The Elusive Language of Ducks

by Judith White

  THINGS HER MOTHER TAUGHT HER

  As an example, in the way she lived, her mother taught her about love, about beauty, about colour, about compassion, about commitment, about loyalty, about courage, about selflessness, about kindness, about modesty, about generosity. About gentleness and dignity. About humility. About selfless service. About honesty and respect. About friendship. All the good things. All the other things had gone and the good things were left.

  And she wished now that she could talk to her mother about all those virtues, about everything, with hindsight, as an overview; she wished she could express her appreciation to her mother as the person she was before her demise. Before the illness. She wished she had been nicer. She had so much understanding, now, that she didn’t have before, and the reason why her mother did this and that, which at the time seemed . . . ridiculous, or unnecessary. If only she’d been more grateful. But it was over, and all she wanted to say to people who had mothers was: Take the chance while you have it.

  But now she had the duck, and there was something about this duck that felt like a second chance.

  NOT A BABY

  Hannah’s work was interrupted by a text from Simon. Two of his engineering colleagues and their wives were coming to dinner.

  Sorry, Ducko, she said as she sprinkled poultry pellets into a cabbage leaf. This is it for us today. Not only the crows but I’ve got the house to tidy, supermarket, cook dinner, and then attempt to pretty myself up. Panic stations, I’m afraid.

  What about me? You’re so mean. You don’t care. Come back. Come back. Come back back baaaaack.

  As it turned out, the evening was awkward; she hardly knew the guests and she felt like a dowdy waitress. The two wives discussed books she’d never even heard of. Hannah attempted to bring in some light and witty anecdotes about the duck, but she felt Simon’s foot pressing upon hers, grinding it heavily to the floor. She stopped mid-sentence and no one seemed to notice. A budgie pausing mid-chirp. As they left, saying their goodbyes, one of the women called her Harriet, and the husband insincerely apologised to Hannah for ‘talking shop’.

  And then, when they’d all gone, the duck.

  The hutch stank. Usually Hannah kept it clean, but tonight the cabbage leaves were pearly bowls of poo. Flies, disturbed by the torchlight, ping-ponged above the grass, pinging in the pong. She picked up the duck, adjusting him so that he was lying with his belly against her chest, his neck lying across her shoulder. He was becoming too big to comfortably rest his feet on her arms. He greeted her desperately, nibbling gently at the soft skin under her chin. He smelt like a wet cow yard. He reeked of neglect, her neglect.

  Inside the house, Simon was clearing up the dinner dishes. He turned his head from the sink.

  Honestly, he said. Look at you with that thing. It’s not a baby. Really.

  Hannah struggled not to cry. It was the last straw. Her relationship with the duck was attracting some snide comments. Jokes at her expense, barely disguised mockery. She pushed past him, wanting to say so much but saying nothing. In the bathroom she caught her image in the mirror. How pathetic, wild, lonely, old, she looked. She was fading away. Her reflection revealed a deranged woman who should be pacing the moors on a bleak, mist-swirling afternoon. And indeed, the duck could be a swaddled baby with an elastic neck and a deformed pinhead resting under her chin.

  She just wanted to plonk the duck away in his plastic box. Instead she placed him in the bath and set the water running. He was used to having baths now. She always started out with the bath empty so she could relish the transition from clumsy old waddler to elegant floater. He started to coo as he lifted with the rising water. He turned upside-down and dived for the poultry pellets she threw in, snorting softly as he cleared his nostrils. He was as happy as a duck in water. Her depression rolled off her like water off a duck’s back. He was a sitting duck, a paddling duck, a much cleaner duck. Tonight she was not laughing but was absorbed by the watching of him. She could watch him forever. She wondered what it was about, all this. She hated being forced to think about it.

  He floated on a boat of thick feathers. When had they arrived? If she dipped her fingers into his chest, the tips of her fingers disappeared to the first joint. Her fingers were like old legs trudging through snow.

