• • •
You do know the word transfer. The transfer they’ve been waiting for. They’ve finally got the transfer. Out of the western suburbs and into the northern beaches. It’s the big tick, the right-hand veer in the road. Your mum and dad say some really strange things.
Your dad drives down the street past your friend Kelly’s house, the library and the park. Kelly’s bedroom blind is open a tiny bit, but she isn’t looking through it like she said she would. The library is closed. The park has been freshly mowed. You try to attach these landmarks to the last moments of conversation connected to them.
Kelly’s House, Kelly: ‘I’m going to Sheree’s tomorrow and we’re having marshmallows. Will I still be your best friend?’
Library, Me: ‘Mum, I forgot to wear undies.’
Mum: ‘How could you forget? Keep your legs together and don’t sit on the carpet with your book. I’m not going back now.’
Park, Dad: ‘You need to ride down the slope. Pedal and pedal and you won’t fall off. The speed will keep you balanced.’
Mum: ‘Jesus, Goddy, she’s going to end up with bits off her everywhere.’
Your dad turns left and keeps going until you don’t recognise anything. Sometimes, in your dreams, your parents get out of the car and leave you in the backseat. You try to get out too, but the car drives you away from them. It drives through red lights and stop signs until there is no way to return. How does your dad remember all these roads and yet some nights he forgets to come home?
The place you are moving to has the word beach in it. Clareville Beach. That’s why your mum and dad have been working such long hours. When they were eight, they were lucky to get a sprinkler to jump over. They had to drag their mattresses into the breezeway and cover themselves in wet towels. They’ve had to work hard because no-one’s just going to hand it to them; money doesn’t grow on trees, you know. You’ve never tried to convince them that it does.
You play I-spy for a while, until things get complicated. ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with DWLRDTMOTR,’ your mum says. You give in. ‘Double White Lines Running Down The Middle Of The Road.’ The game ends.
‘Right here. This is the exact place where the air changes,’ she says to your dad. The windows are down and they breathe it in. They sing along to the Beach Boys with good vibrations and excitations. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. And she rests her hand on his knee.
• • •
Your new room is at the top of a set of stairs with gaps between them through which you can look to the space below. Your mum and dad now sleep two levels beneath you in a room that has its own bathroom. You take a lot of care on those steps to start with. You feel like it would be easy to fall right through them. From your bedroom window you can see the gum trees leaning, as though unsteady, in the wind. Sometimes, at night, it is as if the whole house is swaying with them. You don’t really like being up there in the blackened sky with the stars shining through the tree limbs. Sounds echo up to your room from the beach: the creak of boats trying to pull free of their moorings, words you can’t decipher, the lap of the water as perpetual as Mrs Carter’s God.
Each day your mum gives you a glass bowl full of honey mixed with water, and you feed rainbow lorikeets from the balcony. The birds grip your arms and leave dents in your skin. Their tongues have tiny hairs that tickle your fingers. The shadows from the timber railing fall across the deck and you try to step between the shadows, never letting the darkness touch you.
In the late afternoon, you draw a lone lorikeet with its blue head and belly, and persimmon chest. As the bird dips its beak into the bowl, your suburban cat, Nosha, hides in new shadows, moving his limbs slowly and keeping his head low. You close one eye and outline the green sweep of the lorikeet’s tail. Nosha pounces and the rainbow feathers flare and flutter and fall. Your dad grabs Nosha by his scruff and dangles him over the balcony. Your mum puts her hand on your shoulder and talks about animal instinct.
• • •
Your dad takes you for a walk to the shops. You think about how you used to pick up your friend, Ghostie, from the top of a paling fence and put him in your pocket on your way to buying mixed lollies from the corner store. You’re glad you know now that he wasn’t real, because if he was he’d be pretty sad, stuck on that fence, waiting for you every day. It takes one hundred and twenty driveways and four road crossings to get to the shops now. You can smell the salty air and the honeysuckle. Your dad picks the yellow flowers and you both bite off the green ends and suck out the nectar. You leave a trail of them behind you. Across the road is a place that smells just like the one you and your dad used to go to before the transfer.
