by Pip Smith
Isn’t that the butcher boy from Newtown, Papà? Why would he need to line up down here?
Well, the man’s got to eat, Papà said. He can’t survive on scraps from the butcher. You’re lucky you have a papà to feed you fish at a time like this.
But I’m a fisherman now, I said. I can feed myself.
He shook his head and said, No, Nina. That’s enough of these silly games. Tomorrow, you will help your Mamma instead.
Between washing my sisters’ pinafores and mending Papà’s trousers, Amelia and I continued to rampage around the place—but secretly, so Papà would never notice. I snuck out and threw a rock at Amelia Grey’s window and said, Ngarl nymph thoro! which meant Hurry up, let’s go to the quay! in the language we made up. Amelia took forever to come outside. I knew she was there because her blind was all the way up which was code for I am at home, so I sat on the bit of the paling fence where there weren’t any palings and waited.
A woman looked at me through the lace curtains of Amelia’s living room window. It was probably her mother, but I couldn’t be sure.
When Amelia finally came out she was wearing a white dress with a waistband like the swan ladies, not the smock she usually wore. She had her hair down and brushed. It was wavy and golden and some of it was pinned up underneath a flower. It was a real flower. A bee the size of my thumb was hovering near it, preparing to land. I went to swipe it away, but she said it didn’t matter. She said she couldn’t come out anyway because she was getting ready to go to a new college for ladies.
Do you want to go to the quay afterwards? I asked her, but Amelia had already gone inside and shut the door.
I went down to the quay with Horse instead.
To the West Coast! I cried, and we snuck on board a Norwegian barque to play the ship game. Horse was Captain Martello and I was First Mate Eugene, but Horse spent most of his time sitting inside the giant coils of rope on deck. He was weird like that. He would always find small spaces to sit in. He said it made him feel safe. I didn’t need to sit in small spaces to feel safe. I knew I would never feel safe. My skin would always prickle as if one layer had been ripped off and my nerves were flailing around like tentacles. Amelia Grey didn’t need to sit in small spaces to feel safe either. Amelia Grey had a safe feeling inside her wherever she went, as if she believed nothing bad would ever happen to her, which is probably why nothing bad ever did.
When I got home there were tomatoes spread out on trays in the grass, tomatoes lined up along the top of the front fence, tomatoes on the roof, seeds up, and the sun was reaching down saying, Grow, grow! and the tomatoes were saying, No, fuck off, we don’t want to! and shrivelling up instead. There were trays with tomatoes on them balanced on top of the pumpkin vine in the vegetable garden, and tomatoes instead of fishing nets spread out across the grass, and inside someone was moaning. The house looked whiter than usual. It looked sick.
In the kitchen there was a puddle of something red on the floor—some of it bright tomato red and some of it dark wine red. Papà was pacing the corridor and I could hear that the moans were Mamma’s and were coming from the bedroom.
What’s wrong with Mamma? I asked.
And Papà said, What do you think? It’s time for the baby!
When I opened the bedroom door Mamma reached out for me. Her hair was out again, and mussed up all over the pillow. You’d think it would be easy for her after having had so many babies, but she was wailing like she was going to be sick. Tiralo fuori! she said. Get it out! Nonna was standing at the end of the bed, looking between Mamma’s legs, ready to catch in case it shot out like a cannonball.
And then it did.
It shot out. The baby couldn’t wait any longer.
The other babies had held on to the inside of Mamma for as long as they possibly could, but this baby wasn’t afraid of anything. The baby didn’t even cry. The baby laughed and clutched at Nonna’s hair. The baby was strong and wouldn’t let go. The baby tried to eat the hair. The baby had a deep voice. The baby was a boy.
Un maschio! Un maschio! Nonna cried out.
Papà couldn’t help himself, he flung the bedroom door open and clutched the boy, covering him with fat tears and kisses.
Un maschio! Finalmente! he said and took the boy to Mamma and covered her with tears and kisses too.
