No Stars to Wish on

by Zana Fraillon

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the

  Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

  First published in 2014

  Copyright © Zana Fraillon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from

  the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 514 9

  eISBN 978 1 74343 284 6

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Cover artwork by Geoff Kelly

  Typeset by Sandra Nobes

  TO JUGS,

  WHO MAKES ANYTHING POSSIBLE

  IT happened before Jack was born.

  When Amrei was six, a spider appeared on her shoulder. She wished it had been a bird or a butterfly, but the mark was definitely a spider. Amrei shivered, just looking at it.

  Amrei’s grandmother, her great-grandmother, and the three great-great-aunts touched the mark and agreed it was a sign: Amrei had started on her path to seeing the future.

  Not long after, Amrei received her first Vision – a Vision so tragic it made her weep.

  The Greats decided they had made a mistake. The mark on Amrei’s shoulder must have happened by chance; they had been fooled by coincidence. Because Amrei’s Vision was so horrible, so horrendous, that no one believed it could possibly be true.

  Amrei saw a future without children, without brothers or sisters or cousins. Amrei saw a future in which the house was empty, the garden dry and barren. All the love and laughter and happiness had been stripped away.

  And when Amrei’s Vision finally did come true, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, and her three great-great-aunts all retreated inside. They closed the doors on the world. The garden withered, the house crumbled around them. They cursed themselves for their carelessness. Because by then it was too late. Jack and the other children had gone.

  I was home, asleep in my bed. Amrei shook me awake. ‘Jack! Jack! Wake up!’

  She told me to run. I thought she was having a nightmare. I rolled over and went on snoring. I wish I had listened. I wish I had run.

  What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot!

  What’s a zoo keeper’s favourite vegetable? A zoo-chini! Why do birds fly south in winter? Because it’s too far to walk!

  Ha ha!

  HERE’S the real joke: I’m not who they think I am. They’ve brought me here because they think I’m Number 49, but I’m not. I’m not an Orphan or an Unwanted Child. And that’s who this place is for. It says so above the door when you first come in.

  I’m in this huge house with a tower coming from the roof, and a fence with barbed wire and a gate that locks. I always thought living in a big house with a tower would be special and wonderful. But it’s not. It’s scary and dark.

  They think I’m Number 49, but Number 49 is some other poor boy. Some boy with no Janey, no mum, or three great-great-aunts, or Great-gram, or Gran, or cousins Amrei, Phin and Baby Sal, all living together.

  Because they think I’m Number 49, they’ve given me his clothes and taken mine. I don’t have any of my things from home; not my books or my pencils, not even a picture by my sister Janey, who steals my pencils and spends all day drawing with them.

  I’m sleeping in Number 49’s bed, under his sheet. The mattress smells of wee, and the clothes are ripped and torn. The boy in the next bed told me we get clean shirts and pyjamas every two weeks, and clean pants every four weeks. We don’t get any underwear.

  Only the shoes are new. When the real Number 49 ran away he must have been wearing his shoes. That should have been a big hint for them, to let them know I’m not the real Number 49. Do they think the old shoes walked out on their own?

  Each kid here has only one pair of shoes. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold, the shoes are the same all year. Anyway these shoes they’ve given me are almost a good fit. I know they’re new because they still have that shop smell. I love that new rubber smell. It reminds me of my gumboots.

  Gran gave me gumboots for Christmas. ‘Just like Santa’s,’ she said. And even though it was summer, and there weren’t any puddles, I wore my gumboots every day. Mum would hold her nose when I took them off and said she’d throw them in the tip down the road. But I knew she wouldn’t. Mum always says stuff she doesn’t really mean. You can tell when she’s serious by her eyes. When her eyes go all small, and her eyebrows creep in towards each other like caterpillars, that’s when you know you’d better stop mucking around and do what you’re supposed to do.

  The boy in the bed next to me says his mum is coming to get him soon. His name is Samson. He’s Number 23. His bed is next to mine, on my left when I’m lying down.

  I said my mum was coming soon too. Sometimes if you say something it makes it seem more true. I don’t think my mum knows where I am, though. If she did, she would have come by now.

  I’m keeping track of the days. At least I’m trying to. I’m keeping a tally on the wall outside. I use a rock to scrape a mark on the wall every day . It’s only been three days but it feels much longer.

  There are lots of boys in this room. There are four rows of beds going one way and nine rows of beds going the other way and each bed looks exactly the same, with the same metal and the same scratchy sheets and the same pillows that are as hard as rocks.

  Each bed has a boy. And each boy has a number and I guess a name, too, because everyone has a name, even if the Nuns here say different. And there aren’t any windows. Not to see out of, anyway. The only windows are up so high that you can hardly even see the sky.

  White walls and wooden floors and metal beds and scratchy sheets and angry boys.

  Actually, not all the boys are angry. Samson isn’t angry. And some of the boys must have been here for a long time, because they don’t even look sad.

