A Lifetime of Impossible Days

by Tabitha Bird

  I’m sure she hasn’t baked before. She mumbles something about not needing biscuits at my age.

  ‘Biscuits? Are they …’ I try to understand. ‘Could they be jam drops, dear?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Oh, goodness.’ My fingers begin to tingle. ‘What would you do that for? We don’t bake jam drops.’

  Katie rips her apron off. ‘Fine! That’s fine with me. Not my idea anyway. Don’t call me in the middle of the night saying you want some, though.’

  She tucks a blanket firmly around my knees.

  I can’t bear to sleep in my old bedroom, or any other bedroom for that matter, so my bed is now this chair. It is a replica of Grammy’s favourite, so it holds me well.

  All I can think to say is, ‘But I don’t eat jam drops.’

  Katie splutters. ‘Since when?’

  There’s a distinct smell of the ocean, and the tingling intensifies in both my hands. Katie returns to the kitchen, runs a tap and bangs around a bit more. Maybe she’ll bang around so much that the old turquoise laminate countertops and what remains of the floral wallpaper will fall off, too.

  When Katie appears again, she considers my feet.

  ‘Yellow gumboots, Willa. Same as the umpteen other yellow pairs you own.’

  ‘But not ones in this shade, dear. See, my other ones are lemon sherbet. This pair is more cockatoo yellow. And the ones next to them are the colour of undressed bananas …’

  ‘Undressed bananas – what? That’s not a colour,’ she says, looking at some new wristphone-thingamabob projecting its screen onto her arm. Katie enjoys her gadgets. Phones were once empathetic creatures that purred as your finger moved around the dial. A dying breed that I now collect, some on shelves, a few on the table.

  I turn my feet this way and that. ‘So, you’re the Gumboot Police and the Colour Police tonight?’

  She turns the wristphone thingy off. ‘Do you need anything else?’

  I pull at the tucked blankets. ‘That’s a dangerous question, now, isn’t it? Perhaps I need more gumboots. Or an alpaca. Or maybe I need to pee.’

  Katie is blank-faced. ‘Do you need to pee?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me about the gumboots or the alpaca?’

  She bends down. ‘Because I am the Gumboot Police and the Colour Police and because it’s 8 pm and time to go to sleep. In the morning there are boxes to pack.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  She folds her arms so they make crisp right angles. ‘You ask me every day.’

  ‘Tell me again. Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m sorting through your stuff before you go to the nursing home. You can’t take all this with you.’ She waves a hand around the room as if proving some point.

  ‘Nothing is getting sorted and I’m not going anywhere, Katie!’

  ‘Eli said you were adamant about not wanting to leave your city flat, either, but now –’

  ‘Now I am here, and this is the right place to be. It says so in my notebook. Things I Am Sure of. Number two: Stay out of the nursing home.’

  Katie sighs. ‘Goodnight, and sweet dreams with your moonboots on.’ She opens the front door and there’s a waft of fresh, salty air through the house. Exactly the same smell as in town earlier today.

  ‘Wait. What’s that box?’ I point to a soggy one sitting on my back deck that I can see through the glass of the back door.

  She sighs. ‘There’s nothing there, Willa. You’re seeing things. Now goodnight!’ She closes the yellow front door, leaving me alone. Locking me in. Locking the stars out.

  I swallow hard. ‘I’m not seeing things!’ I say to the soggy box.

  I hurl a nearby gumboot at the front door. It lands without the thud I was hoping for, and nowhere near its target.

  ‘And I’m not going anywhere!’ I tell the boots on my feet.

  Something has woken me. I don’t know if I nodded off for a little snooze, but Katie isn’t here and I’m guessing she has already left for the evening. Who can know if you drop off for a little nap when you are at that stage of life where you regurgitate events and everyone simply wants you to get to the point? That age where dropping your spoon and peeing your pants a bit when you laugh might be considered a good night out.

  Putting my glasses on, I peer out the back door. Katie forgot to draw the curtains, and I can clearly see the shape of a girl wearing yellow gumboots through the glass. A peacock feather stapled to a newspaper crown on her head.

