Being Kalli

by Rebecca Berto

  The front door is locked when I rock the knob. I knew it. She left. Did she get in an accident? Oh, crap.

  “Nate!” He comes up beside me and he too tries the handle. “She’s not here. She left but why wouldn’t she have been there?”

  I, of course, am not sure if I need that answer, and luckily Nate can’t answer for me.

  “Here, we’ll call the local cop station, search the streets. Just take a drive and see what we can do. She’s probably fine.”

  I take in our lonely house in the dark of night and the lamppost illuminating the front bit of the lawn. And, as I look around the sides of the house, I notice there’s light on in the garage.

  I drop my heels and run.

  It’s moments like this when you look back and wonder if it would have made a difference if you just ran that damn red light. Or all of them.

  Would it have mattered?

  You wonder if you hadn’t wasted time looking here and there and ultimately nowhere, in the right spot.

  Would it have mattered?

  You wonder why your feet pound so slowly against the concrete driveway when your chest is pleading for you to stop for air. If you could have got there faster. You wonder why your feet feel like lead, and why you seem to be running on the spot like in those cartoons.

  It matters.

  When you find a hose attached from the exhaust, around the car and stuck inside the driver’s door, everything you could have done matters.

  Behind me, hands come around my waist and yank.

  “Nate!” I scream. “My fucking mum. Let go!”

  “Kalli, you’ll die if you go in there.”

  I’ll die even if I stay out here and let this happen. What if she’s still alive?

  I ignore him and yank for the knob again. When we share a look, he knows my meaning. I would knock him out cold if he dares stop me again. Nate dials on his phone and I chase him outside, too. I hyperventilate three huge breaths, barely letting anything out, and then take my last huge breath and run back in. I shut the side door behind me and throw open the driver’s door.

  I’d heard it was colourless, odourless, but wow. It’s so, so … nothing in here.

  I take the keys out of the ignition and yank the hose out. Mom’s head flops on her shoulder and I shake her arms, but her head just bobs like she’s a jellyfish. Like life’s escaped her.

  My heart starts to pound quickly, my oxygen depleting, fast. I get one hand behind her neck and the other under her knees but her dead weight is too heavy.

  Dead. Weight.

  My head pounds at me now, desperate. It’s distracting trying to push aside my need to breathe, but if I breathe I’ll start to become as useless as Mum.

  I grab her under the armpits and drag. Her body bumps over the seat and the car floor and finally to the concrete.

  I’m so dizzy. I reach down to grab her but my instinct to breathe kicks in and I leave her and bolt to the door, throw it open. With the cool rush of air, I take it in, gasping everything I can in.

  “Stay there,” Nate says.

  I turn but he’s gone, his phone on the damp grass. He returns seconds later dragging Mum out of the garage. With my head throbbing less and my chest filled with air, I run to the door to close off the garage.

  Nate kneels by Mum on the phone to emergency services as I lean down and lower my ear over her mouth. I place my hand just to the left side of her chest a bit and feel for a spot under her jaw with two of my fingers.

  It could be the night air, but it feels hotter coming out of her mouth, and although my hands are shaking I swear it’s her chest too.

  “She’s breathing, I think.”

  Nate tells the person on the call as much. He helps me roll her on her side, knees and elbows bent to help keep her in that position and then I stick my fingers down her throat and start scooping. For something, anything.

  But nothing comes out. Of course, I have the feeling this must have been self-imposed, but I’m as shocked as I am mad and panicked, livid at the thought someone tried to kill her.

  My mum would never try to kill herself.

  My mum would tell me first.

  My mum isn’t the type to fall into this state.

  But, she is. And somewhere inside, I already knew this. My throat tightens in panic, as if to agree.

  In the distance we hear the sirens and the red and blue flashing lights begin to reflect off house windows in the night.

  Nate and I exchange a wordless conversation.

  His hand comes around the front of my belly. He curls around the top of Mum’s body and shakes his head at her, at life, at something, something that shouldn’t have happened.

