I shake my head, what?
“Some religions and societies aren’t so accepting. But your mum, Nate and I—we just want you to be happy.”
“Have ‘fun’, you mean,” I say, quoting Mum. “Anyway, tell me more about this chick.”
Scout tells me her name, Steph, what she’s studying, and some general interests, but within no time she’s dead to the world.
Since she’s out, I feel lonely again. Mum still isn’t back, and the only things that will calm me right now are Seth and Tristan. I need to hold them.
In the end I peel Tristan from under the sheets, carry him over to Seth’s single bed and sleep head to toe with them, me curled up at the bottom, so hopefully they still have enough room.
For as much as I struggle sleeping after drinking and parties, tonight is like every other when I come to sleep here.
I’m out before I have to start trying to sleep.
• • •
I am awoken by a crash and a subsequent, “Oh, crappity.”
Eyes sprung open, I take in my surroundings, wedged between the twins. I slide down until I can climb over Seth and tiptoe out unnoticed. By the time I reach the living area, she’s still palm to wall with jelly legs and cackling every time she stumbles.
“Mary-friggin-Jane. You arrive.”
“What?” Her eyes scan the carpet under her feet in sweeping motions until she reaches my face. “Huh? Oh, I’m Mary Jane. Right.”
Mum’s name is Mary. Just Mary. But when you’re as high as a kite as often as she is, Mary Jane tends to roll off the tongue naturally. Since Mum’s all about fun, she thinks it’s hilarious. The early hours of this morning are no different.
I go through the usual.
“How much did you have?”
“A few. Many. Whatever, Kalli.”
“Alcohol, weed, ecstasy …” She gets the point.
“Oh, shh.”
“Time?”
She stumbles on that one. “Early?”
“Or late,” I mumble to myself, but she doesn’t hear. I check the wall clock that’s opposite her, the one she’s forgotten about which answers all my questions. “It’s 5.55 am.”
“’Kay.”
“Who were you with?”
“Betsy. Kalli …” She finds a chair at the kitchen table, sits and lazily wipes her flyaway hairs from her face. “… you’re nineteen.”
“You’re thirty-seven,” I counter.
“You should be the one coming home at this time.”
I lay my palms on the table in front of her, lean down and say, “Yet you’re the stumbling mess doing exactly that.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You’re a fucking mess, Mary Jane.”
At that I feel done. We get nowhere with this banter. As soon as I stalk off to the kitchen to grab some painkillers I regret not calling her “Mum” because she doesn’t find that fun at all, and if there’s one thing Mary Perkins needs it’s an OD of boring and that still won’t tame her.
I down two pills and walk to the hall, hearing Mum slur, “Still love you, Kalli girl.”
I detour to my bedroom, land on my bed with my feet under my ass and slam my fists into the cover, harder and harder until I hear the springs creaking. By this stage a wave of satisfaction, which closely resembles calm, relaxes me and I trust myself to be able to contain myself enough. Bonus, Scout is passed out and doesn’t wake.
I hate Mum saying how much she loves me when she’s high or drunk because she never tells the twins or I when she’s sober, and that breaks my heart.
I get up and check on the twins, and discover they’re still sleeping. I press my lips to both of their foreheads and the feel of that tender skin warms my heart as much as it hurts. I wonder why our mum won’t just damn care.
I pop my head back into the kitchen and see her slumped over the table, her arm curled around her head.
“Mum,” I call. No response. “Mum!” I shout-whisper.
“Mmm?” She looks around for the voice until she places me.
“Go to bed and sleep there.”
“It’s fine,” she mumbles, probably into sleep.
“Now, Mary-friggin-Jane. Get to bed now.”
“Oh,” she says, wiping the flyaway hairs back again. “Yeah, bed. Thanks for reminding me.”
At that, we both stalk back to our respective rooms like zombies.
• • •
I reach for my phone out of habit before I sleep, then decide to start a text to Nate. I close it just as fast and try to sleep. I even count the fine hairs on Scout’s forearm under my bedside-table light. I give up after forty-three hairs.
