by Jessie Cole
‘But I’m thinking now maybe I should have called you Aphrodite, that maybe I got it all wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’ I’d pretty much ignored mythology, as best as I could manage.
‘Aphrodite is the goddess of love, you know that. She has this belt, and when she puts it on she’s in her full power.’
I felt my nose crinkle. I didn’t much like it when Mum tried to talk to me about sex.
‘But she can take it off when she’s had enough. She can even lend it to someone else.’ She pushed her crumpled fringe back off her forehead. ‘She doesn’t have to be that way all the time, it doesn’t have to define her.’
I knew she was trying to tell me something, but I wasn’t quite sure what.
‘But who would I be then?’ I asked, thinking of how the name would shorten. ‘Dity? I’d be Dity. That’s not much of a name.’
Mum laughed again and the sound was sweet to my ears. I half wanted to ask her about the bulling, about whether I should turn things on their head, but I didn’t know where to start. I buttered her toast, spread it thickly with jam and then put it on the table in front of her. She reached out and squeezed my arm.
‘You’re spectacular, Mema,’ she said. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not.’
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d known exactly where things stood. All those hidden thoughts, rising up and finding an open space. I wondered if she knew I’d been imagining the abandoned shack. The thought of her seeing it—all my desires shunted off into that deserted house—made me redden. It was hard to know if I would ever have a private place.
Mum disappeared into the shed to clear up the mess she’d made, and I took the dog on her lead to see if I could find the watching eyes. I figured if it was Anja she might as well come inside. It was only a kiss, I reasoned, not the end of the world as we knew it. My first port of call was the secret tree, the spot where we stashed our boards. It would be just like Anja to haunt the place where she saw herself betrayed. I headed down the hillside, Blossom tugging at the lead. My foot was better, the torn skin almost healed, my ankle sure and strong. The sun was hot against my head, but I knew I’d soon hit the shade.
My love still sat in my belly, starved and hungry, bellowing to be fed. I did my best to kill it off, careful not to feed it titbits of care, sliding my thoughts away. But in the night it came back to haunt me and I opened the doors of that abandoned shack, trying to shove it all inside.
Watching the pup as I walked—frolicking about me in her careless way—I went back to counting my breaths. In and out, an oscillation, that point in the middle when everything is still. Finally, I stepped into the shade of the secret tree and my reverie ended. Instinct had told me where to look and I’d followed it blindly, but peering along the banks of the creek, I didn’t see any trace of my observer. I wondered if I was going mad, if my body had been so short-circuited by this deluded love that it was starting to feel things that weren’t there. That all that tingling at my nape was just another expression of the thwarted desire I carried inside. Was I so scrambled that now nothing worked as it had?
I stood pondering for a few moments, staring out at the empty space, but then I saw them, on the other side of the creek, a little way off to the left. A pair of men’s boots, brown and mud-splattered, with crumpled dirty socks spilling out the top, and I knew I was right. There was somebody else out here. I stared at the shoes, wondering about the man who’d worn them. I’m not a fool, there was a part of me that was afraid, that understood I was putting myself in danger. I thought about the way Blossom whimpered when she got too close to those restless mongrels patrolling the fence line. She was torn between fear and wanting, animal instincts kicking in. When it came down to it, I knew it was only me locking her up at night that kept her away from them. She was a dog, after all, and without me she’d do what dogs did. Slink off to find a mate in the night.
I couldn’t see any signs of movement, so I sat down under the shady camphor and waited. It takes two to play cat and mouse. In a little while Blossom stopped sniffing around and settled beside me, chewing her paws. Every now and then she’d glance up, hold my gaze for a sec, checking in. I didn’t know what to tell her. We were waiting it out. There was no way whoever left those shoes wouldn’t come back for them—a fine pair of work boots like that.
