by Tabitha Bird
I look at her and decide I’m going to say it.
‘Could I make up an old lady and then see her in my garden?’
Grammy clicks her tongue. ‘Do you know Alice in Wonderland?
I nod, but I don’t really know Alice. She’s only in a book.
‘Alice believed impossible things and had a grand adventure.’
‘What about the queen who said, “Off with her head”?’
Grammy laughs. ‘Tell me, did Alice’s head roll? Or did she follow all those impossible things right back home?’
I blink. ‘Do you think I’m being silly?’
Grammy pulls me onto her lap again. ‘Just the right amount of silly. A spoonful and never more. Maybe you need this old lady. You can make up any ole thing you want.’
‘But is she real?’
‘That depends. Is she real to you?’
I shrug.
‘Oh, my little thoughtful one. Maybe impossible things don’t enjoy being worked out. Maybe they simply want you to see.’
‘See what?’
‘That, poppet, is up to you.’
Chapter Thirty
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
My greatest achievement today is dropping Eli off at school. Winter grey fills me.
I’m about to blend into the couch and stare blankly at the TV while Seb has a daytime nap when the sound of waves makes me stop by the back door. A tingling begins in my fingers.
The phone rings and I dive to answer it before it wakes Seb.
‘I’ve met someone,’ Mother coos. I wonder what hell she’d unleash if I simply hung up? I know this tone, all teenage starry eyes mixed with popping champagne corks. ‘He’s sixty-six and so smart –’
‘Is Lottie with you?’
But Mother is in full party mode, lost in her own conversation. ‘He’s making noises about marrying me –’
‘Lottie! Is. Lottie. With. You?’ I snap.
‘You know she isn’t, and I’m trying to tell you about Paul.’ Her voice is clipped now.
‘My father came around here yesterday and I’m worried about Lottie,’ I say, a headache already behind my eyes.
Mother doesn’t even pause. ‘Are you listening to me? This isn’t about your father or Lottie. This is about my life and how I am trying to move on and have a little piece of happiness. The past is over. Forget it.’
‘Yes, you’re good at that. Forgetting. Putting a bandaid on things, pretending things weren’t that bad. You knew what my father was doing to us was wrong.’ I’ve done it now. Crossed the line. Childhood on one side, roadkill on the other.
‘I get it. I will never be good enough. Are you happy?’ Her voice is edging towards a screech.
‘Ridiculously so, Mother. I’m self-harming because of all the crap in my past. Did you know that? Do you even care?’
‘So you’re blaming me for it?’
The phone crackles against my ear, Mother saying other things. But the sound of waves from outside is so loud I can’t hear her anymore.
I drop the phone.
The mango tree reaches to the sky, and around its trunk cloud-waves lap.
Under the tree, there she is. Super Gumboots Willa with her arms folded and her face unwashed. She’s panting like she ran a long way to get here. I gather myself upright. I invited her here; it’s time to listen to her stories, to face things. But deep inside I’m hoping there’s a way to help Lottie. A way to make things right between us. A way to save her.
‘I’ve come from Grammy’s house to see you!’ She takes out a note from her pocket and shoves it in my face. At first I think it’s the note I sent her inviting her here.
Gone to the beach.
Love Silver Willa
‘See? She left me because I got mad at her. So, now you have to help!’
I wave the note away. ‘She’s probably gone on a little holiday. People do that, you know. Besides, last time you came here you said you hated me.’
‘Yeah, well. That was then.’ She folds the note and puts it back in her pocket. ‘That was when you said I should tell Mummy about the garden. Well, I told her. And guess what? She didn’t listen. And he. Daddy. They. They had this fight and Lottie was dropped and then went into hospital and now she won’t talk much or even come out of her room. It’s your fault!’
‘Lottie got hurt? That’s what happened? That’s why you were really mad at me?’
She nods.
I dropped Lottie on the stairs. We dropped Lottie on the stairs. Everything is happening the same way it did before. Choices have been made, and our family is already damaged. It’s too late.
‘I can’t do this with you. I thought replanting the garden might help me heal the past, that maybe I could help Lottie. But I can’t watch you go through everything again. I’m sorry.’