  I wonder how long the real Number 49 was here for, before he ran away? I guess he was one of the angry boys.

  The real Number 49 is bigger than me, because his pants keep slipping down my bum.

  I wish he’d come back, so I could go home.

  Why did the rabbit sit on the clock? He wanted to be on time!

  What is big and grey and has horns? An elephant marching band!

  Why do dogs run in circles? Because it’s hard to run in squares!

  Ha ha!

  I was cross with the real Number 49, at first, for letting them believe I was him. But now I see why he ran away and didn’t think about other boys who might be mistaken for him. Because it isn’t nice here. Nothing is nice here. If I really was Number 49, I’d run away too.

  But I’m not. I’m not Number 49. My name is Jack and I’m six, almost seven, actually. I tried to tell the Nuns that, when I realised they’d made a mistake. But no one would listen. Maybe they are deaf like me. So I made sure they could see my face when I spoke. And I spoke slowly and carefully. I told the
m that I don’t live here. That I’m not Number 49, and that I want to go home.

  The Nuns aren’t deaf. The Nun I was speaking to grabbed my arm and pulled me downstairs. Down down down into the dark. Right down into the boiler room. She was saying something, but she wasn’t facing me so I couldn’t read her lips.

  She pushed me inside the boiler room. It’s small, like a cupboard. I had to stand up against the wall so the boiler couldn’t burn me. She left me there all night, with only the red eye of the boiler winking at me, and the steam all whooshing out the top.

  It was meant to make me sorry for telling them they were wrong. Sometimes adults don’t like kids telling them they’re wrong. Especially little kids. It makes them feel stupid. Mum explained all about that when Mr Jenkins down the road got cross with me. He was wrong, though, and I was right. Mum said that even so, sometimes it’s best to know you’re right inside your head but not say anything. Gran said, ‘Rubbish. If the man is wrong, he’s wrong, and he might as well find out now.’

  Gran says the stupid people are the ones who don’t listen. I’m deaf and I listen all the time.

  Here’s another joke: being put in the boiler room didn’t make me feel sorry, or sad, or scared – it made me happy! Ha ha! We have a boiler at home, and I’m the only one who can fix it when it breaks. On really cold nights, we all gather around it to keep warm. And we don’t get burned when we fall asleep because our boiler isn’t in such a tiny room as the one here.

  So when the Nun locked me in that little room, and I smelled the steam and the burning dust, my brain flew me home again, to be with my family. And for the first time since being taken, I felt happy.

  I spent the whole time I was awake telling jokes to the boiler’s little red eye. And when the Nun came to get me in the morning, I smiled.

  That made her angry, but by then someone must have told her I was deaf. She didn’t try to talk to me, just pulled me along by Number 49’s shirt, into the Dining Room where they were serving breakfast: watery porridge with weevils.

  I didn’t eat much because it made me feel sick. I swapped my bowl with another boy who was still hungry even though he had finished his. You have to eat everything in your bowl here. I couldn’t eat it. But now I’m hungry.

  I wonder if the porridge used to make the real Number 49 feel sick.

  WHEN Jack was still small, his father disappeared, leaving Jack’s mother to look after the family on her own. Already there was Janey, three years older than Jack, and Great-gram and the three great-aunts Jess, Bette and Annie. And the family soon grew.

  Now and then an aunt or uncle would drop off another child to stay for a while, saying it was just until they could ‘sort themselves out’. Some children stayed for days, others for months or years. That was how Phin came to be part of the family, and Amrei, and Baby Sal. Gran and Great-gram and the Greats did all they could to help, but still Jack’s mum had a lot of people to find food for.

  Amrei didn’t mind. A new baby was good news. It made her Vision retreat into the deepest part of her mind, almost forgotten. The more children there were in the house, running around and laughing and calling, the more ridiculous it seemed to imagine that they could all disappear.

  When does a cat say Moo? When it’s learning a new language!

  Did you hear the joke about the spaceship? It was out of this world!

  Why can’t you tell a joke when you’re on the ice? It might crack up!

  Ha ha!

  I don’t hate Number 49. I wish I knew how he did it. How he got away. He must have left some clues to tell me how he escaped. Before I go, I’ll make sure to leave clues, just in case the Nuns mistake the next boy for me, the way they mistook me for the real Number 49. Then that boy will know how to escape too.

  I don’t live here. Not in this place that feels dark and cold and scary even when the lights are on and the weather is warm. They said I do, now, but I don’t. I live at home, with all my family. Sometimes it’s cold at home, when I can’t fix the boiler just right, but then we can all sleep together in the same bed. Even if there are bedbugs, all together like that we’re as warm and toasty as Eskimos in their igloos. Eskimos make so much heat with their bodies that inside an igloo it can actually get too hot, and they have to open a window, which is really just a cube of ice they made.

  On hot, hot summer nights we sometimes even sleep outside, and then I imagine I’m an explorer setting up camp at the edge of the jungle, and wake up with lions and alligators chasing through my head. I always try to keep my eyes closed and bring the dreams back. To keep that floaty feeling in my body for a bit longer. They don’t let you do that here. You have to get up right away.

