He walked to the house and before going inside, gave Koji a timid wave. He walked slowly to his room, shut the door behind him, and grabbed a pencil and paper from his desk before climbing into his bunk bed. As he was drawing a Japanese style house, Polly passed through the wall as effortlessly as water through air, coming to where he sat in his bed. Without saying a word, she put her long, wispy arm around his shoulder and dipped her head, watching him draw, her hair tickling his neck. Eventually, Wolf got bored with drawing and crawled under the covers. Polly went to the end of his bed and curled up like a cat, and he pushed her with his feet as he burrowed under the blankets and dozed off.
He awoke hours later to the ashen hues of nightfall. His stomach grumbled, and he felt disappointed because he knew he wasn’t getting dinner tonight. His disappointment turned to fear when he heard his father’s car skidding into the driveway. His dad cut the engine, exited the car, and entered through the kitchen door, and once he was inside, Wolf heard his mother place a plate of food on the breakfast counter, then the sound of metal utensils scraping the ceramic plate.
“Where’s Orville?” Wolf heard his father ask.
“At a friend’s house,” his mum replied.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she responded faintly.
“Don’t give me that. I can tell something’s eating you. What did the kid do?”
“George, he didn’t do anything, and you’ve been drinking, so let it go,” she said nervously.
He set down his knife and fork and said, “So what? I’ve had a couple of drinks. What’s that got to do with anything? I am that boy’s father, and I should know what’s going on. What did Wolf do?”
“Nothing. Well, yes, he did something, but it was really nothing. I’ve taken care of it.”
“Okay, Lizzie, if I promise that I won’t punish him, will you just tell me what he did?” his dad said, sounding reasonable.
“You promise?”
“I promise. You can handle it.”
“I want him to learn to behave, George, I really do. He’s a good boy, and he is still young. You need to promise me,” she responded, her eyes glossy as she rubbed her hands together like she was washing them with soap.
His dad wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Lizzie, spit it out. I won’t get involved.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you because you’ve promised. Today, he was in my veg garden even though I’ve told him multiple times to stay out of there. It just made me angry that he doesn’t listen. He knew I was mad, and I sent him to bed without dinner. He doesn’t like when I get angry with him, so I’m sure he won’t do it again.”
His father was quiet for several minutes, his hands clamped together and his knuckles touching his lips. Then, he slid off the barstool and said, “Well, I’ll teach him to listen.”
“But George,” she replied in a harsh, whispered cry, “you promised!”
“That boy needs to learn who’s in charge here.”
Wolf heard his dad’s feet pounding down the hall, growing louder until his footsteps stopped at the entrance to his room and the door flew open. “Get down from there,” he commanded, pointing to the base of the ladder.
Wolf scurried down from his bed, his palm’s moist, causing him to slip on the rungs of the ladder.
“You didn’t listen to your mother,” he said, removing the belt from around his waist, “and you know what happens when you don’t listen.”
As Wolf tried to hold back his tears, sickened by the acrid smell of his dad’s breath, he thought about the earlier conversation he had with Koji in the garden, and he extended his neck, trying to give the impression of growing larger. As Wolf glared at his father, his dad leaned his head back slightly and looked down his nose, an expression of wonder on his face.
“I was just sit…sit…sitting in the garden,” Wolf said, his words sticking in his throat.
The moment Wolf finished his sentence, his dad dropped the belt on the carpet and used his fist to punch Wolf low in his stomach. Wolf’s lean body stumbled backward until his back and head contacted the wall and he collapsed to the floor.
Wolf remained there, his body trembling as he curled up, trying to become as small as possible, determined not to cry.
“Face the wall,” his dad said.
Wolf turned on his knees and put his palms on his bedroom wall. His dad picked up the belt and wrapped the buckle-end around his knuckles, and with a long strip of the leather still dangling, he lifted it in the air and cracked it across Wolf’s back, the hard leather imprinting a line in the skin below his shirt. As Wolf remained still, his face cringing with every strike, his father struck him two more times, then stopped.
“Now get in,” he said, pointing at the box.
