by Jessie Cole
I swam back to the bank and stepped up on the grass.
‘Billy,’ I said, though Hamish hadn’t asked.
He didn’t reply but looked across the paddock to where Billy had disappeared.
‘You think if I swam across now, he’d give me a lift into town?’
I knew Hamish didn’t like being stuck with us but I suppose I’d expected him to wait for the water to go down, ’cause when he said that my stomach dropped.
‘Probably,’ I said, looking at the ground.
He was silent a minute, weighing up his options. ‘But if I stay one more night you’ll drive me in tomorrow?’
‘Yep, we’d be going in anyway to get supplies.’
‘Your mum doesn’t mind, does she? She doesn’t seem to like me much.’
I didn’t know what to say about Mum. ‘She’s okay. You know, she’s just … like that.’
He thought for a minute longer, still deliberating.
‘Okay.’ He finally nodded at me. ‘One more night.’
I smiled and pulled my skirt off the tree, swinging it over my arm. I didn’t want him to disappear just like that.
‘Come on, flood guy, let’s head back.’ It was hard to hide my happiness, though something told me I should. He stood up beside me and we wandered back towards the house. The grass was springy beneath my feet. I marvelled at how flattened it got in a flood but how quickly it righted itself. Everything stretching out towards the sun.
‘That guy Billy likes you, Mema.’ Hamish nudged his arm against my shoulder. ‘He thinks you’re hot.’
I felt myself go red. No one I knew used that word. Hot. It sounded odd, hanging in the air between us. I thought of how he’d described Anja yesterday—built like a thoroughbred—appraising her like horseflesh at a market. There was something about it that wasn’t quite right.
‘Mema?’
‘He asked me out a little while back.’ I couldn’t tell him about the chook joke.
‘Where would you go around here on a date?’ He gazed across the open paddocks with their smattering of trees.
‘You haven’t been into town yet,’ I said. ‘There’s a pub and stuff. Couple of shops. Or—I don’t know—you could go further afield, go out to the movies.’
‘Did you go out with him?’
It sounded offhand but I could feel him waiting for my answer.
I looked at the ground. ‘Nah.’ I wasn’t sure how to express it. ‘He isn’t my type.’
‘What’s your type, Mema?’
Up until that point I’d had no type. Hamish was glancing at me sideways and I wondered if he was teasing me.
‘I don’t really …’ I could feel my face getting hotter, ‘… do boys.’
He looked startled. ‘Girls?’
I shook my head. ‘No, just not anyone really.’
‘Oh.’ He glanced away from my face.
We walked for a bit in silence.
‘You’ve never done it? Not even once?’
I shook my head. I guessed it might seem odd—I wasn’t a child, after all.
‘How many times have you?’
‘I don’t know, Mema. Too many to count. I’m a guy.’
‘How many different girls?’
Hamish shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember, exactly.’
My mind flashed with visions of unknown women, all different but somehow the same. Unmemorable. ‘How could you not remember them?’
‘Lots of guys wouldn’t remember everyone they’ve slept with. Ask young Billy next time, he’ll tell you.’
This was hard to comprehend, but with all the things I’d been told about men, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I stored that information deep within me, best brought out and examined at another time.
‘But you’re still pretty young, Mema,’ Hamish mused, looking at me again. ‘I forget, ’cause you’re a bit …’
My whole body seemed to lean towards him, listening for the next word.
‘Unusual,’ he said finally.
‘You think I’m weird?’ I guess I was insulted.
‘No, not weird, a bit different from other women your age, maybe.’
‘Right.’ I wasn’t sure where to put that sentence. He’d said it once before, but this time I didn’t know where to store it.
‘I really like you, Mema, don’t get me wrong.’ He leaned towards me, nudging me again with his shoulder. ‘You saved my life, remember. You’re my knight in shining armour.’
I had to smile. ‘We already worked that out. A man for a calf. We’re even.’
‘If you say so.’