He leads you through glass doors with his hand clamped around the back of your neck, past nicotine-yellow tables, over kaleidoscope carpet. A row of men are perched on stools, their thick arms bent across blue towels, their hairy legs dangling. Their hair is shrinking into their skulls. They are stunted and swollen like the puffer fish you poke with a stick on the beach.
A woman with sausage-skin arms fills glasses with liquid that smells like the men and the carpet and the air. Soon your dad will smell that way too. The air is heavy with smoke and your eyes smart like they are squinting into the sun. He passes you some coasters and you shuffle them, wondering how you can play with a hand of cards that are all the same.
‘You again,’ the woman says to your dad. She winks at him. Your mum can’t wink and neither can you. Your dad can wink and roll his tongue and wiggle his ears. He always tells you it’s just a matter of practice, but your mum says it’s a genetic flaw, like insanity. This makes your mum and dad laugh, even though they’ve said it so many times that it can’t still be funny.
‘We’ll be calling you a local soon,’ the woman says. She winks again, but your dad doesn’t wink back or wiggle his ears. He just smiles. He looks a bit sad. He orders a schooner and a can of lemonade.
‘She’ll have to go outside or there’ll be all sorts of strife,’ the woman says, nodding at you and raising her eyebrows.
One of the puffer-fish men says she’s a narky old thing and asks you if you want a trot-trot. You shake your head. ‘You know,’ he says, patting his lap, ‘a trot-trot. This is the way the ladies ride, trot-trot-trot.’ He moves his knees up and down. ‘And this is the way the gentlemen ride, a-canter-a-canter-a-canter. And this is the way the larrikins ride, a-gallop-a-gallop-a-gallop.’ His voice gets louder and his legs thrash around, and you hide behind your dad.
‘Jesus, Fletch, she’s scared silly,’ the woman says. ‘Don’t be an idiot all your life. Have the day off.’
‘Ah, you’re just jealous. Months since your last trot-trot, I reckon.’ He laughs and elbows the man next to him.
‘You’re a real comedian,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know this job’d be so frickin funny.’
Your dad moves his empty glass towards the woman and raises one finger in the air. He’s won the drinking contest with you again. That means he gets another one. He leads you through a door that opens out onto a playground. You see a boy running up the sliding side of the slippery dip leaving dirty footprints. Your dad nudges you towards him.
‘Here’s a nice little friend,’ he says in the same voice he uses when he tells you the water feels beautiful once you get in.
The boy smiles, but as soon as your dad’s back is turned, he opens his mouth and his eyes as far as they will go and calls you a spastic.
You sit on the swing and pull your legs back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but you don’t really get anywhere.
• • •
Dreams of Mrs Carter’s wingless angel trying to flutter her way out of the soil give way to the smell of coffee and fish paste. Your mum calls you downstairs and greets you with toast, lumpy butter and Anchovette. You have that squelchy feeling in your stomach that you had the last time you changed schools. She puts your hair in pigtails and loops bright green ribbon around each one to match the piping on your un
iform. The night before, on a whim, your dad cut your fringe. Your mum says it looks like he did it with pinking shears. You’re not sure what they are, but you’re pretty sure it’s not a good thing. Your dress is stiff and goes past your knees. You are wearing the only school shoes made for skinny feet. You know every other girl will have fat, flat feet enclosed in Jesus sandals. They’ll have silver sleepers in their ears. Your dad has slipped a notebook with an embossed gold cover into your briefcase, just in case you want to take notes. You look like a stiff and sickly PI.
Your mum is wearing a new green skirt, a red top and black stockings. She has a plastic butterfly pinned to her chest. You watch her lean in to the bathroom mirror and colour in her face. She bends down to put on her pumps and catches her stockings with her fingernail. Her skirt comes up and her stockings come down. She pads barefoot to the car at the bottom of the driveway and you follow her. She calls you her slow little lamb. Near the powder-puff tree that smells like lemons, your mum stubs her toe. ‘Shit … I mean sugar,’ she says.
