Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 10, Issue 4

by Tony Birch

  I pulled the plug from the bath, stood up and climbed out. I had my back to the door when it opened and slammed shut. It was Mrs Glass. I covered myself with my hands and started shaking like mad. She took a towel from the rail and held it open.

  ‘Let me dry you, Noah.’

  ‘Na. I don’t reckon. I can do that myself.’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ she said. ‘I still dry my Heather. She tells me you have no mother. That must have been such a terrible loss for you. Please let me.’

  I wanted to tell her no. To scream it at her. But I’d never screamed at a white person before. Never said no to one. She walked over to me. I wanted to back away but couldn’t move. She wrapped me in the towel, sniffed my neck and stroked the top of my head with her fingertips.

  ‘There you are, darling. A poor, poor boy. You are all such poor, poor boys.’

  I looked up at her. She was crying.

  Sweetest Thing

  Ellen van Neerven

  There was a little bit of vanilla rice pudding left in the tub, and Serene brought the cold spoon to her lips and let the rice soak her tongue. Living here alone now for a few months, she still found hints of Feather around, things that irritated her and also made her intolerably sad; he used to keep change in a tea canister in the medicine cabinet, but he’d left only silver there now, as if a couple of bucks made all the difference. She tried not to think of what she’d lost; since him she had been trying to keep ahead of things.

  It was hard to know the start of it, those deep things within, things she recognised in others too. She would say to a confidant it had been as long as she remembered. But what does she remember? Sneaking into the bushland beyond her mother’s place they’d since cleared for the extension of the shopping centre, paperbarks in her wake. Sex education class when she was eleven; her grandmother putting her in her first bra, not long before she died, one she’d got at the rotary sale they’d set up in an old butcher, the bra’s cups cold as stone against her nipples and smelling a bit of a stale, relentless meat. Around then her breasts ached that now-specific ache. They were filling out and getting tighter, a heavy part of her, a mass of their own. They felt like shells of water weighing on her chest, and she grew to be a willing carrier. Soon came strong desires of having them felt, her hands went down and with deepening fear began to caress and squeeze. She would press against the paperbark. She wasn’t thinking of anything. Maybe the dragonflies dotting the tones of bark and foliage, quick enough to appear without legs.

  Her breasts grew noticeable earlier than most, she was pleased with this difference between her and the other girls at her school. By thirteen they were the size of her mother’s. She’d heard women inherited their father’s genetics, their father’s female shapes.

  She’d think about being forgotten. She had always known who her father was. Van Vliet, the owner of the little Dutch bakery on Hamilton Road, a block from their house. The cafe was a local favourite, with a modest street front, a hand-painted sign with a clog. When she went there to get bread for her mother he was friendly but didn’t move to her, no different to her than to the other customers, except he gave her a snoop with her hot chocolate. She bought these hot chocolates with the money she’d found in her mother’s jeans’ pockets when she put on a load of washing for them both. She would order a hot chocolate with two stroopwafels. Blame her teeth now for it. He had another daughter; she wore glasses and sat straight-backed in the stool in the middle of the café near the window, a scarf in her hair. Her father looked up at her watching at his other daughter, his wiry fingers staged to grab the biscuits with the tongs out of the glass jar.