  I sit here touching her, hand to cheek, hand to shoulder, lips to forehead. I layer kisses on her face and touch her in every way I can. With her out of that garage, the cold night bring my thoughts back into place. I can’t actually think of a single way to describe finding my mum like this. It rips out my everything. I’d rather die than see her like this. She was crying out for help. She needed me, and I wasn’t there.

  Actually, she was doing fine, and I gave her the ultimate guilt trip. Fuck, I’ll never forgive myself for that dump. I knew I had reason to be careful all these years.

  Tonight is poisoning me, too, with unspoken dreams, unsaid feelings and unexperienced future memories.

  I should have seen the signs. I’m so dumb. It’s my fault, and I should have seen the signs.

  “I should have been here for you, Mum,” I say.

  She won’t ever know I said it.

  The paramedics arrive and pull out their gear, working on her, and through all the medical bustle and Nate shaking and holding me, and my tears, and my body which feels of lead, I can’t help but notice Mum looks truly peaceful for the first time in her life.

  23

  Twenty-four.

  It can be a symbol. Two is a pair, a duo, balance. Four is the number of chambers in our hearts. It’s the year some of our first memories start to stick.

  In hours, twenty-four can be short or long. Twenty-four hours on a holiday passes before you realise a day’s gone by. But twenty-four hours between life and death is an insufferable amount of time to watch my mum lay on this hospital bed.

  Nate stayed with me all night. He left at noon to give me time to sleep, to grieve, to wonder. How screwed up and calculated last night was. So far I don’t know the inner thoughts Mum went through before she tried to end her life but I know she planned to leave the boys with the sitter. The sitter was then instructed to drop them off at Aunty Nicole’s house. Just like that. Nate told me he was taking them back to my place where Scout is, and she’ll look after them. She came and stayed for hours, too, but in the end I needed them to leave.

  I’m a downright bitch sometimes. No matter that I’ll never be able to repay Nate and Scout for being ready to do anything I needed at my beck and call, I ignored them.

  I can’t explain it. Nate put his hand on my forearm, in what I guess he thought was reassurance. I had my arms crossed in front of me and my chin propped on top on the guards around Mum’s bed. I ignored him for as long as I could.

  Nothing. I felt nothing.

  Last night must have drained me of my human qualities because I have suddenly forgotten why people like dark, looming shadows and pressure holding you down on your shoulder or against your chest, or circles rubbing on your back. I have forgotten why people have the need to cry when all I’ve done for twenty-four hours is stare.

  Stare, stare, stare. Still, twenty-four hours of staring has done nothing to answer my questions.

  Why live life by the motto “Life needs to be fun” when you’re anything but?

  How could my mother’s life end as if she were capable of leaving this world?

  When was the moment she started killing herself? Why couldn’t I sense it?

  Doctors tell me to leave and I respond with “Cool. I’ll leave her alone when you can also decide to stop breathing. That’s what
we’re both doing, if that’s cool with you?” I don’t even know why. They’re helping. I can’t do what they’re doing, yet I refuse to move until a kind nurse drags my shoulders back, clutching my upper arms to her chest, and my legs start in motion to stop me from falling, yet I can’t ever remember doing that ‘til afterward.

  I’ve been told she’ll wake up soon. Without sleep for a day and a half now, I am sane enough to realise I’m delirious. Finally, the adrenaline, the panic and the shock simmer from my system enough to draw me into a sleep.

  It’s a sleep so desperate to take me I don’t dream. I wake twelve hours later in a lone room, sleeping on a hard, thin mattress on a rectangular block structure. The room is a small, horrible thing. Cupboards are stuck high on the wall and against the floor. The smell is distinctly antiseptic hospital, and I note this as I walk the room.

  When I step outside a lady at a reception counter raises her eyebrows at me and shuffles over, fixing her T-shirt uniform.

  “Kallisto Perkins?”

  I nod.

  “We checked to make sure you were okay, but you sure seemed in need of a sleep.”