My house appeared in the distance, shimmering in the sun. It was always peculiar seeing it from a distance when usually you were inside. I wondered if Mum had finished in the shed, if she’d be pottering around making lunch. This far away the house looked gracious, like a homestead, but when you got up close you could see the wear and tear. I had always loved it, filled with the familiar, but it was different imagining it through Hamish’s eyes. So many things were. I felt suddenly self-conscious, and even though I was still damp I stopped a minute to put on my skirt. Hamish kept walking.
‘Your foot doesn’t stop you,’ he called back. ‘It’s pretty amazing.’
‘I guess.’ I flicked my wet hair back over my shoulder. ‘I’ve got special boots and everything, you know, for walking in town, but I never seem to need them around here.’
Maybe it was because I’d been walking this land for so long, but I always felt it accommodated me. That there was a way to walk through it without being off balance, that the land somehow came to my aid—shored up all my weak points. In town I became clumsy, as though all the straight lines and pavements tripped me up. The world became even, no undulations, and I became off centre.
Mum was still in the shed when we went inside and I gave Hamish a towel for the shower. The clothes he arrived in were so covered in birth gunk they’d gone mouldy in the rain. In any case, the jumper was a write-off from the beginning. He was looking pretty scrappy, and I figured I should try to find him something better to wear, now the lights were back on and I could have a proper look. Having four brothers, you’d think we’d have a few old things lying around, but the truth was, I don’t think they ever had much.
I was kneeling on the floor of the storeroom, peering into some of the bottom drawers, searching, when I heard steps behind me.
‘Mema?’ It was Hamish.
I turned around. He’d had the quickest shower on earth.
‘I think I need your help.’
I grabbed an old pair of board shorts and a shirt and scrambled up, looking for clues on his face.
‘With what?’
‘Can you come and see?’
I followed him into the bathroom and he pointed at the shower recess. There were a couple of cane toads in the corner.
‘Yeah, those guys are always there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They like it. The wetness.’ I hadn’t tied up my hair yet, and as I moved it kept flopping forward across my shoulders. It was slippery, my hair, that’s why I liked to keep it plaited. ‘I don’t even know how they get in here. They’re not supposed to be able to, but I think they jump up the stairs.’
‘What should I do with them?’ he asked me. ‘Have you got something to kill them with?’
Even though I knew everyone hates cane toads, I still felt myself suck in a breath.
‘We don’t ever kill them,’ I said. ‘But I’ll get the broom and move them if they bother you.’
He shifted on his feet and I could tell he was disturbed.
‘Mema, they’re cane toads. You have to kill them.’ In the closeness of the bathroom I could see his jaw clenching. ‘Don’t you have a plastic bag? I’ll put them in the freezer. They won’t feel a thing.’
‘No.’
I’d been showering with those toads for years. They weren’t going in the freezer.
‘Cats are bad, Mema, but cane to
ads are the worst.’ I could feel his frustration. ‘Anyway, you can’t just leave them in the shower.’
‘They’ll keep out of your way.’
We stood there locked in an awful silence, staring into the shower. The cane toads seemed to know they were under scrutiny, ’cause they pressed further into the corner, flattening themselves on the tiles.
‘Look,’ I broke the silence, ‘I know cane toads are bad and everyone kills them. It’s a sport around here—cane-toad hockey, cane-toad golf, cane-toad musters—but they’re still animals, Hamish. It’s not like they introduced themselves.’
‘You can’t argue for a cane toad’s life,’ Hamish said. ‘They eat everything, and then the things that eat them die from their poison. They are wiping out whole species at an incredible rate.’
I knew all that. There was no way you could grow up around here and not know all about the history of cane toads, home-schooled or not.
‘You’re not putting them in the freezer.’
Anja’s dad kept a piece of old pipe handy at all times especially for eradicating toads. They were exceptionally hard to kill. I’d seen him bludgeon them for ten minutes at a time and then watched them try to hop away. Something about the violence of it always made me feel ill.