  The unexplained desires, the breast echoes that were growing in force during that pertinent time of a young woman’s life, were about to be realised. He was her mother’s amicable friend, Anthony Filchman, aging and studious. There were arrangements for him to tutor her in Maths but it didn’t progress beyond a few times. She was almost fourteen. He left the textbook open in the red study glow of the desk lamp, lifted her shirt up lightly, the fabric ballooned from the rise of her chest. Beautifully out of herself, she was open and messy and dislocated like a bouquet being readied for a vase, flowers, stems, spores spread everywhere. He brought up her bra, she was embarrassed by it, a dirty sports bra that didn’t fit her. She looked down at him facing her right breast, it didn’t look like her own, the engorged nipple, the sweat glossing the side. He moved his mouth against it. Her breast was an idiosyncrasy, a different colour to the brownish sepia film of her body. Her back pushed up to him. Even though he didn’t kiss her on the mouth, she tasted the ash of his cigarette, the older-man cologne. While he was over her, she looked from her breast to the ankle of his sock protruding from his boot—a lilac and white licking his trouser cuffs. It was gentle, there was no teeth, just a firm suckling of her pubescent breasts. A white colour, turning blue. A pressure. She thought they might come off. She remembered feeling intense bliss, she knew then that this was what she had been programmed to need. He did nothing else and she didn’t find out if he would have, as not long after those weeks he disappeared. It was too sudden to be sad, she felt nothing but gratitude towards this tall, quiet man, two-time Maths tutor and the first print on her breasts.

  When she went back to school and sat in the sweaty classroom, her breasts were loud in the silence. Most days she went to the girls’ bathroom and pressed down hard on her aching nipples, sometimes crying out. She felt the shadowy pinch of depression. For the first time she found the need to be tactical. She saw a dark cinema, and she found herself there with a slow, sensitive boy, Jemmy Church. She liked his sensual mouth, the light hairs on his chin. She chose him from an incident in the sports hall. She was never one for sports but she noticed the blood on his knees. He was on the losing team in a volleyball match. He wasn’t a great player but he never gave up. The scrape had occurred from a desperate lunge at the ball—he made it and scooped the ball over the net—but the opposing player volleyed it back over into the open space. Jemmy looked up in devastation; his save had only been temporary.

  She’d chosen a movie she’d already seen with a friend that month, in case her mother asked details, though her mother was no longer attentive. She was more interested in meeting her friends at the Kedron pub, the one that had refused Serene’s grandparents entry but people forgot about that now—it was a haunt for women of her mother’s ilk: divorced, discarded, with loose threads of long silent and secret relationships carried under their shirts. The beer was cheap, the glasses were dirty and the food was comfortingly predictable. It guzzled her mother into a state of comfort for men, a comfort that there would be no more surprises; like whitegoods, they would always break at some point.

  She’d also selected a movie that wouldn’t draw a kids’ crowd: they were the youngest there, the cinema was full with older people. She pulled him boldly to the back row, the two seats in the corner. The advertisements were fading, and an old woman came to sit next to Jemmy. As the lights seemed to dim more, easing her self-judgement, she held his hand and guided his warm body to hers. He breathed so loudly she thought everyone could feel it in their peripheral. She swallowed the sound. After a few minutes of wet snogging she didn’t enjoy any more than the first boy who kissed her, she told him with her body, and was glad he wasn’t as thick as to not cotton on, what she wanted. He nibbled her like she was toast, the first breakfast in a week. It was salvia filled and noisy, not like Anthony Filchman, but her body still reacted to his tongue moving up and down. She kept wanting to catch her nipple in his mouth, hold it there, but he didn’t pinpoint her need. He sucked and bit other places of her body too, a waste. Like on the volleyball court, he was not short of enthusiasm and made the most of the movie without tiring of it but at one point he spun off her breasts and offered her his crotch. She didn’t respond. The movie ended and the lights came on. He was useless. She walked out without him, not waiting, with tears of confusion on her face. He had not made her feel like Anthony did, what
she thought she would get and had taught herself she deserved: comfort, worship, devotion. Trust and understanding. Despite the bites on her neck, ears, collarbone, and above the breast, she was scared of her hunger and the possibility of hollowness. She was already an addict.

  High school was disappointing in other ways; as much as she tried, she was always on the outer. She wasn’t sure what the boys had found out, but she was treated with ridicule. She got along with a few girls in her science classes. There was a determination to these girls. It wasn’t expected, for her especially, to do the science subjects, so there was a respect there. It was also assumed she was easy. But she didn’t lose her virginity in high school like most of the other girls. She thought she’d wait for love.