All that day people were coming over with fried eggplant and crayfish and mullets in tomato sauce. They drank their way through Papà’s wine. They slapped him on the back. Every now and then Papà would come back down to earth, look at me and say, Where are your sisters? Go and play with your sisters.
When Father Kelly came, it was decided the baby was going to be called William. A solid name for a solid New Zealander boy, and from that moment on I knew I would hate him forever.
Mamma was scared Baby William would die because all her other boy babies had died, and so she tiptoed around him always, as if he was nothing but a phantasm that might vanish if she ever sneezed or gave him the wrong food for breakfast. Oh, don’t wake William. No, don’t give him an apple, he doesn’t like those. No, he doesn’t like honey on bread, don’t even think about putting honey on that bread, she’d say, and William would look back at her with an idiot look on his face because he was a baby and that’s what babies do. Mamma never ruffled my hair or called me a funny joker anymore, she was too busy trying to work out exactly what Baby William wanted at all times in case he died and she had to live the rest of her life thinking perhaps she hadn’t paid enough attention to how much he did or didn’t like apples or honey on bread. And if you were scraping the burned bits out of the bottom of a pan when you were doing the washing-up, it was all No! No! Cosa fai? You’ll wake Baby William! in a whisper loud enough to wake Baby William and then whose fault was that but yours if he started screaming? I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I could dislike honey on bread too if it would make her like me better and meant I could get out of cleaning the whole kitchen after every meal, but I knew it wouldn’t. After a year of washing Baby William’s nappies and mashing Baby William’s food so it would come out orange-brown and putrid in another nappy moments later, I packed a few things. I took a can of sardines. I took some bread and a bottle of wine in case I might need to trade it for something. Then I walked. I walked until my feet bled and kept walking until my feet couldn’t bleed anymore and the bones stuck out of my feet. I didn’t stop until I arrived in Miramar, where a tall chimney injected the clouds in the sky full of smoke, and thought, Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get a job and earn more than Papà. That’ll show them.
I walked up the driveway of the place with the chimney, right past a dray being drawn by four horses. The dray they were tugging was heavy with bricks and the horses had stopped in the middle of the driveway saying, Why should we bother when the sun is out and the grass is long and delicious? but then the driver whipped them and they said, Oh, that’s right, we’d forgotten about the whip, and kept pulling.
I walked past the horses, through the main gate and right to the edge of the brickworks. It was crawling with men snuffling through mud like pigs. There were no hats or babies for miles and I thought, Yes, this is the place for me.
I found the man who was pointing and ordering people around the most, thinking that would be the man who was in charge, and I said, Will you give me a job please, Sir?
And Sir said, What—to a girl? and started laughing and looking around him as if he was expecting a chorus of people to erupt into laughter with him, but there was no one there, they were all in the quarry working.
Well, I was going to show him too.
I walked out of the quarry, past the whipped horses who were still hemming and hawing over the deliciousness of the uneaten grass, and continued to walk when the dark spilled into the sky, and kept walking until I saw the dark dissolve around a lit-up house.
I went up to the front door of the house and—holding the bottle of wine out in front of me so they wouldn’t think I was a beggar—knocked on the door.
&nbs
p; A mother answered the door. She looked distracted. I could tell she was a mother because I could hear a baby crying in the background. She turned to it and said, Oh William, hush now! and I thought, Not another fucking William, they are everywhere.
I made to leave but then the mother smiled down at me. She wasn’t wearing flowers in her hat, she was wearing no hat at all, and only had a few teeth. She clearly couldn’t afford dentures or couldn’t be bothered looking pretty anymore seeing as she already had a husband and a baby.
I said, Please, ma’am, do you have any scissors?
She laughed and said, What do you want scissors for, girl?
