The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

Her hands stopped their quick pecking at the dishes in the cupboard, re-positioning them. ‘Are you saying she hasn’t called home?’

  ‘Once,’ I said, my voice squeaky. ‘But she only spoke to Dad. We were at school.’

  Her forehead creased.

  ‘I’m worried she doesn’t have everything she needs, cause maybe she stayed longer that she thought she would,’ I said.

  ‘Your Aunty Peg will lend her what she needs. Lord knows she’ll have something to spare in that house of hers.’ She tried for a cheery tone cause everyone made fun of Aunty Peg and her keeping stuff.

  ‘She forgot her wedding ring,’ I said.

  Mrs Tyler’s smile disappeared. ‘She left her ring?’

  I didn’t tell her that I was scared Mum leaving it behind meant she’d gone forever, but I could see I didn’t need to. The creases in her face cut in deeper. She shoved the last things in fast, closed the cupboard with a bang. She hurt my shoulder with her squeeze.

  ‘Reckon we should take it to her?’ I didn’t say it was because I needed to tell Mum how sorry I was.

  ‘You could very well be right there, love. Let me speak to your dad.’

  I was glad, and not glad.

  Dad was all buttoned up in the car. We stopped in at the milk bar to get the mail. Philly and I were out the car door before it had practically stopped, but there was nothing from Mum. There were no corners in Philly’s face to hide her disappointment.

  ‘Letter?’ Dad snorted when we reported back to him. ‘She’s only away for a few days. She’s not likely to waste her money on a stamp. She’d get home before any letter.’

  We got our choc wedges and piled back into the car. We licked at them like it was normal because, no matter what, we knew Mum saved up all week so we could buy them and we weren’t going to let her down.

  When we got to the hill before our place, Dad kept his eyes on the road. Tim and Philly and I looked at each other, worry bouncing between us in the back seat. Normally Dad didn’t do what people called ‘driving’ down this hill. He usually crept along, taking in all the things that had changed since he was last that way, making a new map of everything in his head.

  ‘Do you want me to check the level of the creek, Dad?’ Philly piped up finally.

  ‘I’ll be on the lucerne,’ I said. ‘Tell you how much it’s grown.’

  ‘She’ll be right,’ he said, his eyes still glued to the road, taking the curve down to the bridge more than fast.

  Tim and Philly and I grabbed the back of the seat in front and handballed some more worry between us. We made it home in one piece, though. Dad turned off the engine and pulled on the handbrake. He put two hands on the steering wheel and leaned back. After a minute of waiting and watching him, Tessa shooed us in to put the beans on and make the gravy for the roast.

  ‘Is he still there?’ Tessa asked, a while later, when I lifted the lace to look out the window.

  ‘Stuck like mud.’

  ‘Tell him dinner’s on the table.’

  Philly went out and that did get him moving, but slow. He didn’t even wash his hands. He pulled his chair out and angled it towards the window, his legs stretched long and eyes staring out over the paddocks. He leaned his forearm on the table and drummed his fingers against the tablecloth. Tessa put his meal down in front of him. We all waited until he picked up his fork and speared it into the lamb before we got stuck into ours.

  After a while, Dad broke the silence. ‘Nobody should be bothering people.’ He shoved a forkful of squashed peas into his mouth.

  The other kids looked up. I didn’t.

  ‘What do you mean, Dad?’ asked Tim.

  ‘That’s all I’m saying. People have their own worries. And your mother’s fine.’

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Tim shrug and get back to his eating business.

  ‘It puts shame on this family,’ Dad went on, a whine getting in to his voice, ‘and I can’t be explaining to everybody that your mother has got her hands full with an emergency so doesn’t have time to ring every five minutes, and what a drama queen certain people are.’

  Tessa looked around, stricken. Then she saw me with my head down, keeping a close eye on proceedings on my plate. Relief that she was off the hook was chased away by a grimace that she should have known a thing or two.

  ‘What?’ I burst out, accusing her.

  ‘What, what?’ she said.

  ‘You always think it’s me.’

  ‘Because it always is.’ Her face twisted hard and voice loud. ‘The rest of us are doing what we should. Tim’s out on the horse, I’m cooking—’

  ‘What about Philly?’

