The Gaps

by Leanne Hall

  ‘Two beers,’ she says to a surly guy in a fisherman beanie. He points at the handwritten $3 sign and she hands over a note. He doesn’t ask us for ID.

  ‘That’s Liv, over there!’ Natalia points but I have no way of singling her sister out. I can’t see anyone that looks like her. Two girls push us away from the drinks table. One of them manages to give me a split-second once-over (verdict: not impressed) before lunging for more booze. We ricochet into the centre of the room.

  Across the topography of heads I can see that there’s art on the walls, even hanging from the ceilings, but no one seems to be paying any attention to it. Instead they’re people-watching, checking each other out, making sure everyone knows they’re having a great time, or else playing at being mysterious and poetic. No one looks over twenty-five, but no one looks as young as us either. There are designer mullets, shaved heads, big beards, round glasses. Overalls spattered with paint, clever tattoos, ripped mesh.

  Natalia’s face shines. You can almost see her feeding off the crush and the heat and the noise. Her eyes flick back and forth and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she’s acting a little off. But maybe this is what she’s like out of school, at night, at a party. ‘What a bunch of freaks. Come on!’

  She drags me over to her sister, who is in the far corner with a group of friends. ‘Chloe, this is my dear darling sister, Olivia.’

  Natalia hugs her big sister. Olivia is ridiculously good-looking, of course, but also looks very different to Natalia—she’s bony and pale, with spiky black hair. ‘Liv, this is Chloe, the artist I was telling you about.’

  I glare at Natalia and she pokes her tongue out.

  ‘I’m not a real artist,’ I say apologetically.

  ‘Well, neither am I.’ Olivia smiles at me. ‘I couldn’t explain any of this crap to you. How do you know my little sister?’

  ‘School.’

  ‘Ah, commiserations, my friend.’ Olivia holds up her bottle to clink against mine. If you look beyond the differences she has the same aqua eyes as Natalia, and the same level of charisma. That direct look that makes you feel like you have all of her attention. ‘I also survived that hellhole.’

  She turns to Natalia. ‘Listen Tal, I have one request of you this evening. Don’t be a dork, okay, and don’t drink too much.’

  ‘That’s two requests.’ Natalia does her private-school princess smile but Olivia manages to stare her into submission. There’s a first. The girl next to Olivia leans forward and kisses Natalia on the cheek and they start talking.

  I’m left hanging, not sure if I should look at the art or try to introduce myself to someone. I settle for a combination of looking soulfully into the distance and smiling vaguely in the direction of Olivia’s intimidating friends. I take a long swig of beer.

  The short, quiet guy next to me asks, ‘What medium do you work in?’

  ‘What?’ I lean down to hear him better. He’s also dressed like an off-duty fisherman and I don’t know how he can stand to wear a beanie in this sauna. A hot flush starts to creep over my cheeks and I know I need to slow down on the beer or my face will start to look like a tomato.

  ‘Your art…what medium?’

  It takes me a few seconds to figure out what he means.

  ‘Oh. Photography, I guess. What’s, uh, your medium?’

  ‘These are all my pieces.’ He gestures around us; his fingers are covered in tiny tattooed symbols. We’re in a corner of small ceramic objects: arranged on shelves and hanging up on fine wire above our heads. I look closer.

  ‘What are—oh.’

  Each shape is a vulva. We’re surrounded by pottery vulvas. Some with jagged teeth, some leaking red, others with thin sausages of clay balanced in them.

  Olivia’s friend looks at me, waiting for my response.

  ‘They’re very powerful?’ I say, and that seems to satisfy him. Someone pushes past us, squishing our bodies close together. I can feel heat from the vulva artist’s front and a stranger’s drink trickling down my shoulder.

  ‘Have you shown your work anywhere?’ He lifts his drink to his mouth. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like he presses even closer. His head is right at my chest level.

