Solo

by Alyssa Brugman

  Itsy split the wood and then I collected the pieces and put them in the basket to take inside.

  She told me I had a bank account and that Daddy had put money into it. She asked me if it was all right for her to use some of the money. Itsy looked me in the eye when she asked me, but her face was pinched and faded. She said she would only use it on things for us – on ‘living expenses’.

  I smiled and said that was fine. Of course, Mummy. (I didn’t start calling her Itsy until after she had spent all my trust.) I don’t know how much money was in that bank account. I suspect it was some kind of mechanism for hiding money, and if that was the case then it might have been quite a lot. My guess is over a hundred thousand.

  It never occurred to me to say no, but even if I had refused, I’m sure she would have stolen it from me.

  Of all the things Itsy has done to me, it’s the memory of this day that makes me rumble full of hate for her with a thickness and force like boiling oil. She can make my present life a misery, but there is something particularly spiteful and uncaring about stealing my future as well.

  We stayed in the cottage for a while, perhaps three years, and then when I was about nine we moved into a unit.

  My cousin Drew came to stay. He was older – he must have been fifteen. He talked to me about music. I didn’t know the bands he mentioned but I pretended that I did.

  We slept in the lounge room in sleeping bags. I had a yellow one with cartoon characters on the inside and Drew slept inside the green one – the one I brought with me to wilderness therapy.

  Drew zipped it to the top, and then, with the hood over his head he stood up inside it and tucked his fingers in the corners. We were listening to Korn. He sang along to ‘Falling Away from Me’ inside this sleeping bag, wiggling his fingers and bobbing up and down at the knees, face all serious as he sang the words. He looked like a giant, bright-green caterpillar. It made me laugh so much that I wet my pants a little bit, and I wore the sleeping bag at least up to my waist for the rest of that night because I was embarrassed that there might be a pee stain.

  We made peanut-butter foldies for dinner. That’s pretty much all we ate while he stayed. Peanut-butter foldies, and when we ran out of bread, Iceberg lettuce with a dob of mayonnaise inside, which is just a foldie of a different kind.

  When I had run out of fresh clothes Drew tried to do a load of washing, but he must have put the hose in the wrong spot because it flooded the laundry. Water went out across the carpet and over our verandah, then dripped down onto the verandah of the flat underneath ours and the one underneath that.

  We grabbed towels and tried to soak it up. We were giggling even though I knew we would get into trouble. I rubbed the laundry floor, and at first I thought I’d rubbed the pattern off, but then I could see that the tiles were white underneath. I’d always thought they were cream and brown.

  The neighbour knocked on the door and we pretended we weren’t home. Leaning against the wall in the hallway, we covered our mouths with our hands, trying to keep from laughing.

  About half an hour after that the real-estate agent came, and when I could hear her jingling the keys outside, it stopped being funny and I started getting scared.

  She stood in the doorway with her eyes wide and hand over her mouth. We showed her how we had turned off the machine and cleaned the laundry. She picked her way across the floor in her high-heeled shoes as though she was hopping rock-to-rock over a river full of snapping crocodiles.

  Then Itsy came out. The real-estate agent shook her head. Itsy’s face was puffy and screwed up. She said she was supposed to have notice of an inspection. They stood in the lounge room and shouted at each other. The estate agent wanted Itsy to buy new carpet.

  Drew took me to the verandah and covered my ears. He pulled silly faces to stop me from crying. I could still hear them, though, and see them through the door. He treated me as though I was a little kid and I liked that.

  I wish Drew had been around to cover my ears more often. He got a job in Alaska as a helicopter mechanic, which is about as far away as you can get.

  Itsy yelled that she’d been on night shift, but it was a lie because she hadn’t left her room for nearly ten days. At least, not when I was awake.

  Then the downstairs neighbour stepped inside the doorway. He and the real-estate agent exchanged a glance, and that’s when Itsy went nuts. She gave the real-estate woman a big shove – two hands flat on her chest just below her shoulders. The woman fell off her shoes into the neighbour and he lost his balance too. They scrambled out the door and Itsy slammed it behind them, still screaming and swearing.

