Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 3, Issue 4

by Melina Marchetta

  ‘No,’ Amelia said. ‘I don’t have dreams.’

  ‘Everybody dreams. It’s a medical fact.’

  ‘Sometimes I do,’ Amelia relented. ‘But they’re never nice.’

  ‘What are they about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me!’ Megan pinched Amelia’s thigh.

  ‘Ow! Don’t. God, you’re a bitch.’

  ‘Well, tell me.’

  Amelia sighed. ‘Warts,’ she mumbled, her face flushed with an old shame.

  Megan ran her fingernails over Amelia’s smooth knees–they were in their usual seat on the bus, slouched down, knees wedged up on the back of the seat in front of them. ‘But they’re gone.’

  Amelia shifted, pulling at her Perm-A-Pleat skirt. She was tingling pleasantly where Megan had touched her, and she worried it meant she had lesbian tendencies. Amelia worried about a lot of things. In this case she needn’t have worried–she just hadn’t had a lot of affection in her seventeen years, so her skin was singing.

  It was rare for Megan to be touchy-feely. She rested her hand on Amelia’s leg as though it was suddenly too heavy to lift. ‘I wonder where they went,’ she said. ‘What if they’re just under the surface?’

  ‘Oh, yuck! Thanks Megan. Like I really want to think that,’ Amelia said, sitting up straight, her voice more querulous than it should have been.

  But Megan wasn’t listening. She was turning to look carefully over her shoulder at The Back, where a thick fug of cigarette smoke hovered like a storm front. Amelia refused to sit down there because her permed hair always stunk afterwards.

  Afraid she might be missing out on something, Amelia jerked around to look too. She couldn’t see anything worth looking at. They were nearly in town now, so the bus was full, and the kids down there were all from Alligator Creek and Jarmoya. For the first part of the journey they roamed, swaying up and down the aisle, swapping seats like monkeys swinging from vine to vine. But when the bus reached the estates closer to town, where each stop held big clumps of kids waiting to get on, they’d suddenly retreat, securing their territory.

  Barry, the bus driver, pretended he couldn’t see them smoking.

  And at the very back of The Back–on the back seat no less–were Chris and Trevor. Chris was in jeans, despite the fact that the year was sliding into summer. Chris had been wearing jeans since he was thirteen. He ran in them, he swam in them, he played footy in them. Kids had kicked gravel at him when he’d first returned to high school because of them–even though their school had no uniform, you couldn’t just go around being different. Really, he was quite the freak. Amelia hadn’t seen Chris’s legs for five years. Not since 1984 to be exact.

  Of course, now they were all in grade twelve, the jeans were just part of Chris’s legend. Covered in the graffiti of a thousand boring classes. That morning he was busy on a new addition, scratching away at his thigh with a biro. Beside him, Trevor pulled out the cigarette he’d tucked behind his ear, rested the tip on his bottom lip and tapped Chris on the shoulder–presumably for a lighter–all the while attempting to appear nonchalant.

  The whole sequence looked like something he’d rehearsed. Probably for Megan’s benefit; never mind the fact she was his cousin. Males tended to want her attention.

  ‘What do you think Chris dreams about?’ Megan asked Amelia. Her voice, normally deep for a girl’s, sounded reedy.

  ‘As if I care what my brother dreams about,’ Amelia said. Then she blinked. And she frowned–hard enough to cut an eleven between her eyebrows.

  Megan wouldn’t meet Amelia’s gaze, but she smiled. The sort of smile you do when you’re smiling to yourself. It was just a secret at the corner of her mouth.

  At that point, Chris looked up at Megan, as though somehow aware of her attention. Most of the time, Chris’s eyes were crinkled at the corners; they were brown and red with glints of light. But right then they were dark all the way through, nearly black, and he was gazing at Megan, but not really seeing her. His eyes only got like that when he was brooding, and Amelia knew that there was only one thing that Chris bothered to brood about. Well, two things, if you counted their mother.

  ‘Coady! Lighter!’ Trevor elbowed Chris, snapping him out of it. Chris focused on Megan properly and flickered his tongue at her. And Trevor looked disappointed, like he wished he’d rehearsed suggestive tongue manoeuvres.

