by Carly Nugent
When you are writing a story for the first time it is hard to decide which details are important and which ones are superfluous (i.e. ones you don’t need to understand the story). This is because sometimes you don’t know what your story is about until it is finished. So you have to write down everything and when you get to the end you can go back and cross out the superfluous details.
This morning something happened that felt important, even though it had nothing to do with finding Virginia and William Shakespeare. Today was Saturday, and it rained. I was getting ready to meet Jonas so we could go and look for the peacocks, but when Mum saw me putting on my gumboots she said, ‘Oh no you don’t, Cassandra Jane Andersen. Not in this weather.’
‘But the peacocks.’
‘The peacocks can wait, okay?’
It looks like a question when I write it down like that, but it really wasn’t. Questions are part of discussions, and we weren’t having a discussion.
‘Take off those boots,’ said Mum. ‘You can help me make zucchini cake.’
I wanted to point out that it wasn’t really fair for me to help Mum with her homework when she hadn’t helped me with mine, but I knew that would be pushing it so I went and got the flour out of the pantry instead.
Making zucchini cake wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Mum let me beat the egg whites into stiff peaks (which is my favourite cooking job to do) and for a little while it felt like I had gone back to last year, before Mum was always cross with me. Back in that time whenever I would help cook or plant roses or do jigsaws I would ask Mum ‘WH’ questions and she would answer them. Here are some examples of the kinds of ‘WH’ questions I used to ask Mum:
WHy do people kill seals? (Answer: for their fur and their meat.)
HoW old do you have to be to drink coffee? (Answer: at least fifteen.)
WHat is a dust bunny? (Answer: a ball of dust.)
WHere is Machu Picchu? (Answer: in Peru.)
WHen did humans land on the moon? (Answer: 1969.)
WHo invented light bulbs? (Answer: Thomas Edison.)
While I was beating egg whites on Saturday morning I was thinking about how Jonas doesn’t like The Creation Story from church, but I do. So I asked Mum WHat she thought about it.
‘I like it,’ Mum said.
‘But it’s not true,’ I said.
‘Just because a story’s not true doesn’t mean it’s not good,’ Mum said. She was grating zucchini and her fingertips were green.
‘Jonas says the real story is there was a Big Bang in space, and then the Earth was made out of bits of exploded rock.’
‘Well, that is true, scientifically,’ Mum said. She stopped grating and looked out the window, where Dad’s car was pulling into the driveway. ‘The Creation Story is true in a different way. It’s a Metaphor.’
I started to ask WHat a Metaphor was but when I saw the way Mum was staring at Dad I stopped. I followed her eyes out the window and saw Dad shut the boot of the car. Then the front door opened, and we could hear Dad doing something in the laundry. Mum sighed. Then Dad came into the kitchen and Mum started grating zucchini again.
‘Hey, Dad,’ I said. ‘We’re making zucchini cake.’
Dad made a throat-clearing sound and rubbed a hand over the bits of almost-beard on his chin. He looked at Mum.
‘Yum,’ he said, except the way he said it made it sound like he really meant ‘Gross.’
Mum didn’t look at him.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Dad said, and then he went into his study.
Mum stopped grating and stared at the pile of green mush she had made on the chopping board.
‘This is too much zucchini,’ she said, and scraped some of it into the compost bin.
And the thing about all this that felt important was that, later, when the zucchini cake was in the oven and Mum had gone across the road to visit Mrs Hudson, I went to the laundry and opened the cupboard. At first the mop and the big umbrella fell on top of me, which was normal. But then I looked up. And that was how I saw the boxes. The top shelf was full of them. They were all made of brown cardboard, and they were big, small and medium-sized. I couldn’t reach any, but just seeing them sitting there gave me that heavy shot-put feeling in my stomach again. It was an out-of-place feeling. And it seemed important because we’ve never had so many boxes of so many sizes in our laundry cupboard before.