I turn and walk inside.
Super Gumboots Willa follows me into my house. ‘Wait! Grammy said it’s okay to believe in impossible things. I believe in you.’
I march on, but she catches me in the kitchen and pulls another letter from her pocket, shoving it in front of my face. ‘You’re Middle Willa, right? Well, you said to meet in the garden …’
‘I know, I know I said that. Look, I’m so sorry. I never managed to save Mother. Some people don’t want to be saved.’ Then quieter, I say, ‘I haven’t saved Lottie. God knows, I’ve tried. You have to believe me.’ For a moment we both stand there, big and little, not speaking, not knowing what to do.
Finally, I say, ‘It’s too late. It’s all broken, everything. And it is my fault. I know you want me to change things, but it won’t work.’
She reaches out her hand, but I walk straight by. Her eyes are my eyes. Her memories are my memories. Fears. Guilt.
Super Gumboots Willa follows, her voice begging. ‘But you could try again. We can make up a new story to tell Mummy and Lottie and –’
‘No!’
I close my bedroom door, but she opens it. ‘Have you started making picture books yet?’
‘What?’ I pause.
‘I told you that’s what we want to be when we grow up.’ She opens drawers, pulling out shirts and socks. ‘Where are they? Where are your drawings?’
‘I grew up, okay? You think it won’t ever happen, but it does. And then there are more important things to do.’
‘Like what? Grammy says stories can change the world. Help me make up a really amaze-a-loo plan. I’ll make you mango ice cream and be good forever.’ Quietly, she adds, ‘I’m sorry I said I hated you.’
I walk out of the room and through the back door to the garden. She comes too.
Under the mango tree, I stop. ‘Please, go home.’ I kneel in front of her. ‘I am you. We are the same, right?’
She nods.
‘I can’t help because it’s already happened. Don’t you see? Your parents made their choices.’
‘But if you get someone to help?’ she splutters.
‘No one can see me but you. Only kids and the Willas can see each other. The past has already happened and it can’t be changed. I’m sorry, it’s simply the miserable way of the world.’ Before I burst into a sobbing I won’t be able to stop, I turn away. Without looking back, I run inside. She is the bruise in my soul. But what can I do?
I ring Sam and ask him to collect Eli from school. He deserves so much better than this wife who can’t cope, this mother who’s afraid she’ll give in to hiding in the bathroom with sharp things.
Rocking Seb in his chair, I hum a song that calms us both. He drifts off with his blankie in those chubby little hands. I hum as I put him in his big-boy bed then I tiptoe to my room and lie down.
‘What happened today?’ Sam sticks his head around the corner of the door. What time is it? How long have I been asleep? I can hear Eli in his room. Sam must have told him to give me some space.
‘I can’t face her!’ I crawl further under the covers regardless of the fact that the day hasn’t ended and dinner won’t cook itsel
f.
Sam sits on the end of the bed. ‘Can’t face who?’
‘Me! And I’m not telling you if I cut anymore.’
‘But you said – We agreed you would.’
‘What good does it do? Telling you doesn’t stop me from doing it.’ This is the real me. Island Willa. Population: one. Sam visits, but he doesn’t get to stay. The truth is that I don’t let anyone see the full extent of my wounds, my trauma. Even in all the years I’ve been married to Sam, I don’t let him into the places I truly need him. I learnt young that to love with all of your self, with two feet in the circle, makes you far too vulnerable. You are never the same when someone breaks you, so you keep some part of yourself hidden to survive, in case they do. And once you know that people who are supposed to love you can break you, then you are always waiting for it to happen, even if the next person never does.
‘But I want to know. I want –’ Sam searches the air as if there might be words floating by, soft and perfectly fashioned to bandage his wife’s wounds.
‘You want some hero part to play, is that it?’
I hate my words even as I say them. This is me casting him in a production of Save Willa against his will. It’s so terrifying to me that Sam might leave in the midst of my pain that I push him away.
