Chloe and Paris painted each other's faces with tiger stripes. They took off their clothes and painted stripes on their bodies as well. Chloe put a fluffy length of fabric from the dress-up box round her waist, and Paris found an old pink tutu that used to be Lizzie's. It was far too small. The pants climbed up over her bottom and the top didn't cover her nipples.
Chloe led Paris through the undergrowth to a special place she knew, a bowerbird's nest with a treasure trove of blue objects. There was the usual assortment of bits of blue plastic, blue pegs, a faded blue flower. They also found two blue playmg cards lying on the ground, face down.
Each had a picture of a queen on a throne. One of the queens was fair-haired and carried a cup like a wine goblet. The other queen was dark, and had a sword. They carried the cards back to where Emma and Stella sat on the verandah.
‘Savages!’ cried Emma when she saw them emerging from the bushes. She hugged savage Chloe to her, putting her face in Chloe's hair. ‘They're tarot cards,’ she said. ‘I bet they belong to Amrita, down the road. I'll ask her if she's lost them. It'd be typical of her to leave them lying about where a bowerbird could take them.’
Paris looked annoyed.
‘But you can keep them for a while,’ said Emma. ‘They're little treasures, aren't they?’
‘What are tarot cards?’ said Paris.
‘Well, I don't know all that much, but I know it's a special pack of cards that have different things on them to help you think about your life. For instance, this card,’ said Emma, holding out the fair queen, ‘is the Queen of Cups. It could represent a dearly loved female friend. She's good, fair, and creative. She stands for harmony in your life. But if you got this card,’ Emma held up the dark queen, ‘the Queen of Swords, it could mean there's conflict or change or trouble coming to you.
‘She's a very powerful queen,’ she went on, glancing at Stella with a look that I stored away, so I could work out its meaning later. ‘She can bring whirlwinds, tornadoes and gales; she's ardent, deceitful and selfish, never a friend of her own sex.’
There was something about my mother that suggested danger. Stella laughed uncomfortably. ‘Quite a lady,’ she said.
‘I like this one best,’ declared Paris, taking the Queen of Swords. ‘Chloe can have the other one.’
Chloe and Paris tossed the tarot cards on the ground, joined hands, and danced in a circle. Then they let go and danced separately, and it became wilder and wilder. Without warning, Chloe ran up to Emma, grabbed her by the hand, and bit her, hard, on the arm.
Emma pulled away with a cry ‘Oh! Chloe! Why did you do that?’
‘Because I'm wicked,’ said Chloe, and grinned at her, showing her teeth.
‘No, you're not, no, you're not,’ murmured Emma, and Chloe crept onto her lap, thumb in mouth. Her other hand slid inside Emma's shirt and found a nipple, and she kneaded it between her fingers. My mother cradled Chloe in her arms and rubbed the plump curve of her bare bottom.
Stella pulled Paris onto the sofa, nestling her in the crook of her arm. Paris's pointed little face was stern, her lips pursed. The stuff she'd painted on her body had smudged and worn away, so that she looked merely grubby and uncared for. Stella dreamily kissed her on the forehead.
Late on an overcast day, with storm clouds building, we went to the beach. It was a long, empty beach. The sea was grey and green. I watched my parents walking along the edge of the water. Claudio had taken himself off alone, and his face had a storm-cloud look to it, which I knew didn't mean that he was especially angry or upset; it was just moodiness. His eyes could just as suddenly spark with fire and good humour, and his astonishing eyebrows, one with a zigzag break at the apex, would shoot up towards his receding hairline.
My mother trailed after him, but she eventually caught him up and took his arm, looking in vain into his face as he stared out over the water.
I turned away from them. Stella had also walked up the beach, but in the opposite direction. She walked jauntily, without a care.
I called to Paris, my voice silky. ‘How about we bury you in the sand up to your neck? Have you ever done that? It'll be fun - it's so cool in the damp sand.’