  ‘No. I’m still learning.’ I definitely don’t imagine the way his gaze slides away. He scans the room over my shoulder, looking for someone better to talk to. Natalia has been drawn even further into Olivia’s group of friends. It looks like she’s telling them the funniest story they’ve ever heard.

  ‘You know, at high school.’ I say it loudly enough to be heard over the din.

  The vulva artist steps slightly away from me, appraising my underage body afresh.

  ‘Take my advice,’ he says, without checking that I want any, ‘work hard on your folio. You could even take a few years after school to develop your practice, then apply for VCA. It usually takes a few attempts to get accepted, but you want to start your career on the right foot. Of course, I was accepted straight from high school, but that’s quite rare—’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not sure I even want to do it as a career.’ I stop his flow. I don’t think Mum intended me to take an academic scholarship just so I could bunk off and be an artist.

  The vulva artist smiles tightly, no teeth. He looks disapproving—a disapproving, creepy uncle who is only a few years older than me and might touch me on the butt. ‘Well. I guess art is not for everyone.’

  ‘I guess it’s not.’

  The conversation falters. We both look away and I realise anew how cacophonous, how teeming, the room is. It’s the very opposite of the dignified and calm NGV.

  ‘Congratulations on your vaginas,’ I say and walk away.

  I spend a few minutes trying to tunnel my way over to Natalia, who seems to have completely forgotten that she was the one who invited me to this thing, but give up after taking several elbows to my ribs.

  Instead I do something radical. I look at the art.

  I shut out everything around me. If I did ever decide to study art—as if I would ever do a course so guaranteed to leave me poor—this would be the kind of company I would be in.

  In one corner is a pile of dirty rags, a stack of sticks and an old TV playing a video of a guy smearing mud on his face. It doesn’t do much for me.

  The next artist is devoted to painting highways and concrete flyovers.

  There’s a set of guns and other weapons made using a 3D printer.

  I’ve almost circled the gallery when I find something that interests me, in one of the smaller rooms leading off the main one.

  It’s a collection of photos—studio portraits of the South Sudanese artist and her family and friends, posed on sets in a formal style. The subjects wear a combination of traditional dress, retro work uniforms, modern streetwear, beaded necklaces, head wraps, sunglasses and white trainers. Bright print fabric covers every surface, punctuated by bunches of flowers in vases.

  I find myself lingering on one photo, of two girls who are posed so closely they must be sisters or best friends. They look close but individual; they look like they have each other’s back. I look closer—I think the artist has started with a monochrome photo and coloured it digitally, to create the very effect I’ve been chasing.

  The room is full of the artist’s vision and personality. Pattern and colour everywhere. Confidence. The labels on the wall list the artist’s first name, Adut, the titles of the works, and nothing more.

  My heart thumps in my chest, my fingers tingle. My eyes open to possibility. It’s the same feeling I got in the pine forest during cross-country, so I recognise it now. I take photos on my phone so I can carry the feeling home with me.

  I can’t even imagine creating such a series that hangs together so well.

  When I return to the main room it’s an abomination, a brawl of posing people. The inspiration and tingles drip away.

  I try to move and somehow find myself near the door to the outside world. I am carried down the breakneck stairs and out onto th
e street.

  The outside air hits my relieved lungs. It’s good to be away from hot, sweaty bodies.

  I sit on the front ledge of the pizza shop next door, finally get my backpack off my shoulders, and watch cars and bikes and trams slide by. Why would Natalia act so desperate to see me all holidays and then not look out for me at all?

  My annoyance grows.

  Vulva artist was a tool.

  Smoke from a nearby group hits me in the face so I move even further up the ledge, closer to where a girl sits with a can of lemonade.

  She glances at me. ‘Intense in there, right?’

  I nod.

  ‘Way too intense,’ she repeats.

  We fall quiet. Metres away from us, in front of a backdrop of passing cars, a soap opera plays out.

  A skinny girl in platform boots starts berating this guy, poking him in the chest. A friend of the upset girl grabs her around the waist and tries to haul her away, but she’s only half her size.

