The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  ‘He didn’t ask you to throw everything everywhere.’

  I looked around and I saw. It was like all of the guts of the wardrobe had been spewed into the room. I bit down on my lip to stop the panic rising up. ‘You’re just a baby, what would you know?’

  ‘I’m going to go get him right now.’ She swung on her foot.

  But I was too fast. I lunged and grabbed her ankle and down she went, fast and loud. She flung her hand and caught the stand-up lamp and down that went with her, smashing to the floor, the glass splintering into a thousand tiny bits as far as the door.

  There was blood on her chin and I scuttled over to wipe it with my jumper and to get her to stop yelling. But Tessa was in there, and hard on her heels Mrs Nolan, who looked like she’d never seen the like of it in all her life.

  I knew this for sure because that was what she said later when she had Dad buttonholed to the table. ‘It looked like a bomb had gone off in there and in the middle of it all sat JJ as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.’ We heard a teacup being moved across the table. She’d stopped by this morning to drop off a casserole and Steve for his piglet shift. She’d stayed to help all day given the mayhem she’d found. She was still there at dinner and sent us away after so that she and Dad could have a quiet word.

  There was no hope of that because she was doing the talking and her voice could carry clear across a paddock. We’d taken off all right, just as she told us to, but doubled back to huddle in a pack out of sight beside the fridge.

  ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do?’ Mrs Nolan dropped her loud voice to soft like a cushion as if Dad could lay his head right on it.

  But he didn’t seem to feel the same because all he did was grunt.

  ‘Now that Sarah’s gone,’ clarified Mrs Nolan. ‘With the kids.’

  ‘They’ll be right,’ said Dad.

  ‘Kids are a handful,’ she pushed on. ‘Four of them.’ Making it sound like Dad’s particular kids were even worse than the normal variety.

  Dad took a loud slurp from his teacup the way he did when he was with just us, so we knew he was no longer on his best behaviour.

  Mrs Nolan didn’t take the warning. ‘You have to think what’s best for them. Man like you is too busy to be fussing around with kids underfoot.’

  ‘All good, thanks, Nancy.’

  ‘Girls need a mother. Specially your girls, just at that age.’

  Dad didn’t say anything this time, which Mrs Nolan read in a completely different way from us. We heard her charge on as if the gates had been opened.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the ladies of the district and Jessie is happy to take Philly, which is very good of her given that Philly is still so young and Jessie has those twins already. I could take Tessa—’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, thanks, Nancy,’ said Dad as if he meant it this time. As if he’d finally woken up to what Mrs Nolan was saying. ‘We won’t be splitting the family. That’s not what Sarah would have wanted.’

  ‘Sarah wouldn’t have wanted you to be left with all of this,’ Mrs Nolan said. ‘At least think about JJ.’ Her voice dropped lower again. ‘She’s not quite right. I mean what’s she doing spending so much time with that Tommy Rielly? She should be helping out in the kitchen. Somebody has to teach her how to be a proper girl now that Sarah’s gone.’

  ‘JJ’s all right.’ There was a stop sign in Dad’s voice.

  Tessa, Philly and I were biting through each other’s palms with our fingernails. Tim was right there with us, but he was less worried because nobody would think of taking a boy from his father.

  ‘You weren’t there, Jack. JJ attacked little Philly. There was blood and glass everywhere, not to mention the mess. JJ must have thrown everything helter-skelter. I put it all back in order and now I wish I hadn’t so you could have seen. I wasn’t going to mention this until after the funeral, but in the light of recent events… I don’t think you know the magnitude of the danger Philly is—’

  ‘Philly’s in no danger,’ said Dad, cutting her off, but still mildly. ‘JJ’s got a temper on her, but she means well.’

  Tessa and Philly got tighter hold of me.

  ‘On the day Sarah left, she told me JJ needs—’

  ‘I won’t be saying any more on this, Nancy. I can see you and the other women have done some thinking and I appreciate it, but Sarah wouldn’t want the kids leaving their home, going to strangers.’

  ‘Strangers? My home, or Jessie’s or Mary’s, who is more than happy to take on a handful like JJ, near saint, is nothing like a stranger’s.’

