Heni Hani and the Magic Pendant: Part 1 (Heni Hani and the fears of the unknown)

by Peter Ness

  As I walked back out into the kitchen she pointed disapprovingly at the blue and white checkered shirt hanging out of my blue denim jeans, shaking her head. I hurled my soiled school clothes through the air. They landed with a plop in the clothes basket in the corner by the shower room. Then, I tripped noisily over Jo’s dolls and fell, knocking over a chair with a bang and a crash!

  ‘You milked the cow early today, Mom?’ I asked, watching her strain the milk from the bucket and pour it into large port flagons. ‘Thanks.’ Then, I tucked in my blue checkered shirt with one hand, kicking at a doll. It went flying through the air and over the sofa. ‘I score! Two points count!’ Reaching across now, I picked up the chair one-handed. It squeaked on the floor as it grated back under the table.

  ‘Yes. I left some for the new calf though,’ she replied, looking at me in a better light now that I looked a bit tidier. ‘It was born last night. The cow has a pink, sensitive, swollen udder, so I squeezed out the excess milk to reduce any tenderness and pain. But it is pretty hard to do with a cut finger.’ She held it up. ‘I left some milk in the udder for the new calf to suckle. We can suckle it from our fingers using a bucket in a few days.’

  I can tell you from experience, it’s a terribly odd feeling, and the calf’s teeth are sharp. Try sticking two fingers in your own mouth. Now try to suck them without your own razor sharp teeth biting your fingers. Yeah, and your fingers probably don’t stink of milk and calf snot. Then the runny yellow shit oozes out of the calf’s backside plopping everywhere. It smells worse than cat poo. I’m going to convince Jo it is fun though. Then she’ll want to suckle the calf.

  My eyes flashed across to the metal bucket and then at Mother’s painful, nursed, hand. It occurred to me that the cow had kicked the bucket out of her hand and she’d torn her finger on the serrated metal flange. I winced at the thought.

  ‘So, what’d you do to your hand?’ I asked. She ignored me. ‘So — what’s for tea?’ I sat down on the chair, intending to place my feet on the table. Mother’s head snapped around, giving me the evil eye. My feet rapidly retracted to the floor. ‘What’s for tea?’

  ‘You saw me making it Hen. Meat and potatoes,’ Mother said. I hold a stilted memory of childhood, especially the meals.

  ‘Meat and potatoes, again—?’ I drawled with agony. Mother smiled at me, bemused. Having finished dicing the carrots she picked up a spoon.

  ‘Yes! Meat and mashed potatoes—, again,’ Mom said it as if it somehow differed from the normal food we ate. She now held a ladle vertical in one hand, almost threateningly. ‘Do you have a problem with that, Hen?’ My face dropped as I reluctantly shook my head. She explained how things worked, wagging the ladle up and down in the air. ‘This is not a throw-away society. What’s not eaten today will be tomorrow: in pasties, meat pies, Shepard pies, or in the lasagna recipe Kirin gave me. It’s good for you. It helps young boys grow hair on their chest,’ Mom finished.

  Back then I didn’t expect ever to need a razor.

  ‘Isn’t that what the razor is for?’ piped up Jo, picking up a headless doll from off the floor.

  ‘What?’ Mom and I both turned to look at Jo, our mouths agape.

  ‘To help you grow hair on your chest,’ Jo explained.

  ‘Shut up Jo! What would you know?’ I shot back.

  ‘Brian told Charlie Henton that he shaves his chest all the time,’ she teased, brandishing her hands in the air.

  ‘Brian never said any such thing,’ I replied. ‘What a dork you are.’

  ‘He did too! And, and — I heard that your new girlfriend Amanda shaves her legs too,’ even Jo’s eyes mocked me. ‘Oh — so, you noticed? Yeah — that’s right — boys notice those sorts of things,’ she watched my face flush red ‘She has a crush on you — the size of a bulldozer.’

  ‘Cripes Jo — you promised—,’ I replied, indignantly, hurling my arms in the air.

  ‘It’s no secret. Most of the kids in class saw you playing footsies with her under the table at school—,’ Jo pointed at the table and laughed, ‘and those that don’t know, soon will.’

  ‘Why you — little liar! You shut up, or I’ll rip your dolls arms off!’ I screamed now, standing up, chasing Jo around the table.

  ‘Run-run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me I’m the Ginger-bread man. You can’t catch me — he, he—,’ Jo taunted. Then — I did. ‘Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me! Leave me alone, you big bully!’ she let out a piercing scream and kicked my bare shin. ‘Mom help!’

