by Tabitha Bird
I wipe my lips with the back of my hand. Lipstick spreads across my cheek. A clown face stares back at me now. Frog Dog jumps on Mummy and Daddy’s bed, watching me.
‘You’re just a little girl,’ I tell the mirror, and poke out my tongue at myself.
Wait. I have an idea. I pull Mummy’s dress off and tie one of her headscarves around my neck.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask the mirror.
‘I am Willa Grace. Same middle name as Grammy,’ my reflection says back.
‘Stupid emotional female. What’s so great about you anyways?’
I take the letter from Silver Willa off Mummy’s dresser and flatten it out on the bed. The one from Middle Willa gets shoved in my pocket.
Dear Super Gumboots Willa,
You must be sad, but I know what to do. Sing. Dance with gumboots on. And make carrots that taste like ice cream.
From Silver Willa. (You know, ’cause I have silver hair.)
P.S. Did you plant the ocean? Isn’t it fabulous?
My reflection pouts. ‘I invented carrots that taste like ice cream.’
‘Ooh, amaze-a-loo. What else can you do?’ I put my hands on my hips.
‘I can become big,’ my reflection says.
‘How big?’ I stare. Frog Dog stares, too. If she was lion-sized she’d save us all.
Thinking, thinking. What’s a very big number?
‘Ninety-three,’ my reflection says. ‘And I can save my sister.’
‘Hurry up, then. I need you,’ I answer back.
Chapter Twenty-seven
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
The days past have smelt like bleach, reminding me of hospitals. I can’t bring myself to clean with it anymore. I’ve switched to lemon myrtle. A homemade concoction, all natural, altogether devoid of horrid memories.
There’s a knock at the door, though I’m not expecting anyone. I hear small scuffs. Could it be Lottie? I race to the door, throw it open. Every day I check in with the local police, but they’ve heard nothing. I imagine her finding her way to me.
But it’s my father who is crammed in the doorway. June winds gust their way past me, bringing smells of dead grasses and tired lands. Every inch of me stops still.
‘Can I come in?’ It’s a demand more than a question. We used to see my father on occasion before the boys were born. With my sons came a new awareness of the danger I could place them in if we kept seeing him. At first I can’t imagine what he is doing here, until I think maybe he still has Lottie and he’s bringing her here or wants to tell me something about her. I try to look past him.
‘How are you?’ he says. ‘My grandsons? I’d like to meet them, you know.’ Mother told him I have sons, despite my wishes. ‘Is Lottie with you? Let me in. I just want to talk to her.’
So Lottie isn’t with him, then?
I try to pull the door closed on his foot, but he catches it with his hands. ‘She isn’t here, Dad.’ I set my body behind the door and look for what else I can jam between us. There’s an umbrella in the basket in the entryway. I grab it with one hand and hold it out of his sight.
His voice is still calm, but sickly so. ‘Well, maybe you and I can talk? A quick cup of tea? Surely you want to be a good sister and help me find Lottie.’ He has half a shoulder in the doorway now.
He reaches to the little table we have beside the door. There’s a card there. Seed Counselling Services. ‘Is this where Lottie goes?’
‘No, it’s me, it’s mine.’ I snatch it from him and push harder against the door. Why did I say that?
‘I have to go. I can hear the phone.’ I will the phone to ring. What else can I grab? With my foot, I drag the basket over, like it will be any help at all. My insides churn. I have a sleeping toddler inside and Sam isn’t home.
‘What will you talk about in counselling?’ His voice gathers momentum.
There’s the wooden hallstand. Could I push that behind the door? No, if I let go of the door he’ll have access to the entire house.
I don’t answer.
He tries again, softer this time. ‘I know it was hard on you girls, but I did the best I could and there are other things you don’t understand. All I want is a chance to fix things.’
His voice reaches out, almost vulnerable. If I didn’t remember how he was when I was a child I’d be forgiven for thinking this was a tender moment.
He pushes harder against the door. ‘You don’t need counselling. There’s nothing to say. We might not have been perfect, but families stick together.’
