by Sue Saliba
‘thanks. thanks, kara, and thanks for your note too.
i really appreciate it.’
‘that’s okay. i just wanted to let you know i was thinking of you. i was a bit abrupt yesterday. i’m sorry. did you want to talk about something?’
‘umm,’ and esma felt the seduction of the warmth of the teacup inside her hands, the unexpected morning of love.
‘no, it’s okay.’
‘are you sure? i mean i think it’s really important we have good communication in the house. i really value your input.’
‘it’s okay, really.’
‘okay,’ and kara nodded, smiled and said how nice esma was looking today, how cute.
‘i really love that blue cardigan on you. it matches your eyes.’
and while esma had all the plans to shout kara that ice-cream and wear her special green skirt, it was kara who dressed up especially and insisted on buying everything. kara and esma, walking down lygon street, passing waiters and lovers and italian babies, almost arm in arm, or so esma imagined.
‘i can’t wait to show chloe around,’ kara said. and esma felt herself tighten.
what a perfect morning it had been.
‘it’s so good of you, esma. you’re such a great housemate. i can’t wait for chloe to arrive.’
and esma – if she were agile enough – might have convinced herself that kara’s happiness was because of her, because of esma, but something reminded her that it wasn’t, or that it wasn’t that simple. a clear moment of truth that made esma want to hate chloe even more. even more than she did when she decided that simon must stay.
and simon did stay – at least for now.
samantha decorated his room with leaves she’d found from the trees. ‘everything’s falling, esma, and it’s beautiful.’ she even tried to convince esma to go out into the gardens with her before the 5.47 a.m. sunrise expected thursday morning. ‘they’re the best leaves to get,’ she said. ‘they leave the tree as it’s dreaming.’ but esma wasn’t interested. how stupid to go out chasing dead things in the cold, she thought, and pulled her knees tighter to her chest as she heard the front door click behind samantha.
it was already morning and she hadn’t slept. she hadn’t slept for three nights now. only fitful little bits that she fell in to and out of in the darkness.
because although kara had said nothing more – about chloe, about simon, about esma – esma had that knowing she’d felt when jen first stepped towards leaving,
before packing the black case she’d taken to alaska, before reading out loud the letter that said she’d won the scholarship, before tipping a block of ice onto the wooden verandah – aged fourteen – and watching it disappear to leave only a messy stain.
esma felt it again, that unworded feeling, and this time it was accompanied by anger and shame and absolute distress that she could not locate its exact whereabouts and cut it out of her stomach or her arm or wherever it began and put an end to it, this awful dread.
because, after all, wasn’t that what growing up was about? never having to feel foolish, uncomfortable and vulnerable again?
that’s what she’d set herself to doing, after jen left. i won’t answer her letters, that’s what esma had said, pushing the opened aerograms under the mattress. ‘it all means nothing to me. i’ve moved on now.’
her words were shadowed by her sudden desire to peel and rip and tear down the posters of horses and flowers and the table of elements jen had left on the bedroom walls, leaving the walls blank and still and silent as night.
but esma’s grief pervaded her, no matter how hard she squashed it. it rode her like those horses jen had so admired. saddled, bridled, strapped with leather and stirrups.
‘when are you going to forget the sadness of jen?’ sally had said before she ran away. it was a sadness esma had no control over.
a deep sadness she was scared would betray her.
and indeed it did. kara sniffed it out from the beginning. ‘duende,’ she called it. that was in her poetic moods. ‘depression,’ that was how she named it in her more clinical times, her moments of analysis and separation.
other times kara would name it as ‘low energy’, as not living life, as some awful deadness, and she’d say that chloe was so different. chloe was so bright and alive.
‘i really want to move away from that space of low energy,’ she’d say. ‘i really don’t want to be around people in that space anymore. it’s so different with chloe, she’s so spontaneous and positive. she’s so alive.’
and esma would again wish she could transform that sadness inside herself into lightness and fun, could wish away saturn with his remoteness and melancholy, his awful weight that told her something deep inside the universe was changing.
or something deep inside herself.
for everything would change, and change again, although much would happen in between.
such as chloe’s arrival, and kara’s birthday, and samantha – knife in hand – crawling through the broken wire of a dog pen in ballarat on the darkest of nights, and esma discovering the truth behind kara’s possessive-ness of simon, and of course kara calling her ‘meeting’ to inform simon of his imminent eviction.
it happened one morning in late june, frost on the kitchen window so simon couldn’t look outside it, beyond it, when kara said, ‘simon, esma and i feel the need to call a house meeting. are you available an evening of this week, between eight and nine-thirty?’ he did struggle to see outside, esma noticed, she sitting on the ripped vinyl chair at the kitchen table opposite him.
‘is there a night that would suit you?’ kara said.
‘yeah, umm, ah, i’ve got band practice tonight and i’m taking samantha out tomorrow night. what about…?’
‘simon, this is important,’ kara began. ‘i know you may not have always participated fully in household responsibilities before but this is something you need to be part of, to be present at, to…’
‘to what?’ simon asked and esma thought she heard a solidity, a resistance, even a strength to simon she hadn’t noticed before.
