Being Here

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘This book is about love. And one of the things it teaches us is this: I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.’

  The girl liked the music in the words. But they didn’t make sense in her head.

  ‘Love never ends,’ her mother continued. ‘Prophecies will pass away, tongues will cease, and as for knowledge, it will pass away. Now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’

  The girl didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

  ‘You love me, don’t you, my angel?’

  She knew the answer to this.

  ‘Yes, Mummy,’ she said.

  ‘And I love you too. More than I can say.’

  Silence gathered. A swollen moon dusted the room with silver. The girl thought her mother had fallen asleep, but it seemed her voice was only resting.

  ‘Just a little more from this book. It says love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. What this means is that if you love someone you must never tell them lies. Do you understand? I will never lie to you and you must never lie to me. Only then can our love last for always. Do you promise? Do you promise never to lie to me?’

  ‘I promise, Mummy.’

  ‘And I promise, too. We will love each other always. We will not lie.’

  Leah’s mind circled the world of sleep. She felt its warmth stealing her thoughts. There was something lurking in her mother’s words. A danger, like the shadowy evil in a fairytale forest, but she couldn’t pin it down. She recognised the language of fear, though. It filled her mother’s voice and made it thick. But she knew she could make it go away. Words were power.

  ‘Yes, Mummy,’ she said.

  It was easy.

  ‘Sounds like you were happy as a kid,’ says the girl.

  Once again, I’ve almost forgotten she is here. My mind freezes around the burning image in my head. A small girl cocooned in love and darkness and stories. I press the pause button of my memories, and it is now, only now with time stilled and mind lucid, that the thought explodes like a soft and soundless bomb. That far away night was the last moment I’d experienced happiness like that.

  All those years. All those long and dusty years.

  Yes, the worm was in the apple even then. I knew it. But I had hidden the knowledge from myself.

  I attempt to focus on the girl’s words. They appear to float, insubstantial. Or do I detect an edge of irony?

  ‘I was happy,’ I reply. ‘We were happy.’

  ‘That farm you lived on,’ says the girl. ‘You said there were apple trees. But you must’ve grown other stuff. Or kept animals. How tough was it, way back then, being a farmer?’

  She has not turned off her machine. The red light stares at me, unblinking. This is one of my good days. On other occasions I might not have noticed it. Or noticed how this child is using words designed to nudge me from my course. She is pleased with her linguistic trick. But I am not fooled.

  The girl deserves an answer. Or perhaps she doesn’t. I give one anyway. This, I know, is the ritual of human interaction. You give. You take. None of it makes much difference.

  ‘The farm was large when my father died. Thereafter, it shrank steadily. Inexorably, looking back on it.’

  ‘So what did you grow?’

  ‘Apples,’ I say, and my hands remember their cool hardness. ‘After my father died. Just apples.’ For a moment, the room fills with the sharp sweetness of their smell. Then it fades and a ghost-odour of disinfectant and fear lingers.

  ‘Were you able to live off just apples?’

  ‘No, which is why the farm shrank. Mother sold off parts of it, year by year. Not much during the Depression, but after. When neighbouring farmers eyed our paddocks, were eager to expand and had the money to do so.’ I smile, but keep my lips together. I hate the toothless grins of the old. They make us fools. Or reptiles. ‘Mother shaved our land like cheese. A slice here. A slice there. I didn’t know when I was a child, but the world was shrinking towards me. The stories I read led me to believe in worlds expanding to infinity. All the time, mine was becoming smaller, circling down onto a patch of apple trees and a girl.’

  ‘Sounds tough.’

  I study the girl. We have spent time together and it is courteous to pay attention. She wears denim shorts and sits with her legs crossed under her on the chair. I wonder briefly where the confidence of youth goes. Does it wither with time or flee abruptly one hope-forsaken morning? She wears make-up that is inexpertly applied. Allied with that blue gash in her hair, it gives her a brazen look. She twists the curious metal bar in her eyebrow from time to time. It is a nervous gesture and I feel certain she is unaware of doing it. The tic sits uneasily with her veneer of assurance, hints at complexities beneath the surface. I think she struggles with something.

  Every person is a mystery. Most days I accept this. But today, for reasons I cannot fathom, I want to visit the inside of another head, if only briefly. There are stories locked away there and I am lonely.

  ‘Tell me about yourself, Carla,’ I say.

  She twists her eyebrow stud and smiles, though that twists too.

  ‘It’s Carly,’ she says. ‘And there’s nothing to tell. Sixteen. Student. What can I say?’ She waits, but I let the silence work. Most people can’t live in silence. They have to fill it, even if their filler-words rarely stick.

  ‘What?’ She smiles and spreads her arms in appeal.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, them.’ Her mouth bows downwards. ‘Well, that won’t take long. Older brother who is mega smart. Doing medicine at uni. In his third year. Going to specialise in cancer.’ She bites her bottom lip. ‘Dad is dad. Makes heaps of money from property. He calls himself a developer, but he doesn’t actually build anything. Just buys and sells. With other people’s money. Mum teaches kindy. That’s it.’

  ‘And you?’ I say.

  ‘Me? Average Year 11 student is all.’