I’m shaking all over. ‘Look, I have to go.’
I sense he is trying to word something carefully. ‘Maybe I did things that you misinterpreted as a child?’
Again, I scan the entryway. Keys on the hallstand. Don’t people in horror movies use them to gouge eyes? What else could I use if he forced his way inside?
‘All I want is for our relationship to get better. I’d have a thing or two to tell that counsellor. I should be there if you’re talking about me.’ He starts to say more, but I cut him off.
‘You should leave. Sam will be home any minute,’ I lie, my full body weight against the door, but he leans heavily too.
I push the door as hard as I can, and he moves his shoulder and hands from the doorjamb. When it’s properly closed, I lock it.
On the other side, I hear his ragged breathing. Every part of me tightens. Bones. Sinews. He finally walks away and I hear him drive off. Only the howl of wind is left behind, a physical thing prowling.
As soon as he’s gone I ring Sam and he says he’s leaving work right away. I ask him to collect Eli from school, too. I need everyone home and safe.
I check Seb repeatedly; his little torso rises and falls with sleep. The whale-print blankie in a swirl around him. I touch his cheek, tell myself over and over that he is okay.
I race around closing curtains and checking every door and window is locked. Every light in the house I turn on, except for the one in Seb’s room.
I run to the bathroom and throw up, then shove myself into a corner. As I wait for Sam in the empty house, I fade to nothing. There on the green tiles, I give in to my need to hurt myself.
Chapter Twenty-eight
2050
Willa Waters, aged 93
Early morning creeps through the window. I’ve been watching the darkness, how it clutches my house and threatens to hold on until the sky breaks to become morning. For some reason, I’m thinking about basset hounds and how fabulous Grammy said dogs were.
Eden’s awake early, too. She slouches in the chair opposite me, robe pulled around her, slippers on and her hair a nest. There are boxes standing to attention all over my house. My collections packed.
‘You didn’t sleep well either?’ she says.
‘Do you live here now?’ I answer her question with my own.
‘For a little while, until we have you ready to move.’
I evil-stare at her, but I don’t think it’s working. She merely yawns, then says, ‘I left a message for Eli when you asked a few weeks back. He called me yesterday, but … he’s not sure. He’s thinking about it.’
‘Not sure about basset hounds or sleeping?’
Eden chuckles. ‘About Seb. About coming over here to talk to you about Seb. He asked if you could give him a bit more time.’
‘No, I can’t, Eden. I don’t have enough time myself. Can you find out where we can buy some from? I’m going to need more.’ I chew my lip.
‘Don’t we all.’ Eden considers her feet. I wonder if she’s thinking that she’ll need some new gumboots.
‘Stay always?’ I say.
Eden folds her hands. ‘We’ve been over and over this. My apartment is in the city. My business, the veterinary practice that I started from scratch, is there and occasionally I still go in. My life is there. And besides, I don’t like the country. Vets out here are up to their armpits in cow!’
‘You could be a Viking,’ I say hopefully.
‘You don’t drink coffee, dear.’
‘I do now,’ she says. ‘Oh, and Mum? I found a whole bunch of clothes outside under the mango tree. They’re all wet and sandy. Looks like they’ve been out there for a little bit. You haven’t been going outside on your own, have you?’
In my best jingle-bells voice, I say, ‘Nope. Pinkie promise.’
She frowns. ‘Hmmm, there was a letter in the tree, too. I put it all on your side table.’
While Eden’s making coffee, I pick up a scarf and a blue-gold flowery dress that Mother liked to call her tropical hipster dress. Hold them close and breathe them in. Why do these things upset me?
I also find a letter.
Dear Silver Willa,
I am going to visit your castle and see if you’re real. I’ve got carrots and mangos. You bring the ice cream. Don’t forget.
From Super Gumboots Willa
P.S. I have a new plan.
At the bottom of the letter is a drawing of an ice-cream mountain and a child standing on top with a spoon. The spoon is the size of a shovel. I wonder where you find those types of mountains? What a sticky hike that would be. Imagine if it rained ice cream.