  ‘Ouch!’ I jerked my painful leg back, rubbing it.

  ‘Hen,’ Mother scolded. ‘Back off!’ I wished she wouldn’t look at me that way.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get you later on. You can run Jo, but you can’t hide — you big mouth — snotty little snitch!’ I pointed my wavering finger firmly at Jo, who stood on the protected side of the kitchen table near Mom. There was no way Jo would escape unpunished. Jo immediately retaliated.

  ‘You shut up yourself Heni, or I’ll smash your dinky toy cars and model planes. Like this!’ She jumped up and down on an imaginary toy. Jo backed away as I came around the table towards her fist raised. I planned to give Amanda’s younger brother, Ken, my dinky toys. I seldom played with them anymore anyway. Even so, I reacted angrily.

  ‘You —? You and whose army? I don’t think so!’ My eyes flashed with anger: if looks could kill. ‘Anyway, the cars are metal, so you’ll just hurt yourself,’ I added sarcastically. ‘You’ll stick a hole in your foot and then I’ll drill a hole in your pumpkin head — like this.’

  Jo moved around the table to avoid me. Now, I had her cornered by the sofa. Screwing my face up, I rotated my fingers above her head.

  ‘Stop it! Mom! Make him stop it! Help me!’ Jo pleaded, screaming loudly and slapping at me with those sharp cat-like claws. I dodged her hands, dancing about nimbly.

  ‘No, you shut up you snitch,’ I retorted, withdrawing a wincing hand. Jo hurriedly escaped under the table to the other side, to the same side as Mother.

  ‘No! You—. You are that swear word. You are that swear word you — you snake!’ she cried back.

  ‘Snake—?’ I stopped to rub my hand. ‘Huh?’ My mouth dropped.

  ‘Tiger snake sissy,’ Jo added, poking out her tongue.

  ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me,’ I replied. ‘Anyway — it was just a python.’

  ‘You, you — pig faced poo poo bum bum,’ Jo spat out. I slid around to the other side of the table confronting her again. Jo dodged behind Mother, who did her best to ignore us. She sidestepped Jo, picked up a bowl of apples from on the table, and then put the bowl back down. Mother then selected one and began to peel it, her back to us.

  Angrily, I followed Jo across the room, pushing her onto the couch.

  ‘Mom, can you bash him up for me?’ Jo bleated, as I dove on top of her and pinned her arms down. Jo kneed me in the groin.

  ‘Ouch!’ I cried. ‘Hey! That’s not playing fair.’ I pounced onto Jo again.

  Mother put the apple and peeler down onto the bench top next to the sink and sighed heavily. Striding across, she pulled me off of Jo.

  ‘No fighting you two, or you get no apple pie and custard for dessert,’ Mom retorted. ‘Back down! The pair of you!’ She scowled as Jo flayed a kick at my bare legs.

  ‘What’re we having for tea tonight Mom—, meat and potatoes?’ Jo asked, with a sweet innocent face now. Mom nodded. ‘Wow! My favorite! I’m starving hungry,’ Jo snorted. Poking her tongue out at me she pulled her ears, taunting me again behind Mom’s back.

  ‘Yes, meat and potatoes,’ was Mother’s innocent reply. ‘Now run along. You too Hen! Finish your homework — before tea,’ she emphasized the last two words. ‘And—, remember this. Education is the only thing separating humans from monkeys.’

  ‘Okidoki Mom,’ I replied reluctantly. ‘But, tell that to the monkeys.’

  ‘I am!’ She glared at me.

  Jo and I both w
ent in the other room and exchanged glances.

  ‘Meat and potatoes, Gyah—,’ we both repeated and made to belch (vomit). Then, we both jumped onto Jo’s bottom bunk bed and laughed in union. We did the famous Brian hand-to-elbow to hand clasp, and then we were friends again.

  ‘You can always add tomato sauce,’ Mother called out at us. Jo stood up and walked back into the kitchen.

  ‘Ketchup,’ Jo said, leaning against the door now. ‘Doesn’t Mom ever learn?’

  ‘Tommyrot. It’s Tomato sauce,’ Mother replied as my head appeared around the doorway behind Jo’s. ‘This isn’t America.’

  ‘No! But it’s still ketchup. Mr. Kirin said so,’ I pointed out, ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Poppycock,’ Mother smiled at me mockingly then nodded at my books on the table. ‘Do your homework before tea,’ she said, ‘Now.’ She tapped at the table.

