The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  They got around Mum’s coffin and the air got heavy. Like they were in a dance, they all swooped at the same second and hoisted Mum into the air and then onto their shoulders. Young Dave stumbled with her weight. Somebody gasped. The men under Mum’s coffin got their arms around each other’s shoulders and steadied. Seeing those grown men holding on, one to the other—it wasn’t something you saw every day.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to stop all that seeing. The priest moved off, starting up the procession.

  Tessa marshalled us out into the aisle after the coffin. She took Philly’s hand and she took mine. I wanted to pull away because I didn’t want Tim to be left with Aunty Peg. But I didn’t. All eyes were on us again, full of sorry. Ours were straight ahead, full of stones.

  Out into the world we went behind our dead mum, through Dad’s Knights of the Southern Cross mates who were lined up on each side like a tunnel, which Dad called a Guard of Honour. They shouldn’t be here. Mum didn’t like them one bit. She pursed her lips up pin tight once a month when Dad was rushing between bedroom and bathroom, black suited and Brylcreeming his hair shiny.

  ‘Pack of sanctimonious, holier-than-thou men,’ I heard her say one time to him.

  Dad didn’t care. He slapped her on the bum, grinning, because he was excited to be off. ‘They’re good, God-fearing men, love. Church’d fall down without us pillars.’

  She swiped him back. ‘It’s like a little boy’s club for grown men. You’re scared of each other’s shadows. You’d sacrifice your own mother not to look bad in their eyes.’

  Once we were through the Knights, Aunty Peg poked me from behind to keep me going forwards until we were well away so everybody else could file out behind us. Faces all closed up serious. Women and men knotted together giving half nods to each other and scuffing their feet in the dirt: ‘Lovely service’, ‘Didn’t Father McGinty speak well’, ‘The flowers.’

  I wanted to stand beside Mrs Nolan to make up for laughing at her. Red undies at a funeral. I could see she was worried everybody was thinking about it because that smile of hers was all stiff and straight. But then I saw something else.

  In the long car that they put Mum’s coffin in were the roses. And then I knew. Those roses weren’t going into the ground with Mum.

  I charged over. Banged my knee getting into the back of the car but I didn’t reach them. There were hands around my waist dragging me out. I kicked out, but they had me good and proper. They belonged to Mrs Nolan. I couldn’t hear what she was yelling for the loud in my ears. But I saw. Everybody was looking, rushing to her side.

  I squirmed and kicked out some more. I couldn’t get her big filthy red underwear hands off me. And then the noise broke through and there was a scream, sharp and loud, and it was me doing the screaming.

  Dad put his big shouty face in mine. He had a good grip on me too, trying to yank me away from Mrs Nolan. I thrashed. Dad ripped me free and clamped me to his side. I saw Tessa’s face through the crowd. Her face all squashed and wet.

  ‘It’s what I’ve been saying,’ Mrs Nolan shouted, rubbing her elbow. ‘You all saw.’

  We were in the middle of everybody, and everybody was seeing everything.

  ‘Completely out of control,’ she yelled.

  ‘Fat liar,’ I said, matching her loudness.

  ‘You can’t bring her up, Jack.’ Her face wild.

  Dad breathing hard. He jerked me closer. ‘I’ll have you mind your own business.’ He was all low and clear.

  Then my head clouded up because it wasn’t just me any more. There was red underwear and Dad by the fireplace burning Mum’s missal, and so much swirl in the air.

  But then Mrs Nolan said something and Dad took his arm from my shoulders. He stepped forwards. His hand sliced through the air and he slapped her, hard, right across her mouth. The slap cut through the crowd sharp.

  ‘You shut your mouth about my daughter.’

  We never went back. Every Sunday Dad found enough petrol for us to go all the way into St Francis Xavier’s in Chilton for Mass. Tessa said we didn’t go to our Mass any more because they were all busybodies. But not all of them, I didn’t reckon. A lot of them had still come to the cemetery to put Mum in the ground. Not Tim, though. He wouldn’t get in the car. Tears screwing up his eyes. Everybody stood around watching Tessa try to get him in, waiting for Dad to blow again. In the end, somebody took Tim away to the hall where we were having the spread to wait for us there.

