Metal Fish, Falling Snow

by Cath Moore

  I want to tear him out of my body.

  ‘Dylan, you need to be brave right now. That’s all you need to do,’ says Pat.

  No, no, no. This is a state of emergency. Immediate evacuation required. I spin the steering wheel and the tyres lose their grip. For a moment I think we’re gonna crash into the rubbish bins ahead, but Pat grabs the wheel and we swerve back onto the road.

  We’re stopped dead in the middle with our bodies lurching back like the end of a rollercoaster ride.

  ‘This is where you belong. They’re your family too,’ Pat says, trying to get his breath back. And up they come, running in the rear-view mirror with eyes wide open, flapping their arms around trying to get to me.

  I’m willing the car to transform into an impenetrable metal beetle that flies away. How can strangers be your family? He’s blackety black, wearing a cardigan and thick glasses. I look at the brown woman’s eyes and there’s my dad, the way she’s squinting and chewing on her bottom lip at the same time. The other one is blonde like Mama, but has her hair cut short, shaved on one side. Margie would say she should know better than to play with an asset like that. Each woman has a small arm wrapped around her lower leg, like an octopus tentacle. A little face pokes out between them, dark eyes glaring at me from under a mop of brown curly hair. Even though his mouth is shut tight I know he’s laughing at me. I want to scream at them all: ‘Stop looking at me! Can’t you see I’m invisible?’

  Maybe I don’t want to be real after all. If I was a machine, then I wouldn’t be afraid like I was gonna pee my pants again, or worse. Pat’s spun a web of lies so far and wide I don’t know when it started or where it will end. I want to bust out of the car, run so fast they can only watch me vanish over the hill and say, ‘We lost her.’

  All I can hope for is some divine intervention delivering me from evil. By the time I grab the doorhandle he is already there, peering in at me. Funny thing, his eyes are full of fear too. I can see through them and back to myself.

  All this time believing my way to an imaginary boat only to end up in the middle of a crazy snotstorm because Pat is a gutless wonder. He winds down the window and mumbles to the old man who has walked around to his side. The old man nods and walks back to his house with the others.

  And then Pat parks the car at the side of the road. ‘Dylan. I’m gonna sit in this car with you, and when you’re ready we can go and meet your family together. That’s your Grandad William, your Aunty Cecilia and well…I don’t know about the others.’

  I’m not listening. I just want to hurt Pat like he’s done to me.

  ‘Mum didn’t love you. She never did.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Black men are trouble. You should know better.’

  ‘Like I told you, Dylan, it’s something deep inside that makes people do bad things, not a colour.’

  Pat pretends this is a natural conclusion to the trip. Like it was always gonna be this way.

  ‘This is your house now. And your mum would be real proud of you.’

  ‘You’re a liar! You never said anything about him, not even once!’

  That dark colour is rising in the back of my head like a tornado, ripping up my memories and good thoughts about the world. The wolf has won.

  I wind the window down, smash my snow globe on the road and stare at all the little splintered pieces of glass lying on the ground. The water trickles through the cracks and soon enough only tiny white specks of snow are left. I’ve carried it safely all the way from Beyen and now all that precious care means nothing.

  21 The wardrobe revolt

  It is dark in the wardrobe and not like the one at home that smelt of Anais Anais perfume and soft cotton dresses that floated down from above like weeping willows onto my face. This one smells like mould and wrongness, and there’s a crack in a floorboard waiting to split in two. There are no fur coats so I can’t escape into Narnia, even though I want so bad to be having tea and crumpets with those friendly beavers. Fat lot of good that metal fish has done me. Of all the times and places I needed it to come good, and nothing. Maybe Dad is in on the joke. I can’t repel, reject, reverse or rewind anything now. Especially not in this dark wooden box I’ve found myself in. I hold the fish in my hand, running the top of my fingertips across the scales and wonder how I can get back to the car without being noticed.

