Islands

by Peggy Frew

  Pretty much the only good thing about the boyfriend’s house was that they might get better food—watermelon, strawberries, blue cheese, chocolate—special-occasion food, because almost everything seemed to be a special occasion now, if Helen was involved.

  They might get to watch a video, although the choices were limited. There was High Society, which was Junie’s favourite, but Anna didn’t like the romance. There was a David Attenborough film about lions hunting wildebeest and zebras and other herd animals that came to drink at a waterhole. Anna was scared of that one, and in fact Junie was too, and relieved not to have to admit it—the rolling eyes of the prey when the lions sprang and clung and brought them down; the twisting necks, the way they slowly, uselessly, kept trying to get up again, even with half their skin torn off. Then there was Dot and the Kangaroo, a cartoon, which was Anna’s favourite, of course, bouncy and boring. And the only other one was a film of Carmen, the opera.

  Inside the television cabinet were other videos, not meant for children. Junie and Anna would look at the covers of these sometimes, while the grown-ups were not around. They didn’t seem very interesting, the titles usually in other languages, and most appearing to be set in the olden days. There were a few with people kissing on the cover, the women in revealing outfits, black and lacy. If Anna hadn’t been there Junie probably would have tried to watch one of those.

  That was it for the good things. There was a dartboard outside, under the green plastic roof, which might have been good if there was anyone to play with other than Anna, but proved quickly to also be boring, and even problematic, as it caused fights.

  The bad things were the smell, which was like the one in the shed at Nan’s where there was mouse poo and old blankets, and which was worse the closer you got to the carpet; the boredom; the boyfriend’s bed in the front room, which you had to try not to look in at as you went past; Helen laughing in her new laugh at the boyfriend’s jokes; Helen touching the boyfriend all the time and then trying to touch you; Helen making groaning sounds as she tasted a bit of food the boyfriend had put into her mouth for her like she was a baby or there was something wrong with her hands; Helen and the boyfriend drinking from enormous wineglasses, sloshing the wine around and making a big deal of sniffing it; the bathroom, with the boyfriend’s things in it, which were all slimy colours, dark green and black, and in which it was impossible not to imagine the boyfriend naked; Anna climbing onto Helen’s lap all the time like she was still a kid; Anna hugging the boyfriend hello and goodbye like she actually knew him; having to agree with Anna about the choice of video; fighting with Anna over the dartboard; Anna never just sitting to watch the TV like a normal person but always having to balance on one arm of the couch so that when she slipped and fell she’d kick you by accident, or lie on her back on the floor with her legs up, again accidentally kicking you, twisted round with her head in a position that looked so uncomfortable it was just plain annoying. This last one happened at home, too, but at least there you could go to your room and draw.

  They watched Carmen the most. That Carmen! Her flashing eyes, her curly black hair, the way she jumped up on the table, swirling her skirts—Junie couldn’t look away. The men were forgettable, poncing about in uniforms, straining at the notes when they sang. But she was effortless, quick and light, swishing away whenever one of them tried to kiss her. And then the shock of her death, the fast knife, the blood, her body in the dust. Anna couldn’t watch that bit, and rolled on the floor with her eyes covered, but Junie was transfixed. This wasn’t like the poor zebras and the lions that had to eat, to feed their cubs; this wasn’t the violence of nature, necessary, excusable. This, no doubt about it, was punishment.

  The phase of visiting the boyfriend at his house was a short one; before long he would move in at Avoca Street, bringing his slime-coloured toiletries with him and imbuing Helen’s bed with his smell, which, although not as bad as that of the brown carpet, was still unpleasant.

  It must have been on one of the last of these visits that the worst fight over the dartboard happened. It had been raining, but then it had stopped, and Junie—bored, bored, always bored—had gone outside and was standing alone on the wet bricks with the rusty darts bunched, heavy, in her left hand, when Anna came leaping out, letting the door slam behind her.

  ‘Can I play?’ said Anna.

  ‘No,’ said Junie. ‘I’ve already started. You can have a turn after me.’

  ‘But you haven’t started.’ Anna tiptoed along a row of bricks, then turned and tiptoed back again. ‘You haven’t even thrown the first one.’