  It was true that some people went off with Mrs Nolan, but not as many as you’d think. I think they knew she was trying to put a bigger thing in their minds so they’d stop thinking about her trip-up on the altar.

  She went too far.

  That’s what Dad said.

  Dad went too far, too, but I reckoned people thought he was just mad with grief. I heard somebody saying that, anyway. After that, everybody left us alone.

  Mrs Nolan was right about one thing, though. I was too much trouble. Dad was real good to stand up for me like he did. I was going to be just like Tessa from now on. No more feeling. Either a thing was a thing or it wasn’t. So no more questions about Mum. I wasn’t going to give him one reason to send me off to Mrs Kelly, near saint that she may well be. Mrs Nolan could be right about that other thing, too. The thing that made Dad smack her one. Maybe there was the devil in me.

  PART 2

  UNBURIED

  1982

  The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

  Nadine Gordimer

  ANOTHER BEGINNING?

  Some days I don’t do life. I let it kick on by itself and sometimes those days turn into a week. And knives twist into my mind and grey things up. So on the day of Aunty Peg’s funeral it was a matter of forcing myself up and out of bed and forcing myself to go through all the motions to get dressed and ready.

  I’d done it, though. And there I was, facing the world outside the gates of St Mary’s. And there was the world facing me back, all hooded eyes and watching and hand in hand with silence that licked at all the cracks. The heat was in on it too, eating up the air so there was no breathing, and me in the middle of it, pulling in enough of something to keep me on my feet. For a second I wished I’d said yes to Tye when he’d wanted to come with me. He’d be an extra layer of skin holding me together. I straightened my shoulders. He didn’t need to see me taking a trip through the mud of memory lane, especially when I had way too much else I should be telling him. I put my hand to my belly and felt about its flatness experimentally. Hard to believe there was so much going on under the skin. But tests don’t lie. I just wasn’t sure what I was going to do about this awkward truth.

  In my head I’d planned to be the last one through the church doors, but the tram had charged along and then stopped dead outside St Mary’s. So instead I was the first by a long shot. I stood at the entrance to the church grounds filled up with numb until I let myself fall into the wrought-iron gates, headfirst. I found some breath in among things and got my eyes open, weighing possibilities.

  I didn’t like the immediate ones. The church bluestone shot up into a spire and laid a long shadow back down along the ground. It was dark and solid and sharp edged. My ciggies found their way into the cradle of my palm and then I knew what I could do next. I unpeeled from the gates, went into the churchyard and hid around the corner, because I’m good at hiding. I lit one and chugged on the end, and watched the smoke carve a slow spiral heavenwards. I’d need to make a decision pretty damn soon about whether smoking was going to stay on the agenda or not. But not today.

  ‘You turned up?’

  Tessa’s voice sliced through the quiet. I recovered enough to wave my hand over myself as if to say it was self-evident. ‘Honouring the dead.’

  Tessa’s eyes swept over my jeans as if I wasn’t honouring anything. ‘A little more help with the living wouldn’t go astray.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to take your spot in heaven.’

  ‘Still a bloody idiot.’
>
  ‘Dad coming?’

  She shook her head. ‘Relieved?’ she asked, eyes narrowed, thoughts ticking.

  I gave the clouds a good going over. There was something, but I wasn’t sure it was relief. I flipped open the lid of the cigarette packet and held them out towards her. She looked at the line-up of filters, packed in shoulder to shoulder like soldiers, and for a moment I thought she’d go for one, but the hearse nosed between the gates and she tore off, back straight and equal to any task, just like always.

  I dragged at the end of my cigarette for a bit of comfort. Out of nowhere an ache snaked down my arms for Tessa’s little boy, Georgie, because it had been a while since I’d seen him. He’d be going on four now. A half laugh coughed into my throat as I thought about the way his eyes gulped in the world, mouth going like a fish. I hadn’t even met Tessa’s twins who’d already clocked up a few months.

