Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (9 page)

He came and put an arm around me, kissed my forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Min. I’m very sorry.’ He went to the door. ‘I’ll find him and deal with it. Don’t worry.’

I ate a bowl of the chicken brew. The alarm went for the listening watch. This time I got another weather observation and a medical report from a boatie to pass on. ‘Minna on Motutoka Island to
Ocean Fizzer. How
did you get a fish hook in your butt? Never mind, Maritime Radio says there’s a paramedic on D’Urville for the next hour and can you go there? Over.’

The watch finished, but Dad and Noah didn’t show. I ate another bowl of chicken brew. It wasn’t too bad. I took some of the liquid in to Mum on the theory that chicken soup was good for invalids. She managed about half a cup. ‘It’s good, Min. Thank you, darling.’ She took my hand. ‘What was all the shouting about?’

So I told her — the freezer and the dope. She closed her eyes. ‘I asked him. I asked him several times. I thought … but he always said
no
and
didn’t I trust him?’
Tears squeezed out. ‘Oh, Min — what a mess.’

I wandered back to the kitchen, where it was warmer but not as warm as it should be. I fed more wood into the burner. I wanted to hang about until Dad got back with Noah. I fetched my guitar and the book which was going to teach me how to become an expert in ten easy lessons.

It was late when they came in; Noah looked like
a person who had just lost his entire supply of pot and probably the seeds he was intending to grow as well.

Dad didn’t say anything. He dished up dinner for the pair of them. They didn’t talk so I continued with lesson one.

When Dad got up to clear the table, I asked, ‘Dad — what are we going to do about the meat?’

He put the dishes on the bench, turned and looked at me then at Noah. He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking … this whole situation has become untenable. We’re going home.’

‘Home!’ I yelled to the chooks as I ran past them to the loo.

‘Home sweet home!’ I sang in the shower until I got a mouthful of bird shit and salt-flavoured water. I would not be sorry to leave that behind.

‘Yay! Home tomorrow.’ My koala got the hugest hug. Seb would be so surprised and somehow,
somehow
, I would find a way to be with him. The ring glistened on my finger. He must love me. He wouldn’t have given me a ring if he didn’t. I decided I’d see him first before I even told the girls I was home. I could do without Lizzie orchestrating my life for me — it made me so nervous when she did that.

I did a video diary. ‘I will be home by this time
tomorrow. Home and jumping into my very own bed in my very own room.’ I struck a hand against my head. ‘No, I forgot. Our house is rented out for the year.’ I grinned at the camera. ‘We’ll have to stay in a hotel. Bummer!’

I jumped into bed, stifled any negative thoughts floating around, of which there were plenty, and concentrated instead on an image of me running up the steps to Seb’s house. He would answer the doorbell and there I would be. His parents would be out and we would go to his bedroom.

I swear I woke up smiling but maybe that was because of the smell. That smell had nothing to do with the sea or the wind or bird shit— somebody, and it had to be Dad, was cooking bacon. Real food! I threw on a selection of highly unattractive but warm clothes and ran to the kitchen.

Mum tottered in the door from the loo with the view, but she didn’t go back to bed. Instead, she eased herself down on to the sofa and lay there looking green. I took her a cup of silent, weak tea. Dad ignored her. I cut a piece of his toast into fingers and gave her a couple. He didn’t say anything but his jaw was mighty clenched. ‘Would you let her starve if I wasn’t here?’ I asked.

He didn’t answer so I dropped that as a topic of conversation and held out a plate for some of the bacon, eggs, a good helping of unburnt spuds and a couple of tomatoes. Bliss on a plate.

‘Get Noah up, will you, Min?’ Dad said.

‘Like he’ll take notice of me.’ I wasn’t going near Noah. He wasn’t stupid — he’d know it was me who dobbed him in.

Dad gave me a considering look but didn’t say anything. He put down the frying pan and went on the Noah quest. They were back two minutes later and I was glad I hadn’t ventured into the N-Territory. He was not the happiest of campers.

‘Don’t want any breakfast,’ he said — except that there was some vocab in there that Cara would have to delete if she wanted to use it, which she would, it being good television and all. Dad calmly and patiently dished him up some anyway.

Dad had a lot of calm and patient to spare right now, seeing as how he wasn’t using any on Mum.

Nobody talked. I sopped up all the juices and bacon fat with a piece of bread and it was heaven.

