Painted Love Letters

by Catherine Bateson

‘I thought I could have a go on the trampoline.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? It’s been put away — Mum thought it might rain.’

  ‘But you promised.’

  ‘I didn’t promise, Chrissie. Anyway, I forgot.’

  ‘Can’t your dad get it out again for us?’

  ‘But I don’t want a go. I told you: it’s boring. And anyway, we can’t disturb Dad.’

  ‘I don’t want my fingernails painted.’

  ‘Well, you can watch me paint mine then,’ Dee said, and took out a little velvety bag. She spilled the contents on to the chenille bedspread. There was a pair of tweezers, an orange stick, an emery board, a pair of small gold-handled scissors and a bottle of pearly pink nail polish.

  ‘Mum lets me use her cuticle cream and her nail and hand cream every night, just a drop, to make my fingernails strong. She says chipped nails are a disgrace.’

  I sat on my hands. I was a nail biter.

  ‘My mum says nail polish contains chemicals that just dry out your nails! And,’ as Dee picked up a lipstick, ‘most lipstick contains beef fat.’

  ‘Beef fat? That’s disgusting. It does not! You’d be able to taste it. Lipstick doesn’t taste like that, it’s sort of perfumey.’

  ‘They put that in, to disguise the beef fat.’

  Dee dropped the lipstick.

  ‘So what happens when a boy kisses you?’

  ‘I suppose it depends on whether or not you’re wearing lipstick.’

  Dee looked worried, ‘Do you reckon they can taste it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyway, so what. Who wants to kiss boys?’

  ‘I do. But you don’t have to worry about it Chrissie Grainger. Look at you — no boy would want to kiss you looking like that.’

  I looked in the mirror. I looked the same as I always did. I was wearing an old soft T-shirt, perhaps a little short, and a pair of denim overalls. They were one of three pairs my mother had got from Toowoomba when we still lived in Nurralloo, and by now you could see my ankle bone, but that looked quite summery. I liked my ankle bones, they were thin and stuck out like a horse’s fetlock. The tops of my sandals were peeling because I scuffed them when I walked, even though my mother was always telling me to lift my feet. I had scraped my shoulder length hair into a pony tail that morning and I thought, if anything, it looked a little neater than usual. I leant forward into the mirror. There was probably a new freckle on my nose, but really that was all I could think of that might make me impossible to love.

  ‘What’s wrong with the way I look?’ I asked.

  ‘Chrissie Grainger, if you can’t see what’s wrong, there’s no point in me trying to tell you. It seems to me that you don’t know diddley swat about anything important in this life, even if your father is an artist and you can draw willy wagtails.’

  I knew things, I thought, as I trudged slowly home. I knew things Dee couldn’t imagine. I knew how to sit quietly for hours at the creek, just watching as all sorts of things lived out their tiny lives. I knew what it was to wake up every morning and hear your father dying little by little, just down the hallway. I knew how it was to hold so much sadness inside yourself that you felt that even a drop more and you’d explode. The sadness would break you open, scatter tiny bits of you right across the floor and the whole you would be gone forever.

  ‘I want some new clothes,’ I said to Dad when I got home.

  ‘New clothes, why?’ Dad said, looking up from the book he was reading at the table.

  ‘Oh Dad, look at me! Can’t you see? My overalls are too short, this top rides up all the time and I need a bra.’ I stuck my chest out at him and waited for him to laugh. He looked me up and down and nodded slowly.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Chrissie. You’re growing up fast. So, do you have any ideas about these new clothes?’

  ‘Not overalls,’ I said quickly, ‘we’re not in the country now. I want a skirt, a leather skirt. A short leather skirt. And a top with laces and big floppy sleeves. And sandals. Sandals with a little heel.’

  ‘Could we settle for a fake leather mini?’ Dad asked, ‘after all, we’re vegetarians.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I don’t think Dee’s is real anyway.’

  ‘Okay,’ Dad said, ‘a fake leather mini, a top, sandals with a heel, a bra — anything else?’

  ‘A training bra,’ I said, ‘that’s what you call it, a training bra.’

  ‘A training bra,’ Dad repeated, ‘What exactly does that do?’

