‘What do you call a blind dinosaur?’
‘I don’t know, Jude.’
‘A do-you-think-he-saurus. What do you call a blind dinosaur’s dog?’
‘I don’t know, Jude.’
‘A do-you-think-he-saurus Rex.’
‘Goodnight, Jude.’
Jude wasn’t difficult all the time. We did the normal things that sisters do, even though she’s nine years older than me. She took me shopping and we got ice creams, perved on boys, stole costume jewellery and makeup from the cheap shops. Jude was an amazing thief before she got diagnosed. Medication killed her stealth.
When I was being bullied at school, she was in the hospital. When I was studying for my hsc, she was in the bathroom, trying to overdose on iron tablets and cooking sherry. When I came home crying after my first relationship ended, she was asleep in a haze of downers.
Sometimes I thought of our different fathers as a kind of blessing. I could always accept half of my sister. But when she raged at me, I knew it was her fault these men had left us behind. When she spat and swore and threw things at me, I sometimes wished my father would appear at the door and take me with him. But he had his own family, and a normal life.
She’s calmed down a lot since then. I know this because I’ve been told. Mum has said as much to me every month, as part of her regular update. I’ve heard it a thousand times, on a hundred phones, in a dozen countries.
I left home when Jude was the age I am now. I came back for Christmas about once every three years. I preferred to drop in and out of their lives, and they didn’t seem to mind. Their life, I should say, singular.
‘I need to have my own life,’ I said. Straight out of high school, I took off up north, alone for the first time. I took odd jobs fruit picking, and met people from other countries. The ease of their travels was a shock to me. I realised that with only myself to organise, there would be no shit fight to get out the door, no hours of reassurance and repetition to soothe my sister’s fears. When it’s just me, I don’t have to check under the car for velociraptors.
I’ve been back for six months. I have few possessions, few acquaintances, and few adult memories of this city. When I arrived at Mum’s house, I expected Jude to be angry, or at least sullen. She acted as though I had never left.
‘If anything happens to her . . .’ Mum said, and then she looked over my shoulder into the street. Sometimes I think she’s on the lookout for dinosaurs, out of habit. It is also a habit of hers to leave her sentences unfinished. I guessed it was a plea and not a threat.
‘I’ll call you, I promise. It’s only a month. We’ll be okay, won’t we, Jude?’
‘We’ll be okay,’ Jude said. ‘Promise. A month.’ She hugged Mum and followed me to the car.
As I drove away, Jude leaned out of the window and waved until the house was out of sight. I thought, I’m doing this in case anything happens to you, Mum. You’re supposed to thank me.
I think about calling Mum while Jude sleeps on the couch, but I know she will offer to come and pick her up early. I have one more week to go, and I will manage, though that life I always wanted for myself is looking sweeter every minute.
Late in the afternoon Jude wakes and sees me. She doesn’t smile.
‘Hi.’ I close my laptop. ‘Want a cup of tea?’
‘Yes.’
I bring in the mugs. Jude places hers carefully on the ground and pats the coffee table. I sit down.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I lost it.’
‘It’s okay.’ I stroke her hair and smile. ‘You know it’s okay. You’re getting better, you just still have these episodes sometimes.’
She smiles at something over my shoulder.
‘It was my fault too,’ I admit, ‘I got stuck into this cut and forgot it was pill time.’
‘I’ll get you another one,’ she says.
‘Another what?’
She reaches out to touch my watch. I remember she lost mine ten years ago, dropped it down a stormwater drain. The velociraptors were living down there, she explained, and they needed to be pacified with gold. It was only a cheap plastic watch, but to her it was a chance to quiet the voices, to buy a moment’s peace.
I put my hand over her hand.
‘Hey Jude, what do you call a blind dinosaur?’
She smiles and groans and rubs her face in the pillow.
‘It’s harmless,’ I tell her. ‘Look.’ We are standing in my neighbour’s yard. It’s five in the morning. The light is grey, the metal kindergarten-yellow. I take Jude’s hand and place it on the side of the machine.
‘It’s a bulldozer,’ she says absently.
‘What did you think it was?’ I ask her.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, Jude. Don’t worry.’
I know she forgets when she’s feeling better, but I can’t help testing her. I am hoping I will catch her out one day, find proof that she’s been faking all along.
‘Jude, look at me.’ I snap a few shots of her leaning on the machine, even though I know they will all turn out with her same vacant stare. In some ways, her moments of clarity are harder. There is no longer a chance of reprieve.
I am eleven years old, and Jude is in the hospital having tests. Actually, the results are already known. Mum isn’t ready to tell me yet.
I should be able to guess. All her favourite things are here with her, a circle of talismans. Her Walkman is lying on the bed. She is drugged and pale, but there are no machines or drips in the room like a normal hospital, and no telephone.
My sister is listening to ‘Cecilia’, rewinding it, and listening again.
‘I could make you a tape of just that song if you want,’ I offer. ‘Over and over again.’
‘Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians,’ my sister drones.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians.’
‘Jude, do you want me to make the tape or not?’