  ‘Philly’s a baby,’ said Tessa. ‘But even she did the folding.’

  ‘I’m not a baby!’ said Philly.

  I stared knives back at Tessa. ‘You’re not Mum and you never will be.’

  She sprang to her feet. ‘You—’

  Dad’s fist thundered on the table. ‘We’ll have a bit of peace around the dinner table,’ he said. ‘Your mother would be ashamed of the lot of yous.’

  Tessa sat down, pulled her chair back into the table. ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  He grunted.

  I wasn’t sorry. I was glad because me talking to Mrs Tyler had been all forgotten. What I wasn’t glad about was that it looked like Dad wasn’t listening to Mrs Tyler either, and we weren’t getting in the Holden to go and see Mum anytime soon.

  When Philly and I woke up Monday morning, there was a little black body tangled up in the lace of our bedroom curtain. It was all folded inside its wings. I yanked the blanket back over my head, leaving a gap so I could keep an eye on it. The tousle of Philly’s head stirred.

  ‘Don’t move,’ I whispered.

  Philly flipped back the blankets, saw the bat, squealed, flipped the blankets straight back over her head.

  ‘Shh. You’ll wake it up.’ I slipped my feet out of bed first and followed them down between our two beds, squishing a pillow to my head while I snaked over to Philly’s bed and slipped up under her blankets. Her eyes were big in the dark.

  ‘We can’t stay here. We’ll miss the bus,’ she whispered after a while.

  ‘We’ll have to make a run for it.’

  But neither of us moved. Our bodies like two halves of an apricot.

  ‘I need to wee,’ said Philly eventually. That got us going. We spent a lot of time setting up for a quick getaway. Then we did it, charged out, pillows plastered like beanies to our heads. Tessa had to go back in to get our uniforms.

  The next morning when the sun woke us up, the bat was back hanging there. Philly let out a whimper that went on and on like a train. When it hadn’t been there when we got home from school last night, she’d been sure that we’d never see that bat again. In the end we called Tim to bring his air gun. He sent us out of the room and when it was done there was a smudge of black on the white pretend-lace curtain where the bat had been. Philly made me climb up on the bed head and jump the curtain rod down. She pushed both the curtains off the rod, rolled them in her arms and took off for the laundry. She got Tessa to help her and before long those curtains were back up on the rod drying. There was still a dead bat shadow, but Philly pinned it in a way that nobody could tell.

  I was all dressed for school and admiring her handiwork when I saw Dad out the window under the pine trees.

  He couldn’t feel me. He wasn’t like that.

  I thought everybody could feel things, but there was one time I was tucked in between the two house tanks with my book. Mum had called Dad to help her chase the goats out of her vegie patch where they were doing a power of damage. As Dad shoved the last one out it raced under the clothesline and yanked down a shirt of Dad’s. Mum started to chase it, but Dad laughed. ‘Let it go, Sare,’ he said. He grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around her. ‘Didn’t like it, anyway. Horrible itchy.’ I was going to pop out and join in the laughing. But Dad was nuzzling and kissing Mum, all close and unbearable. First Mum leaned into
him but then pushed back, swiping at him with her apron.

  ‘Not in front of the kids.’ She laughed.

  ‘None here,’ he said, pulling her back into his arms.

  ‘What’s that, then?’ asked Mum, swivelling around, pointing dead on me. ‘Block of flats?’

  ‘You’ve got eyes in the back of your head,’ he said, all admiration, letting her go with a final slap on her rear.

  ‘Comes in handy with four kids.’

  I was a feeler like Mum.

  Now Dad was standing under Tessa’s tree. Hands on hips. He pushed his hat back on his head. I was about to turn away to get dressed for school, give him a bit of privacy, when he staggered, his hand stretching out for the tree. But he didn’t connect. It was like he gave up on the idea of staying upright and collapsed to his knees, toppled forwards so his forehead was to the ground, back heaving. I was stabbed through with the pain in him.

  But what was breaking him in bits? Then it hit me. The big of it stopped my breath hard. Mum might or might not be at Aunty Peg’s like he’d been saying, but he was as certain as he could be that she was not coming home. Not on her own.

