My Life As an Alphabet

by Barry Jonsberg

  I left to make the tea, which is something I enjoy doing.

  F

  IS FOR FRANCES (SKY)

  Rich Uncle Brian says newborn babies look like bulldogs. Most of the time, I know what he means. The hanging jowls and lolling heads.

  But Sky was different. Her cheeks were rounded and covered with soft down. When I ran my hand along her cheek it was like stroking a peach, faintly warm and the texture of satin. She smelled of powder and milk and her. I would bury my nose in her neck and fill my nostrils. I inhaled her while she made snuffling noises.

  Sky was my sister and I first saw her when I was five. When I think back to that time, I picture it in snapshots. Separate images connected by blanks, like white, empty spaces in a photograph album. Only occasionally do they spool together to form a story. I remember looking up at Mum in the kitchen. She was doing something with flour and her hands were dusty so she couldn’t touch me. But she was smiling and one white hand rested on the swell of her stomach. I remember Mum and Dad talking about the new baby and the changes ahead. They tried to make me feel comfortable about what was going to happen but they needn’t have bothered. I was excited, not because I knew what to expect [I was five. You don’t know what to expect at five. You don’t know what to expect at twelve. Maybe you never know what to expect], but because our household was alive with happiness. It bubbled and made us glow. The sun was brighter then, the grass greener, the clouds whiter.

  So maybe Sky did look like a bulldog and it’s only my memory that has re-formed her. I don’t think so, however. I have photographs, and though they sometimes lie, I do not believe so in this case. Not in this case.

  I remember nothing of Mum going into labour. I cannot remember Dad driving to the hospital. My first sight of Sky, though, is vivid still. A tiny arm poked from a tiny blanket. It was fleshy and rounded and ended in a clump of perfect fingers. It was hard to believe that a fingernail could be so small yet so beautifully finished. Mum sat up in a bed so white it glowed. It was as if she was partly buried in a snow drift. Her hair was wet and stuck to her head. One dark tendril curled against a pale cheek. She held something small and pink against her chest. The baby, too, had a lick of dark, wet hair that clung to her skin. I remember thinking that this small thing was a part of my Mum, chipped off in some way. The hair was the connection.

  ‘Say hello to your sister, Pumpkin,’ said Mum. Her voice was smiling, but I couldn’t take my eyes from the baby. I didn’t say hello. I simply stared.

  Dad leaned in. He put his index finger against the baby’s fist. Her fingers curled and then clamped down. She clutched his finger as if her life was anchored to it. It was then that my heart first lurched and something powerful was born within me. Such a tiny thing. Such a tiny, perfect thing.

  ‘Do you want to hold her, Candice?’ said Dad.

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he added. ‘We’ll help you. You won’t drop her.’

  I stared.

  Dad leaned in again.

  ‘Frances,’ he said. ‘Meet your big sister Candice.’

  Mum shifted her grip and turned the baby’s face towards me. Her eyelids were partly closed, her lips an exaggerated bow, impossible eyelashes against impossible skin. And then she opened her eyes and looked straight into mine. I was told afterwards that newborn babies cannot focus properly, that it is something they learn later. I do not believe it. She looked into my eyes and saw something there. Hers were a pale blue, though other colours shifted within them. I felt I was staring into someone who had no end, that the mind behind the gaze went on forever. I was staring into the sky and I knew that was her name. Frances was a label, but Sky was who she was. Who she will always be.