Wolf stood up, and with small, quick steps, scurried to the box, opened the lid, and got inside. Wolf lay on his side with his knees touching the inner wall as his father closed the lid above him, almost crushing his head. As Wolf smelled the damp mustiness and touched the rough, lightly splintered walls with his fingertips, he was soothed by the familiar feeling of being inside the box, away from his father. Over the years, the box had become a dark refuge, a shelter of protection from his father’s physical pain.
His stomach was sore from where his father punched him, so Wolf tried to use breathing to alleviate his pain. As he was imagining Master Kelly helping him to breathe, Polly came into the box. She slid one arm underneath his neck and pressed her chest against his back, burying her forehead in the space between his shoulder blades as she whispered, “You’re okay. He’s gone to bed.”
Wolf started to cry, trying not to make too much noise by swallowing his sobs. “I know what to expect from him, Polly, but her? Why did Mum tell on me?” he whimpered.
“I was in the kitchen with them. She tried not to, but your dad tricked her and promised he wouldn’t hurt you. I think she wished she never said anything, but it was too late,” Polly said. “Think about what Koji told you today. Think about your path. Someday, you’ll be able to stand up to him and anyone else who tries to hurt you, just like you did when you were a samurai.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I hate this place. I’d rather be dead.”
“Don’t let him win, Wolf.”
After several minutes, Wolf finally stopped crying, his tears leaving salt trails on his cheeks.
“That’s better,” Polly said, stroking his hair and tucking it behind his ear. “Want to leave the box and go somewhere?”
Wolf felt a tingle in his chest.
“I guess. I like that place in Kenya.”
“The Masai Mara. Okay, deep breaths, and focus on the mountain beyond,” Polly told him.
Soon Polly and Wolf breathed in harmony, their inhales and exhales a perfect, rhythmic match, and Wolf’s body became weightless as a variety of images began to appear like a slideshow in his mind. He had visions of his dad, his mum, Polly, Junsaku, and the animals in the yard, each picture lasting only a split second before stopping and switching. After a few minutes, Wolf only saw pitch black. He clenched Polly’s small hand as the black lifted and the colours of an African savanna emerged, a soft, warm breeze blowing on Wolf’s face.
Wolf and Polly were standing in the middle of African grasslands at sunset. Against a gradient sky of red, burnt orange and sunflower yellow, they saw tall, golden grass, short shrubs, and umbrella-shaped trees. All around them were zebras, gazelles, impalas, wildebeests, warthogs, giraffes, and even a herd of elephants eating from a single acacia tree, one female with a baby huddling near her massive legs for safety.
“Look! Do you see them?” exclaimed Polly, her eyes fixed on a distant point.
“See what?” asked Wolf, squinting.
“Gosh, Wolf, I don’t even have real eyes and can see so much better than you,” she teased. “Anyway, let’s get a closer look,” Polly said, pulling Wolf by his hand as she walked briskly through the tall grass.
After walking for more than ten
minutes, they stopped at the bottom of a small hill freckled with dense bushes. Polly didn’t say anything as she gestured to the top of the ridge towards some large shrubs, and Wolf saw what she was referring to. The lion’s head was massive. He had molten copper eyes, a noble face, and a mane that circled his face, glistening like a wheatfield in the sun. The big cat stared intensely at Polly and Wolf before becoming disinterested and turning away, unthreatened by the children.
With a look of surprise on her face, Polly proclaimed, “Whoa, I didn’t know there were two!”
Another massive lion popped its head up from below the shrubs, so close to the first lion that together they looked like a mythical beast with one body and two heads. The second lion had a mane the colour of dry hay, and one of its eyes was crystalline grey.
“That’s his brother. His eye was cut in a fight by another lion’s claw; that’s why it looks weird. Wow, they are beautiful,” Polly said softly.
“Yeah,” Wolf uttered, captivated by the vision.
The big cats stood up and pressed their front paws to the ground as they arched their backs, stretched, and started walking slowly down the hill, heading straight towards Wolf and Polly.
“What should we do?” Wolf asked nervously.