  I pushed back off the windowsill and ran to find Tessa.

  ‘Get the Rice Bubbles,’ she said, not looking up from the sink.

  ‘Dad—’ I started.

  ‘Just do it, JJ. For once in your life.’

  So I did. But not because she told me.

  WHAT MRS NOLAN KNOWS

  ‘Get those ricies into ya,’ I said to Philly when she came out of the bathroom, cheeks all rubbed up rosy hard like Alice, which she was still reading. She was just a little Alice kid, trying to get on with things in a world that didn’t make sense without Mum.

  There was Dad in pieces and Philly still baby-bird small. I smashed one fist into one hand cause I knew it was up to me now.

  ‘Made em myself,’ I said.

  She spun around twice before she sat, sticking her little finger out as she held the spoon. ‘Delicious,’ she said in her little-girl posh voice. ‘So good, you should open another restaurant at the other end of the house.’

  ‘Madam.’ I bowed. ‘I spat my best spit.’

  She pushed the bowl away.

  ‘In my bowl, not yours.’

  She pulled the bowl back to her, her eyes all squinty, head shaking like a little monkey.

  I thought I was doing a good job distracting her. But the next thing she said slapped that right out of me. ‘Mum’ll definitely ring today,’ she said.

  I hoped like hell she would, too. Otherwise how could I tell her I was sorry and I’d never do it again, and she should come home cause we all missed her and Dad was in bits, and I’d iron my school clothes and not whinge about it and I’d wear that stupid school ribbon, and I’d never say a terrible thing to her again.

  ‘Dad can tell us all about what she says, then.’ Tessa came into the kitchen, all school uniformed up.

  ‘He’ll be down the paddock.’ Philly slurped up Rice Bubbles and milk. ‘I better stay home from school to answer.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Philly,’ Tessa said. ‘I’m just wrapping up a piece of Mum’s apple cake for you to take for little play.’

  A spurt of fear jerked my head to face Tessa because I knew good and proper there was no apple cake, and she must know it too, so she was setting out a trap for me and finally I’d have to admit to everything. But when I turned to get in first and accuse her, she was bent down to the freezer pulling out a round shape wrapped in foil. Then I knew. Mum must have made more than one cake the morning she left. It took me a while to get my breath nice and steady after I realised I’d dodged the Tessa-finding-out-what-I-did bullet.

  I’d smelled that apple cake smell from all the way down the back of the house where I’d been in bed the morning she left. My tummy had gone back to normal. But the rule, see, was if you if took a sickie cause you said you were sick, you had to stay in bed. So I pretended I had to go to the toilet so I could get a taste, just a tiny bit from the underneath so nobody noticed.

  But it was even yummier than normal. I knew I’d gone too far because I was full as a goog, and because the underneath of the cake looked like a moon crater, all pocked and empty.

  When I heard Mum’s footsteps outside coming up the path back to the house I froze, then shoved the cake back under the tea towel, backed away fast, hands locked tight behind my back. But I knew it had to be written all over my face. Then, at the last minute, Mrs Nolan, who I hadn’t realised had come over, called out to Mum, and her footsteps went back the other way.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. Then I did need to wee. I straightened tall and rubbed some innocence into my face. Mum wasn’t just a feeler, she was a real good one; could feel from half a paddock away, so it took a lot to pull one over her. I scooted along to the toilet, which was up past the underground tank. Normally I stopped to open the lid and get my head inside the cool dark of the tank that went all its echoey way to the centre of the earth. But this time I was all business, heading for the outhouse and hoping like hell the pan wasn’t full.

  The air was sharp cold, so the warm of the outhouse sat nice on my skin. I peeled my jarmie pants down.

  ‘Yep. Stayed home again,’ I heard Mum say from the vegie patch.

  ‘She’s a handful,’ said Mrs Nolan’s hard, polished voice.

  I stuck out my tongue and waited for Mum to tell Mrs Nolan she was wrong.

  ‘Always got the knife and fork out, carving us up,’ was what Mum said instead.

  I gripped the toilet seat, my skin lit up with buzzing.

  ‘She’s not a bit like Tessa. That JJ needs a good firm hand to keep her on the straight and narrow,’ said Mrs Nolan.