  Her mother had fallen in love. She had met a Koori man at NAIDOC Day and within weeks she followed him down to Redfern and they were married. Her mother liked the community there. Living in their suburb where they’d both been born, they were often treated differently, especially as Serene was an illegitimate child. When her grandmother was alive there were other family around, but they had kept out of touch. Serene didn’t blame her mother for becoming ambivalent about her life, turning to the women in the pub for friendship and spare change to slide in the machines. Although it was sudden, this Koori bloke was good for her.

  Now Serene lived in their housing commission house by herself. She had just turned eighteen and worked at the petrol station on the main road. These years moved the fastest. She would catch the bus to the city at night and meet her friends. Some of the science girls at high school had solidified into a tight-knit group. They were beautiful and smart and exuberant. Serene had never known friendship like this. A few of the girls lived in the house with her at some point, and all of them stayed over after a night out. Those nights Serene often let herself go, giving in to the need of her breasts. By then she’d had boyfriends and enjoyed casual sex with a few men. She could separate this arousal from her breasts, and it was unusual for these desires to be mixed. Some of the men she had gave her and her breasts warming satisfaction that went back to Anthony Filchman and the early years against the tree. But they never lasted, and she was always trying to stay ahead. If her friends noticed her behaviour they didn’t voice disapproval. Between each other, they were able to talk about anything. After a few weeks of nerves during these intimate conversations at the house on Sunday nights, Serene decided to cast her voice.

  It was gradual, but still surprising. When the women would meet they would suckle each other’s breasts, usually once a week but more if initiated. A mutual favour that occurred in living rooms and kitchens. A pillow for comfort. Serene felt rewarded. Other things in her life started to come together. She was focussed on a career as a masseuse; she’d completed a course in the city in less than six months and had got a job in a salon across the road. Such a strong part of herself needed specific physical attention, it helped somewhat to give. All of her clients had some sort of liability. Bodies weren’t neutral. She massaged pregnant women, elderly men, children with disabilities. Her friends had interesting jobs as well, and stories to tell.

  Now, she had a strong desire to have it again. She looked at the address book. What would they say? Those days were long over. Before they turned thirty her friends were married and had children and left Chermside. For a while they might have caught up at Queenies in Nundah for high tea, but it was too sporadic, and too flash for Serene; it was something clearly fading. Serene went instead to the Kedron pub on Friday nights. Her mother wasn’t there to see her source anonymous suckling, often recklessly. She was sure she had a repetition, but it made things easier. She was too tired now to be frequenting different spots in the Valley. The men of Kedron knew all she needed was a tit bitten against the TV wall, and they didn’t kiss her.

  Van Vliet bakery had long closed, but Serene found herself walking past there and putting a palm against the dusty window, at the news her father had died. She hadn’t had a conversation with him since she was seventeen, her last few days of high school. She went in to get bread. He said she hadn’t come in for a while. She was suddenly angry at the silence in her life, at his hypocrisy. She’d seen him and his daughter, his younger daughter, his real daughter, at the supermarket, heard him whisper, shall we get the juice for Mum? And something for you, honey? In the first years of Serene’s life he had bought her things. A book, clothes, liquorice, hagelslag to put on her toast. But it had soon seemed impossible. When Serene rang her mother up and told her about her father, she made a small noise. The Koori husband told Serene she didn’t talk for days. She’d kept a relationship with Serene’s father for fifteen years. Serene felt her mother’s tears, but she wouldn’t cry.

  She was sliding, barely coping in her new job at a ballet company in Boondall. It was a job that hadn’t seemed out of her depth, massaging and providing a general list of exercises for the young dancers with injuries, but without the most basic of her needs met, everything was hard. She was reclusive, and always tired. She had ongoing problems with her digestion. After writing off her car, hungover on her way to work, she thought she’d try to give it up. Live without sourcing mouths for her breasts. She went to the tattoo place between the bicycle shop and the comics store. Something symbolic was in order. She met with the senior tattoo artist, a lanky woman a little younger than her, with short styled hair, a lip piercing, and tatts from sleeve to fingers on both arms. She also had a tattoo of the outline of a shoe on her neck in blue ink. Serene talked to her about what she wanted done on her breasts, and another idea for her shoulder.