  I went to school the next Wednesday morning, and in the afternoon went home to a different flat. I don’t think Itsy paid for the carpet. I’m pretty sure she left that place in a big mess.

  She was always wrecking other people’s things. I remember once she ran into someone’s car in a carpark. She drove out of there as fast as she could. I told her that she was supposed to leave her number on their windscreen.

  ‘Who are you, my mother?’ she asked. ‘They’ve got insurance.’

  Itsy looked glamorous, but something underneath was decayed and you knew if you pressed too hard it would all crumble away to dust.

  Now I think of Itsy like a penguin in an oil-slick – clogged, miserable and without any hope of saving herself.

  4

  BREAKING UP WITH MUM

  Itsy said, ‘This is not working out for me,’ as though I was optional.

  She said she needed some time to herself to work things out. Space. It wasn’t me, it was her. I wanted to punch her in the face, but I didn’t. My hate bulged inside my guts and along my limbs and made all my muscles sore.

  She wouldn’t look me in the eye. I remembered that she had been strange for a few weeks now and I wondered if I had failed some test she had set for me – a worthiness test.

  I thought about all the things she had asked me to do. Set the table. Clean up your room. Run down to the shops. I hadn’t done all of them, but I would have if I’d known it was a test – if she had said, ‘Hang out the washing, Mackenzie, or I will leave you and never come back.’

  This wasn’t a test. She wanted a fresh start. A new day with no mistakes in it like Anne of Green Gables, and I was a hangover from the old mistakey day.

  She didn’t want me and I could have punched her, but I also could have fallen on the floor and grabbed her around the ankles and begged her to take me with her. I didn’t do either, I just stayed lying on my bed at a funny angle, skewiff, with my knees facing the wall and looking at her over my shoulder.

  She was standing in the doorway with one hand on the handle. She was biting her cuticles. It’s disgusting the way she eats at herself.

  I remembered the time when I was seven I went to Gregory Oldberger’s birthday party. It started at two in the afternoon and everyone else had gone by five. Itsy didn’t pick me up until eleven o’clock the next day.

  She said she thought it was a sleepover. Such a liar.

  She made me stay with the Oldbergers, who I hadn’t even met until that day. They said grace before they ate and I didn’t know what that was.

  In the morning Mrs Oldberger told me to have a shower and when she locked me in the bathroom, I was terrified. My family showered in the nude, but maybe people who said grace before they ate kept their clothes on? Their shower tap only had one lever. It was too hot, but I stood under it and cried, and hoped none of the Oldbergers would come in and see me naked.

  My mother said that she didn’t think our relationship was working out. I lay twisted and didn’t move, or say anything, even though I could feel a pain in my lower back and my mouth was twitching. I couldn’t stop it from doing that.

  I said ‘OK, see ya,’ and turned around as though she had said she was going out for milk rather than that she was breaking up with me.

  5

  BACKWARDS, OR MAYBE SIDEWAYS

  The bay smelled of salt, fresh pippy shells
and dried-out seagrass. From the top of the hill I could see the buoys above the crab pots, bobbing and dipping on the water’s surface. Moored yachts rolled lazily from side to side in the chop, pulleys clanking against booms. The afternoon sunshine flickered across the water so brilliantly that I had to shade my eyes with my hand – a salute to old territory.

  As I trudged down the long driveway past the garage my schoolbag bumped against my back. There was a blister on my heel and with each step I pushed hard into the toe of my shoe, trying to lessen the rubbing.

  The door to my old room was open. The bunk beds were unmade and two small boys in board shorts were lying on the floor on their stomachs playing Snakes and Ladders. Their legs were deep caramel, and encrusted with sand. They peeked up at me, startled, with huge black eyes. They looked Indian, or maybe Sri Lankan. The older one offered me a brief, wary smile.

