by Tabitha Bird
Lottie Ebony Waters got born on the oneth of February. I said that over and over so I didn’t forget. Oneth. February. I told the post lady giving Mummy stamps, the milkman taking our glass bottles, a kid playing hopscotch, and the butcher wrapping meat in three paper bags for us. I even told the crows.
I held Lottie at the hospital. I did This Little Piggy Went to Market on her toes. And when she got grumbly, I whispered a story in her ears and she stopped. I was a big sister. Did you hear me, world? And this time I was going to watch and watch her. Mummy said I could be a big help. She could be my baby, too.
I had Frog Dog and Lottie. For a while I had them both.
‘Frog Dog is dead.’ I can’t even look at Silver Willa. ‘You know what happened to her.’
Frog Dog snuffles and snorts while I run my hand over her body. I don’t know how long I sit cradling her. Long enough for Silver Willa to drift off to sleep. I am so glad that when I get to be as old as her I’m going to invade people’s homes and tell their thin-haired fathers to leave. And then I laugh. Out loud. And it wakes us both up.
A small knock sounds at the back door.
Silver Willa waves for me to answer it.
‘Who is it?’ I ask.
‘Go see. That’s good advice, dear.’
I’m not up for any more visitors and I nearly tell Silver Willa that, but she’s dozing again.
When I open the door I see Super Gumboots Willa. Lank arms, hair matted and wild, like she’s come in from the desert. Perhaps she has.
Super Gumboots Willa hangs her head. ‘I watered the ocean-garden and Frog Dog ran through. I’ve been standing outside trying to get braver so I could come get her. And …’
‘And what?’
‘Well, you wrote about drawing in the garden and … I came ’cause I really need you to … Maybe you can help me?’ She sticks her chin forwards. Belly out.
I bend down. ‘Help you what?’
‘Fix Mummy and Daddy and Lottie.’ She looks up at me.
I try to be gentle with my answer. ‘We can draw, but I … can’t fix the past.’
Super Gumboots Willa gathers herself upright and folds her arms. ‘You know, you could fix something if you stopped being a big scaredy-cat bum-bum-head!’
‘A scaredy-cat bum-bum-head?’ I’m not sure whether I should be amused or offended.
‘Yeah, with spewy brains and stinky farts!’
I can’t help smiling. ‘Truly? What else am I?’
Super Gumboots Willa balls her fists and yells. ‘You’re not like me, that’s for sure! Do what you want – I don’t care anyway ’cause you’re not even wearing gumboots. Tell me how old I am when I forget to wear amaze-a-loo shoes, and I’ll make sure I never get that big. Stupid bum-bum-head!’
‘So nice you two are getting to know each other,’ Silver Willa shouts from inside.
Facing Super Gumboots Willa, I say, ‘Maybe you should go home.’
‘You go home!’
‘I am home!’
Super Gumboots Willa squares up to me. ‘It doesn’t look like you’re very at home. You’re not wearing boots. You haven’t told Daddy to stop being mean and –’
‘Oh, for the love of … I can’t do anything about your dad. It’s already happened. What’s the point in talking to him? I have my own kids now and – Oh, what would you know anyway, you’re just a little girl.’ As soon as I say it I cannot believe my mother’s words have spilt out of me.
Her eyes are fierce. ‘So that’s why you crossed out the word “love” at the bottom of your last letter. I’m just a stupid girl and you hate me, huh? Well you’re the stupid one, ’cause if you hate me you are really hating yourself!’
I slam the door in her face.
Her fists bang into my door from the other side.
I fling it open. ‘What do you want from me?’
She stands inches away. Her breathing is as rapid as mine.
‘You said you have your own kids?’ I didn’t notice before, but she’s shaking so much I think those knobbly knees might shake right off.
‘Yes, you’ve met them. Eli and Seb,’ I say, my voice quieter now.
‘I know, it’s just … I just worked out that I am their mummy. I really want to be a mummy one day too.’ She rams her fingers through her hair then wipes her nose.
Yes, I remember that wanting. And I guess it would be very strange to meet your own children when you’re only eight.