  Junie didn’t answer. She selected a dart, a green one, and aimed.

  ‘Junie! I want to be in the game! Let me play! You haven’t even started!’ Anna twirled and skipped closer. ‘Please!’ She made gestures of appeal with her arms.

  ‘Too late. And you’re too annoying, you don’t play properly. You don’t try.’

  But Anna stepped between Junie and the board. Anna planted her feet and stuck her hands on her hips.

  Junie didn’t lower the dart. ‘Move,’ she said, ‘or I’ll throw it, and you’ll be in the way.’

  Anna stood firm.

  ‘Move,’ said Junie, her voice calm and mean. ‘Or you might get hit.’

  Anna’s nostrils flared. She had pulled in her lips so her mouth was a colourless line. Her breaths were loud and defiant. But when Junie drew back the hand with the dart she cowered and wailed, ‘Mu-um!’

  They waited. No reply.

  ‘Mu-um!’ called Anna again. ‘Junie won’t let me have a turn at the dartboard!’

  ‘Junie,’ came Helen’s voice from inside the house, ‘sharing, please.’ It wasn’t her real voice; it was the one she used to tell them off when the boyfriend was around—friendly and reasonable, but with a finality to it, as if Anna and Junie knew what to do really, were good girls, but just needed this one little reminder. At home, without the boyfriend there, she might yell, ‘Oh God, you kids, just stop it,’ or, more likely, not respond at all, but close a door between herself and them.

  A few things happened then, all at once. Junie again drew back her right hand, although she didn’t intend to actually throw the dart; Anna made a grab for the bunch of darts in Junie’s left hand; Anna slipped on the wet bricks and went down, hard, slamming into Junie’s legs; the handful of darts fell on top of Anna.

  Silence, then screaming, and Helen came rushing out.

  Anna lay on the bricks. Her knees were bleeding where she’d landed on them. The darts were scattered around, a couple on top of her, but none actually sticking in. It looked a lot worse than it was.

  Junie stepped back. She knew what was coming. There was no point in trying to explain.

  It was a typical Anna performance. Shrieking, running around, wriggling out of Helen’s grasp, refusing comfort or to have her knees wiped with wetted sheets of paper towel. Helen chasing after her, in and out of the house, saying in a crooning voice that became less crooning as the chase went on, ‘Anna, Anna, it’s all right, darling. Settle down, settle down.’

  Eventually Anna allowed herself to be caught, and stood bawling into Helen’s chest, then treated everyone to a little escape attempt, then did a bit more bawling, followed by loud breathing and hiccups. And for the rest of the evening she would not get off Helen, but had to sit all over her, legs dangling ridiculously, face in Helen’s neck, fingers in Helen’s hair.

  Later that night, back at Avoca Street, Junie sat hidden on the stairs and listened to Helen speaking on the phone in the kitchen. It was a friend—Junie could tell by the voice Helen was using, and also because Helen mentioned book club, and how she kept eating cheese even though she was supposed to be on a diet. From where Junie was she could see the bottom half of Helen in the kitchen armchair, her crossed legs, her hand playing with the coils of the phone cord.

  ‘The girls are good,’ said Helen. ‘They’re coping really well.’

  Junie listened harder.

  ‘We di
d have a scene today though,’ Helen went on. ‘At Phil’s. Junie did one of her stealth attacks, God knows what exactly, but Anna fell and hurt her knees, blood everywhere.’ She said the word fell as if it was in quotation marks.

  Junie leaned forward on the step, licked the skin of her own knee. There was a certain glory in being judged incorrectly. She opened herself to it, to its cold, lonely pleasure.

  ‘… very clingy, afterwards,’ Helen was saying. ‘Poor Phil, he’d made this delicious curry and I had to eat it with this child stuck to me.’

  A pause, while she listened.

  Then, laughing, ‘Yes, yes, but you know what it is, Shanti?’ Her hand slapped down on the edge of the telephone table and she gave a theatrical sigh. ‘It’s a punishment.’