‘All right, kids,’ said Dad. ‘Get packing. I’m going to call base as soon as I finish with the listening watch.’ He glanced over at Mum and his mouth turned down. ‘We should be out of here by tonight.’

‘Home again! I can’t wait.’ I threw a bit of toast in the air and caught it in my mouth. I hoped Cara would use that clip because it would drive Gran H spare.

Then Mum lobbed in a grenade designed to blow the whole plan off the map. Her voice was still weak and wobbly but it was clear enough. ‘I’m not going.’

Dad ignored her.

Noah said nothing. He didn’t look as if he was bothered one way or the other, which had to mean he had a secret dope supply that Dad hadn’t found, but who cared about that right now?

I went to her sofa, jammed my hands on my hips and glared at her, although it’s a waste of energy to glare at
somebody who keeps their eyes shut. She couldn’t shut her ears though. ‘What d’you mean, you’re not going? It’s your fault … You shouldn’t have … You’re horrible and I hate you and when we get home I’m never going near you ever again.’ More tears for the camera. Then I sniffed and said to Dad, ‘I’m going to start packing.’

I was right about not being able to shut ears. I heard very clearly what Mum said next in her wobbly, weak voice. ‘Can’t do another helicopter ride. Wasn’t too sick before that, but now …’ Her voice faded away.

I swivelled around, turning my back on her. ‘Dad? What’ll we do? We
can’t
stay here.’ He didn’t want to stay, not now. We would go home, we
would
. I opened my mouth to plead some more but shut it again when he snatched up the fish slice and belted it hard against his leg, twice. The impact left two greasy patches on his overalls. I staggered backwards at the fury on his face, hit the edge of Mum’s couch and nearly fell on her. ‘Dad?’ I whispered.

He didn’t answer, just chucked the fish slice into the sink so hard it bounced and then he was out the side door, crashing it shut behind him. I straightened up and just stood there, staring at the door still vibrating from the impact of the slam.

‘I hate you!’ I bellowed at my faithless mother. I ran from the room and left her alone with Noah. If I never saw her again it would be a bloody good thing. Let her get in the helicopter. Who cared if she died. Not me.

I wanted to talk to Lizzie, Jax and Addy so much that I couldn’t think about it or I’d disintegrate into tiny fragments. Seb — I
needed
him.

A fresh spurt of anger shook me —
how
could Mum have agreed to do this stupid TV thing? She knew the truth would come out. She
knew
the entire whole country would find out she was nothing but a whore. And who was the fucking father anyway? Oh God, that was a joke and not a funny one. I curled into a heap on my bed and bawled my eyes and heart out.

But it was cold in my room, so in the end I got up and went back to the kitchen where Mum was shivering on the sofa because the fire had died right down. Dad hadn’t come back and, of course, Noah had vanished. We’d missed the start of the listening watch and the radio was nagging away. I grabbed the microphone. ‘Yes, here! Motutoka. Sorry we’re late. Come in please.’

And then it was all on with the multitasking. I dealt to the radio, fed the fire with coal, filled a hottie for Mum and got her blankets and a cup of tea. She’d been crying too. Good. It served her right. She should cry. She deserved to cry. I didn’t talk to her.

Because there was nothing else to do, I did the dishes. Picked up the camera. Fed the chooks, who, so Dad said, lived on a diet of wheat.

I ran back into the house and spoke to the faithless one. ‘Mum, we have to go home!’ I couldn’t face it — living with furious father, sick mother and grumpy brother.

‘Can’t. Not yet.’

I stared at her, my mother — the shell of my mother. There was nothing left of the mother I knew.

What if she did die?

Now I was scared. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’
I whispered.

The corners of her mouth twitched. It could have been a smile. ‘Mashed potato. I’d kill for some mashed potato.’

She whispered instructions and it looked good by the time I’d whisked it up with a fork. Mum ate three teaspoonfuls. She eased back down on the sofa. ‘Thank you, Min.’

It was the way she said it that got to me — there was a whole trailer-load of sadness in it — and that’s when I started to realise we couldn’t go back, not to the life we’d had, not now and not ever.

I wondered if this was how little kids felt when all their Christmas presents got stolen. You look forward to something so much it hurts, and then it doesn’t happen. What was left was a vacuum.

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked but she didn’t answer.