I was astonished that she agreed to it. All of us - me, Chloe, Paris and even Lizzie - dug the hole to bury her in, a long hole like a shallow grave so that Paris could lie down flat on her back with her head sticking out. When it was large enough, Paris lay down in it, and we began to fill in the sand around her. I slapped wet sand into the hole with satisfaction; it flew up into her face and made her flinch and blink fastidiously She looked like an annoyed little cat.
Back at home, the sky dark with storm clouds, Emma threw open all the windows and doors to let the heat out of the house, and wind whipped the curtains and blew newspapers across the living room. As the first lightning shot from the sky, she stood on the verandah with her hair flying and a glass of cold white wine in her hand, and looked at it with satisfaction.
With the storm approaching, Paris lies in the grass with her notebook in front of her, relishing her closeness to the soil, watching ants make their scurrying preparations, diverting them with a stick laid in front of them. With her eyes close to the ground, the world is a thin line, the sky huge. In her notebook she writes three times I am a witch and slams it shut.
There is a smell in the air that signals the approach of the storm, and she watches till it is on top of her, till the first lightning darts earthward and rain as pungent as a firecracker falls across her face. Then she stands up and stretches her arms out wide, her face tilted to the sky. She has the power to transform reality.
The storm was wild. Lightning struck the earth next to our house, one bolt so close that a blue streak seemed to appear right inside the living room. The house shook and rocked like a boat in stormy seas. It was exhilarating and frightening; we moved about, peering from windows at the torrents of water. Chloe and I shrieked at each new thunderclap and hugged each other. But we knew that even wild storms finally passed over, so mostly we simply relished the thrill of it all.
The rain washed across the verandah and then eased to a thin drizzle. Then, when it seemed to be all over, the power went off. Paris and Chloe lit their wallaby-skull candleholder and carried it through the darkened house, their necks bent worshipfully, watching the flicker of the candle. Claudio cooked by the light of a hurricane lantern. He sloshed olive oil into the pan and sang, ‘Just take another little piece of my heart now, babee.’ Stella came and leaned on the bench and watched, and he talked to her, laughing loudly. His laughter sounded through the house in bursts. Emma, leaning out over the railing of the wet verandah, turned her head in the direction of the kitchen with a strained smile.
By the time dinner was ready, the rain had stopped and the verandah boards were dark with water that had blown in. It was like the deck of a ship that had survived the pounding of the seas, and we carried the dining table out there and ate in the damp, cool night air, feeling like survivors. Stella sat beside Claudio, and when he said something that made her laugh she rocked from side to side like a child, knocking against him accidentally or on purpose.
Then the power returned, lighting up the house suddenly and surprisingly, for we'd left all the switches on. Chloe and Paris took their candle-holder outside. Chloe had her hand protectively round the flame, watching it, nurturing it against the wind. They found the place where Emma had tipped the wallaby skull onto the ground. Scraps of flesh still clung to the bones, and Paris poked at it with a stick by the light of the guttering candle.
‘Paris!’ whispered Chloe. ‘We could make a spell!’
Before bed I cleaned my teeth on the verandah with water in a cup. Claudio and Emma were standing together, not talking, leaning over the verandah rail looking out into the darkness. I saw my mother press her hand against my father's shoulder, and when they kissed, her tongue slid inside his mouth.
The next morning I went to Lizzie and found her still asleep on top of the bedclothes, with flowers
strewn all around her.
She opened her eyes, saw me, and took in the crumpled blossoms. ‘Couldn't sleep,’ she murmured. ‘Went out in the middle of the night to pick flowers.’ She closed her eyes and dozed again.
When she woke properly, I was still there. ‘Lizzie,’ I said. ‘Do you think they're going to get a divorce?’
She stared at the ceiling. ‘Why do you ask? Nothing's happened. Has it?’
‘No,’ I replied.
I remembered my mother saying that the Aubergine children had told their parents to get a divorce. These days it was nothing unusual. I knew lots of kids whose parents were no longer together, who had all sorts of living arrangements so that you didn't even quite know who anyone was really related to.