My dad and I are the same in a lot of good ways like writing stories and listening to the Rolling Stones and eating strawberry ice cream out of the tub. We are also the same in some so-so ways, like having curly hair, and being tall and skinny. And we are the same in one bad way, and that bad way is having Those Days.
On Those Days things that I normally love doing—like having pancakes for breakfast or reading or looking for the peacocks—aren’t fun anymore. Everything feels like maths class: boring and complicated. On Those Days I don’t want anything, which is not right, because people always want something. Mum wants to cook, and Diana wants to be on her phone, and Grandpa wants to do crosswords, and Jonas wants to go on the Internet. Even animals want things—Simon wants to sniff, and birds want to fly, and worms want to wriggle. But on Those Days the only thing I want is sleep, and I only want that so I don’t have to think about not-wanting anything else.
If I go to school on one of Those Days I’m not good at anything, not even reading and writing. Sometimes if I’m at school and I’m having one of Those Days I can’t open my book. A lot of the teachers get angry at me but some, like Miss Shilling, just pat me on the shoulder and leave me alone. On Those Days nothing is interesting at all. If Jonas tells me a fact on one of Those Days I don’t care. And usually I like to think of nice ways to describe people. For example, on a normal day if I was trying to describe Miss Shilling I might say she looks like a Christmas tree in autumn, because she is decorated in red and orange and yellow and brown. But on one of Those Days I would probably just say that Miss Shilling has a lot of necklaces.
Dad and I never talk about having Those Days the way we talk about Huck Finn or whether ‘Wild Horses’ is a better song than ‘Love in Vain’. But I know Dad has Those Days, too. I know when he doesn’t eat, and I know when he hasn’t shaved, and I know when he doesn’t read but just sits and stares at the TV and is very quiet. I want to tell him that I know about Those Days. I want to say something that will help him smile, and talk, and want things again. But I don’t know what to say. And then I feel like maybe I’m not that good at words after all. And that makes me scared, because when I was little I thought words could fix everything. But now that I’m eleven-turning-twelve I’m not so sure.
I waited in the kitchen until the timer buzzed, like Mum had asked me to, and then I turned off the oven. By then it was the afternoon and the rain had turned into a downpour. I had finished all my homework and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Mum was still at Mrs Hudson’s. Dad was in his study with the door shut. Diana was in her room with the door shut. And Simon was trying to hide in the kitchen cupboard because he is very scared of heavy rain, even without thunder. (Simon is allowed to be an inside dog during downpours and thunderstorms, because he is so afraid of them and might run away.) By two o’clock I was officially bored.
‘Stop being such a baby,’ I said to Simon. Then I left him in the kitchen—half in and half out of the cupboard with his bum shaking—and went to see if I could overhear Diana talking to her not-boyfriend, a.k.a. Tom Golding.
I listened at Diana’s door very quietly for a few minutes, but there was no sound coming from her room at all. I knocked (which is something Diana says I have to do because now that she is fourteen-turning-fifteen she needs privacy) but there was no answer. So—partly in case Diana was unconscious or dead but mostly because I was bored—I opened the door.
Diana was sitting in the middle of the carpet with her legs crossed. She had her arms balanced on her thighs and her palms were flat and open, the way you’re supposed to have them if you’re feeding sugar cubes to a h
orse. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing really slowly and heavily. When I saw her like that my cheeks got hot and I felt the same way I had when I walked in on Mrs Hudson on the toilet. I wanted Diana to know I was there so it would stop being weird, so I said, ‘Diana.’ But she didn’t move, so I said, ‘Diana!’ really loud, as if I was inside and she was in the backyard. And her eyes popped open.
First Diana looked really calm. Then she looked confused. And finally she looked angry.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘What are you doing?’ I said back, because sometimes the best way to avoid getting into trouble is to answer a question with a question.
‘I told you to knock,’ Diana said.
‘I did!’ I said. ‘You didn’t hear me because you were… doing that.’ I pointed to the space on the carpet where Diana wasn’t sitting anymore because she was standing up and trying to get me to leave.
