A Place Like This

by Steven Herrick

  I kissed her forehead,

  the way she kissed me every night before bed,

  and I closed the door.

  The sun still shone brightly …

  And that’s why I go to birth classes with Emma,

  why I feel I can’t leave now.

  Maybe it doesn’t make sense.

  It’s like a death.

  Or a birth.

  Annabel and the car

  Last night

  I got in our car

  and drove.

  Just me.

  No Jack. No Emma.

  I drove along Turpentine Road

  up to the quarry.

  I parked, turned the radio up loud

  and lay back.

  I figured I had two choices.

  I could keep driving and not come back.

  Jack can have the money and the beach

  and whatever else he can invent.

  I’d leave the car outside his house

  and go back to my life.

  My other choice was to say no to Jack.

  To simply say no.

  The baby will be born,

  with or without him here.

  And Emma will be a good mother,

  and there’s George and Craig and quiet Beck.

  Lots of children don’t have fathers

  or mothers.

  Jack should know that,

  more than all of us.

  Craig

  Emma says

  her son’s not living on a farm

  all his life

  and he’s not picking apples

  or praying for rain

  or busting a gut fixing things that

  can’t be fixed

  and he’s not

  wearing the same shoes winter and summer

  ’cause that’s all he’s got.

  And Emma says

  if it’s a girl

  she’s not marrying a farmer

  or cooking all day

  for kids who vomit it all back up

  and she’s not spending nights

  watching TV and dreaming,

  or getting pregnant at sixteen

  and looking after brothers and sisters

  and fathers and family.

  Emma says all this

  and I’m thinking this baby

  better be born soon

  because it’s got a lot of living to do

  and a lot of learning on what

  not to do.

  Birth classes

  Ten farmers in flannelette shirts

  and me

  sit on our knees in a circle

  at the CWA hall.

  Ten farmers’ wives lean back

  against their husbands.

  Emma leans against me.

  I hold her hands in mine

  and talk quietly,

  repeating the instructor’s words.

  Sometimes I add my own.

  Silly stuff like,

  ‘She’ll write books.

  She’ll call you Mum and me Uncle Jack.

  She’ll grow up smart.

  He’ll grow up smart.

  He’ll never pick apples.’

  I just talk away.

  Emma holds my hand tighter,

  offering me encouragement.

  I don’t care what the farmers think.

  I hold Emma’s hands and talk.

  We both close our eyes

  and listen.

  The perfect sky

  I stop the car

  a few kilometres from the farm,

  at Broken Lookout.

  Emma and I sit on the warm bonnet

  and look at the distant farm lights.

  We don’t say much.

  Birth classes take it all.

  I tell Emma about my mother.

  Dead. Nine years now.

  I tell her how I remember everything about her.

  Her hair, her soft voice in the dark,

  her way of looking at my sister and me.

  I tell Emma I’ll never forget a thing.

  Not because my mum’s dead.

  Not because I miss her.

  But because she’s my mum

  and it’s important.

  And before she died,

  she taught me that.

  She taught me what’s important

  and what isn’t.

  And I’ve never forgotten.

  And that’s what mothers do, I say.

  We look at the lights some more

  under the perfect sky.

  I try to remember every detail

  of what’s important.

  Annabel and George

  Jack and Emma were at birth classes last night.

  I was in the shed, again.

  Reading. Dreaming really,

  of the beach,

  of the world away from apples.

  And George knocks at the door of his own shed.

  He wants to talk.

  He’s worried Emma will leave after the baby,

  after we go.

  She’ll leave this farm, this land,

  and him and Craig and Beck

  and home.

  George is scared.

  His voice is tight, his eyes darting.

  I tell him to wait.

  I tell him to look at Emma

  and how she walks

  and how she holds her stomach when she walks

  as if she’s protecting the child,

  as if she’s afraid to let something precious fall.

  I tell George to trust his daughter

  and her hands.

  I tell him those hands won’t fail.

  And I pray I’m right.

  Annabel

  After George left

  I couldn’t read anymore.

  I sat on the hay bales

  and tried to work things out.

  But all I could think was that

  I felt like an intruder,

  here on the farm.

  For weeks we’d been helpers.

  When George couldn’t get pickers,

  we worked.

  When Emma needed someone for classes,

  we volunteered.

  But now,

  with George wandering his farm

  like a lost man,

  waiting for Emma and Jack to come home,

  I knew.

  We were intruding.

  It was all too private.