Finally I heard it, a faint shuffle in the bushes on the other side. Blossom heard it too and she sat up, alert, floppy ears shifting around, trying to ascertain the source of the rustle. She barked then, a high-pitched feeble sound. I’d never heard her bark before. Obviously she needed some practice. I guess I could have called out, but I didn’t. What would I have said? When I saw him, it seemed natural enough, like I’d expected it all along.
‘Mema,’ he called across the creek, ‘whatcha doing?’
It was the question I should have asked him.
‘Watching you,’ I called back. It was easy to feel relaxed with a body of water between us.
Billy stopped still then, peering at me, squinting like he couldn’t quite make out my face.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, and I knew if he tried to tell me it was something to do with Old Gordon’s driveway he’d be talking shit. But he didn’t answer, not right away.
‘Hoping I might see you,’ he said finally, and I liked him for telling it straight.
‘How many times have you come here?’ I asked. You couldn’t see our house from the secret tree. I wondered if he’d been crossing the creek a little further downstream where it was shallow and coming up closer to the house. I guess he must have if he’d taken off his shoes.
‘A few.’ He kept squinting at me through the sun. He wasn’t the type to look away. ‘I got used to seeing you walking, but then you stopped.’
I hadn’t walked on the road since Frank came. It didn’t seem quite so soothing anymore.
‘Where’s your place, then?’ I didn’t know exactly where Billy lived.
‘My dad’s farm is further out that way,’ he pointed across the paddocks, ‘but, you know, along the main road. I been living in the caravan. Just for now.’
As far as I knew, Billy’s mum had taken off when he was small, but his dad remarried, had a couple more kids. I was hardly going to judge him for still living with his parents.
‘I used to hang out with your brothers quite a bit. Sunny and me, we were pretty good mates. How come you never came to school, Mema?’
It felt funny having a conversation like that, half yelling across the creek. A part of me wanted to ask him to come over, but I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him up close. There was no easy way to answer the question about school.
‘I was always curious about you,’ he admitted, still not looking away. ‘Your brothers never tell you?’
I shook my head. I knew nothing about their friends.
‘You ever hear from him?’ I called out. ‘You ever hear from Sunny?’
Billy shook his head. ‘When he comes home, he’ll drop by. But he hasn’t been home for a while now.’
‘You know where he is?’ I asked, and it suddenly hit me that I could go and find them. Take off on the road, follow their trail. But then I thought of Mum and Sophie, Rory and Lila, and Anja too, and I just didn’t know. I’d promised Anja I wouldn’t leave her, but now it felt like she’d left me.
‘Last time I heard, Sunny was somewhere up the coast, you know? Half of those boys, they do the snowfields in winter. Work real hard, earn some good money. Then sometimes they go out to the islands and stuff for the summer, or do some fruit picking.’ His voice carried across the water. ‘Sometimes I think I should go too.’
I thought of Billy leaving like the rest. ‘Why don’t you?’ In my mind I could already hear the sound of his footsteps walking away from me.
‘I like it here,’ he said, looking around at the trees. ‘It’s home.’
There was something warm about those words. They sounded small but they weren’t. That heavy feel
ing that I’d been carrying loosened a little.
‘Did you ever go to the abandoned shack?’ I asked, knowing in my mind it was a beginning. Knowing I was starting something.
‘With the boys, yeah. Not much left.’ He was standing over there, baking in the sun.
I didn’t know how to tell him what I wanted, with that wide stretch of creek between us. Maybe I didn’t even know.
‘Your friend Anja, she’s been on the wander,’ Billy said out of nowhere. Maybe they’d bumped into each other, snooping around. Maybe Anja was shadowing me too. ‘She’s always been a weird one.’
‘She’s alright,’ I said, my old habits kicking in.
‘Back at school, the kids used to kill ants right in her face just to watch her scream. She’d scream like it was murder, till she was red in the face, and then she’d go and tell the teacher. Teacher’d just laugh. No one cares about an ant.’
Something about this story reminded me of the chook joke. ‘Anja does.’