I needed my friends. I needed somebody to talk to. I went back to the chooks. They liked being talked to. They came when I called. They scratched around in the dirt and listened when I told them how putrid the world was. Izzie came up and stuck her head through the wire and went
derrrk
when I stroked her feathers. ‘I could come to like chooks,’ I told the girls via the camera. Oh yes, I didn’t forget the camera. Old Cara might as well get her money’s worth, although she probably had enough drama already to make us into the world’s top, riveting reality show.

Bizzie came up to investigate, but backed off when I pointed the camera at her. ‘What do you think, chooks?’ Dizzie bustled up so I asked her the question that scared
me rigid. ‘Do you think Dad’ll stay here with Mum, or will he go and leave her behind?’

Derrrrk, took took took.

I sat and watched them for the longest time. Thoughts clacked around in my head and no matter which way I tried to line them up, they’d only go in one direction. I stretched out a hand to Fizzie and scritched her.

Derrrk, took took.

‘Very wise, Fizzie, very wise. But what do you say about this? What if Dad does go home? What happens then? Somebody’s got to look after Mum and I don’t see Noah being a lot of use.’

Fizzie lost interest and took herself off.

I went to the fence around the garden and tugged on a large green weed then lugged it across to the chooks. They pounced on it like there was no tomorrow waiting to clamp down on them, but I guess if you’re a chook you don’t think about tomorrows.

I climbed a fence post and sat on it — not a comfortable perch. I rubbed my hands over my face — I was starting to think like a damned chook. I needed something to do, but what? I didn’t want to go back inside the house where I’d have to look at Mum.

Dad.

What if he did go home? What if he just flew off with Cara the Cow and abandoned Mum? It’d bloody serve her right, actually.

But what if she died, left alone here all by herself?

‘Oh, crap in a basket!’ I yelled. ‘I’ll have to stay with her.’

The chooks ruffled their feathers and gave me ten
beady-eyed glares. I took myself and the camera off but not into the house. Anywhere but there.

The day was cloudy and windy, not hell windy, but enough to send the clouds scuttling across the sky. I opened the gate in the fence surrounding the house, and set out to do a circuit.

The house was tucked in a valley at what Dad had said, back when he was still talking, was the north end of the island. It was near enough to the sea to hear the waves, but I didn’t feel in the mood for the sea and waves today, not if I couldn’t get down to them. I followed the path that led out from the house on the south side. It took me round to the back and through a belt of trees with dark green leaves that looked polished. And behold, there in front of me were gardens — four of them and all with neat rows of plants. Vegetables probably. I recognised silver beet. Off to the side was another shed which was a kind of garden centre/greenhouse affair with trays of plants inside it. Gardens, I suspected, needed to have work done to them. I shrugged. Not one of my accomplishments. Dad could do it.

If he stayed.

I stayed outside till I got hungry. Mum opened her eyes when I came in, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything either but I made me a sandwich and gave her some dry toast, another spoonful of mashed potato and a cup of tea. I went to my room, crawled in under a mountain of blankets and listened to music. Noah didn’t show and neither did Dad until halfway through the afternoon. He walked into the house, yelled for both of us and when I came running from my room he was sitting at the kitchen table, his back to Mum and his face looking like one of her brass sculptures.

He was going to leave, I was sure and certain. I wanted to ask him. I wanted him to put me out of my misery, to tell me and let me get used to the whole
putrid scenario:
Minna and her faithless mother alone on Isolation Island
. But no way would he tell me if he had to repeat it for Noah. Where the hell was Noah? Nowhere he was needed; so what was new?

It took him several minutes to make the epic journey from bedroom to kitchen. ‘What?’ he snarled.

I tottered from the doorway to the table. I couldn’t bring myself to sit down, I just held on to the back of a chair and stared at Dad, trying to see into his head. What had he decided? Why couldn’t he just come out with it?

He waited till Noah got his butt on to a chair, and then he waited some more.

For chrissake, Dad — open your mouth and speak. Hit me with it, let me get used to it. After all, what’s one more body blow?

He banged a closed fist on the table and eyeballed us, first me and then Noah. ‘We’re going to have to stay. At least for a while.’

I swear I went dizzy. I’d been so sure he was going to cut and run. I pulled the chair away from the table and collapsed on to it. ‘All of us? You too, Dad?’