So, again, I pull out my phone, open a text to Nate and breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
All I can remember is Scout boggle-eyed over my admission. I don’t see the big deal. I’ve kissed her, kissed him. Why is it suddenly weird that we did something that involved more?
Kalli: Ey, Mary Jane came home 10 mins ago. That pretty much explains that situation. But want to make sure we’re all cool n stuff? I’m all for winning bets ;) but wanna know we’re still cool? All good? K so yeah. Morning.
Pressing send must shoot an automated response that makes my body thrum with electricity. I can’t even close my eyes without wanting to snap them open, and my fingers are itching to fiddle with something. I should want to sleep after being up for two hours short of a day. However, this morning’s events haven’t exactly been sleep-inducing.
I don’t know how much time passes but I end up at my desk writing some sheet music to play on the violin. I write down several bars, hum it back to myself, and each time they become increasingly less stupid.
I’ve been playing the violin since I was seven. Back then, Mum and my aunty Nicole were still talking, and it was her who suggested I start since I loved music so much.
I focus on my song and stop thinking. Just stare. I feel the beat in my head then play an imaginary violin as I always do. My eyes glaze over and so does my focus on this room.
That’s when I feel the rhythm I need. I was mixing thoughts, thinking about pop while trying to write music with the feel of my favourite Bach pieces.
From here on out, the writing is easy. Twelve years of playing, talking, breathing this language comes much easier than sleep. Sleep can induce nightmares, making me a sobbing ten-year-old girl, ashamed of myself. Music makes me someone I’m proud to be.
At some point I realise the time. Sort of. Scout is waking, and I know this means it’s much later than I think it is. I look to my radio clock and it reads 8.05 am. Scout, being a light sleeper, moans a bit and says in this zombie tone, “God, Kalli! God.”
“My shit singing voice got you again, didn’t it?”
She stuffs an extra pillow under her head and her eyes focus on me. I must seem awake and vibrant, and so unlike what I should be after our night.
Her eyes pop a moment before she says, “What happened?”
“Mary Jane happened.”
“Ohh.”
“Yeah, you know how she left the boys? She got in at six.”
“Did you rip into her?”
“The usual.”
“Maybe she needs help, you know? Not a beating.”
“A beating,” I whisper to myself.
“Huh?”
“Oh,” I say. “Just gotta go for a sec.”
I storm down to Mum’s bedroom. Her clothes are strewn everywhere as if she were the nineteen-year-old in this house. Light streams in between the curtains and the sides of the window, and illuminates the room enough to see her splayed out, with one leg curled out of the bedspread.
You know, I can still smell her: perspiration mixed with smoke mixed with the sweetly sick smell of weed. It’s just a hint, like a spray of air-freshener in a room twenty minutes later, but it’s there. And it fuels my rage.
I shake Mum until she’s lucid, and then say, “Sit up. Now.”
She takes a while to stay awake, understand my words and prop her
self up, but she does.
“Oh, Kalli. I’m in bed? My head hurts. I have to make it u—”
My finger to her lips, her voice shuts down. And I take over.
“This is a strike. This strike means you fuck up like this a couple more times and you’re out. You know baseball, right, Mary? That’s right. How could you forget? Chester is a fanatic. You remember way back then when your ex taught you the rules? Same applies here, except I don’t get to forget about you; you’ll always be in my life.
“I don’t know what I’ll do when you strike out, but mark my words: get close to leaving your four-year-old boys alone through the night again and I’ll make sure you don’t see them anymore.”
Mum’s pretty lucid by the end of my spiel. She doesn’t have wrinkles yet, but her skin looks looser than it should for someone at thirty-seven. Her eyes used to be a bright blue but they’re now dull, slowly seeping colour as a result of the drugs she’s flushed through her system for years. It’s a damn shame to ruin a pretty woman’s face as she has.