  Maybe we were wrong,

  wrong to offer with the classes,

  I’m not sure.

  Only now, maybe,

  they needed each other,

  not us.

  Craig and his mad dad

  I think Dad’s going mad!

  True.

  Last night I saw him

  wandering around the house

  in his overalls and slippers.

  It was a full moon

  so I could see good

  and you know what they say

  about a full moon – it makes you mad!

  Well, Dad’s walking around the yard,

  and he wanders out to the orchard.

  He picks an apple,

  a big juicy apple,

  and I think,

  fine, he’s going to eat it.

  But no.

  He starts tossing it in the air,

  higher and higher,

  and he catches it every time.

  Now Dad hardly ever throws balls

  and never, but never, throws apples.

  He’s always telling me

  not to drop them into the bin

  in case they bruise,

  and here he is, a full moon,

  playing catch with an apple.

  Very weird.

  He’s out in the orchard forever it seems,

  just walking around

  with this apple,

  tossing it from one hand to the other.

  And this is the best bit –

  he walks back to the house


  and he looks up

  and sees me at the window.

  I’m thinking I’m going to get it

  for being up so late,

  but all he does is cup his hands,

  like this,

  meaning he wants me to catch the apple.

  So I lean right out the window

  and Dad throws it, perfect!

  I catch it with both hands.

  I take a big crunchy bite

  and Dad smiles

  and waves goodnight.

  It was a good apple too.

  A good apple, picked by a madman,

  on a full-moon night.

  Craig and cricket

  At school today,

  sports day,

  we had our cricket final

  against Blairthorn School.

  Most of the school was there,

  you know,

  cheering us on.

  I got out for a duck.

  I lifted my head, as usual,

  and got clean bowled.

  But when Blairthorn were batting

  and it was getting tight,

  their best batsman

  hit this huge shot

  and it was going for four, or maybe six,

  and I ran around the boundary,

  dived full-length, sideways,

  and caught it!

  Everyone cheered

  and my duck was forgotten

  and now we stood a chance of winning.

  It was a good catch,

  my second good catch in twenty-four hours,

  don’t you reckon?

  Emma and the right way

  I’ve been thinking hard.

  It’s all I can do right now.

  Think. And wait.

  I needed Jack and Annabel

  on this farm two months ago.

  They came out of nowhere

  and gave me hope.

  The way they were, together.

  Everything they do is positive.

  They’re not like the kids at school.

  I needed them.

  I needed help with birth classes.

  But now,

  I’ve been thinking about Dad.

  I’ve never thought about him.

  He just was.

  I worried about Mum, wherever she is.

  I worried about Beck and Craig, without Mum.

  But Dad, look at him.

  Three children, no wife,

  a farm that barely pays

  and he gets up every morning,

  sits on the veranda

  watching the sunrise,

  and he counts himself lucky.

  And when I come home pregnant

  he doesn’t yell or rant or blame.

  He just keeps on going.

  He looks almost proud of me.

  Now he worries I’ll leave.

  He worries Jack and Annabel leaving

  will mean I’ll follow,

  maybe not after them, but away,

  anywhere.

  But he’s not saying anything.

  He’s going to let me choose,

  I know.

  It’s his way.

  It’s the right way.

  Guts

  Maybe I don’t have the guts to leave.

  It shouldn’t be too hard.

  Mum left.

  She packed and was gone in a day.

  Vanished.

  I could do that,

  only I’d write and phone

  and maybe come back,

  you know, later.

  A girl, pregnant or not,

  could get lost in the city.

  And it couldn’t be worse than here,

  could it?

  Bloody Mum. I hate her.

  I hate her for going so easy.

  For going and staying away.

  Craig and Beck still hope she’ll come back

  some day.

  I can see it now.

  I leave home

  for the city,

  I’m walking down the street

  and guess who’s walking towards me.

  And what do I say to her?

  ‘Hello, Mum,’

  or,

  ‘Hello, Grandma.’

  Now that would be funny.

  So funny I’d have to stop myself

  from hitting her,

  from telling her what I really think,

  but maybe I don’t have the guts

  for that either.

  But when I look at this farm

  I keep thinking,

  it’s not whether I have the guts to go

  but

  if I have the guts to stay.

  Emma and leaving

  Last night

  Jack told me about the beach

  and his plans,

  and the more he talked,

  the more nervous I got.

  I don’t know why.

  I can’t tell.

  I just listened.

  I listened and dreamed.

