holds out his arms.
He’s done it every other time he’s seen her cry.
But she’s still standing there,
whimpering,
shivering.
She doesn’t want to touch him.
Jim’s eyes rove over Char.
She’s got eyeliner and mascara streaked across her face.
Red eyes and nose.
Her teeth are chattering.
And her arms are wrapped around herself, seeking warmth.
Poor thing.
Jim takes another step forward, holds out his arms again,
and beckons.
But Char takes another step back.
He takes off his jumper,
recoiling against the cold,
and holds it out to her.
She forces herself to take a step forward, puts the jumper on.
Jim watches her, with the distinct and uncomfortable
feeling that this is somehow partly his fault.
Lesser of two evils
They sit on the picnic table in the park,
huddling for warmth.
It’s getting colder,
and Jim wants to be somewhere warmer
but he doesn’t want to push Char,
this child-woman on the edge.
He takes her hair in his hands,
and begins to plait.
It’s the only thing that he can do,
the only thing right now that feels right.
She begins to talk,
as if the fingers in her hair, gently putting
something in order,
unlock her mouth.
She tells Jim
about the last few weeks
about the girls in Maths
about the fight with her mother.
She tells Jim, ‘I can’t go home tonight.’
Jim knows he has to take her back to his house
for the night.
He prepares himself for the objections,
but there aren’t any.
He guesses that, tonight, it’s the lesser of two evils.
Jim’s place
Jim’s parents
are a godsend.
They leave us be.
Don’t give me funny looks.
Just say, ‘Hello Char,’
and leave it at that.
I feel funny
about taking off Jim’s jumper, my pants.
I always slept in my undies at Jim’s place.
As I’m undressing, Jim pretends not to watch
but I know he’s seeing everything.
I feel naked
and cold
as I climb into bed.
Not that forgiven
We talk
about what’s happened between us.
About the cheating.
About the baby.
About the rift between us even now.
We talk
about what’s been going on in my head.
About how I felt when my mother was screaming at me.
About how scared I was in the park tonight.
About how I don’t know whether or not I can go home
tomorrow.
Jim smiles, pats my hair, kisses my forehead,
rubs my arms and back that are still goosepimply.
He brings his lips to my ear and murmurs,
‘At least you still smell great, beautiful thing.’
He holds out his arms
and I lie in them.
He traces my tattoo with his index finger,
still disbelieving that I went through with it.
I snuggle in
but turn my cheek at his kiss.
He’s not that forgiven.
Morning light
In the morning
we’re both shy.
A lot has happened since we’ve woken up together
and we’re not quite ready for each other in
morning sunlight.
Jim pulls a school dress of mine out of his cupboard.
It’s the one I was wearing the night we drank all that rum.
I spewed on it, and since then it’s been washed.
Jim points to his desk. ‘That was in the pockets.’
There, sitting on his desk, are hair ties, ribbons and
lip gloss.
Turns out I’d also left a change of undies here.
I get dressed for school.
Bodyguard
As we walk to school,
I wonder if my mother looked for me last night.
Wonder if she cared.
Wonder why I can’t talk to her.
Jim has his arm around my shoulders.
We march into school like that.
I can see the questions in everyone’s eyes
but Jim wards them off,
keeps me
protected.
I wonder
how he can be so good to me
how things can have gotten so bad between us.
I wonder
why I can’t just be normal.
Facing Mum
During Japanese, the school secretary comes to find me.
‘Your mum’s coming to pick you up. She’ll be here in
ten minutes.’
I mutter, ‘Excuse me’ in Japanese,
stuff my books into my bag,
and head towards the office.
I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to face Mum.
Mum signs me out.
We walk into the carpark, get into the car, drive off.
She takes me home, makes me coffee and a sandwich.
I’m not hungry, but I take a bite of the sandwich,
a sip of the coffee,
trying to please her, placate her.
We still haven’t spoken
and I wonder why.
Mum sits me down in a chair.
Asks me what’s wrong.
I take another sip of coffee, trying to unlock my mouth.
Mum looks so tired, so worried,
I know I have to say something.
I can’t tell her about Jim.
She’d kill him.
I can’t tell her about the abortion.
