Creepy and Maud

by Dianne Touchell

  She does not tell me where she is taking me. She has been to see Nancy. I am at home because apparently I am unwell. Creepy is at home because he has been suspended. He does not look like it bothers him at all. He has achieved Kyle Sully status by popping Mr Lowe, so he is probably glad to be able to stay home. He hates attention. He probably blames me for the whole incident. Anyway, he looks happy enough, lying on his bed, reading, Sylvia curled up on his chest. I hear Mum coming and snap the blinds shut before she opens my bedroom door. I am complicit in the whole Sylvia thing now. I am the silent partner. The accomplice. My silence has made me the co-conspirator.

  Anyway, Mum just stands in the doorway and says we are going out. She does not say where. I assume she is taking me to see Nancy. It would not be the first time she has taken me to an unscheduled session. I had an unscheduled session after they peeled me out of the arms of that Moreton Bay fig. I did not care. I felt good. Even sitting in Nancy’s office that day, I could still feel the dimples the tree had massaged into my upper arm fat. I sat there hugging myself, running my fingers lightly over my corrugated flesh. I was serrated and alive. Well, they nipped that in the bud pretty quick. Nancy gave me tablets. I had to take two right then and there, and then all those sharp edges, all that keenness whittled into my heartwood by tears, hiccups and burps, was filched. I became a spectator again. I saw myself becoming smaller and smaller until all my aliveness was just a memory, or a memory of a dream. It was not unpleasant or pleasant. It was just a nothingness.

  So that is where I think we are going. Mum gives me two of those tablets (she stands in front of me and watches me swallow) and says we are going out. I am to put clothes on, and a hat, and we-are-go-ing-out. We-are-go-ing-out.

  I do not remember the drive, only the arriving. I-think-this-is-nice. We-are-at-the-shops. Mum and I have not been to the shops together for a long time. Nanna used to take me to the shops. We would go to a cafeteria in a department store and Nanna would buy us chips and gravy and cream buns, and she would push her arm deep into the self-serve display cabinet to find the buns that had the most cream on them. Suddenly I am craving chips and gravy and cream buns and Nanna, and I start feeling a bit sad. But we are at the shops and this is nice.

  I do not remember the walk from the car, just the arriving. We are at a hairdresser. There are not many people here but they take me right to the back, down by the basins. A lady with long nails is touching my head. I do not like to be touched, but compliance is best. She is lifting sections of my hair, moving it from side to side like the pages of a magazine. Like she is reading me. She is talking to my mum. I hear the hushed debate over washing. We do not want to lift any of these scabs. It is a matter of hygiene, this is not a sterile environment, has there been infection? I say ‘no’ and then realise no one is talking to me. Mum puts her hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Ssshhh, darling.’ I do not think she has ever called me darling before. I am thinking about that when the lady with long nails leans into me and says in a wet whisper, ‘I’ll use warm water, darling.’ Now everyone is calling me darling. Something is wrong.

  She fills a pink squirt bottle with warm water and starts wetting down my hair. It feels really nice. I close my eyes. The water makes me tingle, each spray sending tiny droplets crawling through wiry follicles to my scalp. I picture them finding their way, minuscule water bombs exploding on my head, their wet bounty snaking down, down, down to my neck, into my ears, into my eyelashes, into my bra. It is like infant baptism. Why do babies cry about it when it feels so nice?

  It is the sound that makes my eyes fly open as if I have received an electric shock. I hear the precision sigh of metal on metal and then a loud crunch. Sort of the same sound that eating cereal makes inside your own head. The lady with the nails is cutting my hair. I see the first fistful come away in her hand, dark with moisture, the colour of my own blood. She drops it on the floor. I am so surprised, I cannot speak. I open my mouth to try and say the fat ear-piercing ‘no’ in my head, but nothing comes out. I am stuck in slow motion. My brain cannot keep up with nail-lady’s scissors. The scissors are electric blue stainless steel. They sound beautiful, opening and closing with a swish like a dancer’s petticoat. I am distracted. I cannot speak. I am crying.

  I watch my reflection in the big mirror as I become someone else. What will I do when I can no longer recognise my own reflection? The scissors sound louder and louder and my head echoes with the sound, like a bell ringing, a drum thumping, my own pulse firing. I am crying a jagged, abortive wail like an old car engine that will not turn over in the cold. My crying is bungled. I-can’t-get-it-out. I-can’t-get-it-out. I shut my eyes tight. I try to take myself away. I will myself to float up out of the chair into a-sus-pen-ded-life. But I can’t. I am anchored here in a foggy half-life instead. I start to mutter and do not recognise the words: ‘S’il te plaît, maman, non. S’il te plaît, maman, non’. Mum hisses, ‘Stop it,’ and pinches my hand. My eyes fly open at the pinch-pain and I see a wasted, swollen stranger glaring back at me in the mirror. I am gone. I am shorn away like a cliff face.

  I do not remember the journey, just the destination. I do not know how long it all took. I am the baptised infant crying in the arms of a stranger, held over a precipice and wet for the sins of my father. I want to spit in the font but I have no spit. I am all dried up.