After a pause, she says in a small voice, ‘I suppose I’ll get my dog and go. Then you’ll never have to see me again.’
In the honey-coloured light of the afternoon she is simply … little. A child. A dot and a dash.
And it hits me. That is what she has always been. A child. Super Gumboots Willa, with all her hacked-off hair. She wanted to be a boy. Nothing was as disgusting as simply being a little girl. But that’s all she is. A little girl. Nothing more, because that is more than enough.
I cup her chin. ‘I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it, about you being just a little girl. You’re eight, aren’t you?’ When I look in her eyes I see her fear and I think perhaps I’m still afraid all these years later.
She nods.
‘Eight is pretty big, really,’ I say.
She stands on tiptoes.
Solomon is right: I have never really met this little girl. Never sat down with her and earnestly listened. Maybe I’m afraid of what Super Gumboots Willa might want to tell me.
She sees Frog Dog behind me and as she tries to run inside her foot catches on the doorjamb. She falls into me and her weight is uncomfortable, even though she weighs not much at all. Together we stand in a huddle until a voice behind us says, ‘About time. Bring her inside, dear. Cups of tea all round.’
Super Gumboots Willa goes looking for pens and paper, but I’m not sure about drawing with her just yet. Silver Willa stands with me in the kitchen and when I reach for the teacups she sees the cuts on my wrist. I pull my sleeve down.
‘It’s okay, dear. I have scars too.’
It seems the kindest thing anyone has said to me in a while, and it takes me a moment to finish making tea.
‘Tell us about your trip to the beach.’ I can’t bear to ask her about Lottie yet. What happens to her? Is she still alive? I can’t quite brave the answers.
‘The beach? I like the beach.’ She brightens.
Much later, after multiple cups of tea, I see my younger and much older selves off through the garden.
‘Did you meet everyone you needed to?’ Silver Willa asks.
‘Frog Dog, Super Gumboots Willa and you? Check, check and check.’
‘And for heaven’s sakes, go and draw with the child!’ Silver Willa also makes me promise that I will be here next time she comes. She says it repeatedly, a wildness in her eyes.
‘Pinkie promise,’ I say.
Chapter Thirty-seven
2050
Willa Waters, aged 93
Nearly everything has been packed and hauled away, but not the newspaper I’ve kept under the seat of my chair. After our visit to the grave, I remembered I placed it there.
The lounge room is filled with the soft sound of Eden’s humming wafting through from the kitchen. I pull out the paper and read.
1 November 1990
Boonah Mother Survives Tragic Car Crash
On the eve of her 34th birthday, Willa Grace Waters escaped from her submerged car after skidding off the Boonah Bridge around midnight last night. Tragically, her two-year-old son, Sebastian, who was also in the car, was declared dead at the scene despite efforts by Mrs Waters and a local resident to save the boy. Police investigators have blamed the single-vehicle accident on the wild weather and substandard bridge railings.
The words hurt to read. That night I left Sam, Seb was with me in the car. Just as Eli said.
At that moment, Eli walks through the front door with a bunch of daisies. I find myself wondering if people will one day garden on the moon; I sure wouldn’t wan
t to walk up there without flowers. He places them in a cup on the window ledge.
‘Oh, you’ve come again. Did I fix everything yet? Is Seb okay?’ I ask, almost shouting.
He gently takes the newspaper out of my hand as Eden walks through from the kitchen. They exchange looks and he passes the paper to her. Without looking at it, she folds it crisply in two.
Eli pipes up, ‘I visited the nursery and bought some new plants for the backyard. Walking iris, passionfruit and –’
‘The nursing home?’ I grab his shirt. ‘I can’t go there!’
‘No, Mum, the nursery. Where they sell plants. You move in a couple of weeks.’
‘When? What day do I leave?’ The boxes are gone. Eden is cleaning. Think, Willa!
‘Outside is looking lovely – want to see?’ Eli says.
‘When do I go?’