Sam sighs. ‘Okay. If that’s what you want. I only wanted to know because … I care. Because I want to be there for you after, and – I don’t know. Do whatever you want.’
He leaves, walks to the study. I have won my solitude, the most terrible prize of all.
Chapter Thirty-one
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
Seed Counselling Services, the sign says, the name of Dr Solomon Williams’ new practice. Sam was thrilled that I got an appointment so quickly and offered to drive me, but I’ve come alone. I promised that I’d be fine.
When I enter the yard, basset hounds greet me with their floppy ears and love-me-forever eyes. As I walk to the front door of the house where Solomon has his counselling room, I pat their ears, encouraging them to walk with me. It might be the only way I make it to the front door.
Inside, Solomon’s office is bland. Off-white walls, a plastic fern in a corner and a painting in washed-out colours that hangs slightly off-centre on the wall behind him. Vague things that don’t carry much emotion. Maybe that’s how this room copes with all the stories it must hear. A vocabulary of human wreckage, even in the words that aren’t said.
Solomon sits across from me, his boots copper coloured, knee high, army style. Lottie had a pair exactly the same. I almost walk out of the room, except I made a promise to Sam that I would stay.
He speaks first. ‘Welcome back, Willa. What do you bring with you today?’
What an opening question. Oh, just two other people. A child, aged eight, and an old lady, aged ninety-three. Want to hear the fun part? They are both me. Which is, you know, impossible. You’ve heard this one before.
Instead I say, ‘I bring me.’ Honest, not specific. But honest. Solomon is still. His eyes and skin are deep almond, and his face perhaps has a few more lines than last time, but otherwise he is unchanged. He is way over six foot tall standing, but the quietness of him, the relaxed slope of his shoulders and the way he holds his hands together in his lap, make him less giant and more gentle.
‘You bring you?’ he says. ‘Tell me about that.’
I try to think how to word this so he won’t have me committed someplace. In my mind I can see the mental hospital they eventually put Lottie into.
I visited once.
Mother took me to see her after hours. I was eighteen and Lottie only fourteen, but we might as well have been the same age. What age are you when your insides have burst open and life is that precarious? Lottie and I were at once brought together by our grief and separated by it.
The nurse punched a code to open the front door. It wasn’t visiting hours, clearly. Didn’t we know? Even though the entry sign stated the opening times, Mother said we were family and should be bloody well able to come whenever we wanted. The nurse ended the conversation by folding her arms and saying something tightly between very thin lips.
Lottie slipped into the foyer unannounced. Her boots copper coloured, knee high, army style. She was more shadow than girl. She wore her clothes the way you might carelessly throw something over a coat hook.
I edged closer to her. ‘Lottie?’
She reeked of cigarette smoke when I hugged her. That’s what I tried to focus on, anyway. I was not thinking about how her bones protruded from under her shirt, or about the sores on her face. Scabs picked at while they were trying to heal over.
When I hugged her I was transported to that eight-year-old self all over again. It was that night on the stairs and Lottie was slipping away.
I edged into a chair in the corner of the foyer because I needed somewhere to stuff my useless self. Lottie’s eyes darted, settling on nothing.
Lottie? Want a story? Wanna find bugs under the mango tree?
The nurse said we could stay for fifteen minutes and made it clear that next time we should respect visiting hours.
‘Respect? Pfft.’ Mother spat the words out, then walked over to Lottie. It was an awkward moment: two strangers, one standing with lank arms hanging by her side, and the other squeezing her.
I sat on the edge of my seat, hands shoved underneath me.
I should have said sisterly things like, ‘It’ll be okay,’ and other rubbish that wasn’t true.
Eventually Lottie walked away.
Over her shoulder she said, ‘Dad did do those things. I didn’t make them up.’
My heart skittered out under the bright lights, following Lottie down the corridor.
Solomon should know about how heavy a sister is to hold, even years after you’ve dropped her. I’m here to say these things, obviously. But how do those words sound when you speak them?
After I breathe again I say, ‘It’s my fault.’
I blurt out about Super Gumboots Willa too, and Silver Willa, and how I’ve self-harmed. About Lottie and how I don’t know where she is and that my father tried to force his way into my house looking for her. It comes out in a rush.