“Stand still. They don’t want us. We’re not their kind of food. Plus, it’s only our spirits here, not our bodies.”
They both stood still as the lions moved toward them, the brother in the front parting the brittle stalks of tall grass while the other, blind-eyed brother followed close behind. When the big cats were within arm’s length, they turned and looked at the children with watchful eyes as Polly bowed her head, diverting her gaze, her neck curved as she looked at the ground.
All of a sudden, Wolf felt uneasy, not because of the lions, but because he could sense he needed to get back to the box.
Before mentioning anything to Polly, she said, “I feel it too. Come on.”
Wolf and Polly held hands, shut their eyes, and focused on their bodies still back in the box. Within a flash, they were back inside, cuddling each other just as the door to his bedroom opened.
“Get back to bed,” his dad barked, throwing open the lid and leaving the room again.
Polly floated out of the box and glided up the bunk bed with Wolf following her. Wolf crawled underneath the sheet, his stomach sore and his back hot from where his father had hit him.
“Let’s read for a bit,” Polly said, laying her head on Wolf’s pillow.
Wolf reached into the space between the wall and his mattress and pulled out a torch and a book about crocodiles. He opened the book and placed it on his thighs, shining the light on the page as he read in a whisper. “Crocodiles can live appro…appro…”
“Approximately,” Polly whispered.
“Approximately seventy years. Oh, approximately, that’s a good word! Crocodiles are car…car…Polly?” Wolf whispered, pointing at the word.
“Carnivores. It means they eat meat.”
As she and Wolf focused on a picture of a big salty on a riverbank, Wolf replied, “I’m a carnivore. I like meat, especially veal scalapony.”
“Silly, it’s not scalapony, it’s scaloppini. It’s Italian.”
“It’s scalapony. I can say it how I want. Like hiphopatonomus. It’s a hiphopatonomus.”
Polly laughed and said, “Hiphopatonomus is wrong! It’s hippopotamus. Wolf, you’re ten years old. You should know how to say it by now. Why don’t you keep it simple and just say hippo?”
“Nope. Hiphopatonomus,” he joked, poking her in her ribcage, his finger sinking into her bone.
After thirty minutes of reading, the children were sleepy. Wolf put down the book and returned the torch to the crack between his mattress and the wall. He lay on his side and fell asleep to the sound of crickets in the yard as Polly slept weightlessly on his feet.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I’m ready to go back into Dad’s shed,” Wolf said.
“Really? Even after what happened the last time?” Polly questioned.
“Yep. I’m older and smarter now, so I’ll make sure I don’t get caught. I want to see what new stuff he’s got in there.”
As he made his way across the yard, he waved at Korey in a tall gum tree on the opposite side of the fence. The koala had his arms and legs draped over a branch, his furry chin resting on the limb, and he barely moved his paw as he returned Wolf’s wave before closing his eyes.
It was still early on a Thursday afternoon, and his dad wasn’t home from work yet. His mum was working in the front yard and had left the main door to the shed open, so Wolf passed through the open door, grabbed a hammer from the wall, then exited, disappearing around the back. Behind the shed, he crawled under the brush and used the hammer to pry nails out of one of the pieces of dry wood siding. He removed the board, exposing a space in the framing that was big enough for him to fit through, and he pushed with his legs and pulled with his hands until he was through the opening.
Once he was inside, Polly penetrated the wall and joined him in the secret room, and they began exploring in the dim light. As Wolf touched his father’s things, his heart raced and he felt powerful.
“Look at this,” Polly whispered, her finger resting on an old stopwatch on his father’s desk.
“Let me see it, Polly. Give it to me.”
Wolf grabbed the dulled timer and brought it close to his nose. He inspected the scratched, tarnished silver rim and clicked the metal knob at the top, causing the thin hand on the inside to spin in a circle. As he smiled at Polly, the door inside the main shed opened wide and the secret room was flooded with daylight.
It was Wolf’s mum who opened the hidden door from inside the shed.
As she bent down in the low threshold, Wolf saw a bruise on her right, upper arm that looked like a ring nebula from space, a cluster of purple, blue and mustard yellow marks visible near the seam of her short-sleeved shirt, and she didn’t speak a word as she curled her index finger, motioning for him to come out.