  A memory returns so clear I could cut it out and glue it on paper. I was little and it was night-time. That day, my mother collected a box from the post office addressed to me. A soggy thing that she was going to throw out until I begged her to let me have it. A box delivered by post seemed exciting, even if it was a bit wet.

  ‘If you want to keep the darn thing then you carry it back to the car,’ she said that afternoon in town.

  It’s dark outside, but I can still make out the girl on my back deck from the lamplight of my living room. She holds the box tightly, looking out into the backyard.

  My hands tingle again, and my nose stings with ocean air.

  ‘That’s the box!’ I point a crooked finger. She doesn’t turn around. The box in her hands drips, and the drips puddle on the deck and turn to sand.

  She stands taller, tries to grow bigger. She’s all of about seven or eight.

  As I stare at her, more memories of the afternoon we got the box come stumbling back to me. Oh, I remember wanting that box fiercely. Mum said I had to leave it outside. Too messy for her house.

  My goodness, is it possible I’ve been waiting until I’m ninety-three years old to meet my younger self? That’s a lot of life dripping away. Childhood is its own kind of dripping, isn’t it?

  There she is, standing with her back to my door, shaking. She wants to open the box, but she should be in bed.

  I have to say hello, see her up close.

  I’m hoping my yellow gumboots look impressive as I try to get up to meet her, but my bones creak. I focus on the box in her skinny arms, wondering why I haven’t seen her until today.

  She walks away into the backyard before I can move.

  ‘I am Super Gumboots Willa too,’ I say, even though she didn’t ask. Because I’m sure of it now, and what else can I say that would be true?

  Then a wave of nausea comes over me. Her daddy. The night he finds her under the stars.

  ‘No, come back!’ I call out to Super Gumboots Willa. ‘Don’t go out there – something terrible will happen!’

  The words are out of my mouth, though I struggle to understand them. What happened to that little girl? No amount of rattling my brains will bring the memory to my mind, only that Super Gumboots Willa is not safe and she needs to stay inside.

  My toes curl up in my gumboots. ‘Come back!’ I yell again, but she is long gone. The smell of the ocean fades and she disappears.

  I knock my walker out of the way trying to get up, and soon I can’t remember why I keep trying to stand. Do I need to pee or get an alpaca? The night is full of untucked blankets and frantic glances at the back door. Someone has written in my notebook, Things I Am Sure of, 3. Find Super Gumboots Willa.

  Chapter Five

  1965

  Willa Waters, aged 8

  The ocean comes in a box.

  The cardboard is soggy where it sits in the dirt in my backyard, sand clinging to the sides. A white note the size of a postcard is stuck on top of the box. Waves that look like storm clouds are drawn in swirls on one side. On the other side, in loopy handwriting, it reads: One ocean: plant in the backyard.

  Standing over the box, I scratch my head.

  The address label on the box says: 14 Seagrove Way, Boonah, 1965.

  Well, that’s us. ‘What do you think, Frog Dog?’ My Chihuahua snorts and nuzzles my leg.

  I look over my shoulder to check no one is watching, and then stare at the box again. My mango tree stands close behind me; the moon is watching, too. A few well-behav
ed growing-in-a-straight-line-because-Daddy-said-so plants grow in the garden under the mango tree, but that’s it. Only them and me and Frog Dog. My breath curls in the cold as I try to think of what to do with the box. I walk right around the rocky edge of the garden, thinking.

  I carefully tear the card off the box and tuck it inside the pocket of my robe. Good thing I’ve got gumboots on if I’m going to open a box full of ocean.

  The cardboard flaps open without much help. A bit of help. Okay, I pulled.

  What kind of ocean comes in a box?

  You should be able to collect oceans. That’d be some kind of magic job. That’s what I told Grammy that day, the Very-Best-Day-Ever, when she took us all to the beach and I saw this old Queenslander house with its happy sunshine-yellow door right by the sea. I imagined it was our home where Grammy, Mummy, Lottie and I lived safely and snuggly. Grammy said the house had butterfly stairs. Amaze-a-loo, a house with butterfly stairs! But if we couldn’t live there, then maybe we could pour the ocean into a jar and take it home to our dry-as-a-bone town. Grammy said oceans heal wounds and souls. I didn’t know what she meant, but I liked all the sand between our toes that day, and the way Mummy laughed and pushed Lottie on the swing. The way it was only us girls, and Daddy was at work. Grammy and Mummy having tea for two from a flask. Lottie and me playing chasey with the waves, and all of us having a fish-and-chip picnic. If you had an ocean in a jar you could catch that moment and keep it.

