‘How was school?’
When Terry asked it was an opening to joke around. She wants a proper answer and it just seems like too much effort. ‘All right.’
She drops the bundle into the basket of clean laundry and lifts it onto her hip. ‘She’s ready to get out.’
I watch Rose-Marie go, then reach for Tash’s towel. ‘All right, you heard that. Time’s up.’
‘Two more!’ she pleads.
‘Nope, now. Terry’s got dinner on.’ She loves Terry’s cooking.
I get an incomprehensible earful about her day as I lift her out of the tub, dry her off and awkwardly sticky-tab a nappy. She pushes me away when I start dressing her. ‘I can do.’
‘Yeah, well last time you put your pants on backwards.’ Tug her back towards me till we’re face to face. Her eyes are big.
‘Tomorrow Sat’day?’
‘Tomorrow’s Friday. It goes Thursday, Friday, then Saturday.’
‘When we go zoo?’
‘Saturday. Not tomorrow, day after.’
A visit to the zoo is a second birthday present from Terry and Rose-Marie. She hasn’t shut up about it since we explained it to her. I don’t think she really gets the days of the week but she knows Saturday is when we’re going to the zoo.
Dinner is the usual. Tash eats earlier, so it’s just the three of us at the table, my least favourite time of the day. I swear Rose-Marie thinks her main purpose in life is to teach me table manners. She’s a total Nazi about using the right fork, the right serving implement. It’s a relief when she lays off me and turns to Terry.
‘Any rain in sight?’
Terry works for the Bureau of Meteorology. This is Rose-Marie’s way of showing interest in his job, and she’s asked the frigging question every day since it last rained, which was in fact the twelfth of February. Thanks to Terry, my head is now filled with useless shit like that.
‘Nothing yet.’ Terry at least manages to vary his answer, and—more impressively—makes it sound like he’s actually glad she asked. If I were him I would have told her months ago to just turn on the damn weather channel and look for herself.
The most common cause of drought in Australia is the climate phenomenon called the Southern Oscillation, a major air pressure shift between the Asian and east Pacific regions. Its best-known extreme is El Niño. As I said, useless shit.
Rose-Marie turns back to me. ‘We need to talk about schools for Tash.’
‘Preschool?’
‘No, primary. The good ones fill up early, three or four years ahead. There’s a few options around here that we can hopefully still get into. I thought we could sit down and look over some information after dinner.’
Tightening in my stomach. ‘Yeah, but can we do it tomorrow? I’ve got a stack of maths homework.’
She holds my gaze for a long moment, then nods. ‘Of course.’
Tash conks out in front of the TV and Rose-Marie puts her to bed. I sit down to do my maths homework but my concentration’s shot, thanks to Rose-Marie. I’ve got enough things going round in my head. I don’t need more. I sure as hell don’t need to be thinking about something that’s three whole years away.
I grab a can of Coke from my bar fridge. Takes me a while to remember where I stashed the Bacardi, but I find it in the bottom of the wardrobe. Top up the can and then re-hide the bottle at the bottom of my Balderdash box.
‘You know, hiding booze is a key sign of alcoholism,’ Izzy the sage told me once.
‘Shut up,’ was my answer. ‘It’s just so Rose-Marie doesn’t find it.’
A drink settles my mind enough for me to get through one textbook exercise and start on another. I’m trying to remember how to do rectangular hyperbola when I get interrupted.
‘Tash, what are you doing up?’
‘I woke up.’
‘Well, go back to sleep.’
‘I dinna get story.’ Rose-Marie got so excited when Tash started talking. Didn’t realise from then on she’d never shut up.
‘I have to do my homework.’
She comes closer, climbs up onto my lap and nudges my hand aside to see what I’m doing. She’s always this way, as if she can’t wait to be reading and writing and doing overcomplicated and unnecessary maths problems too.
‘What’s that?’ Absolute favourite question.
‘Finding the loci of points in rectangular hyperbola.’
The eyes go past my work, to the can of Coke. The hands reach out for it. I whisk it out of her reach. ‘No, mine. You already brushed your teeth.’
