Creepy and Maud

by Dianne Touchell

  Maybe it is called bored stiff because you dry up inside. You are here. Your goal is there. Now put little legs on your brain and walk it. It is a long walk, but we are all here to help you by keeping you without distraction. If it even appears that you are attempting to divert yourself, we will take away your fingers and your charcoal. If you stop on the way to accepted wisdom, we will give you a pill and it will dry you up inside and your brain will creak for want of moisture, but only with true stiff boredom will you get better. Get better at life.

  When Kyle Sully came back to school after being suspended, he was a bit of a legend. Crowds parted for him, his mates shook his hand and girls hung around him like he was a rock star. He was suspended for setting fire to Owen Liddell’s lunchbox. Made Owen cry. I do not think Kyle got any real big flames going; it was just a stinky smoulder. His mum and dad defended him with a fierceness that disturbed everyone, even his fans, considering he had set fire to a hibiscus tree in their front yard the year before. Mr and Mrs Sully came to the school for a meeting that I heard about because Bec was in the front office waiting for her own intervention after stealing every whiteboard marker she could get her hands on. That is what they call it—an intervention. Anyway, Bec heard Mrs Sully yelling you-have-no-proof-sir, you-have-no-proof-sir, over and over again, as if it was a hex that would just ‘poof ’ them all out of there, far away from her humiliation. Kyle was spotted surfing during his suspension.

  If anyone needed the school chaplain present during intervention, it was Kyle. That boy needs a priest. But it was me who got him. My mum and dad just sat there, intimidated, mortified, while Mike (the chaplain gets us all to call him by his first name because he thinks it makes him one of us) talked in a kind of sick-room whisper about get-ting-help-for-her. I felt myself floating up towards the ceiling, my suspension begun, just perched like a fat bird at the edge of nothing. I could look down on myself and the air tasted salty. I could see Mum and Dad being comforted (Mike had his fingers resting lightly on Mum’s wrist) and the school counsellor nodding sympathetically when I knew she was really thinking: I hope this thing does not run into lunchtime. I do not know how I knew she was thinking that, but all of a sudden I could see inside everyone’s heads, even my own, and inside my head was a blurry image of Mrs Sully come to defend me, come to slap Mike’s hand away from my mother’s and shriek ‘you-have-no-proof-sir’. Then maybe they would let me leave and I would learn to surf.

  Mum is still putting food out for Sylvia, even though she thinks she is dead, and Sylvia does not come for it. Dad has checked under bushes and walked around the block a couple of times because Mum says cats will go away to die. Like elephants. Do they just know when it is time to die and take off? Do they take off to spare the herd distress? Or is dying just private? Most comforting things are private. Beyond discussion and beyond division. If I die in front of you and you watch, then we go halves in this, my private thing. And that gives you some ownership of me. Then I am divided too much.

  Coda: Rather dead than happy without me. I am divided too much.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A-Sus-pen-ded-Life

  I am not supposed to open my new blinds. I am on an honour system with this; there is no alarm attached or anything to alert Mum and Dad (or Nancy) that I have moved them. I never pull them up because they have these little clips at the base that lock them into the down position—they fit in there pretty snug, and I think it might be time-consuming (and noisy) to adjust them. But I can open the slats with a little rod that twists. The little rod is a clear plastic octagon, ever so thin, and when the sun comes through and catches in the rod it lights up like Excalibur. It is beautiful. I do not notice Sylvia at first because I am looking at the rod, twirling it in my fingers, and the blind slats are going open-close-open-close as if I am sending Morse code or something. Then I look out (which is the reason I opened the blinds in the first place) and there he is, binoculars in one hand and Sylvia in the other.

  He has her lying along his inside forearm, her head cupped gently in his palm. Her legs are drooping down either side of his arm and his arm is slightly extended towards me as if he is offering her to me. John the Baptist’s head on a platter. I do not know why I think of that but it is the first thing that pops into my head. A macabre but loving offering because I have stopped dancing for him.

