Fauna

by Donna Mazza

  ‘It will sneak up on you, Stacey, earlier than your other daughter, and that’s when they’ll want her for the gene pool.’ She is warning me.

  ‘Do you know where they’ll take her?’ I will go with her if I have to.

  ‘I did know, but that might change. She will be kept well. She’s very valuable and they won’t put her life at risk but they’ll use her.’

  I am barely breathing. She nods at me, close and serious.

  She ends with, ‘Teach her what you can so she can look after herself when you aren’t there to help her.’ I feel the portent of the statement like a burst pipe deep beneath the surface. I keep it buried, mindful there will be a moment when it starts to rise.

  And then, after all this cold and distant time, she hugs Asta tight into her bony chest. Finally she stands and packs her gear and the three of them crackle back down the gravel driveway to return to the cities where they belong.

  I am exhausted after the visit and fall asleep on the couch in front of the television. Asta sleeps in a beanbag on the floor beside me. The doors are open so I don’t hear the kids come into the house. I wake to the popcorn-maker tocking in the kitchen and the clanking of bowls.

  ‘Do you want some popcorn, Asta?’

  ‘Pop-pop,’ and she uncrumples herself from sleep, takes Emmy’s hand.

  ‘No butter and no icing sugar.’ Jake likes to load his with sugar.

  ‘I know, Mum.’ She is impatient. ‘I can look after her, you know? You could have a holiday if you wanted to. Dad reckons you need one.’ Her statement stuns me after Jeff’s suggestion and she gives me a sassy look and sits beside Asta with the popcorn. ‘Say ta Emmy.’ So like my mother.

  ‘Ta, Emmy.’ Somehow Emmy can get her to mimic so much more easily than I can. Asta looks at her with steady, wide eyes and takes some popcorn.

  ‘So what makes Dad tell you I need a holiday?’ He’s been complaining about me, shredding my reputation with the kids.

  ‘It’s just what he says when we talk to him about stuff, that’s all.’ She is getting quite clever with circular conversation. My irritation shifts me to sit up and Jake plops himself beside me with a sugary and buttery mass of popcorn.

  ‘Have you two got some issues we need to talk about?’

  ‘No,’ says Jake through a filter of popcorn. In unison, Emmy shouts yes.

  ‘Why can’t we go out anywhere all together anymore? Why don’t we have birthday parties at home since Asta was born? Why don’t you just get over it, Mum, and accept that she’s not normal?’ I go to respond but she lets loose a tirade, setting the bowl on the floor. ‘I think it’s you that has the big problem with her because even Milly reckons Asta is cute and whatever disability she has isn’t a big deal.’ She starts to cry then and I suppress the swelling sadness in my throat, sitting back like I’ve been shoved. ‘And anyway, Mum, she’s not the only kid in the world to have a disability and I love her so you shouldn’t keep her all to yourself.’

  ‘Have you said all this to Dad?’ I can imagine him weathering sadder, longer versions, rationalising with her, blaming my over-protectiveness.

  ‘He said you worry a lot and you need a holiday, like I said. But he also reckons that the thing with Asta has to be kept secret and that’s what stresses you out so much.’

  I call her to me and she snuggles into me on the couch. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’—she cries into my chest.

  ‘I’ll try and do better,’ I tell her, silent tears dropping down my face.

  Jake puts a cartoon on the television and sits on the floor with Asta, finishing the sugary popcorn together.

  ‘Milly can come over anytime you like.’ I think a moment, make a rash promise. ‘And maybe we can all go on a holiday again, like we did when she was born.’

  Emmy curls up beside me for a few minutes, eyes on the television and the emotion slows to a soft pulse.

  She sighs. ‘They ate it all.’ And I go to make her some more, brush the popcorn crumbs from the couch into my hand. A clean house really doesn’t last long with them.

  When Isak comes home he makes us tea and we sneak outside to the shed. He always wanted a space like this but between work and sport and entertaining the kids it has only been used to store things that don’t go in the house: kayaks and bikes. The hard clay mounds of wasp nests punctuate the joins of roof and wall like giant full stops.