  But oceans that come in the post? That’s a magic I hadn’t thought of.

  I open the box one cardboard flap at a time. It doesn’t seem like a thing you should rush, although there’s this rushing feeling in the air, inside me. Like something has been set free, fireflies let loose, and now I want to catch them all.

  My fingers begin to tingle and the air around me is suddenly warm. It reminds me of Grammy’s kitchen. Beside me, Frog Dog wags her tail. I wonder if she’s thinking about Grammy and slurping bowls of cream-of-chicken soup too. Or when we had a midnight tea party with jam drop biscuits by the outdoor fireplace on Grammy’s back deck. Possums came and twitched their noses while they sniffed at the bread and honey we left for them.

  The air now smells of Grammy’s jam drops baking in the oven, but that’s silly. There are no biscuits here.

  Peering into the box, I see it. Something.

  ‘There you are,’ I whisper.

  I lift it out and hold it up. Frog Dog and I look.

  An empty jar with the strawberry jam label peeling off. At the bottom is some greyish liquid. Dirty water? It’s nothing much at all. The jar sits in my hand. I think it might be staring at me.

  I wait.

  An ocean that asks to be planted should do stuff. Flap, hum, sparkle, glow or something. It should at least be full of water and it isn’t even that.

  I wait some more.

  Finally, I shake it, put it to my ear, turn it upside down. But it stays as it is. A jar with a greyish dribble at the bottom.

  I sniff. Frog Dog snorts. The water looks a bit swamp-ish, like it should stink. Instead the air smells of Grammy’s mint garden.

  There’s nothing for it but to dig a hole. I unscrew the lid and kick at the dirt with my gumboot, making a hole under the mango tree that should be about right.

  Then I hear him, behind me. He. Knows. I’m. Out. Of. Bed.

  I jump back. Frog growls. The jar slips from my hands, bumping against the tree, and then the water is gone. A Gone-Ocean or whatever it was, dripping down the tree trunk. But I’m not gonna cry. Definitely not that.

  Stand still now, Willa. Shh. Disappear.

  But I open my eyes and they get wider still. Now I see the jam jar didn’t break and that the ocean, the one I thought I lost, is now a puddle glowing blue near my foot. The air smells of salt water and I can hear waves, a gentle roar, like putting your ear against a seashell.

  Daddy is here now. Getting closer. Closer.

  It’s too late to run back to bed. My hands twist themselves together. What about my glowing ocean? He’s not the kind of daddy who would allow something glowing in his grass. Even weeds don’t dare dip their toes in here.

  I pick up the jam jar and screw the lid on, then hide it in the pocket of my robe with the card. I try to stand on the glowing water, to squash it. Frog runs about, too, but the blue spreads out, soaking into the ground. It stops when it hits the little rocky edge around the mango-tree garden. And then, from the glowing ground, up sprouts a blue leaf. I rush to stand on it. Another one pops up, and another, and another. An ocean that grows and won’t be squashed. I rush out of the garden and into the middle of the backyard. I stop.

  Daddy walks up beside me. I suck in air. But, when I look up at him, he gently pats my head.

  Sometimes being eight is loud and scary. Even here with my ocean growing and Daddy’s arms hanging at his side. His head turned to the sky. A breeze makes my hair go all twisty. Goosebumps tickle all over, but I try to be still.

  My toes dig into my gumboots and I almost run now. But what would happen to my ocean? I make myself think about the worms under the earth. Sometimes when I’m gardening with Grammy we count how many worms there are. Daddy gardens by ripping things out. I often think about how different that is from watching worms wiggle.

  Grammy says shoes can make a woman. I wonder what makes a man? When I was little like Lottie I used to say I wanted to be a man when I grew up. Now I’m bigger, I don’t think that’s so silly. You don’t have to be scared if you’re a man and you can stomp around. That’s why I’m Super Gumboots Willa, because with boots on my feet, my steps are bigger.

