Dust

by Christine Bongers

  A big grin split his pimpled stubble.

  ‘Offer’s open, girls. Whenever you’re ready.’

  She took a swig and wrinkled her nose. ‘Tastes like banana lollies.’

  I thought that wasn’t such a bad thing but said nothing as she lit a fag to get rid of the taste.

  Morning tea was too short for a fag each so we shared just the one, smoking in companionable silence.

  The boys fought over the last of the grog until the bell rang and they tossed the bottle under the stands. Not far enough, apparently. Because next morning on parade, the Principal, Mr Reagan, went off.

  chapter 25

  ‘Because of the actions of some students, all students are now banned from sitting on, or congregating near, the grandstands down at the oval.’

  Mr Reagan ignored the babble of protest.

  ‘All areas beyond F Block are now banned during breaks. Students found beyond the end of F Block will find themselves writing out the school rules during their breaks.’

  ‘Dismissed!’

  By the time we’d hit the port-racks, Glenda had worked up a head of steam.

  ‘What are we going to do at break if we can’t smoke?’

  I hadn’t had time to give the matter much thought. ‘Dunno. Eat. Sit around. Nothing, I guess. Be bored.’

  She nodded as though that was the right answer. ‘They’re going to send us all nuts if they don’t let us smoke! There’s nothing else to do!’

  I was about to suggest we could go to the library when she turned on me.

  ‘You know why people smoke? Because it gives them something to do when there’s nothing to do. You’re never at a loose end – you can always just have a smoke and bingo, you’re doing something.’

  Her angry smile was more dazzling than her logic. She shook her head as if unable to believe everyone hadn’t already come to the same conclusion.

  ‘God knows what non-smokers do with all the time they must have on their hands.’

  English was next, then Geography. I grabbed my books and hugged them to my chest, unsettled by Glenda’s comments.

  I had always thought reading was what you did when you had nothing to do. In fact it was usually my preferred alternative even if I did have something to do. I just couldn’t let a lifetime’s commitment go up in smoke without defending it.

  ‘We could go to the library – heaps of stuff to do in there.’

  Glenda didn’t even bother turning around. ‘If you wanted to be boring as bat shit, you could.’

  That stopped me in my tracks. ‘Pardon me?’

  She shrugged. ‘Trying to remember all that stuff. Boring as.’

  She swayed off in the direction of English, leaving me rooted to the floor, counter-arguments ricocheting around my head.

  Hey, wait a minute, you don’t have to read to remember, you can read to forget. To escape. To find funny things that make you laugh –

  ‘Sis, you loser!’

  Punk loped up with Karl Rogers, star of the school cricket team, as the Eight Twos filed into Maths. Janeen Kapernicky and I were the only Eight Ones left at the port-racks; if we didn’t get going soon, we’d both be late for English.

  ‘Gorgon gave me seven-and-a-half out of ten for my Kon-Tiki assignment – last time I’m letting you do my homework!’

  He pushed into the line at the doorway and disappeared into the classroom. Karl Rogers winked and followed him in.

  A wave of depression rippled through me. My best friend thought that reading was boring and I could barely pass an Eight Two English assignment.

  An undertow of despair picked me up, dragged me along the hardwood verandah behind Janeen and deposited me like useless debris outside English.

  Janeen had slipped in ahead of a sudden blockage at the doorway. My eyes surfaced for a quick gulp at Miss Davies who looked puzzled at the burble of barely contained laughter coming from inside the classroom.

  I ducked my head and tried to squeeze past her but a soft hand steered me back outside.

  ‘Tell me, Cecilia, is there something odd about my appearance today?’

  I looked up from the tottering suede stiletto ankle boots to the two inches of petticoat hanging below the loud checks of her skirt, giant blue roses blooming on her blouse, chalk dust smudged across her forehead and cheek, and had to tell her the truth.

  ‘No, Miss. You look much the same as usual.’

