Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  And he was laughing, lovely creases forming at the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Because I think you’ll be just fine.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re basing that on, Mr –?’

  ‘El-Amin.’

  Nassim El-Amin. Like water, like music, like poetry.

  3

  I opened my phone and the screen lit up. No reception. I hadn’t anticipated that. I switched it off straight away, feeling a bit odd about the way the sudden brightness had exposed me in the dark. Feeling a bit creeped out, actually – no point pretending. To be honest, ‘terrified’ would probably be a better word. All my bravado and euphoria, gone with the bus.

  Fear is funny like that. There’s the present fear, the kind that gets your heart thumping and your pupils all dilated, like standing alone in the dark on a road in the middle of god-knows-where. That’s the fear of something, something, that might be out there, something that might be coming to get you. And then there’s that other deep and creeping fear, the fear of nothing, of being nothing, the one that slowly eats away at you and drives your actions and comes from inside and sends you out into ridiculous situations where you end up standing around in the dark actually frightened of something, with your heart pumping and your pupils all dilated . . .

  Breathe.

  I stood in the dark and looked up and down the empty road and then across at the house and back at my reception-less phone. Sometimes my tendency to overthink could be an absolute bugger. There was just nothing else for it. There were no choices here.

  Come on, Anna. Big girl pants.

  I strode across the road with spirit and gumption, wheeling my sleek case across the bitumen, but the second my case and I were through the gate we were struggling with long wet grass. With my shins and my feet I found a brick, a tangle of chicken wire, and a broken chair. My case found a rotted tree stump. And then a sudden looming rusted thing blocked my path. I stood holding my phone light out and looking at it while the grass heads distributed their water-droplets evenly over my jeans and the tops of my socks and into my shoes. The object was unidentifiable. A handle at the top, a rusted chain hanging down over a rusted plate side. The bottom of it – wheels perhaps, or rotor blades – was knitted securely to the earth, a mat of weeds tying it down in a tangle of organic threads. My suitcase had become hopelessly ensnared, so I left it where it was and wrestled my picture and my backpack and myself around the rusted thing, and when I finally made it to the front door it was only to realise that the front door was obviously out of action. The torch on my phone showed a crack right down the middle of it, a stack of broken crates teetering against it, and a couch full of holes covered in sagging boxes drawn partly across it.

  I watched a doco with Dad once, The World After Us, about the way nature will reclaim the built spaces when all the humans are gone: plants using our structures to climb closer to the sun, thrusting their feeling tendrils into all the cracks and pulling the human world apart, brick by brick. We were sitting there in our pristine designer lounge room, on Mum’s pride and joy – her sleek mid-century reproduction yellow cloth couch – and I was struck by just how much maintenance it took to keep human spaces human. How quickly and determinedly and opportunistically life overran our puny human attempts at order. I wasn’t even allowed to drink a cup of coffee while sitting on that couch.

  Suddenly that struck me as funny as well as terrifying – oh my god, was I becoming hysterical? – and quickly I looked back up at the stars, trying to feel the world wide open again. Trying to remember to be invigorated rather than horrified by the way it didn’t care about me or what I did.

  I turned down a narrow side path and manoeuvred myself along the cracked concrete until a back door appeared – a torn flywire screen over a plain white door with frosted glass through which spilled a dim but very welcome milky light. In the glow I leaned my memento mori and my backpack against the wall then turned off my phone light and put my phone on top of my backpack. I straightened my hoodie – Nassim’s hoodie – and brought my hands up to smooth down my hair, listening for a sign that any noise I had made had already disturbed them. I pressed one palm to my chest, hoping to magically slow the beating of my heart with hand-pressure alone.

  I was just about to step across the square of concrete, gritty with broken glass, to knock on the door, when suddenly the light snapped off.

  I was plunged into darkness, comprehensive darkness. My eyes had already been ruined for starlight by the artificial glow, and the sudden pitch of it was so startling, so alien to my city eyes, that I froze, unable to move. And then, almost without me, my invisible hands reached out, my fingers scrabbling urgently against the flyscreen, looking for a handle, finding it and pulling it hard, only to find the door was locked.

