Metal Fish, Falling Snow

by Cath Moore

  Again I wonder if the owls know where I’m going—do birds have the same, shared mother tongue? I follow those wings flying high above, but then my toes curl round the edge of a cliff. If this is a dream I want to take myself out of it right now. I look down and see my feet, bloodied and bruised. Throbbing.

  The hoatzin is calling.

  ‘What do you want to show me? Help me home!’ I run, half-fall, trip and over the side for real! Down the slope and onto the beach. The hoatzin squawks at me: ‘Into the cave, into the cave!’

  It’s most certainly a trap but he will not bring me home until I do it. Fists in front of me like a fighter waiting for a sneaky left hook, I walk further down until I can’t see fingers in front of my face. Might be travelling to Middle Earth for all I know, until I turn the corner and blinding light shines into my eyes. There it stands, the biggest seashell you have ever seen, curling round and round and up to the cave ceiling. The inside of the shell glows like a thousand light bulbs. There’s an invisible thread tied around my waist pulling me towards it and I try to step back but my feet push me closer still. It is wondrous but I’m frightened all the same. I climb up towards the top and all the while I can hear the sea outside, so loud I’m almost deafened. I hear waves crash onto the shore then splinter into a million pieces. And inside all that crashing, they are whispering, because they do not want me to know their secrets.

  Then I hear her voice: ‘Reviens à moi!’ Mum is at the very top of the shell. I cling onto the sides as I climb higher. Now it’s raining rusty fish. They prick and scratch my skin with their cold brown scales. I close my eyes as light pours over me, from yellow to white to bright beyond bright. Higher, go higher, take me sky high back to Maman…

  I feel sick, seasick, the room spins and I want to get off. Turn my head to the side and here it all comes, burns my throat on the way up and onto the floor. I stumble out of my bedroom and out into the garden where the rain pelts down, hitting me hard like liquid bullets. It says, ‘Stupid girl, feel how stupid you are!’

  I start digging in the ground: if I cannot have her spirit then I will find her body. And it doesn’t matter that she went into the ground at Beyen, that dull and throbbing pain is bringing her here, dragging her bones beneath the earth, sliding her body through the mud, worms, roots and all. My nails are black with dirt as my hands dig fast and frantic. I am gone to it all and soon there are thirteen holes across the garden seeking and searching for Mama. Maman, aide-moi, reviens à moi. Où es-tu? But I have tricked myself again, and the rain pelts my skin harder to punish me for thinking I can bring her back through dreams or real life.

  My head is thumping when William comes racing out. He tries to lift me off the ground but I am as limp as a ragdoll with nothing left inside.

  ‘Come on, come now!’ He crouches on the ground. Wraps his arms around me, holds tight. We are rocking back and forth because he knows it’s the only thing he can do.

  ‘Am I a real girl?’

  ‘Come on, my baby.’

  ‘Am I still real?’

  ‘You’re here with me.’

  But that’s not an answer.

  Next thing I’m back in bed. Dry and warm. Poor William is on his hands and knees cleaning up the sick. No words, just wiping it all away.

  And then his cool hands are on my forehead feeling for a fever. ‘You feel bad? Got some nasty belly work there?’

  ‘That sea is sick. It’s making rusted fish.’

  William’s got his worried eyes on nodding to me with all the understanding that he can muster. He tells me that I’m safe now and the best place to be is bed. Cecilia is coming in the morning with Jules and Joni, but if I’m not up to it they can stop by later. I hope later turns into never because I’m in a bad way and want to have my tongue taken out so I don’t have to speak to anyone ever again.

  William goes and then I’m alone, but I keep my eyes open—I don’t want to go back where I was. Feel the bottom of my feet and they’re smooth but something has punctured my chest all the same.

  The rain falls gently again on the window, but I turn the other way. Sea, rain, river or tap. Water is poison to me now.

  In the morning my stomach calls out for something so I shuffle into the kitchen. Before I can turn away Cecilia is out of her seat and squeezing me tight against her boobs.

  ‘You coming down with something?’

  ‘No, I’m staying up.’

  She looks at William, confused.

