A Lifetime of Impossible Days

by Tabitha Bird

  ‘Remember when you told Trevor to chase the yachts and she actually tried it?’

  ‘I didn’t think she’d tear across the park trying to hunt something sailing hundreds of metres out to sea.’ Sam attempts to pout, but he’s very bad at it. You can know that about someone when they once bought you a clown.

  ‘Wouldn’t chase a stick, though,’ I say with a smirk.

  ‘That was beneath her – it would have been demeaning,’ he says. We are both chuckling now.

  ‘Or, possibly, she was –’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ Sam grabs me in a bear hug without thinking, trying to tickle me. I don’t push him away. Maybe we are not as far from each other as I think.

  I regain my breath. ‘I didn’t want a big dog. They suck at being lapdogs, and you can’t tuck them up in bed.’

  ‘Wow, it’s getting in the bed now?’

  I throw some T-shirts at him.

  ‘A cocker spaniel, then? They’re smaller. It’s probably not too late to return that thing from wherever you got it.’

  ‘Sam! She’s staying … You’re laughing at me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you just get so passionate about those dogs. What about the fact that it’s ugly? Have you truly considered those bulging eyes?’

  ‘Yes, okay. Bug eyes. Satellite-dish ears. Whatever jokes you want to make. But Chihuahuas are so fearless they damn near think they’re lions. They won’t leave, not even when your mother breaks and your father grabs you by the shirt. They bite dragons and …’

  The story pours out of me: that night when Frog died and the world ended. The way I buried her under the mango tree.

  For a while I’m unaware Sam is even still in the room, until he says, ‘Oh, that kind of Chihuahua. Well, I was wrong about them. Chihuahuas are definitely a need, and she must stay.’

  He draws me to him. ‘Did you get a discount because of the tail?’

  I let the weight of me lean on him. ‘It’s a special feature,’ I say. ‘We’re lucky she didn’t cost the earth.’

  Sam picks the pup up. ‘Hear that? You have special features.’ Then he says to me, ‘What’s her name, then?’

  I look at the size of her. How much courage I know Chihuahuas have.

  ‘Lion,’ I say.

  Chapter Forty-two

  1990

  Willa Waters, aged 33

  The day is grey. October rains have wiped away the blue sky and make worms of water on the window. The car’s wipers are on, lights peering through the drizzle. I hear something moving in the back seat and look in my rear-view mirror.

  ‘What the heck!’ I pull the car over to the side of the road, unclick my seat belt and swivel around. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Super Gumboots Willa sits up straight. ‘I went through the ocean-garden and hid in your car. You said Daddy was going to counselling with you. I want to come.’

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’

  ‘You’re going to make Daddy say sorry today and I want to see it. How did you make him come to counselling anyways?’

  I sigh. ‘It wasn’t that hard in the end. He called me trying to come and see my boys –’

  Super Gumboots Willa gasps. She’d be sick if she knew Lottie had been staying with him at one point. That I still don’t know where Lottie is. How I often drive the streets at night, hoping to see her. How I still check in with the police. Of course, I’m not going to tell her any of that.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m not letting Daddy come around, but I did say that he has no hope of a relationship with them the way things are between us, and I told him I was going to counselling. I knew that would be enough to get him to come. He said if I was hell-bent on counselling he’d better make sure the truth was told.’

  She pales at that. ‘The whole truth?’

  ‘His version, I suspect. But you can’t come with me; this isn’t for children.’

  Super Gumboots Willa folds her arms: locked in, locked tight. A silent tantrum.

  ‘He killed my Frog. I want to tell him off, too! Grown-up adult people are very bad at doing that. You might need my help.’

  ‘Grown-up adult people? You know, sometimes little people can make it very hard to be a grown-up adult person.’

  Her knees are hugged up near her ears.

  ‘You can wait in the car,’ I say. At the top of the street, I turn my car around and pull over in front of the house where Solomon works.

  Turning the ignition off, I try to think of something to say to my little self. To comfort her or to make her stay put.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she says.

  I soften my voice. ‘Me too.’

  She looks up at me. ‘You can’t leave yourself behind, you know.’

