by Sofie Laguna
Part Two
For the next three years all the words Robby didn’t say entered his bones and muscles, fibres and skin, and he grew taller and taller. The unspoken words were the nutrients taking him further from ground level. His eyes remained the same; they were no age, like water. He only ever answered my questions now when we were far from the house – only then would he help me with my obstacles. I had reached nine but I stayed small. Robby had reached fifteen and was taller than Dad. When Robby looked at him, his eyes were so big Dad had to turn from them. They were pools without bottoms. Under the water there were lands my dad didn’t want to visit; he knew he would be a stranger, without language or a currency.
I had to go to school every day now.
‘Do you understand, Jimmy? Is it clear?’ my teacher, Mrs Stratham, asked.
I heard instructions but two of the sentences came to me at the same time, one on top of the other, like bunks. I didn’t know which to choose; you can’t have a top without a bottom.
I needed extra attention that Mrs Stratham had no time for. She wasn’t paid enough to look after thirty ordinary kids and one retard. ‘Have you considered a different program?’ she said to my mother. ‘Have you thought of Pine Centre?’
Pine Centre was two bus rides away. It was built on the outskirts so that nobody had to see. Once we went for an interview and the windows were high up and at first I saw nothing behind them but I kept looking and looking and soon I did see things behind them. But not whole things. Boys in half.
Dr Eric wrote a letter to the school that said I was their responsibility. If it wasn’t for Dr Eric I’d have been with the half-boys at Pine Centre. Other teachers let me run but Mrs Stratham couldn’t stand the pressure. I was cooking her from underneath. I might be the smallest part of the machine but I was the hottest.
When I thought of school my vitals grew heavy. I had to drag them. Every weekday morning was a fight with my mother.
‘Come on, Jimmy, we have to go. I don’t want to be late for work.’
‘I can come to work with you, Mum. I can read my book for Mavis Tits.’
‘It’s Tidd, Mavis Tidd, Jimmy. No you can’t. You’re too old for all that now. You have to go to school just like everyone else.’
‘But Mrs Stratham, Mum, Mrs Stratham.’
‘What about Mrs Stratham?’
‘Mrs Stratham is a crab.’
‘Jimmy, don’t say things like that! Esther does her best, poor thing. Not everyone knows how to handle you. You leave poor Mrs Stratham alone.’
‘She doesn’t leave me alone, Mum! She doesn’t leave me alone!’
‘Come on, Jimmy. Get your shoes on,’ said Robby. He threw my school shoes at me across the floor. Robby was at Altona High. Sometimes he left the house early on his bike so he could play football with his friends on the oval. I’d seen his long pale legs sprinting across the grass towards the ball. Just beyond the ball was the goal. Robby knew where the ball needed to land. He sized it up, his legs propelling him forward towards his destination. Anything between him and the ball didn’t enter his vision.
‘Ham sandwich, Jimmy,’ Mum said, holding it up for me to see. She packed it into my lunchbox. ‘I want you to eat it this time, okay, love?’
A lot of times I didn’t eat. If a bend in my pipe was too sudden the food got caught. It happened a lot at school because of the positions. Mrs Stratham said, ‘Sit still while you eat, Jimmy. Everyone else can manage, why can’t you?’ Why couldn’t I manage? Why couldn’t I?
Mum put a banana in with the sandwich. ‘Promise me you’ll eat today.’
‘Yes, Mum, yes, Mum. Ham sandwich for lunch, followed by banana. Orders from above.’
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ she said. She took a plate from the fridge and held it out to Robby. Blocks of chocolate covered in little white ants sat in a pile; by the end of the day there wouldn’t be any left. ‘Robby, love, take a lamington to have with your lunch.’ Even though I knew Robby didn’t want the lamington, he took it and put it in his bag. He did it as a favour.
‘See you, Mum,’ said Robby. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. He let her. There weren’t many chances anymore.
I couldn’t get the knots out of my laces; my fingers were as thick as slugs, and the knots were tricky. I picked and picked but the knots wouldn’t loosen.
