Solo (7 page)
When we hugged I realised that I was taller than she was.
‘What are you doing here, love?’ she asked.
‘Can’t your favourite granddaughter drop by for a visit?’ I joked.
She pulled away from me, holding me at arm’s length. ‘No, really?’
I sat down at the kitchen table. There was a fruitcake on a plate, sliced and covered in Gladwrap. I helped myself to a piece.
She wasn’t supposed to ask me straight away why I’d come. I had imagined that we’d hang out for a while and talk about nothing – maybe watch some TV together. Nan likes the soaps. I could help her cook dinner, cutting things up on the plastic cutting board at this table while she slow-waltzed around the kitchen. I wanted to work my way into the place backwards, or sideways.
Better still, we could not talk about it at all. We could prepare the meal, eat, and then, after a few games of cards, she would send me to one of the guest rooms around the corner. Not my old one, obviously, there was a family staying in that one. But there was room at the back. They never put anyone in that one unless they had to because there was only one window and the opening into the roof cavity was in the corner of the ceiling. Also it backed on to the bathroom and Nan thought you could hear people ‘using the amenities’.
I didn’t care about that, as long as she let me stay. I could float into the place and stick like a barnacle to the underside of their life.
Nan was waiting for an answer so I told her how Itsy broke up with me. At the end she patted my wrist with her dry hands that had twisted knuckles. In that small space between us there was peace and familiarity.
Then she stood up and waddled over to the corner cupboard to pull out the
Yellow Pages
. Slapping it on the counter, she licked her finger and turned over the pages, flick, flick, flick. She found the page she wanted and slid it under my nose, pointing to the bold typed headline: W
OMEN
/Y
OUTH REFUGES
.
‘How about you give them a call? Use our phone. Or I can ring if you like. I’m sure they’re very nice people. They must talk to kids with your sorts of problems every day.’
It hadn’t even crossed her mind to offer.
The screen door clattered and Pop came inside. He paused and then opened his arms wide. I fell into them, trying to hold onto my tears.
‘Hello, poppet!’ He rubbed my back.
Over my shoulder Nan filled him in on my predicament.
‘Why doesn’t she stay with us?’ he asked as he released me.
Nan blinked, holding the phone in her hand. A look passed between them and I realised that the idea had crossed her mind and she’d dismissed it.
‘Mackenzie doesn’t want to stay with us,’ she assured him. ‘Couple of old fogeys like us? No! And we don’t have the room, anyway – not right now. It’s too far to school and there’s only one bus a day. This isn’t a place for teenagers. These people are very nice.’ She held up the phone, as though it was evidence. ‘They must have to deal with kids like Mackenzie every day.’
Kids like me. Youths with potential.
‘Don’t be silly, Pop! It will probably all blow over. You know how Mum is.’ I smiled as widely as I could. ‘It’s no biggie. I have a friend who I can stay with. She’s waiting for me now, actually. I’d better get going!’
My lips were stretching back from my teeth as I backed out the door. I didn’t think they could possibly be fooled by it, but they pretended to be. They let me walk out.
Afterwards I wished I’d cried and begged them to take me. They would have had to say yes if I’d done it that way, and it wasn’t even pride that stopped me, but manners. Civility. I didn’t want to embarrass them.
I waited at the park around the corner until it was dark, and then I crept through the garden past the garage and slept in the boatshed. I wrapped myself in an old tarp. The lights from the house lit the lawn in rectangles. I could hear the Sri Lankan family with their two little boys playing Trouble.
When I thought about it later, I knew they wouldn’t have me from the start. That’s why I’d hoped I could work my way in backwards, or maybe sideways.
There was a girl called Mellinda at school. She was quiet and had a habit of bundling herself in her school cardigan. She would stretch it out in front of her until the seams were straining, and then she would wrap it tightly around her, holding it with her crossed arms as though she was wearing a straitjacket.
Mellinda lived in a granny flat behind her parents’ house. She had a sofa bed.
I slouched up to her in Science. We were testing whether various household products were acid or alkaline. I leaned so close that our elbows were touching.