  I stubbed the butt of my smoke out under my Docs and rubbed a sheen of sweat from my hands down my jeans. The wooden fence slats separating the church from the high rise listed towards me like they’d had too much to drink. I drifted further away along the side of the church and got myself behind a buttress in the wall where I couldn’t be seen at all from the front.

  ‘JJ,’ Tessa called. ‘We’re starting.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘For Godsake, JJ.’

  The clouds billowed big like parachutes, full of far-off questions. I shook my head free of them, closed my eyes and counted to ten, going at a good slow jog. Then I pushed off the wall but stayed close enough so I still couldn’t be spotted. At the corner I hovered, scanning ahead to see whether the coast was clear. I raised my wrist. The funeral was just about to start, so I reckoned everybody who was coming must be in there, but I took the stairs two at a time anyway. At the top I congratulated myself that there was still nobody in sight who might have a query or two about what I’d been up to in the last many odd years.

  It took a few goes to heave the massive wooden door open. Inside, the chill of the marble coated me up close like a shroud. I grabbed a cardi out of my shoulder bag. There was a scatter of people right up the front. I dug a knuckle into my palm as I headed towards them, every step against the tide.

  Aunty Peg’s coffin was a lighter wood than Mum’s had been, but it took up just as much space in the aisle, all final and finished like a full stop. I patted the pocket of my bag where I kept my smokes, then went back to knuckling my palm.

  I turned into an empty pew behind the others and kneeled, my elbows on the seat in front of me, head tucked in. It was like slipping into old pyjamas. I studied the women from up home. Funny how none of the men had bothered to turn up to Mad Peg’s funeral. But the sisterhood was there. That arrowed a zing of warmth through me. The quiet resistance of women with deep-lined, farm-hard faces gathering to honour one of the tribe, even if Peg was an outsider. Mrs Tyler’s face had softened and splayed since I’d seen her last, but still she was trim and bird sharp. I had to look twice at Mrs Nolan. She wasn’t just comfortable now, she was more than well cushioned, and her hair greyed over. The years were racing her to death’s door. I wanted to reassure myself that she was not just old, but also harmless. I couldn’t though, not unless I was going to lie. She’d taken to leaving messages at the boarding house for me since Peg’s death a week back. I knew Dad didn’t have my number so it had to be either Tessa or Tim who’d given it to her. Whatever she wanted with me, I wanted no part of it. I hadn’t seen her since that day. One funeral always made you think of another.

  I bit my lip to stop it shaking. When she turned her big eyes on me I ducked even further between my arms. She pitched forwards to tug at Tessa’s jacket sleeve. She tapped her finger against the page of her open notebook. Tessa bent further in to look, head to the side, then nodded.

  The church door banged shut and there was a clack of high heels that echoed in the hollow cavern. We all turned. It was Philly, sailing in like a grand new ship to harbour, making no apology for the racket. She waved and when she reached us she went forwards to peck Tessa, Mrs Tyler, Mrs Nolan and the others, like she was at a gala. She looked the part, too. All black and white, swinging skirt and fitted jacket.

  When she was through she came back to sit in my pew. She leaned towards me and rested her head on mine. The soft of it melted into me. I tried out a smile and at first it was like cracking through dried mud. She arched an eyebrow and I saw that she saw how it was with me. She reached down to the line of her skirt and raised it just enough to show me a flash of frilly fire-engine red. She winked and let her skirt drop. A smile sunshined out of me this time. She has always been able to change the channel in me. It reminded me of Mum, but in a sister way.

  The priest hobbled out from the sacristy, old and wobbling like a bowling pin. First Philly and her frilly red knickers, and now him on the verge of toppling over. There was a pop in my head and the air got in and out of me easier. Tessa crossed the aisle to us and slipped in beside Philly, taking the time to ignore me. I was okay with that. Good, actually. Better to worry at the paint of the past on my own without her silent running commentary.

  The priest found his mark on the altar and spread his arms over us, making a wide sign of the cross. Despite myself, I felt the blessing. I tightened my fists into shields because I didn’t want any blessing from the woman-hating Catholic Church.

