The Things We Promise

by J. C. Burke

  ‘You wouldn’t know,’ Mum answered. ‘You’ve hardly tried it.’

  ‘I’ve tried it enough.’ I added, ‘To know I hate it.’

  ‘You’ll never be good at something you hate, Gemma!’

  ‘I have other strengths,’ I announced.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like …’ I had to be good at something. I just couldn’t think of what. ‘Apparently I’m good at writing English essays. And being cool. I’m good at’ – there was a knock on the door – ‘I’m good at answering the door,’ I said, doing exactly that.

  Standing there on the other side, with a ginormous belly, was Catrina and her wedding dress.

  ‘Is Maryanne home?’ she whispered.

  But Mum was already next to me, taking the dress out of Catrina’s hands and saying, ‘Come in, Catrina.’

  Before I was even asked, I went straight to the kettle and started to fill it with water. Then I thought to myself: Why are we making this person a cup of tea? Catrina was a horrible person and she probably wouldn’t touch one of our mugs anyway. We should be honoured she’d even walked into the flat at all.

  Mum and Catrina sat down at the kitchen table. I wondered who was going to be the first to speak. It was Catrina.

  ‘I am so sorry, Maryanne,’ she began. There was a definite quiver in her voice. ‘I had no idea that my mother and bridesmaids had planned to take the dresses. I am ashamed. I am embarrassed. I just don’t know what I can say.’

  ‘Thanks, Catrina,’ Mum said. ‘I appreciate that. But this is who we are. Warts and all. You can like us or lump us.’

  ‘I never said those things about Billy or that I was scared to come here and use the stupid toilet.’

  Mum was doing the slow nod, which made me suspect that she was biding her time before she dropped an almighty clanger. ‘How did you know Billy was sick?’ she asked.

  ‘We obviously have the same GP. My mother saw Billy there.’

  ‘And thought what? Oh, he’s a fag, he looks a bit thin, he must have AIDS?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mum was leaning on the kitchen table. She’d clipped the softness in her voice just enough for Catrina to know she meant business. I switched the kettle on because for some reason that I couldn’t explain, part of me suddenly felt a bit bad for Catrina.

  ‘Really?’ Mum said. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she answered.

  Mum sat back in the chair but I knew she wasn’t finished.

  ‘Please, I just really wanted to say how sorry I am,’ Catrina offered. ‘And … I also wanted to ask if you would consider finishing my dress?’

  ‘Of course I will finish your dress, Catrina. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to,’ Mum said, then she dropped the clanger. ‘I know your mother is friends with Sandra, the receptionist at the doctor’s surgery. I would very much hope that’s not how the information about my son was passed on.’

  Catrina went pale. The kettle started whistling. And my mother folded her arms wearing an expression I had never seen before.

  To me she was just Mum. Plus a dressmaker who worked from a little room off the kitchen sewing pretty clothes for people. But right now she was a lady not to be messed with.

  Suddenly I realised that maybe it wasn’t so important my armour always fit properly because my mother would fight to the death for both my brother and me.

  I poured the boiling water into the teapot, hoping that when it came to my turn, I would be a mother like that too.

  Even before the lift doors opened I could hear it. A spine-chilling wail that made the hairs on my arm stand up.

  I stepped out into the entrance of 9 South West and the sound became alive, like someone had just turned up the radio.

  ‘No. No. No!’ the voice cried. ‘Please, pleeeease get me out of here.’

  Straight away I knew it was Zane.

  I edged down the corridor towards his room. I was terrified of what I would find.

  Inside I could hear Anna saying, ‘Zane? Zane! Keep still or you’ll pull your drip out.’

  There was another voice, maybe a doctor’s. ‘Zane, we need to keep you in this room until you’re better.’

  ‘Noooo!’ Zane howled. My hands covered my mouth and I started crying. It was the worst sound I had ever heard. It blasted through my chest, through the bones of my ribs and stuck to my heart like the tentacles of a bluebottle mid-sting.

  ‘Get me out of here!’ He started to sob. ‘Get me out of here! Please! Please, Anna?’