  The tattoo artist, her name was Monique, rubbed her nose. ‘That’s pretty major. A big decision, and it will take you a couple of sessions. What I like to do in these cases, especially when the client hasn’t had a tattoo before—’

  ‘A virgin,’ Serene interrupted.

  ‘A virgin,’ Monique repeated. ‘I like to do smaller work with them first. Since you’ve already indicated about the bird on your shoulder, how about we do that and then we’ll see about the full chest tattoo.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘How’s tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s good.’

  ‘So why the eagle?’ Monique said. Serene thought she handled the needle so far with not too much discomfort. Breathing through the sharp cuts. It seemed to ease her breast ache, and they were rubbing against the rubber bed.

  ‘Our mob. Wedge-tails,’ Serene found she could talk through it. She heard her grandmother’s voice, Mibun wallul mundindehla nalinah dhagun, eagles protecting our country.

  Monique was not what she expected on first impression, they had a lot to talk about, which helped. Monique also lived locally, on the hospital side of Chermside. She’d just had a break-up. They talked through the time and after Serene sat up she was warm with the feel of the bandage on her back, and she booked in to get another eagle done on the other shoulder, for her grandmother, before the big one. She had a greater appreciation of her grandmother’s life now. She was the first Aboriginal woman in Queensland to drive a train. She worked for Queensland Rail for twenty years. She set up a cultural centre in Nerang, which had a kindergarten. Her mother told her they recently renamed the centre after her.

  ‘What do you do?’ Monique asked, taking her credit card.

  ‘I’m a masseuse,’ Serene held on to the counter, feeling light-headed. Monique had said there’d be shock afterwards.

  ‘We’re not so different, then. You’ve probably made more people cry. The straight-edge guys? Family men? Biggest screamers, right?’

  ‘Yep. I work for a dance company now though, with kids. Those girls are so shy, too shy to tell me I’m hurting them.’

  In their next session, Monique asked about the tattoo on her breasts she’d explained in their first meeting.

  Serene hesitated, ‘I have this thing. I feel most judged by it, more so than the colour of my skin or where I live or any of those things.’

  ‘You can tell me,’ Monique said. ‘I�
�ve just told you I’m a dirty cheat.’

  ‘I need my breasts suckled. All the time. It’s affected me my whole life. I’m always thinking about it. Needing it. I’ve ruined relationships, lost jobs, humiliated myself over and over… I’m done. I want you to make my breasts so ugly no one will ever want them again.’

  She felt Monique stiffen behind her. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You don’t know? I’m about beauty, Serene. Art. That’s what I do.’

  ‘Then what will I do?’ Serene felt the possibility of tears.

  ‘Come here.’ Monique rolled her over on the bed and got her breast into an embrace. She put her mouth over the nipple and Serene let out a breath she had been holding in for some time.

  Monique’s place was one of the last workers’ cottages in Chermside, falling apart, almost kissing the place next door. It had old, soft windows, and doors that didn’t shut. Monique played The Cure on repeat and sometimes got up to check on her nine-week-old poodle puppy she’d put outside. Serene lay back on the couch. Monique was interested in the scar below her left breast. From rockclimbing, Serene said, remembering a past boyfriend. When she looked down at Monique’s tongue flicking her nipple, Serene noticed her breasts had never seemed so big; she’d put on weight. Monique maintained she didn’t mind their arrangement, accepting Serene’s carrot cakes and scones on arrival. But Serene wasn’t much of a baker, and she worried for their friendship. So she said she would start walking Monique’s puppy after work.