend’s name is Leah, by the way. Black hair, brown eyes, five-foot-four. I’m thinking burnt at the stake will do nicely.’ She tips her cap at me. ‘See you round,’ she says.

  She turns and walks away, and I watch her all the way to the door.

  The notification is waiting for me two days later: Isaiah Tilo invited you to join the closed group Life After Life.

  At first I don’t get it. Who the hell is Isaiah Tilo and what in the world is Life After Life?

  But then I remember: Hannah. The Facebook group.

  I get a happy buzz seeing it there but then I also kind of want to projectile vomit. It’s a weird feeling: elation and blinding terror all wrapped up in one confusing package.

  I’m supposed to be getting ready for school but I stay wrapped up in bed to check out the group’s page straight away; the laptop is warm against my thighs, even through the doona. Next door Pip is bashing and banging and god only knows who he’ll be today, but I tune him out. I tune Mum out too, downstairs singing along to Stevie Nicks while she makes breakfast. It’s just me and the screen and my gut-twisting hope.

  Because what if my donor’s family is on here? What if the message from the hospital was a mistake? What if they got me mixed up with someone else and my family actually want me to contact them? What if there’s one person – maybe the brother or sister or cousin – who wants to get in touch even though the rest of the family don’t?

  There’s hope, isn’t there?

  No. Be sensible, Marlowe. You’re just on here to connect with people who get what you’re going through. That’s all.

  I start scrolling and wow. There are so many comments. Looking for a woman in her fifties who had a liver transplant in October last year. Anyone know a teacher in his thirties who donated his corneas in December? My husband received a lung transplant in April two years ago – was told his donor was a retiree in her sixties. Can anyone help?

  It’s overwhelming. I mean, where do I even start? Can I just start talking to these people? Hey, I’m not the one you’re looking for but I am a recipient and man do I need to talk.

  I look up and breathe deeply. I focus on the drawings pinned to my walls. Pip and Mum and Hannah and kids from the hospital, kids whose names I can’t always remember.
Are any of their families on here?

  Okay.

  Breathe.

  Just breathe.

  I look back at the screen. If I start scrolling up from the date I got my transplant then that’s not such a big deal is it? I wouldn’t necessarily be looking for my donor’s family but . . .

  I scroll down and down and down through the months. I let the words blur because it’s all too real, too much like being forced to stare at yourself in that Snow White mirror that can only tell the bitter truth.

  All those desperate words. All that unanswered hope.

  Finally, I hit February and god I really am going to throw up. I feel hot and like my insides have spontaneously morphed into bees.

  Breathe.

  Just breathe.

  You’re not looking for your donor’s family, Marlowe. It’s no big deal, okay?

  Mum calls from downstairs. ‘Hurry up, you two, or you’ll be late. Unless you want to skip school and we can see if they need volunteers at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. I’d actually be okay with that.’

  I hear Pip thump thump thump as he makes his way to his bedroom door. ‘Can’t. I’m Vincent Van Gogh,’ he shouts. ‘But with two ears and a really positive mental outlook. I’m going to give out hugs and sunflowers all day.’

  I frown so hard I feel a headache forming already.

  My husband donated multiple organs. Worked in building construction. Late forties.

  Looking to connect with whoever received my mother’s kidney in late January, around the twenty-second.

  Is anyone here going to the Annual Service of Remembrance in May? Would be great to meet up in person and say hi.

  ‘Then get your positive mental outlook down here for breakfast or you’ll be late,’ shouts Mum. ‘You too, Marlowe.’

  I scroll up. And up and up. I guess I could leave my own message. But what would I write?

  What little hope I had is dying. All those bees inside me are stinging it to death. Slowly. Painfully. I mean I knew it wasn’t going to happen I just . . .