  Amelia saw the red patches blooming like poppies on Megan’s cheeks and neck, and she knew her cold friend had caught fire. She turned to face the front. Arms crossed.

  * * *

  Town. It looked better in the dark, or when viewed from a distance. From Jarmoya at night, it was a glow in the belly of the southern sky. A calling. Street lights, night clubs and fights. By day, the town was sun-slapped and sweaty, lying like a dying pet at the foot of the Berserker Range; snaked by an old brown river, fed by the Bruce Highway, and striped by the Tropic of Capricorn. It was a place where people crossed the road slowly, the bitumen sucking at their thongs. A beef town with sale yards and abattoirs, two bridges–the ‘old’ bridge and the ‘new’ bridge–and a bigger population of both people and bull statues than those down south realised.

  But it wasn’t the town of Amelia’s dreams anymore. Not now it seemed like her only option.

  The bus stopped at their school first. Most of the kids got off there, and Amelia and Megan always waited until the chattering, laughing, sniffing line of students had passed them by–now they were in grade twelve, they didn’t stand in line for anybody. While they waited, Megan breathed on the glass of the window, steaming it up. Then she licked her index finger and drew a circle. She nudged Amelia, as though it was a display meant for her. But Amelia didn’t feel mollified. She suspected it was designed to get her brother’s attention.

  He and Trevor were in line, shuffling towards them. When they reached the girls, Trevor stopped, looking at Amelia as though he was about to say something, but at that moment Chris tugged at the hems of his shorts, and Trevor ducked down in a squat. Dakking had been a big thing with them the year before, and old reflexes died hard.

  ‘Two for flinching, Trev,’ Chris said, punching Trevor in the shoulder twice.

  Trevor stood up, holding the waistband of his shorts, his face flushed. ‘I’ll bloody flinch you in a second, dickhead.’

  Then he saw what Megan had drawn on the glass, and he frowned, like he was trying to work it out–they hadn’t brought up that stuff for years. Don’t bother, Amelia felt like telling him. It’s not to do with you. Or me.

  ‘If you were still fat you wouldn’t have to worry about losing your shorts, tall skinny man.’ Chris pushed him in the back. ‘What have you done with our Trevor? We want our little fatty back!’

  Still distracted by the circle, Trevor made a half-hearted swipe behind him. ‘Screw you, Coady.’

  Chris grabbed Trevor’s shoulders, pulled him backwards, and licked his ear. ‘Go ahead, you sexy beast.’

  ‘Argh!’ Trevor vigorously rubbed his ear on his shoulder. ‘What’d you do that for?’

  Then they were gone, caught up in the conga line of students spewing out of the door.

  ‘Take a good look,’ Amelia said to Megan. ‘Because you’ve been dreaming about an idiot.’

  She stood up abruptly, reefing her backpack out from under the seat. It was a military-style cotton-weave, just like everybody else’s. But unlike the rest of the school population’s bags, which were covered in badges and scrawled band names and initials that proclaimed they’d be 2 gether 4 eva 4 true ♥ is 2 strong 4 us 2 part, Amelia’s bag was unmarked, except for her name written neatly across the top flap. A teacher had once told Amelia that it was the saddest thing she’d ever seen. Really? Amelia retorted. Sadder than a teacher trying to be cryptic?

  Megan hadn’t moved. She was watching Chris and Trevor cross the road–their backpacks were filthy, and they wore them slung over one shoulder, and the strap on Chris’s was so stretched that his bag bumped against the back of
his knees.

  Then, like she was laying down a pair of aces, Megan placed her palms on the circle she’d drawn on the glass.

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Amelia said.

  But if Megan was believing again, her sudden conversion could have only been helped by the song playing on the radio, which begged:

  Touch my skin,

  Breathe it in,

  Wake me up,

  Make me spin,

  Around and round and round.

  ‘Oh, come on, Megan. That’s pathetic.’

  And it might have been, except that on the other side of the road, Chris didn’t follow Trevor through the school gate. He stopped and turned back towards the bus, his arms hanging loosely by his sides and his mouth open, as though he’d just remembered something.