  The muffled laughter from the other side of the door seemed to exclude both of us. Kooky dress sense or not, this time I was on her side.

  ‘Maybe you should check your chair for plastic dog poop. There was one being passed around before school.’

  She straightened her shoulders. ‘Right. In you go, then. Let’s get started.’

  I led the way into the sniggering classroom, feeling a bit vulnerable and out of sorts. The vacant seat next to Glenda beckoned and I wasn’t sure if I could decently refuse. What could I say? You insulted my library. I don’t want to sit next to you right now?

  Miss Davies handed me a stack of papers. ‘You can hand these back. And Cecilia,’ she smiled, ‘I really enjoyed your poem. Perhaps you’d like to read it out to the class.’

  ‘Uh, not really –’ An explosive giggle forced Miss Davies to raise her voice above the hubbub.

  ‘Settle down, people. Now, Michael Galliano –’

  Excellent instincts; she’d gone straight for the biggest turd-burglar in our class.

  ‘Please check my chair and desk and take anything unusual you find there up to the Principal’s office.’

  The tittering dried up; all eyes on how Michael would handle the deft request.

  While Miss Davies congratulated us on our imaginative poems and their exciting diversity of approach, we tracked Michael’s elaborate and apparently unsuccessful search for any offensive items. He was surreptitiously adjusting the back of his shorts when Miss Davies turned an innocent smile his way.

  ‘Nothing? Probably just as well. Sit down please, Michael, and no fidgeting or you’ll be volunteering to read your poem out to the class.’

  Deft and deadly. Guaranteeing a painfully quiet Michael Galliano for the next forty minutes.

  ‘Right, I asked each of you to write a poem on a biting topic and am delighted with the range of responses. I’ve selected two pieces that provide an interesting contrast in approach. Cecilia, if you’ve finished handing them out, we’ll start with the rhyming verse you wrote for a children’s picture book –’

  ‘Miss, I really don’t want –’

  ‘Go on, verse was meant to be read aloud.’ She smiled as though bestowing some sort of reward for the turd tip-off. ‘Have some fun with it.’

  Everyone in the class had managed to find something fascinating on the laminate surfaces of their desks. Clearly I wasn’t about to be saved by a chorus of ‘Pick me’s. I cleared my throat.

  ‘It’s called “Bite Me”.’

  Someone tittered, spiking adrenalin through my veins.

  Miss Davies made little shooing motions with her hands.

  ‘Go on, get on with it.’

  OK.

  Ever since I was small (not big at all),

  things have liked to bite me.

  It started with ants in my underpants,

  leaving lumps that were most unsightly.

  Then it was bees, buzz-bombing my knees,

  till they swelled and glowed quite brightly.

  March flies were the worst,

  with stings that I nursed,

  till I pouted and cursed.

  Quite rightly.

  Mozzies would stray out of their way,

  determined just to spite me.

  Assassin bugs would drop their prey

  in order to hug me tightly.

  In earnest I’d pray that they’d just stay away …

  and I tried to ask them politely.

  But before I could say ‘Please go away!’

  Something different would bite me.

  As if
magnetised by the flesh that they prized,

  bugs constantly wanted to fight me.

  They just couldn’t wish for a tastier dish

  to feast upon, day and nightly.

  As I got older, the beasties grew bolder.

  For my pains, the Queen should just knight me.

  As now on the list of things that persist,

  is an Ibis that pecks at me lightly.

  Even my ferret decided to dare it,

  hanging onto my hand so tightly.

  There seemed no escape – no matter the shape –

  from things that were out to smite me.

  So I moved to the sea, in the hope there would be

  a future that shone out more brightly.

  No insects in sight, no nippers to bite …

  A safe haven, this just might be.

  I’m kidding, of course. It was par for the course.

  In the ocean, a jellyfish swiped me.

  A stingray was next – I swear that I’m hexed!