  The girl sitting next to me gives me such an exaggerated and comical look that I laugh. She holds out a packet of gum and I take a piece. The taste of cheap beer lingers in my mouth.

  ‘I’ve got to warn you, this flavour’s not for everyone. It’s cinnamon.’ She holds out her hand for me to shake. ‘I’m Adut.’

  ‘Chloe.’ Then realisation hits me. ‘Wait. Is that you up there? Are those your photos?’

  She confirms it.

  ‘I don’t believe it. I love your photos. They’re the only thing I really liked.’ With some effort I force my mouth shut, before I truly embarrass myself.

  ‘Shhh, the other artists might hear you.’

  Adut looks pleased. When I look closer, I do recognise her from the photos, but her hair is shaved in an undercut now, with two tight bleached braids on top.

  ‘It’s hell standing around listening to people talk about your art,’ she says. ‘That’s why I’m out here.’

  ‘I’d be so nervous,’ I say. ‘I noticed you didn’t put up an artist statement like the others did.’

  She smiles. ‘I have to describe my work so much at art school. I get tired of it. I want my work to speak for itself.’

  ‘What do you say though, when people ask you what your art is about?’

  Adut thinks for only a moment. ‘I say it’s about decolonisation and identity and migration and recognising the traditional owners of this land.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ I say foolishly, but how does a person get to the point where they can say so succinctly and without apology what they are doing? ‘Do you go to VCA?’

  ‘That place? Full of private school wankers. I’m at RMIT, doing my masters. There’s a better range of students, different sorts of people, and the lecturers are good. Working artists, you know?’

  I don’t know, but I nod.

  ‘How about you, Chloe?’

  I blush. ‘I like making art. I’m working on something photographic at the moment.’

  I show her some pics saved on my phone and Adut asks questions and I explain it as best I can, even though I don’t have ideas as sophisticated or as important as hers. She listens carefully as I explain my doubts and my confusion, nodding and laughing and telling me her own stories.

  ‘I doubt myself almost every day,’ she says. ‘But I remind myself that being a young woman who wants to take pictures of other young women and queer folk and people of colour is enough. Putting my own representation, my own images forward, that’s powerful in itself.’

  ‘I never thought of it like that.’

  ‘It’s hard being at the start of practising something creative, knowing you’ve still got a long way to go. Especially if you have big ideas. Can you email me one of those?’

  Adut gives me her email address and I send her a pic. My phone is still making the swooshing send sound when a man in a loud tie-dye t-shirt rockets out of the gallery stairwell. When he spots Adut he raises his hands high—WHY?—and pretends to reel her in on an invisible line.

  ‘Oh, they finally noticed I’m hiding,’ she says. ‘Good luck, Chloe. Thanks for the chat.’

  Adut gives me a quick hug and then she’s gone.

  I wait on the ledge for the motivation to go back upstairs and find Natalia, but I’m distracted by thoughts of different places to study and being a beginner artist and how to be myself until my chewing gum has gone tough and gross. I spit it out and realise I need to pee. I can’t remember any toilets in the gallery, so I go to the 7-Eleven at the intersection, and when I come out I turn left, instead of back towards the gallery.

  I don’t know what happens, but my feet take me up the street until I reach the tram stop. I’m on a tram, heading for the train station before I even realise that I’ve left the opening and I’m not going back.

  DAY 55

  The world glows green when I wake up, still surrounded by pillowy softness. I might have been asleep for a thousand years and even though I try to blink away the fuzziness, still my eyelids won’t stay open.

  ‘You talk in your sleep, did you know that?’ Yin’s voice, close to me.

  I smile without opening my eyes.

  Her mat is close enough that our sleeping bags brush together with a whisper. The morning sun creeps through the thin tent walls, our secret grotto, our private place, two girls sitting inside a cave made of curled leaves and petals.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ says Yin. Her voice is older, sadder. ‘Nat. I’ve been waiting so long.’