  And that’s what I’m doing now.

  I’m dreaming.

  Only sometimes it’s hard dreaming

  when

  Beck needs help with her homework

  and Craig’s talking nonstop

  and Dad’s burning the dinner

  and my own kid’s kicking his way around my belly.

  So I’m not thinking good

  when Beck,

  bloody Beck,

  she who never says a word,

  looks up at me over the pages

  and says,

  ‘You’re smart,

  you know that, Emma?’

  And it all makes sense,

  even to smart old Emma.

  A young orchard

  It wasn’t what Beck said,

  but that she said it at all.

  I knew.

  I’m staying here.

  No dreams of fancy clothes

  and cafes

  and movies

  and working in a sleek office tower.

  It was old lino

  and peeling paint

  and apple pies every dessert

  and my baby eating apple mush

  and Craig and Beck and Dad.

  But it was more than that,

  it was me.

  Me without Jack and Annabel

  and some excuse to leave.

  Me without Mum and the fear

  of loneliness and boredom.

  Me, making my way.

  And Joseph, or Josephine.

  Me, back at school.

  Me, taking that bloody bus

  the twenty kilometres

  and the baby in childcare

  while I study hard,

  harder than ever before.

  And me getting out of here,

  my way,

  when I’m ready,

  with my child.

  Me, getting out but

  not like Mum,

  running so fast

  she’s too scared to look back.

  Me, getting out but

  being able to come back.

  Me and my home.

  Me and the baby,

  happy in the orchard

  picking those stupid apples

  if we choose.

  Or me and my baby

  leaving,

  finding another orchard,

  a young orchard,

  and making it ours.

  Annabel

  When we first came here,

  Jack and I had a picnic every Sunday.

  We went to the channel

  or across town to Brown Creek,

  we lay on the blanket in the sun

  and slept, or drank a few bottles

  and dived into the chill water.

  Today we asked Emma along

  and she said no.

  She said no in a strange way,

  and I think I know what she meant.

  Here at Brown Creek

  I lean
over and pick up a few rocks.

  I aim for a boulder on the far side of the creek.

  I say to myself, as Jack sleeps,

  if the first one hits,

  we leave this week

  and drive, nonstop, to the beach.

  I choose the biggest rock

  and let rip,

  and my aim is true.

  Now

  Jack wakes,

  and I tell him of the boulder

  and my perfect aim.

  I tell him I’ve decided,

  we leave this week.

  We fill the car with petrol now,

  just to be sure.

  I tell him I’m not angry

  or crazy.

  I tell him I’m ready,

  and he should be too.

  I tell him to think of our two years together.

  Think of us leaving uni and ending up here.

  Think of us making love on a stack of hay bales.

  Think of the mornings in the orchard

  and the taste of dew-fresh apples.

  Think of him and me and Emma at birth classes.

  Think of Craig and his painted cows.

  Think of Emma here on the farm

  and the rich soil of family.

  And it makes sense, I know.

  I hit the boulder with one throw,

  and it made a strong ringing sound

  that echoed back across the creek.

  We’re leaving.

  Emma and her dad

  Jack and Annabel

  have filled their car with petrol at last,

  and gone on a Sunday drive.

  A picnic, like young lovers.

  They asked me along.

  I said no.

  I said, ‘Stay young lovers together,’

  and they looked at me funny.

  Dad’s working on the tractor again.

  Beck and Craig are in the treehouse,

  playing quiet for a change.

  I take Dad some tea

  and this cake I made,

  which wouldn’t win any prizes,

  but it’s okay –

  I don’t want to be a cook or anything.

  Me and Dad sit by the tractor,

  the dogs hang around for food

  and the afternoon settles

  on an orchard stripped of fruit.

  The season is over.

  Jack and Annabel can go whenever they like.

  They’ve been waiting,

  the whole farm’s been waiting,

  waiting for me to have this baby.

  I start talking to Dad

  about my baby,

  about Mum leaving us

  and never coming back.

  I tell him about school

  and the long afternoons in Maths

  when I dreamed myself away,

  away anywhere.

  And about Jack and Annabel,

  smart and ready,

  and I’m wondering where all that smart comes from

  and I figure some from parents,

  some from school and some from a place inside you.

  I tell Dad

  I got smart from him,

  and I’m smart deep inside,

  but from school I got nothing but pregnant.

  I can curse school for that or curse myself,

  but what’s the point?

  So I think school deserves more

  and I say to Dad

  I want to go back to school