The Shadow Girl

by John Larkin

  ‘God . . . father?’ says Father Kelliher, narrowly avoiding blasphemy. ‘What is a fourteen-year-old girl doing reading The Godfather.’

  ‘Actually, I’m thirteen.’

  ‘Be quiet, missy!’ he snaps. ‘You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

  My poor English teacher, Miss Feathershaw, is sitting transfixed like a rabbit in the headlights. Fresh out of uni and they give her year eight. That’s a tough gig for anyone, let alone a newbie.

  ‘Yes, well,’ interjects the principal, because Miss Feathershaw appears to be thinking about a career in retail. ‘This one’s never without a book in her hand.’

  ‘Then I think it’s high time that we started monitoring what she’s reading.’ Father K rubs his crucifix again and for a moment I wonder if they’re going to perform some sort of exorcism on me.

  ‘I think,’ intones the school counsellor, ‘we need to focus on the real issue here.’ You can actually feel the room yawn at this point.

  ‘And what, Miss Sigmund Freud, do you think is the real issue?’ Her name is actually Mrs DeSouza (though everyone calls her Mrs DeSnooza behind her back), but the way Father K spits ‘Sigmund Freud’ at her lets everyone know his opinion of psychologists.

  ‘I’m not entirely certain. I would need to spend a few sessions with her alone. If we could make some time next week there are some things . . .’

  ‘Do you think,’ interjects the principal quickly before we all fall asleep, ‘that it was appropriate to share your work with the class? To read it out loud? Shirley Jennings has gone home sick.’

  ‘Shirley Jennings is always sick,’ I reply. ‘She should be living in a bubble.’

  Miss Feathershaw snorts at this and everyone looks at her, but fortunately she manages to turn it into a cough.

  Father Kelliher shakes his head. ‘What an imagination.’ He says this like it’s a bad thing.

  ‘I think the real issue –’ begins Mrs DeSouza but she is soon cut off.

  ‘Will you stop it with your touchy feely “real issues”, woman,’ snaps Father Kelliher, reminding us all that in a Catholic school at least, the Church still rules the roost. ‘The REAL issue, as far as I can see, is that she’s either making all this up for attention, or she’s telling the truth. If it’s the former then I think a few sessions with Mrs DeSouza are in order. If it’s the latter, then God help us all.’

  Father Kelliher directs his attention to me. ‘Well, missy. What do you have to say for yourself?’

  I decide that now would be a good time to focus on the tessellating pattern of the carpet. I wanted to push this because of what happened last night, but now that I’m past the point of no return, I want to go back. I can deal with Uncle Creepo. Why hadn’t I just made something up? I’m the best writer in the class. I could have said that my father works hard and Mum bakes cakes and helps out in a soup kitchen on the weekends. Or Mum works hard and my father bakes cakes, blah blah blah. But now I’m either going to score some counselling sessions with Mrs DeSnooza, or find myself in a shallow grave in the forest this afternoon.

  ‘Well, her parents did move overseas when she was in year three,’ offers the principal when she realises that I’ve been temporarily struck mute. ‘She lives with her aunt and uncle now. We’ve contacted them and they’re on their way.’

  Oh no. I’ve done it now.

  Father Kelliher turns to the principal. ‘Do you think she might be being . . . you know?’ Then he turns to me. ‘You can wait outside now, missy.’

  The door mysteriously clicks opens and once again I come under the hateful glare of the office ladies.

  Father Kelliher doesn’t think I knew what he was going on about with his suggestion that I was being ‘you-knowed’. Priests can be so naive at times. He was asking whether I was at risk of my uncle slipping into my room at night and reading me bedtime stories that finish with a happy ending – for him at least. So I decide to let them run with it. To see how far it goes. He might be rubbish at geography, but Father K is smarter than I gave him credit for. Except now my aunt and Uncle Creepo have been summoned up to school and I’m in serious trouble.