  ‘Zane!’ Another voice shouted and I wondered how many people were in the room. Were they holding him down? I could hear the squeak of the mattress and the rattle of the bed. Maybe Zane was trying to fight them off?

  Anna ran out. She was calling to another nurse who was gowned and gloved, running down the corridor with a syringe and a towel. Then Anna noticed me. ‘Go back to your brother’s room, Gemma!’ She was wearing gloves too. ‘Gemma!’

  But my feet were glued to the ground.

  Anna and the other nurse rushed past me and back into the single room. ‘Gemma! You need to move.’

  How could I explain that I couldn’t? I literally couldn’t move. I wanted to get away. I didn’t want to hear the sound of Zane’s terror because the situation in there was clear to me now. After four days, Zane must’ve woken up and found himself in the single room. The room for the dying. Zane had belted out that raging ‘Nooo!’ to whoever it was who told him, ‘We need to keep you in this room until you’re better,’ because Zane knew they were lying.

  Somehow I made it into the TV room. I was blubbering so hard my whole body was shaking. I wedged myself behind the door and knelt on the floor while the television played the midday movie.

  I couldn’t tell you if it was five minutes or half an hour later when I felt the door of the TV room push against me. I looked up and saw Anna.

  ‘I knew I’d find you hiding in here,’ she said. She reached out her hand and helped me to stand. I had pins and needles in both ankles. ‘I’m sorry I growled at you before, Gemma.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘Zane is very upset but he’s also quite confused at the moment.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sometimes AIDS can affect your brain,’ she told me. ‘He’s going to have some scans so the doctors can see what’s going on.’

  ‘Does he have that cat cancer thing in his brain like Maurice did?’

  ‘Toxoplasmosis? Most likely. But we won’t know until we get the test results.’

  ‘I see,’ I whispered so softly that even I barely heard it.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to your brother’s room?’ Anna said. ‘I’m here till three-thirty if you want to ask me anything.’

  I wandered back to Billy’s room. I must’ve looked as bad as I felt because the minute Mum and Billy saw me they chimed, ‘What’s happened, Gem?’

  With a wobbly jaw I told Mum and Billy what I’d heard outside Zane’s room and what Anna had said. I finished with a question for Billy: ‘Zane can come back into this room, can’t he?’

  At the same time as my brother said, ‘Yes,’ my mother said, ‘No.’

  ‘But Mum, he doesn’t want to be in a single room and if Billy doesn’t mind—’

  ‘It’s not up to Billy,’ she snapped. ‘It’s up to the doctors and nurses.’

  ‘So if they say he can come back in here, then he can!’

  ‘Gem, I don’t think it’s that simple,’ Billy said.

  ‘Oh what, you’ve changed your mind now, have you?’

  ‘If he needs to be near the nurses, they’ll keep him in a single room,’ he told me. Mum nodded her head in agreement.

  Suddenly, I felt like slapping them both. ‘If you had heard Zane yelling out, then you wouldn’t feel like that, Billy,’ I snarled.

  ‘I did hear him, Gemma,’ he answered. ‘I heard him this morning and last night and the night before that.’ It was that weary but matter-of-fact tone
in Billy’s voice that I could hear again. The way I’d heard myself speak when I’d told Louise that my brother had AIDS.

  Right then, I could’ve surrendered. I could’ve agreed that it was up to the doctors and nurses what room Zane stayed in. I was tired and I thought about how nice and easy it would be to collapse into the recliner next to Billy’s bed, snuggle up with a spare blanket, put on headphones and have a little nap. But I couldn’t.

  That night I started to write a letter to Zane’s parents. I decided I would ask Anna for their address and if she wouldn’t give it to me then I’d simply mail it to Zane Bradbury’s Parents, Garrandai Post Office. It was a small town. It would find them.

  Dear Mr and Mrs Bradbury,

  My name’s Gemma and I’m friends with your son, Zane.

  This is a difficult letter to write. I’m not completely sure I am doing the right thing. But I hope I am.