  I wasn’t sure, I’d just heard talk of them at school, so I ignored him and continued with my list.

  ‘A pair of jeans,’ I said, remembering running with Bongo and the creek. ‘Flares.’

  ‘Okay, let’s note that flares are desirable according to budget. So we’ll make a shopping date, Chrissie.’

  ‘You’ll take me?’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ Dad said, ‘I like shopping and your mother doesn’t. We might leave that training bra for her, though.’

  ‘I don’t want you to get … I mean, will you manage?’

  ‘I’ll enjoy it,’ Dad said, ‘it’s been ages since I’ve been shopping.’

  ‘I’m going shopping with my Dad,’ I told Dee.

  ‘With your Dad?’

  ‘Yes, with my Dad. I’m getting a mini, like yours.’

  ‘You won’t get anything like this in Brisbane,’ Dee said, smoothing down her skirt and showing off her long pink fingernails. ‘My cousin brought this back from America.’

  ‘And I’m getting flares, a new top and sandals with a heel.’

  I missed school for the day to go shopping with Dad. He drove carefully, like an old man, but when he got out of the car he was humming just under his breath.

  We went straight to David Jones and he made me try everything on and parade in front of him as though I were a model. At first I was embarrassed but he frowned and said, ‘Shoulders straight, Chrissie. How can I possibly see what you look like when you’re stooped like that? That colour suits you, there — look at that.’ And he wheeled me around to face the mirror. ‘See how it makes your skin look warm?’ He pulled my hair up to the top of my head and turned my chin towards him so I had to squint sideways at my face.

  ‘She’s a pretty girl,’ the shop assistant said, ‘and you are so right about the colour. What a lucky girl, having a dad who can take you shopping. And one who knows about girls’ things.’

  Dad didn’t like any of the skirts. ‘Feel them,’ he ordered, ‘they feel like — what?’

  ‘Plastic,’ I said, ‘kind of hot and sticky.’

  ‘Revolting,’ Dad agreed, ‘but the top’s good. And it has the right sleeves and here’s a denim skirt, much more practical. And here — oh Chrissie, here’s a dress for you.’

  It was long, with a sort of scooped neck and the colours were crazy, all jumbled up and dancing across it in pinks, oranges, greens and blues.

  ‘I can’t wear that to school,’ I said, ‘it’s too good.’

  ‘Not to school,’ Dad said, ‘but to my exhibition opening and to lunch with your old man, after we’ve bought it. Try it on.’

  It went right down to my ankles. I could feel it soft against my legs when I walked.

  ‘She’ll wear it,’ Dad said, ‘just cut the tag off.’

  ‘Shall I do her hair? The way you had it, sir? I’ve a comb here and I’m sure I could find a couple of pins.’

  She brought out a comb and tugged it through my hair and when she was through I looked at a ballerina in the mirror, all eyes and bones.

  ‘You’ll have to do something about the shoes,’ she said looking down at my tatty black sandals, ‘they’ve got some new stock over in shoes. Just the right thing, little heel and a daisy in the front.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dad said, ‘thank you for all the trouble you’ve gone to.’ And they smiled at each other as though they shared a secret.

  The dress made me hold my shoulders back and the little bubble of hair seemed to pull my head straight and high, so
I didn’t stumble-kick forward the way I usually walked, scuffing my feet along, chin to my chest.

  My new sandals made a satisfying clip-clop sound crossing the street and I felt very tall. We walked into the dark cave of a restaurant called Captain Cook’s Cabin. There was a large aquarium at the front and fishing nets strung from the walls. It was all dark and blue and green, like being underwater. I wasn’t sure if Dad was feeling ill or whether the light in the place gave everything a greenish tinge.

  He sounded okay as he ordered two half dozen oysters au natural.

  ‘Oysters?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Chrissie, there’s a time in every person’s life when they have to eat oysters. Long ago I promised myself I’d introduce you to your first oyster and now is the time.’