  Junie went back up and got into bed. She must have missed something. What was the punishment, and who was giving and receiving it? Was Helen going to punish her, Junie? But Helen had never been into punishments—that was John, although he called them consequences.

  Junie didn’t understand what Helen had meant until many years later, until she was an adult, with her own children. She was picking one of them up from child care and as she went in the gate another woman came out, carrying a struggling, red-faced, wailing toddler.

  ‘My punishment,’ said the woman to Junie, with a wry smile.

  Junie, or June as she was by then, stood in the tanbark of the child-care centre’s front yard and remembered sitting on the stairs, remembered Helen’s overheard sigh and her pronouncement. Now she saw. Anna punishing Helen, that was what Helen had meant—Anna, with her tantrum, had been punishing Helen for the boyfriend, the end of the marriage, the end of their family.

  She remembered Anna’s distress, its theatricality, what it demanded of Helen, and the entitlement of that demand. How close together the two of them came, afterwards, their bodies in the chair, Anna’s cheek to Helen’s.

  June remembered the video, the long, deep notes of the music in the death scene, so grave, so formal. How, once he had stabbed her, the man at last held Carmen close, and sobbed.

  AVOCA STREET

  After school Junie caught the tram to Avoca Street. This was not usual, because now she was living with John, at his flat. She had to, to get through year twelve.

  Today was because they’d asked her, Helen and John. They had to go to the school for a meeting with the teachers, about Anna, and they didn’t want her left alone for too long—Anna. Anna, Anna, Anna.

  She’d seen Anna at the school stop, pretending Junie wasn’t there, getting on the tram by the other door. This is stupid, thought Junie. She shuffled down the aisle, plonked next to her sister.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I’m coming home with you, did you know?’

  ‘No. Yes.’

  Anna sat low, bag on lap, knees knocking as the tram swayed. The top half of the window was open; in a whirl of plane tree pollen they overtook a pack of Christian Brothers boys, blue blazers, yelling mouths. Anna’s raw fingers worked at a scab on her arm.

  They started off walking together, from the Avoca Street stop, but Anna was slow. She was doing it on purpose; she dragged each foot with a scrape, staring down as if the scraping feet were not hers, hair in her face.

  ‘Come on,’ said Junie, and then, ‘Come on, Anna,’ but Anna kept scraping along and it was so annoying that Junie sped up and left her behind.

  At the house, in the fridge, Junie found cold potatoes and slices of cold lamb, grey with edgings of hard white fat. She took a potato and flopped into the big corner armchair, pulled her feet up. Inside her head, Helen’s voice: Shoes off, please. Junie kept them on. Through the window she watched Anna enter the yard and go to the back fence to smoke. Up and down Anna walked, ginger-bright against the wisteria, then she turned towards the house and kicked first one leg and then the other, and her shoes flew across the lawn.

  Junie finished the potato, licked her fingers, wiped them on her skirt. She thought about Molly the horse, about the beach, the island. It was a secret, it did not cross into her life of year twelve, of study periods, of common assessment tasks, entry scores and preferences, plans for schoolies and parties, parties, parties. Everywhere you looked groups of girls were jumping and squealing. Changes were coming and she, Junie, was not excited, was not keen, was not ready.

  Outside Anna stalked the grass in her white socks, puffing with vigour. Junie rearranged herself in the chair and sank into a vaguely assembled fantasy of living alone, somehow, on the island. Blue-skied days. Riding Molly, swimming. Maybe she worked for a farmer, or maybe she worked at the library in Cowes, pushing the trolley, slotting books into the shelves. She had a car, a ute; she drove with the window open and her elbow out. A boy, yes, there was one, but he wasn’t gross, was a man in fact, mature, like her, maybe he was a surfer, and they met in the evenings, they had a bed with trailing sheets under an open window, white curtains blowing in …

  Anna thumped through, slinging her bag and shoes into a corner. In the next room the television started up. Junie got out of the chair and went to the doorway.

  ‘Don’t you have homework?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Anna was huddled at one end of the couch. The blind was drawn, the room dim. She was watching Ocean Girl, gnawing at her thumb, jiggling one knee.

  ‘Always.’ Junie perched on the arm of the couch, the other end from Anna.