‘You know, this might actually be useful. More useful than rat dissection, anyway. How often are you going to need to do that in your life?’
Mellinda murmured in agreement. She had the earpieces from her iPod dangling around her neck and I grabbed one and held it to my ear.
‘I’ve never heard this before. What are you listening to?’
She blushed. ‘It’s um . . . Do you like it?’
‘Yeah, it’s great! Who is it?’
Mellinda stared at the table and folded her litmus paper over and over into little triangles. She spoke in a whisper. ‘I have this, ah . . . program on my computer. It’s not special or anything. You can get it on the Net, and then you just record sounds, and cut little clips from other things and loop them.’ She shrugged.
‘This is you?’
She nodded and chewed her lip.
‘Oh my God! I was so sure it was, you know, a proper CD. Is it? Have you sent this to anyone, like a studio or something? Do you have a recording contract already?’
Mellinda laughed and then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘No! It’s just for fun. I haven’t. I haven’t shown anyone.’
‘Nobody? You mean I’m the first? Seriously? Wow! That’s kind of an honour. Thank you so much! So how do you do it? Do you think I could have a try? This is amazing!
You’re
amazing. Can I hear another one?’
‘I could show you how if you wanted.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not that hard.’
‘That would be so great. Are you busy this arvo? Can I come over? I don’t know if I could do it, but I would love to watch how you do it. If you’re not busy.’
The trick to couch-surfing is to find someone who is too polite to tell you to leave – the sort of person who is flattered by high-volume attention.
Mellinda’s sofa bed was lumpy, but I was able to throw my washing in with hers.
Then her ‘uncle’ came to visit and I knew by the blushing and the cardigan-bundling what sort of uncle he was.
He told me he had a spare room in his house. I could stay there for as long as I liked. He stroked my hand and licked his lips.
When I flicked a look at Mellinda her face was distorted as though she had a tic. Emotions played across her face – relief, rage, and then a kind of bewildered jealousy.
Between twitches I could tell what had happened. He’d told her that he didn’t normally do this sort of thing, but she was so desirable, so fresh, so attractive that he couldn’t help himself. He wondered if she knew how truly beautiful she was.
He’d asked permission for one small thing at a time. ‘Can I run my fingers through your hair?’, ‘May I touch your feet?’, ‘Let me stroke your back’, and at first it would have seemed reasonable.
Then there would come a point where she was uncomfortable, maybe even hurting, but then he would have told her that he couldn’t possibly stop now, and besides, she had let him do that other stuff – this wasn’t really any different.
When he went away she would have been ashamed and confused. ‘Was this how it was?’ she would have wondered.
The ads told her it was. The ads said that you should buy make-up, and colour your hair, and drink Coke so that you will be the sort of attractive that men can’t resist. It was pretty shabby, but then so was menstruation. All the girls in those tampon ads wear white and play sports and beam as though it wasn’t interfering with their life in any way. Maybe sex was the same?
I stood at the window and watched the uncle walk down the driveway. He was high-stepping and humming, tossing his keys in the air and catching them. He gave me a cutesy waggle-finger wave as he got in the car.
‘You’re not going to let him do that any more,’ I told Mellinda. ‘If he even leans too close, you say in a loud voice that you’re going to phone his wife. Tell him that if he comes near you again you’re going to ring his boss and take out ads in the fucken
Daily Telegraph
.’
Then I looked for a different couch in a household where there was no uncle or neighbour, or brother, or cousin, and every now and then I found one.
Once I was staying at my friend Emily’s house while her mother was away. Emily was drunk and when she passed out on her bed I took off her shoes and covered her with a doona. Then I went downstairs to the guest room.
I stripped down to my undies, pulled on an oversized T-shirt and then I saw a reflection in the window. Emily’s older brother Joshua was standing in the doorway. I could see his erection through his clothing.
He grinned. ‘I think we should have sex.’ I knew he meant to whether I wanted to or not.
For a moment I panicked. I had to find a way out. I had to think fast.
‘Oh no, I’m too drunk. Maybe another time,’ I laughed.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bedside lamp with a heavy base. I sat on the edge of the bed so that it was within arm’s reach. It was attached to an extension cord, which was even better. I wouldn’t have to unplug it before I sconed him with it.