  Rich Uncle Brian lived in a large house with eight bedrooms that no one else ever stayed in. He was alone. Mum, Dad, Sky and I lived in a small house with only two bedrooms. It is where we live still. Mum and Dad put a cot in their bedroom and Sky slept there for her first six months. She woke at least three times a night because she was hungry. Sometimes she woke when she wasn’t hungry and Dad walked her round and round the house, her head peeping over his shoulder. He jogged a little as he walked so her head bounced slightly. He murmured to her. I followed him. Whenever Sky woke, I woke. Occasionally, I would wake slightly before she did, or maybe it would be more accurate to say slightly before she cried. Perhaps we always woke at the same time. But I knew when I glanced at my bedside clock and saw it was 12.30 or 2.55 or 4.13 that she was awake. I’d climb out of bed and go into Mum and Dad’s room, just as Sky was starting to sniffle and cry. At first, Mum and Dad took me back to bed, but it was never any use. Even when they forced me to stay in my room, I couldn’t sleep until she’d drifted off. After a while they stopped trying to keep me out of the room. I watched when Mum breastfed her. I followed behind Dad when he took Sky on her jiggly tour of the house. I helped with the changing duties. I became good at cleaning her tiny bottom and fitting it with a fresh nappy.

  Sky smiled whenever she saw me. She smiled even when she was too young to smile, when I was told it was merely wind contorting the face. She smiled.

  ‘Pumpkin, aren’t you tired?’ said Mum one morning over Weet-Bix.

  ‘No, Mummy,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just that all of us are having broken sleep, sweetie. Why don’t you leave Frances to us and get a decent night’s sleep?’

  ‘I just wake up,’ I said. ‘Whenever she wakes, I do. And I can’t go back to sleep then, Mummy. I just can’t. So do you know what I think we should do?’ I talked a lot more then. I didn’t even wait for Mum to reply. ‘I think we should put Sky’s cot in my room. She should sleep with me. That way Daddy might get more sleep. He told me he’s nearly fallen asleep when he’s been driving and that is bad. I’ll wake you up when Sky wakes up, so it’ll be the same as now, except I’ll get to sleep in the same room as her. Please, Mummy? Please?’

  Mum and Dad exchanged a look, but didn’t say anything. And another two months went by before they moved Sky’s cot into my room.

  She died four weeks later.

  It would be good in a way – a literary way, I suppose – to say all the details of that evening have been fixed permanently into my memory. Or, given that I had a special bond with Sky, to say I had some warning about what would happen when I fell asleep on the fourteenth of June, two days before my sixth birthday. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all.

  Mum read me a book as always. She kissed me on the forehead and told me to sleep well and to make sure the bed bugs didn’t bite. Dad tickled me on my side. Then they both went to Sky’s cot and bent over her sleeping form. My nightlight cast a pale red glow over the scene. I think I remember that Mum’s and Dad’s hands felt towards each other and their fingers entwined as they watched their youngest daughter. But maybe that is just memory playing tricks. Memory does that. And I was tired. My eyes were heavy and closing even then. The room was hazy somehow, as if I were seeing under water. Then, nothing. I woke so violently that I sat up in bed in one movement. My heart was thudding, the pulse of blood loud in my ears. The nightlight still cast its rosy glow, but the moon also washed my bedroom in silver. I glanced at my bedside clock, but the numerals were flashing on 2.22. A power cut maybe. I had no idea of the time. I put my feet on the floor, snuggled my toes into ridiculous slippers that were in the shape of bunnies’ heads and padded over to Sky’s cot.

  She lay on her back and her eyes were open. Moon-shadows and nightlights play tricks, as memories do, and for a moment I thought I saw her gaze shift and settle on my face. But the moment passed and I saw . . . nothing. The blue of her eyes was as intense as ever, but now there was no depth within them. It was as if the sky had become a shield, a plate of colour that was in one dimension only. I touched her face. It was warm, but my fingers sensed the heat departing.

  Then all I could hear was screaming. I suppose it was mine.

  No one talks about that night. I suppose there isn’t a great d
eal to say. Many months later, Mum and Dad took me to a man who tried to get me to say something about it, but I had lost interest in talking by then. After a while, we carried on as a family. Not like everything was the same. It wasn’t and we knew that. But we carried on because . . . well, what choice do we have?

  I’m twelve years old and smart, apparently. I know what people think. That I blame myself for what happened to Sky and that my strange behaviour stems from guilt. I’d put pressure on Mum and Dad to let Sky sleep in my bedroom. Would she have died if she’d stayed in Mum and Dad’s room? Was it all, in some peculiar fashion, a way of punishing myself for imaginary crimes? It would explain a lot. My writing of notes, rather than talking to people I don’t know well. Some of my . . . obsessions.