  Nanna had a painting of Salome that I loved, even before I knew the story behind it. I would stand in front of that picture for ages, studying not the flamboyant girl but all the shadowy things going on in the background. It was not until you got really close to that picture that you realised how dark it was, deep-deep-in-side-it; all the garish flush of Salome and her sweaty audience of lusty boys just a distraction from the important things going on behind them. Tiny figures heaved onto the canvas in a couple of careless strokes that have just as much life as Salome herself. Servants and cooks and wayward dogs and wine wenches all with dark lives of their own, all overlooked. Lives-in-sus-pen-sion. Nanna told me that when the dance ended, Salome would ask for the head of John and if she did not get it she would never dance again. Small price to pay.

  And so it is with Sylvia, or at least that is how it looks to me. At first I think she is dead, but then she rolls her head into his hand, marking him the way cats do, claiming him the way he has claimed her. I know I should tell. I know I should go straight downstairs and tell Mum that the creepy boy next door has stolen our cat. But I do not.

  Being suspended from school means I get to go and see Nancy every day. My dad calls them ‘Trips to Nancy’, as if they are a reward or a holiday. He even says it with a little lilt in his voice and his step. But his hopefulness lacks confidence. I know he is silently begging me to raise my status from disappointing to tolerable. No one has mentioned the vampire throwing Stephanie Morcombe off the balcony. No one has asked me anything about it at all. Their-minds-are-made-up. Like a bed with hospital corners, or a pretty girl’s face. Nothing to be done. Do not touch it because it is already made up. I get so cross about this that I start answering Nancy in French and she looks deeply disappointed and a little bit on the verge herself. So I withdraw again. And I pull until my fingers get bloody. I dab at my wounds with my mittens, and Mum finds them stiffened and rust-coloured. Like a pocket torn from an artist’s smock. I am like a little dark brushstroke in the background now. Like a bruise on a canvas.

  I wonder how Mr Thornton is handling his suspension? Is he bored stiff, too? Is he sitting in some darkened psychiatrist’s office, talking about his methods of self-soothing? I doubt it. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe his indifference went over the balcony with Stephanie that day and he suddenly found sensation creeping back into him after living thousands of years in a bloodless stupor. What must it be like to wake like that, in the sunshine, to find your first real feeling is skin-tingling horror? Surely you would die from that.

  Nancy’s office is not darkened, the way these places should be. It is lousy with sunlight, eyeball-drying sunlight. Sunlight to disgrace us, I think, and our disappointed mothers.

  There is a girl in the waiting room who cries while she is waiting and cries when she comes out—I suppose she is crying while she is in there, too. Apart from the crying, you would not think there is anything wrong with her. She wears nice clothes and her fingernails and toenails are painted to match and she is thin and pretty. Her mum sits with her in the waiting room every time and reads a magazine. She doesn’t really read it; she just sort of flicks the pages in a snippy way. I always want to talk to the sad girl. Once I caught her eye and smiled carefully, one of those ones you can pull back in a hurry if it is unreciprocated. She smiled back, but then I looked at her mum. Sad-girl’s-snip-pymum curled her lip at me. Upper lip left corner lifted just a little bit. And I got a funny feeling in my chest, a big rolling sick feeling, so I had to open my mouth to get more air into me. It was disgust on snippy mum’s lip. Disgust that crawled from her lip to her nostril and right up into her eyes. So I said: Vôtre fille a des beaux cheveux
. Je me demande comment ça goûte. And my mum, sitting next to me, probably wishing that the sad girl with all the lovely hair was actually hers, pinched my hand hard and said, ‘Shut up.’

  Coda: Your daughter has lovely hair. I wonder what it tastes like.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tear-One’s-Hair-in-Grief

  A prickle of current that starts at the root of the hair and shoots like cold fingertips into your brain. Like someone walking on your grave. Like getting out of bed so fast, your low blood pressure throws black fireworks in front of your eyes. Like butterfly kisses. Like nothing can ever bother you again. This is what I feel like first day back at school, sitting in the facilities, pulling my eyelashes out.