  ‘So, who came down?’ He pulls out the camping chairs and a plastic crate for our tea. He kisses the top of my head. ‘I can see you’ve been crying.’ The sobs start again and he sits near me, takes my hand.

  ‘Jeff,’ I eventually get out. ‘Told me I have to let go of her.’

  He shakes his head and looks down in his lap. I get out something about early puberty.

  Isak knots his brow, squeezes my hand. ‘It’s not just you that needs to let go Stace. What about the kids? And me.’

  I tell him about Jeff’s idea that I visit my mum.

  ‘Sandra would love it,’ he laughs. ‘But I really can’t see you going over there to see her. Maybe a weekend away; maybe you and Emmy and Jake? I can stay here with Asta. It would be good for you to spend time with the kids. They get enough of me.’

  I know I won’t leave her, even for a couple of days.

  I settle down and describe the trio and Asta’s reaction, then the change to LifeBLOOD® as best I can. ‘I wished you were there, it was all very well explained, as usual, but I think there must be something in there we need to be careful of because Dimitra warned me.’

  Isak has pulled out his phone and looks up Ärva Pharmaceuticals, turns the screen to me.

  ‘Ancient knowledge: Future health’ is their caption, with large images scrolling around advertising Poplar Painkillers—golden leaves, sprouting buds on bare limbs, close images of pale bark and finally a simulated image of a child very like Asta chewing on a sprouted twig.

  ‘There,’ says Isak, tapping the screen on the child until it swells to fill the glass. ‘That’s why they’ve bought up LifeBLOOD®.’ Not a real child though, just an artist’s interpretation. ‘Don’t know what you want to do, Stacey? It’s not like we can run away from it. We’re locked in here.’ He raises an eyebrow.

  Run, run, run, run, run. ‘I want you to read it and see if you can work out what they’re going to do with her.’

  He nods, swiping around on the phone, digging into the pages.

  ‘And I want to run away with her.’

  ‘Do you really think you can run somewhere and hide, Stace?’ He has a told-you-so look. Reminds me of his mother. ‘We can’t get her out of the country without a passport.’

  ‘There are plenty of places to hide here though.’ Deserted wheatbelt places, dug-out mining towns in the Pilbara, struggling schools happy to welcome a new family, no questions asked. ‘That was my childhood, remember?’

  ‘Stacey, we signed up for this and whatever they have in store is probably not much different from what the other fuckers had in mind. I’m not running unless it’s back home, and she doesn’t have a passport so that’s not going to work.’

  I stand and pace around him. ‘That’s harsh.’ Agitated and sick. In the light from the window, the lines on his forehead are deeper than usual.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ He twists his mouth, impatiently. ‘There are all of us to consider, Stacey.’ Implies I only consider Asta. I can’t refute this. Inside I am crumpled, curling in on myself, singed in the heat of guilt which ferments inside me each day, of knots combed through, each rip of hair, the sloppy braids, the tears that hatch in Emmy’s eyes. A flake of dark ash rises, black scraps caught in our orbit. Crows drone, their pitch declining as their notes lengthen into soliloquy. Feasting on our compost.

  He resolves to read the contract before we sign it.

  Later, while I am in bed, the glow of the screen lights his face. He has their research papers and the contract. Steady and focused, rubbing his head. I turn my back to him and try to sleep.

  A boardwa
lk runs through a grove of eucalypts and paperbark and I drop Asta’s tricycle onto it in the mid-morning sun. The air moans with flies and the heat has roused crickets. She points at scattering orange butterflies. Tiny, busy things wafting in the long grass.

  ‘Butterfly,’ I tell her but she is silent. I don’t lean into her, don’t force the issue like Emmy does. I think she understands more all the time but her vocabulary is still so small, growing incrementally though her body shoots like spring. She scratches her arm against the dead sticks of struggling basket-bush, rubs it and continues. Her bike clacks like a train on the boards.