‘Well, knock louder next time.’ Diana pushed me towards the doorway.
‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Just tell me what you were doing. Please. I promise I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the weekend if you tell me.’
Diana sighed.
‘Pretty please,’ I said. This is something Diana and I always used to say to each other before she was fourteen-turning-fifteen. ‘Pretty please with sprinkles and nuts and chocolate topping and wafers and sherbet and—’
Diana took a very, very deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘All right, fine,’ she said. She opened her eyes. ‘I was Meditating.’
‘What’s Meditating?’
I thought Diana was going to tell me I wouldn’t understand because I was only eleven-turning-twelve, but instead she said, ‘It’s breathing and not-thinking. It’s Buddhist.’
I understand a lot of things, like past participles and sarcasm and the Dewey Decimal System. But one thing I definitely don’t understand is not-thinking. I am always thinking. I’m thinking when I read and when I write. I’m thinking when I walk home from school, and when I’m talking to Jonas, and when I’m doing high-jump in PE. Even when I’m asleep I dream, which is basically the same as thinking except you don’t get to choose what your thoughts are about. I was pretty sure that most people were like me and that they were thinking all the time, too. Was there a way to turn off your brain that I didn’t know about? Like the way Diana could roll her tongue but I couldn’t? Up until now I always thought that thinking for your brain was like beating for your heart: if it wasn’t happening it was because you were dead.
I also didn’t understand because Jonas had told me that Buddhism was about thinking, which meant that either Jonas was wrong, or Diana was. Which didn’t make sense because Jonas and Diana are two of the smartest people I know.
I didn’t say any of this to Diana because I didn’t want her to think I was stupid. Instead I just nodded and went ‘Hmmm’ like I was thinking deeply about my opinion (the way Mrs Atkinson does on Monday mornings when Jonas tells her all the interesting facts he has learned on the weekend). It must have worked because after a little while Diana said something else:
‘It’s from Aunt Sally’s book.’
And then something else:
‘It’s about Nirvana.’
And finally:
‘It’s a place where you don’t need anything.’
I had never heard of a place called Nirvana before, and I know a lot about a lot of places.
‘Is that in Scandinavia?’ I asked, because Scandinavia is one of the places I don’t know a lot about. Diana rolled her eyes.
‘It’s nowhere,’ she said. ‘It’s in your head.’
This reminded me of The Creation Story, and how Miss Robinson had explained it using a piece of black paper.
‘Is it a symbol?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Diana said. ‘And it’s not a Metaphor, either. It’s a way of being.’
‘How can you be and not need anything?’ I asked. Diana sighed and I could tell that she was losing patience with me.
‘You just close your eyes and breathe and try not to think,’ she said and started to nudge me out the door. ‘Okay? Now leave me alone for the rest of the weekend.’
I walked into the kitchen and Diana shut herself back in her room. I listened to the rain and stared at Simon’s shivering bum. The whole time my brain was wondering and wandering and trying-to-figure-out. After a while it figured out two things:
1) Fourteen-turning-fifteen Diana is complicated, and
2) Understanding Buddhism was going to be a much Longer Term Goal than I had thought.
On Sunday it rained again so I wrote down all the things that had happened on Saturday and started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. (Dad is teaching it for Year Nine English and he let me borrow his copy.) Then today two things happened that made me think my luck was changing:
1) The sun came out, and
2) It was A Pupil-Free Day.
A Pupil-Free Day means kids don’t go to school but teachers do so they can get work done without being distracted, work like writing reports or putting up displays or having staff meetings. So on Monday morning Dad ate his breakfast and got his bag and his keys and went to school, and Diana stayed in her room Meditating, and Mum went to the library, and Simon and I went looking for the peacocks.
