An autumn afternoon

It put Pip off his search.

The little boy’s grave.

1972-1983.

Black with gold inlay.

And the father’s name scratched out.

He wondered how he had not noticed it before. This little boy’s grave. With the father’s name scratched out, but its shadow left behind. And Pip stood in front of it for some amount of time between three minutes and a year, his hands in his pocekts, the autumn sun on the back of his neck and the gentle shuffling sounds of the other kids’ whirligigs whistling through his ears.

A parrot.

A crow. Two. Three.

A lorikeet.

Cars at ten kilometres an hour.

Pip needed to make his decision today and so he tried not to see the mother dressed in purple and black, her back hunched and her shoulders curled as she cursed the rising sun which lit the shadow of the name. The name etched more deeply into her heart than into the stone.

The sound of her frantic scratching ripped through the drying grass. The sound of her sobs dripped from the trees. And the stench of her anger gave life to his own, so that once again it snaked its way out of his bones and coiled itself around him head to toe, and wound itself in and out of the days that would come to make up weeks that he would come to waste on deep breaths and sharp words and bitten fingernails.

And the search he thought today would end had only just begun.

Visiting, Sunday afternoon

The smell was lunches past. The besa bricks were dully white and the dusty flowers were silk. The fluoro lights were evenly spaced. Blu-tacked posters listed irrelevant rights.

If it had not been for following the squeak – his right shoe, after he lifted his heel and before he lifted his toe – he would not have timed his walk, and he would not have known that each door was fifteen steps from the next.

Not all of the doors were closed but all of the beds were made. Televisions flickering in darkened rooms, and all of them too loud. Brisbane versus the Crows.

A woman knitting, another with a book. A visitor with a cup of tea wrapped between her hands. A man asleep in his chair.

Photo frames in rows or clusters of threes on shelves and window sills and bar fridges and televisions which stood on four sturdy legs. Photos of people who echoed each other, but whose names could only now and then be dredged from between the holes of crumbling brains.

And then in a room at the sunroom end, a woman. Her chin lifted. Her mouth lightly open and her eyes lightly closed. A younger woman, one he’d never seen, bent over her, putting lipstick on in dabs.

‘There you are, love, gorgeous again…they’ll be here soon’. Her voice was round and strong and yet to let her down. He was seven steps past, but he thought of turning back and of wrapping her in his arms. She would not smell of voilets or cashmere bouquet or even Oil of Ulan. Her skin would not be paper thin and her eyes would not be pale. There would be no weight between them.

Somewhere down the corridor, a baby cried, another door closed.

He used the stairs because he could, went down them two at a time, then jumped the final four, pinned the number in, made sure the lock of the gate was clicked.

But still, the wanderer’s alarm followed him back to his car.

The turning point

‘She wouldn’t be quite so annoying if she wasn’t quite so short,’ she said.

She scratched her head and pulled her hair behind her ears in the way that she always did. He looked down at the table and closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink.

‘Like the cardigan she was wearing was a perfect fit, except for the sleeves, and so she’d made a cuff which was four rolls thick.’ She cleared her throat and he knew that if he looked up now he would see her biting her lips.

She blew on her cup of tea. Had her blows always been so loud?

‘At least four rolls.’

Pip put his cup down, picked up the pen, pulled the newspaper closer, began drawing a moustache.

‘And she giggles when she can’t reach things,’ she said.

She took a sip which became a slurp.

Pip added glasses to the face he had moustached.

‘And I don’t mean suitcases on the wardrobe or cobwebs on the cornice…anyone can get a stool and reach those kinds of things.’

Devil’s horns. A moustache, glasses and devil’s horns.

‘But no, she can’t reach the salt.’

Snot drips out of the nostril.

‘Can someone pass the salt she says and then she giggles. Every. Single. Time.’

And now the other one.

‘Like she thinks it’s funny having arms that short.’

Earwax! God, how long had it been since he’d drawn wax dribbling from ears? Twenty years? At least.

‘She could wear heels,’ she said. ‘No-one needs to be that short.’

Pip put his pen down, picked up his cup. It wasn’t the one he liked. It was all right for coffee, but not for tea.

‘Heels wouldn’t help her to reach the salt,’ he said. He brought the cup to his lips. The tea had cooled enough to drink.

She looked down at the things he had drawn, then up again.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean.’ She scratched at her head again. ‘And do you have to swallow like that when you drink?’

He put the cup down, picked the pen up. The next time they had this conversation Pip promised himself that he would say you’re only five foot two.

Sharon’s rags (1987)

If Sharon thought about it, she could remember she’d had her rags, one at sports day and that’s why she didn’t win the 800 metres or the hurdles or any of the sprints. And there was one in Charities Week, because that was the day the blood had shown on her skirt, and she had to pretend she had sat on a chocolate ice cream, and she’d gone home at lunch time and she hadn’t gone to school for two days until the school rang Dad, and he said I thought those days were over, love so she went back, because she hated to make him sad.

Had there been another one since then? Yeah, another one, or maybe two. Enough. There was no need to feel scared.

Sharon started to count. From now. Because it didn’t really matter, because nothing would go wrong. It was just for something to do.

She checked. Four days, a week, three weeks, a month. Over a month. Two. Shit. Shit and fuck.

She went to the toilet when she woke up, after breakfast, after her shower, when she got to school, at the end of lessons, at the beginning of lunch, halfway through lunch, at the end of the lunch, after school at school, after school at home. With no sign of blood on her knickers or on the paper, she stuck her fingers up there. She stuck them up, and she wriggled them back and forth a bit until it almost hurt. They came out again without a sign of blood. Shit. Shit and fuck.

She said to Pip ‘my rags haven’t come.’

He looked scared and he said shit and that was the moment when she knew he wouldn’t stay.

She tried to pretend there was nothing wrong, she told herself it couldn’t be true, she prayed to God. She filled her prayers with promises and bargains she told herself she’d keep. But why would He listen? He never had before.

She burnt the tea and she burst into tears.

‘What’s wrong, love?’ Dad said. ‘Is it exams? Are you worried you won’t know enough?’ She thought of a million different things to say, of different ways to get the words out, but in the end, she just said ‘I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby.’