Behind her a young boy of about my age ran towards the sound of the screaming baby. I said to the mother I’d give her this very fine Italian wine in exchange for the use of her scissors. She stopped and considered this for a second, which seemed to take all the energy she had because she froze and looked up into the top right corner of her head where all her thoughts were already tucked into bed for the night. Finally her eyes came back downstairs into her face and she said, Oh, alright, you seem to be a fairly harmless girl to me. Then she screamed at the boy, JOE, COME ’N’ SHOW THIS GIRL WHERE THE SCISSORS ARE KEPT, WILL YA?
Joe came up to the door. He had a tooth missing. He had hair sticking up in all the wrong places. He had pants that were too big and rolled up at the ankles and a shirt that looked like it had been worn by seven generations of potato farmers and braces that were holding up the too-big pants. His mamma went to stop the baby from screaming, so Joe and I were left to stand there and look at each other. I was sure he’d never seen a girl before just as I’d never seen a boy with lashes so dark and soft they belonged to the eyes of a mare.
I remembered what Amelia once said about boys being only after one thing and said, Hey Joe, have you ever been with a woman before?
He stared. Then blinked. I’m twelve, he said.
Well, these are uncertain times, Joe, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. They say we’re all about to become communists so you better get a feel while you’ve still got the chance.
Um, the scissors are above the sink in the shed—you can get them yourself if you want, Joe said, then turned to go back inside.
Oh no, Joe, I don’t think I could possibly reach them by myself, I said, grabbing him by the sleeve. Why, I’m just a little girl.
Joe frowned as if he was trying to work out how to spell parallel or gnome and finally said, Oh, alright, then led me around the side of the house to the shed.
The shed wasn’t really a shed, it was more like three bits of metal propped up around a tap. Above the tap there was a plank of wood with nails sticking out, a tool dangling from each one. He reached up and lifted the scissors off their nail, and as he did I could see that the hair around the back of his neck curled like the feathers on the bum of a duck.
He turned around and there I was, standing in the doorway of the shed, not about to move away for anyone, especially not him.
Now, Joe, I said, if you take off your trousers, I’ll take off my dress.
I thought you wanted the scissors, he said.
I did and I still do, but I thought I’d give you a present first.
Why would taking off my trousers be a pres—, he started to say, but I lifted my dress straight up and he stopped talking.
I couldn’t see him because I had my skirts in front of my face but I knew he was standing there with his jaw dangling by its hinges and I said, What, Joe, you never seen a naked woman before?
But Joe wasn’t staring, he was looking at the scissors, scraping off the rust. Yep, he said, I see my mum naked all the time.
But mums aren’t really women, are they, especially not yours. She doesn’t look like this, does she? and Joe squinted up at me.
So, I said, if you cut off my hair, I’ll let you stick your penis in here, and I put my fingers in my vagina.
Why would I want to do that? he said. Why didn’t you just ask me to cut your hair?
Will you cut it then? Will you cut it like yours? I asked.
My dad did it when he was drunk.
I think it looks perfect, exactly as it is.
Joe looked at me, all hopeful, saying, Really? and I did my sweetest smile yet and said, Yes, Joe, really.
He cut my hair off with only five snips of the scissors and when he snipped the last snip I held his hand that was holding the scissors and turned around so that the scissors were being held between us, a silver lily with dangerous sharp leaves, and pushed my hands all the way down until the scissors were pointing straight at his penis, which was when I said, Take your pants off right now.
He opened his mouth and started to shout M—
But before he could say —ummy I shoved the scissors closer—but not too close because I didn’t want to rip a hole in what would soon be my new trousers.
He took off his trousers and took off his shirt and kicked them over to the corner, so I took off my dress and did the same.
We both stood there in our underclothes and maybe it was the wind bringing out the goosebumps on my arms, or maybe it was the blue shadows that dragged under his eyes, but I suddenly felt horrible.
I’m sorry, I said.
It’s cold, he said, and started to cry.
His singlet was grey with stains in a way that made his skin bright white and the moon lit him so he glowed like a saint or a rabbit that was about to get skinned.
You can put my dress on now, if you like, I said.
He started laughing. He laughed so hard, snot bubbled out his nose.