  While I studied, Jo read comics noisily and played with her Dolls House. I looked up. Jo dolls were in the back of my toy trucks. My plastic army platoon was spread out around the Dolls House and on its roof. I smiled and quietly continued my study.

  ‘How’s it going Hen?’ Mom asked, wiping her hands on her now grimy apron.

  ‘Well. I’m on question six, but I’m not sure if the right answer is a) or c),’ I said, looking up. Mom’s head leant over my neck now. She read the question aloud.

  ‘Explorers suffer many difficulties. What were the most serious faced in a, b, c, and d?

  a) Norwegian conquest of North American and Greenland (986 to 1180 A.D.);

  b) Captain James Cook’s visits to Hawaii (e.g. Feb 11, 1779);

  c) Robert Falcon Scott’s trip to the South Pole (1912); and

  d) James Lovell’s experiences in Apollo 13 (April 13, 1970).

  So, what’s your problem, Hen?’ Mother asked, hand on hips.

  ‘Well,’ I flicked through my school note book. ‘After living in Greenland and North America for some time the Norwegians either froze or starved to death during a mini ice age at around 1180 A.D., or the enraged Inuit Indians massacred them and ate them for supper a few hundred years later. Captain Cook was bludgeoned, stabbed, and slain to death by angry Hawaiians after he shot and killed the wrong chief for stealing his prized dingy. I guess they boiled him in a pot and ate him too. Scott’s 1912 Antarctic expedition of five were beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegians. They starved to death in the extreme cold — probably too ashamed to come back home. After an oxygen tank exploded, unable to land on the moon now, the Apollo 13 astronauts limped back to Earth as national heroes. With no oxygen, I wonder what they breathed. Anyway, I cannot figure out whether more people died in a) or c). The right answer is a) — I guess?’

  ‘What’re you talking about?’ Mom snapped, in a horrified voice. ‘It’s not a multiple choice question! Read the question before answering it,’ she tapped the page, twice, hard.

  ‘Norwegians are top explorers. I wonder, whether James Lovell is Norwegian?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know? No—, of course not! Just answer each separate part of the question — properly,’ Mom walked away scratching her head, wondering whether I learned anything all at school.

  Sometime later, the clunking of a metal pot sliding off the stove and clanging onto the sink top interrupted my thought patterns. I vaguely heard Mom talking to Jo.

  ‘Jo, stop dancing around like that,’ Mom said. ‘Go to the toilet.’

  ‘I’m holding it in,’ Jo replied legs crossed, wriggling on the spot, ‘for later.’

  ‘Well, you’d better go to the loo before tea,’ she said, then loudly, ‘Hen! Go with her. It’ll be dark soon.’ Mother screwed up her face, the idea somehow stressed her out. ‘Your homework can wait.’

  ‘Did we leave any comics in the dunny?’ Jo asked.

  ‘No. I think you used them all — to wipe your little butt—,’ Mom joked, patting Jo on the backside as she walked past. Jo and I stopped dead in our tracks. Our eyes met.

  ‘Comics—?’ we said in unison, eyes flashing around to search for them.

  Looking at the comics piled up on the corner table and then at each other again we both dove headfirst for them. A chair fell crashing. A solitary doll’s head bounced, landing by Mom’s foot. I grappled with the Atom comic as it slipped from under Jo’s claws. Jo was left with Marty Mouse and the Beagle Boys. She smiled, rolled it up, and hugged it fondly.

  Then, we both made a bee-line for the door. Once outside, we slammed the door — well, both of them, the wooden door and the screen door — behind us, tearing around the corner towards the outside toilet. I ran head-first into Father plodding from the other direction in his usual attire: grey tattered overalls, soiled to the neck in oil, grease, streaks of grey cement and white paint. It felt like whamming headfirst into a solid brick wall. His pocket partly ripped, an undone broken stud scored me above my right eye. Holes caused by welding sparks pock-marked his tattered kneecaps and lower arms. Mom’s attempts to patch some of the holes in the legs and arms were futile. New holes had formed through frayed sewing, expanding in the wash.

  ‘Have you finished your homework yet Hen? You don’t want to end up like me and Ashton, with all your options closed off,’ he added, stopping to remove his rubber boots which excreted the ammonia filled odor of warm pig turd.