  And then a something-fear leapt at me, like a snarling dog over a fence, and my heart raced off its mark and I turned the heel of my hand to the screen door and hammered loudly. I stepped back and felt quickly along the wall for my backpack and my phone, and when the face of it lit up I flicked the menu and pressed on the torch and shone it back behind me into the darkness. The feeble light found another shrub-crowded path going towards a faintly lit gate in the distance. Nothing else.

  I held the torch there, but still there was nothing. And still there was no sound from inside the house.

  I leaned my back against the wall, breathing hard, wondering what I should do, if I should knock again, when a new light came on, further back inside the house. The floorboards creaked, there was a shuffle behind the door and then came a wavery voice with an upward inflection.

  ‘Who’s there?’ A woman. A frightened woman.

  ‘Hello?’ I called, stepping towards the door. ‘Hello. It’s Anna, Cathy’s daughter.’

  Moments of silence and then the original milky light flicked back on. The sound of a key in a deadlock, a bolt sliding back but the chain still on and rattling as the door opened a crack. A glimpse through the flyscreen of a blue polyester dressing gown, a cloud of white hair, a thin face.

  ‘Cathy? Is it?’ The voice was as thin and uncertain as the face.

  ‘No, it’s me, Anna, her daughter. Mum’s not here.’

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes, your granddaughter, Anna. I got your letter.’ I pulled a letter out of my pocket, held it up as proof. ‘I got your letter, Grandma, and I came.’

  The door opened wider.

  ‘Anna? Baby Anna?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The whole dressing gown now, a thin woman, rheumy eyes blinking, looking. She began attacking the locks on the screen door, and as the screen door opened and she stared at my face I saw that there were tears leaking into the lines on her wrinkled cheeks. She reached out and began plucking bony fingers at the front of my top, pulling at me until I stepped forward and she clutched me in a fervent embrace.

  Her head barely reached my shoulder. I brought my arms up and hugged her in return.

  It was like holding a bundle of sticks.

  4

  Near the end of that first week of school Nassim turned to me in class and said, ‘So, I’m assuming you’re not a brilliant droid and that sometimes you eat?’

  I could see where he was going with this. ‘I don’t have time to socialise this year,’ I said. ‘I can’t go out.’

  ‘Oh goodness no,’ he said, ‘of course not. Entry into medicine isn’t going to achieve itself – 96-something wasn’t it? And you’ll want to be aiming for 99.95 really, if you’re going to be safe.’

  ‘That’s right!’ I said. ‘Exactly right.’ And then nothing was as clear as it had been a moment ago and it felt odd when I said, ‘So I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ignoring me. ‘Is there anything in particular that you don’t eat? Are you vegan? Averse to chilli?’

  I regarded him carefully.

  ‘I’m omnivorous,’ I said. ‘And I like chilli.’

  He drummed his index fingers on the tabletop, a rapid drill, a gesture I would
come to recognise as winding up energy before launching into something difficult.

  ‘Okay. Say “no” if you like. I can deal with “no”, but just let me put this to you first. So . . . I like to cook,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, bit of a secret, but I mean I really like to cook.’ He rested his elbows on his knees and looked up at me; he spoke slowly, and with particular enunciation and emphasis, like he was explaining a difficult chemical equation. ‘So, what if I was to make something, for lunch, tomorrow, for you, which,’ and then in a rush, ‘would save you some time tonight, I think, wouldn’t it? In the time it usually took to make your own sandwich or whatever you could study some more, or get ready for bed a bit early, or just, I don’t know, give your brain a break, do something else you like to do. I won’t do it if it would make you feel weird. But it would be a great favour to me – more than you know – and when you taste it, you can practise your insight and sensitivity and ability to articulate things to tell me why you loved it or hated it or remained indifferent to it despite my best efforts, and then you need to walk with me.’