  I try out a comforting smile.

  “You must be worried about your mother. I’ll get her doctor to come see you.”

  “Um, later?”

  She gives me a knowing sad smile and walks off, leaving me be to clear my head.

  I know I cannot be told anything less than Mum will come out perfect, and finding a meal seems like my only option at the moment in case that can’t be promised. Plus, the doctor will always be here, but I won’t be if I faint.

  I take the lift downstairs and bypass the cafeteria area. There is a gift shop, Maccas, a deluxe ice cream shop, and every other fast food store with varieties of high-sugar, high-fat types of delicious food, but they’re all too close to this hospital and my scattered memory of Mum and last night. I walk out, and keep walking until I get to a train station where noisy trains and fumes are ever too strong.

  The ambulance took me in the back so I have no car, and Nate left with his when he followed us. Plus, I’ve had persistent trembles for twenty-four hours and I don’t trust myself to drive if I did go home.

  I am one of the strange people who enjoy train rides. I can space out and not worry about traffic or an accident or where to go. I pick my line and take it to the destination. I know I can close my eyes, listen to music or read. Or do nothing and appreciate the time to relax.

  After these twenty-four hours, I need nothing. Nothing limits anything bad happening, and although I must know this is temporary, that I can’t continue living in this void plane where there aren’t highs or lows it’s what I can handle at the moment, and God help anyone who forces me otherwise.

  I’m not sure what line I take, but it doesn’t matter, and the round trip should take me three hours all the way out and back. At the train station I stand in line and order a jam doughnut, a chicken and avocado sandwich, mango and orange juice in a Pop Top, three dim sims, and three potato cakes.

  It takes ten minutes to eat them, and the man next to me who smells of rusty metal and a mixture of something dank, with his holey T-shirt, ripped pants and no shoes even gives me a look.

  When I finish, the sugar from the jam doughnut still coats my lips, and my lips are greasy too.

  “Miss?” someone asks. I look up to see a nice-looking lady in her late twenties. “That’s an adorable dress. Caught my eye the moment I boarded the train. Hope you have a nice date.”

  She gives a parting smile and gets up to exit at the arriving station. I watch her look at me and turn and step off, then I see her figure shrink down the platform and up the escalator.

  She was so full of life. For the moment she was near me, I just wanted to smile and I knew it would radiate all the way into the core of my body. And that’s the reason I didn’t. Being happy seems terrifying when there’s so much on the line. As if one tiny smile from me will send the happy police on a hunt to take that away too.

  Tears streak my face. I’m stinky and lethargic after my extremity of no sleep, and then oversleep. I’m dirty, and the tears feel like acid streaks. On my seat, I curl up my knees to my chin and fan out that “adorable” skirt over my legs. As I hunch over, the thin straps are like blades slicing my shoulder open so I flop those off my shoulders and feel the cool soothe my skin. For at least a little while, it’s a break where I can just let go.

  At my original station, I leave the train and walk back to the hospital without seeing.

  I walk and walk, and it takes forever. I stop only to unhook my heels and carry them in my hand. I walk until I run into Nate, with his thumbs hooked in his pockets. They’re right in my line of sight with my eyes dropped. I know it’s him by the way he holds himself. After this scare he’s learnt to leave me be, not to push me.

  But my body responds to him, even after all of this and I realise since he’s been gone I’ve been depleting, and alone, and I am liking alone less and less.

  Still, I shock myself as well as him when I wrap my arms around his neck, my heels dangling, and mould my curves around his chest and hips. I drop my head into the warm bit between his jaw and shoulder and his warmth undoes me. I cry ugly tears into the nape of Nate’s neck. He drapes his coat over my back and shoulders.

  “The doctors are waiting for you when you’re ready, Kalli,” are Nate’s first words. “And they know you might not be ready for a few days, and that’s okay.”

  “I’m ready now, I think.”

  • • •

  I go home and open the front door on the third day to hear Scout calling, “Fine! No Nemo, then!”

