Solo

by Alyssa Brugman

  7

  WILY

  Once I was staying at my friend Emily’s house while her mother was away. Emily was drunk and when she passed out on her bed I took off her shoes and covered her with a doona. Then I went downstairs to the guest room.

  I stripped down to my undies, pulled on an oversized T-shirt and then I saw a reflection in the window. Emily’s older brother Joshua was standing in the doorway. I could see his erection through his clothing.

  He grinned. ‘I think we should have sex.’ I knew he meant to whether I wanted to or not.

  For a moment I panicked. I had to find a way out. I had to think fast.

  ‘Oh no, I’m too drunk. Maybe another time,’ I laughed.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bedside lamp with a heavy base. I sat on the edge of the bed so that it was within arm’s reach. It was attached to an extension cord, which was even better. I wouldn’t have to unplug it before I sconed him with it.

  Joshua sat next to me and kissed my neck. I could smell the beer on his breath.

  ‘I hardly know anything about you,’ I said. ‘We can have sex if you want to, but first tell me a secret.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I know that your father died last year,’ I countered.

  He sat back.

  ‘That must have been really difficult for you,’ I added.

  ‘I haven’t talked to anyone about that,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘No, I want a root.’

  ‘OK, but after you tell me about your dad.’

  So we sat there together until five in the morning, sharing beers, and Joshua told me how hard it had been. He even cried. At the end he thanked me.

  Initially it had been a wily means of escape for me, but now that I think back, it was probably really good for his mental health.

  8

  METAPHORICAL DUCKS

  My counsellor doesn’t use the word ‘problem’. She says ‘challenge’. I am a smorgasbord of challenges. I’m kind of a sampler kit of disorders for social workers. You name a challenge and I will have brushed against it at some time or another – but just a little bit. I’d make a great practice youth for novice social workers before they moved on to bigger cases.

  I’ve stayed with foster-families. The first time was after the incident that happened at the chemist’s shop, and then the next was for four months last year.

  The first time was OK, but the second family didn’t want me there. I think it’s because I was too old. Or maybe it’s because I ate too much, and not at mealtimes. I would wait until everybody was sleeping and I’d sneak into the kitchen. I’d get a big platter from the cupboard and fill it up with a little bit of everything in the fridge – one slice of ham, one teaspoon of Vegemite, two pickled onions, two slices of bread, a handful of frozen peas and a dob of tomato paste.

  Just when I was about to close the fridge door I’d spy something else – a stick of peperoni, say – and hack off a good eight centimetres. In the pantry cupboard I would select a sheet of lasagne, a muesli bar, an apple and two dried apricots. I’d sprinkle the whole lot with breakfast cereal and a squeeze of honey.

  This second foster-family had a breakfast bar. I would squat down behind it in the corner where nobody could see. The telephone cord dangled just above me. I’d sit in the dark and eat my plate of little deliciouses with my fingers, delicately feeling for each morsel and placing it in my mouth – just holding it there and running my tongue over it, feeling its texture and temperature.

  Afterwards I would quietly wash up the platter and put it back in the cupboard. I’d go to the bathroom and kneel before the bowl. I haven’t made myself vomit yet, but I always think about it. I’ve heard other girls say that the stomach acids coming up all the time rot your teeth. I like my teeth. Besides, if I stick my fingers down my throat or buy laxatives then I will have the sort of ‘challenge’ I’ve promised my counsellor that I’ll talk to her about.

  Nobody noticed my bingeing. The foster-mum suspected. I could tell by the way she looked at me. She didn’t like me lurking around the house at night. She thought it was creepy.

  I don’t like foster-homes. I prefer to couch-surf.

  I’ve never had to sleep on the street. I’ve worried about it, though. The school counsellor knows. She’s given me a key to the showers at the back of the PE change room. But we never connected, not the way I did with my court-appointed counsellor.