  I’d run into the house because there was movement at the station. Only primitive people squat wherever they are, so I went inside the house like it was the library toilet. When I finished I saw them all talking about me in the kitchen. That small boy was sitting under the table, just like I used to do at home. Rubbing some grubby soft toy against his dry lips. He looked to the door and ogled me. My cheeks burned and I shouted at them all like a wild banshee: ‘I’M NOT HERE!’

  I stormed off to the front door but it was locked (what a surprise) so I ran from room to room until I found one with a vase of flowers on the desk, a bed and a wardrobe. I jumped inside and hugged my knees, waiting for everyone to forget that I was there. But of course this supposed family of mine were infiltrating my human right to freedom, so that was never going to happen.

  And sure enough I hear those creaky floorboards drilling into my ears as they enter the room and stand in front of the wardrobe.

  ‘She doesn’t like runny eggs. And watch your taps because she likes water. I’ve written you a list. Oh, and the forks.’

  That’s Pat telling them all about my habits, which is just rude because you’re not supposed to talk about someone if they are there, even if they’re inside a wardrobe.

  I peer out of the little keyhole and see William hobbling onto one knee, and then squinting back at me. He shouts like I’m at the bottom of a well with a bucket on my head: ‘You want a fork, Dylan?’ He flaps his hand at Aunty Cecilia and she races out the door. I hear a clunking, crashing sound and then doof doof doof as she runs back.

  ‘There’s more in the sink we can wash.’ She’s a bit breathless.

  William holds the fork up in front of the wardrobe. I peer a little harder and can see his hand shaking. But I still don’t open the door, so he puts it down on the floor.

  ‘We’ll always have cutlery for you, Dylan.’ William’s voice is a little bit gravelly like he’s either about to cry or has biscuit crumbs in his throat.

  The little gremlin appears again. I hear someone call him Joni. He’s wearing gumboots that are too big for his feet and he stumbles a little before steadying himself. Puts a teaspoon down next to the fork. Typical. Small, clumsy and clueless. This kid is obviously not related to me.

  ‘Well, how ’bout we let Dylan get used to her… wardrobe,’ says that William Freeman.

  Everyone leaves because they know I am revolting. That’s what the French do, because they won’t stand for nonsense and they always march through the streets singing angry songs about when tomorrow comes.

  I’m travelling back in my mind to when Pat was making all those phone calls back in Beyen, saying they were none of my beeswax, and I put all the pieces together like a jigsaw. Now I know Pat had been talking to William, figuring out this whole plan to dump me here because I’m just excess baggage to him. Through the peephole I can see they’re in the hallway mumbling in low voices, all sombrous (serious and sombre), and then William hands Pat a big wad of cash. Human trafficking pure and simple. I’d been transported halfway across the country like sheep on a ship to the Middle East. At least the sheep got to go on a boat, but my journey ends here. No one had ever asked about where and who I wanted to be now that Mum wasn’t here.

  Forty-seven minutes pass by. I am waiting it out. Some people stay in the wardrobe for decades and it’s not until they’re thirty-four that cousin Gracie says, ‘Aaron’s finally come out of the closet.’

  I should have brought a choc-chip muesli bar with me. The house is too quiet. Maybe if I scream the silence would fall out the window. Slowly I push one of the wardrobe doors open and slip out. Creep over to the windo
w where I can see Pat sitting in the car. Just staring straight ahead like he’s caught in some kind of trance. I don’t see his eyes blink, not even one time. And even though he has a house to go back to (if the repo men haven’t chucked it on the back of their truck), he doesn’t want to leave.

  Home is only a space full of emptiness that can’t be filled even if you buy a pot plant from Bunnings to liven up the living room or turn up the volume on the TV. No matter how loud or colourful the distraction you’re still alone. He is sitting with his shame like when people throw word-stones at you. Abo, nigger, coon, monkey, leaving little puncture marks all over your skin. Even though I partly hate him, other parts (mostly my ankles) want to run outside and chuck the car keys in the drainpipe to keep Pat here a little longer.

  The only company I’m keeping is a hungry stomach. I can hear pots banging, oil sizzling and now the smell molecules are floating under the door. I’m pretty sure it’s chicken, and that’s hard to deny.