  ‘My kids would be honoured to be looked after by any of you women,’ said Dad with just the right amount of honey, and Tessa and my eyes snagged on each other at this strange tone in him. ‘But the thing is, Sarah and me, we love these kids. And Sarah, she wouldn’t want me to give them to anybody, no matter how good they were.’ Dad’s voice cracked and wavered.

  We were all fitting ourselves into the shape of the next second. We could hear Mrs Nolan’s silence it was so loud. It was like she was as unprepared as we’d been. But she surprised us, too.

  ‘You’re right there, Jack,’ she said. ‘Sarah wouldn’t like it.’

  I let go of the breath I’d been holding.

  ‘But Sarah’s not here any more.’

  Panic flew my eyes wide and snagged them on Tessa’s.

  ‘You may have to face facts,’ Mrs Nolan said. We heard the sound of a chair going back. ‘But we’ll leave that for after the funeral when you’re back to thinking straight.’

  ‘Facts?’ he said, his voice on the rise. ‘Let’s talk facts, then. What did Sare say to you? You drove her to the station the day she left. It could only have been you.’

  Mrs Nolan didn’t speak for a beat and I wanted to squint around the fridge, just enough to see what her face was saying, but I didn’t. None of us did. We heard the chink of china as the cups and saucers were swooped over to the sink.

  When her voice came it was full of stiff. ‘Indeed. I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, Jack: she didn’t say one word about Peg having had a turn.’

  Tessa gripped me. I gripped her back.

  ‘She must have found that out when she arrived at Peg’s,’ Mrs Nolan went on.

  ‘She told you that’s where she was going, then?’ Dad asked, a quiet of desperation creeping into his words, as if he knew he were admitting something but he just had to anyway.

  ‘Not in so many words.’ Mrs Nolan sounded uncomfortable, like she was squeezing words out though her own tight straw. ‘She asked me to take her to the station because you were busy. All she actually said was that she had a spot of shopping to do in town.’ Mrs Nolan’s voice stayed all clipped and hard edged. ‘Told me she’d get the school bus home. I knew she always dropped in on Peg, so I assumed.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  The tick of the clock was the only loud thing now.

  ‘She have any other friends down that way?’ Dad asked, low and dirty.

  ‘Not that I knew,’ Mrs Nolan clipped back. ‘What exactly are you asking, Jack?’

  Dad didn’t say anything for a long while.

  ‘Funeral,’ he finally said. ‘We don’t want any of her friends to be missing out. And it seems you women know a deal more about a man’s wife than I’d have reckoned on.’

  ‘We’ll keep the meals up,’ Mrs Nolan said, ignoring his words like everything was bang-on normal. ‘We’ve got the spread covered for the funeral. We’ve booked the hall if that suits. Expect there’ll be quite a few there for Sarah. Such a tremendously good woman.’ I caught Tim’s look, which was just as full of question as mine about why Mrs Nolan said ‘good’ as if Dad might ever have thought about arguing the point.

  Dad was back to grunting and Mrs Nolan took that as acceptance. After the door closed, we were all ready to skedaddle before Dad spotted us, but he didn’t move a muscle. After a long quiet, we pushed back across the lino, slow and silent like mice backing away f
rom a cat. We didn’t call out to Dad that night to remind him to do our prayers. We did them for each other.

  A CLUE AT LAST

  The next day, Dad said we wouldn’t be going to Mass. We’d never not been to Mass. We looked at each other like this was maybe even bigger than Mum dying. But I kept my mouth tight shut because after Mrs Nolan trying to take me away and Dad saying ‘no’ at first but then letting Mrs Nolan say ‘maybe after the funeral’ I was on my best behaviour. I had to even those scales up, which were pretty heavy on the giving-me-away side after I told Dad the devil was after his soul. He hadn’t even looked at me since, although he hadn’t parceled me out the door quicks sticks with Mrs Nolan either, so that was a shine of hope.

  But my very best hope was staying exactly out of his path, out of the way of temptation. So instead of going to Mass I went all the way down to Jean’s Corner to sit by the apple tree. There weren’t any flowers about so I just had to say it all to Mum without their help. Told her about how I couldn’t stop sassing Dad, because as soon as I got one thing straight in my head another thing that didn’t fit would go pop and the red flooded in. I promised her I’d be stopping all that, though. One hand on her scarf, the other on my heart.