  By now I was laughing a little bit as Nassim leaned forward and pulled his phone out of his back pocket and opened up an article he’d found on scientific evidence for study breaks and linking increased performance and brain function with healthy food and exercise.

  ‘Okay!’ I laughed. ‘Okay.’

  I’d had a boyfriend before. Briefly. In year ten. A stocky, sporty boy of moderate social standing mainly on account of being okay on the footy field. I felt it was the thing to do, to have a boyfriend, so when he began paying me attention, I went along with it without really feeling any particular preference for him. And then he, well, not so much forced, but rather, coerced me. That is the word I use when I recount the story to myself. I didn’t have any particularly strong opinions about virginity, and so it didn’t seem such a terrible thing to give.

  But pretty quickly I realised that for me there was nothing so awful as sex with a guy I didn’t want. Before he’d even pulled on his pants I’d explained to him that the level of pressure he’d applied was unacceptable and a relationship with him was something I could no longer countenance. I’d used that kind of language too, perhaps stupidly, because even then I’d known what the outcome would be: that he would talk and, for a little while at least, I would be known, amazingly and contradictorily, as both a prude and a slut.

  But I’d learned something important about myself and my boundaries – I would take a lesson from this. I’d visited Dr Honeycott for the morning-after pill and an STI screen and called it done. I got my head down and studied hard, and decided that guys were simply not worth it.

  But right from the start Nassim was different. Once a week he cooked for me. Every Monday lunchtime for four weeks we sat together on a rug under the big oak tree in the northwest corner of the school and I ate handmade falafel that still showed Nassim’s thumbprints even after frying, mujaddara (I had no idea that I could like lentils so much), homemade baba ghanouj, pan-fried flatbread with dukkha, vegetarian pumpkin kibbeh with labneh, meat kibbeh with lemon tahini, fruit cocktail with homemade ashta cream . . . and once, homemade croissants. ‘That seems a little out of left field,’ I’d said, and he’d said, ‘Hey! Don’t you restrict my culinary creativity. I cook what I like.’ And he made me describe everything I tasted, what it reminded me of, my favourite foods as a kid, the sensations, and then, when we had both eaten enough, we walked once, briskly, around the school grounds.

  And all that time we talked. About our families. About Nassim’s little sister Nadia and how clever she was at gymnastics, about his dad who was funny but who was never home, about my dad and how gentle he was, and a little bit about my mum, about how she was a supercharged mover-and-shaker in the business world and just about as far from gentle as you could get.

  We talked and walked and ate together on those Mondays, and the rest of the time Nassim left me alone. He kept himself happy in his own life and allowed me to disappear.

  And then on that fourth Monday, I became frustrated. I didn’t know that was going to happen, that all of a sudden, sitting and talking and walking wasn’t nearly enough for me. What was this? I let my hand, holding a vegetarian kibbeh, drop away from my mouth.

  ‘Why are you doing this, Nassim?’ I said. ‘Are we friends? Do you do this for lots of girls? Or are we besties now? Are you gay?’

  And Nassim laughed and looked down at his fingers – lovely fingers, I thought – and breathed a long breath out.

  ‘No, Anna. I’m not gay.’ He didn’t look up, but spoke to his own hands. ‘I’m doing it because I really like your brain and I want to be around it. If this is all you have to give at the moment – you know, 99.95 and all that – then this is what I’ll have to take. But no, I’m not gay. And I’m not doing this with any other girls.’

  I thought about this. ‘So, just my brain then?’ I said.

  He glanced up at me quickly. ‘Oh Anna, don’t be an idiot.’ He shook his head and looked at me directly, a long look full of something thrilling, then he shook his head again and looked down. ‘But I don’t want to complicate your life and your plans, and that sort of thing always complicates, and,’ Nassim breathed a large breath, ‘and I’m fairly confident that I’m in pretty deep here, Anna, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit quietly, over here,’ he drew a line with his hands between himself and me, ‘and play the long game.’