  They looked like large jellied eyeballs, or the neatly bagged contents of a small stomach. They looked like shelled snails, turned inside out. There were six of them, still in their shells. There were six stomach-churning mouthfuls sitting smugly in front of me, resting on ice, garnished with a sprig of parsley, a lemon wedge and a couple of tiny pieces of brown bread. I opened my mouth to say that there was no way on earth I could possibly swallow something that looked as though it had been retrieved from a surgical operation, when I looked down at my dress, swirling to my ankles.

  ‘Now don’t chew them,’ Dad said, ‘you slide them down your throat, okay?’

  He demonstrated, delicately dislodging one from its shell, squeezing it with lemon and then letting the whole thing disappear into his mouth.

  I tried not to see the oyster. I tried to let the colours of my dress fill my mind. I squeezed the lemon, tipped and swallowed: there was the taste of the ocean, a slide of glob down my throat and only five to go.

  After the oysters, Dad paid the bill and we left. I was still hungry but I looked at his face and didn’t ask for fish and chips. When we left, I let him hold my hand as though I was a little kid again. We walked slowly back to the car and didn’t say anything much for the rest of the day.

  When Mum came home that evening, I did my catwalk strut for her, modelling my new clothes.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Dave,’ she said.

  ‘I wanted to,’ Dad said in a voice I had never heard before. It was final and almost angry and I looked at him, shocked. Mum didn’t say anything more except that yes, the dress was beautiful, very beautiful and I looked very grown up in it.

  ‘We ate oysters,’ I said, ‘because everyone has to be able to and they were okay. They tasted like the ocean, not half as disgusting as they looked. I ate six whole oysters.’

  ‘And now you’re exhausted,’ Mum said to Dad and her voice was different too, flat, as though it had been ironed.

  ‘And shall go to bed,’ Dad said, getting up slowly, ‘I’m glad we found the dress, Chrissie, and I’m delighted to have taught you about oysters. Stop it, Rhetta love, exhaustion isn’t the end of the world.

  I wore my new sandals and skirt to school the next day and Dee said, that although my skirt wasn’t leather, it was a good length and the cut suited me. She let me read her magazine during lunch.

  ‘Trash,’ Ms Raskill said, walking past. ‘I’m not surprised at you, Dee, secretarial expectations are all you could aim for, but Chrissie Grainger I expected more from you with your background.’

  ‘She’s a Women’s Libber,’ Dee whispered when Ms Raskill had gone, ‘That’s why she’s a Ms and not plain Miss like everyone else. Some days she doesn’t wear a bra. I’ve seen her, you know, poking out.’

  I didn’t care about Ms Raskill or her nipples. I didn’t even care that I nearly failed Art and had to go to the principal’s office with Mr Chapman and listen while she said words like ‘sullen’ and ‘uncooperative’ until eventually they asked me to leave the office and I sat outside on the detention bench while they argued about me.

  I didn’t care because I had a growing list of things I now knew that would be useful in the high-heeled world Dee couldn’t wait to join. I knew that sometime in the future I’d be nearly as pretty as my mother. Dad had shown me my future face and even if I couldn’t get it to look like that all the time, it had once and would again. He’d promised that. I knew that clothes weren’t just about how they looked, but also that you had to be able to touch them, the same way you touched flowers when you walked past particularly lovely ones. And bigger than all of that, I knew that sometimes you had to do the impossible, like eat oysters, or go shopping even when you could hardly breathe, because that’s what people did when they truly loved one another, and it had nothing to do with freckles or anklebones or lipstick.

  I didn’t fail art. Mr Chapman came out and asked me to walk him to his car. He said that my Nature Journal was every bit as important an art document as Ms Raskill’s dab and flick paintings, that to call me sullen and uncooperative said more about her than it did about me and that I shouldn’t mind these things, but to continue being brave and strong and if there was anything I wanted to talk to him about, I was welcome to do so.

  ‘I don’t think you should smoke,’ I blurted out loud, watching him as he ferreted around in his pocket for matches, ‘I really don’t, Mr Chapman. I don’t think you should smoke at all.’

  He put the matches back in his pocket and tucked the unlit cigarette back in its packet and opened his mouth but I didn’t wait to hear what he was going to say.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said desperately, ‘I’ve really got to go. Thank you, Mr Chapman for that stuff, and I’m really sorry.’ I took off, my school bag bumping against my legs as I ran.