  When I open the door there are seven forks waiting for me on the floor. Long, heavy metal grooves, pretty flower patterns, ridges around the handle and a green plastic one for picnics. I stand at the door to the kitchen and watch that polite kind of eating people do just moving food around the plate. The boy is asleep on the couch with a blanket over him, scrunched in on himself like a small turtle. I still don’t know who the woman with shaved hair is. William nods in her direction as he talks to Pat.

  ‘Jules here works right near that chicken factory on Hurst Street. They’ve got a direct outlet.’ He gets up and opens the freezer door. The whole thing is filled with plastic bags. Like a poultry morgue.

  ‘She keeps bringing me the whole bird even though—’

  ‘—you’re a leg man, we know, Bill,’ replies Jules, like she’s heard it a hundred times before. They’re all laughing now. Nothing funny about frozen chicken parts.

  William catches me standing in the doorway and quick as a flash his smile fades. He races back over to the table and lifts up a plate.

  ‘There’s still dinner here for you.’

  Some French stumbles out of my mouth ’cause I want them to hear me but not understand. The translation is roughly like this: ‘You are all dirty and dangerous, and in the morning I am running away because no way are you my family.’

  ‘That’s pretty, sweetheart,’ says Jules the chicken woman.

  William says that Jules is Joni’s other mum. I think what a good idea that is, because men stink out the bathroom and say thoughtless things, so if there were just two ladies in the house it would smell very sensitive and clean. I ask if they are both hermaphrodites to get a baby. I thought it was a very sensible medical question but everyone burst out laughing and that Joni boy just kept staring at me with those glassy eyes of his and that ratty-looking soft toy.

  Cecilia says that Jules’s brother Abe helped her make a baby. He lives in Brisbane so he is just an uncle to Joni.

  Jules says I can come and have arvo tea at their house whenever I like. She’s a lighter shade of safe, but I can’t afford to trust anyone right now, so I grab my plate and go sit back in the wardrobe listening to the cutlery as it echoes round the kitchen. It’s prickly on my ears and sounds like the exact moment my snow globe shattered all over the bitumen.

  Even though the chicken drumstick is filling that hungry hole in my stomach, there are tears in my eyes and I cannot taste it at all.

  22 Painting myself outside in

  I stay in that wardrobe the whole night. Don’t brush my teeth or even change my clothes. At 10.37 pm Pat comes in and gives me a blanket, says that we’ll talk about things in the morning, but I’m not gonna talk about things with him ever again. Everyone is my enemy and everything has gone pear-apple-and-banana-shaped. Three times during the night (11.34 pm, 12.12 am and 1.49 am) I hear William creaking his way through the house with his old bones to peer in on me, checking to see if I have gone weak and nodded off. But not on my watch, no way, no how, no where. Who knows what dark strangers are likely to do in the middle of the night when you are floppy and unconscious. I just breathe extra hard so William thinks I am asleep then he totters back down the hall. He takes ages to close the door trying to be quiet and only ends up making triple the noise. But his fussing about distracts me from my revolting and I fall asleep at 2.06 am. I think.

  Long fingers of sunlight creep through the keyhole and underneath the wardrobe door to remind me I’m not alone. Can’t blame it for trying, even though company’s not always what you want. Cecilia went home after dinner, and so I just have William and Pat to deal with. Breakfast time and they just keep gawking.

  I point my finger at William. ‘Don’t look at me.’

  ‘I’m not looking at you.’

  I shoot my finger across to Pat. ‘Or you.’

  ‘No one’s looking,’ says Pat, the perpetual liar.

  ‘All this is a bit new. Gonna take a bit of getting used to,’ William says in his gravelly old-man voice.

  Ha. What they don’t know is that I’m not getting used to anything because I am running away. After I have some Vegemite toast and Rice Bubbles.

  William pours Pat a cup of tea and his hand is wobbling again like his insides are made of jelly.

  ‘Sorry, milk’s off.’

  Typical. With all his trembling he’s forgotten to turn the milk on. What kind of people are they?