‘For heaven’s sake, Jimmy,’ said Mum. ‘You have to go to school.’ She kneeled down beside me and grabbed at the laces. Everything was hard for her – hard to get down and hard to get up and hard to pull in the air. It hovered thickly around her mouth and Mum was barely strong enough to drag it in, and when she did it couldn’t get past the dust to fill her tank.
I put my arms around her. ‘I’m ready for school, Mum. I’ll eat the ham sandwich.’
‘Oh, Jimmy, my love.’ She looked at me and hugged me and in flew the air.
Mum and me climbed into the Holden. Mum was wearing her apron that said Westlake Nursing Home and I was wearing my jumper that said Altona Primary School. I wished we could swap. Mum turned the key.
On the drive I stared out the window as everything rushed past. In the car I was the slow one. I wished the drive never had to end; I liked to feel the engine beneath us, rumbling and wobbling my mother and me, my mother’s hand tight around the gearstick, jerking it one way then the other as she pulled the car from number to number, her fingers with the rings squeezing the skin, her nails painted pink. The streets and lights and houses and other cars outside the Holden never stopped moving. Sections might stop, but then all the other parts would work faster to keep the balance. The whole never stopped. I saw it from the inside of the car and even that was moving; my mother’s hand, the windscreen wipers, the Doris tape singing ‘Dream a Little Dream’, my mum leaning forward to wipe the steam from the windscreen.
‘Mum, does any part stop?’ I asked her.
‘What, love?’
‘What part is always, always stopped?’
‘What part of what?’ She looked across at me. ‘Do you have your raincoat in your bag, Jimmy? This doesn’t look like drying up.’
‘Mum – in the world. What part is always stopped?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You can see all the moving parts, but is there a part that is always stopped?’
Mum puffed her cheeks up with air and puffed them out. ‘A part that is always stopped . . .’
‘Yes, Mum. One part. One part that is always stopped.’
‘Hmmm.’ She frowned. ‘If it’s raining in the afternoon I’ll be at the side street, okay? Don’t come around here, it’s too far to walk in the wet.’
‘Mum! What part is always stopped?!’
‘Don’t shout, love. I don’t know what part. Can I think about it today and then tell you tonight?’
‘Yes, Mum, yes. Don’t forget, Mum. A single part that is always stopped. Always.’
‘Here we are, Jimmy.’ She pulled up at the drop-off lane. ‘Now quickly, hop out.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’m going to be late.’
‘No answer no answer no answer,’ I sang as I walked my heavy legs up the path towards the school gates.
•
Mrs Stratham was a crab just like the ones Robby and I used to find on the rocks at Seaholme before the concrete starts. When Mrs Stratham got home after a day at school, she pulled her human skin over her head and there was the crab, black shining eyes on orange sticks seeking out her prey. Beetles and rats and rabbits hid under her chairs, trembling. Mrs Stratham’s bed was a rock and she didn’t have blankets, only armour. She drank salt water from a teacup with her breakfast.
Mum said, No more crab talk, Jimmy; it’s disrespectful. Esther is trying.
As Mrs Stratham stood at the front of the class I watched for the changes.
‘Good morning, class, I hope you have all done the homework I set for you,’ she said. She turned around to write on the board and I noticed that under her back piece was a cave. Her skirt wasn’t
long enough to hide it.
‘Jimmy,’ Mrs Stratham said, her crab lips snapping. ‘You can do this one. What is three times thirty-three?’
The class went very quiet as they waited for me, the Detective of Threes, to solve the problem. I closed my eyes and saw more and more threes everywhere I looked. In every line of threes there was one other number – six, four, one, nine, seven, seven, one – but was the answer in the diagonal or the straight? Nobody in the class made a sound.
The threes kept coming. I couldn’t see beyond them; it was an infinity of threes. I went from still to running, with no time in between. I got off my seat and ran around the chairs and around Mrs Stratham’s desk and past the windows to the door and back again. ‘Three three three three!’ I shouted, touching everything I could. ‘Three three three!’ The answer lay on the surfaces and every surface was a clue. ‘Three three three!’