‘They don't argue,’ I said. I wanted Lizzie to say something else to reassure me.
‘I'm so tired,’ she said quietly.
She lay staring into the air for a long time, and I asked, ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Go on. You must be thinking something.’
She finally spoke. ‘At night flowers have no colour. They are dark, like the night. And some of them have no scent. Is a colour still a colour if you can't see it? Well - you asked what I was thinking. Stupid stuff like that.
‘Don't be silly,’ she added kindly ‘Nothing has happened. That's it. End of conversation.’
The next morning was sunny, and the grass and trees and sky had an extra brightness, as they do after rain. Emma sat in the kitchen and watched the dappled light on the floor. Yesterday's collection of shells and sea treasures were ranged on the windowsill. She poured a little more tea into her cup and sighed with pleasure.
‘I'm going into Mullum for some stuff,’ yelled Claudio. ‘Anyone coming? But I'm going now! Chop, chop!’
There were shouted negotiations. ‘Oh come on, Lizzie!’ bellowed Claudio. ‘Do you good to get out. Stuck inside with that guitar all the time. Un-natural for a young girl!’ and then he sang it, operatically: ‘Un-nut-ur-al, my dear!'
Despite myself I got caught up in the excitement of a sudden expedition to town. I ran around getting ready and calling out, ‘Wait till I get my hat!', ‘I can't find my purse!’ But part of me was already making it into a story I could tell someone, sometime, though I didn't know yet who that would be.
‘Hurry up, Paris. We'll go without you!’ Stella put her head around the kitchen door, where Emma sat calmly with a cup of tea. ‘Can I get you anything in town?’
Emma shook her head.
In the end the only ones who didn't go were Emma and Chloe.
The car bumped its way down the track. Paris, in the back with me and Lizzie, stared from the window. She glanced sideways at me with a sour expression, seeming to know when she was being looked at.
‘There's a patch we'll go through soon where it's always raining,’ Claudio told Stella, who sat with him in the front. ‘You watch, even though the day's sunny, it'll shower when we pass through there.’
‘See?’ he said and they looked at each other and laughed as drops of water spattered over the windscreen. ‘It's a regular vale of tears.’
In Mullumbimby we all went our separate ways. ‘Do you want to come with me?’ Lizzie asked Paris dutifully, but Paris shook her head and stalked off. I saw her later sitting on a seat in the main street, her legs sprawled in front of her, defiantly eating a family-sized block of chocolate, the silver paper pulled back, munching on the whole block without even breaking it into squares.
I went into the second-hand bookshop, where the dust irritated my nose so much I had to leave almost straight away I examined the plants outside the nursery, and peered into a shop window at earrings arranged in boxes with green felt lining. It was my mother's birthday soon and I had an idea I might buy a present for her. I bought a cupcake at the bakery and walked along nibbling at the icing. I slowed down near the open air arcade and went into a shop full of fake-looking Red Indian stuff: suede fringed vests and dream-catchers made of feathers. There were some tiny cacti with bright flowers that I thought Emma might like. I peeled back the paper case of my cake and devoured the rest, scrunching the paper up into a tiny damp ball.
I saw Stella and Claudio at a table outside the coffee shop. Claudio was talking quickly, waving his arms and laughing, telling Stella one of his preposterous stories. Stella laughed and laughed at Claudio. She giggled uncontrollably and rubbed her arms, as if she was caressing herself.
I looked away, and examined one of the cacti. It had a bright pink flower like a trumpet.
When the sound of the car has died away Emma feels that she can inhabit her house entirely as she wants to. She pours herself through the rooms, becoming thought, feeling, sensation only The square of sun coming through the kitchen window becomes dappled and disappears. The shadows lengthen. She goes to the cavernous main room, shadowy and cool, and puts her arms round the tree trunk that reaches up to the beams of the roof. It is clay-cold and white and comforting against her cheek. She remembers the grey and green of the sea the day before, the lightning that struck out in bright sparks against the sky, and thinks calmly about going to her studio and attempting to paint it all. But then she decides to simply let it all be, and keep the colours in her mind.