She’d kill me.
I can’t tell her about me drinking every chance I get.
She’d kill both of us.
Mum asks
why I haven’t been eating.
Asks me if I’m scared of getting fat, if I think I’m fat.
Not really, I tell her.
Wish it was as simple as that.
I just don’t feel like it, that’s all.
Mum asks me why some nights I don’t come home.
Asks me if there’s some reason for that, something that’s
stopping me coming home.
Not really, I say.
Wish it was as easy as that.
Some nights I just forget.
Mum asks me why we fight so much.
Asks me if I think she’s a bad parent,
if she’s done something wrong.
Not really, I reply.
Wish parents wouldn’t ask those kinds of questions.
We’re supposed to fight anyway.
Mum asks me if I’m having trouble at school.
Asks me if I’m having issues with friends,
issues with schoolwork.
Not really, I mumble.
Wish it was something so fixable, so easily labelled.
But I’m surviving school.
Mum’s given up on the questions. She looks the way she did
when I snuck out and got a nose ring, years ago. Like she
doesn’t know what to do. I want to tell her that neither do I.
I tell her that I don’t know what’s wrong.
That sometimes I just feel down.
Sometimes that’s become a lot more lately.
I tell her that I don’t feel much like sleeping.
Much like eating.
Much like doing anything.<
br />
I tell her that I can’t seem to handle it any more,
I don’t even know what I mean by that,
and I can’t clarify my words, I’m crying instead.
Mum gently takes my hand, a determined look on her face.
Grimly she tells me, ‘We’ll fix it, Char. We’ll fix it.’
She’s so sure, so resolute, that I don’t have a
glimmer of doubt.
She says it like it’s the best option,
the only option.
The only option we’ve got.
Cheers
That night, as usual, I can’t sleep.
I pull myself out of bed,
stretch,
yawn,
turn on the lamp.
I pace
around my room
looking
for something to do.
My head is throbbing.
Bleary-eyed and groggy,
I open my cupboard,
grab a jacket,
and sneak out my window.
I walk past the park where I ran to that night.
Boys are drinking under one of the trees,
boys I know,
friends of Jim’s from footy.
One of them calls me over,
puts a bottle into my hands.
The glass shines eerily in the moonlight and,
as I watch it,
I’m nudged.
‘Well it ain’t gonna drink itself. Cheers.’
He drinks from another bottle as I put the one in my hand
to my lips.
Poison
Straight alcohol
tastes
like poison
and drinking it down
is oddly ritualistic.
You literally have to force it down your throat
and hold it down,
ignoring the fire spreading from bottle to mouth
to stomach.
I cough
and the boys laugh.
And yet I keep swallowing the bitter burning fluid.
After a while I begin to laugh as well.
Straight alcohol
tastes
like poison
and drinking it down
numbs your brain
your senses
your sense.
That’s mine
Jim’s friend puts his arm around me,
takes the bottle.
‘Hey, that’s mine,’ I say.
‘I think you’ve just about had your fill,’ he teases.
I pout,
sit on the picnic bench,
pout some more.
He takes a scull,
and hands me back the bottle.
Quenching the hunger
Eventually, when the wind is too icy
and our bones are feeling brittle,
people start leaving the park.
Jim’s friend wraps his arm around me and walks me away
with him.
I stumble
sway
curse
while he laughs
and holds me up
holds me tighter.
I lean on a street lamp
while he puts the bottles in the bin.
He comes back
his
hands on my hands
lips on my lips.
It’s been so long since I’ve been
touched like that
touched so gently
I yearn for more.
It’s like a hunger
that needs to be satiated.
Too good to be true
In the morning
Char’s mum is feeling optimistic.
Surely,
after the talk with her daughter yesterday,
things should be looking up.
She makes pancakes with blueberries in them,
Char’s favourite.
She
takes them up to Char’s room.
Breakfast in bed.
She knocks, twice,
then opens the door.
Char isn’t in the room
and
although the sheets are rumpled,
they are cold to the touch.
Char’s mum sits
having returned to the kitchen,
sans pancakes.
She has made herself a pot of tea
and sits at the table in the early morning light,
talking to herself.