Crash! The lizard’s aquarium shattered behind me. ‘Three three three!’ I shouted.
Linda shrieked as the lizard ran across her feet. Suddenly everyone in the class was moving. I felt the air tear through me as the threes scattered, running for their lives. Girls were screaming, ‘There! There it is, Mrs Stratham! There!’ and the boys grabbed rulers and poked them into the shelves and under the desks.
‘Children! Please settle down!’ Mrs Stratham was on her hands and knees, looking for the lizard. Her skirt lifted at the back and I saw into the cave. It smelled of seaweed and fish. She waved her pincers wildly around her head and her crab parts dripped. ‘You sit on that chair and don’t move, Jimmy. Don’t move.’
I saw the lizard beneath the map of the world, its grey tail close to South America. I stopped in my tracks, my eyes on the lizard. I was panting. The lizard didn’t move a muscle and neither did I. I looked at the sharp spikes on the reptile neck, its green eyes, and long claws. I noticed how still the lizard was, completely stopped in all parts of itself. I took a deep breath and breathed out as slow as I could. I set myself to the clock of the lizard. Suddenly I knew the answer to the problem of the threes. ‘Ninety-nine, Mrs Stratham. Three times thirty-three is ninety-nine.’
But Mrs Stratham never heard me. She was still looking for the lizard.
•
At the end of the day Robby and his friends, Justin and Scotty, were waiting for me outside the school gates. They stood with their legs apart over dragster bikes. Their hair was long and Scotty had an unlit cigarette behind his ear. Their bags hung loosely from their shoulders as if they hardly cared if the bag was there at all, it was up to the bag.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked Robby.
‘They wanted her to do the dinner shift,’ he said. ‘She left a message at the school for me to pick you up.’
‘Feel like a ride?’ said Justin.
I nodded.
‘Get on,’ said Robby. I climbed on the back of Robby’s dragster and we got going through the streets, past all the other kids walking and past Mrs Stratham crawling into her Ford and past the slow mothers pushing prams. We went up and down, up and down and Scotty lifted his front wheel into the air and shouted, ‘Fuck!’
I held onto Robby’s shirt and felt the hard bones of his body as he pumped the pedals and we rode past the cracked driveway of Nineteen Emu, past its narrow door, and up Maidstone, then onto K Creek Road where the trucks carried the fuel in giant tanks at high speed into the city beneath the bridge. Robby pedalled faster and faster and Scotty overtook us, mouth open, hair blowing back, and shouted, ‘Yah yah yah faaarrrkkk!’ But then Robby stood up on his pedals and pushed his legs up and down like pistons on a steamer, push push push, he went faster than all of them, even with me on the back, my bag swinging against his legs. Thwack thwack thwack Robby Robby Robby fastest of them all.
•
Just after Robby turned fifteen Mum said I had to move into her sewing room. If you cut our old room in half, the sewing room was smaller than one of the halves. ‘Robby needs his space, love,’ Mum explained. ‘He’s too old to share a room with you.’
‘But why, Mum, why?’
‘You’ll understand when you get older, Jimmy.’
‘What will he do with it?’
‘With what?’
‘The space.’
‘I don’t know. That’s Robby’s business. Help me carry your books into the other room.’
‘The sewing room. Why don’t you call it by its name?’
‘It’s not going to be the sewing room; it’s going to be your room. Come on, Jimmy. Pick up your books and let’s go. I want to get this done before Rob gets home.’
‘Okay, Mum, okay.’
Mum’s sewing room only had one small window and all you could see through it was a brick wall that held up the neighbour’s house. In the corner of the room was the Singer on a table. There were racks of skirts and fabrics hanging from bars on wheels. Mum sweated while she worked. ‘I was never a natural,’ she said. She did it for a bit of her own to spend. ‘For treats, hey, Jimmy?’
Mum’s mother didn’t teach her much because Mum was the last one of nine and by number eight she was done, so Mum was put on a ship from England leaving all the others behind. She couldn’t remember their touch. It had evaporated.
When Mum tried to climb her family tree to find the ones she left behind, the branches broke beneath her feet. Even if you hacked at the tree with a stick, there was nothing growing. There weren’t even insects, only dust. All Mum got was sewing.