I’ll get a tantrum now; natural follow-up to not getting what she wants. She’ll dig in stubbornly and keep going till she gets it. Well, tough luck, kid. I’ve been playing this game a lot longer than you have.
Before she can unleash, I tighten my grip around her waist. Take her into her room. It’s dark. Rose-Marie forgot to turn on the nightlight. Climb onto her bed—it was another birthday present, graduating from the cot—and grab a random book from the shelf. ‘One book, okay? Then I have to go finish my homework.’
Wriggly, impatient, not happy with that book. Elbow in the chest as she climbs over me to choose a different one.
Diary of a Wombat.
‘This one.’
‘Okay, this one.’ She’s had it read to her probably hundreds of times, and like always she wants to race through, tries to turn the pages before I’m done reading them. I read through it once, then she wants it again, then I tuck her in properly, as she tries to wriggle free.
‘No, stay there. Rose-Marie’ll get mad if you don’t go to sleep.’
I leave her there with her room lit blue by the nightlight. My maths books lie open, waiting for me, but my concentration is really screwed now. I shut the books and top up the Coke. Stretch out on my bed.
The roof slopes downwards over my bed: it’s a real attic bedroom. The ceiling’s completely covered in A3 pages I printed off in the school library and taped up there. Took me nearly a week to put together. Izzy came over and stared at it for a full minute or two before she asked me what it was.
‘It’s a brain, you idiot.’
She couldn’t understand why I’d paper my roof with a scientific diagram. Her bedroom walls are an inch thick with years’ worth of hot pin-up boys, the less clothes the better far as she’s concerned. I didn’t bother explaining, she wouldn’t understand. She never does.
So this is my bedtime routine. I lie there with my drink and gaze up, tracing the different sections, rolling the names over my tongue. I imagine diving inside, watching the neural connections flash by on all sides, the cerebrum walls stacked with folders and files like on a hard drive, each packed full of data: snapshots, glimpses of memory. The fresh arrivals from today are: the foul odour of a stink bomb in our English classroom, the familiar shudder of the car just before it stalled, the sight of Tash’s bare little bottom in the bathtub and the sound of her nonsense singing echoing off the tiles. I sort each incident. I let my mind dwell on the good ones and commit them to memory. Will the rest away. Then I take my mind back, systematic as always.
My first crush, on Matty Jardin in year two.
Being bitten by a dog in kindy.
Fourth birthday, somebody made me a castle cake.
I explore each memory carefully, trying to squeeze out as much detail as possible before moving on. Sometimes, rarely, I get something new, something long filed away. A voice, a glimpse of a face or hands. Impossible to date. Impossible to know if it’s even real, or if my mind has simply started manufacturing memories. Making up answers because I don’t have them. One hundred billion neurones. Talk about a needle in the haystack.
I scull the rest of the rum and Coke. Make another. The warmth creeps in slowly, lifts me. Rose-Marie can do what she wants. Let her make her plans, I don’t care anymore.
Terry and his chocolate.
Rose-Marie and her stupid plans.
Tash.
before
after
later
The darkroom is supposed to be empty, and it’s not. The safe lights are on, and I give my eyes a few seconds to adjust and pick out the form at the wet bench. A girl. Maybe my grade, probably a year or two younger. She lifts her paper carefully out of the stop and lowers it into the fixer, then gently rocks the tray so the chemical covers the print. Only once that’s done does she look up and notice me.
‘Hi.’
I feel foolish, like an intruder. I still feel like an outsider, no matter how many names I learn or how many routines I now find myself flowing through, and it’s tiring. I was hoping this would be a sanctuary.
‘I’m Sarah. I’m in year twelve. I’m new…’
‘Morgan. Year eleven.’ She moves a second print out of the wash and shakes the water off it, holding it up to look at it.
‘Do you do this in art or as an elective? Photography, I mean.’
‘I’ve got a free period now so Miss Shepherd lets me come here to work. I do the two-unit elective. They don’t do it with art classes—too many idiots.’ She throws me a grin, and I feel a surge of gratitude. I need a friend.
She puts her print in the drying rack and then moves the other one out of the fixer. ‘Are you doing photography for your major work?’
