No Stars to Wish on

by Zana Fraillon

  Some of the babies do have older brothers or sisters or cousins here. But they aren’t allowed to see each other because they’re different ages. That’s the saddest part of all. Older kids know they have to protect their babies, and babies just want their big brother or sister or cousin to look after them. And no one can do anything. The Nuns don’t like saying No twice.

  I’m sure there’s a joke about Nuns saying No twice. My joke book had a whole section of Nun jokes.

  What do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea!

  Why did the foal cough? Because he was a little horse!

  Hickory Dickory Dock, the mice ran up the clock, the clock struck one, but he wasn’t badly hurt.

  Ha ha!

  THERE are two twin boys here, Gus and Max. They introduced themselves to me so I could see their lips and learn their names. Not many kids bother to do that. They seem nice. They don’t hassle anyone, the way some of the other boys do. Some of the girls, too. Twins are lucky. They get to be in the same room because they’re the same age and because they’re both boys. Mother Superior made them sleep at opposite ends of the room, though. I don’t know why she would do that. Does it matter if they sleep next to each other? It would just have made them feel happier. But they seem pretty happy anyway. Being together in the same place is enough. There aren’t many of us who still have our families.

  Great-great-aunt Annie, Great-great-aunt Bette and Great-great-aunt Jess are all sisters. They were quadruplets – but then one of them, Great-great-aunt Something fell into the river and drowned. I think I knew her name once.

  I guess I am a bit lucky because I know my cousin Baby Sal is here instead of somewhere else. I haven’t seen her since the truck, but I know she’s here in this Home. So I’m not really alone. It makes me feel bad, though, because I should be looking after her, and I’m not. I wish I was.

  She could come with me when I have to do all my jobs, and she wouldn’t slow me down. I would probably work faster, even, because it’s hard to work fast when your heart feels like an elephant has stomped all over it. The Nuns should know that. They should realise that if everyone was happy, we could all work faster. Maybe the Nuns aren’t very good thinkers.

  She was with me in the truck, Baby Sal. She was the only one from my family with me. Janey and Phiny were put in a different truck. What a waste. They could have kept us all together and saved on petrol and drivers. I bet this whole mess has cost the Nuns an awful lot.

  I could see the top of Janey’s head as my truck pulled away. Her fist was hammering on the window. I couldn’t see Amrei, but I could see Phin being pulled towards Janey’s truck. My truck drove around the corner before I could see if they got Phin into that one or not. He was putting up a good fight. Two policemen had to hold his legs, and another two men had his arms.

  He was always a good fighter, our Phin. Even when kids were bigger and tougher than him. And he always smiled when he was fighting, as if he enjoyed the challenge. The bigger the kids, the bigger Phiny’s smile. That used to make the big kids really angry, because they thought he was laughing at them. Phin never got angry when he was fighting, though. Or scared. He was too clever for that. He told me that angry just makes you stupid, and scared just makes you panic. If you want to win a fight, you have to be clever about it. Phin wasn’t smiling when the men grabbed him. Maybe they were just too big and too tough even for Phiny. He even tried to bite them. I wonder if he did. I wonder if he remembered not to be angry and scared, and smiled at them instead.

  I wonder if they smiled back and let him go.

  I didn’t fight. I guess I didn’t know how. I didn’t smile, either. They let me hold Baby Sal in my lap. There were other kids already in the truck, taken from other families. They looked scared. I wonder if I looked scared. I just held Baby Sal and Mr Rabbit and wished I could wake up.

  Baby Sal was hot in the truck.

  That whole truck ride, all I could think was how, before we got taken, when everything was still normal, Mum had said she wanted to take Baby Sal to the doctor. She thought she was getting a fever, but hoped she was only teething. I wished Mum had taken Baby Sal to the doctor, because then they’d have been in town, and Baby Sal wouldn’t be with me in the truck, getting hotter and hotter.

  I could feel the hot through my pyjamas, like a hot water bottle.