  Though I’m trying to take it more lightly …

  On land or at sea, it’s now plain to me

  (and I’ve learned to accept it quite blithely) …

  I am destined to be somebody’s tea …

  Or brunch … Or lunch …

  SO BITE ME!

  A wave of good-natured laughter washed over me as I sat down, heart thumping, in the first empty seat I could find.

  Glenda leaned forward, expelling her stored-up thoughts in a loud whispering rush.

  ‘I wish I’d thought of something like that. Mum said I should write about something important like Uncle Ian coming home from the Vietnam War and I ended up with this horrible rhyme about flaws in all wars. Davies is such a freak: Nice idea, Glenda, but you need to work on your iambic pentameter. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  I’d missed most of Miss Davies’ comments; all that really registered was the name called out next and the fact that she didn’t argue; just stood and walked to the front of the room. She began to speak, fringe curtaining her face, prompting the usual chorus from the back row: ‘Can’t hear you!’

  Janeen Kapernicky’s eyes flickered, then locked back onto the single sheet of paper held out in front of her.

  ‘I said, it’s called “Indifference”.’

  Something in her tone made us listen, even strain to catch the words as they fell like clear drops into a silence that rippled out across the room.

  Would you notice

  if I went missing?

  If I showed up too late

  for your classes in rejection?

  Teaching children to hate.

  Would you care

  If I told you

  the truth?

  That the hands of time

  Are not inching

  but racing.

  I’m lost

  in a maelstrom

  of frightened confusion.

  I know who I am

  What I want

  Where I’m going.

  But no-one is here

  to support my idealism.

  Would you know me

  If you saw me

  on a corner

  years from now?

  Heart, a begging bowl;

  Eyes, coined

  in disillusion.

  Would you notice

  me then?

  Would you care

  that I am

  your creation?

  She walked back to her desk through a silence so thick I wondered at her ability to pass through it at all.

  My eyes burned at the accusation in the words, at the loneliness, at her ability to voice them at all. I could never do that. Strip myself bare and let people see where they’d wounded me.

  I wanted to tell her. That she was brave. Braver than me. Braver than all of us. I wanted to clap, but I was afraid she’d understand why; that she’d know. That she’d see through me and know me for what I was. And that scared me more than anything. That she could know something about me that I didn’t want to know about myself.

  Hot air blasted in the bus window. I slotted my face into the opening, trying to ignore Scrote and Blob Reiken from Goovigen teasing me about my hairy legs.

  I wouldn’t look down, didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me check how hairy my legs really were. For some reason, I couldn’t recall my leg hair. Couldn’t remember ever noticing it. Didn’t know why it should suddenly be an issue. Couldn’t understand why it made me feel like crying.

  ‘Have you ever considered shaving as an option? It would save you having to wear trousers for the rest of your life.’

  Blob’s podgy face feigned friendly helpfulness.

  My lips stretched in an equally pleasant smile.

  ‘Have you ever considered suicide as an option? It would save you having to live without brains, personality or friends for the rest of your life.’

  A gush of laughter from the closest seats annoyed him more than I had and he pulled back, punching the nearest offender hard in the arm. It happened to be Scrote, his streak-of-lizard-shit brother, and I slid out of my seat under cover of the kerfuffle.

  I swayed to the front of the bus as it wound down towards our stop on the corner of Greycliffe Road.

  I had to talk to her. I had to say something while the need was fresh and raw. I knew that if I waited, it would close over, the moment would pass and I’d say nothing and be sorry forever.

  She looked up from her book as the bus door sprang open and spoke before I had the chance.

  ‘Miss Gordon must be a tough marker. I heard that seven-and-a-half was the top mark for that Kon-Tiki assignment.’

  ‘Move it, Sis! You’re holding up traffic!’

  Punk rammed me with his port, driving me down the steps and out the door. It clamped shut behind us and the bus crunched off in a cloud of red dust and gravel.