Chloe's singing comes to her, childish and tuneless, and draws her to where Chloe sits on the floor with her dolls, combing their hair and singing and talking to them. Emma wraps her arms around her youngest daughter and smells the farmyard odour of her unwashed hair, the sweetness of her plump limbs. She feels she could drown there, but she releases Chloe after a second or two and returns to the cavern of her house, feels the cool timber floor underfoot, shiny from the tread of all their feet.
When the others return, it disorients her to be so suddenly confronted with the lap and pulse of people around her.
‘Couldn't find that size light bulb I wanted,’ roared Claudio. ‘Bloody useless electrical shop.’ He pushed groceries away into the kitchen cupboards, bouncing the doors open, letting them flap like useless wings.
‘I got you a present,’ I said. I thrust the cactus with the bright pink flower at my mother, unable to wait for her birthday. I'd get her something else, something better, closer to the time.
‘What a gloriously coloured flower.’ My mother turned and encountered Stella, whose arms were full of dried flowers, large and dun-coloured and as crisp as brown paper.
‘For you,’ said Stella abruptly ‘For having us,’ and thrust the bunch into Emma's hands. Emma automatically put her nose into the arrangement, but there was no fragrance of flower. It was a brown smell, uninviting.
‘I think we'll go tomorrow,’ said Stella, putting her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. ‘We've imposed on you long enough.’
Emma stood holding the gifts she'd been given: the prickly flower and the dead ones, and was about to protest, not imposed, no, but weariness overtook her. ‘Of course,’ she murmured, ‘of course.’
That evening, their last evening with us, Chloe presented Paris with the gaudy wallaby skull. ‘You can take it home,’ she said. Paris took it without a word, dismissively, and Chloe looked so crushed by her ingratitude that I swooped on her and kissed her.
I watched Paris on that last night, taking in everything, imprinting it on her mind. I saw her take note of the uneasiness at the dinner table, where conversation between Stella and Emma was awkward and even Claudio's attempt to crank up laughter fell flat. She saw me looking at her. ‘Stare, stare,’ she said quietly and carelessly Another child would have stuck out her tongue, but Paris knew already the power of understatement.
I imagined Paris regaling her friends with tales of this awhl or strange or weird or pathetic family she'd stayed with. She didn't need the wallaby skull to take away as a memento. As surely as primitive people take locks of hair, or fingernails, and work bad magic with them, Paris was taking something of our family away with her.
And this is what I had seen that day:
Claudio finished whatever it was he was saymg, and Stella looked into his eyes. She'd stopped giggling and rubbing her arms and was absolutely still. Claudio said something else. He didn't laugh as he said it. Stella lowered her eyes and replied. Her hand reached across the table and took his. She took my father's hand, the hand I knew so well with its square fingers and short, tough nails.
My father closed his eyes. He looked happy Thank you, I saw his lips say Thank you.
With his other hand my father reached out and touched Stella's cheek with the back of his fingers.
I bought the cactus with the pink trumpet flower and went looking for Lizzie. I found her a few doors away in the op shop. She was trying on an assortment of dresses out in the open shop, not bothering to take off the clothes she was wearing first.
I told her I had seen Stella and Claudio having coffee, but I didn't tell her what else I had seen.
‘You should have seen her,’ I said. ‘She was laughing like a hyeena.’ I could feel my mouth pull into a grimace and my teeth bare like a hyena's itself as I said the word.
After dinner I sat in Lizzie's room with her. ‘Anyway’ she said with satisfaction. ‘They're going tomorrow.’
She plucked a string of her guitar and listened as the sound resonated and then died away.
‘And nothing happened,’ she said.
I wondered if the sound of the guitar was still there, though we couldn't hear it. You can only hear music when it's played but it's still an event. It's still real. I imagined the sound wave passing out into the universe. Perhaps someone was still hearing it somewhere.
A Charm of Powerful Trouble Page 4