  Baby Sal’s only eight months old. She needs looking after, but I haven’t even seen her for ages. They just grabbed her and disappeared her away to the Infant Girls’ Room, and that was that, as Gran says.

  I was glad I couldn’t hear, because I would have known she was crying for me. If I’d heard that, my heart might have split down the middle, like the firewood when Mum chops it. Little chips of heart all over the floor. And I don’t reckon a splintered heart can ever be glued back up the way it was before.

  I wish I could see her. I wish I could hold Baby Sal and tell her it’s all right, Mum will be coming soon.

  At home, I used to lie in bed and look at the stars out the window. Amrei showed me how to wish on the stars. There were so many. So big and bright, going on and on for ever. But here, the window is so small and high that all I can see is dark.

  When I lie in bed, I wish harder than I’ve ever wished before. I wish I could help Baby Sal. But I can’t.

  There aren’t any stars here to wish on.

  Who tells chicken jokes? Comedihens!

  What is the slowest horse in the world? A clotheshorse!

  What do you call a sleeping bull? A bulldozer!

  Ha ha!

  I felt beaten at first, thinking about Baby Sal, because even though she’s only eight months old she understands a lot. She can definitely understand that this isn’t the way things are meant to be.

  But now I have a plan. Mum says that all plans have to have steps. ‘Just take it one step at a time,’ she says. ‘Small steps will get you there.’ So now I have the first step.

  My plan came to me when I was cleaning the windows to the Infant Girls’ Room. I was washing the glass, up and down and up and down and trying not to get streaks because the Nuns don’t like streaks, and thinking about Phin’s Fighting Smile. Even if Phiny didn’t remember to smile when the men were packing him into the truck, I reckon he would have remembered by now, and he’s probably already on his way home, whistling his way up the street.

  And just as I was thinking all that, a little one turned her head and looked right at me. We looked at each other through the window, each of us caught in the other one’s looking. And just like that, the whole plan fell into my head.

  I smiled then. My first proper smile since getting here. I waited a moment, then ducked down out of sight and popped back up with the biggest smile on my face. It took a few goes, but after a while the baby started laughing. I think she suddenly remembered peek-a-boo, and how to play.

  Some of the other babies started watching too. And if they weren’t watching me, they were watching each other laughing, and that was enough to start them off.

  I couldn’t see Baby Sal in there, but I hope the laughing reached her where she was. Maybe she was sleeping. Samson says sometimes people take children to their own houses to look after them. And you have to call the people ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, and do what they say, otherwise you get sent back to the Nuns in disgrace. And then the punishment is even worse than before, and not worth talking about.

  That happened to Samson. He had a whole day in a house with a bedroom and everything. He even got new underwear, his own size. Samson said when he went with the foster parents there were no other kids in the house. It made him feel kind of strange, but it was better than being here. He even agreed to call the woman ‘Mother’, but only because his mum is called ‘Mum’ and hates the name ‘Mother’. But then it was dinnertime. Samson didn’t want to eat his roasted capsicums. He hates capsicums. They make him feel sick and come out in a rash. But no one believed him. The Nuns wouldn’t know, because capsicums have colour, and the Director or God must think it’s
not a good idea to feed kids anything with colour, because I haven’t seen even a smidge of capsicum here. Which is lucky for Samson.

  God must hate colour and flavour. If Cook would just put a bit of salt on the food, it might make it taste like something that should be eaten. But maybe Cook doesn’t have any salt. Probably because all the salt is kept in the bathrooms for us to dip our fingers in and brush our teeth with.

  I’ve seen Cook a few times. She looks like someone who would put salt in our food, if she could. She looks like someone who tries to make people happy. She’s the only grown-up that I’ve seen here with a smile, and it’s a real smile. It warms you up from way across the room, even if she’s smiling at someone else and not you.