  But I don’t blame myself. It wasn’t my fault. Sky died of cot death. Sudden infant death syndrome is the medical term, though that explains nothing because no one knows why it happens. It just does. For no reason. No one’s to blame.

  Unfortunately the human mind doesn’t work that way. Logic is no good here. Candice feels she is to blame and that is the important thing. But all I can do is repeat: I know it wasn’t my fault.

  But it is unbearably sad.

  Families are fragile. Mine did not die when Sky did, but it took a battering and came out bruised and limping. It was the start of when things fell apart.

  Mum’s breast cancer. Dad’s increasing distance from everything except the computers in his shed and a faintly buzzing silhouette in the sky.

  I never saw them touch hands after that night. Now I am surrounded by unhappiness. Mum. Dad. Even Rich Uncle Brian.

  That is not my fault either.

  But maybe I can do something about it.

  Before the last traces of warmth flee my family too.

  G

  IS FOR GRAVITY

  ‘This is it,’ said Douglas Benson From Another Dimension. ‘My passport home.’

  ‘Wow!’ I said, and meant it.

  It looked like a tree, but apparently it was a passport home. It was a big, spreading passport with a gnarly trunk and loads of branches. Leaves blocked the sky and there was a bare patch of earth at the base where the grass did not grow. I stood on that patch and craned my neck. I made small cooing noises and hoped they sounded like appreciation. I had never seen a portal to another dimension before and the protocols were beyond me.

  ‘How does it work?’ I asked after a suitably awestruck pause.

  Douglas looked at me as if I were crazy, which was a little strange since I wasn’t the one claiming that a spreading tree was a gateway to another dimension. But then, I thought, I am crazy – so I suppose he was entitled.

  ‘I climb into its branches and jump,’ he said.

  ‘Hi tech,’ I replied.

  We were in his garden. I had come round for our afternoon tea date. Dad dropped me off, and when I had approached the house I had seen Douglas sitting under his passport, though at that time I’d thought, in my innocence, that it was a tree. Inside his house, I imagined, were facsimile parents, and I was nervous about meeting them so it was good to chat awhile and delay. I’d hoped to spy a postie’s bike in the yard, but there was no evidence of one, which was disappointing. Still, I reasoned to myself, you can’t have everything. A portal and a postie’s bike was probably asking for too much.

  ‘Come for a walk with me,’ said Douglas. ‘I want to show you something and the facsimile parents have informed me food will not be ready for another forty-five minutes.’ His lip curled slightly when he made the parent reference. His eyes might also have flashed, but I’m not prepared to swear to that in a court of law, so it’s safer to stick with the lip-curling.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  Douglas lived five-and-a-half kilometres outside Albright in a five-hectare block. Dad had driven up a rutted path, avoiding assorted chooks and one small lake. We retraced that journey up the path. It was a beautiful afternoon. The sky was clear and birds sang. It wasn’t difficult to imagine we were the only people in the world. Douglas said nothing for ten minutes, and although I like silence, generally speaking, I had questions that were, if not exactly burning, definitely smouldering around the edges.

  ‘Douglas,’ I said. ‘If travelling through dimensions happens when you jump out of a tree, are possums doing it all the time?’

  He sniffed.

  ‘It’s not just jumping out of a tree, Candice,’ he replied. ‘There are other things involved and the maths is quite tricky.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I was a bit tired from my question. We walked for another minute or two.

  ‘Do you have a pad and a pen with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I knew that interaction with facsimile parents was inevitable and had come prepared.

  ‘I’ll draw you a diagram when we get there,’ he said.

  ‘Okay.’