  ‘Needs something.’

  I held my tummy. That cake had got nearly all inside me. Mum’d see. She’d know it was me. Something was clouding me up. Twisting red and slamming about at my inside walls. I jumped off the toilet and pulled up my jarmies. I rushed out and banged the door closed. It didn’t make a loud enough bang, so I banged it again and stamped around to the vegie patch.

  Mum looked up. Hope in her that I hadn’t heard, so I wiped that look off her face quick smart.

  ‘I hate you,’ I yelled. ‘You’re a… you’re a… bum.’

  I swung around and took off.

  ‘Elizabeth Jane, you get back here right now.’

  But I was back in the kitchen and the slamming of the front door behind me cut off the rest. I went straight to that cake and I lifted that tea towel and I used both hands and I tore that thing apart until it was just crumbs. Now she’d never know that I ate it. I stood back. It wasn’t enough. I picked up the plate to throw those crumbs all around the kitchen.

  But then I saw on the backbench Mum had set a bed tray for me. It had lilac in a vase and everything. Mum always gave me lilac when I was sick, a little bit of hope I would spring back to wellness fast. It was our special thing. I dropped that plate back on the bench like it burned, stepped back. Hands tight together.

  Mum was right. I was trouble. I knew it all the way down into the part of me that went on forever. Past all those watching eyes, down, down, to where there was no more me but it still went on.

  I was on the ground, all curled up and folded over. Then there was Mum in the kitchen with me and she had me gathered into her arms, pulling me onto her lap, wrapping me around with the soft of her forgiveness. I burrowed into the cake smell of her. She was the only one who could ever change the colours in me, so I went in and in to her. She held me tight and tight, and rocked me, saying ‘JJ’ over and over.

  After a while the air got lighter. She got up and walked me to the bathroom, wet a washer and washed my face, and the cool of it took another layer of the dark away. Then she walked me back to bed and tucked me in and sat beside me, smoothing my hair behind my ear. All fairy gentle.

  When I woke up, she was gone.

  Then I found out she was gone, gone.

  It was all my fault. Dad was all in pi
eces under the front trees; Tessa trying to fit into Mum’s shoes and mad because she knew she couldn’t. Tim so out of his skin he was getting himself strapped at school, and Philly, like a baby chick who had nobody to follow any more. It was too big and Mum hadn’t forgiven me after all. But she would.

  I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t wait for her to call in case she never did. I had to go and get her myself. Tell her I’d be better. Make her come home.

  ‘You haven’t touched your cereal,’ Tessa said.

  I gave up and pushed the bowl away. ‘Got spit in it.’ I tried a half grin at Philly. ‘Tim can have it.’ I rubbed my tummy, trying to settle it.

  ‘You sick again?’ asked Philly.

  ‘Just itchy.’

  I ran back to our bedroom and stuffed some after-school clothes in my schoolbag and upended my piggy bank into the palm of my hand. There wasn’t much so I did the same with Philly’s. Reckon she’d think it was in a good cause.

  ‘Timmm!’ yelled Tessa. I made it back into the kitchen just as he came out of Mum’s sewing room, which joined up to his bedroom. ‘You can have JJ’s spit,’ Tessa said from the sink, hands deep in the suds, ‘or you’ve missed out again. Bus’ll be here.’

  ‘JJ’s spit,’ he said, sitting down. He wolfed down the Rice Bubbles as Philly and I slung our bags over our shoulders, me pretending mine wasn’t fuller than usual. We all took off down the track at the same time, but I ran back pretending I’d forgotten something and shoved a few more things from the kitchen cupboard into my schoolbag. I dashed out again, stopping to give Dad’s good old dog, Doll, an extra scratch between her ears, telling her to look after Dad for me. Doll’s eyes were full of serious, like she understood her job now wasn’t just herding up the sheep.

  At the school gate, I gave Philly a peck beside the cowlick in her fringe and she shot off. Tim didn’t look back. Tessa and I normally walked together because our rooms were side by side, but she had to go to the church first to say some extra prayers. I left her at the door, then slipped behind the church and dodged through the trees to the back fence, skidded over it and headed towards the main road. I got changed in the bushes and shoved my school uniform in my bag.