  ‘I don’t want to hear about any more birds and I’m not ever dreaming again,’ I say before heading back to bed. I take an apple on the way.

  William nods and then everyone else does too.

  Cecilia and Jules pop their heads in before they go and they tell Joni to say goodbye to his cousin. But he doesn’t say anything. Just takes in a big breath of air and blows it out again with a long, heavy sigh. Like he is ninety-three years old and tired of it all.

  I don’t know how long I sleep but when I wake it is dark and my timing is all out of whack. I want to start the day but it’s coming to an end. William is watching the cricket on TV. He stands up suddenly with a whoop and then sits down again.

  ‘Yes sir!’ he shouts at the TV.

  I make myself a cherkin sandwich (cheese and gherkin) and sit down next to him.

  ‘This is their last chance. Just plain sloppy.’

  I don’t know who is plain or sloppy, so I just nod.

  ‘How are you feeling, Channa?’

  ‘Hungry.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good sign.’

  He reaches into his pocket and fumbles around.

  ‘Joni left something for you.’

  Now you won’t believe this. Still hardly can myself. William pulls out a little curly seashell and puts it in the palm of my hand. Before I can say anything he’s up on his feet, yelling at the TV with all his hoo-ha again. ‘No doubt about that!! Howzat! Howzat! Howzat!’

  26 Buttons

  I stare at that shell all night. Hold it up to the moonlight and remember just how I’d climbed up to the very top heading towards Mum. A miracle, mystery and natural wonder of the world all in the palm of my hand. How did that little boy with no words know about my dream? How could he have seen where I’d been? The hoatzin had led me to Joni and now where would Joni lead me?

  The next morning William has to look after Joni because each Tuesday both of his mums are bringing home the bacon. Joni’s sitting at the table with a jar of buttons, drawing a picture. I sit at the table and pour milk on my Rice Bubbles.

  ‘Thank you for my shell.’

  Joni just keeps scribbling.

  ‘How did you get into my dream?’

  He cocks his head to the side but doesn’t say anything. I crunch my cereal real loud and tap my foot hoping that my annoyances will trip him up. But he keeps on colouring. I want to tell him he needs to stay inside the lines but I manage to hold my tongue. Joni finishes the picture and pushes it in my direction. It’s pretty bad, but there we are, looking like scarecrows holding each other’s stick hands. I’m mostly green and he is pink and orange. We have no necks.

  I go brush my teeth and when I come back he’s sitting in my bedroom on the floor.

  ‘Turn around,’ I tell him. I get dressed while he faces the corner. I know he’s scrunching his eyes shut but I still watch him on the off-chance he tries to take a peep.

  I’m not really interested in having a one-sided conversation with a mute four-year-old, so I don’t say anything. William knocks on the door and says he has a chess game with his friend Ruben. Some people say chess is a spectator sport, which is crazy. No one runs and there are too many rules about horses and prawns. William says Ruben was in Wodonga. They play over the phone which means he has to move his own prawns and Ruben’s and Ruben has to do the same on the other end of the line. They’ll be at it forever, but old people don’t care about time because their brains go round and round in circles. William puts on a cartoon about pink fairies chasing elves and say
s that after the game we’ll all go for a walk and get fish and chips for lunch.

  Well, I’m fourteen, for goodness sake! William’s too busy moving Ruben’s knight down to his queen to notice that I’m going for a walk to buy something anyways. Pat gave me the very last of his boot money, pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar note from his stinky right sock on the night before he left. I wasn’t going to keep it. I wasn’t going to keep anything from Pat.

  Halfway to the shops, who turns up but Mr Mute. He’s hiding behind trees every time I turn around, thinking I can’t see him except his jar of buttons is jiggling like a full packet of smarties. I tell him to bugger off home, but he just holds his breath like that’s gonna make him invisible or something.

  In the end I tell him to come walk next to me ’cause I don’t like being stalked. Having some company is okay for a while, but then I realise we’re just ambling about and I’m lost. I don’t want to frighten Joni because I’m the bigger person and supposed to know what’s what. So I sit on a tree that’s fallen over, scared of being so tall.