  I knew why. One of the first times I was waiting in the school counsellor’s office I had Mellinda’s iPod. When she came in she asked me what I was listening to. It was Billie Holiday. She gave me an indulgent smile as though she owned Billie Holiday and I was just borrowing her. Now I can’t listen to Billie Holiday without thinking about it and I hate her for stealing Billie Holiday from me. So when she asks me questions, I lie or deflect. Sometimes I cave and need her, and then she pretends to misunderstand and gives me careers advice to pay me back.

  Sometimes the Home Ec. assistant, Sally, lets me wash my clothes in the machine that is used for the teatowels and dishcloths from the school kitchens. Sally is discreet, which I appreciate, but she doesn’t want to hear about my life. If I start to tell her things she fidgets and turns her back, pretending to be busy.

  Mostly I couch-surf, but a couple of times last winter I caught a train to Mount Victoria and then back again. All the way from Strathfield to Emu Plains I looked into people’s back yards. It was like seeing the houses in their underwear – people in slippers bringing in their washing, kids on tricycles and swing sets, cockatiels in cages, unsorted recycling, unmown lawns.

  As the train jolted past Pendle Hill station there was a lady on the top floor of an apartment block wearing lycra and doing aerobics along with the television. I saw a man in Lidcombe walking around his house in socks, with his pants unzipped, and another man in Schofields breaking up large trays of seedlings in his greenhouse.

  I imagined the front of these houses tidy and whipper-snipped, with the curtains drawn in neat, even pleats.

  When I see those grey-layered bundles hunkering at the bases of buildings, I can’t help but stare. I wonder where I will go when I run out of boatsheds, couches and long train rides. It fills me with dread and a horrified recognition.

  I imagine myself looking out from the crazy, dirty face of the old woman with stringy tendrils of hair whipping around her neck. Is she really as old as she looks? Where did her story begin?

  What would a homeless person do if they were agoraphobic? What if you had to sleep in a park and you were arachnophobic?

  Can you only afford to have a phobia if you have a home?

  You could get a pet duck. Ducks eat spiders. I don’t think it would walk on a lead, though. You’d have to carry it.

  I wonder what sort of phobias I will discover that I suffer from. Fear of cold. Fear of bacteria. Fear of being robbed. Fear of people looking at me the way they look at homeless people.

  Androphobia. I looked that one up.

  I would have to find myself a metaphorical duck.

  What would you do if you were afraid of spiders and ducks? You’d be stuffed.

  9

  PIPPIES

  Itsy wasn’t always the way she is now. We used to go to the beach house every weekend. She was a sun-soaker, lying with her bikini straps splayed across the towel, shading her eyes and reading a fat paperback. I would sit at the water’s edge with one of my dad’s T-shirts over my swimmers, heavy with water, encrusted in sand. Dad would call me ‘Mackenzie Schnitzel’ when we came inside.

  I made mermaid castles by dribbling the wet sand from the tips of my fingers into folds and curlicues. After I made a whole mermaid palace complex I’d call to my mother and she would run over the hot sand on the tips of her toes to look.

  If I looked up I would often see Dad sitting on the front deck with his shirt open, drinking a beer.

  For lunch we would have hot chips from the surf life
saving club, eating with our mouths open so we wouldn’t burn our tongues. Mostly Dad would come to eat with us, unless he was with business associates.

  Then at the end of the day, when everyone else had already gone home, Itsy and I would chase the waves to catch pippies. I’d laugh at her on her knees digging like a dog. We would collect them in a bucket, vowing to take them home to cook, but we only ever caught a dozen. When we were exhausted we’d tip them out and watch them slip sideways into the wet sand and disappear with a wink.

  My mother doesn’t love me because she’s a junkie. Junkies can only love people temporarily. They are emotionally nomadic.

  10

  DARKNESS

  As the darkness stole the afternoon away I drank three, four, five mugs of tea from river water in the billycan, which was a mistake.

  I cooked half the sausages on the wonky grill and ate them with my fingers. I wrapped a potato in foil and threw it into the flames. After what I imagined to be an hour, I took it out again. It was blackened on the outside and raw in the middle, but when it had cooled enough to hold I ate it like an apple.