  I wake with a lurch, wake with Yin’s voice right in my ear. My heart beats a sickening pitter-patter and her voice keeps reverberating in my head.

  My sheets are tangled, I’m sticky with sweat. I can tell from the grey light seeping around the edges of my bedroom curtains that I’ve woken way too early. Liv and Naomi dropped me off late last night, after post-exhibition pizza and gelato, and I stayed up even later watching videos in bed.

  You’re awake, I tell myself, you’re awake in your room and it’s now and not then and Yin is not whispering in your ear and she’s not even here anymore. So why did her voice sound so real?

  I throw off my doona and sit up, hoping to shock myself into wakefulness, into reality. You can make up your mind what to feel but then your traitorous brain will lift the gate and let the monsters in while you sleep.

  I dig my nails into my arm until I am back in my body, back with it.

  I can’t have dreams like this, I can’t.

  I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but when I pad out to the landing with my hair mussed up, still in my disgusting sweaty pyjamas, desperate for juice and toast and coffee and daylight and normalness, I can hear Mum’s voice and something about it is so instantly secretive that I know to creep.

  I skip the squeaky stairs, I’m silent as a mouse as I crouch at the bottom, Mum only metres away in the kitchen. I sit my butt down.

  ‘…working from home today,’ she says.

  Her soft tone means it’s a personal call; she has an entirely different voice that she uses for work.

  ‘I’m a little worried about her…keep an eye on things… uh huh, uh huh…’

  I wish for a rubbery extendable neck that could wrap around the corner like a periscope. Worried about who? Me? Liv? Grandma?

  ‘Have you heard much from Allison?’

  Aha. She’s talking to Ally’s mum.

  ‘I still remember my first time in Italy,’ Mum says. ‘The food. The men!’

  I roll my eyes. Get a grip, horny old lady.

  ‘I think it’s been hard for her, with all her friends out of town. We were supposed to go down to the beach house, but work took over…’

  I grip the carpet beneath me. She’s talking about me, behind my back, to Ally’s mum.

  ‘It’s more than that though. She’s erratic, moody…I don’t know. She’s not being herself and she won’t talk to me at all…’

  There’s silence as Ally’s mum weighs in on my craziness, my inability to be myself.

  ‘There’s my therapist,�
� says Mum, ‘I did wonder…’

  I’ve heard enough. I walk back upstairs, not bothering to be nearly as careful this time. Fury rises up in me. I go to my bathroom, splash my face with cold water, splash it into my mouth too and spit it out, but a scream still wells up.

  I shut my bedroom door.

  How many of her friends has she been calling to talk about my moods? Sarah’s mum too? The whole neighbourhood?

  I grab my pillow and scream into it, dig my fingers in and gouge just like we learnt to do in self-defence class.

  After pummelling my fingers I sit very still on the edge of my bed until my boiling blood subsides. I scroll on my phone, looking at photos of the traitors Sarah and Ally in Florence, posing sluttily in front of the Uffizi, attending a paper marbling workshop—of all the things they would not be interested in. Sarah’s main motivation for going on the trip is to lose her virginity to an Italian guy because apparently that’s the fanciest cherry-popping a girl can have. Those two don’t even care about art, not like Chloe, who would actually appreciate seeing everything they’re taking for granted.

  Chloe.

  She plain disappeared last night, poof! into thin air, sending me a message saying she had a headache and was on a train home, but then didn’t reply to any of my messages after that.

  I asked her if she talked to anyone interesting, I asked her if she’d hooked up with Genital Gerard, I asked her if she liked the art, I asked her if she thought my sister was nice.

  I send her another message now: Good morning are you completely inspired now?

  Because that was the whole point, to inspire her. So that she could meet proper real-life young artists and talk about paint and balsa wood or whatever things they go ga-ga about and make connections and then have her first exhibition and live happily ever after and always remember that I was the first person to believe in her vision the end.