  On the screen, to the sound of ominously stabbing keyboards, Ocean Girl was discovering blue barrels of toxic waste on the bottom of the sea.

  Anna took a sudden, gasping breath. ‘Shit,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. I just sometimes can’t breathe properly.’ She did a few more deep breaths, hand to chest.

  Drama queen. Junie got up again. ‘Maybe you should stop smoking.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Well, what is it then? Asthma?’ Junie went to the window and tugged the cord and the blind went ripping upwards, filling the room with white light.

  ‘Hey!’ Anna flung herself around. ‘I can’t see the telly with the blind up!’

  ‘It’s depressing, sitting in the dark,’ said Junie. ‘Plus, it stinks in here.’ She shoved the window open. ‘Plus, that show is rubbish, it’s for kids.’

  ‘Plus, why don’t you fuck off, Junie? Just go back to Dad’s. Go and do some homework. Go and draw your stupid horses.’

  On the TV, Ocean Girl’s friend the whale was heaving himself about at surface level, making long wet huffing sounds and waving a stippled flipper.

  Junie walked out, muttering, ‘If you’re having trouble breathing you should see a doctor.’

  ‘I have,’ muttered Anna, getting up to close the blind.

  On the kitchen floor, under the telephone table, lay a piece of paper with Helen’s writing on it. Junie picked it up.

  AGREEMENT

  If clothes not in dirty clothes basket they won’t get washed.

  Mon, Wed, Anna cooks dinner.

  All other nights Mum, apart from Fri—takeaway!

  Homework before TV.

  Saturday morning housework, do together.

  Be honest with each other. Respect!

  She let it fall, slid it with her foot back into its forgotten place. From her schoolbag she took her maths homework and spread it out on the table. Sat down. Got up. Walked three times around the table, then to the window. Then she went upstairs.

  Her room was just the same. Dustier. She hadn’t taken much to John’s, apart from clothes, because it was only meant to be a temporary thing. Her wall of horses looked sad, crumpled. She tried to fix some drawings that had come unstuck. Then she went back out of the room, climbed onto the bannister at the top of the stairs, opened the skylight window, pulled herself up and scrambled out onto the roof.

  She wriggled across to where she could lean against the chimney. The tiles lapped down, some rich brown-red, others with a lace of grey stuff—lichen or something. Yellow patch
es on the lawn below made Junie think of ringworm. Anna had been busy: the gutter held a drift of cigarette butts.

  A disturbance at the skylight. Anna’s hands appeared, then her head and shoulders, her face—sun-blinded, fiercely pale. She collected herself and scooted across to Junie. Reached into the pocket of her school dress, took out a joint, offered it, but then pulled it back again.

  ‘One rule,’ she said. ‘We can only say nice things to each other.’

  ‘Okay.’ Junie moved over to make room. ‘We’ll smoke in silence then.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  Anna lit the joint and they handed it back and forth. What felt like a long time passed. Junie sank into the tiles, the chimney at her back. The heat from the sun ran up one side of her head and then down the other, then settled, buzzing, in her ears. A breeze slid incredibly slowly over her shins.

  ‘I don’t even like it at Dad’s,’ she said eventually. ‘He’s like a robot. The same things, every day. The same food, the same jokes, the same stories. He just loves repetition. He thrives on it. Thrives. Thr-i-i-i-ves. That’s a really strange word when you think about it.’ Her eyes had been closed; she opened them, the yard below rippled, and she closed them again. ‘And then he has two glasses of wine with dinner and gets all sad.’

  ‘Why’d you go and live with him then?’

  Anna’s voice sounded very close. And was that Anna’s breath Junie could feel, on her cheek? She reopened her eyes, just for a moment. No, Anna’s head was turned away; she was looking off over the neighbours’ yards.

  ‘It’s not you,’ said Junie. ‘Not your … stuff, I mean. Your problems.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘What about Mum?’

  ‘I don’t know, she just really annoys me. I mean, she wrecked everything, our whole family, and she takes no responsibility. She’s so positive all the time. Everything she does is an act. She’s all, Isn’t life great? Let’s drink wine, have you met my new boyfriend?’