His shoulders slumped as he pressed the button on the stopwatch and froze the small, metal hand. He returned the stopwatch to the table and trudged towards his mother, dragging his feet as he left the room, entering the main part of the shed.
“Wolf, I heard you talking in here. Now I’m in a terrible position because I’ve opened the door and broken the fishline. He’s going to know someone was in here. How am I going to explain this?” she said, exhaling loudly.
“I’m sorry, Mum. Can’t you just replace the fishline, and I’ll nail the board back in place and he’ll never know we were in here?”
“I never go in this room because your father clearly doesn’t want anyone inside,” she said, ignoring Wolf’s question. “I’ve always known about this door hidden behind the cart, and I’ve never dared open it. And now, I can’t act like nothing happened because he’s going to know someone opened the door. I’ll never be able to get it back exactly like he had it. No, this time I have to tell him Wolf did it,” she stated, phrasing her last sentence as though Wolf wasn’t there.
“Mum, please! He’ll kill me,” he pleaded.
“Oh, don’t exaggerate,” she snapped. “No, I have no choice. I’m telling him the truth. He needs to know that you did this. Now, hammer that board back in place and go to your room.”
Polly grabbed his open hand and pulled him past his mother as they walked briskly through the shed and around to the back. Wolf used the hammer and nailed the wood slat back onto the wall, then grabbed Polly’s hand, walking solemnly towards the kitchen door. As they walked, Wolf saw Buford hiding underneath a shrub with his jaws clenched tight, staring at him with small, narrow eyes. As they shuffled past the aviary, Wolf noticed most of the birds facing the wire wall and staring at him as he passed. He looked at Cecelia standing on her perch, her eyes black and glossy, and her beak moved as she formed the word “Courage.” He noticed Gary standing below her birdhouse with his wings folded at his chest, his beak tightl
y clamped, glaring at Wolf.
Once he was in his room, Wolf laid on his bed, his body as stiff as a corpse, and Polly sat on his feet, gazing at him with glowing green eyes. After several hours passed and night darkened his room, he heard his dad’s car arrive home.
His father came into the house through the front door, and Wolf felt a glimmer of hope that his punishment might not be so severe because his father usually only used the front door when he was sober. He heard his dad set his hard-shell briefcase on the foyer table, and he listened as his parents talked in low, murmured voices, straining to hear what they were saying as he nibbled on a fingernail.
After a few minutes, their conversation stopped.
“Wolf, time for dinner. Come to the table,” his father yelled.
Wolf dragged himself to the dining table where Dad and Orville were already seated. He sat down, and Mum served each of them a plate of spaghetti with meatballs and a glass of milk. Wolf ate quietly, cutting his spaghetti into smaller and smaller pieces with his fork as his father and Orville talked about Orville’s cricket game earlier that day.
“Peter just can’t bat,” Orville said, chewing. “He hardly scores any points. He’s a knob.”
“Well, you keep concentrating on your game. You’re bloody good,” his dad replied, twirling pasta on his fork.
During dinner, Orville and his dad had lengthy conversations while Wolf and his mother said nothing.
“Not very hungry?” his dad finally asked Wolf who still had more than half of his spaghetti on the plate in front of him.
“Not really,” Wolf replied, biting his bottom lip gently.
His mum stood up and scooped up Wolf’s dinner plate. “Well, go take your bath, Wolf.”
“And, don’t forget to wash your ass,” his dad joked.
“Okay,” Wolf replied cautiously.
The night passed without incident, and Wolf slept with Polly’s arm draped over his chest as he dreamt of Junsaku in battle, the samurai using his sword and taking down his enemies.
The next day Wolf awoke just after sunrise and, wearing his pyjamas, went into the yard to pull his weed. When he was back inside, he heard movement in his parent’s room and knew at least one of them must be awake. He dressed, made his bed, and went to the kitchen where he found his mum and dad sitting at the breakfast bar drinking tea and reading newspapers.
She Named Me Wolf Page 17