  Sometimes I long for conversation—those friends we had in Dublin, now scattered in the wind and abandoning social media. I have nobody but Isak and he has peeled away from me like a shed skin but I’m not sure who has shed and who has been shed. I worry that we will never grow back together. My little deceptions have seeped into that thing that sticks us to each other, slowly eroding its hold. Little bit by little bit. I don’t even know where it began, or how I might grab hold enough to fix it.

  I sit in the picnic shelter and pull out my phone. Asta has settled on the boardwalk, legs hanging over the edge into the dry swamp-bed. I find my mother’s listing, scroll past it to Alex and text him. ‘Just saying hello.’ Awkward. ‘Wondered how you’re going.’ So stiff and unfamiliar. I delete it without sending and rest the phone on the seat.

  Large insects are suspended in flight and butcherbirds warble to each other across the treetops. It is an alien world where everything fits together into a glorious pattern of birds and trees, curling shapes and persistent calls, grasses shifting in the breeze. It all fits—magically complementing each part like a network built to withstand almost whatever humanity hurls at it. Whatever overload of carbon and pesticide and population, until it topples. Becomes extinct. And then there is me, creating my own kind of extinction—unable to seek solace from my distant brother and mother. I am already fading, disappearing from the world and my own human identity. Perhaps I am gone already. And Asta, she occupies this space with me—a creation completely outside this time. A person extinct for reasons we don’t really know. We are toppling through the abyss, hand in hand. How can I let go of her?

  Dry leaves shift and crack on the ground. I stand quickly, grab her hand and pull her onto the tricycle. A prickle of fear veils my back and neck and I walk quickly to the car, barrelling down the road until the safety of our driveway is in view.

  FOUR

  The samphire beds form a saline marsh, wide and flat, punctuated by the twisted, pale remains of paperbark trees. It is hot, even though it is still early. We do nothing about me going away but I resolve to spend more family time outside our house. We are riding our bikes along the causeway to the peninsula. Jake and Isak have taken the lead. Asta tramps along on her tricycle, having synchronised pedalling and steering after much practice, and Emmy stays with us, slowly weaving across the road. We go without helmets, in solidarity with Asta who will not fit any size. Our heads all equally vulnerable.

  The estuary is a cul-de-sac here, fringed with the pink-tinted plants, hard and low and broken by geographical shapes of mud and brown water. To walk through it would be a treacherous and muddy experience, home no doubt to slithering things and sharp crustaceans. Caps of sand show through the water at low tide and stretched-long white egrets stalk with courageous toes. The slow ride allows us to watch the hunt, deliberate steps and long yellow beak deep in the ground, wrangling whatever creatures it extracts.

  Emmy is sun-brown and salty-haired, the urban child that she was four years ago has been erased by days outdoors, and her ankles and knees seem to have stretched. I see myself as a young teenager, finding my way into each new town through its beach or river. She is lost in singing, winding a pattern on the road to match the repetitions of the chorus.

  When we reach the peninsula, Isak and Jake wait by the picnic area, staking their claim on a bleached table. I lay out a cloth to mask white splats of guano and unpack several containers from our backpack. Emmy pours metal cups of cold water and we sit together, quietly eating. Muscles ticking from the ride.

  Each coastal tree that rings this marshy bay is pale and lifeless, crisp with salt and sun. Yet the ibis gather in those desperate branches, moving in a mass from sky to limb to marshy shore in a pattern of feast and frenzy.

  Asta doesn’t cope well with the summer. Her face flushes and her skin dries and peels like dust. Her energy is low and by mid-morning she retreats inside to the air-conditioning, red and listless. I read her picture books or she pulls out the mixed box of crayons, pens and pencils leftover from each school year. She seems to mimic the other kids, scratching away at the paper with purpose, producing rows of lines and curves like writing, but doesn’t form recognisable images like they might have done at the same age. Swirls her fingers through dobs of glitter glue. She prefers the three-dimensional freedoms of play dough and will shove the pencils off the table edge and open the mixed-up colours of dough, forming them together into brownish lumps and blue-grey. Trouncing them with her heavy fingers, squeezing and churning them, her face lit and focused. ‘Egg,’ she tells me, wrestling the lump in two, and she grabs a stray apple core from the coffee table and shoves it inside the ‘yolk’. ‘Baby bir,’ she grins at me, holding the lump at my eye level.