  My hands are wet inside these mittens. It is not a cold day, so people look at me and the mittens are my Star of David. Are people walking past me more carefully? Their tread sounds different, shallower. So I walk louder, I tramp, I stomp, I dare them with my footfall. I suddenly feel embarrassed, awkward, and wish I had one of those glamorous girly frailties like alcoholism or diet pill addiction. I get angry. And so here I am, sitting in the toilet, and I cannot even wee, so I pull.

  I walk into class late and get sent to the office for a late note. In the office, they ask me why I am late and I say I had to go to the toilet and they ask me if I want to see the nurse. I say no. I get the late note and walk across the quad towards class and get distracted by the gum trees because they look taller than usual and their trunks are whiter than my skin. When I get to class, the teacher asks what took me so long and I say I had to go to the toilet and she asks me if I want to see the nurse. I say no.

  I do not remember getting from one class to another. I count my steps in fives: one-two-three-four-five-one-two-three-four-five. My skin is crawling hot from the niacin tablets they are making me take, so I rip off my mittens and tear at my skin and run to the toilets between classes to run water on my arms. I’ve never spent so much time in the toilets during a school day before. In Maths I lick the palms of my hands and press them to my face. The teacher asks if I want to see the nurse. I don’t even answer.

  No one ever told me panic is so much like elation. The Science teacher tells me to put my mittens back on and I laugh at him. Everyone else laughs, too. He stands over me and says it again, and it is on. We have a contest. Right here, right now, with everyone watching and him looking first-year-out unyielding and me looking, looking, looking everywhere because I cannot keep my eyes still. He says it again, ‘Put the mittens back on,’ but there is a new element now. He sounds concerned. And I hate him for it, so I twirl some hair around my index finger and breathe through my mouth. I am not even pulling, just twirling, but I can see I am winning. Then he just walks away. He just turns from me and walks away, talking about some experiment, and I hear the word pipette before feeling a fury I have never known before. And it is a clean, clean anger that feels like one of my dad’s backhanders.

  I am late to my next class in the library. We are supposed to be looking up renewable energy on the internet, but I look up pipettes and draw them in my notebook and put little heads inside the bulb. My pencil digs in hard and my nail beds are white with effort. A blob of saliva falls on my page and I realise I have a mouth full of it, so I swallow. I close my eyes and can see my own pulse flashing like hazard lights on the inside of my lids.

  The teacher asks me if I want to see the nurse. I hear Mr Lowe standing close to me and I hear him say the words. My eyes are still closed. He is loud; the room or my head is humming beneath him, a counterpoint to his snappy syllables. He tells me to open my eyes. I cannot. I choose not to. He is bothering me. Open your eyes. He says it again. I think if I open my eyes, my eyeballs will fall out of my head and roll away and I will never look in a mirror again. I will never be reflected again. And then an appalling thing happens: I start to cry.

  I have not cried in so long, I do not recognise the burning of it. I make no noise but my eyes and nose are running. It feels like an unfurling. It hurts wonderfully. Almost as good as pulling.

  I can hear someone saying get-her-out-of-here. Then I hear howling. Is that me? How astonishing. That is the only word for it. I do not think I have ever used that word before in my life. It is a Nanna word. It is a Creepy word. He stuck astonishment in his window once, after my blinds went up. He wrote: ‘I am all astonishment.’ My Nanna said ‘How astonishing’ when they told her she had Alzheimer’s. It is wonder I feel, and surprise. I am all astonishment. I am bawling and someone is pulling me to my feet and I feel weightless and heady and liberated by this shrill girl inside me. The inside of my head is a prism, all sharp edges and bright colours, and I think I am going to pass out. And then I hear the crash.

  It turns out I was not the only one astonished. I do not see it happen (my eyes are still scrunched), but from the shouting around me I can work it out. Mr Lowe grabbed me by the upper arm and hoisted me to my feet. I still have the little bruise where he pinched me. He did not mean to. It did not even bother me. It bothered Creepy. Creepy crossed the room in strides and, before anyone knew what was happening, punched Mr Lowe square in the face.