  I think about the word ‘average’. Is there a story there? The invisible child, hidden behind a sibling’s dazzling beam? The father disapproving. He attributes her refusal to shine as wilfulness. The mother resigned, but in the still of night interrogating herself about where she might have gone wrong. I like those characters, but they don’t ring true.

  ‘Do you have a beau?’ I ask.

  She moves her hand to her hair.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sort of. He goes to the same college as me.’

  Her eyes flick away and I read the sign. Her boyfriend is the story. I will tease it out, though it will take time. This girl has to be squeezed like a tube of toothpaste to extract anything.

  ‘What’s your boyfriend’s name?’ I say.

  There is the slightest hesitation.

  ‘Josh.’

  ‘And he’s a student?’

  ‘Well … not a great student, to be honest. He’s a musician. Guitarist.’

  How appalling, I think. It’s wise to keep this to myself.

  ‘And you’re happy together?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sure.’

  That’s a lie. It’s in her voice and the way her eyes slide off my face once more. I will let this mature in my head.

  ‘Do you wanna rest now, Mrs C?’ she asks, too brightly. ‘I don’t want to tire you out.’ She reaches towards her machine.

  ‘I’m happy to carry on,’ I say. She folds her hands together. Is there disappointment in that movement? ‘The memories are bright now. Sometimes they dim and I cannot get them to flare. Tomorrow might be one of those times. Where was I?’

  The girl sighs. As an exhalation it is almost imperceptible. ‘Your mother,’ she says. ‘How she loved you and how you promised never to lie to each other.’

  There is resignation in her voice and I realise where I have been going wrong. My
story does not have conflict. Or rather, at the start of my story I have not signposted it sufficiently. No one, least of all the young, wants to listen to the emotional soup of simple reminiscence. The human animal craves drama. The warmth of pity. The attraction of evil. The joy of terror. Happiness is, at best, dull. At worst, it’s a crime.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Love is the finest of all experiences. As a daughter yourself, you must know the peculiar, intoxicating joy of the mother–daughter bond.’

  The girl gazes at me blankly.

  ‘But what happens, Carla, when that love turns dark? When you wake one morning and realise your own flesh and blood has become a stranger. What do you do when you find that, in the name of love, the stranger is capable of killing?’

  Her finger plucks at her lower lip and I think I have her attention.

  CHAPTER 3

  ON MY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY, my mother beat me with a leather belt until I bled. Then she locked me in the barn for three days. The same barn my father had used to spread his brains over the walls. The stain was still there seven years later. It was the only thing I had left of him.

  It was coincidence that it was my birthday.

  It wasn’t coincidence that she chose the barn as my prison.

  My crime was curiosity. For over five years, my mother had written her book. Three hours a day, six days a week. She didn’t write on Sundays or on religious holidays. At the end of each session she shuffled the papers together and placed them in a large box kept in the corner of the kitchen. Then she locked the box with a key she carried on a chain around her neck. I watched the ritual often, through the kitchen window. I still stayed outside while she was writing. Three hours a day, six days a week.

  My thirst for stories had not diminished over the years. On the contrary, I had insufficient books to slake that thirst. Mother had a library and I think some of the books in it were my father’s. I had read them all, even those I had no chance of understanding. Apart from a small collection of fairy stories, the books weren’t for children. There was nothing for a twelve year old girl.

  Sometimes, when we walked the three miles into town, I would persuade mother to allow me to visit the store where Mrs Hilson kept a small collection of books among a general clutter of bric-a-brac. There was no library in the town and no bookshop. Those didn’t come until thirty years later. Mrs Hilson’s collection was a poor substitute, but for a starved girl it appeared a feast of unimaginable richness. We bought a book once a year, for my birthday. I would agonise over my choice for months beforehand. The greatest leaders in history – those who weighed the futures of generations in their hands – did not feel the weight of decision-making as keenly. But despite our being poor customers, Mrs Hilson allowed me to sit in a shadowed corner and read. I think she was lonely and liked the warmth of another presence. Hardly anyone came into her store.

  So I stayed for an hour while mother shopped or talked to people from the church. I read what I could, buried myself in words. It was always a surprise when she tapped me on the shoulder for the dusty journey home. Though the clock said sixty minutes had passed, for me it was seconds. A week later I would pick up the story where I had left off. Over the years, I finished many books this way. Piecemeal. A crumb here, a crumb there. And my hunger grew with each small mouthful.

  I had not spoken to my mother about her writing since our initial conversation. I understood it was something that would come my way only when she was ready. Yet often my thoughts would turn to the contents of the box. It was, of course, more attractive because of its mystery. And I remembered her words. That she would write a story about a place where we could live forever. I wanted to visit that place so badly that it hurt. Perhaps it was because I had not the smallest clue of where that world was or what riches it might contain.

  Curiosity nibbled at me and its teeth were sharp.

  One day, mother was talking to a neighbour in our front room after inspecting one of the larger paddocks on the edge of our farm. I could hear the low murmur of voices through thick doors. The man’s voice was raised, urgent. My mother’s voice was quieter, and although I couldn’t detect individual words I could sense the determination in which they were steeped.