  Sometimes, Mum brings us hot chocolate or special milk, which is warm milk with sugar and vanilla in it and a tiny bit of nutmeg sprinkled on top. We drink it sitting up in bed, and Gran and the Greats tell us stories, and when we fall asleep the warm in our bellies lasts all the way till morning.

  And all those times, I didn’t know that things were going to change, and that all those things would stop being Everyday and Normal. I wish I’d known. I would have spent more time hanging on to each minute. But then maybe I wouldn’t have really enjoyed any of it. Can you enjoy something when you know it’s going to end? Maybe you enjoy it more, like chocolate that you know you won’t get again for a long time. If I’d known, I could have held each minute in my mouth until it melted away.

  They said that our families weren’t looking after us. That we came from ‘immoral stock’. They told us that on the first night when they were ‘washing us clean’. We were all just having a shower but they made sure we scrubbed all over extra hard with one of those silver scrubbing brushes you use on the pots. All our bodies were bright red when we got out of the showers, even though the water wasn’t very hot.

  I’m not sure what immoral stock is, but I am sure what they said isn’t true. One of the older girls who was helping us new kids told me it means that our families were teaching us things that are Evil and Wicked. The girl said the Nuns like to use the words ‘Evil’ and ‘Wicked’, especially when they are talking about our families. The girl didn’t know I was deaf but she spoke clearly anyway, so I could still see what she was saying. I don’t think the girl likes the Nuns.

  The Nuns here aren’t like the Nuns at the church near home. Those Nuns are smiley and kind and make you feel warm to be near. These Nuns must have gone to a different Nun school. I don’t get it, though. The Nuns here must believe what they say because one of the things about Nuns is that they never lie. I guess if you think you are telling the truth then it’s not really a lie, is it? But it’s not the truth either.

  The Nuns asked how many of us had gone to bed hungry. They said our families didn’t need us draining them any longer, and we were all better off now. Maybe they were trying to make us feel better about being away from home. But they were wrong.

  My family does look after me. Even if there isn’t always enough to eat, and only my mother working, and all us kids growing too quickly with hollow legs and stomachs that never get filled and drive Mum crazy, we don’t care. That’s how everyone is.

  The other week Mr Rossi brought over a whole sack of tomatoes from his garden for us. We only had two lemons for him, and six potatoes, but he didn’t mind. He loves potatoes. We always have plenty of potatoes because Great-great-aunt Annie planted them years ago and they just keep on growing.

  Great-great-aunt Annie knows about potatoes. Potatoes and babies. Perhaps there’s something in babies that’s the same as in potatoes. Great-great-aunt Annie can just look at a baby and tell what’s wrong, or right. Mostly, anyway. And the same with potatoes. For a while, our potatoes spread right under the house. Great-great-aunt Annie went out in the evening, just as the light drifted from the sky, and she told the potatoes what was what. My sister Janey couldn’t stop giggling. She still can’t look at a potato with a straight face. But it worked. The potatoes never grew under the house again. They kept to thei
r patch, and went on growing no matter what the weather. I wish she could talk to all vegies like that. But it is what it is, as Great-great-aunt Bette always says. She’s the quiet one, Great-great-aunt Bette. She doesn’t say much, but she gives the best cuddles, and always when you need them the most.

  Sometimes I get bored with eating potatoes, but I never say so, because that’s sure to get Mum’s eyebrows creeping, and she starts in on how ungrateful I am, and then I feel bad because I know there are lots of kids in the world who would love a potato.

  I would love a banana, but we hardly ever get those. There’s probably a kid somewhere who gets to eat bananas all the time. His mum probably grinds on him for complaining about bananas, and all he really wants is a potato. If I knew who he was, we could swap. I could send him potatoes, and he could send me bananas. Ha!

  One of the other boys called me stupid because I was smelling the rubber on my shoes. I knew he said stupid by the way he moved his lips. Little bits of spit flew out of his mouth when he spoke. It was kind of nice the way the spit shone in the sunlight coming through the window. Like little planets. I wonder if Earth looks like a bit of spit, if you’re looking from really, really far away.

  But I know the boy is just sad he doesn’t have new shoes. He’ll have to get some soon, because his shoes have holes in the bottom that let all the water in. I told him he could smell mine if he wanted to.

  He punched me and made my nose bleed all over the real Number 49’s shirt. I guess he doesn’t like the smell of rubber.

  Samson told me not to worry about it. He is still waiting for his mum to come. He told me to wash the blood out of my shirt right away because the Nuns don’t like kids fighting. He even came with me to the bathroom to help. Samson has nice eyes. You can tell someone is nice by their eyes. His eyes are a bit sad, but so are everyone’s. Even some of the Nuns’.

  I wonder if this whole thing is some huge misunderstanding, and someone will come along one day and say, ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean that. Whoops. Oh well. No harm done.’