I packed my backpack with water and zucchini cake. I was going to call Jonas but then I remembered that he was leaving this morning for his big overseas holiday with Peter and Irene, so I didn’t. I showed Simon William Shakespeare’s feather and let him sniff it. I was hoping doing this would help him find the peacocks the way letting police dogs sniff evidence helps them find criminals. But Simon just looked confused, and when I pushed the feather closer to his nose he sneezed all over it. Simon is definitely not police-dog material.
While we were walking, Simon had his nose down deep in the leaves. He moved really fast and sniffed a lot, and he kind of looked and sounded like a vacuum cleaner. I liked the idea that we were vacuuming for clues. We vacuumed all the way along the river in one direction and all the way back again in the other. We vacuumed off the track and into the bush and under logs and into wombat holes. We vacuumed for so long that the sun climbed right up into the middle of the sky and my stomach started grumbling. We hadn’t found any clues, and I was about to suggest that it was time for zucchini cake. But then Simon stopped and stood very still.
Simon never stops and stands still, unless something important is happening, like Dad opening a can of dog food or Aunt Sally’s car pulling into our driveway. The only thing that moved was Simon’s pink nose—it twitched, and its nostrils got wider, and the little hairs on the end of it stood up and reached forward like they were arrows pointing towards a smell. My eyes followed Simon’s nose across the river and between two gum trees. And standing there, with his tail folded up and his wings tucked against him, was William Shakespeare.
It took the rest of Simon a while to catch up with his nose (because Simon is a Brittany spaniel smell is his best sense), but when it did he started running, and there was nothing I could do except hold on to his lead and run too. After smelling, Simon’s best skill is being strong, so when he started pulling us down the bank towards William Shakespeare I knew I had no hope. I was going in the river.
It wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be, but it was as wet. I landed on my bum and yelled ‘Ow!’ and that was when Simon finally stopped and turned around to look at me. His face was a mix of ‘What are you doing in the river?’ and ‘Hurry up!’
I quickly checked to make sure there were no yabbies nearby and then hauled myself out of the water. Across the river William Shakespeare was still standing between the gum trees. He was looking at us with his head on one side like he was trying to figure out what we were doing. Then Simon barked and William Shakespeare let out a loud Liiieeaaaaaawww! sound and ran off into the bush.
By the time we got out of the water and up the bank and through the trees William Shakespeare was nowhere to be seen. Simon looked at
me with the same face he has when he thinks he’s getting a bone and it turns out to be a worm tablet.
William Shakespeare had led us to The Other Side of Town. We vacuumed slower (because we were disappointed and because I was waterlogged) past the bank, and The Very Nice Restaurant, and Lee Street and the bus station. When we got to the hospital we sat down for a rest. Simon licked my wet shoes and I gave him some zucchini cake. Then I tried to decide what to do next.
While we were sitting and eating and thinking, a car door slammed. I looked up. Across the road was a red station wagon, which is exactly the kind of car that my dad drives. And walking away from the red station wagon—even though he should have been photocopying or cleaning his desk or having a meeting—was my dad.
When Simon saw Dad he started whimpering and pulling on the lead and trying to get to him. But something about the look on Dad’s face and the direction he was walking in made me think he wouldn’t be happy to see us. And the direction he was walking in was past the hospital and up the little path and through the little gate and into The Clinic.
I pulled Simon behind some bushes and knelt down. We watched Dad walk—in his brown going-to-work shoes with his brown going-to-work bag. And he looked exactly like my dad in every way except that he was in a place I’d never seen my dad go, making a face I’d never seen my dad make. We watched until the door of The Clinic closed behind him, and until the shot-put in my stomach was so heavy I thought I might throw up.
The only thing I could think to do next was go home. So I packed up the zucchini cake and the water and William Shakespeare’s feather.
And we went.
Sometimes Those Days happen for no reason, but sometimes something makes them happen. For example, seeing your dad do something you have never seen your dad do before. Something so strange that it is disturbing (which is the name of the feeling you get when you see a cat play with a moth for twenty minutes before pulling its wings off and then not even eating it). So strange that you have to go home straightaway and get into bed and stare at the ceiling and try to understand what it means.