When I was small Anja and I used to catch tadpoles in the creek and watch them grow their legs and drop their tails. Sometimes they turned into little brown frogs, and other times they turned into little brown toads, but the thing was—you couldn’t tell the difference when they were tadpoles. We’d spend weeks tending them and watching them grow only to find we’d raised the enemy. And then we’d be left with the sticky question of what to do with our babies once they’d grown. We couldn’t toss them onto the road to get squashed, or put them in the freezer to die slowly. We’d grown attached. So in the end we’d sneak off quietly and let them go. Before anyone could stop us.
Looking at Hamish I could tell none of that was going to make sense to him. His face was closed, stern. The bathroom felt small, like there wasn’t room for both of us.
‘I came across a woman standing on the bridge once, leaning over the rail,’ I said, feeling that sudden helplessness of misunderstanding rising up inside me. ‘She was weeping. She used to live in a caravan under one of the big trees. I stopped and asked her what was wrong, and she pointed down at the water.’
Hamish didn’t speak.
‘She’d found a rat’s nest filled with little pink babies and she’d thrown them into the water. But she couldn’t leave. She just stood there crying. You could see their little bodies in the shallows, drowned and still.’
Staring at the cane toads, Hamish lifted his arm and ran his hand across the top of his head. His elbow bumped against my arm, and he stepped a little away from me.
‘She was probably just having a shit day.’
‘Maybe,’ I answered, but I didn’t really think so.
Hamish pressed his hand against the back of his neck and then ran it forward, over his head and down across his eyes. He wouldn’t look at me. I watched his hands, admiring their shape. If you looked too long at something it was hard not to ponder its uses. I started thinking about what it might feel like if he swept his hands across my head and down against my eyes. I’d never imagined that before, not with anybody’s hands. He pressed his fingers against his eyes and made a low sound. Not a word, more a hiss.
‘Alright.’ He turned and looked at me finally. ‘No cane-toad killing today. But I’m not showering with the buggers. You’ve got to get them out.’
I handed him the clothes I’d been clutching and went to get the broom. It was a pretty inelegant business, sweeping toads. They rolled right over onto their backs, legs dangling in the air, soft pale bellies exposed. After a bit of jiggling around they’d right themselves and then try to jump away into the corners, but I was used to that. A couple of brushes and they were gone. Swept out onto the grass. But I knew they’d be back.
‘It’s not much of a victory, Mema,’ Hamish said quietly, looking down at the floor.
I leaned on the broom a second, watching his shuttered face.
‘I’m not playing to win,’ I said finally, thinking of all the squashed toads on the road. I didn’t think I was playing at all.
9.
While Hamish was in the shower I had a scramble around in the fridge to see if there was enough stuff to make us all sandwiches. The stand-off about the cane toads had left me uneasy. I guess I was looking for a distraction.
When Mum got working in the shed, sometimes she forgot to eat, so I usually tried to take her out something. The bread was a bit stale. I popped it in the toaster to freshen it up. Found some tomatoes, some cheese, picked a few lettuce leaves from the garden. That’d have to do. I wondered about what we could make for dinner. We’d been trapped in for a few days now and our supplies were getting low. I’d have to investigate what was at the back of the pantry. No one in my house was too good at cleaning things out, so sticking your hand into the depths of the cupboard was a bit of a lucky dip. Sometimes you might come out with something—a laksa paste and some rice stick noodles or a nice-looking tomato pasta sauce that wasn’t out of date. Anything was possible. Shopping was a haphazard activity for us, not a regular one, so it was a bit hard to keep track.
Out at the shed Mum was spanning the whirling pot in her arms, its final shape solidifying. I stood on the threshold with the sandwich, watching her, appreciating how she knew the precise moment when it was ready. When I threw pots I was always unsure. Could they use a little more? Should they be a little thinner? Thicker perhaps? It was all indecision, but for Mum there was a precise moment. I watched her hands waiting for the moment. It wasn’t anything she could describe in words, though I’d asked her many times. Maybe it was the simple knowledge of when something was done that made her the master and me the novice.