‘to what, kara?’
and esma, watching kara, saw her eyes dart. she’d never seen that before. kara shifting her stance by the kitchen door and breathing in, swallowing.
‘let’s talk about it at the meeting,’ kara said at last.
‘okay, tonight,’ simon said. ‘i’ll skip band practice.
eight o’clock.’ and he stood, collected the papers he’d been reading over his breakfast – the case study of a man prosecuted for chaining a dog to a tree without food for three days – and left.
a gap of silence rested in his absence. kara fussing with the buttons of her cardigan, esma growing taller and fuller in the air around her, realising that she may not need to be the agent of resistance to simon’s eviction after all. that he, newly firm, resolute, confident, might in fact fill that role himself.
esma played the scene over and over in her mind all day, as she sat through her 11 a.m. tutorial on super-heroes in contemporary fiction and as she scribbled sketchy notes in her near-empty 4.15 lecture, the gothic novel: women and revenge. she played the scene over and over.
simon, stopping, gaining himself and asking kara, ‘to what…?’ what did he need to address himself to, to be present to, to answer to? it was a reasonable question, but not one simon would have formed six months earlier. and perhaps even now, it was one he could only begin and couldn’t quite carry through. but all the same something had shifted. and esma knew and kara knew what it was. simon had been touched. someone – it wasn’t hard to guess who – had reached inside him and whispered to that part of him that needed awakening, that part of him that needed to grow just a little bit firmer.
‘you’re wonderful,’ samantha might have said, or ‘amazing’. or ‘they’re so lucky to have you’ or ‘you have more courage than you realise’. or any number of things that made him know the truth of what he was – even just for a moment. ‘you’re special,’ she might
have said and pinched the corner of his collar. however she did it, samantha had touched something inside, and esma knew that the house’s meeting at eight o’clock that night would be like no other.
and she was right. simon, dressed in a t-shirt saying, ‘shout no to animal cruelty’, was at the kitchen table early. kara, uncharacteristically casual, arrived downstairs at four minutes past eight. ‘would anyone like a cup of tea? i bought some special licorice blend for us today from the food co-op at uni.’
esma filled in the silence. it felt like the right thing to do. ‘no. i mean yes, if you bought it especially.’
‘simon?’ kara turned herself to him, almost unexpectedly. ‘you look… vibrant tonight.’
‘thanks. let’s start with the meeting, shall we. no. no, thanks, kara. i won’t have any tea.’
and kara put the pot down as if it wasn’t worth brewing the special tea, after all.
‘well, esma and i wanted us all to get together,’
she began. ‘you know, as housemates to talk about the direction of the house.’
‘the direction?’ simon said.
‘yes, i mean where we’re going, what kind of space we want to live in.’
‘well, i guess a neat and tidy space,’ simon said.
and esma felt her heart sink. he sounded as if he really didn’t get it after all.
‘i was referring more to the emotional space,’ kara said.
‘you mean like how we all get along?’
‘i mean like how we all contribute emotionally to make this a home.’
‘and…?’
‘and what?’ kara said.
‘and… i don’t get where you’re going with this, kara.’
‘where i’m going is…’ and she looked down at her perfectly clasped hands. ‘well, actually it’s not just where i’m going. i shouldn’t dominate this discussion as if it’s all what i want. esma, i should let you speak because this is something you came to me to talk about initially.’
had she? suddenly esma couldn’t remember. she’d always thought it was kara’s idea but then maybe she was wrong. or maybe she was simply wrong in that although she hadn’t approached kara openly, kara had detected esma’s unhappiness and acted altruistically and brought up the awful fact: that simon must leave.
it was a bewildering task – to find the truth – but one there wasn’t time for. simon was facing her. ‘what is this about, esma?’
‘it’s about a home and wanting everyone to be happy and thinking about what makes a home and trying to make things safe and solid and right… no, right isn’t the word.’ she stopped herself. ‘not right but… wonderful.’
she couldn’t believe she’d said that… wonderful? but she went on: ‘it’s about feeling free to be happy and to love and to have spirit and to know there’s always someone waiting, no matter how imperfect you might be.’
kara and simon looked at each other.
‘and so,’ esma said, carried away to a place she remembered almost like the gardens, or the book of sparks, ‘so, kara and i would like chloe to come and stay with us. to live with us, to be part of our house.’
‘where will she sleep?’ simon said.
esma stopped for a moment, cut short. and then a thought occurred to her.
‘we could convert the little room next to the balcony,’
she said. ‘just for now.’
and everything shifted. the house, kara’s face, simon’s shoulders, esma’s mind. yes, esma’s mind, because she’d created a way she hadn’t known, a third way.
a room at the top of the stairs she’d forgotten about, a strand of hope, or an avenue of escape out of what seemed inescapable.
a belief that all would work out, and they would live happily ever after,
although of course it was not true.
simon unlocked his hands then. kara looked at the clock. esma bit her lip to hide a tiny grin and reached for the tea pot.
‘would anyone like some tea?’ she said.
simon raised his hand and kara sat in silence.
