by Sofie Laguna
I went into Number Seven, Mr Roger’s room next door, but it was empty and the bed was stripped. The photos were down and the books were gone from the shelf and the vase with the rose made of plastic was missing. The window was open, letting in the factory air.
I found Mum in the kitchen. Her face was pink from the steam of boiling macaroni. Underneath her arms, on both sides of her dress, were big damp circles. There was wet in her hair. ‘Where did Mr Rogers go?’ I asked her.
‘Mr Rogers?’ She frowned, as if she had forgotten who he was.
‘In Number Seven. His room is empty.’
‘Oh, Jimmy, it’s all part of working in a nursing home. We have to get used to it.’
‘But, Mum, where did he go?’
‘Don’t you worry yourself about Mr Rogers. He’s in a better place, that’s all you need to know.’
‘A better place? Mum, what place?’
‘Oh, love,’ she said, wiping her face with the end of her apron, ‘can we leave it for now? I still have to finish the mince. You go and have a chat with Mr Olly in seventeen. Mr Olly likes to see you.’
‘Okay, Mum, okay.’ I’d seen a lot of seniors come and a lot of seniors feed the refinery flame.
We got home just before midday. Mum swept the garden path and I rode my three-wheeler through the dust and hair and dirt that rose up as she swept.
‘Don’t, love,’ she said, smiling.
I did it a few more times then rode at the fence to make the posts shake.
Mum kept sweeping. She hummed Doris, Won’t you tell me hmmmmmm, won’t you hmmmmmm, then when I looked around again she took her puffer from her apron pocket and gave it a shake. She sucked back on it. ‘Empty,’ she said.
We went inside and she looked for other puffers and found one in the bathroom cupboard but it was empty, and I found one under my bed but it was empty too. Mum sat down and read Murder on the Orient Express. Agathas were Mum’s specialty and she did the same ones over and over. I sat next to her and built a block and rod refinery. I didn’t have enough rods to make all the pipes and smokestacks, but I built the base and assembled the ladders and got the tanks ready. Then I read my sink manual to check the positions. I matched the plug with the refinery exit.
Mum turned on the television in the sitting room and we watched Days of Our Lives. She lay on the couch with her head tilted on the arm holder. When she breathed in it sounded as if the air was made of metal shavings. Soon she sat up. ‘I thought it would be better with a rest, but it’s not. We’ll just have to wait for your father to get home, Jimmy. We’ll take it easy till then, won’t we, love? Really easy . . .’ She touched my cheek. When Mum touched me it lit her up. ‘You light up my life, little man,’ she said. I let her do it anytime.
I rested against her and hardly moved. The end of my finger tried to – up then sideways then down. I stopped it. My leg jiggled. I stopped it. My other leg jiggled and I stopped that too. I took it really easy just like Mum asked me to but it didn’t help; all that afternoon her air wouldn’t go in. Nothing moved the blockages. I wished I could turn the hose-snake on full and blast it down her throat.
‘Get the telephone, love,’ she said.
On Days of Our Lives, Bo and Hope Brady kissed and Bo said, ‘Hope, Hope, you know I would never give up on you.’ Hope had a medical emergency and only Bo could help but he was so tall he couldn’t fit through the doorway.
‘I’m sorry, Hope . . .’
‘Jimmy, Jimmy, you need to help me get to the telephone.’
‘What for, Mum? What for?’
‘No time for questions, Jimmy. You have to help me.’
I looked at Mum; she was turning the colour of a bruise. ‘Yes, Mum, yes.’
She got herself to the edge of the couch, pushing her bottom to the rim. Water sat in droplets on her forehead. She put out her arms. ‘Help me, Jim,’ she whispered.
I took her hands so she could balance and I pulled as hard I could.
Mum tried to stand but she couldn’t get the weight on the right side of the couch. It kept tipping back. ‘Oh love,’ she said.
I looked in her eyes and the blue of the bruise was spreading to her whites. ‘Come on, Mum.’
She leaned forward and put her muscle in her legs. I gritted my teeth and I pulled so hard I thought my eyes would pop. Harder and harder, leaning back against her as if I was pulling oars in a boat on the water, pull, pull, and at last up she came.