  The man called out to her.

  She hoisted herself from her knees and backed out of the bathroom, careful to keep in sight of the duck, his black watching eye intense.

  What did you say?

  I said, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been mean.

  She faced him, and all the fury that had stopped her responding to his first comment surged back again.

  If it weren’t for you, I’d have my own babies.

  The duck stopped chirruping. The man became motionless at the bench. The moment was sucking in air. She was between the two in the hallway, stepping from the sight of the duck to confront Simon. She waited, but he said nothing. He had received her words and had turned to stone.

  Meanwhile, the duck was going mad over her disappearance. She could hear the heaving turbulence of the water, the thump as he threw himself against the side of the bath. When she re-entered the bathroom, his head was poking above the bath rim like a periscope, gliding up and down, up and down along the rim of the bath, searching for her.

  Their moment of peace had been destroyed. It took a while before the duck stopped panicking, before her own heart had settled. She knelt beside him, letting her hand gently ruffle the water, while she concentrated on breathing, on harnessing her breath back to a regular pace.

  Then Simon came to the door and hovered there, watching. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t hear him go, but she became aware of her shoulders, gradually releasing themselves from her ears.

  TIPPING POINT

  In 1966, Hannah had her very own baby. She’d arrived home from school and found her mother and father holding hands in the sitting room, gazing into a cane bassinet nestled in an oval wooden stand. In the bassinet, a mustardy red creature, mewling in vibrato, punched miniature fists at the air. Her parents pulled her back tenderly. Careful you don’t tip her over, sweetie.

  But Hannah was the one who had already tipped over. She’d tumbled headfirst into the needy eyes, the imploring eyes of her new sister. Her one-armed Teddy and her hairless doll, Pamela, with the blue eyes that opened and shut, were instantly forgotten.

  Even though her mother expertly unbuttoned her blouse and kept a discreet blanket across her chest, Hannah could sometimes spy the swollen nipple eased from her sister’s milky mouth as her mother’s breast was delivered back to its rightful place, like a tongue pulled in after eating ice-cream. Hannah knew her own role was secondary, but nonetheless she’d make sure to be there to help wash the baby in the plastic bath on the kitchen table, splashing warm water on the naked wrinkled skin. She’d poke her nose over the bassinet and watch her sister’s ugly beautiful face soften into sleep. For a time, she was sure that Maggie was going to grow into one of those perky-eyed monkeys she’d seen in pictures, and she wouldn’t have cared.

  But then the creases filled up with their mother’s milk, and the ruddy skin whitened and the eyes deepened. And when Hannah discovered she was able to make her baby sister laugh, this became her sole intention in life. It was so simple. Hiding behind a tea towel and going Boo. Throwing tissue balls into the air and going Wheeeee. Putting a red stuffed cat on her head and letting it fall off. Maggie’s plump face would split into a fissure of laughter, her body cramping and jiggling, her mouth open to let the joy pour out and swirl around the room.

  Before Maggie took her first tottering steps alone, Hannah would take her by the hand and lead her wobbling to her mother and father’s open arms. When Maggie was able to walk, Hannah led her around the house and down into the garden and down the street and into town and up the long straight streets to the end of the road, and along the footpaths to school where she watched for her in the playground. After a year at school together, Hannah biked
to intermediate, and then to high school and, by the time Maggie was at high school, Hannah was writing copy for the local radio station.

  Where Hannah’s hair was blonde, Maggie’s was jet black. Where Hannah was pale and tiny, contentedly dreamy, Maggie was strong and sporty, with long froggy legs and burnished skin and inquiring dark eyes. They were Snow White and Rose Red. Maggie grew into pretty dresses, then sharp punky dresses, into independence, into a wild defiant thing, a thing who would be more likely to bite than hold anybody’s finger, who knew everything, who was quick, cheeky, disobedient, who slammed doors and rocked the house with retort. She had so many friends that Hannah had to close her own bedroom door in search of peace. It felt as though the house was overrun with young devils. Hannah withdrew into books or sat in the willow tree by the back fence in her jeans and listened to the birds.