  We go home and no one says anything and I do not open my blinds for two weeks.

  Coda: Please, Mummy, don’t; please, Mummy, don’t.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Pris-o-ner-of-War

  After World War II, French women found to have been collaborating with the Nazis had their hair cut off.

  The next time I see Nancy, she is shocked. I have not looked at myself in two weeks; I hung scarves over my mirrors like you are supposed to when someone dies. Well, I have died. I forget my own face. You would not think that were possible but it is. I have forgotten what I look like until I see Nancy and see that flicker of repulsion, see the ever so slight hesitation in her eyes, hear her voice splinter in such a way that she has to clear her throat and start her sentence again. She asks me to wait where I am. She wants to speak to my mum alone first. Then she gives me a tight-lipped pity-smile. I hate her for it.

  When Mum comes out of Nancy’s office, she is angry. We leave straight away.

  It is Creepy who told me about the French collaborators. I suppose he thought I would be interested, seeing that I speak the language and now have the haircut. I opened my blinds and he was in the same position I had last seen him in, lying on his bed, reading. He did not notice me at first. Sylvia was curled around his head on the pillow. It was when she moved that he stirred, turning on his side, running his hand through his hair, then shoving the heel of his hand into his eye socket. He saw me when he was in mid-yawn. I had my question ready and slipped it through the blind slats:

  —DO YOU HAVE KITTY LITTER IN THERE?

  He picked up his binoculars and walked to the window. He stood there, looking at me for so long, my arm got tired holding my question up. Then he put his binoculars down and scribbled his response:

  —You look like a French collaborator

  He had to explain that to me. It made me smile. It made me smile because for the first time in two weeks, I felt a little bit of bravery simmering in my shame. I look like someone else’s history now. I am someone else’s history.

  Creepy has been expelled. He does not care. With neither of us having been at school, we have no idea of the sort of fallout we have caused. That does not matter, though. We are our own country now. I write it for him:

  —WE ARE OUR OWN COUNTRY NOW

  He smiles at me. Sylvia is in his arms. She rasps her head under his chin and he responds by tucking his chin into her. She looks fat. He must be overfeeding her. Mum would be furious, and the thought makes me happy.

  Mum does not say much anymore. I think she is happy that I stay in my room, keep to myself. She and Dad had a big fight when we got home from the hairdresser.
I think I cried all the way home. My face was bloated. Dad said ‘What have you done?’ and Mum said ‘What else was I supposed to do?’ and Dad screamed ‘Well, not this,’ and Mum said ‘But it’s in a nice style’ and tried to run her fingers across my head and I slapped her hand away. She gasped and huffed then, at the same time, if you can believe that. Shock and indignation right there in her face. Looking at me as if I had no right. Looking at me the way Dad was looking at her. Everyone is pleased that I am staying in my room.

  We have not been back to Nancy. It has never been spoken about. Nancy has called but Mum will not speak to her. I hear Mum and Dad fighting about it. Mum will never speak to Nancy again. I know that. Mum did not realise that in branding me, she branded herself. Well, she did not realise it until she saw it in Nancy’s face. Dad talks to Nancy and then tells Mum about the conversations. I usually hear the second half of these interactions because by then they are screaming at each other. They never used to scream at each other. Nancy wants to talk to me but I refuse to. I could not bear for what I saw in her eyes to trickle down onto her tongue and come out of her mouth. I cannot be spoken to the way she looked at me. I could die from it. Dad keeps telling Mum about the residential program Nancy wants me to go into. Mum is refusing. She keeps saying, ‘Leave the poor girl alone for a while.’ I wish that thought had occurred to her before she decided I needed a make-over.

  Sometimes now Creepy and I just sit and look at each other. I imagine his bedroom is a painting and I see myself, dark brushstroke, in the background, hidden in the places Sylvia has left sloughed skin and drool. I imagine the window is a frame, the places where paint is peeling and birds have shat deliberate ornaments, like filigree or gilding. Sometimes I see Salome herself, except it is my mum and she says, ‘Bring me the hair of my daughter so I can dance again.’

  I uncover my mirrors. I have two: one is hanging on the back of my bedroom door; the other hangs on the wall. Then I polish them. I still have the Windex in my room. I polish them until there is not a trace of fingerprint, like I am the perpetrator of a crime removing myself from the scene. I polish them until their surfaces squeak. Until they are lakes. Until the girl looking back at me could reach through and hold my hand while I polish. I find myself breathing fast while I do it. Breathing through my mouth. Creepy watches me with the binoculars; through the pink slats, his eyes come, big and black. It comforts me.

  I have stopped taking those pills. Mum does not stand in front of me anymore, watching me swallow. She just brings the box and pops them out of the little blisters into my hand and walks away. I have been hiding them in the doll’s house. There is a little couch in there that I made out of matchboxes wrapped in ribbon. I have been stashing the pills in there. I do not know what they are. Apparently, they are supposed to help my anxiety. I suspect the real reason they were prescribed was to help my Mum’s.

