Dust

by Christine Bongers

Punk shrugged. ‘Doesn’t bother me. When’s it due?’

  ‘March.’ She grabbed Fatlump’s plate just as the last glob of egg went into his mouth. She was cleaning up before we’d even finished eating. Getting a head start on the day.

  ‘It’s all lined up.’ Dad stomped in and leaned into the sink to wash his hands. ‘Seven birthdays and Christmas. Should be broke by Easter.’

  The target of his good humour ducked her head over the sink.

  He caught my eye and tilted his head in her direction. I groaned through a mouthful of cereal and showed him my half-full bowl. No way was I cleaning up before I’d even finished eating. He frowned and a thought leapt unbidden into my head.

  Please God, let her have a girl. A nice one, next time. Amen.

  By the end of the week, the word was out.

  Lenny Rademaker spun round on the bus seat, showing off his four teeth and five gaps.

  ‘Mum’s already started knitting. Reckons yellow’s the go till you know what it is.’

  I didn’t blame Mrs Rademaker. Even though she clearly knew all along and didn’t bother telling me.

  I blame the post office out front of the Jambin Shop. It leaks like an incontinent cat with all those oldies spilling their guts on the front verandah when they come to collect their daily mail.

  Dad reckons the pub’s even worse and tongues are loosened there first. Not that I’ll get to find out for myself until I’m too old to care. But anyone can see it’s a popular stopping-off point.

  From lunchtime, road trains lined up outside, trailing two or three loads of listless cattle with horns pointing towards the Biloela meatworks, or bins of grain grinding their way to the Defiance Mill in Toowoomba.

  Clustered around their axles were the usual litter of runty farm vehicles: an old Bedford truck, its once-red paint bleached to a faint blush; a dusty ute with a rusted tailgate, hanging like the arse out of someone’s trousers; a trayback with a dinged-in door and a spray-paint of cow shit – pretty compelling evidence that some idiot had broadsided a straggler on an unfenced road.

  But this morning, Mr Blinco’s bus is the only vehicle pulling onto the dirt out front of the pub. The session won’t open for another hour or two and Hayley Harris’s daffodil sundress is a daub of colour on the blank canvas of the year’s end.

  For today is an end and a beginning. The last day of school. For Punk, his last day ever at Jambin State School.

  My thoughts skitter around the problem of next year.

  Hayley Harris and the Sykes twins, Jenny and Valda, will be with Janeen Kapernicky and Punk, worlds away at high school in Biloela, fifteen miles up the bitumen.

  I’ll be the only girl in Grade Seven, with Aileen Kapernicky the only girl in Grade Six.

  The door cranks open on this bleak thought, admitting Hayley Harris in a blaze of gold, a shower of shrieks.

  ‘A baby! You lucky thing!’ Words tumbling about her as she sweeps down the aisle.

  Mr O’Dribble outdid himself with a full day of games: rounders, three-legged races, egg-and-spoon challenges, and round-robin tennis.

  By the afternoon, I’d had it with coming last in everything and had holed up in the cool of the deserted classroom.

  I finished Treasure Island and was back drilling the inkwell hole in my desk with my finger when Punk strolled in and started scrawling on the blackboard.

  ‘The way you spell, you’ll be back here again next year.’ I peeped through a crack under the desk lid to watch my finger wiggle inside.

  ‘It’s a joke, y’idiot.’ He kept scratching and scrawling till he had it looking just right. ‘I know how to spell school.’

  crool scool

  Goodby crule skool

  sckool

  My desk smelt of overripe bananas and stale paper. I was tempted to tell him how to spell goodbye, when Brian Vernon burst into the room.

  ‘Mr O’Driscoll’s handing out lollypops down at the Big Tree! Come on, or you’ll miss out!’

  The door banged behind him and Punk before I could get my finger out. By the time I ricocheted off three desks, a doorjamb and the port racks, the boys were long gone. I triple-timed it down the steps and raced across the parade ground towards the kids clustered under the Big Tree.

  Mr O’Driscoll was already on his way back. I trotted up, afraid I’d missed out, until I spotted a green and red gob-stopper on a stick, poking out of his clenched fist.