  The key to the box lay on the windowsill. I caught a flash of light from the corner of my eyes as I walked across the stone flags. It winked at me. I stood, frozen by possibilities.

  I was not, by nature, a child susceptible to impulses. Maybe that was because my life did not admit the opportunity to indulge them. The farm was a known place. So was my mother. Everything, with the notable exception of my reading, was ordered, safe and incapable of change. I paced out my childhood along a pre-determined path. The key gleamed with the promise of diversion.

  I trembled as I picked it up. I trembled more as I eased it into the lock. I took great care, worried about scratching the casing with inexpert fumbling. Does that show knowledge of wrongdoing? Maybe so. Certainly I knew, though nothing had ever been said, that what I was doing was wrong in my mother’s eyes. I listened to the rumble of conversation from next door. Nothing indicated it was on the point of concluding.

  I turned the key in the lock and opened the lid.

  Inside were hundreds and hundreds of pages, each crowded with my mother’s cramped handwriting. I knelt on cold stones and for a few moments gazed upon a mystery, teetering on the edge of revelation. It was, I knew, impossible for me to read this. It would take many months. But I had to know how the story started. The opening sentences, I told myself. The opening sentences, a glimpse into another world, and I would be satisfied.

  I picked up the first page.

  Her handwriting was difficult to read. I was accustomed to print. I had to focus, squint my eyes to make the words form shapes I could recognise. Probably it was that concentration that robbed my other senses. I didn’t register the silence. I barely understood the significance of the faint rasp of wood on wood as a door opened. When I looked up, mother and the man loomed above me. Perspective leant them a sinister aspect, like monsters from a tale. We remained that way as time stretched. The page in my hand fluttered like a flag of surrender.

  ‘You know my daughter, Leah,’ said my mother. There was nothing in her expression.

  The man smiled.

  ‘Indeed I do. Hello, Leah.’ He crouched and smiled. His face was brown with the sun, wrinkles like dried-up creek beds. I noticed his teeth were stained. ‘You should come over to play,’ he continued. ‘I have a son about your age. Farm kids get lonely.’

  ‘It’s her birthday today. Leah is twelve.’

  ‘Many happy returns, Leah,’ he said. ‘Please come and visit. And I reckon I could even rustle up some kind of birthday present.’

  I didn’t reply. The coldness of the floor had spread through my body. It had mopped it up, like the edge of tissue paper kissing water. I was carved from ice.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Cameron,’ said my mother. ‘We’ll see.’

  When he’d gone, mother took the page from my hand and placed it back in the box. She turned the key in the lock. It rasped with anger and finality. Then she placed the chain over her neck, led me into her bedroom and took out a broad belt. It had metal studs along its length. It must have belonged to my father, though I have no recollection of seeing any of his clothes either before or since.

  Throughout the beating she didn’t say a word.

  * * *

  The barn was sliced with light. The gaps between boards allowed slivers of sun to highlight dancing dust. During the day, the sun formed narrow spotlights picking out a show that played endlessly.

  Mother padlocked the door. She returned four times over the next three days, bringing a jug of musty water and a plate of dense, dry bread. These she placed on the floor and left without a word. I grew to dread the grating of the padlock as it turned in its hasp, the hushed ritual of my offerings being placed before me, the click of the key turning again and the sound of footsteps retreating into silence.

  It was her
silence that scared me most.

  On the last visit, her face was shiny with tears. This time, she had nothing in her hand. She weaved over to where I lay as though ill or drunk, though I know she had never touched alcohol in her life. She placed her arms around my neck and drew me towards her. She sobbed into my skin.

  ‘We have sinned,’ she said, though her words were difficult to understand, muffled as they were by emotion and my body. ‘We have sinned, my baby.’

  Afterwards we prayed for hours. We knelt side by side in the barn and let words rise in the air, drift and curl until they dissolved. Our prayers were smoke. Tears ran down my mother’s face throughout. After an hour I found my own face wet. We sobbed and prayed, prayed and sobbed until we were cleansed, scrubbed clean. Maybe it was simply exhaustion, but I don’t think so. I felt pure as though something dirty or corrupt had been driven from me. My mother and I were charged with love. It spilled over and bound us in soft chains.

  ‘I love you so much, Leah,’ said my mother. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you too, Mamma,’ I sobbed.

  I was as golden as the beams of light which still sliced the air.

  Throughout my imprisonment, I heard the snuffling and whining of Pagan, my dog.

  Mother wouldn’t allow him to be with me, though I didn’t ask. It wasn’t a situation where I dared ask. He circled outside. Once or twice he tried to dig his way under the wall and I worried mother would find him and punish him. But he finally gave up. Wherever I was in the barn, he would lie down as close as he could to my unseen body and whine gently. I talked to him through the walls and we calmed each other.

  Adam was my warmest company throughout the coldest times.

  He had changed over seven years. In the early days, he was a fiction drawn from my limited reading of what a brother should be like – incoherent, yet knowledgeable and brave. A visitor from a world that was partly alien and partly familiar. And his role was limited by my needs. He took me to places in my imagination, and when I didn’t require him, which was often, he was not there.