  By the time Hannah was thinking of leaving her job in Hawke’s Bay to go to university, Maggie was sneaking out of her window at night to meet her feral mates to smoke cigarettes and ride as pillion passengers on motorbikes with youths in black leather jackets. In the small hours one morning, her parents were awakened by a knock at the door. Two policemen on the doorstop informed them that their daughter was in hospital after being flung off a bike by the river. No, you have the wrong person, she’s in bed, they assured the police.

  It was just grazes and broken ribs and burns from the exhaust, and shattered trust. They could feel their thirteen-year-old daughter slipping from their control. Notoriously, she was the daughter of a school teacher. Their father. Everyone knew who the bad girl was. Hannah had been so good. Hannah had been no trouble at all. What had they done in the ensuing years for it all to go so badly wrong?

  A year later, after a tip-off one Saturday night, Hannah drove with her father out of town and off a country road, through a gate across paddocks to the river. Teenagers were scattered about, or sitting around a bonfire. A ghetto-blaster was shrieking manic music at the night.

  What’s all this? their father had said as they climbed from the car. A boy was vomiting against a tree. Another two boys were hauling a branch through the grass to replenish the fire.

  Where’s Maggie? Who are these people? They’re drunk. Drunk!

  Indeed they were. Bottles scattered everywhere. No one knew or was telling where Maggie was.

  Other parents arrived in cars behind them. Some of the boys ran into the bushes. Somewhere by the trees a couple of cars vroomed into throaty action. A motorbike wove across the paddock. The girls who could stand up were busy helping their friends who couldn’t. But once they stood they didn’t know where to go, looking stupidly into the glare of the headlights. Others were asleep in sleeping bags.

  Hannah’s father tugged at his coat under his throat, his mouth open as if to make an announcement. Half the kids there knew him from school. What had he been about to say? They never found out. He took a step backwards, then staggered to the stony ground. At that moment the music stopped or was turned off. The fire was crackling and the river was rushing by and the light from the fire was flicking over her father’s contorted face. His hand was pulling at the buttons of his coat. Some distance away, a girl was chattering obliviously. Car doors were slamming.

  Not long after, Maggie appeared in a dishevelled state, hiccoughing uncontrollably.

  Hannah looked up at her from where their father lay.

  Look! she screamed. Look what you’ve bloody done now.

  Chapter 9

  NO FIXED ABODE

  They had visitors coming to stay, so Hannah had to unearth her mother from the cosy grave of bedclothes and once again face the issue of where to put her. She walked around the house with the carry-bag, eyeing this sunny corner, or this window sill with a pleasant view over the valley, or the old glory box, still smelling of camphor balls, that her mother had used for storing collected items such as sheets, towels and nightdresses before her marriage.

  She was trying to imagine where her mother would most be comfortable. Somewhere picturesque, inspirational. Somewhere in Nature, maybe. She stood staring pensively out the window. Her father’s ashes had been tossed into waves from jagged rocks in Hawke’s Bay, amidst cracking thunder and driving rain, amongst swirling rose petals and beneath wheeling keening seagulls.

  Seagulls.

  Recently, Hannah had been taking more notice of the seagulls at the beach. Their huge wings. Unlike the scruffy old duckling, every feather was locked into place on their sleek thick necks to give the appearance of smooth porcelain.

  She’d watched them strutting around in the sand, squealing for crusts, their skinny red legs with old-man knobble-knees.

  The duck’s legs in comparison were like fence posts, his knees barely visible under a ruffle of feathers. His legs were yellow with fishnet stockings pulled up into the suspenders under his fancy feather pants. They were serious legs designed for a big clown. How tall was he going to become, how big? His beak looked as if it were growing mouldy, a black symmetrical smudge smeared halfway up from the curve of his smile. She had experimented by scraping her fingernail across the black to see whether it would come off. It didn’t. There were pink lumps now framing his beak, and these also had mottles of black. Perhaps he was rotting from all the puddling around in filth?