  He held it up like a bouquet.

  ‘Lucky last. But you might like to save it till later. I’m going to grab the cricket gear and get a game going till the bus comes.’

  I smiled, jamming it into my mouth.

  Cricket? When it’s a hundred degrees in the shade? I don’t think so.

  The lolly rasped against my tongue, painfully sweet; my eyes fluttered shut and I grabbed the end pole on the monkey bars for balance.

  As I swung round in the heady heat, some sixth sense kicked in. My eyes snapped open and I caught myself an instant before colliding with Aileen Kapernicky. I got my feet under me and straightened as she pulled out her lollypop with a wet smack.

  The sweet was worn down to a crisp white core like an apple. Her lips glistened, tacky with red and green. A bump twisted the bridge of her nose sideways; sleep crumbled and flaked at the corners of her eyes.

  I realised with a shock that her eyes were the same colour as mine. That they reflected back a stubborn certainty: neither of us would be the first to back off, the one to walk away.

  We’d avoided each other since the fight; staking out different areas of the schoolyard, keeping away from each other on the bus. But it was time to face facts. We couldn’t keep it up forever.

  A disturbing new reality was only just starting to hit home. A reality that clanged so loudly in my head, I had to open my mouth and let it out.

  ‘So. It’s just going to be you and me, next year.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘So?’

  ‘So, maybe we should …’ I hesitated.

  Should what? Call a truce? Try to be friends? How the hell was that going to work?

  Faced with the reality of Aileen Kapernicky in my face, the words dried up in my throat.

  ‘Should what, Vanderbum?’

  She just couldn’t help herself. I don’t know why I even bothered. It wasn’t going to work. We were just too different. She didn’t want to be friends any more than I did. I folded my arms across my chest.

  ‘Maybe we should just stay away from each other. OK?’

  She folded her own arms and blew a gust of air out of her nose, as though she hadn’t expected anything else. My chest tightened.

  ‘Got a better suggestion, Kapernicky?’

  Open dislike shimmered like heat between us.

  ‘Yeah, why don’t you just spend the year in that stupid library you love so much. Keep out of everyone’s face.’

  ‘Yeah, well why don’t you just go cartwheel in a corner by yourself like you always do –’

  She threw up her hands and I flinched. She shot me a look of pure contempt and flung herself sideways into a series of perfect cartwheels. Then she turned and ran at me, hard. I sidestepped a high-speed round-off that ended in a thud beside me.

  ‘Can’t do that, can you, Vanderbum? Friggin’ useless. Can’t do anything, can you?’

  She cast her arms skywards and in a surprisingly graceful movement, flipped up on to her hands. Her legs scissored, revealing a flash of frayed and stained underpants before they straightened into a perfect handstand, her old cotton miniskirt riding down over her hips.

  ‘God, put it away, Kapernicky! No-one wants to see your grungy undies! You’re disgusting!’

  She stepped down, the blood dark in her face.

  ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘Your undies are disgusting. You’ll make decent people sick showing them off like that –’

  A wild fury swept across her face.

  ‘SHUT UP!’

  A line of spit shot out of her mouth, laced into a st
ring of ugly words.

  I backed away, shock wrapping round me like a bubble.

  She came at me, screaming crazy things, clawing at her skirt, clutching and ripping at the tattered underpants, launching them at me with a force that made me duck and throw up my hands.

  Her knee glanced off me as she charged past, cartwheeling explosively over the dead grass, kicking up dust in her wake.

  From the shade of the Big Tree, lines of kids snaked out, slipping into knots that tightened around her, their cries mingling with hers, hoarse and guttural, like crows flocking to a fresh kill.

  Over the din, Mr O’Driscoll raced in, his voice clanging like a bell, his brown lace-ups pounding over the scrap of material lying forlorn and forgotten in the dust.

  chapter 17

  The cracked green vinyl of the bus seat sweated beneath me.

  Shrieks and giggles ricocheted off the walls, punctuated by slaps and shoves and fevered hopes for the long hot summer that unravelled before us.