  My aunt and uncle sidle into the reception area looking like they’ve been forcibly torn away from a bling and pimp convention. My aunt’s hair appears to have been fluffed out with static electricity and then set in quick-dry cement, while her flashy wedding ring seems a bit out of place in the school’s dowdy reception, especially considering the almost-vacant trophy cabinet and the area that we live in. She belongs in that cabinet. The perfect trophy wife. Her advice to me when I was put in the top class and given extension work was: ‘Don’t act too smart. Boys don’t like it when you’re smarter than them.’

  She ignores me and wobbles up to the glass window. Her shiny skin-tight pants make her butt look like a couple of baby hippos fighting in a garbage bag. Uncle Creepo gives me the death stare, but I avoid his eyes by gazing at the floor again. He sits down next to me and mumbles something under his breath. Something about me being like my mother.

  ‘Are you going to send me back to live in Europe too?’

  ‘There’s something seriously wrong with you.’

  ‘And you’re perfectly normal, shower boy.’ If I wasn’t past the point of no return before, then I definitely am now.

  ‘If you’ve said anything, I’ll . . .’

  ‘You’ll what?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  I look at my watch. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. I’ll probably be dead by tea time.

  SO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

  Well, they were summoned into the office and even though I couldn’t hear the conversation, I got the gist of it. ‘She’s always had an active imagination . . . reads too much . . . Parents are fine . . . they’re living back in Europe but they wanted to give her a better chance because she doesn’t speak the language . . . we’re raising her like she’s our own,’ and on and on until you could almost hear the violins. And that was it. They came out smiling and laughing and it was handshakes all round.

  Creepo said, ‘Come on, you,’ and ruffled my hair, which almost made me vomit. He even picked up my backpack and slung it over his shoulder, like it was the sort of thing he did all the time, and I wanted to scream at Father Kelliher and the principal and the counsellor and everyone that he’d fooled them all. That he’d got our house and all our money and I’d never see a cent of it because he’d buried it out in this forest somewhere.

  Why did you think that?

  Because just after it happened, the first night after my parents went back to live in Europe and I moved in with Creepo and Serena, I was looking out of my bedroom window and I saw him packing a shovel and a couple of big garbage bags in the boot of Serena’s car. The bags were so heavy that she had to help him lift them in. And she was crying. So I figured he’s been to my parents’ house and stolen their stuff, and now he wants to hide it. And then he came and got me. Gave me a hot chocolate and said we were going for a little drive. I always thought it’d been a dream.

  Can we hang on a minute? What happened to your parents?

  I can’t even remember what they looked like. Not without photos.

  How old were you when they – left?

  I was in year three, so I would have been . . . nine.

  Do you want to talk about it?

  They weren’t the best parents in the world. Mum was okay. A bit lost if I think about it. But my father wanted boys. Or a boy at least. Instead he got me. They kind of left me to it. Or I let them leave me to it. I read this book when I was in year two – Matilda by Roald Dahl – and then I saw the movie in vacation care and I wanted to be her. I wanted to be Matilda. So I used to read everything and anything. Had my mum buy me books and join the local library. I even tried telekinesis but nothing ever happened. I asked Mum if I could change my name to M
atilda but she cracked the shits and said that I had a lovely, traditional Eastern European name. I wasn’t quite as smart or as innocent as Matilda but I still became pretty cluey because I read the same books that she did, even if I didn’t entirely get most of them. So we were a lot like the Wormwoods. Up to a point. I can’t remember Matilda’s dad being killed by his wife. Though he probably deserved it.

  I think I’ll order you decaf tomorrow.

  No. This is good. Isn’t it what you writers call being in the zone?

  All right, keep going.

  Parents?

  The night they went away.

  I STAGGER IN FROM SCHOOL LUGGING ANOTHER STACK OF BOOKS THAT Matilda recommended. Mum’s slouched over the breakfast bar. Although she doesn’t work she’s usually out in the afternoons and I’m kind of a latchkey kid so it’s a shock to see her here. I’m actually a bit annoyed, because I like having the house to myself and I wonder if she’s been walking into doors again, which happens a lot around our place. Well, it does to her.