  I close the car door and walk off. How can I possibly take her in there? Halfway across the street I hear her get out of the car and slam the door. She runs after me. ‘Why aren’t you wearing gumboots? You promised.’

  ‘I did not promise. Besides, you can’t wear gumboots to counselling.’

  She grabs my arm. ‘Why can’t you wear gumboots?’

  ‘Because!’

  ‘Because you’re not brave enough!’

  Solomon walks down the driveway towards me and shakes my hand.

  ‘Thought I’d meet you outside today. This is huge and I want you to know I am here.’ His handshake is firm, but gentle. Hands so different from my father’s. I need Solomon’s security today. I spent the morning in the bathroom, feeling nauseous at the thought of the day ahead.

  We walk inside, Super Gumboots Willa following. It’s too late to take her back to the car. And what would I say to Solomon? ‘Excuse me while I remove my younger self’?

  My father stands when I walk into the waiting area, shoulders hunched forwards. His face is taut. His clothes are ironed to within an inch of their lives. Pressed. He looks pressed.

  Super Gumboots Willa peeks out from behind me, but I know he can’t see her.

  ‘How are the boys?’ he asks, not looking at me.

  ‘None of your business!’ Super Gumboots Willa spits.

  ‘Fine.’ I grit my teeth, trying to walk past him into Solomon’s office, but my father blocks my path.

  ‘Fine?’ Super Gumboots Willa says. ‘Who is fine? I’m not fine!’

  ‘Go back to the car!’ I say under my breath.

  ‘What?’ my father says.

  ‘No!’ She stomps her foot at me.

  My father is dwarfed by Solomon’s size, and he is forced to look up at him. He steps back, lets me pass. It’s not until we are all seated that my father makes eye contact.

  The room is still for a moment, the plastic fern huddled together with a book on the shelf, the rug clinging to the carpet below it. Super Gumboots Willa sits cross-legged on the floor beside my chair.

  Solomon motions to me. ‘So, where would you like to start, Willa?’

  The little girl hisses in my ear. ‘We could start by telling Daddy to stop hitting Mummy. That’s a good start.’

  I hesitate a moment. Suddenly, I’m not ready.

  ‘Say something!’ Super Gumboots Willa pokes me.

  ‘I would really like to hear from you. What do you have to say about the past?’

  Super Gumboots Willa raises her eyebrows. Sits up tall.

  ‘Well, I would like a chance for us to reconnect. What can I do to heal my relationship with you?’

  Super Gumboots Willa leaps to her feet beside me and shakes my shoulders. ‘What is he saying? I don’t get it. Is he sorry yet? What about Frog Dog?’

  He turns to Solomon. ‘Things at home were … difficult for Willa and her sister. But I never wanted to hurt anyone. I was only trying to get control of the situation. Your mother was a challenging woman to be married to,’ he says, leaning towards me. ‘True forgiveness can take time, Willa, but it’s the only path to freedom. Many things happened that you don’t understand.’

  To Solomon he says, ‘I find how I’ve been excluded from Willa’s life hard.
I didn’t do anything to deserve that.’ His voice cracks.

  ‘You killed my dog! You hit our mother!’

  He stares at me. ‘Perhaps I haven’t been a good father but doing that’ – he swallows hard – ‘would have made me a terrible father. You girls have always been against me.’

  Super Gumboots Willa balls her fists, arms rigid beside her.

  My father starts to … cry? Can it be?

  Super Gumboots Willa stares at me, mouthing the words, What are those wet things? She moves forwards, all but reaching out to touch them.

  ‘Who is he?’ Super Gumboots Willa has never seen such a display. I have no idea who this man is either.

  My voice is measured when I speak because there is a precious little girl standing between us, even if I am the only one who can see her.

  ‘I want to talk about the physical abuse. That time you had Mother by the hair, when you grabbed me by the shirt and … and kicked Frog to the wall.’

  I’m not here only to talk about Frog. I want to talk about Lottie, about the sexual abuse and about where she might be now, but I can’t. Not straightaway. I need to work up to it.