  ‘It’s mostly finished,’ I said, hurriedly turning my head away from the stench. And then I sped off round the corner after Jo.

  A few years ago Dad would probably have said something ignorantly like: ‘Study is a waste of time. It never helped me. It won’t help you,’ and then ‘Only stupid people need to study. You’re stupid so you need to study.’ Now, his focus was on whether I really did do the work or not. I guess that between Mom and Kirin they had educated Dad as to the value of knowledge and a good education. Other people are not so lucky.

  Dad had slowed me down just enough for Jo to beat me to the outside toilet. Scrawled on the wooden door by a child was a single word: “Toylet”. We had Jo to thank for that, I thought, analyzing the blistered peeling pink paint on the cream door. A whiff of putrid ammonium aroma burnt my nostrils, as I approached, nauseous. Disgust crept across my face. Then I glanced at the fresh soil mound piled up around the outside of the galvanized iron framed toilet. It wasn’t a flushable toilet but rather just a long drop hole in the ground with a wooden box and a toilet seat, housed inside a small metal compartment with a door.

  ‘This is very 18th century, but I guess at least it does have an electric light,’ I said. Yes, we were still on our first 32-volt home generator. ‘Flushing toilets are yet to arrive in this part of the country. Not yet, anyway. Pity that. I can’t wait.’

  For a long time I stood outside, shuffling around to avoid boredom, leaning my back against the outside of the dunny door and reading my Atom comic. The small pendant dangled from my neck. A faint pulse of green light cut through dull light capturing my attention for a split second. Without seemingly looking, or noticing, I thrust the pendant below my shirt. It clammed down hard squeezing tightly against my chest, taking my breath away. The pendant merged into the skin, as if it were part of the body. It had done that before, so I was used to it by now.

  ‘Hurry up.’ I banged the door with an open palm. ‘Hurry up slow poke — before it gets dark and the Min Min lights get you.’

  ‘Shut up! Anyway, just wait. I’m doing number two,’ Jo said back.

  ‘Too much information, Snottle Pooks!’ I replied.

  ‘Shut up, you big hairy ding-a-ling,’ she kicked at the solid wooden door, which shuddered.

  ‘Hurry up, you wet behind the ears Weasel Sneezle,’ I banged on the door.

  ‘Shut up! You pig faced poo poo bum bum!’ Jo shouted back. ‘Can’t you wait? I’m nearly finished,’ then sarcastically, ‘anyway, you can always pee on the ant heap if you’re in a hurry! Like last time. I won’t tell Mom.’

  ‘Yeah! Sure thing!’ I said. Then I leant back against the toilet door again and read my comic. After a while,
I slowly wandered over to the old International tractor nearby and sat on the front tire. The Atom comic, the current edition, The Skull Cave grabbed my attention. After a while, it seemed like ages, the pressure of the full bladder became too strong. Jumping up and down now, I crossed my legs to keep it in. Wandering back to the toilet now with that “I have to go now feeling” I knocked on the hard, dry blistering paint of the door.

  ‘Hurry up Jo! Hurry up! Get off the dunny. I’m dying to pee. I really need to go. Now! No joking. Get a move on!’ I shouted, banging on the door frantically. Bang! Bang! No reply. No sound. A few minutes passed. ‘Come on. Hurry up!’ I yelled, with agony, trying to hold on. ‘Cripes. I have to go!’ Bang! Bang! The silence continued.

  The door latch was locked fast. ‘Darn! I’m bursting to pee.’ Then I glanced across at the ant heap, over at the house, and then stared long and hard at the ant heap. The ants had built new rims around their holes. That meant they expected rain in the next day or two. Well, it was going to rain a storm now. I stole a quick look back at the house to make sure Mother wasn’t peeking out the window. The blinds were closed.

  ‘Ant heap—. Heh! Heh!’ I cocked my legs. I drooled. What a relief. The yellow fluid dribbled down. It hit the top of the ant heap, bouncing off. Now a small dribbling river formed. Wow, what a release. That felt a lot better. A few large Bull ants came out of their holes running in a frenzied panic, trying to escape the yellow torrential downpour splattering about them. I wondered whether they could see in this fading light. Ants do have eyes, don’t they? ‘Take that you King ants. No. Don’t bite me, you brutes. Get away from my legs you slime-balls!’ I yelled, jumping and hopping away from them. I cocked my ear. Jo never said anything. ‘You slime-balls,’ I said again, trying to illicit a response. I looked toward the toilet door, but got no reply from Jo.