  But then Pat puts on a pretend interested face like there’s a light bulb glowing above his head. ‘Maybe you can help William get some more milk, Dylan.’

  Pat writes out a list of all the foods I like including fish fingers, cheese sticks, barbecue shapes, red not green apples, spaghetti with cheese and butter, never beans from a can, but tinned peaches for dessert. I am going along with it because driving to the shops might become part of my escape plan. Then Cecilia comes and picks us up. At least that kid’s disappeared.

  Pat says he’s coming but at the last minute takes another call from his boss and he starts that pacing of his up and down on the front lawn. I’m still fuming from all his trickery so I don’t let him know that this might be the last time we see each other. I just look at him and on the inside of my mind I say, ‘Well, that’s that.’

  All the way into town Aunty Cecilia says how Joni has been waiting for me to come. That he’s a quiet little kid but she can tell he’s excited to finally have his cousin here. Cousin. I’ve never been anything to anyone younger than myself. Cousins are supposed to do fun stuff together like go on adventures with peanut-butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and apples wrapped in a tea towel, and discover secrets in the wild that grown-ups don’t know about. Can’t do that with a silent rug rat like Joni. Cecilia hums along to a song on the radio. This is a stupid town to live in because not once, not even one single time did they play Tina Arena or John Farnham. Not even ‘Take the Pressure Down’, which is a classic in anyone’s book.

  There is only a Woolworths supermarket, not a Coles, not even an IGA run for the locals by the locals. And everything looks different, even the footpath is a wet slug shade of grey. There’s no public statue in the town square and right now I miss that hand, back in Beyen. On hot days, curling up inside and pushing against the hard, shiny metal until you feel the heat sink into your back. The only thing I feel now is my stomach drop, like I’ve swallowed a stone.

  William buys me a Golden Gaytime and I eat it because I keep my manners even when I’m rebelling. The fish fingers are a different brand called Timmy’s Fish Logs and only came in a packet of twenty not forty like the bulk home-brand pack Mum used to get. Maybe that is a good thing because there isn’t much room left in the freezer with all those chicken pieces. Cecilia takes my hand and leads me to aisle eight, which has soap and handwash and bandaids and toothpaste.

  ‘Sweetheart, you just tell me what kind you use.’

  She pointed to the hygiene products for women: colourful packages of pads and the small white rockets you shoot up your clacker. I know because I peeped through the bathr
oom door once and saw Mum doing it. There was a string that hung down out of her vajayjay like a little mouse’s tail. She wiped up a drop of blood from the ground and flushed it down the toilet. I stared at that spot for weeks after, thinking again how come women don’t die when they lose it all—blood magic and magic blood.

  I tell Cecelia that my ‘little friend’ must have got lost, because she still hadn’t come to visit. (Maybe that’s why I’m still alive.) Cecelia looks real worried and says we might have to go to the lady doctor. I say maybe I’m like the Virgin Mary and I’ll have a baby one day without all the hoo-ha. Cecilia buys me a bulk packet of pads just in case I end up not being a miracle.

  Funny when you get something in your head like babies, you see them everywhere. Three in aisle eight and a pregnant cashier who looked too old to be. Then while we’re stuck in traffic on the way home I look over at a woman in the car four down and across. Straight away I’m travelling inside her memories—swimming through words so heavy they cannot be spoken. For some reason she can’t have babies and now it’s the only thing that matters. Her clock keeps ticking as she waits and worries that it’s all too late. She’d know how I am feeling, how you could miss someone you would never see again (or even meet).

  I decide to make a break for it. Traffic light’s still red so I bolt out of the car and run down the road, darting in-between cars to get to the empty-womb lady. Jump in the back seat and close the door.

  ‘Jesus! What are you doing?’

  I want to say there are lots of other babies in the world she can have, whose mothers are already in the ground or do not have enough food for them, babies that are crying in an orphanage because there is no one to hold them in the night. But I don’t say this because she starts screaming. Then the light turns green and people behind her beep their horns.

  ‘I haven’t got any money,’ she says with a quiver in her voice like William’s trembling hand.

  ‘Neither have I!’