• • •
Class 3/4B is housed in a demountable shaded by a jacaranda tree. The walls are grey and stained and there is a metal grate at the bottom of the steps. Stained-glass fish made from black cardboard and cellophane swim across the windows.
Inside, the annex smells like old honey sandwiches and mandarin peel. Backpacks hang from the wall in two rows. Mrs Brouart tries to squeeze your briefcase handles onto a hook, but gives up. She asks if all the children from your old school had bags like yours and you tell her it’s new and it’ll soften over time like your mum, or so your dad said. Mrs Brouart offers a funny, crooked smirk and sits you next to a girl with wavy brown hair, silver sleepers and Jesus sandals. A glance around the room confirms your sandal suspicions. You smile inwardly at your well-developed intuition. One day this will be jotted down in your notebook.
The girl’s name is Jessica. She asks what the hell happened to your fringe but thankfully doesn’t wait for an answer. She points to a boy sitting under a window on the other side of the room. He has a fringe that flops in his face; he keeps sticking out his bottom lip and blowing his fringe up in the air. Your dad could certainly do a job on him. Jessica tells you his name is Grub and that he’s her boyfriend so he’s B-A-R-ed. Your friends at your old school weren’t quite up to boyfriends. They were up to hopscotch and tossing jacks. You can only assume it’s something to do with all the salt in the air. Jessica suggests that if you want to go with someone, there are only the dags and Shaun left. Shaun was dropped by Katie last week, so he’s available, but he’s a bit bug-obsessed. Nicodemo won’t go with anyone because it’s against his religion.
Jessica copies your spelling list. She borrows your coloured pencils and breaks their leads. She cuts your rubber in half and writes JESS on her half with thick black texta.
Mrs Brouart talks about syllables. She claps your name out to the other students. ‘Jo-se-phine-Kav-an-agh.’ Clap-Clap-Clap-Clap-Clap-Clap. ‘Six syllables. Lots of syllables,’ she says. ‘But not as many as Nic-o-dem-o-A-gus-tin-o.’ Nicodemo smiles at you. It is not a warm smile but a slitty-eyed smile that lets you know your place in the order of things. He has beaver teeth and a pointy face and a shock of black hair. When the teacher mentions his name, he twitches his nose and sniffs, reminding you of a guinea pig. Nicodemo sports a badge on his shirt, a shirt with creases down the middle of each sleeve. He is the class captain for reasons you now understand. He has you all worked out. The whole room starts to smell of skinny-feet school shoes and Anchovette and fear. If you breathe in deeply, perhaps the smell will move through your nose and into your body and no-one will notice. You say his name over and over in your head. Nic-o-dem-o-A-gus-tin-o. Eight syllables. Jessica claps out Grub-Jones.
• • •
It is six in the evening. The kookaburras find something very amusing. Your dad is in the sitting room surrounded by white billowing foam, black felt, pruning shears and a glue gun. His eyes move from your favourite book to the foam and back again. He lays it out on the table and starts to cut. He looks confused and out of control, not at all like the haberdashery lady whose textile-lined shopfront was just a short walk from your old home. You think of her now, rolling out a bolt of material and cutting the fabric in one smooth sweep, the sound of the blade skimming across the wooden table. You can’t recall her face, just her hands and her chest: petite, smooth hands with gold bracelets that jangled as she moved them, and a name tag on her chest that said Mary in neat black print. Sometimes you pretend that lady is your mother: her confident repetition, the exact measure and fold of cloth, the matching spool of thread. She would be great with fringes.
Your dad has a bottle next to the chair that smells like the men and the carpet and the air in the place you now visit most afternoons. He moves the creamy-white foam material across the table. He takes a swig from the bottle and wipes the froth from his moustache. His dazzling blue eyes are bloodshot.
• • •
Gumbles travel together in clusters. They are small white creatures who live in the Australian bush: happy, giggly things that can be squeezed, without being hurt, into any form. If you push them too hard, though, they need help to get back to their original shape.