  ‘Tim gunna make it?’ I whispered to Philly.

  ‘Said he had to finish the drenching for Shelley’s dad.’

  I guess that was okay; it wasn’t like it was Mum’s funeral. Philly wagged her finger, reading me like a book. ‘First time he’s Missing In Action—two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth for you.’

  ‘When you put it like that…’ I had to admit.

  She nodded, her lips all pursed up saying, ‘You know I’m right.’ Tessa frowned at us and we both raised our eyes as one and clapped them back on the priest. He gestured to Mrs Nolan and she got to her feet, notebook in hand. She bobbed before the altar and suppressed a groan as she lumbered up the steps. She put her hands on the lectern, cleared her throat and made contact with each of us, making sure we were all across the gravity of the occasion. I kept my eyes well down.

  She opened with, ‘Peg was a marvellous woman. In the true sense of the word.’

  The surprise of ‘marvellous’ jerked my head upright.

  ‘Peg lost touch with us after she moved to the city: she wanted her life to go a different way,’ Mrs Nolan said.

  Philly turned to me with a lift of her eyebrow. I knew what she meant. What happened to: Dad chucked Aunty Peg out. Mum cried. Aunt Peg cried. Mum steadied Aunty Peg’s arm as she got into the car. Dad held the door, looking out over the top of the car into the far horizon, face like concrete. The story Tessa had told us.

  Mrs Nolan put her shoulder to the wheel of truth and ground it down into something like normal. In her account of the days of Aunty Peg’s life there was quirkiness rather than madness.

  Truth was that Peg’s madness often came in handy. When I lived at her place, straight out of school, she kept this cloud around my head of what she had said and hadn’t, what she’d asked me to do and then hadn’t. I couldn’t live with the convenience of it for her. That, and all the junk she hoarded and the way it breathed up all the air and leaned in close. In the end I realised that was Peg’s way of getting me out the door without hurting my feelings. She hadn’t wanted me there any more than Dad had wanted me living there. But in those first few months before I got that dishwashing job, staying with Peg was the only way I could afford going to uni.

  At least she had colour, though. Madness had that going for it. She was always crashing through walls other people couldn’t see.

  Mum was special that way, too. She also saw those walls and decided to ignore the shit out of them. She stood with her back to them, sleeves rolled up, arms plunged elbow deep into the sink, scrubbing hard. Heroic in the epic battle of dirt-poor survival.

  I leaned forwards and dropp
ed my head deep into my arms triangled on the back of the pew in front so nobody could see me swipe my eyes across my forearm. My heart cracking and then shattering for my beautiful skin-and-bone mother.

  Maybe Mum would have been happier mad. But Peg beat her to it. So she was left with duty. Maybe that’s why she left us, looking for that something between the stifling rightness of what everybody expected her to do day after day, and the wild wrongness of mad. The tragedy was, she died in a cold hospital bed before she found it.

  For a second there seemed no other option for me than to get to my feet, stumble over the back of Philly’s and Tessa’s legs and run fast and long, away from all of this. But Philly’s hand snaked up between my arms until I caught it between my own. And I held on and on to her until the shuddering passed and something new of my mother came to me.

  The clean, sharp poetry of her.

  She could stand quiver still in a storm.

  One time, in the late afternoon, out of nowhere, the sky darked up and split open, bucketing down curtains of rain after years of hard, drought-baked skies. Us kids got straight out and under it. Dad came racing up from the cowshed and joined in, side-kicking and tossing Philly and me up into it.

  Not Mum.

  She let her tea towel fall to the ground and just stood there, eyes closed, face turned up to the sky, rain rivering over her.

  She was our true north.

  In that moment I saw I was looking for my own in-between. That narrow strip between being tied to the oven with short apron strings like Mum and all these other women, and giving into madness like Peg. If I were honest, though, it was always going to be more Peg than Mum for me. But I stayed alert. Never kept so much as an extra plastic bag at my place. Made sure I never did the same thing twice unless I was convinced it was for the convenience of taking the same shortcut, not for the obsessive of it.