  She wondered what would happen if she brought him to the sea, with all that sky above and the depth and spread of ocean below. He might just bob along on a soft summer’s day, getting smaller and smaller as he drifted away from her, the steady gaze from his black eye like a peep-hole into loneliness.

  At that moment there was a knock at the door. Their visitors already!

  Hannah shoved her mother into the very back of a pot cupboard and raced to open the door.

  PEER PRESSURE

  Night-time. The duck was still in his cage. Hannah could hardly stand it. She went out with a clean towel for him to nestle in. He emerged from his cubby hole blearily, expecting her to pick him up. She felt like a traitor. She felt lily-livered.

  The reason she wasn’t bringing him inside was simple: fear of censure. Their farmer friends, two burly brothers from Puketitiri in Hawke’s Bay, had come to stay for a few days. She knew without doubt that they would have something to say about a duck sleeping in the bathroom. They’d think she was nothing but a foolish middle-aged woman. They would scoff: Hah! Poultry inside! You’ll be sorry! It’s an animal for Christ’s sake!

  As it was, when they’d spotted the duck outside in the cage they’d eyed him up as a meal prospect.

  Yeah, great eating, Barbary duck, not as fatty as other ducks. He’ll be just right for Christmas dinner. If we’d known you liked duck we coulda got a couple out of the freezer.

  ONCE SHE HELD A HEART IN THE PALM OF HER HAND

  When she was about thirteen, Hannah’s father pulled his flat-bottomed boat with an outboard motor from the garage. He was now selling it for something bigger. A couple of rugged, tanned duck shooters arrived to look at it. They were wearing shorts and khaki shirts, and every sentence was splattered with swear words. Bloody this and bloody that and I’ll be buggered and we got the bastard. The day was sunny and hot and they all stood negotiating for the boat in the driveway, while Hannah as a young girl watched from the back steps. The deal was done and the men went off with the boat.

  A few weeks later, one of the men arrived at the back door with a couple of ducks hanging from his hand, his big finger separating the two woeful heads. In gratitude for the boat.

  When he’d gone, her parents discussed the ducks. They’d been uncertain; it was the plucking and the gutting they weren’t sure about, and, really, duck meat was a bit rich. Hannah was interested in the inner workings of things — dissecting frogs and sheep’s eyes at school was a real curiosity for her. So she offered to prepare the ducks for eating.

  Her recollection of it all was a haze now, but she could still recall the sensation of yanking the feathers from the flesh, the naked skin ashiver with goose bumps which were actually duck b
umps, and the last few insistent ones plucked individually. And then the gushing spill of intestines, a slimy visceral mass of innards and her fingers squishing through it all as she tried to identify each of the parts. The heart amongst it all, sitting in the palm of her hand. Then, it had been just a meaty heart. Now, when she thought this in relation to her duck, with that engine pumping to all the machinery of her living duck, she felt sick. Back then, she’d felt sick because of the stench. She remembered dry-retching violently as she worked. And by this stage, what had happened to the heads? She recalled the concrete double tub and her mother’s preserving jars filled with fruit on the shelves alongside her. She remembered her parents bemused by her curiosity that gave her a detachment from it all. And after all that, the meal not such a treat. All she could remember now was her parents complaining about the gamey flavour.

  But of course, she had no intention of talking to the duck about this.

  GENTLEMEN’S CLUB

  The farmers told them a story of a woman from the country who collected unwanted male ducks because she knew they were destined for the roasting dish. She now had a flock of eighteen male ducks all rivering on her rural property, dipping and diving and splashing in a gang, all coming to eat the handfuls of maize she sprinkled out for them, all thinking she was their mother duck.