  When I open my eyes, Creepy is standing closer to me than he ever has before. He is breathing funny, in little gulps, and his hands are shaking. Mr Lowe is on his back on the carpet and his lip is split open. One of his shoes is off (do not know how that happened) and there is blood on his shirt. He has one hand on his chin and the other on the back of his head. I think he has hit his head on the monitor behind him. I am shocked silent, except now I have the hiccups. I think: I did not even know Creepy was in this class.

  Then there are people everywhere. Teachers, kids, some guy in a boilersuit who might be a gardener. There is even a canteen lady. Where have they all come from? Mr Lowe is being helped up and into a chair. I feel a little bit sorry for him. He looks like he might cry. In all the fuss, nobody realises Creepy has gone. I do not see him leave, but suddenly he is not next to me anymore. He must have just walked away. Then everyone is being ordered back to their places and Mr Lowe is being led out of the library amid lots of shooshing and deferential back-patting as if he is an invalid, or the Pope. Ms Tryst hisses ‘Stop that!’ at me and I realise I am still hiccuping. My throat is getting sore from it, actually. The hiccups are finger-snapping loud, and when I try to stop myself I burp instead. No one pays any attention when I walk outside.

  I am sitting here under a Moreton Bay fig tree in the quad. Dad told me it is a Moreton Bay and said it is taller than God. I settle myself between two of its cool grey buttresses. It feels like I am being held tight. For all its hardness, I am sure I feel it give a little around my shoulders, as if it is taking my shape into consideration, as if I could become a part of its cells and sinew. Or it could become a part of mine. The ground is littered with fat purple fruit, split and oozing, leaving sticky bloodstains on the grass. It makes me think of Mr Lowe’s lip, which makes me think of Creepy.

  I think about staying here forever. I wonder if these living flying buttresses will eventually grow around me, the roots drawing sustenance from the sugar and salt in my own blood, my body withering as nitrogen and potassium are leached from me to maintain this bigger-than-God beauty that will outlast us all. I’ll become as leathery as these leaves, as shiny as sun in a puddle, and only my eyes will peep out and see everything I am happily excluded from. They will look for me, I will watch them walking past and hear them calling my name, but they will never think of looking inside the tree. Even if they did, they would never chop it down to scoop me out. This tree is too important for that.

  My hands are wet, my fingers webbed with hair. I look down and there is blood. At first I think it might be fig blood but it is mine. I did not even realise I was pulling. My hiccups have gone.

  The school nurse and the principal are walking towards the tree. Walking in a fast, brusque way. For just a minute, I think they will not see me. I imagine I am just eyes gazing out of the heartwood, and so I am completely calm. I am even sm
iling when the school nurse kneels down in front of me and takes hold of my hand.

  Coda: I am astonished eyes in the heartwood.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  A-pple-and-the-Tree

  The apple never falls far from the tree. I do not think anyone has ever actually said this to my mum and dad, but I know that is what they are thinking. Or at least thinking of each other. And at each other. Sometimes they think it so loudly, it starts a fight. My mum and dad do not fight like Creepy’s mum and dad. There is no screaming, door slamming or sound of breaking glass. It is stillness and sarcasm and innuendo. My mum says ‘What are you insinuating?’ a lot, and Dad says ‘Nothing,’ and Mum goes all shuddery like she is a magnet for the blame. Considering I am the cause of this hostility, I am surprised how little I am mentioned or consulted. If they asked me, I would tell them they are not to blame. But they have forgotten about the bad apple in their fixation with finding the rotten tree. And because all of this is so quietly done behind closed doors and camouflage smiles and ploys of normalcy, everyone on the outside thinks my parents have everything under control.

  About the time Nancy starts talking about a residential program, my mum starts to see how being the tree from which the apple fell can work to her advantage. She joins a support group for parents of mentally ill children and starts wearing her blame face all the time. Soon the only thing sticking to her is pity and compassion. People feel sorry for her. Maybe they should. She is treated like she is special, like the survivor of a terrorist attack, or something. She starts having her own sessions with Nancy. When she talks to me, it is with a precision usually reserved for retards or people who do not speak English. She is all heavy vowels and blistered consonants.