She stood panting against me, one hand on my shoulder, the metal shavings in her air passage tearing at the sides with every breath. I was her little man walking stick as we made our slow way up the hall.
I led her to the kitchen couch.
‘Get me the telephone, love,’ she wheezed, sitting down heavily.
‘Yes, Mum, telephone.’
I took the telephone from the bench and brought it down to her, the cord stretching over the island so that the loops were pulled out.
‘Good boy,’ she said, putting her finger in the circle. She spoke to someone at the other end of the cord, her voice a mix of whisper and scratch. She said our address – ‘Nineteen Emu, nineteen . . . yes . . . yes, I think so . . .’ – then she hung up. She tried to lift her mouth into a smile but the rope and pulleys behind her cheeks only got it halfway.
Next Mum called Dad. She had to wait, the telephone pressed against her chest while they dragged him out of the pipes and cleaned him off. The rust was too toxic to expose to the oxygen. Mum never called Dad at work. Once I broke my finger in the sliding door and when the nurse said, ‘Did you call your husband?’ Mum answered, ‘Oh no, not at work, love.’
At last they let Dad on the telephone and Mum said, ‘Gav, the ambulance is coming . . . Jimmy’s with me . . . I’m sorry, Gav, I just wasn’t sure . . . Oh good, oh thanks, love . . .’
I found another puffer under the couch but there was no puff left in it.
‘I thought I bought one,’ Mum said, hanging up the telephone. ‘Jimmy, I need you to . . .’ She was pulling in, but there wasn’t enough air to support her words and they came out dry. The tentacles were trying to wave but they were heavy with dust and dirt, metal shavings and throat-water.
‘What, Mum, what? What do you need? Mum? Mum?’
‘Open the door.’
‘Yes, Mum, yes.’ I ran to the front door and turned the lock one wrong way, then another wrong way, then another, then one right way. I pulled and the door opened. I heard the siren ‘Eeeeooooeeeeooo!’
‘Eeeeoooooeeeeoooeeeooo!’ I cried out w it h t he siren, both of us loud through the streets for my mother. ‘Eeeeoooeeeeeeeeeoooo!’
I ran back to the kitchen where she lay on the couch. ‘Mum, it’s coming.’ Her head was tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open. ‘Mum! Mum!’
‘Eeeeeeeoooooooeeeeooooooo!’ the siren kept calling.
I leaned over and looked into the dark tunnel of Mum’s open mouth and I saw a knot. I reached in with my fingers to undo it. She turned away from me. I was getting faster. I shook her shoulders. ‘Mum!’
I heard voices. I ran up the hall. Three men wearing blue uniforms said, ‘Where is she? Where is your mother?’ Dad came through the door behind them. He wore his shining refinery vest and his boots, round at the ends, and his face looked as if a fist had screwed it tight into a ball.
‘Through here,’ he said, leading the men into the kitchen. They carried a thin white bed in their arms.
Dad went very close to Mum, closer than me or Robby had ever been, so close he was almost under the surface, and he whispered something to her. I couldn’t hear what. Nobody could. They were words only for Mum. Her eyes opened as she looked at him, into his eyes, then closed again.
The men lifted Mum up onto the bed. One of them put a mask over her face.
‘No! No!’ I shouted. ‘Open her! Open her!’ But the men took no notice. I followed them as they carried Mum out to the ambulance. They moved like the robots in my Sourcebook, hooking her up to a blue plastic bag dangling f
rom a pipe, sliding her into the back. ‘Release! Release! Return!’ I called out commands but they didn’t stop.
‘Shush, son, shush now,’ my dad said. He stood behind me on the pavement and put his arms around me. They felt strong as trees as he pressed me to him. His voice vibrated in my cavities. ‘Take it easy, son,’ he said. We watched as the men took Mum away.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where crying started. I never had, even when I was born and wanted to cry because I didn’t yet know words to say what it was to be parted from my mum in that way. Every other baby knows how. When they cry the tears block out the memory, but I didn’t know how, even in the first seconds outside the membrane. That’s what alerted the authorities.
The street was very quiet without my mother and the siren. Dad was still holding on to me. I looked at the round ends of his boots and stood on one with my bare foot. ‘What now?’ I said.