‘No.’ She is too listless to shake her head at me. ‘Then it would be a different song each time.’
I want to yell at her and bang my fists against the metal bed frame. Shake her out of it. I hate this place. I hate the way my sister has been turned into a zombie, and I hate her when she’s not one too. I walk out of the room, past my mother, who is talking to the doctor and doesn’t notice me, and climb the fire stairs to the roof. When I get to the top, the door is locked and bolted, and I trudge back down. No one even notices I was gone.
At the end of four weeks, we pack Jude’s things into her backpack and wait on the porch. Jude is ready to leave an hour early. She watches every car carefully, and when Mum’s Honda appears around the corner she stands up and claps her hands.
Mum looks even more tired than she did a month ago. She smiles at me sadly, as if I have disappointed her. She hugs Jude and then me. She picks up Jude’s bag before I can invite her inside. Jude pulls at her yellow hair in a smug way, like a teenage girl who is confident of her popularity.
‘Did we have a good time?’ Mum says. I stand on my porch like an ornament and wait for Jude to condemn me. She glances at me slyly, then nods at Mum. The gesture is just noncommittal enough for both of us to feel relief.
‘Let’s get going, shall we?’
I can’t wait to get back to my work and have the house to myself again. To be able to concentrate. To tidy knowing it will stay tidy.
Mum starts the Honda and motors away down the street. Jude waves without turning around; she could be waving at the birds.
I love you, I think. It’s a selfish prayer. It’s the way people speak to the dead.
After the car has gone around the corner, I walk inside and pick up my books from the floor. Outside, the bulldozer starts again. It’s bloody annoyin
g. I go to the window, stick my head out, and say, ‘Shut up, T-Rex.’
I walk to the stereo and press play on the tape that’s in there. I sit down on the couch and smooth out the pillow, catching a few strands of yellow hair in my fingers. I put my head where Jude’s head has been and hum along.
Mice
I’m stacking apples when I see the lioness. They are individual Granny Smiths, and come identically sized in a way that has always disturbed me. I’ve never quite got the hang of the perfect pyramids my manager, Tracy, makes when she’s explaining how it’s done. I should concentrate on what I’m doing more: Tracy knocked five bucks off my pay last week for daydreaming.
It’s not my fault I can’t concentrate. There is a mouse plague this year, and my house is full of them. As winter approaches I can hear them nesting, shoring up space in the wall cavity. They move boldly down the hall in the evening, stopping to snack on some carpety treat and glare at me without fear. I don’t try to get rid of them, even when I can’t sleep. Even when the lack of sleep makes me see mice that aren’t there.
The lioness is not a dream, she’s a real thing, although there is no one else in the aisle to confirm this. I know she’s real because I can smell her. It’s not a zoo-animal smell. It’s predator.
Her fur is tatty in the fluoro light and the rips in her ear tell her age. I look into her wheat-coloured eyes, and she looks frankly back. She swishes her tail at the leafy greens. No noise is made. The lettuces don’t shiver. I can’t move until she looks away. She turns in a tight curve and disappears behind the grey, late-season bananas. As soon as she has gone, I know I won’t tell anyone that I have seen her.
After I finish the apples I get sent down to parcel pick-up. It’s good to work in the loading dock. The change makes the day go faster, and away from most of the customers, I don’t have to worry so much about whether or not I look like I’m concentrating. I even smile at an old fat lady riding an electric scooter when she asks me to put her things in the luggage rack. She acknowledges me with a slow nod before scooting off.
Tracy wants to cut back on this service but a lot of old people still use it. It’s convenient for them, not having to carry their things down all those levels. It must be rough getting old, losing your strength.
The other workers are all skylarking, climbing shelves and hanging off the sides of the trolley, but I don’t feel like playing games today. When we finish the orders, I leave them to it. I take my pushbike out of the back room and pedal slowly home.
About halfway there I get a flat and have to walk. It’s not dark yet, so I don’t mind. I’m not that excited about getting home anyway. My flatmates are away and the house will be just as cold and quiet as the street. Our landlord is cheap and we don’t have any heating; I generally put the oven on and sit right next to it, away from the draught.
I keep saying I’m going to move somewhere else, like down to the city, but something always comes up. Dad’s just had a pin put in his knee, and every other weekend he needs me to climb the ladder for something. Or I get a run of extra shifts and think I’ll save the bond up first, then I spend it.
Maybe I’m waiting for a voice in my ear to say go.
‘Give us a hand?’
I glance up. In a square of light cast by a clapboard house, there’s a blister of warmth. A swelling of solid yellow. It’s a fat lady in a yellow dress.
It’s the lady from before, with the special scooter. She’s got herself out of the chair and is trying to turn it around so she can get the groceries out while leaning on the gate. It doesn’t look easy. Every time she shops there must be a painstaking process like this and I wonder why she doesn’t have any home help. The groceries are still piled in the luggage rack. I try to remember if there was ice cream in her order; it will have melted by now. I offer to carry the bags in for her, and she nods.
‘You came at the right time,’ she says.