  She’s rocking backwards and forwards like crazy people in movies do. And although I just want to go up to my room and read, I feel that I ought to do the mother–daughter thing.

  ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

  She’s just had the kitchen completely redone in a sort of Neanderthal man meets Better Homes and Gardens theme. It’s all granite and stainless steel, so my voice seems to get absorbed by the rock and heavy metal.

  I try again. ‘MUM!’

  She looks over at me but her mascara is making a run for freedom, her eyes all blotchy and black.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Clearly she’s not, but what do you say? ‘Is something . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ she replies. ‘I’m fine. Go and do your homework and I’ll fix you a snack.’

  I feel like saying, ‘Oh, duh! I did my homework at lunchtime like I always do.’ But I don’t want to ruin my mum’s little bonding moment so I let it go.

  She’s toying with something on the breakfast bar. I step closer and see that it’s her mobile. Actually, it’s my father’s mobile. He must have forgotten it this morning. I get the feeling the mobile is responsible for Mum’s smudged mascara, but I’m not sure how. I’ve got to read more adult books to get the hang of this sort of stuff.

  ‘Things are going to be different from now on,’ she says as I gather up my backpack. ‘You’ll see.’

  As I’m dragging my backpack up the stairs I hear Mum call out ‘Bitch!’ and for a minute I think that I might not get that snack after all. But then I realise the ‘bitch’ has probably got something to do with my father’s mobile and the runny mascara.

  I slump onto my bed and open my backpack.

  Out of Matilda’s list of books I managed to get:

  Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

  The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

  Animal Farm by George Orwell

  When I plonked the books on the counter, the librarian gave me a funny look, so I told her that they were for my grandmother who was sick in bed with a fatal disease. The librarian made a sort of ‘harrumph’ noise but then I looked sad because of my grandmother and her disease and everything, so she cheered up a bit and said that if my grandmother liked ‘those’ sorts of books then she would love this one. She handed me another book by Charles Dickens which was called Bleak House. It was about the size of a brick.

  I arrange the books on my bedroom floor and decide to start with The Old Man and the Sea. It’s about twenty times shorter than Bleak House.

  I’m just getting into The Old Man and the Sea – you can actually taste the salt air and feel the cold as Santiago gets up mega-early to go fishing – when Mum comes into my room with my snack. It’s a glass of soy milk (yuck) and a honey and oat muesli bar (gross).

  She sits down on the bed and strokes my face. ‘Whatever happens,’ she sniffs. ‘I’ll always love you.’

  She looks like she wants to talk, which is weird. She’s never been as cuddly as the mums who do the school pickups. Sometimes she seems sad, or kind of disappointed. I once overheard her ask my father why she couldn’t get a part-time job – something in a clothes shop or a salon. My father got mad and said it would shame him. I wasn’t sure why. Lots of kids at school had mums who worked. Maybe it was because, unlike her, he was born in the old country. Or maybe he was just weird and old-fashioned.

  She once told me that she had wanted to be a nurse but she kept skipping school to hang out at the shops with her friends, and when her father found out he burned her school uniform along with her ‘useless’ report cards and screamed at her that her only hope was of finding a rich husband. Because she was useless at that too, he went out and found one for her – one of his so-called business associates not long off the boat from the old country. So she walked down the aisle with her head bowed and me along for the ride, to be greeted by the cold stare of my middle-aged father. She was eighteen. However, my mother was far from being the baby machine that my first-date conception had promised. My premature arrival led to complications. Apparently my father wept like a baby when I was born. Not for my safe arrival, but for the sons that would no longer follow me down the birth canal.