‘We wait for your mother to come back,’ Dad answered. Our bodies were touching at the hands, at the shoulders and down the back. The strength of him was behind me, heating me. We went inside and he turned on the television in the sitting room. Doctor Who was on. He left his recliner alone and sat beside me on the black couch instead. For the first time Mum was gone and there was room.
‘Dr Who? Dr Who? Knock, knock. Dr Who?’ I said.
Dad said, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Dr Who? Dad!’
We watched as the doctor led his friend down many passages, each one narrower than the last. They were running out of time. Three-eyed worms caught them by surprise, rearing up like cobras. ‘Give us your secrets, Doctor,’ they said. But the doctor never stopped. He crept along as the passages grew thinner. He kept going. He knew he could. The knowledge from the TARDIS never left him, even though he was only given it once. That one time was enough. Dad stayed for the whole episode. He didn’t get up to pour a drink or open a window or make a telephone call. He sat beside me and watched. The story of the doctor and the three-eyed worms came to us at the same time. When the doctor exterminated the worms with death foam, Dad said, ‘Good job, Doctor.’
After Doctor Who finished we went into the kitchen to make a snack. We were spreading butter onto biscuits when Robby came home from school. ‘Where’s Mum?’ he asked.
‘Robots took her to the hospital,’ I told him.
‘What are you talking about?’ Robby’s eyes grew wider; rings around rings around rings around the black centre, where the vision entered.
Dad put his hands on the island. ‘It’s okay, son. Your mum’s okay.’
‘But is she in hospital?’ he asked Dad.
‘Yes, she is,’ he answered. ‘She had an asthma attack. She didn’t have her medicine. But we just called the hospital and they said she’s doing well; she just needs a bit of quiet time and she’ll be home tomorrow.’ Dad put the biscuits on a plate, spread with more butter than I’d even seen before.
Robby still hadn’t moved. In the deep of his eyes, water wheels turned, processing the information.
‘It will be okay, Rob. If she has to stay another night we’ll go and visit her. Jimmy took care of things, didn’t you, Jimmy?’ Dad touched me on the shoulder with the same hand that sent Mum’s head wobbling on its stalk. His touch was dry and light and sent messages like a battery charge. I didn’t want it to stop; it rooted me to the ground, sending tendrils out from my feet, deep into the earth.
Robby was looping things together in his cognitive. Him and Dad used to go for whole days. Fishing. Kicking the ball. Driving. I wanted to go with them but Mum stopped letting me. I could have swallowed my tongue or broken glass or been run over.
‘Paula, Jimmy’ll be fine with me. I can manage,’ Dad would say.
‘Just you and Robby go, love,’ Mum said, holding me back. ‘It’ll be a bit easier that way – more fun. And more whiting.’ I saw the wink she gave him; she was trying to pretend she was holding me back for him, and not because she was worried about me.
Until I was three and a half my words were made up and Paula couldn’t understand the language. Only Dad and Robby could. Better than all the bullshit I have to listen to at the car yard, said Dad. Dad linked my wooden trains one to the other and drove them slowly along the tracks. When he came to the tunnel, he took my hand and said, It’s only short, son. Any minute and we’ll be on the other side. Back then, Dad hardly ever reached for the high cupboard. I didn’t even know what was in it.
But when I learned to speak I repeated. Every week that went by I grew faster; words quickened me. Paula stopped letting me out of her sight. She did all the Jimmy jobs. Cleaning and feeding and changing, teaching and holding and clamping and counting and taking my temperature on the nights when the pain in my canals reached the speed of light. She took over with her bulk and when he tried to get to me from around the sides she wedged him against the walls. He began to reach for the high cupboard more and more. ‘He bloody drives me to it, Paula,’ he said.
•
‘You want to go outside?’ Dad asked us.
Robby frowned. ‘What for?’
‘Because it’s only half past three. I’m never home at half past three.’
‘What about Mum?’ Robby asked.
‘She’s going to be okay, Rob, mate. I promise.’
Robby looked away to the window.
‘You want to throw the frisbee?’ Dad asked.
‘Not enough room,’ said Robby.