I couldn’t help thinking that there was nothing wrong with that. Caring about ants. Who decides what things matter, anyway? Sometimes when we were small, I’d step on an ant by accident and Anja wouldn’t talk to me for days. Ants were big to her, spiders too. At one stage, every spider in her house had its own name. I loved animals, but Anja loved them more. It all became complicated when she started with the snakes. She had to breed the mice to feed them, and I guess she got accustomed to the cycle of things. When she’d kissed me there’d been that smell of crushed ants. It hadn’t seemed to bother her then, those ants dying under her palms. I hated to think of her screaming at school while everybody laughed.
Now we’d started up talking, I wasn’t sure how to stop.
‘What’s she doing? Hanging around your place, not coming in?’ he asked.
‘You can talk, Billy,’ I said, and it seemed ludicrous suddenly that they should both be prowling about.
He looked away then.
‘But you and her, you’re friends,’ he added, moving across to pick up his shoes. ‘You don’t know me from a bar of soap.’
I didn’t know which was weirder. Stalking a friend or stalking a stranger. It would be easy to sit back and think I was above all that, but if I’d been able to stalk Hamish I would have. I just never knew where he’d be, he wasn’t a fixed target. I couldn’t see myself out thumbing rides like Anja, when I didn’t even know where to.
‘I don’t know what she’s doing out there.’ What could I say about Anja? ‘If you see her, tell her I said hello. Tell her to come visit me.’
I wondered if I should invite Billy too, but somehow those words wouldn’t form on my tongue. I got up from where I was sitting, brushing off my clothes. Blossom got up too, ready to go.
‘She’s a pretty pup,’ he said, watching her. ‘She looks like a good breed.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bit of beagle in her?’
I nodded, leaning down and adjusting her lead.
‘Heard that fella bought her for ya, that fella that washed off the bridge.’
Sometimes the strangest news travels the fastest.
‘My old dog died,’ I said, thinking of how Old Dog’s ears had stood straight up, exactly the opposite of Blossom’s, and suddenly I missed her real bad. I wanted to turn then and go, back up to the house. See if I could nudge Mum out of the shed so I could throw some mugs. Lose myself in the clay.
Billy didn’t say anything for a bit. I could see him watching my fingers restlessly wind the lead.
‘Well, nice to see you, Billy,’ I said, always awkward at goodbyes. Sometimes I wished we didn’t have them. That a conversation could just be over without this staggered winding down. ‘Bye then,’ I fumbled on, rushing towards the end.
He held up his hand but he didn’t speak. I guess I was doing a runner before he could hold me to something. The funny thing was—I knew he’d be back. I wouldn’t have to search hard to find him. I walked in my crooked way towards the house, and all the while I felt his eyes burning into my back. It made me stiff, being watched like that, all my looseness gone. I wondered what Billy saw in me, what image he held in his mind. My bung foot seemed bigger then, something that stuck out. When I got to the front garden I tried to shake the feeling off. I looked down at my foot, bare and imperfect in the grass, and I couldn’t help but imagine what life might have been like if I’d been born without it. Standing there, my foot felt like a wrongness, and for the first time in my life, I wished I was right.
21.
It was late and I was still wide-eyed, musing in my bed. I guess I’d often thought of my brothers at night, guessing where they might be, but lately I’d been imagining other things too. I started picturing the city, what it might be like. In my mind it was all tall buildings looming, people scurrying like ants, but if I went down to street level there were coffee shops and bookstores, teeming with life. Galleries and restaurants and all those pretty girls. I didn’t really know anything much, but that was the sketch I was forming. I tried to shake my thoughts away, just a flick of my head, but then I started up imagining my home.
I thought of it with a circle around it, like the ring that forms on the water when you throw in a stone. And in my mind the ring was growing wider. I started thinking what it would be like if the ring spread so it included my town—all the old shops, even the sad motel right on the outskirts. And then if it got a little wider, stretching even more, it would include the sugar mill too, and all those other farms and things farther out that I’d never really seen.