I don’t say anything, just move the bags around like I’m still at work. While I’m pushing the scooter she follows me up the path on unsteady legs. She’s only halfway when I come back to help her but she waggles her arms in the air, shooing me in. Her arms have wings, big swinging wings like a plucked chicken. I go back into her little house and move the electric scooter into the hallway, where an empty space waits for it like the dent in a favourite chair.
I help her put the groceries away and am relieved when there is no ice cream. Nothing has been ruined by the wasted time.
‘Do you want a drink?’ she says. ‘I’ve just got cordial.’
‘Thanks,’ I say.
She nods. ‘Go on into the lounge room.’
It’s the same room, only a couple of soft chairs at one end. I look around while she is busy in the kitchen. It’s bare, but with a working heater. There are crocheted rugs folded on the chairs. No photos. There’s a pissy smell I think is old person, but then I hear her talking to cats at the back door.
‘Milk, puss. Milk, puss. Nice chop for you now.’ It’s almost a lullaby.
She comes over with the cordial and I take the cup, a blue plastic mug from a stacking set. We lean on opposite walls and sip our drinks. The cordial is lemon-barley flavoured, with a grainy texture. Neither one of us sits down. She might be embarrassed. She doesn’t have much mobility, and it would be awkward, risking collapse in front of a stranger.
The cats come into the room one by one, licking their lips. There are three of them. There might be more.
‘Can I borrow one of your cats?’ I say.
The woman looks disturbed.
‘Heaps of mice this year,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve tried everything but I can’t do much about them.’ I haven’t tried everything, but I feel exhausted enough to say so. I’m helpless with them. A bit of a pushover.
She doesn’t say anything. She keeps looking at me and I start thinking about the lion. Her eyes are similar. An orangey brown, they are clear and unafraid.
I bend down to pat one of the cats, an old tortoiseshell swiping at my feet. When I reach out for it, it flinches and gives me a sour look.
‘I don’t lend me cats,’ says the woman.
‘That’s fair enough,’ I say.
She reaches out to put her cup down and the arms swing, casting massive shadows on the wall behind her.
‘I should go, I left my bike outside.’ I say. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘Yep,’ she says.
I let myself out.
I walk the few remaining blocks home, wheeling my bike. I can’t stop thinking about the lioness. What she finds to eat. Whether she might be living in the shopping centre, or down in the basement where it’s dark and quiet. Whether maybe the lights of the shops have confused her, in the same way headlights confuse rabbits.
Predictably, the house is full of mice. I see them scuttle when I turn on the light. They are worse than cockroaches; four-limbed mammals, things you can see breathing, are harder to kill.
I push my bike into the cold hallway and fix the puncture. My hands are stiff from the cold. When I’m finished I go into the kitchen, find a lighter and open the oven.
I’ve disturbed a mouse in the middle of dinner: it’s eating crumbs off the oven floor. To a creature that size, the space must be a ballroom. I reach in to light the stove and the mouse runs into a compartment in the back of the machine that I didn’t even know was there.
I have to do something about them. I rack my brains for a better kind of trap, but I’m no engineer. So I do the same thing I always do. I lie awake and listen while they build their house in my wall, from my old phone bills. Eventually I get to sleep.
In the morning I wake to find that I have made a decision about the mice. It seems so simple. I ride to Terrace Fair grinning into the crisp morning air. I find Tracy at the checkout after I clock on, and volunteer for fruit and veg.
I look
out for the lioness all day. I keep expecting to see her stalking past the bananas, her muscle the colour of dry grass. I spin at odd moments to catch her lurking. But she doesn’t appear.
I figure I need to tempt her with something. In a quiet moment I wander into the meat section and ask Gary if I can have a bone for my dog.
‘I didn’t know you had a dog,’ he says. He swipes his chin with the back of his hand and drops the hand to his side. A particle of white fat falls from his glove onto the floor.
‘I don’t. I’m minding it for my grandmother.’
He points his chin at a mess of bones and fat and sinew in a garbage bin. I put a plastic bag around my hand and help myself to the biggest single piece I can find without too much diving. It must weigh half a sheep. I slip the bag around it and stash it in the staff kitchen. If anyone asks I’ll say yes, the dog is enormous.
After my shift I take the meat down the fire stairs and jam the door open with a piece of cardboard. Then I walk back up and take my usual exit through the loading dock. I say goodbye to a couple of people then wheel my bike around to the open door. I push it into the stairwell and carry it down to basement level. Then I wait.
The concrete is cold. I don’t sit down. The night seems to take a long time to arrive. It must be the artificial light lingering in the stairwell, scaring the real night away. I think about the freezing that’s been done to the meat and whether it will still attract an animal, or if its tempting smell has been cleaned off by the cold.
When I hear the last of the cars leave, when I know the shopping centre above me is empty, I push the door open.
The basement under Terrace Fair is a blank space of smells and pipes. Dim light flickers through fittings that are never cleaned. It smells of shop rot and vinegar.
I put the hunk of meat down on the floor and pull the plastic bag off it, then retreat into the shadows to wait.
The Rest is Weight Page 10