Even though you can read, your dad still likes to lie in bed with you and tell you about the adventures of the Bottersnikes and Gumbles. Lying in your parents’ bed makes you feel safe. You curl yourself around his warm tummy and rest your head on his chest with one eye open so you can see the pictures. Sometimes your eyes grow too tired and he asks if you want him to stop, but you tell him your ears are still awake. He laughs and keeps reading. He couldn’t read to you last night, though, because he was too busy creating a masterpiece for the book parade.
Now, when you walk into the sitting room, he is asleep. His head is tilted back against the cane chair and his mouth is open. His legs are sprawled out wide and he is making a low snorting noise, the sort of noise a Bottersnike makes when it laughs. You think for a moment that he even looks a bit like a Bottersnike. They have scaly skin and red, cheese-grater noses and cruel mouths with sharp teeth. They are the bane of Gumbles. There are now five bottles on the floor next to his feet. One has tipped over onto the seagrass matting.
Your mum is on the phone.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him, some sort of gastric thing. He’s rushing to the toot every five minutes. There’s no point him coming in. Yes, I know it’s a bit late to get a replacement. I’m sorry. He’s sorry. Yes.’
She plonks a cup of coffee on the glass table and one of his eyes flicks half-open like a faulty shutter. She picks up the bottles, sticking her fingers in the mouth of each one so they clank together.
‘You need to sort this out, Gordon,’ she says. Your mum never calls him Gordon. It’s always Goddy. ‘I lived with it growing up, and I’m not doing it again. Josephine’s not either. So, get that into your soggy head.’
She walks out the door and the bottles smash into the bin. You think of Mrs Carter and your broken angel. Your dad winces and reaches for his coffee cup. His hands are shaking. You try to pick up the costume but he won’t let you. From somewhere he gets the momentum to glue on the black felt nose and eyebrows. He has cut out black fringes for the ears and he glues them on too.
‘Close your eyes, Josephine, and keep your arms nice and straight. No, not like Jesus. By your side, Josephine. Careful now, the ears will fall off. Nice and still now, my little Gumble. We’ll squeeze you in.’ He borrows a word from the book. ‘We’ll wodge you right in.’
He’s cut the eye holes too far apart and you can only see out of one of them. The foam scratches and sticks to your skin.
‘Dad, I can’t get my hands out. How will I carry my bag?’
‘For the love of God.’ He walks around the costume slowly, pinching his moustache. ‘Slight hitch. Nothing to worry about. Gumbles don’t worry; they come up with solutions.’ He feels for your fingertips and makes a tiny slit in the fabric a
t the base of them with the pruning shears.
Through the hole, your mum emerges. She is framed by a white circle. As she gets closer, you can tell she is trying not to laugh.
‘Jesus, Goddy. She looks like the love child of Groucho Marx and a blancmange.’ He stands and walks towards her until they are both in the white circle. He plants a kiss on her nose.
Your mum brushes him away, but her eyes soften. ‘There’s time,’ she says. ‘There’s time for me to make pancakes. Put the jug on, Goddy. Make yourself useful.’
‘Pancakes,’ he says. ‘You know what happens when a Gumble gets squashed flat as a pancake. We have to puff them back into the right shape.’
She lets him nuzzle into her shoulder, and pats his back with a flat, firm hand. ‘While I make a living today, you’ll go to Josephine’s parade. God knows, she’ll need someone there.’
You take a few steps and the foam shifts and puts everything out of focus.
• • •
At the school gate, Dorothy laughs at you as she pats Toto. Peter Pan does a slow pirouette and puts his hand over his mouth. Snow White and Cinderella link arms and skip in the opposite direction. Kids dressed in their school uniform stop looking neglected, and smirk.
The skin under your arms and between your legs prickles. Gumbles are not supposed to travel alone. They are a pack animal. They are meant to be small enough to fit into jam tins. You can’t bend into any shape, can’t bend at all. You can only shamble with slow, awkward steps and one working eye. You’re a vision-impaired Gumble with a briefcase. You think that it would be better to be one of those kids with no costume at all. The sort of kid your parents always feel sorry for: ‘No money for excursions. Lunch orders all the time. Can’t be bothered with a costume. What sort of parents are they? Why do they bother having kids at all?’
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