  His crying stops. A true disappearing act.

  ‘I never hurt Frog on purpose; she just got in the way. I remember that night. Your mother was dragging you girls off and leaving me. That woman needed a firm hand. Perhaps I smacked her to try and control the situation, but there were no bruises. It’s not like I put her in hospital.’ He says the last sentence directly to Solomon.

  I raise my voice. ‘There were bruises. You grabbed her by the hair and hit her. And you did kill Frog; that was not an accident. Do you remember any of that?’

  His face is blank.

  ‘You don’t remember?’ My voice is somewhere between shocked and pleading.

  There’s a new determination in my father’s voice when he speaks again. ‘I can see that fight might have been frightening to you as a child, but I was trying to stop your mother from taking my family away. Perhaps I spanked her, but let’s not blow things out of proportion.’

  ‘He’s lying!’ Super Gumboots Willa screams.

  His words hang in the air, banging around like the oversized, blundering things they are.

  ‘But you killed Frog Dog!’ I am almost jumping out of my seat. ‘And where is my sister?’

  ‘Frog got in the way and you fell on top of her.’ His voice is dead calm. ‘And I wouldn’t have a clue where Lottie is. Probably in some crack house again.’

  Super Gumboots Willa runs between us, searching his face and mine. She yells, ‘What’s wrong with Lottie? What’s a crack house? He killed Frog! Make him say something. Make him!’

  My thoughts begin to U-turn and backpedal. Did Frog get in the way? My mother was difficult to live with, but …

  He smirks. ‘You always were a liar. Prone to tell the story the way it suits you. Let’s talk about what you did, Willa.’

  My father seizes the moment. ‘Do you remember how you always wanted my affections? Daddy’s little girl,’ he sneers.

  ‘That’s not true!’ But maybe it is. I was desperate for him to love me, for there to be tenderness in his hands. And my imagination was overgrown with the ways I wanted things to be.

  ‘Remember that night under the stars, how you wanted to see my drawings, and what you agreed to do if I gave you one?’

  A crack appears in the depths of my memory. I was lying on the floor of the art shed, telling myself stories about the beach. About the time Grammy took us to the beach?

  Everything blurs. Solomon is speaking firmly to my father, but the crack in my mind begins to widen: a leak of images, and then a flood.

  Some moments were so loud that being eight years old was scary. Even that night with my mango tree watching.

  ‘I’m going to wear my glasses to bed and look out my window.’ But when I searched my pockets they were empty.

  Taking my arm, he led me to his art shed. He closed the door, locking it. Locking us in. Locking the stars out.

  ‘But my glasses.’

  He took my glasses out of his pocket and pulled them away from me, laughing. A gravel laugh that made me shaky.

  His art shed was not a place to play, he’d warned me, but sometimes I just wanted to be close to his pictures. To the place where his hands did art and not hitting.

  But that night when he took me back to his shed, I stared at the floor. On his desk was a new painting. A black sky with glitter rocks. The stars we had seen together that night under the sky. I forgot where I was and who I was with as I ran my fingers over the painting.

  He handed my glasses back. ‘Would you like to keep the star painting?’

  I nodded, but I was unsure. My tummy did flip-flops.

  ‘Then you have to do something for Daddy.’

  I wanted to leave. No more paintings. No more stars.

  He ripped the painting from me. ‘Maybe Lottie would like the stars, then?’

  The next thing I knew Mummy’s head was being pushed into the shed door and my body woke up. Everything that I’d been thinking so I didn’t have to be there, in the art shed with him: it stopped. It was very late at night, or early morning, or some hour when it wasn’t really day or night, only dark. There was a smell of turps and paint. The concrete floor of the shed was cold all over my back. I was on the floor.

  Super Gumboots Willa throws herself in a heap in the middle of the counselling room. I can’t speak. My heart presses hard against the cage where I’ve trapped it. And in this moment I realise that I didn’t come here to confront him; I came here to get something from him. Won’t you speak the truth, Daddy? What really happened? Tell me it wasn’t my fault.

  My father leans forwards, a finger in my face. ‘I never did anything, but you were always a little slut.’