He snapped at me. ‘Of course me too. I can’t leave the pair of you here with …’ He broke off and sucked in a huge breath. ‘We all have to stay until your mother is fit to travel.’

I was shaking and if something didn’t happen soon, I was going to cry. Something did happen. Dad stood up. ‘Come on kids — let’s see what we can do with that damned meat.’

It was funny. I started to laugh. Meat! Dad’s voice hit
me like a slap. ‘Stop it, Min. This second.’

I gasped and hiccupped and I wasn’t laughing because tears were streaming down my face. I stopped. It took a huge effort, but I did it. Amazing what you can do when you know cameras are on you.

‘Good girl,’ Dad said. ‘Come on, let’s get the job done.’

I gulped a couple more times and picked up the camera. Dad halted at the door. ‘You too, Noah — come and lend a hand.’

‘Get stuffed,’ said Noah.

Dad went over and sat down beside him. ‘You’ll feel better if you do something.’

Noah snarled, but stood up — possibly because even he could detect the steel under Dad’s calm and patient. We trailed out to the freezer shed without saying anything to Mum. The chooks muttered as we passed. Noah and Dad ignored them.

Inside the shed, Dad opened the freezer and we stared at it with its shelves full of meat. Already the bacteria would be having a party in that little lot. I filmed it, Dad prodded it and Noah turned his back on it.

I sighed — in my mind I could see all those steaks, sausages, chops, burgers, roast chickens dripping with gravy, and even Mum’s chuck-it-all-together stews. Every single one of them a gone-burger. ‘What are we going to do with it all?’

Dad rubbed his head. ‘We could try drying some of it — the stuff we can cut into strips. Have to bury the rest I guess.’

Noah spoke. ‘I vote we have a roast tonight.’

Dad was chuffed. The alien speaks. He grinned at Noah. ‘Pick one, son. You can have your choice of chicken, pork, lamb or beef.’

‘Pork,’ said Noah. ‘With crackling.’

Dad scrabbled around in the shelves, tossing packages of soft, squidgy meat on to the floor. ‘Aha — pork!’ He handed it to me. ‘Here you are, Min. All ready for you to transform into succulent, tender meat and crackling.’

I shoved it right back at him. ‘Why me? I’ve done everything around here so far. You cook it. Or Noah. He hasn’t done a damned thing yet except yell and get high.’

Dad got all miffy. ‘Noah can cook when he’s recovered. And in the meantime it’s up to you.’

I folded my arms and glared at him. ‘Is that so? How d’you figure that one?’

He must’ve used up all his calm and patient because there sure wasn’t any hint of it now. ‘Don’t be dense, Min. You must see that I can’t be in the same room as your mother any more than is absolutely necessary.’ He amped up a glare of his own. ‘And I’ll thank you not to make things more difficult by encouraging her to stay in the living area.’

That was too much. ‘Don’t punish me for what she’s done! I’m the only one making sure she doesn’t die.’ He was so unfair. ‘I don’t see you getting her drinks or food. Why should I have to run backwards and forwards to that fridge that’s supposed to be a bedroom?’

I reached out and grabbed the nearest roast, checked that it wasn’t pork and waved it. ‘Lamb.’ I smiled the sweetest arrangement of stretched lips that I could
manage and hit him with, ‘I think Mum will find this easier to digest than pork.’

He was not pleased but I stalked out and left them to it. Then I had to turn back and get the camera, which diluted the effect, but I did get to hear Dad snap at Noah to stop dreaming and get to work so on balance it was worth it.

Blissful days stretched ahead of me in a parade of endless hours.

It wasn’t an afternoon to cherish in the memory. Dad and Noah carted in a basket of roasts and steak. They sat at the table and sliced them into strips.

‘Lend a hand, Min,’ Dad said, busily ignoring Mum on the sofa.

I smiled at him through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t touch raw meat. It’s one of my unbreakable rules.’ One that I would have to break when I cooked the lamb but I intended to get around that by handling it with gloves.

He took a deep breath and treated me to a fair dose of calm and patient. ‘Look, Min — we’re in this together. Cooperation is the name of the game.’

‘Cooking is cooperating,’ I said.

His teeth looked pretty clenched too, but he didn’t yell or say anything at all actually.

So Day Three wandered on by. I made a late lunch with salad veg I found in the fridge.

Dad said, ‘Great, Min. How about making some mince patties to go with it?’

