I don’t trust people. Perhaps Miss Marple, and maybe there might be others who are trustworthy. But I guess finding them is hot, sweaty work, like looking for opals in the Australian outback. And Scottie? He might be a decent enough person and I’m happy to help him. Trusting him is a different story altogether. I’ll trust him as far as I can throw one of the giant boulders in the riverbed. That is that!
When I swing myself behind the steering wheel, Scottie opens his eyes to a small slit. His ragged breathing scares me. I realize I haven’t got the foggiest idea what ails him. It could be nothing or it could be something serious. Are we running out of time?
“Thanks,” He murmurs and closes his eyes again.
A last glance at his truck tells me the smoke has stopped coming from its hood. It’s probably safe to leave it here. Not that I have any other options. I need to get Scottie to the house. What took me five minutes on the way out, takes me over ten minutes back. Yes, I admit it, I am scared and drive like a hundred-year-old lady who celebrates her escape from the old people home with a joyride in the country at the mind-numbing speed of ten miles per hour.
At our place, he’s awake enough to stagger to the house. First, he pushes my arm away but when he almost falls over, he seems to rethink his strategy and leans on me.
“Are all men this stubborn?”
He puts on another unsuccessful grin. I open the door and he stands there like he’s nailed to the floorboards.
“Whoa, what a change.”
His jaw hits the ground. Metaphorically. I feel a tad insulted. What did he think? That we’re sitting all day in the sun and painting our fingernails? I’m getting a little pissed off with him. Just as I warm up to the fact that he is a good-looking guy, in a mature kind of way. Not such a wimp as Horace was.
I lead him to Aunt Amanda’s old couch. After Ama gave it a jolly good bashing with a skillet yesterday, you can sit on the thing without a cloud of dust fluffing up or a hoard of creepy crawlies skittering away. I still prefer the chair. Somehow, I expect arms to reach out from the split between the couch’s armrest and seat cushion and grab me. No thank you.
Anyhow, there is no time for sitting. Scottie needs his injuries looked at and I don’t want anyone saying it’s my fault he has a limp or a funny twitch. No way. I’m standing at the stove and check the hot water in the basin at the back of the stovetop. I chuck another log into the range and hope for the best. No, that’s not right, I am shouting inside as loud as I can, for Elise or Ama to come and help.
I’m not a nurse. I never wanted to be one and I never will. When I say I’m the girl who gets the job done, I mean fixing the computer, or going to the shops and buying things, pretending at a funeral, talking to the post man, that kind of stuff. Never ever did I say I know how to apply a band-aid. I don’t. I know my strengths and my limits. This rescue mission has been way, way out of my comfort zone. Confuse me with Florence Nightingale at your own peril.
Did I say peril? Yip, that’s what I meant.
Elise: 22 November 2015, Late Morning, Wright’s Homestead
What’s the obsession with fresh air and living surrounded by nature? They say it’s good for you, but I’m not so sure. It makes me sleepier than I usually am. Maybe all that pure oxygen is not as good for you as people pretend? My hands drop and I pull them back up with a shriek. I touched the hot stovetop. I must have been in deep thought because I didn’t realize I was standing at the stove. What am I doing here anyhow? Ah, yes, a cup of tea.
“Did you burn yourself?”
“What the…” I snap around and almost stumble over my feet. In front of me sits my neighbor, blood seeping from a hole in his head, and is splattered over his shirt. For a moment I don’t know where to look and what to do. How did he get here? And more to the point, did I cause the injury? I must have because he looks at me as if he’s afraid I’m going to clobber him any moment with a skillet.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.” My voice cracks up. It doesn’t appear that my voice, choosing this very moment to crack up, is convincing him. Should I be afraid of him instead?
“I know. I’m not afraid. Well, that’s not quite true. I hope you know what you’re doing. Are you a nurse? Do you have aspirins? My head is killing me. Maybe I should try to get to a hospital.”
He tries to get up and his face twists in pain.