No way, I’m not a girl! Yuck! he said, then popped the bubble of snot with his tongue, and licked up the remains.
Right, I said, and stopped feeling sorry for him. I put on the trousers and the shirt, and left him shivering by the tap. They fit perfectly, like Joe was the one who’d stolen them from me all along.
I slept behind a mulberry bush on the side of the road, and as soon as I woke I went back to the brickworks for another try at a job. I found the man who’d been doing all the pointing and ordering around.
I need some work, I said.
Oh, we’re a boy now are we?
Yep, I said, I’ve always been a boy, they dressed me wrong before.
Well I can’t pay you the full amount. Only a ha’penny a day, or the real boys will get jealous.
When he smiled, I saw that his teeth were brown pebbles. The spit in his mouth was mud.
Working in the brickworks was easy enough. I didn’t understand why they thought only men could pat clay into wooden blocks and bake it in an oven. It was like baking bread, except instead of carefully measuring out ingredients you pulled fistfuls of clay out of the ground and whacked it into a mould. Actually, it was hard in that your muscles ached, the sun smacked you on the back of the neck and you worked in a permanently hunched position so that by the time the sun went down you were convinced you’d never stand up to see the horizon again, but in comparison to home it was like skipping through a field full of butterflies, all of them pouring honey in your mouth whenever you opened it to breathe.
The other workmen didn’t talk much because if they did their clay faces would crumble back into the quarry and they’d lose the cigarettes from their mouths. We worked in silence until I got something wrong and one of the clay men ripped the wrong thing out of my hand to make it right, then went back to smoking and getting his arms half covered in red mud the way they ached to be.
Later the men sat around and made a cup of tea and lit a fresh ciggie. They still didn’t say much, but when they did it was a joke at someone else’s expense. Only the sissies didn’t know how to take it.
One man with a smoke-grey beard and depressing operas droning on in his eyes looked up at me over his tea and said, What, you can’t be more than ten years old, boy.
No, I’m thirteen years old; further away from the grave than you, I said, because you had to show them you could fight back.
His eyes lit up for
a new comedy scene and he said, Oh really? then picked me up as easy as he would pick a mangy cat out of the bin and threw me down into the bottom of the quarry. I was sure something must have broken—how could you fall that far and not break anything?—but being young and made of rubber, everything sprang back into place.
Looks like that’s pretty close to a grave to me, he said, and the other blokes laughed, even the man with the pebble teeth.
They want me dead, I thought. I have to leave before this quarry really does become my grave. But when I climbed out of the quarry the man who threw me down slapped me on the back so that I almost fell back in. Another man handed me a tin mug half filled with grey-white water he called tea.
Ah, ya little bugger, he said. You’re alright.
When the clay dust hovering above the quarry turned dark red, red as the sky, and all the other men were packing up their things and getting ready to leave, I stayed back and cleaned my tools for a third time. I bet they haven’t even noticed I’m gone, I thought. Papà would be fishing extra late trying to provide enough for a son, and Mamma would have her giant breast shoved in her new son’s face. The son would be fat and stupid and laughing at something only an idiot would laugh at—its own poo, for instance, or a dribble of vomit—and meanwhile my sisters would be cooking and cleaning the house even though they were only six and four and three years old.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Eh, son, said the man with the pebble teeth. I think it’s time you went home now.
He gave me a whole penny for my work, not the ha’penny he said he was going to pay me.
I don’t have a home, I said.
The man sighed. You can’t go telling me that or I’ll have to take you to one of them industrial schools.
My face went slack. I could feel a twinge of tears and had to do everything I could to make them go away. I thought of horses. Harry Crawford’s horse. Harry Crawford winning the race. How I’d be just like him one day. How could I go back to sitting hunched over spelling tests while slow nuns shuffled around dreaming up more things that could be counted as sins, and outside the trees grew slowly and the flowers budded slowly and the grass never grew at all because it kept getting cut before it could even start? The thought of it made me feel dead already.