  ‘Beautiful egg, Asta.’ I kiss her bumped forehead and she lifts herself up, puts the egg under herself and gently lowers herself, careful not to squash it. She mimics the fluffing feathers of the broody hen, still and watching with as much concentration as the real thing.

  At four years old, the other two were in kindergarten. I remember the sweet sorrow of those first days, leaving them behind to battle the world of teachers and children and survive as best they could. Proud of their first steps in the world of humanity—their ability to conform and learn the fundamentals of civilisation and education. With her, I cannot forget that we have limited days together. They lay one after the next in my orbit. It is up to me to civilise her and educate her, although it is she who educates me, draws me to conform to her own directives. Sometimes I look back at schoolwork the other two did in the first couple of years, but that dexterity and complexity is some way off for Asta. She is present in the world in ways I try to emulate—immersed in the act of being and experiencing the wonder of life. One day she will be a special kind of wise woman.

  Some hot days I seek the air-conditioned freedom of driving and I put her in the front seat beside me, to watch and talk to her, while we venture out into the hills and farmlands and remnant forest. She is too big for a car seat now. Yet another tooth has been lost and the driving lets me think, dream up ways to leave with her. In summer the interior has a tinderbox quality, a dry gum leaf smell, chirping with insects.

  Sometimes, while the kids are at school, we have travelled through the hills and out the other side to the wide expanse, dotted with roaming sheep and silent country towns. We just drive until lunchtime and then we stop somewhere for a picnic—at the base of a bridge to hide by a brown river or down a gravel track into shrunken bushland, crackling with reptiles. Secluded places, still without phone reception. I tell her what I know about trees and towns and birds and she sometimes repeats a word or two but there is a lot of silence. I play a game with her to see if we can go all day without speaking to anyone else at all. Even putting fuel in the car can be silent and automated if I choose the right place. Sometimes there is too much silence. And my mind wanders off to the past or the incomprehensible future or imaginings of my life unlived and now impossible. The curled-up foetus of what might have been floats across the windscreen. I test out the stretched distance between me and Emmy, Jake; between me and Isak. Cars are crying places and I drive weeping down escape routes to somewhere I don’t know. Dead kangaroos reek and buzz at the side of the road.

  On the way home she often sleeps and sometimes I dare to stop and buy some fruit or honey from a farmer’s stall by the side of the road. Most have a mone
y tin so no words are exchanged.

  On one of those days we travelled far into the dead fields of harvested wheat and I saw a sign— bichon puppys 4 sale. I reversed and stared up the narrow gravel track trailing up the hill to a chaotic house surrounded by the shells of dead cars. Looked at Asta—‘Dog, would you like a dog?’—she shook her two pigtails as if to say no, so I drove off. But I kept thinking about the dog. That morning I was irritated, unsettled inside because an autumn chill was in the air and they all wanted long pants but Asta’s don’t fit her anymore. Reminders constantly of her growing bigger. Emmy had done Asta’s hair. As we drove, she kept shaking the pigtails from side to side and I started to notice they were touching her face. Back and forth, she flicked them across her cheeks, smiling at the sensation and eventually I realised she didn’t say no, so after our picnic lunch, in a silent stand of trees down an old forestry track, I drove quickly back to the sign, stopped and looked again at the crazy house. Braced myself to interact with the puppy owner, to say no perhaps, even after viewing the little dog, raking my mind for reasons why and why not. This was the dog, after all, that Dimitra had recommended I get in some past conversation. Few cars passed this way and I decided to risk the visit so I put Asta’s sunglasses on her and dragged her hat over the pigtails, which made her head appear even more peculiar.

  The yard was littered with tractor tyres, rusting machinery and large bird cages devoid of birds, and at our approach there was a lot of yapping and a dirty white dog danced on its back feet at the car. The owner, a large, bearded man in a grubby T-shirt, looked a little askew as if he’d just woken.