“No, you shouldn’t go anywhere.” The poor guy probably has a concussion. I pick up a bowl, fill it with water, take a clean towel, and walk back to him.
“I’ve been a vet nurse. As long as I don’t have to operate on you, I’m sure I’m capable of stitching the gash on your forehead. Can you lean back, please?”
I know what will happen next, but there is nothing I can do about it other than bracing myself. Ever since I’ve been a young child, I could see people’s life unfolding in my head the moment I touch them. That’s why I avoid touching them.
I’m not only intruding on another person’s privacy, but it also drains me. I suffer the aftereffects for days. When their life has been hard, I too carry their heaviness and their pain. I’ve tried wearing gloves to stem the flood of information people transmit without knowing, but it didn’t do an iota of good.
I need a steady hand if I’m going to stitch him up. It means touching him before I start. I take a deep breath and center myself. Then I put both my hands on his shoulders… and I see it all.
He’s surrounded by a darkness that envelops him like a comforting blanket and shelters him from feeling his pain.
There is a laughing couple, walking arm in arm through a park, along a stream. She is a tiny slip of a woman, pregnant, maybe seven months, and he hangs on her every word. His admiring gaze wraps around her like a golden orb of love and care.
They are so young and so happy. The next image is her lying in hospital, people running around, cries, tears, pain.
The baby is coming, much too early. I see its soul leaving even before it is born.
An emergency C-section.
Scott is standing at her head, holding her hands, whispering “Amelie”. Her name is Amelie. I can’t bear seeing the doctor lifting a tiny dead body from Amelie’s womb.
Her pain shoots through me like the heat wave of an explosion. She won’t make it.
I see Scott falling apart over a marble headstone.
It makes sense now why he is hiding in the wilderness of the West Coast. He’s given up on the life path of ordinary people. He’s still licking his wounds, like a stag shot and left wounded by an overly eager hunter, no longer moving, waiting for the end.
I dip into his bottomless sadness and find my own reflected in it. That’s how it is, isn’t it? We don’t discover what is out there in the world. We can’t. We project our own pain and only see what we already know. We can only go where we’ve already been.
He hasn’t decided yet whether he will make it. He may not want to. That’s okay with me. I don’t understand people’s obsession with the life and death thing. I have been in the hospital a few times after a suicide attempt, so they told me. Okay, I don’t remember cutting my wrist or taking pills, but I remember very well how I felt and still often feel. These doctors and nurses bend over backward to keep me alive, half of the time angry that I dared to take my life into my own hands. I remember one doctor saying, “That was silly, wasn’t it?”
In reality, they didn’t care whether I lived or died. For them, it mattered whether I did so on their shift. If they heard on TV of me dying, they wouldn’t even blink an eye. I only thought how ridiculous they were, pointing out all the things I have going for me. The wonderful caring husband, now there’s a laugh, the beautiful house, what? And no financial worries.
I beg your pardon, how is any of that relevant? It’s nothing than decoration hanging on me like an old dress inherited from a relative who passed away a long time ago. Too large, too long, and too fake, only good for Halloween dress-up as the female version of Ebenezer Scrooge or some other ludicrous charact
er.
How dare people tell me life is worth living? They don’t know what it means to be me, how it feels to be me, how I’m consumed every day by pain and doubts. I won’t tolerate having my life flicker by, like a silent Chaplin motion picture, worn-out through overuse.
“Ahem. Is everything okay?”
He looks at me and for the first time, I recognize in the depth of his eyes the light of a fellow wanderer of whom I don’t have to be afraid. We may not be able to help each other out of the darkness, but we can walk together, like friends.
“No. I mean yes. My mind just wandered.” I take the towel and tap the dried blood off his face. The wound looks clean enough. Did I already clean it? I don’t remember, but it looks like it. It doesn’t hurt to wash it out some more.
“Could you bend forward, please?”