Using my walker, I pull myself up. She is coming: Super Gumboots Willa, here in my house. My walker should be called a shuffler because that’s what I do with it. I try to find my best red gumboots, but Eden’s put almost everything in boxes. ‘You’re getting rid of me!’
Eden returns and stands looking at me with her coffee in hand. ‘That’s a bit dramatic.’
‘These boxes are a bit dramatic. There’s no need for them. I’m trying to help Willa and you’ve become the Packing Police. There’s hardly any stuff left!’
She tries to guide me to my chair and says I mustn’t upset myself. Says she’s trying to help Willa, too. And that’s when I fling my arm out wide and knock her coffee cup.
‘You’re not helping Willa! You’ve packed her away, and now she will leave Sam and a bad thing happens to Seb.’
But I’m seated, and told not to move. Broken crockery is cleared away and Eden tells the radio to turn on. No one else is allowed to talk.
The announcer is reading out the funeral notices. He’s too young for that job. He’s too young to imagine he could be on that list one day.
‘When my number’s up, I’ll be on a list, too. I want it to read: Willa Waters, aged one hundred and ten, ate ice cream with a shovel, visited a castle with moonboots on and never got packed away in boxes. I wonder, though, is that a bit too long for a funeral notice? And can you live to one hundred and ten?’
Eden mumbles something, clears away the mess someone made and says she’s having a shower.
Carrots that taste like ice cream? For some reason that thought makes me sad. I put my glittery glasses on.
Still holding the clothes and the letter, I hear a song. ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ is floating in from my back deck. I know the tune, but I’m sure the words are made up.
When I look out the back glass door, there she is. Super Gumboots Willa making up songs. Good for her. Real lyrics are for people who need others to tell them what to put in their mouths.
‘Hey diddle diddle, the man called Mr Twiddle danced with the roo and the whale. What a shame people laughed when they all fell, ’cause the roo put them all in jail!’ Her singing is bad enough to make the mangos she’s holding in her shirt squish themselves. How beautiful. She should be on the radio.
I chuckle. I remember teaching that song to Lottie.
‘Sing it at my funeral,’ I said.
‘What’s a fun-a-rol?’ she asked.
‘It’s where nobody sings crazy songs. Grammy says people should jolly well do what others want at their funerals. I want a crazy song.’
Lottie cried when she found out what a funeral really was.
‘Super Gumboots Willa?’ I ask. Things come flooding back: she has to help me, and we have to help Middle Willa. We have to stop her getting in that car and saying goodbye to her children.
Super Gumboots Willa opens the door and stomps right into my living room. ‘I’m here,’ she says, looking about. ‘Amaze-a-loo! This looks like my living room.’
She pokes her head through the doorway to the kitchen and walks in. ‘And this is my lemon-and-blue kitchen, too, but … your wallpaper is peeling and … What happened to the oven?’
I manage to stand and shuffle after her on my walker. Oh goodness, Eden will not be happy. Super Gumboots Willa has dropped her mangos everywhere. One of them is squashed under her foot as she backs into the wall.
‘There was a nice man who didn’t have an oven, so I gave it to him.’
‘What nice man? Was he a daddy?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know, dear. Maybe?’
Her face flushes suddenly. ‘Daddies are not nice men! You shoulda kept the oven. How you gonna bake jam drops now? Are you going to give him the house, too? The jam jar, the ocean-garden? He can’t have it! Daddy can’t have our house. He breaks everything.’ She throws a mango at the kitchen cabinets and it’s so ripe it squishes everywhere. ‘He breaks Mummy. Me. Lottie.’ The more she talks about her dad the more she throws mangos until the cabinets and floor are covered with furry seeds and pulp. She stands there, panting from the effort of mango-bombing my kitchen.
‘Sometimes there are not enough mangos in the whole world, hey?’ I say as she sinks to the floor in the mush.
I unfold the letter and reread it. ‘I’m not sure if I have any ice cream.’