  Zane is not backpacking around Europe like he told you. Zane is actually in the city in King George’s Hospital. He is very ill.

  He didn’t want to tell you that he’s sick. He knew that it would worry and upset you both. That’s why he left home saying he was going on holidays.

  Zane has told me a lot about you and your family and his town of Garrandai where he misses the big sky. He is a great guy and I’ve had lots of laughs with him. But I know deep down he is really sad because he feels like he can’t tell you the truth about himself.

  I wish I could say more but it’s up to Zane to tell you the rest. It’s complicated, as I am realising life can be.

  Please call King George’s Hospital, Ward 9 South West and ask to speak to Sister Anna.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gemma Longrigg

  20

  12 weeks to formal

  THE CAR WAS FIXED AND MUM DROVE ME TO school on Tuesday, supposedly because it was the first day back after holidays and my bag was heavy. However, on the morning news there’d been a story about a young gay guy being bashed by a group of men. I wondered if this had something to do with Mum’s offer of a lift.

  I got out of the car at the back gate, because I’d told Mum my first class was in the gymnasium. I squeezed between the loose bars of the fence and headed towards the stink of sewerage. I needed to hang out there for a while because I wasn’t sure how I felt about being back at school. And I wasn’t sure about who to be now I was back at school. The girl with the brother who had AIDS? The girl who Ralph said was cool even though he avoided her? The girl who was in the middle of a Mexican standoff with her best friend? Or the girl who I really felt I was: the girl who could only think about a guy she barely knew called Zane?

  The letter to Zane’s parents was in my bag. After school I was catching the train in to King George’s. This morning Mum had told me, ‘There’s no need to see Billy today,’ and, ‘Go straight home after school because you’re tired.’ But I knew she meant, Don’t come to the hospital because I don’t want you seeing Zane.

  Both Mum and I seemed to be caught in this funny game of not totally saying what we thought. Not fibbing or outright lying, more just skirting around the edges of the truth.

  Louise was behind the gymnasium smoking. Before I had a chance to sneak away she saw me and waved.

  ‘I haven’t heard from you for a few days,’ she said. ‘Everything hunky-dory? I was getting worried.’

  ‘Just hospital shit.’

  ‘How’s Billy?’

  ‘He should be home by the end of week,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I’m getting a bit over it.’

  ‘I bet you are,’ she answered. ‘What do you do at the hospital all day?’

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘It was pretty boring holidays. I hung out with that guy called Zane I told you about.’

  ‘The good-looking one?’

  ‘He looks pretty bad at the moment,’ I said. ‘He’s really …’ I swallowed hard ‘… really sick.’

  ‘Is he going to die?’ Louise asked.

  My lips were pressed so tightly together I could feel them tingle. ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ I answered. ‘Yet it’s all I can think about. I can’t get him out of my head.’

  ‘You need one of my Rubik’s Cubes.’

  ‘No offence, Louise, but I don’t reckon that’ll help.’

  ‘You should try it. It worked for me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When that stuff happened with Simon Finkler and Bronnie, I was so freaked out. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I just kept thinking about what happened and what I did and what I should’ve done.’ Louise lit up again, her lopsided jaw blowing out a spiral of grey smoke. ‘It was horrible. I never ever want to feel like that again.’

  ‘So what’s the cube got to do with it?’

  ‘One day I was at a toy shop with my brother and I just picked one up and started mucking around with it,’ she explained. ‘About ten minutes later I realised I hadn’t thought about Simon Finkler. Not once, because I was concentrating so hard on matching up the stupid squares. It was like a holiday for my brain. So peaceful. I was addicted after that.’

  Louise rummaged through her bag and took out a Rubik’s Cube, a bit smaller than the one she’d given Billy. ‘There,’ she said. ‘All yours.’

  ‘Aren’t you running out of them by now?’

  ‘Nope.’ She laughed. ‘I have a stash.’

  We walked around the gymnasium and I promised Louise I would give the cube a try, even though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t.

  Andrea saw us as we passed the locker room and came running up like nothing had happened. Like it was perfectly normal to see each other once during the holidays and not every second day like we normally would.