‘Bloody pain,’ she said, trying to thread the needle one more time.
I missed the sound of Robby’s breathing as he slept, steady and light. I always knew he would take another breath. There was a small beat between breathing out all the air, and taking more in. It was a suspension. When the next breath came I filled up with it. Now I was in the sewing room by myself, separated from Robby by a wall. I heard guitar music through the panelling.
I was dreaming that I was being built. I woke up just before I was completed. Concrete trucks were parked along the road, their loads turning to mix the water with the powder. I woke when the shovel went in, digging deep.
I came out of my room and saw Mum lying on the kitchen couch. She was on her back, one arm in the other as if she was making a sling for herself. Her nose was shining and red. I could hear the tentacles in her throat waving, but not fast enough to clear the dust. The Home Sweet Home pillow lay on the floor beside her. She looked like a big cake that wasn’t cooked or ready for the world. The Murder at the Vicarage lay on the floor beside her. On the cover was a man leaning forward across a table, crying. Three other men stood around him looking worried.
‘Mum?’
She didn’t stir.
‘Mum?’
My centre began to speed. Mum never slept in the day; there was too much to do. She had to prune and sweep and wipe and keep half an eye on me. Only at night did she sleep, when the darkness made a blanket and hid her uncooked bulk. My skin prickled.
‘Mum?’
Robby came into the kitchen wearing his green and white football shorts. He had made it into the All Ones football team. Robby had muscles growing up his legs the same as the ones I saw in the rabbit that Uncle Rodney shot.
‘Jimmy, what are you . . .?’ He took another step inside and saw Mum. He gasped. ‘Jimmy? Where’s Dad?’ he asked. His voice was light on top, but underneath it was dense.
Mum stirred, opening her eyes. When she looked up at Robby she forgot that her tubes were thick with dust and that her nose was swollen and that her arm was sore; she radiated. It was the same way she looked in the photograph when she first brought Robby home from the hospital and he was wrapped in the blue rug and was small like a present. My firstborn, she whispered softly as she traced her finger over the picture.
When she smiled at Robby I saw blood in the corner of her mouth. I went to her and held her and pressed my face against her swollen nose and she cried out, ‘No, don’t, Jimmy!’
Robby swallowed and the voice control box under the skin
of his throat bobbed down then up again. His face had turned white. He walked out of the room.
‘Robby, I’m alright . . .’ she said. ‘Jimmy, love, get me a glass of water, will you? From the fridge.’ Mum pulled herself up to sitting. ‘And my puffer from the bench.’ Her voice sounded scratched. I didn’t want to leave her; I wanted to leave the water instead. ‘Please, Jimmy. A glass of water for Mum?’
I walked slowly to the fridge. When I opened it I heard something smash outside. Mum heard it too. Her head turned sharply to the window. She looked scared.
‘Mum? Mum? Mum? Did you hear that?’
‘My puffer, love?’ she said. ‘Quick.’
I left the water and got her puffer. I was starting to shake. Mum took a suck of her puffer, then she got up and went to the window.
There came a thump, like something against wood. I was speeding up, pressing against my own skin from the inside.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Mum. ‘Oh God.’
I ran to the window, I ran to the door, I ran to the window, I ran to the door, I ran to Mum, I ran to the sink, I ran in a circle, then in another circle.
‘Jimmy, stop. Jimmy!’ She went to the back door and looked out and I followed her, and she said, ‘No Jimmy, no!’ and she pushed me back, so hard that I fell. ‘Oh sorry love, sorry,’ she said, taking me to the couch. Panic ran through her streams. Her eyes were stretched – she was going faster than me. She ran back to the window. ‘Oh no, oh god Jimmy, stay there. Stay there on the couch and don’t move,’ she said, and her crying was shot through with fear. She grabbed her keys from the bench and she ran to the back door. I tried to follow her out but she pushed me back again, and locked me inside. ‘Stay still Jimmy!!’ she said. Through the glass I saw her go to the shed door, pull it open and go inside.