  When I got to school the next day there was a little note on my desk.

  Dear Chrissie, it said, When I was a boy, growing up, we didn’t know it was dangerous to smoke. You are quite right, though, now we do know the dangers associated with smoking, it is wrong to continue to do so. I shall try to give up this Christmas holidays. I think Christmas is a good time to try because I am home more and my wife doesn’t like me smoking in the house because I make the curtains stink. Thank you for your concern

  Yours sincerely,

  William Chapman.

  I folded the note up neatly and put it straight in my school bag before anyone, especially Dee, could see it. As soon as I got home, I put it safely under the flowered paper in my undies drawer. I knew I would keep it for the rest of my life.

  Nan and Badger

  I rang Nan because no one else seemed about to do it. Dad said it wasn’t up to him, it had to be Mum’s decision, and Mum refused point blank.

  ‘The last thing I need is her fussing around.’

  So every Friday night we rang Nan but we didn’t tell her. We talked in false cheery voices about everything except the thing we were all thinking about.

  ‘So, do you like living in the city?’ Nan always asked.

  ‘Not much,’ I always replied, ‘but it’s okay.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you all moved. I thought you were happy at Nurralloo?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I always had to say. Mum stood right next to me when we rang Nan, so close I could almost hear her heart beating. I knew she was ready to grab the phone from me if I said a single wrong thing.

  ‘You make me tell lies,’ I said to Mum, ‘you make me say things that aren’t even true.’

  ‘I can’t cope with her on top of everything,’ Mum said slowly, the way she did these days when she was angry. ‘I have enough to do without looking after my mother as well.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to look after her,’ I said, ‘she’d help. She’d want to help. You just hate her.’

  ‘I don’t hate my mother,’ Mum said, ‘you’re just too young to understand.’

  ‘I hate you,’ I said and for a moment I almost believed myself.

  Mum sighed and stroked my hair, ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know.’

  I rang Nan one Saturday afternoon when Mum was working at the bistro and Dad was asleep. I sat in the hallway and picked at the scabs on my legs, while I told
her the whole story in a queer, little, flat voice I hardly recognised as belonging to me.

  ‘Good God,’ she said, ‘why on earth didn’t your mother tell me?’

  I shrugged, but of course she couldn’t see me. I couldn’t really say anymore. It was as though everything I had said had used up all my voice. ‘You poor little girl,’ Nan said, ‘you poor little girl.’

  It felt like the first time anyone had stopped and looked at me and I started to cry, but silently, the tears leaking through my fingers as I listened to Nan sigh half a dozen loving noises at me and tell me that she was coming up on the fastest plane she could catch, and then I sniffed loudly to let her know I was still alive and hung up.

  I knew what I had done was wrong and I didn’t care. Nan was all our family. Dad’s parents died before I was even born, killed instantly in some horror highway smash, and my other grandfather, Nan’s husband, died when Mum was a teenager. His heart gave out. It seemed to me that we were doomed to die young.

  ‘She can’t stay here,’ Mum said, ‘I can’t have her here. It’s impossible.’

  ‘She’ll have to stay somewhere,’ Dad said, pouring a cup of lemongrass tea. As he poured it, the air was suddenly sharp with the smell and for a heart-stopping moment I missed Nurralloo, where we’d grown our own lemongrass just beside the back door.

  ‘She can stay in my room,’ I said, ‘I don’t mind.’

  Nan arrived with only one small bag. She looked different, too — less grandmotherly than she had two Christmasses ago, the last time I had seen her. She was thinner, sharper. She looked like a television older person. She held Mum closely for a long time and then pushed her away and looked at her face as though searching for something there.

  ‘You should have rung at the very beginning,’ she said, ‘I know what you’re going through. Oh Rhetta, it’s so hard, I know. When Keith died I thought my whole life had ended. I know what you must be feeling.’

  ‘Dave’s not dead, Mum.’

  ‘No, of course not. Oh sweetheart,’ and Nan hugged Mum to her again, but Mum stood still and hard, the way I did sometimes when Mum hugged me when I was angry about something.