  Samson says that whenever she can, Cook sneaks into the hospital wing and gives the sick kids chocolate and biscuits. She must bring them from her house, because there are definitely no chocolates or biscuits here, except for the ones the Nuns eat. I can’t imagine anyone brave enough to steal food from the Nuns.

  Anyway, maybe Baby Sal is being looked after somewhere else, by nice people who don’t have kids of their own. Someone like Cook. I imagine Cook would be a fine person to live with until we find our way home. And even if Baby Sal’s not lucky enough to be with someone like Cook, she’ll be all right as long as she learns to call them ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ the way she’s supposed to. She can’t really talk yet, and can’t remember her real mum and dad, so it’s OK. The only tricky bit will be for us to work out which house she’s in so we can go get her. She’s too little to know what clues are.

  Finally, the Nun from the Infant Girls’ Room came out. I kept my head down so she wouldn’t find out what was making the babies laugh. If they stop me washing the windows, the babies might never remember how to laugh again.

  The Nun was Sister Beatrice. I rate her about a five. My ratings are for meanness. Mother Superior is a ten, which is the worst anyone can be. The next worst is an eight. Zero is a real person. None of the Nuns here come close to being real people.

  Sister Beatrice could even be a four, but I don’t know her well enough yet. The first time I met her she shook my hand. ‘Nice to meet you. I am so glad you have joined our family.’ I had my photo taken with her. The Nun with the camera said ‘Smile!’ so I did, even though I wasn’t feeling at all smiley.

  When Sister Beatrice whacks you with her cane, she doesn’t put all her energy into it the way some Nuns do. The other morning she whacked me because my bed wasn’t made properly. She said, ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Perhaps in your old house your bed looked like this, but here we live together. Not everyone wants to live in a pigsty.’

  I didn’t bother explaining that Gus had got into a fight and when Max saw what was happening he came and tackled the other boy and they both landed on my bed. I didn’t bother explaining because here you get a lot more whacks for fighting than you do for not making your bed.

  Seeing the babies laugh lifted the rock that had settled in the bottom of my stomach.

  So here’s my idea. I’m going to tell as many jokes as I can to as many people as I can.

  I’ll have to be careful the Nuns don’t see me. They seem to think that because I can’t hear, I can’t talk or think either, which suits me fine. Apart from showing me which jobs to do, they leave me alone. But maybe if I tell enough jokes, some kids will smile, and then maybe the smiles will spread. Like a disease, only a good one. And if the smiles catch on quickly enough, they might even infect the Nuns, and make them forget that they aren’t allowed to smile or laugh or be happy.

  After that, this place might not be so bad. We might even be able to stand it while we wait for our families to find us. Because our families are out there, looking. I know it. They’ll have made search parties. Whole families will be following the tyre tracks left by the trucks. And as they get closer, more and more families will join the search. And when they do get here, it will be like a whole wave of people. They’ll wash right up over the barbed-wire fences and flood the whole building. And as the families find each other again, every brick in this place will split in two. The whole place will crumble away, as if it had never existed. We’ll be swept along in the wave of families, every one of us. Swept all the way back home.

  They’ll come. They’re looking. It just takes a while to get all the way here, to the end of the world.

  And until they find us, I’ll keep telling my jokes, spreading laughter around as best I can.

  LIFE and energy was slowly seeping out of the house. The Greats had always been old, but now they started to feel old. Even Amrei’s grandmother, who hadn’t yet reached her seventies, looked like one of the Greats. They found it impossible to raise the lump of despair from their chests.

  Amrei walked from room to room, trying to sweep the shadows out of the house. But, even as she opened windows and arranged flowers in all the rooms, she knew nothing could bring the life back to her family. Nothing she could do, at any rate.

  And having spent her life wishing she had never been cursed with seeing the future, now she wanted her Visions back. Just when she needed them the most, even the Visions had gone, stolen along with the children.

  Unable to stop mournful songs erupting from her mouth, Amrei refused to cook. She wasn’t going to add to her family’s sorrow.