  Janeen’s head stayed bowed at the front window as the bus dipped into the culvert and disappeared among the stringy eucalypts lining the creek.

  Punk nudged the back of my knee, collapsing the leg I was leaning on. ‘What’s up your bum? You coming or what?’

  I swung my port round and caught him in the chest. ‘Seven-and-a-half was the top mark, you freak! Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He barked out a laugh. ‘What, and have you get tickets on yourself? Get real.’

  I lashed out at him again but he sidestepped it easily, so I chucked my port at him, missing by miles.

  A semi blasted an air horn as he sprinted across the bitumen. Hairs loped after him and I could hear them laughing together as they hit the driveway and jogged up to the house.

  My school bag was road kill, guts sprayed across the gravel, pages cartwheeling in the semi’s slipstream. Pages I’d meant to clip into a ringbinder at home, gone, like the words I’d meant to say to Janeen.

  Ripped away and lost in a roaring slipstream that I hadn’t even seen coming.

  chapter 26

  Glenda’s smile was smug behind her cigarette.

  We were back down the stands after two weeks of getting sprung smoking in locked toilet cubicles.

  Two weeks of writing out sets of school rules during our breaks. Two weeks of developing a whole new skill-set in writing with two pens at once.

  Two weeks of Big Hairs striding off to the boys’ toilets. Jaw set, shoulder to shoulder with the latest contender from 9B3 or 10B4. And he wasn’t the only one; the number of dunny fights had skyrocketed since Reagan banned the stands.

  Then the word started going round that the teachers were slacking off on the ban on hanging out past F Block, so that all the troublemakers would go back down there and leave the rest of the school alone.

  In dribs and drabs we started pushing at the boundaries. Clustering at the end of F Block, drifting in small packs onto the grass between the building and the oval. Now we were back down the stands and no-one seemed to notice or care.

  ‘Uh, oh. It’s Otis. Fags out, people.’ Mom
ents later Glenda turned a serene face towards our red-faced, tight-lipped Science teacher.

  ‘You lot can get off your lazy backsides and start cleaning up this area. It’s a disgrace. If it isn’t spotless in five minutes, you will all get a set of school rules for each and every butt, or paper, or bit of rubbish that I find on the ground. Now get going!’

  The emu parade was boring and annoying. But when Mr Otis turned on his heel and headed back to the main buildings, Glenda was the first to realise the implications.

  ‘I guess that means we’re officially allowed back down the stands.’

  I blew a smoke ring and looked through it to where Punk was kicking a soccer ball down on the oval. He was with Karl Rogers and Greg Henry who both played for the adult cricket team and were OK at soccer too by the looks of it. But Punk was better, dribbling, hooking the ball up in the air, bouncing it on one knee and then the other, and heading it on to the next player.

  I took a long drag and wondered how I came to take a sharp left at the genetic crossroads clearly marked Athletic Abilities when all my brothers knew to hang a right.

  Hairs was into The Web of Life and reckoned that genetically I was an athlete, but environmentally I was letting the team down. I’d had a lifetime of coming last in races, and wondered if he was going to pass Biol. this term.

  ‘Has your mum had her baby yet?’

  I shook my head slowly, firing smoke circles in an arcing pattern across the sky.

  ‘Must be soon.’

  I nodded, changing gears, bisecting my wavering smoke Os.

  ‘You excited?’

  Punk was going for the record, kneeing the ball with one leg and then the other. He must have been up to about twenty when I emptied my lungs.

  ‘Maybe. If it’s a girl.’

  ‘I hope it is, for your sake. Christ – six brothers – how could you stand it?’

  Punk had finally lost the ball and sprawled on the grass watching Greg and Karl fumble in tandem until they gave up in favour of a bit of one-on-one dribbling. That was Punk’s cue to barrel back in and steal the ball off the pair of them. Such indestructible persistence deserved some form of acknowledgement.