  Despite Wendy and Stefan’s advice, I built the fire until the flames licked up to the height of a man. It was too hot to sit by. For a few minutes I stood at the edge of its heat and felt the darkness press against my back. Then I sat inside the door of my tent and waited.

  The fire died down a little and I stretched out on the bedroll in my sleeping bag.

  The river is much louder at night. I zip up the front of the tent, listen to the white noise and watch the firelight play across the fabric above me.

  A shadow falls between my tent and the fire. I see the shape of a man standing with his hands on his hips. It looks sharp, like the silhouette of open scissor blades. It flickers for a moment and is gone.

  All my muscles are rigid, my jaw locks. There is a man out there – a scissor-man. Bethany’s serial killer. I can’t see anything in here. I’m listening, but the sound of the water pushes against my ears and grates inside my head like steel wool.

  I kneel in my sleeping bag, my muscles uncoiling like a spring, and slowly unzip the tent flaps. I take a deep breath and then rip them back. There is no man.

  I lie still with my heart throbbing in my throat.

  After a long time I see a sprite flit over the stones at the edge of the fire. She is tangerine orange, naked – childlike – no bigger than the span of my hand. She has yellow eyes, split up the middle like a cat’s. She flutters a forked tongue at me through sharp, shiny metal teeth like nails.

  There is a small boy at the edge of the path, standing underneath a tree. He wears a top hat and white make-up like a mime artist. He wipes tears from his black eyes.

  There is a woman pacing where the water laps against the stones. She wrings her hands. She’s wearing a nightdress that clings to her skin. Her dark hair is wet and sticks to the side of her neck, but when she turns towards me, I see that it’s not hair but masses of long black leeches.

  On the other side of the fire there is an older boy – almost a man. He’s choking. His face turns so red and bloated it’s almost blue. The capillaries pop in his eyes and they fill with blood. His tongue is swelling. He retches and retches and the foam runs down his chin.

  I close my eyes, but I can still see them. I imagine them lurching towards me.

  My bladder burns like a hot stone. Mosquitoes buzz around my ears and bite the corners of my lips. I put my hands to my cheeks. The mosquitoes sting my knuckles and settle on my eyelids. I lie still staring at the dying fire, like the figure in Munch’s Scream, waiting for the morning.

  PART FOUR

  Truths

  I wasn’t born with enough middle fingers.

  ‘IRRESPONSIBLE HATE ANTHEM’ MARILYN MANSON

  1

  BALANCING THE UNIVERSE

  Things aren’t as ‘Poor me’ as I might make out. I’m a liar. I’m not even honest with myself. Sometimes when I’m close to the truth I just re-remember it a different way. I’m vain and greedy. I’ve been promiscuous in bouts. I’ve betrayed. I’ve stolen lots of things. I taxed Mellinda when I left. I took the iPod with me.

  There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Adults – my counsellor, my social worker, my school principal – can throw their hands in the air, exasperated. ‘We just don’t know what to do about you, Mackenzie.’

  And I think, ‘Good! That means I’ve won.’

  I can justify most things, at least in karmic terms.

  Every day I see other people my age who have won, just by being born into the right family. I have been set up to fail. I have all the excuses in the world.

  I’m in the lowest percentile range, the long-term, repeat-offender, intergenerational transgressor. I’m locked in the rock-throwing cycle. I’d lost before I was even born.

  Every now and then I deserve a few wins of my own – the occasional skirmish towards balancing the universe.

  2

  TAXING THE GUIDMANS

  We lived next door to the Guidmans for a while. One time when they went for a holiday to Coffs Harbour they asked me to feed their cat.

  The first day I retrieved the key from its hiding place under the third potplant, I went into the house, fed the cat with the first tin they had put on the counter and then I left.

  The second day I went into their house, and after the cat had finished eating I walked around their house. I sat on the lounge and watched a cartoon. I looked in their medicine cabinet in the bathroom and smelled the perfumes on the dressing table in the main bedroom. I kept waiting for the front door to open and for them to find me. It was exhilarating.