‘There is on the other side of the fence.’ Dad grinned. Mum once showed me a picture of Dad when he was a boy. He wore shorts and he didn’t have front teeth and he held two fingers up in a V at whoever took the photograph. Up yours! ‘Come on,’ Dad said, picking up the green frisbee from the step where it lay as a dish for bird water.
Dad, glowing with the powers from his refinery vest, put his hands on the top of the fence and pulled himself over. Robby and I crawled through, the way we always did. We were on the other side, in the wetlands. Birds sat on the shallow water like statues, watching us. Dad ran across the steel bridge, not checking for snakes, not looking through the grid at the water flowing underneath, not holding the bars as he ran, his quick legs like pistons through the silver grass.
The air was fresh in my face, and far away, on the other side of the wetlands, the bright flame leapt from the pipe. When he was far enough Dad stopped and called, ‘Ready, boys?’
We called out, ‘Ready!’ and the green frisbee cut through the grey sky towards us. Back and forth it spun as we ran and threw and ran again. The three lines that joined us shortened and lengthened, the three points stretching and returning, stretching and returning.
Later, back inside the house, red-faced and puffed with sweat dampening our hair, Robby said, ‘Drink, Dad?’ and passed him water, pouring one for himself and me too. Robby’s thin arms moved loosely, his fingers touching Dad’s as the glass of water passed between them. We drank our water and Robby said, ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there?’ I said, ‘Jimmy!’ And Dad said, ‘I am, ya mug.’ Robby said, ‘No, Dad, say Who’s there?’ and Dad said, ‘Me, mate, it’s me!’ and messed Robby’s hair. Robby said, ‘No, Dad, not you!’ and Dad said, ‘What’s wrong with me, mate? You saying there’s something wrong with me?’ Robby laughed and I saw Dad’s reflection in his face with Mum coming up from underneath and entering the cheeks.
It was as if a spell that we didn’t know had been in the kitchen of Nineteen Emu was broken. We weren’t waiting for anything; we were already there. There was nothing in the invisible world, as if there never had been; it was empty and quiet.
Dad made eggs and bacon. He wore Mum’s pink apron with a frill up the sides and the ties went round him twice. Robby laughed and said, ‘You look pretty, Dad.’ Dad put his hands on his hips and flipped his hand and said, ‘More bacon with your eggs, sir?’ We moved around the island easily, each of us taking a different side, then joining sides, as if the island was a raft, and we were changing places at exactly the right time to keep it a
float.
When Dad rang Mum at the hospital he said, ‘Us fellas have got it under control, love,’ and he winked at Robby. ‘You just take it easy, sweetheart. I’ll make the boys tidy the house top to bottom.’ He turned away from us. ‘I love you, Paula,’ he said, close to the holes, as if it was a secret.
•
That night, in bed without Mum in the house, I counted sheep while Robby slept. I held the sheep’s face steady between my hands and I looked up close at the light in the sheep’s eyes. The night went on and on. I kept counting and counting, sheep after sheep after sheep, until I saw a line of light coming through the crack between the curtains.
The next morning, after boilers on toast, Dad took us to Sunshine Hospital in the Holden. When we were in the car with him we didn’t speak. I shared Robby and Dad’s word-free language. All the windows were open and I watched as dust and crumbs and lost hairs and sand flew out the windows and into the sky where they joined the clouds and contaminants and refinery smoke. The car was clean.
We parked in Furlong Road, not far from the hospital.
When I got inside I looked for the sunshine but it was an absence, shut out by the roof and walls.
Dad walked up to a man behind a desk that said Information. ‘I’m looking for my wife, Paula Flick.’
The man checked a folder and answered, ‘F Ward.’
‘F, F, F, F, F,’ I chanted. ‘F Ward, F Ward, F Ward, good good good.’ My cells rotated in my fingertips. I was on end as we passed door after door after door on our way to F Ward. ‘F F F feff feff. Mum! Mum! Mum!’
‘Settle down, son,’ said Dad. But I couldn’t settle. ‘Mum Mum Mum!’
She was there, under the sheet, in the long white bed of F Ward, like a mountain of snow. I ran to her and something fell and knocked behind me and someone said, Easy does it. In one jump I was on the bed against my mum, and she was holding me tight.