  I could hear her name flitting about the bus, landing among shocked whispers, sly giggles and loud guffaws.

  I refused to speak. Wouldn’t answer any questions. Kept staring at the empty seat up front. Willing it to be filled so we could go home. So we could rule a line under this day. Under this year.

  That seat had been empty forever. No-one had ever wanted to sit there. Too close to Mr Blinco and his twitchy cane that swished and sliced the heavy fusty air without warning. Too close to the squished fag ends that he flicked through the open door when we stopped. Too far from the sly fun of the back row.

  But just right for the Kapernickys.

  They’d plonked straight into that seat on their first day and stayed there ever since. Backs to the rest of us. Apart.

  Now the seat was empty again. Because of Aileen.

  Mr Blinco ran up the bus steps and slipped onto his chair, a fag trembling from his lower lip. Lenny Rademaker leaned forward and pointed to the empty seat. Mr Blinco shook his head and cranked the door closed.

  The bus had inhaled its last load for the year. As it gurgled and lurched up onto the bitumen, I swung round in my seat, scanning the grounds until I found them.

  They were still there, where we had left them.

  Two dark figures under the Big Tree, dwindling in the distance, going nowhere.

  It made no sense to me. What she had done.

  Wearing no undies was a nightmare that ranked alongside yellow-eyed monsters on the floor in the dark. Wearing jarmies to school. Falling down an infinite hole and screaming and screaming and screaming and never hitting the bottom because if you did, you died. End of nightmare. End of everything.

  So why did Aileen Kapernicky have to act out everyone’s worst nightmare?

  What was wrong with her?

  ‘HOWZAT!’

  Punk was in the air, reliving his afternoon hat-trick, Aileen Kapernicky forgotten in the recreation of his winning googly.

  ‘YOU WANT ME TO GET THE WADDY OUT?’

  Punk bum-dived back into place and shined an angelic smile at the eyes on him in the mirror.

  ‘No Sir, Mr Blinco, Sir!’

  I turned moodily back to the empty seat up the front.

  Punk was lucky. He didn’t care why people did what they did. Told me not to worry about it. Said she was crazy. Told me to forget about it.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t get the Kapernickys out of my mind. Janeen’s quiet thoughtfulness, bordering on invisibility, and Aileen …well, something feral had always stared out of Aileen’s eyes. The combination marked them as different. Kept others away.

  I stared at the vacant green vinyl. Maybe that was why we had played Aileen Kapernicky’s germs. Back in the beginning. Before we even knew them at all. We knew they were different. And different was bad because it meant you stood apart from the pack. That you had no friends. That you were a bit of a lonely bugger.

  We shied away from it. The loneliness.

  Like it was catching.

  Like it was germs.

  chapter 18

  The ding of the phone made my heart jump.

  I put my book down on the bed and listened. Two short rings, then a long. It was for us. I was dead.

  The stop-start murmur of Mum’s voice eventually trailed off, then started again in the kitchen, with Dad’s joining in, low and muffled.

  I fiddled with a tuft of hair behind my ear and began to plait it, just for something to do. I kept going, waiting for the axe to fall, and had just about run out of hair by the time Mum and Dad finally stuck their heads in my door.

  ‘Did you say your prayers?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  While Dad patiently repeated the question I muttered under my breath a quick Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord, my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take.

  A bit of insurance, just in case. ‘Yes, Dad.’

  He glanced at Mum, said he’d see me in the morning and disappeared.

  She picked up the chenille bedspread I’d kicked off the bed and began folding it.

  ‘That was Mr O’Driscoll.’ She looked more tired than angry. ‘Telling us about that business with Aileen Kapernicky …’

  She hesitated and I realised that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand.

  ‘Mum, I don’t know why she went off like that. She just went ballistic. All I did was tell her she shouldn’t be showing off her grotty undies and she went nuts –’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You do?’

  She put the bedspread on the end of the bed and sat down next to me.

  ‘Mr O’Driscoll said the Rademaker boy heard most of it on the way back from the toilet. Seems she was giving as good as she got, then just exploded out of the blue. You were both at fault by the sound of things.’