  ‘I’m just gonna…have a rest.’

  But I’m not foolin’ this kid. Joni shoves his pudgy little hand inside his button jar and takes out a shiny turtle-green shell. He hands it to me like this is some sort of currency exchange except I don’t know what I’m supposed to give him in return. The only thing I have that he does not, is words. So I think about what is worth a green turtle-shell button. Even though I’m not having anything to do with water anymore, the facts about it are solid and interesting. My rancorous and discordant history with the substance should not stop Joni from being educated.

  ‘Pure water has no smell or taste. It also has a pH level around 7,’ I say.

  A frown floats across Joni’s face but then he nods like he’s chewed on this fun fact and decided it tastes all right. I know this because he digs around in his jar and gives me another button, all bubbled and brown.

  Soon I’ve forgotten we are lost and in potential danger of being kidnapped or falling into a wormhole and ending up back in 1956. This is how it goes:

  Blue pearl: breathing in and out every day uses up more than half a litre of water.

  White swirl: A jellyfish and a cucumber are both ninety-five per cent water.

  Grass green: sound travels five times faster underwater.

  Purple and pink dots: Camels can drink ninety-four litres of water in about three minutes.

  Big fat orange: koalas are one of only two animals that do not need to drink water. They get it from gum leaves. I do not know the other one.

  Another turtle-shell: Blood plasma is fifty per cent water.

  Red ridges: It takes forty-one kilograms of water to make one slice of bread.

  After the red-ridge button I go a bit fuzzy and can’t think of anymore important water facts that end in a full stop. So we stand up and walk along the sleeping tree. I jump off at the end and Joni hops onto my back. I carry him all the way and only stop when he needs to do a wee. I feel it, not because he pees on my back, but because there is something strange going on between us, like the synchronicity me and Pat had when we were on the road. Joni is in my mind and I am in his. We are a little bit psychic and that is the only way you can talk to someone who doesn’t speak.

  We sit on a bench out front of the fish and chip shop with our battered flake and potato cakes like it has always been this way. Can taste salt in the air, straight off the back of a wave. Surely that can’t do me any harm. Joni is still small enough to swing his legs under the bench. Walking home again I jump onto the sleeping tree and hold my hand out to Joni but he just walks alongside on the ground. When I get to the end, Joni holds his hand out for me.

  ‘Checkmate!’

  I don’t know what Ruben needed to check but William was laughing from his belly. ‘Never see it coming, good sir. I’ll go easy next time.’ He hangs up and sees us staring at him, then a look of horror spreads across his face.

  ‘Good Lord, what on earth’s happened?’

  William thinks the tomato sauce on Joni’s cheek is smeared blood. I tell him where we’ve been and what we did, and I might as well have said we’d gone to the moon and back.

  First I think he’s mad ’cause I absconded with Joni, then a smile cuts across his dial like I’d suddenly sprung out of a wheelchair and run the City to Surf.

  ‘It was just to the shops. I’m a teenager. That’s the only place we can really go.’

  But then William got upset. ‘Dylan, you have to tell me if you’re gonna go somewhere. Things can happen when you’re by yourself.’

  But we were together is what I want to say. I reckon he was mad at himself for not knowing we’d been gone on his watch.

  ‘Joni wandered off a couple of months ago. You can’t look after him by yourself.’

  He thinks I am a retard just like those Beyen BMX boys with jeering weasel smiles, calling me Abo Spazzo. Joke was on them ’cause I’m neither. When you become an adult everything makes you sad, mad or scared. Truth be told, I think William is one and three. Sad that I’ve come to him so far down the track and scared he’ll lose me all over again, and maybe Joni too.

  I put my cat-bum lips on, take Joni’s hand and storm off into my bedroom. Joni is the only one young enough to just let me be. We sit and draw together under my desk. I’m not drawing anything except my emotions and that is just a circle of red and purple that goes round and round until it looks like a black hole ready to swallow me up if I stare in too deep.

  I sigh louder than I mean to. Joni takes a big breath in and sighs too. He is me and I am him. And from now on that’s the way it is. He has two mums, I have none. I had a volcanic dad, he has an uncle-pa. We are ying and yang, Cheech and Chong, up and down, right and wrong. We’ll always be together unless a certain someone tries to stickybeak his way back in.