  He looked straight at Megan. From that distance, you might have thought Amelia couldn’t be sure, but she was certain, because right at that moment she buzzed like she’d licked a live wire, and she heard Megan’s sharp intake of breath, and Trevor spun around.

  Oh my God, it still works, Amelia thought, rocked by the shock of it.

  Megan–flustered now–slid across the seat, pushed in front of Amelia, and hurried off the bus. Amelia watched her go, with a crawling feeling low in her guts, not unlike period cramps. She was worried she’d just seen the beginning of something. Something that didn’t include her. Even though the four of them had once made a circle, maybe there were really only two in the loop.

  Then Barry the bus driver glared at Amelia in his rear-view mirror, and told her she could wait as long as she wanted, but they were never going to roll out the red carpet.

  * * *

  Amelia was wrong, though. That wasn’t the beginning. The beginning was five years earlier, and she was there for that, too. It started with her standing on the top step of her house, trying to gauge the nature of the silence bleeding out of the front doorway. It made her anxious when she came home to a quiet house. Her mum hadn’t left for work yet–the station wagon was still parked in the laneway–but there was no radio or television blaring, none of the noise she normally associated with Jessie Coady’s presence. Maybe Chris was asleep.

  ‘Mum, I’m home.’

  No answer.

  ‘Mum?’

  Amelia dumped her school bag in the kitchen and walked into her brother’s bedroom. It was gloomy inside, but no cooler; heavy, brown curtains blocked the window, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The room stank in a way that was both stale and sharp. A folded wheelchair rested against the wall just inside the doorway, and a walking frame was parked near the bed. The walls were empty, with the exception of an AC/DC centrefold taken from Smash Hits, and a poster of a Ford Falcon Cobra. Every time Amelia looked at that poster, she wondered at it. Against the neon-white background and polished floor, the car looked operating-theatre pristine, as though it had never been driven. The poster seemed to glow with a life of its own in the murk of the room.

  Something was different, but Amelia didn’t stop to work it out. Instead, she focused on Chris, who was lying with his back to her, facing the wall. She watched the rise and fall of his chest.

  ‘Where is she?’ Amelia whispered the words, and not just because there was a chance Chris was sleeping. Without having ever discussed it, both she and Chris knew it wouldn’t be good for Jessie to know how much they talked. Jessie put a stop to things like that.

  ‘Outside,’ Chris mumbled without moving.

  ‘Is she checking?’

  ‘Nuh. She doesn’t know he was here last night.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her?’

  Chris sniffed.

  ‘Was it a bad day?’

  ‘She’s gonna take the books away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘What else are you supposed to do?’

  Chris sniffed again.

  That’s what’s different, Amelia realised. All the books and comics normally heaped on the bed and walking frame–within Chris’s reach–were now stacked in two neat piles by the door. Jessie had joined the library in town because she was too much of a tight arse to buy him stuff to read, and in the beginning, because she was one of those people who loved getting something for nothing, she’d filled her arms with books and magazines–mainly straight off the trolley for re-shelving. The books were about all sorts of things, but most importantly, they weren’t about being stuck in a room for two months because your legs had suddenly gone numb one day, and you’d fallen on the floor when you’d tried to get out of bed. Chris loved Mad comics the best. Sometimes Amelia would hear him laughing away and it made her smile. It made her feel like he was a lot younger than thirteen, and he needed to be saved.

  Amelia went from Chris’s room to the sleep-out at the back of the house. She watched her mum through the window. Jessie was taking washing off the line, and she must have just showered, because her ginger-brown hair was wet and scraggly, and she was wearing only a singlet and a pair of undies. Everything on the line was dark coloured. Anything pastel or white never stayed that way, just as the concrete path linking the back steps with the clothesline now looked like terracotta, and the lace curtains Amelia was peering through had taken on a reddish tinge.

  Amelia wasn’t the only one watching Jessie. All of the squab pigeons in the old chook house were up against the wire mesh, jostling each other, like they thought Jessie was going to feed them. They were that dumb. Jessie never went near them. She reckoned the whole coop was crawling with lice.