I pour a cup of water over his forehead and catch it with the water bowl. Well, most. It’s a mess, but that’s a minor problem. I’m afraid there could be pieces of dirt lodged in his gash. Sometimes I’m obsessive compulsive, I’ve been told by Helen, my dear sister-in-law. In times like this, though, you can’t be careful enough. Once I’m convinced it’s clean, I get a tube of antiseptic cream from my first aid kit and apply it. He cringes when I put Steri-Strips over the cut and pull together the edges of the gash.
“You should be okay without stitches. These Steri-Strips work wonders.”
“Thanks a lot. I’ll be on my way then.”
He gets up and staggers a few steps. I rush to him and grab his arm to stabilize him. Goodness me, he’s in worse shape than I first thought. I push down gently on his shoulders and make him sit on the couch again.
“I don’t think you’re fit to go anywhere in a hurry. You might have a concussion. I’d also like to see if you have sustained any further injuries.”
“I’m all right.”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“You’ve said that before. I don’t appreciate being called a baby.”
“I have? I don’t remember. Please lean back so I can check you. You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“Imposition or not, please lay still.”
After checking his torso, arms, and legs I’m satisfied that all he’s got is a bad case of bruising, accompanied by a bad case of grumpiness.
“You have bad bruising on your chest, legs, and arms. You’ll be sore for some weeks to come. For now, though, the couch has your name on it. I’ll get a few blankets. Make yourself comfortable.”
He settles on auntie’s couch and closes his eyes the moment he stretches out, but not without mumbling some stubborn protest. I can see his body deflating as if he’d put tons of effort into staying upright and in control. I’m smiling on the inside. We are so similar.
He’s growing on me.
Chapter Sixteen
Sky: 22 November 2015, Late At Night, Wright’s Homestead
When something is wrong with one of the Tribe, it reverberates through our system like an earthquake and puts me on high alert. Like now. Something isn’t right. I look around the common room and find the door to Maddie’s room open. She’s left the tree house and slipped out. It must be past midnight.
I’m worried about her. Since we arrived at this house, Maddie has not been her old self. She’s changing and I don’t know what that’s about. It is as if arriving at the homestead caused a door to spring open that was locked.
“Maddie, where are you? Come back!”
I catch her standing at the top of the stairs. For a moment, she looks over her shoulder to me, then shakes her head with a cheeky smile, and tiptoes down the stairs in her long, old-fashioned nighty. She floats down into the moonlit living space like a delicate fairy, her treasured doll Madeline tightly clutched in her arms.
It would be a mistake to think she’s breakable even though she might look it. Maddie has seen things and been through experiences that nobody, let alone a child, should have been through. Aren’t parents supposed to love you? Isn’t that’s a non-negotiable law of nature? That they didn’t do so made Elizabeth’s parents monsters. Many of our inside children can testify to that, most of all Maddie. Against all odds, she kept her childlike innocence.
“Maddie, come back,” I whisper louder now but she doesn’t hear me. She’s a girl on a mission and, like all of us, if that happens, we become single-minded. She must have watched Elise on the loom earlier today and only waited for the right time to sneak out and have a go herself. I hold my breath as she bumbles past the couch and heads for the loom. I hope she avoids an encounter with our neighbor who’s sleeping on the sofa.
She probably hasn’t seen him and instead is fascinated by all the colors and different materials Elise put into the large wool basket earlier. For the next while, she rummages through the basket, then picks up a ball of wool, only to drop it for pieces of silky material. With her treasures in hand, she climbs onto the chair, picks up a pair of scissors, and cuts the silk into strips.
It’s easy to forget she’s only four years old as she threads the material through the warp. Rapt by her work, her little hands fly as she creates a small masterpiece. I’m no longer surprised by her creativity. This girl holds more than her fair share of our creative potential. Yes, Elise is the one who works the loom most of the time. She’s the one with a vision of the finished product. However, Maddie is the one who brings flair and excitement to the weave. She’s not afraid to try out new materials and new ways. Together, the two of them create stunning works of art.