  I turned the corner past the old vinyl swinging chair. The screen door creaked as it opened and clattered closed behind me, just as it had all those years ago.

  ‘Nan!’ I called out.

  She appeared around the doorframe holding a spatula. ‘Mackenzie!’

  I laughed. ‘Hello, Nan!’

  When we hugged I realised that I was taller than she was.

  ‘What are you doing here, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Can’t your favourite granddaughter drop by for a visit?’ I joked.

  She pulled away from me, holding me at arm’s length. ‘No, really?’

  I sat down at the kitchen table. There was a fruitcake on a plate, sliced and covered in Gladwrap. I helped myself to a piece.

  She wasn’t supposed to ask me straight away why I’d come. I had imagined that we’d hang out for a while and talk about nothing – maybe watch some TV together. Nan likes the soaps. I could help her cook dinner, cutting things up on the plastic cutting board at this table while she slow-waltzed around the kitchen. I wanted to work my way into the place backwards, or sideways.

  Better still, we could not talk about it at all. We could prepare the meal, eat, and then, after a few games of cards, she would send me to one of the guest rooms around the corner. Not my old one, obviously, there was a family staying in that one. But there was room at the back. They never put anyone in that one unless they had to because there was only one window and the opening into the roof cavity was in the corner of the ceiling. Also it backed on to the bathroom and Nan thought you could hear people ‘using the amenities’.

  I didn’t care about that, as long as she let me stay. I could float into the place and stick like a barnacle to the underside of their life.

  Nan was waiting for an answer so I told her how Itsy broke up with me. At the end she patted my wrist with her dry hands that had twisted knuckles. In that small space between us there was peace and familiarity.

  Then she stood up and waddled over to the corner cupboard to pull out the Yellow Pages. Slapping it on the counter, she licked her finger and turned over the pages, flick, flick, flick. She found the page she wanted and slid it under my nose, pointing to the bold typed headline: WOMEN/YOUTH REFUGES.

  ‘How about you give them a call? Use our phone. Or I can ring if you like. I’m sure they’re very nice people. They must talk to kids with your sorts of problems every day.’

  It hadn’t even crossed her mind to offer.

  The screen door clattered and Pop came inside. He paused and then opened his arms wide. I fell into them, trying to hold onto my tears.

  ‘Hello, poppet!’ He rubbed my back.

  Over my shoulder Nan filled him in on my predicament.

  ‘Why doesn’t she stay with us?’ he asked as he released me.

  Nan blinked, holding the phone in her hand. A look passed between them and I realised that the idea had crossed her mind and she’d dismissed it.

  ‘Mackenzie doesn’t want to stay with us,’ she assured him. ‘Couple of old fogeys like us? No! And we don’t have the room, anyway – not right now. It’s too far to school and there’s only one bus a day. This isn’t a place for teenagers. These people are very nice.’ She held up the phone, as though it was evidence. ‘They must have to deal with kids like Mackenzie every day.’

  Kids like me. Youths with potential.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Pop! It will probably all blow over. You know how Mum is.’ I smiled as widely as I could. ‘It’s no biggie. I have a friend who I can stay with. She’s waiting for me now, actually. I’d better get going!’

  My lips were stretching back from my teeth as I backed out the door. I didn’t think they could possibly be fooled by it, but they pretended to be. They let me walk out.

  Afterwards I wished I’d cried and begged them to take me. They would have had to say yes if I’d done it that way, and it wasn’t even pride that stopped me, but manners. Civility. I didn’t want to embarrass them.

  I waited at the park around the corner until it was dark, and then I crept through the garden past the garage and slept in the boatshed. I wrapped myself in an old tarp. The lights from the house lit the lawn in rectangles. I could hear the Sri Lankan family with their two little boys playing Trouble.

  When I thought about it later, I knew they wouldn’t have me from the start. That’s why I’d hoped I could work my way in backwards, or maybe sideways.