Eden has the paper under her arm. ‘You leave on the eighteenth of October, so you have some time to settle in before your birthday. Eli will be with us to celebrate this time. Won’t that be –’
‘No – I won’t be here! Don’t you see? If I go then Middle Willa, she … she won’t know. The Plastic-Sheet Homes don’t have a garden and – Wait, garden? Maybe if I go through the garden …’
‘They most certainly do have a garden,’ Eli says.
Garden. I can do something. But what is it? ‘Are you planting more of those blue corns?’ I don’t think that’s the question I needed to ask.
‘Blue corns? You mean cornflowers?’ he says.
‘Yes. Them. And don’t rip out all the four-leaf greens.’
Eli laughs. ‘Clovers? No, I wouldn’t dare.’
‘Tell me about Seb.’ I ask and ask. They say we’ve talked about Seb enough. That I need to forgive myself. That no one is mad at me, and there’s nothing I can do to change the past.
‘Yes, I can … Middle Willa can!’
Eventually, they lead me outside, seating me on a wicker chair. I attempt to sip on lemonade while some workers replant the garden around the mango tree. Eli asks questions and gets in the way. How long till the cornflowers are in bloom? Does anyone know their botanical name? Why not? The boy still has questions. I have questions, too.
‘Is Seb coming today?’
Eden pours more lemonade. But there’s no ade, only lemons, so I push it away.
She pipes up. ‘Let’s talk about something nice and cheerful. Remember the clovers? How Eli used to bring you bunches of them?’
The memory comes all of a sudden. I’m Middle Willa once again, and I can hear those bees.
Eli was barefoot in our yard, only three or four years old. Spring had come quickly; clover patches covered most of the yard. Sam hadn’t had a chance to spray it yet. I wasn’t worried until I thought about the bees; Sam was extremely allergic, and perhaps Eli was too.
‘Eli!’ I picked him up and yanked the clover out of his hands, with bees buzzing all around him.
He looked at me, pleading. ‘No! Pretty flowers. Pretty flowers for you.’
Every spring from then on, we sprayed the clover, but Eli beat us to at least one patch. And every spring a vase stuffed with wilting clover sat by my bed. I didn’t always love weeds, I used to be a roses-only girl, but Eli decided they were my favourite flowers. I never corrected him.
Now Eli’s an elderly gentleman himself, seated in the backyard next to me.
‘But where is Seb?’
No one answers. Eli crunches on cucumber sandwiches without knowing that the day is getting darker and darker, even with the sun out. He watches me. ‘Garden coming together nicely, Mum?’
I try to think of something to say. ‘Your teddy, Wozley, would have approved.’
‘Wozley? Gosh, that’s a while ago. Wozley liked the sandpit. And the water bombs that fell from the mango tree. And shaving-cream flowers that popped in your face. You know, I remember this funny story about our house in the city changing into this Queenslander in the country and the magic ocean-garden. You must have told me that story so well when I was a child that I thought it was real.’
I cluck my tongue. ‘But it was real!’
He winks at me. ‘Of course it was.’
‘The ocean moved us from the city into my childhood home,’ I say. He scratches his head, like he’s trying to remember something.
I’m not eating my sandwiches. Eli pats my hand and then holds it. ‘I remember that winter when I was little and I met Super Gumboots Willa. A girl with the same name as you.’
I nod.
‘When I was older you told me about how the little person inside us has untold stories that our adult self needs to hear. And how those stories are often about our truest selves. What we want, what we are afraid of, or grieving for.’
He’s quiet for a moment, then says, ‘You gave the little person inside me a voice and perhaps the confidence I needed to come home and ask you some difficult questions. Thank you for your stories.’ He kisses my cheek. I don’t think he remembers the magic right, but he adds, ‘Oh, and the parts about Frog Dog always made me laugh.’
Goodness, he thinks they were all stories. Of course: only the Willas and children remember the ocean’s magic. Now Eli has grown up, he’s forgotten.
Eli slips into the garden by the mango tree again. Wait. Slips into the garden – slips? That’s it! They can’t take me to the nursing home if I’m not here. If I slip away into the garden.
Later, before he goes, I ask him, ‘What did you grow up to be?’
‘An astronomer. I moved to the States to pursue my career, remember?’
‘A moonwalker?’