And for a moment, I see no fun written over that sullen expression. I hear the biggest lie of all, “I never mean to hurt you. You and them.”
Yes, you do.
When you are a slave to drugs and alcohol, you give permission to that master to forget about anything else but your desperate addiction. The obsession gets so deep you start believing it’s everyone else with the issue.
4
My violin lessons start at nine thirty this morning. The ground level of the shop sells everything from guitars and violins to little plastic recorders and knick-knacks. I continue upstairs to the teaching rooms, and in my room, I put down my bag and violin.
The reflection in the mirror on the sliding closet door is a shock, as usual. I’m in a cutesy knee-length dress with my shoulders covered and a high, cowbell neckline, which doesn’t match my personality considering I’m still without sleep and livid from the early hours of this morning. But the paying parents appreciate it when I look like I have nothing else to do but wait for their children to arrive. And fair enough; each 45-minute lesson costs as much as it does to fill up the tank of a standard car.
I pull out the sheet music I wrote and mull it over in my head while I do some scales and exercises to warm up my freezing fingers. Weather at this time of year isn’t the coldest by far but it’s enough to freeze me silly between where I parked and the entry to this little double-storey building.
Then I warm up on a new piece one of my students will be starting this morning. When I’m at my lessons, I rarely play my own stuff. I run my eye over my student’s sheet music, noting it’s heavy on dramatic shorter notes. I keep looking back to the wall clock as I flick through songs and practice. Playing the violin, I easily lose track of time.
Most of my friends hate waking at this hour for work, but I’ve never hated coming here. I’d come still, even if they couldn’t pay me. It’s my place where I can escape.
Until my phone buzzes.
Nate: Kall Bell :) U said ur working, right? Downstairs waiting on the bench beside the guitars. Or I will be in 2 mins.
My phone reads 8.55 am, so there’s time to catch up before 9.30. Nate always puts me in a good mood and, with three and a half hours of lessons headed my way, I could certainly use some of that.
I put my violin back in its case, fold it away, latch it up and hide it in the closet.
Just to make sure.
My violin is my most prized possession, and expensive, thanks to the twins’ father, Chester who happened to have $1,500 to give me.
By the time I start padding down the carpeted stairs to the ground store level, Nate’s leant over, plucking at an electric guitar’s strings. They barely make a sound, and when they do it’s mainly the noise of vibrating strings. He senses me looking at him, so I look away with a smirk plastered on my face.
The bench is wide enough for two so I slip beside him, lean over too, and cross my arms over my knees. I watch him play with the same electric guitar, humming notes to make a sound instead.
Feeling useless with unoccupied hands, I walk to another section and bring back a display violin. It’s a tiny half-sized one. I lay the violin on my lap, and pluck the G string. The note is low and angry, and grabs Nate’s attention.
“Well, who knew a tiny violin could make a better sound than this thing.”
Nate follows the path to where I grabbed the violin from and comes back with the bow. I could say something, but I don’t. Just watch him lean over my lap to play. He starts on the down-bow, and even worse than when he was playing with the electric guitar, this one makes no sound at all. Of course it doesn’t but Nate as a non-violinist looks up with the cutest expression, lip pouted and turned out in sadness.
“You need to put resin on it to make a sound.”
“Yeah, but it’s stupid, ruined.” Nate drags the bow across, holding it with a fist, instead of similar to a pencil, which would be a problem but there’s no sound without the resin anyway. “See?” he says. “It just doesn’t even work.”
I shake my head, and Nate notices my passion, even just with the violin resting on my lap, my hands not even touching it. Maybe it’s the way I melt away and my world doesn’t matter. Around a violin, magic stirs in me. It feels that way, at least. And it’s nothing like the ecstasy I get when I hook up. It fills me with joy and keeps me whole and satisfied for long after.
“Here.”