  Amelia retreated to the lounge room to wait for her mother, turning on the TV and taking a seat on the couch, automatically clasping her hands around her knees to hide them. And then, perhaps because her throat was tight, and she was sick of feeling like this, just sick of it, she ran her fingers over the skin there, feeling the bumps with a peculiar sense of fascination. Some of the warts were crusty and rough, others were smooth, some had even joined together to form big wart cities. And there were new baby warts coming up all the time. Amelia had tried putting spit on them every morning, and she’d tried coating them with her mother’s clear nail polish. But the warts kept coming, as relentless as the red soil that stained everything in and around their house.

  The boys at school called her Bubble Wrap.

  Like Chris, Amelia was being transformed. And she couldn’t stop it, any more than she could magically make him walk again, no matter how much she wanted that for him. A familiar sharp-edged rage started knocking around Amelia’s insides, and she might have cried then if she hadn’t heard her mother coming up the steps.

  Jessie gave Amelia a vague smile as she passed through the room, her brown eyes distracted. She was skinny, fox-faced. Oddly, it was the dark circles around her eyes, and the smattering of freckles across her nose, that made her prettier.

  ‘Home, Mealy love?’ she said in her smoker’s voice.

  Just that little bit of softness melted Amelia. She followed Jessie down the hallway and into her bedroom, sitting on the bed while Jessie sorted through the stuff in the clothes basket until she’d retrieved a pair of jeans and a lavender T-shirt with shoulder pads.

  ‘Gonna be late if I don’t watch it,’ Jessie muttered while she was doing this. ‘I tell you, time flies when you’re busy looking after his royal highness in there. How was school?’

  Amelia threaded her fingers through the multicoloured crocheted bedspread. ‘I gave my project talk.’

  ‘The one on Africa?’

  ‘No, rainforests.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Jessie started ripping a brush through her hair. ‘You know, you’d think I’d be able to get ready in time with the whole day in front of me, but no, always late. It’s this bloody home schooling. He’ll have to repeat the grade. I can’t keep up with it all. At least you’ll be doing it at the same time–you can help him then. I’m lucky I’ve got you, Mealy. You’re a good girl.’

  Amelia pulled at the bedspread, craving more praise from her mother, but knowing she sh
ouldn’t. Jessie started on her make-up. Foundation, dried powder, lipstick. Then the eye liner–eye hardener.

  ‘I got nineteen-and-a-half out of twenty,’ Amelia said, allowing herself to sound proud.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I only lost half a mark.’

  ‘Don’t worry lovey, none of us have ever been any good at school. Christ, look at the time. I’ve got to get gone. Do us a favour? Find my handbag.’

  She rushed into the bathroom, and a moment later Amelia heard spraying noises. Mum had changed shifts at Coles when Chris’s legs had stopped working. She used to be in charge of the Deli but now she was stacking. Stackers worked at night time, while the supermarket was closed, unpacking cartons of stuff and restocking the shelves. It was only a couple of nights a week but the pay was good–time-and-a-half or double-time.

  Amelia found her mum’s handbag in the pantry where it always was–on top of the gun cabinet. Jessie arrived in a cloud of Impulse. She went through about a can a month, and changed her fragrance regularly. This one was what plastic flowers would smell like, if they had a smell.

  ‘Thanks, love. Now there’s mince for dinner.’ Jessie pointed at the bench where three plates had been Clingwrapped and were ready to go. ‘Put it in the fridge when it cools down, and give Chris his early. He needs a good night’s sleep. I want his light out by eight. He’s been doing too much reading. It’s not good for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jessie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because I don’t like it.’

  Amelia looked down at the floor. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And heat up Ray’s tea when he comes in. Put the bread and marge out for him too, eh?’

  Amelia wondered why her step-father couldn’t press the ‘start’ button on the microwave himself. But they always did it for him. He was the king of their kitchen table.

  ‘Okay, just gotta get those books and I’ll be–’

  ‘Mum? Did Chris–’

  ‘Hang on, where are my friggin’ keys?’