  Even Justin appeared from a corridor and joined the walk to assembly. He’d been in Hawaii and was so sunburnt that the only part of him that wasn’t red were the whites of his eyes.

  ‘How’s Billy doing?’ Andrea asked me, as she twisted and twirled her new piercing.

  ‘A bit better, thanks,’ I answered. ‘Hopefully he’ll be out of hospital by next weekend.’

  ‘In the States they’re all saying a cure for AIDS is around the corner,’ added Justin.

  ‘I wish it’d hurry up,’ I answered.

  I’d figured out ages ago that Justin knew about Billy having full-blown AIDS. Sometimes, I wondered who else did too.

  When I went to the hospital after school, Billy wasn’t in his room. In the other bed was a new patient. He looked okay to me but I noticed the side rails of his bed were up as if to stop him from falling out.

  He didn’t say anything when I walked in, so I said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he answered. ‘I thought there was someone in here. Is it Bill’s sister?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m Patrick,’ he introduced himself. ‘I’m nearly blind. I always think it’s a good idea to tell people that because I’m sure I look like a halfwit sitting in this bed with the cot sides up around me.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’re just being polite, love,’ he said. ‘I haven’t always been blind. It’s the AIDS monster. I’m still trying to get used to it.’

  ‘AIDS made you blind?’

  ‘Cytomegalovirus. CMV for short. Must’ve been exposed to it before.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Do you know where my brother and Mum are?’

  ‘In the cafeteria,’ Patrick replied. ‘Sorry, I was meant to tell you that. Not start talking about myself.’

  ‘No, that’s okay.’

  I was searching through my schoolbag for the letter to Zane’s parents. I slipped it into my pocket, feeling even more deceitful for doing it in front of a blind man. I shoved my bag under the bed and told Patrick I was off to find Mum and Billy. It was a lie, but he wasn’t going to know that either.

  The nurses station was hectic like it always seemed to be
until 6 p.m. when it became a ghost town. Phones were ringing, patient’s families were leaning over the desk asking questions. There were always a few groups of white coats in deep discussion.

  This afternoon one of the doctors was pointing out things on an X-ray. The rest of them were nodding and I wondered if any of them actually knew what they were looking at, because to me it looked like a smudge of black and grey clouds.

  By now, I’d figured out that you just had to hang around the nurses station until someone eventually noticed you or stopped pretending that they hadn’t seen you in the first place.

  The ward clerk who I’d said hello to a few times waved at me and mouthed, ‘Do you need some help?’

  I mouthed back, ‘Can I talk to Sister Anna?’

  She stood up from the desk and came around to me. She must’ve hated having to wear that ugly brown uniform. I know I would’ve.

  ‘Anna’s not on duty today,’ she told me. ‘Do you want to speak to the nurse looking after Bill?’ She scanned the patient board. Next to Billy’s name was written Darren. The nurse’s name next to Zane Bradbury, I didn’t recognise.

  Now I wasn’t quite sure what to do and I didn’t know how truthful I could be with this woman.

  She started saying, ‘I’ll tell Darren—’

  But I interrupted. ‘Actually I wanted to ask about Zane.’ I slipped in a yawn. ‘If that’s okay.’

  ‘Oh?’ She frowned and I was sure I’d blown it. ‘Just hang on a minute.’

  Within seconds a doctor was standing there and introducing himself as ‘Tim’.

  I remembered seeing him when Billy was first admitted because he reminded me of the singer Rick Astley. He spoke in a gentle voice and was wearing a funny tie with Sylvester the Cat on it.

  He seemed trustworthy. He seemed nice. So I collected my courage, took a deep breath and started the mini speech I’d planned.

  ‘I wanted to speak to you about Zane Bradbury and … his parents,’ I began. ‘I know they don’t know he’s sick in hospital and Sister Anna’s told me how the AIDS volunteers have …’ But Dr Tim had stopped listening and was looking over my shoulder. There was something going on behind me that was obviously a million times more interesting than anything I had to say. Suddenly I felt foolish and stupid and every day of my sixteen years.