‘Maybe. Still deciding.’
‘My brother just finished year twelve. He didn’t do art, though. He was into the boring subjects—legal studies, that sort of thing.’ She pauses. ‘Are you going to do some photos?’
‘Yeah.’ I don’t know where everything is kept, though. ‘I’m new, so…’
As a tour guide, she’s nothing like Sarah Bancroft. She shows me the fridge where the paper is stored, the cupboards where the mixed chemicals go, the squeegee for cleaning down the wet bench. She gives me a running commentary as she goes.
‘Processing tanks and black bags are in the storeroom. You have to peg the bags shut at the bottom because they’re all torn up. I usually bring it in here just to make sure no light gets in. And lock the door when you come in, if you’re by yourself. You’re not supposed to because of the chemicals—you know, in case you pass out from fumes or whatever—but if you don’t, there’s a bunch of guys who’ll come in and switch on the white lights. They think it’s funny.’
I’ve brought in a sleeve of negatives from last year. I fish it out of my bag, pick a photo randomly and play around with the enlarger settings. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been in a darkroom, and I need to get my technique back before I can do anything else.
Morgan chats as we work. Even though all I’ve wanted all morning is to be by myself and have peace and quiet like I’m used to, I don’t mind it at all. It reminds me of how Robbie and I used to talk, and it didn’t matter whether we were talking about McDonald’s or about God and the meaning of life, it just came easily. Even with the extractor churning and Morgan’s voice, it feels peaceful.
I drop my first print into the developer, and Morgan leans over to watch as the image emerges.
‘That’s awesome. Where is that, Europe somewhere?’
‘Rome.’ It’s a narrow side street Robbie and I wandered into while Mum and Alan went for coffee. I loved the uneven cobbled road and the peonies in the window-boxes. There’s an old-fashioned bicycle leaning against a wall, and a bunch of motor bikes and scooters outside a gelateria.
‘Did you go over on exchange?’
‘Family holiday. My mum’s Italian. We go over every couple of years to visit all her relatives. She was born here, but you wouldn’t know it. She still talks in Italian half the time.’
‘You got brothers or sisters or anything?’
It’s such a casual, normal question, but my stomach drops, and suddenly I just don’t want to be here anymore. I suck in a breath to try to fight down the panic. Force my hands to stay steady as I lift my print out of the developer and drop it into the stop bath. ‘No. Just me.’
I’m not prepared for the blinding sunlight. It’s a shock after the darkroom. I have to put a hand up to shield my face and wait for my eyes to adjust. The bell has just gone for the end of recess and there’s movement everywhere, pushing and shoving and noise. Too much.
I’m supposed to have English now. I feel the anxiety rise back up at the thought of group discussions. Part of me can see it’s interesting, the intricacies of plot and theme. The rest of me can’t think of anything more pointless than discussing Othello’s evolving frame of mind. Part of me realises that, ultimately, stuff like that doesn’t actually matter.
Almost before I’ve made a conscious decision I’ve started to push my way through the traffic. I duck around the corner of the library then head past the hall. I’ve never, ever jigged school before, but somehow the thought of getting into trouble for it doesn’t bother me. I’m not even worried that I might get caught. I just know I can’t sit through English right now.
It takes me almost an hour to walk home. It’s stinking hot and I’m sweating, and my folder and bag are weighed down with books and textbooks, and my leg is really hurting, but I don’t care. I feel free again. I feel like I could easily just not go back. Maybe I won’t.
The house is cool and quiet, but too empty. I change out of my uniform and take Iago and we head down into the bush, tramping along the overgrown path, trying to keep in the tree-shade. Even so, by the time we get to the creek I have sweat again in every crevice and Iago is panting, his whole body wobbling with the effort. I climb up onto my favourite fallen red gum and sit straddling it over the water, watching the insects zip across the water’s surface, darting and diving, while Iago snuffles in the undergrowth. My leg is aching from too much walking and I stretch it out along the log, trying not to think about it, about anything. The sweat on my skin starts to cool and my legs itch from the long grass, but I feel better than I have anywhere else. I close my eyes, listening to the birdsongs and cicadas and Iago as he scavenges.