  Finally came the morning when Amrei packed a bag and set off, with mixed feelings of fear and determination. She had decided that even though she couldn’t see the future, she still had the power to change it. The Greats would have to manage for themselves.

  What game do ants play with elephants? Squash!

  What has six legs and can fly long distances? Three ducks!

  What do bees do if they don’t want to fly somewhere? They wait at a Buzz Stop!

  Ha ha!

  I knew it. The real Number 49 has left a sign to help me escape, scratched into the wooden slats under the bed. I’m not quite sure what it means yet, but I know it’s a clue. Maybe he left others somewhere else, just in case this one was discovered and removed by the Nuns. Or maybe he escaped as soon as he’d scratched this. Which would mean that as soon as I work it out, I can escape as well. I’ll be home in no time.

  And the real Number 49 left something else too. A treasure. Something so valuable I didn’t dare touch it right away, in case it got snatched out of my hands. I waited until it was dark and the kids had stopped turning in their beds. I waited until the tears had dried on all our faces. I waited until the Night Nun had shone her torch on all of us. I waited until the world was so dark outside the window that it could only be that darkest hour right before dawn, when even the night birds are snuggling down to sleep.

  Then I moved quickly and quietly. Darting under the bed so no one waking from a dream would see, I reached my hand under the slat and could feel the treasure in my fingers. There it was. A pencil. Not very long any more, but a pencil.

  I figure the real Number 49 left it there so I could leave my own clues, and draw my discoveries carefully next to his one. That way it will be even easier for the next Number 49 to get home.

  The clue the real Number 49 left was a picture of a spiderweb, its long strands stretching out over the wood. And in the very corner of the slat was a spider with one long leg curled over its mouth. The spider knows a secret, and nothing will make him tell. The real Number 49 is really good at drawing. Better even than Janey. He’ll be an artist when he grows up, I’m sure.

  I don’t really know what the clue means. Great-gram says spiders are the messengers of the Spirits, and the webs they weave are threads that connect the human world to the world of the spirits. She told me that whenever a spider weaves its web, it’s joining up the past and the future, making dreams come true. I know a lot about spiders because of the spider picture on Amrei’s shoulder. It just popped up there one morning when she was little.

  Great-gram knew the mark on Amrei’s shoulder was special. When she was a kid she used to know things before they happened, the way Amrei
did, and sometimes even knew what someone was thinking before they had properly thought it.

  The funny thing about Amrei’s mark is that Amrei is scared of spiders. They make her go all shivery in her bones. She can’t even look properly at her own shoulder without shivering.

  Perhaps that’s what Number 49’s clue means. Perhaps he dreamed loud enough for a spider to hear him, and so the spider made his dreams come true. I’m not sure how that will help me, because I dream about being home almost every night, and as far as I know no spider has been weaving anything. I’m not sure how you get your dreams heard. But I’ll work it out. I just need to be patient.

  I have lots of time to think about things here. All we do is work. And if we aren’t working we’re just left alone. Which would be good, except there’s nothingto read or play or draw with, nothing to build or ride.

  We think of games instead. Some are good and fun, and you find yourself almost smiling. But most of the games aren’t fun, especially the ones the big, tough kids think up. Then I just have to walk away and be glad I can’t hear anything the kids call after me.

  One of the other kids asked Sister Catherine when we would start our lessons. She just sniffed. ‘Why would you need lessons when you won’t amount to anything anyway?’ she said. Sister Catherine is a seven.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Samson told me. ‘We’ll get to have lessons soon enough anyway. Just as soon as term time starts up again.’

  I thought term time should have started by now, because of the tally I’m keeping. At home, school would have started already.

  ‘Don’t get too excited.’ Samson scrunched his face when he said it. ‘School just means more work. Don’t think just because you go to school you get out of work. Course not. Not round here. The Nuns just wake you extra early to fit more in before school. And then when you get back, there are more jobs waiting for you. By the end of the day, you’re so tired your body can’t hardly drag you to bed.’