‘Good idea, Dad. The stove’s all yours.’ Write
household drudge
on my forehead, why don’t you?

Stalemate.

Noah ignored the salad and cooked more bacon which he slapped between slices of bread. He didn’t wash the pan.

Mum turned greener at the prospect of lettuce, she’d gone off spud but she did manage a bit of the leftover chicken stuff. I, using my own initiative, retrieved another chicken carcass from the freezer-that-wasn’t and made a new brew for her. As I walked past the chooks carrying a thawed body of one of their sisters I yelled ‘Sorry chooks! Don’t look.’

They ran up to me, clucking in a very friendly way. I stopped and scritched Izzie on her head. ‘I’ll come back and pull out the hugest weed for you,’ I promised.

Oh great — Minna Hargreaves; chicken
conversationalist
. This, no doubt, is what extreme isolation can do to a girl. But I kept my promise and they went mad over the leaves, the dirt, the roots and the odd snail. I watched them for a while and then an equation filtered through my brain: chooks equal eggs.

‘You realise,’ I told Izzie, ‘that if I go into your yard I’ll get my beautiful new boots all icky?’

I held out the shiny black boot for her inspection but she didn’t seem that fussed. I let myself in through a door in the netting. Where did chooks lay eggs? The door to their coop was about half as high as it needed to be for humans and the inside was full of perches but I fought through to the nesting boxes against the wall. Yay! Eggs! Nine of them all snuggled up together in two of the four boxes. I made another discovery — the boxes had lids that opened into the freezer shed.

‘Collecting your eggs is going to be a breeze, chooks,’
I told them as I backed out. I felt like a thief, taking their potential babies. I bent and patted Bizzie. ‘But they’re not really going to be babies. Didn’t your mother ever tell you about roosters?’

I let myself out of the coop and leaned my head against the wire. ‘Yes, you poor ignorant chooks — it takes a mummy and a daddy to make babies. Any old daddy, actually.’

The rest of the day was — different. I’d never seen either Dad or Noah ever in their lives pegging washing on a clothesline and I’d never imagined I’d see both of them slaving away with a box of meat, pegging it strip by strip up there to wave in the breeze. But it made excellent television. Dad hammed it up (ha ha, although there was no ham, only pork). He was all bright and happy, but Noah wasn’t. He pegged one gory strip to every six Dad managed to get on the line.

I left them with a pan shot of the entire length of the line which stretched from a tree on the fence line to the verandah of the house.

‘What are the odds on that little experiment working?’ I asked the camera. I did another shot of Dad and Noah slaving away. ‘You wouldn’t put your last cent on it, is what I reckon.’

I sat on the verandah and watched them. Why was Dad bothering? How long would we have to be here? Another week? Two? We’d be out of here before we’d even noticed we’d turned into tree-hugging vegos.

And then what would happen? We had no house to go back to until the year was up.

We. Us. Our.
What were those dinky little words
called? I shrugged. Who cared? I looked at Dad — first time he’d done stuff with us for god knows how long, not that it was prime stuff, except where the prime beef strips were concerned.

Oh god, concentrate, Minna!

But I couldn’t. Didn’t want to think of Life After Island because one thing was for sure and certain — Dad wouldn’t be part of it.

I hated my mother — hated her with a burning, fierce, passionate hate.

No wonder Dad wouldn’t talk to her.

Then I started to laugh. I focused the camera and called out, ‘The birds are a friendly lot here, don’t you reckon?’ I zoomed in on the kingfisher feasting on a strip of meat, then the two blackbirds and a couple of others I didn’t know the names of.

Dad spun around, and groaned. He flapped his arms a few times but that didn’t bother the birds. He eyed them for a moment or two and his brain whirred so fast it’s a wonder they didn’t hear it. Then he rushed into the house, came back with a newspaper and three of my magazines.

‘Hey! What are you doing with those?’ I yelled.

He grinned at me. ‘There are times, Min, when we all have to make sacrifices.’ He sacrificed my magazines by ripping them up, page by double page. Then he put the pages over the meat and clipped them in place with more pegs. ‘Come on, Noah. Lend a hand here.’

The hand Noah lent wasn’t the most enthusiastic or busy hand in the world.

If I was a blessing-counter I guess I could count the
odd one or two: Dad was still here; Mum might be okay to fly tomorrow; I had chooks to talk to.

See why I’m not a blessing-counter?