A loud, gasping moan from the couch startles her. She spins around and knocks her scissors off the table with a loud clatter.
I’m watching the scene unfold in predictable patterns. Our neighbor wakes, jumps up too quickly, and holds his head with a groan. You don’t jump up from a couch when you have a concussion. Men are not wise. I noticed that a long time ago. There was Horace, who was the epitome of predictability in his single-mindedness, stupidity, and cruelty. Little Jimmy knows all about it. He’s much better now that Horace is dead. He even sleeps at night.
I pray Maddie says nothing and flees to the safety of the tree house. I call her again, hoping she hears me. Today it doesn’t work. When the Tribe is excited or anxious, their antennae are not as receptive to my guidance. And Maddie is excited. I can feel it radiating out from her in an almost tangible beam. She’s wanted to meet our neighbor since he rode up to the house on his beautiful horse. I have to find Ama. Maybe she can call Maddie back?
“Thorry, I wake you up. Thorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I’m sorry that I’m a burden for you.”
Maddie looks at him trying to figure out what he means by burden. I can see her little mind ticking. Her mother called her a burden many times and got furious. She didn’t think he’s a burden like that, and she doesn’t feel angry at all. She walks toward him, one hesitant step after the other.
He pulls himself up and watches her approach. Maddie stretches out her hand and touches his head.
“Does it thtill hurt? I thee you in the car.” She yawns and claps her hand to her mouth. “Thorry. You has blood everywhere. I’m glad we was strong enough to pull you out.”
He points to the end bit of the couch. “Come, sit down, if you don’t mind.”
Maddie doesn’t think twice and climbs on the sofa, pulls up her little legs and crosses them under her.
If I had a body, I would roll my eyes now. Where is Ama? How could she have allowed Maddie to sneak out? Not even Phoenix, whose job is to guard the tree house, is around. Maddie’s energy must have been very strong that she bypassed everyone. Ama and I will have to find out where the girl gets it.
“I wondered how I can thank you for stitching me up. I’d like to take you out for a coffee, or a dinner.”
Maddie giggles and leans back and forth as if she is sitting on her swing. “You’re thilly, I’m four years old. I don’t drink coffee and I’m not allowed out after dark.”
>
That’s what you call my worst nightmare. Ama. Ama. Where is that woman? I’m now shouting at the top of my lungs into the expanse of the tree house. If we don’t stop Maddie, she’ll blather us back into the loony bin.
Scott notices something off-kilter and raises his eyebrows. No surprise here. He’s not stupid. I’m surprised he didn’t notice when Lilly swapped places with Elise earlier. That’s nothing though, compared with having a conversation with a four-year-old. She’ll give us away in no time. Already, his face shows a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. He stares at Maddie as if he wants to see what’s behind her eyes.
I feel exposed. Is it possible that he sees us huddling just at the edges of Maddie’s mind? But then, that’s not how it works. From experience, I know whatever people concoct about us is never as weird and as unbelievable as the reality of our existence. Still, we all press into the recesses of the tree house and shut our doors. Except for Ama. Finally. She arrives to get Maddie back inside.
“You don’t have to take the mickey out of me. A simple no would have done the trick. Anyhow, I am very grateful for your help.”
The poor man has to wait for a response, because Ama is switching places with Maddie who trundles up to her room, her right thumb in her mouth, and Madeline dangling at her side. She smiles as she leaves, and I suspect she enjoyed checking out the stranger in our house. That girl has more daredevil in her than I give her credit for.
Only when Maddie closes the door behind her, does Ama turn to our neighbor. “I’m just playing with you. No malice intended. It’s late. We both should aim for another few hours of sleep before the day starts.”
“I feel much better already. Nor more dizziness. I’m sure I can go home tomorrow and be out of your hair.”
Ama squints at him and bobbles her head from left to right. “I’m making no promises. Let’s wait until tomorrow morning. I’ll put my nurse’s hat on and will give you my verdict then.”
Girl From the Tree House Page 13