  I think the reason he’s never divorced us is because the only thing that matters to him more than family is money. Mum told him once that she would take a big fat slice of the pie if he ever packed us off or she caught him cheating. She was entitled to save face too, she reminded him as he stood over her with his fists clenched. And following this argument, just like every argument, she had to use strategically placed make-up in order to show her face in public. The stupid doors again.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asks, which is totally out of the blue. She stopped reading to me in kindergarten.

  ‘It’s called The Old Man and the Sea.’

  ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘Hemingway.’

  To say that I’m stunned is a major understatement. My mum’s reading stretches to supermarket checkout magazines. And even then she probably only looks at the pictures.

  ‘You’ve read it?’ I try not to sound too surprised.

  ‘No,’ she says, and suddenly we’re back on familiar ground. ‘Didn’t he shoot himself?’

  ‘The old man?’

  ‘Hemingway.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I turn to the small author bio in the front and scan down. ‘It just says that he died in 1961.’

  ‘I’m sure he shot himself,’ she says. ‘Death comes to all of us in the end.’

  I wonder how she knows this. Maybe there was a magazine article about it at the checkout – ‘The Somethingth Annivers- ary of Author Blowing Own Head Off’ pullout special. But Mum has a distant look in her eyes and I’m not sure that I want to be talking to her about this stuff. I’m nine years old. Shouldn’t we be discussing homework, or upcoming birthday parties, or my first holy communion in two weeks’ time?

  She pats my hand, stands up and smiles, but there’s that look in her eye again.

  ‘When your father comes home from work, you might want to stay up here.’

  I never saw her again.

  LET’S TAKE A BREAK.

  I’m okay.

  Tissue?

  Thanks.

  Another coffee?

  Hot chocolate please. With soy milk.

  Soy milk? I thought . . . I’ll shut up.

  [Tape stopped]

  [Interview resumed]

  So you were closer to your mother than you let on?

  No. We weren’t close at all and that’s what upsets me. She didn’t know how to be close to me because of her family life and stuff and so she never taught me or showed me how to be close to her. To anyone. She had a crap life. Her father practic- ally pimped her out to my father,
probably to pay off a debt or something.

  Do you ever see them? Your grandparents, I mean.

  No. Why would I? My grandfather on my father’s side was a widower and lived in [deleted from transcript] and we never really saw much of my mum’s parents anyway. The few times that we met they were always trying to hook me up with some mutant cousin.

  Very few Hallmarks card to cover that particular wedding. Sorry, this is serious.

  No, that’s funny.

  [Pause]

  Can we get back?

  If we have to.

  We can stop for the day if you want.

  No. Let’s keep going. I only want to do this bit once.

  So we finished up with your mother warning you not to come downstairs when your father got home from work.

  Yeah. She knew it was going to kick off. Or that she was going to kick it off. I think she also knew that once it started, there’d be no going back.

  WHEN MY FATHER’S CAR PULLS INTO THE DRIVEWAY A COUPLE OF hours later, I automatically switch to reading with my fingers wedged in my ears. It’s hard to turn the page with your elbow, but I’ve had enough practice to be quite skilled at it.

  Santiago’s marlin has just been hit by the first shark when the yelling from the kitchen hits me, and I know that this is going to be a bad one. Even through my la-la-la-ing I can hear furniture hitting walls and crockery smashing. And then just as abruptly it stops and I figure that maybe I’m wrong. That maybe he’s backed off and apologised and that he is holding her face in his hands, tenderly stroking her rapidly swelling eyes and promising never to do it again. Again.

  I unplug my fingers and listen to the deafening silence. And then it hits me. A sound I never want to hear again.

  Once, on a school excursion to the city, one of the ADHD kids got hold of an apple and chucked it out the train’s window. The apple hit a pylon with a wet smack. I don’t know why but it wasn’t the sort of sound that I expected an apple to make. That sound comes smacking up the stairs from the kitchen now. Two of them. In quick succession. And I know that my mum’s eyes will need some serious plastering over, possibly even surgery, before she can go out to the shops again. Or she can show her face in church. Or he can.