  ‘Yeah, Dylan, look I know that—’ Beep. Delete.

  ‘Dylan, it’s been a month now and—’ Beep. Delete.

  ‘Okay, well, I’m gonna leave it to you. I just want to—’ Beep. Delete.

  When he sees me all weighed down with sorrow William takes me to proper church on a Sunday and that is not a bad thing because I can wear a pretty dress if I want to. When I only want to be casually religious I wear trackie dacks and thongs. They are pink so it’s still respectful. I’m not going in the box though. Makes me think about Mum’s funeral and me looking for a way out. William says I don’t have to go up and get the biscuit and drink because I’m not baptised. He goes up though, every time. I ask if it’s all right to be black and Catholic and William says religion, race and spirituality are all different things. He says it doesn’t have anything to do with colour. It’s about faith and belonging. But I’ve never heard of someone having Christmas and Hanukah, which is what we celebrated for Lally the Jewish girl at after-school care back in Beyen. William says people are often contradicting themselves and they could be richer for that. Like a proper church choir made up of criminals and the ninety-year-old wheelchair twins Astrid and Agatha who all sound like angels.

  The church is a funny place. William says it has hurt a lot of people in many ways including himself, but that is also not for me to know about. Not right now.

  That night Joni stays over because Aunty Cecilia and Jules are going out. Jules plays guitar in a band called Halcyon Daze and they have a concert at the pub. Aunty Cecilia just watches because she doesn’t have a musical bone in her body. I tapped her joints with my special fork once and they all sounded flat.

  Joni sleeps on the floor of my room, but in the early morning hours he creeps into my bed and strokes my face. His breath is sweet like condensed milk straight from the can. I can see my reflection in his glassy brown eyes and for a moment, I think I am here. I am.

  I close my eyes and drift away with his warm breath on my face. But when I wake up Joni is gone. Shadows creep across the room like a daddy-long-legs spider. Even though it’s early morning, the moon has not yet gone to sleep. Its blue light guide
s me out, down the hallway. I stop at William’s door. He’s still asleep with a splutter and a snore.

  Out the back through the laundry, tiptoing down the garden path. And that’s when I see them. Buttons on the ground, all laid out like coloured breadcrumbs.

  A path for me. Joni is playing hide and seek. Now I’m not sure if this is another dream but I dare not turn back. I must find him before William wakes because things can happen, yes, that’s true. Children can vanish into the bush forever. So now I panic, picking up those buttons and shoving them in my pyjama pocket just to feel closer to him. I trip over a stubborn tree root, fall flat on my face. Will I see a silhouette of that hoatzin flying past the moon? Has he got into Joni’s little head and led him out here? ‘Keep your hands off him,’ I say. He’s not for you! Orange button, then lilac, rose, ash, cobalt.

  Getting wet, cold mud, slipping down like quicksand. Heart races—he’s up ahead.

  Down in the muddy banks of the mangroves, Joni taps the side of the boat with his finger. It’s wood. Not metal. Someone’s had their fun and now it’s stranded, too far into the mangroves to move. Joni doesn’t care. I swear he’s talking to himself, like when little kids think no one’s watching. Secret worlds. But then he knows I’m here. Nods at the rowboat then looks straight at me as if to say, ‘This what you been looking for?’

  And now I know there’s another answer. When sleeping and waking worlds collide, your dreams let you escape. The boat! Wild mangrove branches wrapped around it so tight they’re part of it: planks of wood returning to tree.

  I crouch down by the side and slide my hand over the branches and along the rim until a splinter pierces my finger. The boat wants to take me out on the water, to beckon Mum’s spirit into being. For real this time. Besides, rowboats aren’t meant to stay still. They must row, sway, float, carry treasures from the sea or steal time away so men can sit for hours waiting for their catch. There are a couple of old beer bottles under the seat and I see a crab scuttle away when I step inside. A handful of Joni’s buttons are scattered on the floor like rose petals at a wedding. He’s been here before.