  Even though I was on my best behaviour when I got back, with the others all helping Dad feed out, I still went looking for Mum’s special brooch again. I snuck into her room and went through her ottoman. Dad gave the ottoman to her when they got married. It was pale green with roses and forget-me-nots—love and remembrance. Being lovingly held in someone’s thoughts, Mum said. I thought that was giving Dad too much credit.

  I got my shoulder under the lid of the ottoman. It weighed a tonne. My heart was loud and boomy in my ears, and I was worried the lid would collapse, catching me like a mouse in a trap, all wriggly and broken. But my panic got the lid heaved up enough so it stood open by itself. The first layer was lemon tissue paper. I flattened my palm to it. It was pale and full of fairyness and I drank it up through my skin. Lying underneath the tissue paper like a secret was a smoky pink dress covered in white snowdrops and done up with black flower buttons like I’d never seen. Around the neck were tiny light-green sprigs dancing in a line. I lifted the dress to my cheek and smoothed it on my skin. But there was a stab of empty cause it didn’t smell like Mum.

  Then the empty all filled up red because Mum kept this magic to herself. This soft, shiny thing. Snowdrops were for hope and she should have shared them with us. But she kept it from us. Just all for herself—and I didn’t like it one bit. I folded my lips together, hard like stones. Big panty breaths, pushing out and in, like Max when he was filled up mean. I dropped the dress on Mum’s bed and ran to her drawer for scissors. I yanked it open and shoved things around, flying her lipsticks out of the bowl and into her rollers. Something in the mirror caught my eye. It was a wild thing. I looked up, stared straight into her wild-girl eyes. I jerked away and saw my hands shaking. I put one hand in the other and nursed it like a baby. Felt the gentle of it. I backed to the bed and sat on the edge, one hand still tucked in the other. I lay down across Mum’s dress and changed hands so the other one would get the gentle too.

  A bit of new came up in me. And it wasn’t red. It wasn’t any colour. The big of it scared me. Then it came out, a high, long, sad thing, and then a breath and there it was again. I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked. Back and forth until the moan of it ended. After a while I was worried that I’d snotted on Mum’s dress. I jerked up. But the wet was on the bed. I sat up and smoothed the dress out, spreading the skirt wide like it was dancing all by itself. I laid myself carefully on top of it, face up, my arms where the sleeves were. Then I was glad the dress existed because now she had something pretty to wear when she went in the dark of the ground.

  I was all wrung out, but I got back somehow to the ottoman—I still had a job to do.

  I found an apron she’d made when she was a little girl, and a few baby scribbles on butcher’s paper.

  I was almost to the bottom of the things and I was thinking I might not find her brooch there after all, and where else could it be? But there it was, stuck in the corner. I opened the lid of its little navy box and got to my knees straight to say a big thank you to St Anthony for finding it for me. The lilies around the woman’s face on the brooch stood out like wedding-cake icing. Mum said lilies were for beauty. But I didn’t know if that meant they made you beautiful or you had to be beautiful to wear them. Mum always looked beautiful when she wore the brooch. She said she was gunna leave it to one of us girls when she was gone. I supposed that was Tessa, but that wasn’t going to happen now.

  The whole house shuddered as the front door banged shut. Tessa’s voice yelled at us all. ‘Father McGinty’s car is coming up the track.’

  I froze. Cast wildly around Mum’s room, but saw that I hadn’t upset too much this time. Tessa made Dad’s bed every morning now so it was as straight as. She even swept up the rice Dad put under his knees, since he’d taken to saying the rosary, praying for Mum’s soul every night. I didn’t reckon Mum’s soul was that black that she needed all that pain and prayer, but it was like Dad couldn’t hear us when we tried to get him to see reason. I bunched up Mum’s snowdrop dress and folded it back into the ottoman. Father McGinty never came over.

  Philly squealed into the house, Tim on her heels, just as I dashed into the kitchen from the other direction. Tessa barked out orders about kettles and scones and teacups.

  ‘That’s girl’s stuff,’ said Tim.