  I walk around the corner to see she has her hands on her hips, standing beside the TV in the living room. I step in further, glance around. Within seconds, Seth and Tristan, put their plates in the sink and come back to pack away their glasses too.

  “See how easy lunch is when we share tasks?” She looks up to see me, perched at the step in the hallway. “Oh, Kalli. Kalli’s back!” she calls.

  “Kalli!” Tristan yells. He throws himself onto me. “I don’t like that lady or Scout as much as you. I missed you. Where were you?”

  “Kalli!” It’s Seth’s turn to crash into me, making Tristan latch on tighter, for fear of being pushed away. “I thought you left. And Tristan was crying so bad, but I cried only once ever. Kalli!”

  Both boys try to outdo each other.

  “I bet Scout was good to you. Here, let me put on Nemo. Were they good enough?” I turn to Scout for approval.

  She holds back a giggle and agrees. I put the boys in front of the TV to watch.

  Scout gets us two cups of warm milk, hers with flavouring. I cup the glass in my hands and let the heat travel through me. Marginally, I feel prepped for our conversation.

  “It’s fine,” I say, tracing lines down the couch cushion with my free hand. “I’m good to talk. Really.”

  This is the thing when a family member comes close to death. People are so cautious. You can’t say death but “passed away” sounds cliché, and so everyone talks about the incident as if it’s that. “That event”. “That night”.

  But never the truth, which is that Mum tried to kill herself.

  She had passed out from the intoxicating fumes. She was breathing but her heart rhythm was feeling the pressure and her breaths were shallow. Once we got to the hospital, I had to be forced back by a nurse.

  “You’re a saviour, Kalli,” I heard more than once. “You got there in enough time. You saved her life.”

  You know what I felt like saying? Why is it that Mum needed saving at all? If I held my tongue as I had done for the last nine years, we’d all be at home, fine, death far, far away.

  The first time we spoke, she mumbled, “Hey, Kalli.” I heard her in a way only a mother of a baby can understand what their first words really are. Her voice was scratchy, and she kept fingering her throat, her wrists. “So weak, so stupid, so unworthy.”

  At first, I bit my ton
gue, clamped my lips shut. I had no right to make her feel bad with death still so close, even if what she said about me was horrible.

  I noticed what she meant after a while. She felt that way about her.

  Her tone was always that low, murmuring sound like children use when they are afraid to speak up the truth to their parents. She wouldn’t look me in the eye; instead, the sheets tucked under her arms and over her chest.

  I didn’t know what to say at first. I flopped over her, held her body in my arms. Eventually, I repeated that I loved her, that I was sorry for my lies, and we fell asleep that way.

  Asleep for another ten hours.

  “Her doctor had lots to say,” I tell Scout. “Psych treatment, her current and future medical treatment, my medical treatment.” I put the milk on the table and throw my hands up in the air. “As if I need treatment! I didn’t try to kill myself.”

  Scout’s eyes dart away. She drinks some of her milk and also places it on the table. Her eyes draw up and she finally says, “I know. Kalli, I know exactly, but from my perspective, I don’t think anyone expects anything of you.” She holds her finger up. “Let me finish. No one expects you to cry or pretend to be fine. People just expect you to be affected. And that, Kalli, is why the doctor must have asked you if you needed treatment. When you’re affected by something that huge, you’re bound to show the repercussions, no matter if you’re Hercules or Barbie.”

  I’ve heard lots of condolences from friends and family while I was with Mum, including Nicole. So many people feeling pity on us, and praying. I doubt God actually has the power to kill or save her on the spot if I did pray, but still, even saying it sounded ridiculous. I don’t want any attention. I needed space to get my head around it.

  Why? How?

  Why?

  But Scout’s words knock me back. I grab my milk and sip. I curl up my toes near my ass and just sip, taking in her words.

  I say, “Fair point.”

  God, she’s amazing. I’ve been moody and bitchy and silent and she’s been looking after my twin brothers since that night. She’s stayed here without anything in return and she’s so level-headed.