I lay there trying to calculate how wide the circle would have to get before it included the city too. And all the things between here and there that the circle would encompass. All the paddocks and scrub, the houses and cars, the factories and mills. Everything. I kept thinking of those rings, expanding over the water until in the end they disappeared. And then was everything one? It was the type of question that had no answer, or not one that I could grasp.
I wondered about that sugar mill in my vision of trees and farms and hills. I pictured it at night, lit up and eerie, huge metal pillars sputtering smoke into the dark sky. Under my covers the whole thing seemed ominous. Imagining the sugar mill made me think of Hamish and that place between my breasts started up its aching. I pressed there with my fingers, like I had the nights before, trying to soothe myself, release some of the hurt.
There was a tapping at my window then, and I jumped up, thinking it was Anja. Sometimes she’d sneak down in the middle of the night, but usually she just crept inside. The window was too high to reach from the ground outside.
I got up and peered out the glass. It was Billy, holding up a stick. I opened the window a little further so I could poke my head out.
‘Mema,’ he called up, trying to be quiet, ‘you’re awake.’
I had to smile. If I hadn’t been awake his tapping would have woken me. I didn’t want my mum to get up, so I pointed to the door. ‘I’ll come out,’ I whispered down and he nodded, letting the stick drop.
I slipped on a skirt and crept out, down the front steps till I was standing on the grass.
‘Whatcha doing?’ It was a funny enough question the last time he asked. I didn’t answer, just stood there watching him struggle with what to say next. I could hear Blossom shifting around in the laundry, and I didn’t want her to start whining, so I walked away from the house, out of earshot.
Billy didn’t say anything, he just followed.
We stood there in the darkness, staring out into the black. There was a slender moon, and though I could see the outline of the hills in the distance I couldn’t see Billy’s face.
‘How far away is that shack on Old Gordon’s place, do you think?’ I asked, alert to all those feelings I’d tried to shove inside. I wondered if they could come out with Billy. If it didn’t much matter who caused them, if they could be spent with someone else.
‘Don’t know, fifteen minutes maybe.’ I knew he was trying to see me through the dark. ‘Why?’<
br />
‘I want to go there.’
‘Now?’
‘Yeah,’ I whispered back, reaching out and taking his hand. He stood there a minute, his fingers in mine, like it wasn’t a development he had planned for. My heartbeat started up, quick and lively, and it made me think that it might work. Maybe I could transfer all that feeling from one person to another.
‘Lucky I brought my torch,’ he said after a few taut seconds, switching it on with his spare hand. And without another pause we set off.
Once we’d entered the shack I knew things would go wrong. Under the beam of the torchlight, we looked around at what we’d found—broken windows and sagging floors. Furniture so damaged it had been abandoned years before even by wild, rummaging children. Pieces of debris, so long forgotten they weren’t even sentimental. Everything was utterly without life.
All the humming in my veins—the deep heat that I couldn’t stop rising inside me while we walked—was dissipating in this place. Glancing across at Billy, I wondered what to do. I knew so little of seduction, the ebbs and flows of passion.
‘It’s no good in here,’ Billy said, dropping my hand. ‘It’s no good.’
I nodded and suddenly felt I couldn’t breathe, like all the oxygen had vanished. I could see Billy’s expression darken, even in the dim torchlight.
‘You’re scared of me,’ he said, out of nowhere. An accusation. ‘Nothing’s even happened.’
He crossed the room and was out the slumped frame of the door, all before I could even turn. I followed, stumbling through the dark, wondering what I had ever seen in this shack, wondering how I’d created it as some sanctuary in my mind. Billy stood outside in the moonlight leaning against a crooked wooden post, his face in shadow, torch switched off. I could only see the outline of him against the dark sky. Watching his supple body, the silhouette of his jaw, I felt that flicker of heat rise inside me.
Again, I wondered what it was that I was supposed to do with it.
‘Billy …’ It was strange to be standing out in the bare paddocks at night trying to throw myself at a man I barely knew. ‘I …’