  ‘I’ll call Dad,’ I said, running right through the kitchen.

  Tim jerked me back by catching at the back of my jumper and ran out in front of me, yelling for Dad at the top of his lungs.

  I winged out my arms, proper mad, but Tessa whirled me to face the fridge. ‘Jam. Cream. Hurry.’

  So I did.

  ‘Do you think Father is coming to tell us off for not being at Mass?’ whispered Philly as she set Mum’s best tablecloth out.

  My eyes went wide for a second, mirroring hers, before I came to my senses. ‘Probably just wants to see how Dad is, Dad being the President of The Knights of the Southern Cross and doing the collection and everything.’

  All the tight went out of her little body and she had enough left to smile some relief. Dad had been so happy the night he was elected President a few months back. Funny to think that now, how happy he’d been. We’d all been. Came home roaring with the drink in him and waking us all up from our beds and on a school night, Mum squawked. But she was laughing when she did it.

  Tessa ran back from the crystal cabinet in the lounge with Mum’s crystal cream jug and sugar bowl. Normally we walked slow if we had to carry Mum’s wedding things. Not this time. Tessa dumped them on the table, panic-signing at us to fill them. Philly and I went into overdrive. Philly spilled the sugar, but I swept it onto the floor and told her with my eyes not to let out a peep.

  ‘Where’s the car now?’ asked Tessa, throwing frozen scones on a tray and clattering them into the oven, fidgeting with the dial to make the gas real low.

  Philly ran-jumped onto the bench to get a better look down the drive. She squealed, which was all Tessa and I needed to hear.

  Tim came running back in, his arms loaded up with wood. He stacked up the fire nice and high.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Tessa asked.

  Tim didn’t face us. ‘He says he’ll be in when he can.’

  We all stopped short. Dad always, every time, dropped everything for Father McGinty. As Mum said, the Church was first, second and third for Dad. And the priest coming to your house was… I couldn’t think of a word because it never happened… an honour, maybe. And Dad was coming when he could?

  Tessa fell on to the nearest chair. ‘What are we going to tell Father?’ she asked, her face full of big and scared.

  None of us had any ideas.

  ‘We could hide,’ Philly finally whispered, which I thought was a good idea, but it was too late.

  We heard Dolly bar
king up a storm as Father McGinty pulled on his handbrake to park beside the ute. All us kids glued to the window, one eye watching as he opened the door and heaved his big body out of the car, the other on the cowshed, praying like mad we’d see Dad heading this way.

  ‘What was he doing?’ I asked Tim.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Tim. ‘Nothing special.’

  Father McGinty adjusted his long black robe over his belly. A priest didn’t belong on a farm. They belonged in their big red brick house beside the church. He looked around at the broken-down dray and the rusting combine. Mum would be having a fit. But his expression didn’t change, so that was something. I suppose he thought somebody should have been out there greeting him by now, instead of Doll jumping all over him with a fierce bark on her.

  Tessa made her lips into one long line and took off her apron. She turned to me. ‘You go the back way to the cowshed and you make Dad come. Right now. You hear?’

  I stared back. She just pushed me ahead of her. ‘You’re the only one who can make him do anything, so get.’

  I took off, leaving her to go in the other direction to greet Father. I ran like the wind, filled up with this new thing that she thought Dad might listen to me.

  ‘Dad,’ I yelled with all my body before I got there. ‘Father McGinty’s here.’ I stopped short when I tore into the dairy. There he was, all hunched over a milk can, in a ball, like he was hiding, just like we’d wanted to. ‘Dad,’ I said, making my voice gentle. He looked up, then. Wiped his wet eyes with a brush of his forearm.

  ‘Why you crying?’

  ‘Not bloody crying,’ he said. He straightened. ‘Nothing to cry about. Your mother’s dead, is all, and now we have to bury her.’

  ‘Bet that’s why Father’s here, Dad.’ Trying to get my voice as soft as Dad’s talking to a skittish foal. ‘Came personally, cause you’re so important.’

  He bit his lip. ‘That, or something else.’

  ‘What else?’

  He looked blankly at me a good long while until I was full up on fright. Then he started like he saw me for the first time that day. ‘Nothing. Nothing it could be.’