  6

  COUCH-SURFING

  There was a girl called Mellinda at school. She was quiet and had a habit of bundling herself in her school cardigan. She would stretch it out in front of her until the seams were straining, and then she would wrap it tightly around her, holding it with her crossed arms as though she was wearing a straitjacket.

  Mellinda lived in a granny flat behind her parents’ house. She had a sofa bed.

  I slouched up to her in Science. We were testing whether various household products were acid or alkaline. I leaned so close that our elbows were touching.

  ‘You know, this might actually be useful. More useful than rat dissection, anyway. How often are you going to need to do that in your life?’

  Mellinda murmured in agreement. She had the earpieces from her iPod dangling around her neck and I grabbed one and held it to my ear.

  ‘I’ve never heard this before. What are you listening to?’

  She blushed. ‘It’s um . . . Do you like it?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great! Who is it?’

  Mellinda stared at the table and folded her litmus paper over and over into little triangles. She spoke in a whisper. ‘I have this, ah . . . program on my computer. It’s not special or anything. You can get it on the Net, and then you just record sounds, and cut little clips from other things and loop them.’ She shrugged.

  ‘This is you?’

  She nodded and chewed her lip.

  ‘Oh my God! I was so sure it was, you know, a proper CD. Is it? Have you sent this to anyone, like a studio or something? Do you have a recording contract already?’

  Mellinda laughed and then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘No! It’s just for fun. I haven’t. I haven’t shown anyone.’

  ‘Nobody? You mean I’m the first? Seriously? Wow! That’s kind of an honour. Thank you so much! So how do you do it? Do you think I could have a try? This is amazing! You’re amazing. Can I hear another one?’

  ‘I could show you how if you wanted.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not that hard.’

  ‘That would be so great. Are you busy this arvo? Can I come over? I don’t know if I could do it, but I would love to watch how you do it. If you’re not busy.’

  The trick to couch-surfing is to find someone who is too polite to tell you to leave – the sort of person who is flattered by high-volume attention.

  Mellinda’s sofa bed was lumpy, but I was able to throw my washing in with hers.

  Then her ‘uncle’ came to visit and I knew by the blushing and the cardigan-bundling what sort of uncle he was.

  He told me he had a spare room in his house. I could stay there for as long as I liked. He stroked my hand and licked his lips.

  When I f
licked a look at Mellinda her face was distorted as though she had a tic. Emotions played across her face – relief, rage, and then a kind of bewildered jealousy.

  Between twitches I could tell what had happened. He’d told her that he didn’t normally do this sort of thing, but she was so desirable, so fresh, so attractive that he couldn’t help himself. He wondered if she knew how truly beautiful she was.

  He’d asked permission for one small thing at a time. ‘Can I run my fingers through your hair?’, ‘May I touch your feet?’, ‘Let me stroke your back’, and at first it would have seemed reasonable.

  Then there would come a point where she was uncomfortable, maybe even hurting, but then he would have told her that he couldn’t possibly stop now, and besides, she had let him do that other stuff – this wasn’t really any different.

  When he went away she would have been ashamed and confused. ‘Was this how it was?’ she would have wondered.

  The ads told her it was. The ads said that you should buy make-up, and colour your hair, and drink Coke so that you will be the sort of attractive that men can’t resist. It was pretty shabby, but then so was menstruation. All the girls in those tampon ads wear white and play sports and beam as though it wasn’t interfering with their life in any way. Maybe sex was the same?

  I stood at the window and watched the uncle walk down the driveway. He was high-stepping and humming, tossing his keys in the air and catching them. He gave me a cutesy waggle-finger wave as he got in the car.

  ‘You’re not going to let him do that any more,’ I told Mellinda. ‘If he even leans too close, you say in a loud voice that you’re going to phone his wife. Tell him that if he comes near you again you’re going to ring his boss and take out ads in the fucken Daily Telegraph.’

  Then I looked for a different couch in a household where there was no uncle or neighbour, or brother, or cousin, and every now and then I found one.