  The kibbeh in my hand hung there in space, suspended in front of me, while for a moment the tightness around my heart that always sat there, like a vice, driving me to study, to achieve, to think of the next thing, and the next, to plan my escape, loosened for a moment, and I saw him, really saw him, his beauty so breathtaking, his mouth all mine, it had to be mine – and I didn’t even think as I dropped the kibbeh on the grass and climbed onto him and he fell backwards and I pressed my lips to his and he returned the pressure, and his hands were on my face, and at the back of my neck, and my hands were on his chest, pressing hard, the firm and soft feel of him beneath his clothes . . . And then the kiss relaxed into softness and his body was warm through his clothes, and his fingertips traced my chin, dragged lightly down my neck, rested on the skin above my breast. Where I was straddling him he grew hard, and I drew his gentle hand down to cup my breast, dragging his thumb over my nipple . . .

  It felt, and I felt, wonderful.

  We hung there for a moment, kissing, Nassim’s pelvis shifting, and then he said, ‘Wait,’ and he breathed hard for a moment, his eyes scrunched up. The teacher on yard duty rounded the corner of the science block, glanced in our direction, stopped, and frowned. Nassim pulled back, toppling me to the grass.

  I sat up and looked around, having literally just tumbled back to earth. Nassim shifted his body further away from me, leaving only his hand lingering on my hip until the teacher shook his head and moved on.

  Nassim smiled at me and smoothed my hair back from my face.

  ‘We don’t want to get expelled,’ Nassim said. ‘You’d never forgive me, and Anna-not-forgiving-me is not in my five-year plan.’

  I did a quick teacher check and then leaned right into him, burying my face into his chest, and then I turned over so I could still keep a lookout while resting against him, leaning right back into him – feeling that I was in the sweetest, safest, sexiest place I had ever been.

  An early autumn haze hung across the oval, the leaves just beginning to turn but the air still summer-hot.

  ‘And also,’ he said, reaching around the front of me to pick up my kibbeh from the grass. ‘It’s not polite to waste good food.’

  He brought the kibbeh slowly and seductively to my mouth, and then, at the last moment, as I leaned forward to take a bite, he rushed the last distance to mash it against my chin and nose.

  5

  ‘Well,’ I said over my grandmother’s snowy head, becoming uncomfortable with the duration of her hug and trying not to pat her. ‘I’m sorry I’m here so late, Grand
ma. And I’m sorry I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘No.’ The old woman shook her head awkwardly against my collarbone. ‘I’m happy. I’m so happy. So happy you came to see your Grandma Bette.’

  Finally, I managed to step back and I offered my hand. ‘Me too. It’s nice to finally meet you.’

  My grandmother took my hand like she didn’t know what to do with it. She looked over my shoulder, into the darkness beyond the porch. Peering, searching.

  ‘I don’t want to keep you outside, Grandma. It’s cold. Can I come in?’

  Grandma Bette stepped back and into the house, leaving a way clear for me. And as I stepped inside, the fear of nothing and the fear of something merged into a vacant kind of panic.

  There were piles of paper stacked on the kitchen floor, haphazard boxes, and old curtains bundled up under one corner of the bench seat on the other side of the table. Cans spilled over onto the floor from where they were stored on an old bookshelf, and drifts of paper collected under the chairs. And on every surface, there was a generous layer of tiny black specks. These specks confused my eyes at first: it took my eyes a moment to decipher what they were seeing. And then, with prickling horror, they figured it out. My stomach pressed upwards towards my throat: I was looking at a generously distributed dark-speckled confetti of mouse shit.

  Breathe, Anna.

  But I couldn’t breathe – the smell. Breathing was a compromised tactic. Breathing was no good to me.

  Grandma Bette moved slowly. She had taken my things away from me and put them on top of all the stuff on the kitchen table. Her hands hung in the air in front of her. ‘It’s not usually so . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I meant to get to that,’ she said, gesturing weakly towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve been meaning to, but . . .’