‘actually, there’s more to it,’ kara spoke at last,
and the fear was back in esma.
‘actually, with chloe coming, it’s going to be pretty crowded at times. i mean, if we’re all going to be around. well, what i’m thinking is, simon, you and samantha might want some space to yourselves.’
‘i’m sure we can work around that,’ he said.
‘well, i thought you might want to be somewhere other than here.’
‘no. i like it here,’ he said.
and esma thought she heard that solidity again, that strength.
‘actually, i like it here very much.’
and as simon sipped his tea and kara fled upstairs (‘involuntary fluctuations of the heart exam to prepare for tomorrow’), esma looked down the hall and saw a shadow flicker in simon’s doorway.
perhaps it was the possum climbing in through simon’s bedroom window, she thought.
but then, of course, it couldn’t have been.
how silly,
everything was locked and bolted tight that night,
esma discovered later, against the storm that was predicted to come.
two a.m. and it at last hit,
wind and rain and night.
and it was only a week after the meeting, when esma was walking past simon’s doorway, that she saw the owner of the shadow. it was a piece of paper that had fallen down past the window from the wall above. simon must have had it blu-tacked to the plaster. too heavy, or shifted by a breeze, it had slipped.
when esma opened it in her palm as she sat amongst the pigeons in carlton gardens on the fourth tuesday morning of june, it read:
‘our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
it is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…’
as quickly as she could, esma slipped the note inside the hem of her skirt, and knew that later, but not too much later, she would copy the quote into her book of sparks.
and the book of sparks grew.
two eyes, a heart,
the twigs of trees.
the curl of wool her father left her,
a sketch of the rainbow parrot fish that lives at the
bottom of the sea,
and spins a web around itself
when it settles down to sleep.
all these moments she kept between its covers and opened when she felt herself in need.
they made her forget who she was, that’s what she thought at first. and then she re-thought it. no, they made her remember something. they made her remember when she’d been simple and born, before everything got confused.
because it had got confused somewhere, and maybe trying to locate the confusion and untangle it wasn’t the point. maybe – and here she stopped in the delicious thought – maybe she could simply find the moments of happiness, of real-ness and let all the mess of the rest simply be. she’d never imagined that. she’d always imagined she’d have to defeat the bad bits, the wrong bits. but here was a new way, a third way. and the book of sparks shone so brightly for her, suddenly seemed so precious, that she decided to cover it in the most wonderful material.
after this, esma drifted through the house as if suddenly light. simon moved around with a new-found firmness. and kara? what of kara, after fleeing up the stairs, defeated and supposedly intent on learning the movements of the heart?
nothing changed for kara after that night in the kitchen where simon refused to budge and esma smiled as she poured the tea. chloe had been assigned to the little sunroom beside the balcony that boiled in summer and whistled with icy wind in winter. and kara would not forget the corner she’d felt pushed into – and the indignity, she fleeing up the stairs, lost for words when she should have been superior and consoling. still, even if she hadn’t got her way entirely this time, she had got something precious, and certainly something that she believed would facil
itate her way. chloe.
chloe would move in – maybe she’d have to stay in the little draughty room upstairs for a short time – and then things would change. the house would become a home as kara wanted it. everything would be fixed and nailed as it should be and everyone would live happily ever after. that is, of course, unless someone other than kara was to write the script.
in the meantime, chloe was coming, flying her way across cities and sky.
esma hadn’t been able to stop that, although she did feel proud that she’d hemmed the younger sister into a smaller part of the house and she continued to walk light and free until kara, bit by bit, spoke of chloe more and more, and slowly, awfully, esma felt that even though she’d warded off simon’s eviction, even though she’d somehow lessened the force of chloe, chloe was still powerful, chloe was still a threat, chloe was still overwhelming in kara’s admiration of her, in kara’s adulation. yes, in kara’s love.
‘she’s so gorgeous,’ kara said, ‘boys just flock to her. and she’s so outgoing. the kids will just love her when she’s teaching.’
it must have been eleven times (esma was counting) before chloe arrived that kara swept and dusted and polished the little room. she shone the windows and placed fresh flowers on a table by the wall. she fluffed the little cushions and tucked and re-tucked the eucalyptus-scented bed sheets. she hung the beautiful cambodian silk she’d told esma she had no more of, and took and arranged the most special books that had sat in the bookcase between her and esma’s rooms. she even tried to fix the wind from coming in. esma heard her hammering a piece of towel to the bottom of the outside door. but she couldn’t stop that. it was already winter.
and, after all, that’s what wind was for, wasn’t it? to push and shift and change.
and change things did.
by the time chloe stepped through the door, case in hand and tanned face that would soon fade, esma had covered the book of sparks.
gold cloth she’d bought from a thai temple. eight plastic jewels saved from minou’s collar. a border of sparkly blue ink whose colour always reminded her of victory.
‘chloe’s looking so special today in that black jacket, isn’t she, esma,’ kara said, and esma smiled and thought of the book of sparks. she was clearly untouched by kara’s admiration, clearly untouchable. or so she thought.