When the pot was finished she glanced up at me, smiling at the sandwich.
‘Thanks, Mema.’ She always emerged from throwing pots softer than when she went in, like it offered her some private solace. ‘You’re such a good girl.’
‘There’s not much left in the fridge,’ I said. ‘So don’t get too excited.’
She took one last look at her giant creation and then moved across to wash her hands in the sink.
‘You go down to the creek and do some ochre painting?’
I could see her checking out my face. I’d tried to wash it off in the water, but I guess it needed a good scrub with soap.
‘Yeah, Hamish was getting stir-crazy. He started talking about computers.’ I didn’t want her to know we’d gone creek-riding.
‘He’ll be gone tomorrow.’ She reached out and took the plate. ‘Back into the world. He’ll be happy.’
‘He thinks you don’t like him.’
I didn’t mean to say it, but suddenly it was out of my mouth. My mum studied me a moment and then took a bite of the sandwich, chewing it slowly.
‘He’s alright,’ she said finally. ‘Just one of those guys, Mema.’
I wondered what exactly she meant but I didn’t feel like asking. She took another bite of her sandwich and looked across the paddocks. In the photos from when I was little, there was only the faintest hint of the furrows that now lined my mother’s face. I studied them, wondering how she could have got so lined in such a short time. Maybe that’s how time worked—left you alone for years and then hit you with a big bang. It didn’t seem to bother her. I’d never even caught her glancing at her reflection in the glass. She only seemed to see herself in terms of her function. Always in the midst of some action. She never sat still.
‘You didn’t make me kill the tadpoles, even when they turned out to be toads.’ I said. ‘I know you could have.’
She put the last bite of the sandwich in her mouth, chewing for a bit.
‘You played with those things for hours. You loved them.’ Mum always knew exactly what I was talking about. I never had to explain. ‘You did the same with snails a
nd slugs. You and Anja. How could I tell you which things were okay to love?’
I smiled, thinking of the snails. How their eyes would tentatively glide out on the ends of those strange tentacles. How slow and gentle they always seemed. The trail of silver they left in their wake.
‘We’re all weeds here, Mema.’ She handed me back the plate. ‘We’re all just weeds.’
When I got back inside, Hamish was on the phone. I thought I’d better give him some privacy so I went into my room. One of the dads used to go to the auctions and buy up old furniture. It meant that all the rooms in the house had these giant old beds, dark and wooden. Mine was really pretty, with carvings on the corners, but it wasn’t the most comfortable. It was missing some slats, and the mattress didn’t seem to hold its shape anymore. I’d slept in it ever since I could remember, but it was only starting to bother me now. Even though I hadn’t grown an inch since I was twelve, the bed seemed suddenly too slack and small. Lately my insomnia had got so bad that when I lay down on it my heart started to race, like it was preparing for the stress of not sleeping.
I had a funny bunch of things in my room—collections of sticks, odd shapes, pieces of wood that I’d picked out as having a pleasing form, stones of all varieties, mainly from the creek. They were all so familiar, but with Hamish here it made me look at them anew. It would be hard to explain what it was about the stones that Anja and I prized. They had to feel a specific way in the hand. They had to be a certain weight, have a certain texture. We didn’t speak about it, we just knew. Then there was my nest collection. Nests were my favourite things. I didn’t steal them from the birds. These were ones that had fallen out of the trees. I would come across them, perfectly formed, made from all manner of things—grass, sticks, leaves, moss. Sometimes their outsides would be made of long strips of grass, precisely worked into a hollowed-out circle, and the inside would be lined with moss. Such acts of devotion, such tenderness. I liked to bring them inside and sit them on my desk. They would start out immaculate, not a strand out of place, but eventually over time they would disintegrate. I liked that too. Liked to watch them decay. It was the world in motion.