  The next time I went there I sprayed on one of Mrs Guidman’s scents and then I looked in their bedside tables. On Mr Guidman’s side there were some porno mags.

  I went through the pockets of all the jackets in their wardrobe and altogether I found thirty-six dollars forty in small notes and change. I left two dollars in loose change, but took the rest.

  Before I left, I tried to put everything back exactly the way I had found it. I went home and sat on my bed stinking of Mrs Guidman’s perfume. I curled my fingers around the money in my pocket and felt the way religious people must feel when they think they are going to hell. I felt damned.

  Sometimes if I had nothing else to do on a Saturday morning I would wait until the Guidmans had gone grocery shopping and I would go into their house using the key that they left under that pot for all eternity. I bet it’s still there.

  I would take money from Mr Guidman’s jacket pockets. I also discovered a jar of coins on the shelf in the laundry. I must have taken hundreds from them over the years.

  I took one of Mr Guidman’s porno mags and sold it to a boy from my class for ten dollars. Another boy found out and wanted me to get one for him, but I sold him a bottle of the Guidmans’ gin for thirty dollars instead.

  The Guidmans never caught me, but the idea that they would was so exciting that it sent shivers over my whole body and made my heart beat fast. Sometimes I would wait until I heard their doors thump closed in the garage before I would leave.

  Rollercoasters have nothing on a bit of petty theft for kicks.

  3

  LORELEI’S SHOES

  That girl Lorelei Darton from primary school knew I was a liar. In year 4 I stole her shoes. One sports day I saw her pull them out of her bag. She laid them on the seat next to her carefully, because she was proud of them. They were white and sky-blue with a shiny silver stripe along the side and heart-shaped silver buttons around the sole.

  They were new and when I saw them I wanted them.

  When everyone was paying attention, I told Lorelei that I had a pair of shoes exactly the same. I asked her where she got them and when she answered, ‘Rebel Sports,’ I nodded. ‘Yeah, me too.’

  Two weeks later, on sports day, I wagged till playlunch and then I went into the classroom and took Lorelei’s blue and silver shoes from her sports bag. I put them on and then I hid my plain
black shoes in the bushes behind the photocopying room.

  Then I snuck around the back of the teachers’ carpark. I came in through the front gates just as the bell went and caught up with Lorelei as she headed towards class. I waggled my foot. ‘Now we can be twins.’ Lorelei smiled back, but it was a tight, closed-mouth smile because she thought she was better than I was.

  At lunchtime Ms D’Antoni asked me if I’d stolen Lorelei Darton’s shoes that morning. Lorelei stood behind the teacher with her arms crossed and an ugly frown like a scar up the middle of her face. I let my mouth drop open.

  ‘I told her ages ago that I had a pair exactly the same. Ask anyone. And besides, I wasn’t even here! Lorelei saw me come in wearing these shoes.’

  Ms D’Antoni asked me to empty my bag. I whipped the zipper around and shook it, letting everything spill on the asphalt. A pencil case and ruler, two library books, an empty drink container with a splash of cordial in the bottom, a brown, wrinkled apple.

  No shoes.

  I stared at Lorelei.

  ‘Apologise to Mackenzie,’ said Ms D’Antoni.

  Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. ‘Sorry.’ She couldn’t figure out how I’d done it.

  ‘That’s OK, Lorelei.’ I smiled at her. I knew that Lorelei knew, and she knew it too.

  I wore those sky-blue shoes every day, even though I got a note home for being out of uniform.

  Lorelei owed me those shoes for being so stuck-up and snooty. Besides, her parents would buy her a new pair. Itsy never would.

  Even now I’m not sorry. I enjoyed getting the better of Lorelei Darton, and the only person who really suffered was Lorelei’s mum or dad or whoever paid for those shoes, and they probably deserved it too, for thrusting their stuck-up, snooty daughter on the world. They should have bought a pair of shoes for every kid in my class.