  There wasn’t far away as it turned out. We’d veered off the driveway and wandered down a rough path through thick bushland, the kind of path that animals make when they can be motivated. The bushland wasn’t very interesting – flat and crowded with spindly gums – so I was surprised when we came to a clearing. Surprised and alarmed, since we were virtually on the edge of a ravine. I say ‘ravine’, but that might be flattering it somewhat. Then again, I am afraid of heights, so even modest drops are ravines to me. I took a couple of tentative steps forward and cautiously peered over the edge. Slabs of rock lined the sides and forty metres below a small stream trickled in a picturesque fashion. I quickly stepped back. It’s not that I don’t like small picturesque trickling streams, but I prefer them when they are on my level. Ideally in a photograph. Douglas sat close to the edge and I joined him. Perhaps a metre behind.

  ‘Pretty,’ I said to his back, though I wasn’t referring to that. And the scenery was pretty. It was a little surprise, like finding a bright stone in a pile of manure. That, I should stress, has never happened to me [possibly because I have never looked].

  ‘It’s nice here,’ said Douglas. ‘I often come here just to think.’

  I was pleased to learn that Douglas had brought me to his special private place. It felt like an honour. I shuffled forward on my bottom so that I was nearly level with him.

  ‘May I use your pad and pen?’ he asked.

  I produced them from my bag. He found a clean sheet and drew a line.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘A line,’ I replied. It wasn’t difficult.

  ‘Correct. A line. One dimension.’ He drew another three lines and lifted the pad towards my face.

  ‘And that?’

  ‘A square,’ I replied. ‘Or maybe a rectangle.’

  ‘Correct. Two dimensions.’ He scribbled some more.

  ‘A cube,’ I said, without being asked. I was on a roll.

  ‘The illusion of a third dimension.’ Then he went a bit mad with the pen. Lines appeared all over the place.

  ‘And this?’ he asked when he’d finished.

  I screwed up my eyes and probably my forehead. I might even have tilted my head to one side.

  ‘A mess?’ I suggested.

  ‘A tesseract,’ he said. At least I got three of the letters right and in the correct order. ‘If a cube is a square taken into the third dimension, then a tesseract is a cube taken to the fourth dimension. For obvious reasons it’s difficult to draw.’

  ‘I thought time was the fourth dimension,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘What I’m trying to explain is that to travel between alternative worlds I need to take the tesseract to a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and then a ninth dimension, wrap myself within that construct and then use gravity to effect the journey.’

  ‘That’s where the tree comes in,’ I suggested.

  ‘Correct.’ He sighed and placed the pad down on the ground. ‘That’s how I got here. Logically, it’s how I should get back.’

  ‘But?’

  Douglas gazed ou
t over the ravine for a few moments. He cupped his chin in a hand.

  ‘Timing is everything,’ he said. ‘It must be at six-thirty in the evening. I’ve been over the maths time and time again. But it doesn’t work.’

  ‘Any idea why not?’

  ‘The only solution I can come up with is that gravity has a slightly different quality in this world.’

  ‘So?’

  He thought for a moment or two.

  ‘So maybe I need to jump from somewhere higher than a tree,’ he whispered. It was as though he was talking to himself. Douglas peered over the edge of the ravine once more and suddenly the afternoon felt chilly. I hugged myself.

  Douglas’s mum was called Penelope and she was very pleasant. Facsimile Penelope. When she found out I was interested in her work, she said she would take me for a ride on her postie bike, but it never happened. She was small with a face like a walnut. Probably a result of riding around all day in the sun. Douglas’s facsimile dad was called Joe and he had big ears and a bigger smile. I liked them. The parents I mean, not the ears, though I quite liked them too. We even had a good conversation before I had to get my pad and pen out.

  ‘Do you like vegetables, Candice?’ asked Penelope.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Roast beef?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Gravy?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ I was feeling confident.

  ‘Is it okay if they are all on the same plate?’

  I was ready for the yes, thank you, but the question stopped me in my tracks. I must have looked puzzled because Penelope continued.

  ‘It’s just that your mum told me that you like to have things a certain way, and Douglas mentioned your pencil case.’ My puzzlement clearly hadn’t diminished because she went on. ‘The way you like to have everything lined up just so.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘So I wondered whether you were okay about having different colours of food on the same plate.’