I hold out my hand and Nate places the bow in my palm. I didn’t think about when he would lay it down, how his fingers would touch me. They feel strangely natural, like I could just hold his fingers in mine until someone has to kick us off the bench. His fingers are on the colder side, mine warm and calloused after warming up before.
Yet, it’s still calmness that seeps into me in that dragged-out moment as he passes over the bow.
I clear my throat, pretend nothing changed, and say, “Resin is what makes the sound, dummy. You need to layer it on the first time to cover all the strings. I just swipe it a few times before I practice to top up because it’s mostly already coated.”
“You’ve got such a big head Kall Bell with your jargon talk.”
“I’m not even sprucing up the explanation. It’s just fact.”
“I think that vibration of yours is still finer than your violin smarts.”
Oh God, not the stupid vibration/vibrato joke.
I tilt my head back, chuckling open mouthed. Both Nate and I realise at the same time my vulnerable position, and he goes in with the finger at the same time I clamp my teeth together, trapping his suspect finger about to go down my gaping hole.
“Can’t even laugh around you.”
“Nope. Not even to brag about that beautiful vibration you can do with your fingers.”
I chuckle close-mouthed this time, then say, “Nate it’s vibrato, and it’s a violin term, not even dirty in the slightest until it comes out of your mouth.”
He winks. “I’m a dirty MoFo.”
“Nate …” I rub comforting circles on his thigh. “You’re not half as dirty as me and my vibrating fingers, the way I hold that neck and move my fingers up and down.”
Still looking at me, his face is motionless apart from his eyelids, rapidly blinking. He gulps, says, “We’re still talking about violin here, right?”
To demonstrate, I make do with the tiny half-size, grip my chin extra tight since display violins don’t come with a shoulder rest and the wood is shinier than polished shoes, and hold my fingers down, pretending to play that new song of my student’s with the dramatic short notes, adding trembling fingers on the strings to create the vibrato sound as if I were playing with a bow.
“See?” I say to Nate’s beaming smile.
I crinkle my forehead and look away, biting my lip. The heck? What was that face? I stand up and put the violin and its bow back on display, and walk back to see Nate has had his eye on me—or my back and my ass—while I did so.
Fine, he wants to play like
that?
“Let’s go out back.”
We go through the back door and sit on the concrete steps. It’s so run down here, and I don’t know why the owners don’t bother to fix it up. Concrete with snaking cracks. Weeds clawing up through those cracks. Moss flourishing in the corners. The back fence has medium-sized holes where chunks in the planks have been hacked away by thugs, and the public on the sidewalk on the other side are loud and visible. The store owners’ kids play chasey and such out here in the morning until their older kid can pick them up at midday.
“So,” Nate starts.
I pick at the hem of his sleeve. It’s a vintage imitation T-shirt, made to look as if it’s been worn for years before Nate got to it. Faded black, charcoal. The hem is sort of frayed and the style is so effortless as it frames his muscles. “I love this one.”
“You said that last night when you went down on me.”
Stopping to recall, I go through what we said and what we did, and I mostly remember touching and the like. There couldn’t have been much talking, and even though I wasn’t sober, I’m sure I’d remember.
“No I didn’t?”
“Nah.” He nudges my arm. “I didn’t know how else to bring it up.”
“But you did.”
“Kall, I can’t just talk about—”
“About me asking to suck your cock?”
He groans into his palms, the sound muffled as his embarrassment eats him up. Typical Nate. He has a problem with talking dirty to me, even though I do it to him.
“How do you do that?”
“Cock?”
“Um, yes.”
I tap his forearm. His elbows are resting on his thighs, his hands clenched in the middle, and they’re in my way, frankly. Serves him right to be teased if he’s going to sexualise my vibrato skills. Nate unclasps his hands and I push them besides his thighs where I know they’ll graze my ass when I do what I’m about to do.
As I manoeuvre one leg over his lap, I’m conscious of the noises of the cars and people doing their thing and the kids running around. It’s something I’m always on the lookout for. It’s the silence I have to worry about.
Being Kalli Page 3