‘It was just the beginning yesterday, the tip of the iceberg,’
she tells herself grimly.
‘It’ll take time to get her back to normal, you know that. Be
gentle, calm, easygoing. Don’t go nuts. DON’T go nuts.’
At that moment, Char walks in the door, bleary-eyed
and ruffled.
Char’s mum stands and
it’s all yelling from then and
defences go up and
arms are folded and
lumps in throats are swallowed back as both try
desperately not to cry and people get frustrated and
say even more things they don’t mean and
Char storms out of the room, a bleary-eyed, ruffled demon
and when she’s thrown herself on the floor and sobbed and
sniffled and gulped and scrubbed at her face with her
fingers and managed to quieten a little,
she opens her eyes and
notices a plate of cold blueberry pancakes sitting very
demurely on the floor.
Why is it easiest to hurt the people we are closest to?
Cow guts
It is dinnertime at Jim’s house.
They’re sitting down to mashed potatoes, steak, peas, and
corn (except for his little sister, who’s gone vegetarian
and is self-righteously tucking into lentils in place of the
steak and giving the occasional pitiful ‘moo’ to get her
point across).
‘James,’ says his mum
(he knows he’s in trouble because she’s using his real name),
‘James, what’s happening with you and Char? Haven’t
seen her about lately.’
He stares at his peas,
and his sister stops making cow faces and looks up,
interested.
‘We’re having a break, Mum,’ he mutters,
wishing she wasn’t so nosey.
How does he explain?
How can he tell his mum?
She’d be gutted.
Just like the steak on his plate.
Trying to sleep
When I’m in bed, later on, trying to sleep, Jim’s friend from
the park sends me a text message.
I’m surprised he even remembers who I am.
He wants to see me again.
My heart lifts a little at the prospect.
We send text messages back and forth
until I run out of credit,
and, like the pathetic person I am,
I reread them over and over.
So much for sleeping tonight.
On the other side of the message . . .
Jim’s friend sits on his desk, feet hanging out the
second-storey window of his bedroom. (Convenient in
earlier years, but he hasn’t had the need to sneak out in
a long while.)
He’s not thinking about jumping, just sitting there smoking
(a slower form of suicide, he thinks wryly].
He is wearing his jacket, the same jacket he was wearing
the last time he saw her, the same jacket he slipped
around her as she shivered (and she smiled at him,
glassily, blearily-eyed, and kissed his cheek).
He thinks of that kiss on his cheek. He hadn’t thought that
a kiss on his check could ever be enjoyable, synonymous
as they were with old aunties
with wrinkly skin, hairy
chins, perfume like the air freshener in toilets, and fuchsia
lipstick that stuck to his skin. But that kiss . . .
(He starts telling himself off for acting like a schoolkid now
and letting his smoke burn down.)
Smoke finished, he hugs his jacket around himself, nestles
his head into the folds, smelling a mix of his own natural
sandalwood scent, boys’ deodorant, and there! Lingering
faintly, a smell of sweeter spice, her perfume (he never
knew girls could smell like that, so much nicer than the
sickly flowery scents he’d always smelt on girls).
He thinks of her, thinks of Jim.
Thinks of how he wanted Char as soon as he met her.
Thinks of how much he wanted to bash Jim when he went
out partying the night that Char had the abortion.
His mother calls out in her loud, squally voice, ‘I can smell
smoke up there! You’re not on the fags again, are you?’
Good ol’ Yapper
Char’s teacher is going on about the power of thought. He’s
old and wiry, with a balding head and an ever increasing
handlebar moustache. He’s one of those teachers who
thinks that the more philosophy his students hear, the
better. The students call him ‘Yapper’, and he knows it, but
doesn’t mind. And he (gasp) uses swearwords!
‘Your mind is a palace,’ he says.
‘Even if everything else has turned to shit around you,
your mind can be your treasure chest,’ he says.
‘No one can ever tell you what to think. It’s the ultimate
freedom you have in this world,’ he says.
‘Did you know your mind can only hold one thought at a
time? It’s worthwhile making sure it’s at least half
interesting,’ he says.
‘And did you know if you tell yourself something often
enough, you’ll start to believe it?’ he says.
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 6