A long moment passes, then Solomon says, ‘Can you tell me more about Super Gumboots Willa?’
He can’t be serious.
‘I think the children we were can live on into adulthood; they just live on inside us. Maybe your little girl has something very important to tell you,’ Solomon says. So, he thinks I am being metaphorical. I decide to leave him with his assumptions.
‘And what do you call yourself in this story?’ he asks.
‘Middle Willa.’
He uncrosses his legs. ‘You have some imagination. Have you ever thought that story might be what saved you as a child, that it might be what saves you now?’
I don’t answer.
‘And what about Silver Willa with her broken mind? What’s important about her?’
I look out the window, anywhere but in his eyes.
Gently, Solomon says, ‘Tell me about Lottie, then. You mentioned feeling responsible for her.’
I was three. Mummy’s face was wet. Her crying walked all the way to her chin.
When Mummy had a big belly I said I didn’t want the baby. When the baby was born I told God I didn’t want her. But then one morning Mummy went to wake her up and she was dead. ‘What does dead mean?’ I asked. I asked. I asked.
‘Gone,’ Mummy said. ‘Just gone.’
I didn’t watch her enough. I said I didn’t want her. And now she was gone.
Mummy held the elephant teddy and sat in the rocking chair. There was an empty cot.
‘But where’s Ruby-Jae?’
She held the elephant and rocked. ‘Please, Willa. Stop asking.’ Her face was red. She didn’t look like Mummy and I wanted her to look like my mummy again.
‘But where do babies go when they are gone?’
She pushed me out of the room. ‘Leave
me alone!’
‘What is it that you want, Willa?’
To watch over Lottie. I want to say those words, but they won’t come out. They’re stuck in the memory of Ruby-Jae’s death. Years later I learnt a devastating new word: SIDS. The unexplained death of an infant, also known as cot death, because that’s where they were when they didn’t wake up.
Solomon tries again. ‘What do you think Super Gumboots Willa wants?’
‘To be safe. For me to fix the past, but I can’t.’
He studies me, his deep brown eyes searching my face. ‘The past is definitely the past, but it can reappear in our present moment in many forms. Maybe the question is, what could a little girl and an old lady show you that might help you make important choices for your life now?’
Solomon is quiet for a while, but when he speaks again his words are sure. ‘Because I know one thing, Willa. We are all the ages we have ever been. We carry around our trauma. And if we have unfinished business at one of those ages we can’t move on to have a healthy adult life.’
Solomon reaches over to a notepad and tears off a piece of paper. He writes something in large block letters and hands it to me.
An invitation:
Have you met Super Gumboots Willa?
Where: You decide
When: In your own time
Chapter Thirty-two
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
Fat drops fall from the sky again. All week we’ve had wet weather and the boys are sick of being inside. When Saturday rolls around and it’s still raining, even the inside of the house is sick of being inside. The boys make fingermarks on the glass windows and wish for sunshine, begging Sam to let them go to work with him.
Sam kisses the boys and apologises for the weekend work.
I pry Seb from where he’s attached himself to his dad’s legs.
Sam looks over his shoulder at me as he walks out the door. There’s a coolness in our mutual gaze and neither one of us knows how to stop the growing nothingness.
In the afternoon, Grammy visits. The boys crawl all over her lap. She insisted on coming over when I told her about my counselling session with Solomon, but it’s taken me some weeks to be ready to talk to her about it. I haven’t seen my younger self in a while; no doubt Super Gumboots Willa is mad at me. Last I heard, Silver Willa was on some beach holiday. I begin to wonder when the ocean-garden will bring the old woman and me together, and if I’m ready to meet her now I’m an adult. If people joke about meeting a future self they imagine messages like: Worry less, have more fun, things will work out. After my childhood, older me is more likely to say, Install deadlocks, take up kickboxing and watch for opportunities to throttle things with your bare hands. Or maybe that’s the advice I hope she has to impart. I’ll want to ask her about Lottie of course, but I won’t. I fear I already know that it didn’t end well for her.