  Solomon stands. ‘I think we’ll end this here.’ He opens the door now, waving my father out. I hear the clock tick. A loud sound. An honest and grounding sound. The only sound that makes any sense in this room. I’m blank. A nothingness inside.

  Solomon has walked my father into the hallway.

  My father turns and addresses me one last time in a voice bankrupt of feeling. ‘You know the truth, Willa. Grow up and face what you did!’

  I’m so heavy I can’t move.

  Solomon closes the door, leaving Super Gumboots Willa and me alone. She lifts her head from the floor, sobbing.

  I’m trembling. ‘What did you do?’ I ask her.

  She gathers herself, jabbing a finger at me. ‘He said bad stuff about us. He killed Frog Dog and you didn’t make him say sorry!’

  ‘You know what happened that night in the art shed, don’t you?’

  ‘No! No!’ Her hands cover her ears.

  ‘Maybe he’s telling the truth,’ I whisper.

  ‘You dropped Lottie, and I hate you!’ Super Gumboots Willa spits at me and runs out of the room.

  Moments later, Solomon returns. ‘He’s gone. I’m so sorry, Willa.’ Then he asks softly, ‘Is there something I can get you? Coffee or tea?’

  I’m silent. What about childhood? Have you got a cup of childhood to spare?

  ‘I’ll get you some tea.’

  Solomon returns with a cup and I caress it, trying to feel something. He sits opposite me again and leans forwards. ‘Willa, you know what your father said isn’t true. Children can’t ask to be abused. Your father is lying, he’s twisting things, making himself the victim by blaming you.’

  When I don’t respond, he says, ‘Where is that little girl you once were?’

  ‘Gone.’ My voice is flat.

  ‘Could you find her?’

  I can’t look up. ‘I have nothing left for that little girl.’ And there are things I can’t tell Solomon. Not yet.

  Chapter Forty-three

  1965

  Willa Waters, aged 8

  Seagulls are crumpled on the ground, wings bent up all wrong. Not flapping. Not moving.

  I dig up my jar from behind the mango t
ree and fill it from the garden hose. Water sloshes out. I wait. The blue glow flickers, but goes out. The mango tree twists into a tight knot and its head hangs. There is fruit squashed on the ground, flies nesting in the sticky mess. Leaves begin to fall, one by one.

  ‘No!’ I throw my arms around the trunk. ‘Don’t die. It’s nearly my birthday. Please, you can’t die!’

  Kookaburras laugh at me, along with some miserable squawking magpies. I want to throw stuff at the tree. Please, ocean-garden. Don’t stop working now.

  I try again: fill the jar, water the garden. When the ocean breeze tickles my skin, I hug the mango tree.

  Someone walks out of the ocean-garden. It’s her, Middle Willa, who doesn’t know how to make my father say the truth. Who doesn’t care about Frog Dog and isn’t anything like me. Not one little bit. Then I notice what’s on her head: a newspaper crown, with a peacock feather stapled on top.

  ‘Do you like it?’ She takes it off and hands it to me.

  I turn away, hoping I’m doing a very good Lottie pout. More mango leaves fall to the ground.

  Middle Willa puts the hat down beside me and holds up a tea flask and a Tupperware container with something that smells like baking.

  ‘Would you like to have a picnic with me?’ I ignore her, but I think she actually means it.

  When I speak it comes out all choked up. ‘The ocean-garden is sick and you let Daddy say yucky things and now everything is wrong.’ Then, quieter, I say, ‘Is Lottie okay?’

  Middle Willa kneels next to me. ‘Look, I know you’re angry. There are things I want to tell you. Can we go for a walk? You used to like exploring, you know.’

  I do my best mad face. ‘Did I? And what did you do? Say nothing when Daddy is horrible?’

  Why do adults always say a whole bunch of stuff you can’t understand, and when it really matters they can’t say anything right at all?

  I don’t wipe the puddles from my eyes. Grammy says it’s okay to be sad. Does Middle Willa know that?

  She reaches for my hand.

  ‘No. I hate you. You’re a stinky bum-bum scaredy cat!’