Super Gumboots Willa points a finger at me. ‘Don’t come any closer!’
I should say something. ‘I like you more than carrot-picking.’
Her eyes dart wildly about the kitchen. There I am, caught with an ache inside me. And there she is, here, with old-lady me. This is … I don’t know what this is. A visit to a castle?
‘We can make bubblegum ice cream as long as we don’t need an oven,’ I tell her, mostly because I’m not sure what to say. Are there words for introducing yourself to yourself?
She swallows. ‘You have my letter and you’re wearing my glasses.’
I don’t say anything because suddenly I have words on top of words. So many words that are stuck inside me.
I was eight. I was her and I collected mangos to make pulp and mix it with carrots then freeze it so I could make ice cream. Squeezing things was good. Mango guts dripping. My hands were strong. I was big. I could make things happen.
The ice cream was for my mother and I thought I’d call it Mango Gum. Or Bubble Squeeze. Or Carrot-Mango Ice Cream. I knew Mummy would be mad about the mess, but I made the ice cream anyway because if she tasted it then she’d know it was magic and she would come and see my ocean under the mango tree. We could bust Lottie out of hospital and carry her through the ocean-garden.
‘Do you know who I am?’ I ask the little girl.
‘Kinda. Maybe.’ She stands up, slipping a bit in the mango pulp.
‘I am you.’ I point to her and then to me, trying to hold firmly to the walker with my other hand and to not slip on the mangos.
Her face pales.
She stumbles towards the kitchen sink. ‘You’re not real. You’re only pretend. I pretended you. I wanted to be big. See?’ Her voice jitters.
I poke my arm. ‘Um … I think I am very much here.’
Super Gumboots Willa and me. Gumboots and slippers. Under the roof of our house, where walls hold our secrets. Where we grew. Where I grew.
She scowls. ‘I wrote a letter. I put Mummy’s dress on and … I invented carrots that tasted like ice cream. I hate carrots.’
‘Me too.’
We look at each other.
‘Sometimes I spill my milk at the dinner table,’ she says.
‘Oh, I do that too.’
She narrows her eyes. ‘I’m not supposed to throw rocks, but when no one’s looking I throw them at Daddy’s tru
ck.’
I tap the side of my nose. ‘Ah, yes. I do things I’m not supposed to when no one is looking as well.’
She creeps closer on her tiptoes, as if small could be made big.
‘Mummy doesn’t need my stories.’
I reach out with one hand. ‘I need them.’
Her own hands are stiff beside her.
‘I wish I could fit into your boots,’ I say.
‘I wish I could be big.’ Her eyes are rimmed with water.
No crying, I would say to myself. Definitely not that.
Super Gumboots Willa’s eyes are pebble grey and wide, and her hair chopped very short.
I say, ‘I am Willa Grace. Same middle name as Grammy.’
She turns her head to the side. ‘You already said that when I looked in the mirror, but I was pretending,’ she whispers.
‘Did I say it before or after inventing carrot ice cream?’
‘Before. You said you could be big. You said you could save my sister.’ She sinks to the floor of my kitchen. ‘You are me, but old?’
I nod.
‘And you live in …’ She looks around my kitchen with the faded lemon benchtops and the all-but-peeled-off floral wallpaper. ‘In my house. It’s old, too?’
‘Ah, now you have it! See, there’s an ocean-garden that links the three Willas. Take the notebook and pen out of my pocket and write that down.’
She gets up slowly and takes my notebook. ‘So that’s what happens when I water the garden and then when I walk past the rocky edge it gets all foggy and I end up in another backyard? I visit Middle Willa or you? And I call you Silver Willa, right, ’cause of your hair?’
I slouch forwards. ‘Yes, yes and yes. Now do you think you could get an old lady a seat?’
She drags a chair in from the dining room and helps me sit down.
‘Ah, that’s better,’ I say. There’s mango all over my slippers.
She studies me a moment, then in her best handwriting she pens, 25. There’s an ocean-garden that links the three Willas.
‘Add our names and a bit about us too, dear,’ I say.