  Mum does not believe in medication. Once, she went two years with excruciating gall bladder pain because she believed she should be able to ‘get through it’. Months after everyone’s compassion had dried up, she insisted on sitting up at night with hot-water bottles, breathing through the pain. Anything else, any sort of intervention, she believed was a sign of weakness. I do not know what finally landed her in hospital for surgery. I’m sure she never forgave herself for giving in to it, though. She does not like weakness in other people, either. She will never forgive me mine. I did not mind taking the pills, but I am a quick study. Last time she took me out after I took my pills, I came back without my hair. Who knows what I will lose next time. It is best to stay alert around Mum.

  I have bent my blind slats so badly now that they do not close flush anymore. A few of them have actually broken. They are made of this funny plastic stuff that looks like metal, so put enough stress on them and these little hairline fissures start. It does not take much after that to make them crack. I have repaired a few with sticky tape, but I am sure Mum will notice sooner or later. Dad does not come to my room anymore at all. I do not think he likes the new hairdo.

  I watch Creepy’s reflection in the mirror. I put my glasses on but still have to squint a bit. He has written me something. I do not want to turn around. I like this reflected boy, all backwards, looking at the real girl who is me. His message looks like one of those eye charts I have to make out when I get my glasses changed. It looks like another language, a cipher, the symbols of our own country. I-will-not-turn-round. I-will-not-turn-round.

  Coda: It is best to stay alert when it does not take much to make them crack.

  TWENTY-NINE

  A-Hos-tile-No-thing

  None of my friends have come round to see me.

  When we were little, we never thought about consequences. I have fallen off seesaws, slides, bikes, swings, monkey bars, and one of those fibreglass horses outside supermarkets that you put coins in and have a ride on. That was a pretty bad fall. I tried to grab on to the reins as I went down, but they snapped and I hit the concrete and knocked a tooth out. It was a baby tooth, so it did not really matter. Mum got mad because I got blood on my dress. I remember her muttering, ‘That’ll never come out, that’ll never come out’ as we walked to the car, and me thinking, But it just did, baby tooth tight in my fist.

  I suppose there would be consequences for anyone who came and saw me. Am I the crazy one now? If they did come to see me, they would probably have an agenda, anyway. ‘Go see the crazy one and report back.’ Would Mum even let them in? Or would she say she is resting, she is in the bath, she is not here, she is a terrible disappointment. Every risk you take is like a climb on to a fibreglass horse that might as well be six feet off the ground and bucks you like a bronco, to boot, and you never know what the consequences will be.

  When Stephanie Morcombe was in hospital, everyone went to see her. Even people who were not her friends went to see her. I think they thought it gave them some credibility. She is school nobility, after all. I do not expect everyone to come and see me, but I thought one or two might.

  I have not been drawing. I just cannot be bothered. Sometimes I will be sitting here in my room and I will realise I have been sitting in the same position for I do not know how long, not thinking. Not thinking. How is that possible? I think of all the ways people describe not thinking, terms we hear and use all the time: empty-headed, not a thought crossing the mind, airhead, lights are on but no one is home. I thought they were just meaningless phrases. How is it possible for thinking to actually stop? Have I discovered self-hypnosis? Even in meditation, are you not supposed to be thinking about a beautiful fruit-laden orchard next to a sunbathed meadow through which runs a crystal-clear brook, the babbling of which sounds like musical instruments? (Nancy’s idea—I could not get into it, but at one stage I thought she had fallen asleep.)

  It bothers me, this nothingness. It is hostile. Something should be going on in my head, right? I find myself counting, just to put some noise in there. One-two-three-four-five. One-two-three-four-five.

  Mum comes to my room to tell me Dad is leaving. I can tell from her expression and inflection that she thinks I will be pleased. Or that I should be pleased. My reaction surprises me. Ordinarily, knowing that my mum expects me to be pleased, my response would be consistent with her expectation. I would display pleasure in order to please her. Not this time. She is confused by my lack of reaction. This time I hear what she is saying but the words go in and curdle, as if I am reading her words off a page. This time the words go in and bypass all my usual checks and balances and just fly away into the hostile nothing. She waits for me to respond and I say the only thing that is in my head:

  ‘One-two-three-four-five.’

  Dad leaves over the course of a week. I do not understand this. It does not bother me; I just do not get it. All the power is in that first leaving. Words are said, gestures made, bags packed, all the time dignity broiling away. It must be hard to appear in control when you have to keep asking the person you are leaving where things are so you can take them with you.
And then the final looking at one another, or perhaps you do not look at one another at all, and then the door closing quietly, respectfully, sadly, and the driving away. When you come back four or five times after that for a bottle of aftershave, a shirt that was in the laundry basket, a novel left in the toilet, some CDs Mum had in her car, you go from powerful to pest. The things Dad keeps coming back for are not irreplaceable. He could pop into Kmart for them. He would not cause the people in Kmart pain every time he reappeared there. Mum never says a word and nothing is ever said to me. But I can see Mum shrink a little each time Dad’s limo pulls into the driveway. I can see Mum shiver a little each time Dad’s limo pulls away again.