Joshua sat next to me and kissed my neck. I could smell the beer on his breath.
‘I hardly know anything about you,’ I said. ‘We can have sex if you want to, but first tell me a secret.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he mumbled.
‘I know that your father died last year,’ I countered.
He sat back.
‘That must have been really difficult for you,’ I added.
‘I haven’t talked to anyone about that,’ he said.
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘No, I want a root.’
‘OK, but after you tell me about your dad.’
So we sat there together until five in the morning, sharing beers, and Joshua told me how hard it had been. He even cried. At the end he thanked me.
Initially it had been a wily means of escape for me, but now that I think back, it was probably really good for his mental health.
My counsellor doesn’t use the word ‘problem’. She says ‘challenge’. I am a smorgasbord of challenges. I’m kind of a sampler kit of disorders for social workers. You name a challenge and I will have brushed against it at some time or another – but just a little bit. I’d make a great practice youth for novice social workers before they moved on to bigger cases.
I’ve stayed with foster-families. The first time was after the incident that happened at the chemist’s shop, and then the next was for four months last year.
The first time was OK, but the second family didn’t want me there. I think it’s because I was too old. Or maybe it’s because I ate too much, and not at mealtimes. I would wait until everybody was sleeping and I’d sneak into the kitchen. I’d get a big platter from the cupboard and fill it up with a little bit of everything in the fridge – one slice of ham, one teaspoon of Vegemite, two pickled onions, two slices of bread, a handful of frozen peas and a dob of tomato paste.
Just when I was about to close the fridge door I’d spy something else – a stick of peperoni, say – and hack off a good eight centimetres. In the pantry cupboard I would select a sheet of lasagne, a muesli bar, an apple and two dried apricots. I’d sprinkle the whole lot with breakfast cereal and a squeeze of honey.
This second foster-family had a breakfast bar. I would squat down behind it in the corner where nobody could see. The telephone cord dangled just above me. I’d sit in the dark and eat my plate of little deliciouses with my fingers, delicately feeling for each morsel and placing it in my mouth – just holding it there and running my tongue over it, feeling its texture and temperature.
Afterwards I would quietly wash up the platter and put it back in the cupboard. I’d go to the bathroom and kneel before the bowl. I haven’t made myself vomit yet, but I always think about it. I’ve heard other girls say that the stomach acids coming up all the time rot your teeth. I like my teeth. Besides, if I stick my fingers down my throat or buy laxatives then I will have the sort of ‘challenge’ I’ve promised my counsellor that I’ll talk to her about.
Nobody noticed my bingeing. The foster-mum suspected. I could tell by the way she looked at me. She didn’t like me lurking around the house at night. She thought it was creepy.
I don’t like foster-homes. I prefer to couch-surf.
I’ve never had to sleep on the street. I’ve worried about it, though. The school counsellor knows. She’s given me a key to the showers at the back of the PE change room. But we never connected, not the way I did with my court-appointed counsellor.
I knew why. One of the first times I was waiting in the school counsellor’s office I had Mellinda’s iPod. When she came in she asked me what I was listening to. It was Billie Holiday. She gave me an indulgent smile as though she owned Billie Holiday and I was just borrowing her. Now I can’t listen to Billie Holiday without thinking about it and I hate her for stealing Billie Holiday from me. So when she asks me questions, I lie or deflect. Sometimes I cave and need her, and then she pretends to misunderstand and gives me careers advice to pay me back.
Sometimes the Home Ec. assistant, Sally, lets me wash my clothes in the machine that is used for the teatowels and dishcloths from the school kitchens. Sally is discreet, which I appreciate, but she doesn’t want to hear about my life. If I start to tell her things she fidgets and turns her back, pretending to be busy.
Mostly I couch-surf, but a couple of times last winter I caught a train to Mount Victoria and then back again. All the way from Strathfield to Emu Plains I looked into people’s back yards. It was like seeing the houses in their underwear – people in slippers bringing in their washing, kids on tricycles and swing sets, cockatiels in cages, unsorted recycling, unmown lawns.