  I peer upwards and try to spot what Daddy is seeing in the sky. It’s all black paint up there. Sheets and sheets of black.

  Grammy says God pegs the night from His washing line and puts His sun to bed with a kiss. That’s what I think, too.

  Daddy says God made the night, the stars, the ever-expanding universe.

  ‘Nothing is hidden from God’s sight,’ he says, but he can’t believe that. Daddy would act different if he thought God was always watching.

  I squint.

  My head turns from side to side. The seconds get longer and my feet itch, but I can’t see anything up there. Frog Dog stays close. The blue still glows strong in the garden under my mango tree. Daddy is lost looking at the skies. That’s good. He hasn’t seen my glowing ocean.

  I look back at our tin house on stilts to see if Lottie has followed me outside, but she hasn’t. Daddy mows our grass so short he kills patches of it. Our house has a corrugated-iron roof and walls, and everything leaks. Stuffy hot in the summer and freeze-your-nose-off cold in the winter. I hate that house, with its lean to the left. I want it to fall down. Maybe Daddy will fall down with it.

  Okay, take a breath. ‘What are we looking for?’ I ask him.

  ‘Stars.’ Daddy doesn’t turn his head.

  I look up. Hard. Harder. ‘Where?’

  ‘Up there. It takes a long time for their light to get to us because we are so far away, but they are still there, even if you can’t see them. The sky changes if you keep looking.’

  Daddy doesn’t say any more. He is with his stars.

  ‘See me, see me, see me, see me,’ I tell the stars.

  ‘Quiet, Willa!’

  I press my hands over my mouth, in case more words escape. When I’m about to give up ever seeing the stars, I pull out my Glittery-Best-Storytelling-Glasses. They’re not real glasses, only playthings.

  Ta-da! Those shy lights peek out at me from the black sheets in the sky. Pop, pop, pop. There are so many I wonder how I didn’t spy them before.

  ‘Oh! There they are.’ I’m so excited I bounce up close to Daddy.

  ‘You see them?’ He pats my head and I hug him, forgetting that I am Willa, and he is Daddy.

  ‘It can take a while for your eyes to adjust to the darkness, but you’ll notice more if you keep looking.’

  I do. I look and look through my glasses. So many pins of light sp
rinkled above houses and lower over nearby paddocks, where the sky is darker.

  I wonder how many stars exactly. Whisper-counting, I check off each tiny light with my pointy finger. More stars pop out, winking at me, winking at the cows in the paddocks. Winking at the ga-roos. That’s what Lottie calls the kangaroos.

  So many stars. Too many to count. Did I spot that one already? I count again. And again … and drats! I make it all the way to three hundred and two, then give up.

  A question inside me gets bigger and bigger. Too walloping to squash. I bet Daddy knows how many stars there are, so I ask. He laughs and it sounds strange. I don’t hear him laugh much. Is he making fun of me? He seems happy, so I laugh too. It’s so nice, this sound of us together. I want to laugh and laugh.

  ‘There are millions upon millions. Scientists don’t know how many. They estimate because there’s too many to count.’ He folds his arms.

  ‘The scientists are counting?’ My eyes are wide.

  ‘They are. And giving them names.’

  I smile at that. ‘Naming the stars. That’s some kind of magic job, hey Frog Dog?’ I bend down to scratch her ears. Maybe I’ll become an astronaut and rocket-ship into space. I’ll be big enough to walk on the moon in my gumboots one day.

  Maybe stars are magic, or maybe it’s my glasses, or the night that isn’t empty anymore because of a soggy cardboard box, but Daddy tells me lots of special things he knows.

  ‘There’s the Southern Cross – you see it?’

  I nod that I do, but all the stars look the same to me.

  Daddy says, ‘It’s one of the most famous of all the southern constellations, and we also have it on our flag. Early explorers used the Southern Cross as a compass in the sky.’

  He goes on and on. Sharing his stars is such fun that I try to understand everything.

  ‘We live in the Southern Hemisphere. Do you know what a hemisphere is?’ He doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘The bright star band of the Milky Way is clearest in a winter sky, though the moon’s not helping a lot tonight. It’s too full. Fuller than it should be. Strange, that.’