  She took her glasses off and rubbed at her eyes.

  ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on with the Kapernicky girl, but that’s something her parents will have to sort out. What we need to talk about is what we’re going to do with you.’

  She paused but I wasn’t much help. Couldn’t think of anything to say that might help my case in the slightest.

  ‘Mr O’Driscoll says you’ve already passed the high school test. Says you’re bright enough to go with your brother next year –’

  A surge of excitement pumped through me. ‘Omygod! YES! I could go to high school with Hayley and Punk and –’

  Mum held up her hand. ‘Just hold your horses. Nothing’s been decided yet. If we let you go, and it’s a big if, you’re going to have to knuckle down and work hard –’

  ‘I will, I promise! Please can I go, Mum? Please?’

  Mum sighed and carefully placed her glasses back on her face. She studied me for a moment.

  ‘Your Dad thinks we should let you go, thinks you’ve outgrown primary school. But, I don’t know, it’s a big step. A big change. I don’t know if you’re ready.’

  ‘Mum! I am –’

  She raised her voice and cut me off. ‘On the other hand – this business with Aileen … It’s not going to go away, is it?’

  I didn’t bother answering. We both knew the answer to that.

  She stood, pressing a hand to the small of her back. The bump under her Osti was getting bigger.

  ‘Mum –’

  She looked down at me.

  ‘Can I get my ears pierced like Hayley Harris, to start high school?’

  Her lips pressed together. ‘Don’t push your luck, my girl. You’re not even a certainty for high school yet. Now go to sleep.’

  She flicked off the light, muttering about ‘gypsies’ and ‘certain types of women’ as she closed my door.

  The night jittered about, unsettled against the low rumble of Dad’s decade of the rosary filtering in from the next room.

  Thoughts of high school crowded out Aileen Kapernicky, dispatching her to a dark corner of my mind, leaving me free to skip away in black lace-ups and a high school unifo
rm of blue and white stripes, gypsy hoops swinging from my ears.

  Mrs Leddes came to me then, in a waking dream. Just like she used to come and help Mum when Lick was a baby.

  She lived in a caravan, down an overgrown lane just before the Argoon turn-off. Tucked in under the trees near the creek, the door propped open by a rusted can crawling with geraniums, purple stinkweed sprouting up against the van’s flat tyres.

  She’d appear in the doorway, one hand turning down the old wireless mounted in the window, the other waving us in.

  Come. Come. I put kettle on.

  Thanks, but we’re just on our way into town, Mum would say. Just wondering if you needed anything while I’m in there.

  No, no. I fine. But leave you babies and you girl. She no want to go, do you, lovey?

  I always stayed, fascinated by Mrs Leddes, her broad brown face, the missing tooth at the corner of her smile, the glint of gold at her ears, the promise of what was to come.

  I’d slide onto her cracked vinyl bench and hold my breath while she set Lick and Fatlump on the floor with biscuits and pots and pans. Just waiting for her to reach high into the overhead cupboard and bring down the large screw-cap jar.

  Mum would laugh when I called Mrs Leddes a gypsy. But I knew what she was because I’d seen what was in that jar and Mum hadn’t.

  It seemed to take forever for Mrs Leddes to unscrew the lid. Winding, winding, smiling, smiling, until finally, she’d pour out the great glittering waterfall onto the green marbled swirls of laminex.

  Glowing strings of pearls, tangled into jewelled necklaces, bracelets, bangles and earrings. Hoops and dangly beaded drops; jewelled clips clasped in gold and silver, set in fiery reds and glittering greens.

  What’s this? I’d ask.

  Jasper.

  I’d slide the word through my teeth and breathe it out through my lips. And this?

  Lapis. Lapis lazuli.

  Exotic. Exquisite.

  I’d start with a crown of glassy crystals; a giant tear-drop centred on my forehead and work my way down. A worn velvet ribbon with a cream cameo broach tied high on my throat, the jasper choker, double-stranded pearls, a mother-of-pearl pendant, layers of bright beads, jangling bangles.