He chuckles. ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
My boy, the moonwalker. That’s some magic job.
‘And Seb? What did he grow up to be?’
Eli shifts from foot to foot.
Later, he pays the helpers and kisses me goodbye. The lorikeets gather in the trees as the sun sets, squawking like they own the afternoon. I barely hear him say, ‘Check the table beside your chair, Mum.’
And there it is. A small vase, with clover in it.
Eden’s making dinner in the kitchen and I’ve promised to eat. She pokes her head around the corner and says, ‘Want the radio on?’
I don’t answer. I am repeating to myself over and over, ‘Slip through the garden. Don’t go into the nursing home. Slip through the garden …’
Eden frowns at all my mumbling and tells the radio to tune in to local broadcasts, then goes back to the kitchen. Bez’s Pet Store has an ad on the radio: a Chihuahua for sale. I turn it up.
I remember Middle Willa cried about Frog Dog. Oh, maybe that’s it – I will get a Chihuahua and go through the garden.
‘Eden, I need a dog!’
She rushes back in.
‘Call, please!’
‘A dog?’ She listens to the end of the ad. ‘You want a Chihuahua?’
‘Oh, Eden, yes! What wonderful ideas you have.’
‘Hello?’ a man’s voice answers when Eden uses her wristphone thingy. From what he’s saying, I think he’s about to close up for the day.
‘I want the bug-eyed mouse. You had an ad on the radio,’ I shout so the phone thingy hears me.
I hear muffled laughing. ‘I got a Chihuahua. Is that what you mean?’
‘Yes, those.’ I clap a hand on my thigh.
Eden lights up. ‘This is a great idea, Mum. The nursing home says you can bring a small pet if family will help with its care.’
‘Good-for-nothing animals, never going to be working dogs,’ the man says.
‘Depends what you want them to work for,’ I say as I get my notebook out.
He’s still talking. ‘I can’t imagine how you think this dog’s going to work, but you can have one. She’s the runt of the litter, born without a tail. But otherwise there’s nothing wrong with her.’
I glance at my notebook. ‘What’s the date for the nursing home, Eden? Can you write it in my notebook?’
She takes it from me and writes somet
hing.
I push my voice out so the man can hear. ‘Can you deliver today? I can’t buy time so I have to use what’s left well.’
He snorts. ‘Ain’t that the truth? Tell you what, I’ll close up shop and drop her over. It’s getting late and I want my dinner anyway. What’s your name?’
‘Silver Willa.’
He splutters. ‘What, the one with the gumboots? That Willa? Heard about you down town.’
That makes me proud. I always hoped I’d be talk-worthy one day.
I read what Eden’s written in my notebook: 28. Willa goes into the nursing home on 18 October. I add: Give Middle Willa a chi … a chuw … a dog.
Middle Willa was so sad about Frog Dog. She must not try to kill herself. ‘Eden, will the dog help Willa be happy?’
‘I’m sure it will, Mum. The dog is a wonderful idea.’
Chapter Thirty-eight
1965
Willa Waters, aged 8
Dear Super Gumboots Willa,
Please come and draw with me.
LOVE from Middle Willa
I’m about to water the garden around the mango tree when I hear Daddy in his shed. I have a bunch of broken crayons in my pocket that Grammy bought me ages ago. I mostly draw at her house. Daddy doesn’t like my pictures. He said they’re immaur … imma … silly, ’cause people don’t have green hair and birds don’t wear ballet shoes.
Creeping, creeping closer. I should run away from Daddy’s shed. But through the dust and cobwebs of the window, I see his hands. Drawing hands. Large, dark lines that look like he’s hurting the paper. He swears. Screws the paper into a ball and rips another sheet off. I watch him do that another three times before he snaps the pencil. With one swipe of his arm, he clears his desk of paper and paints. They fall on the floor and lie there.
He bashes the door open and the whole shed rattles. I jump back from the window and run behind the mango tree, watching him thump back into the house.
It’s so nice when I notice the gentle swoosh of cloud-waves around my feet. My fingers begin to tingle. A blue glow spreads across the ocean-garden.
