Snake Bite

by Christie Thompson

  Lukey started playing with his lip ring with his tongue, something he did all the time. He has nice lips, I thought. They weren’t fat or salivary, just normal lips and a nice pale pink colour. I started wondering what it would feel like to kiss Lukey, with both of our lip and tongue piercings. I remembered when we were thirteen and had gone to Kimbo’s together to get our tongues pierced. Lukey had to hold my hand I was so nervous, but he was really sweet about it and didn’t make fun of me or anything. After we left the piercing studio Lukey bought me frozen custard and when I drooled down my chin he leaned over with a serviette and caught the drips. We had to wait for about an hour in the bus interchange for our ride home, so Lukey rolled a joint and we got high. It hailed that night, marble-sized pellets of ice pounded onto the concrete so hard we couldn’t even hear each other talk, so we just sat there poking out our newly pierced tongues at each other, watching the storm. On the bus we sat right up the back in one corner and huddled together to get warm, Lukey’s arm around my shoulders, my head tucked under his chin, listening to The Smiths on his MP3, one earphone each. When I think about that night, I see us from the outside: two skinny kids with long black hair and piercings, dressed in black, our faces drawn into expressions of practised boredom and gloom. But I also remember what I felt like inside: radiant and perfectly contented.

  ‘Well? Did you?’ My voice didn’t sound like my own.

  ‘Would it matter to you if I did?’ Lukey looked up at me and frowned.

  I swallowed hard. I could see the confirmation written all over his face. His words just kind of hung in the air between us.

  ‘Nah, that’s cool. I don’t give a fuck, hey,’ I said. ‘Just wondering.’

  SEVEN

  When I got home later that night I called out hello, but there was no answer. Mum had gone to work. I smiled a little; it was nice to be home alone, to have some peace. I went on the internet and browsed Facebook for twenty minutes or so, reading through the status updates: this ‘friend’ is enjoying summer, that ‘friend’ smoked a mad doob of chronic hydro and greened bright-orange Dorito voms.

  Yaaawn.

  I went to my room and closed the door, stripped off into my bra and undies, turned on the electric fan and pulled my cherry-red fender strat into my lap. Idly, I plucked at the strings for a while, then I pulled my practice amp out of the closet and plugged in my guitar and started thrashing out some power chords. My spine tingled. It felt amazing.

  I went over to my closet and pulled on a floaty little white baby-doll dress that my mum had given me on my thirteenth birthday along with all her old punk tapes, old late eighties and early nineties grungy shit, which I fell head over heels in love with. The dress had a torn hem, and when I wore it, I totally looked like Courtney Love in old-school Hole, except not blonde, obviously . . . I sat in front of my mirror and painted my face with wine-red lipstick and heavy black eyeliner, teased my hair into sixty different directions and then stood, wide-stance, in front of the mirror, my guitar slung low across my hips, beating out the chords to Babes in Toyland’s ‘Swamp Pussy’, sneering and snarling into the mirror, lost in my own wild, furious eyes. Fuck Lukey and his little girlfriend.

  In my bedroom, home alone, I ruled the fucking world.

  EIGHT

  When I was a little kid, four or five, and my dad and his brothers were drinking beer and playing cricket at the oval on a Sunday afternoon, my mother and I would spend the time in the kitchen at Nan’s house. Nan was my dad’s mother. My mum had been a foster kid and after she had me she didn’t have any contact with her carers. While Mum and Dad were still together, Nan was sort of a mum to my mum. She died a few years ago, of lung cancer.

  I liked the kitchen table at Nan’s house. The bench chairs and table were built into a nook, so it was like a booth you’d see at McDonald’s. Nan would ask if I would like a glass of cordial. She always made it way too weak so you could barely tell what flavour it was. Then she would set out an afternoon tea: ham and butter sandwiches cut into triangles, jam sponge roll from Woolies and Honey Jumbles from a packet. I thought the butter in the sandwiches was cheese. It was cut thick, straight off the block, deliciously firm to the tooth when bitten into.

  I was used to Mum and Nan squabbling and bitching and gossiping. Nan was what Mum used to call a ‘big personality’. To me that just meant Nan was loud and smoked a lot. Her voice was scratchy from smoking too many Marlboros and she would sit in the kitchen booth, her back to the window, one elbow propped up on the table, with a lit durry dangling from her stubby yellow fingers, every second sentence opening with, I’ll tell you something about . . . or I’ll tell you this much for free . . .

  That particular Sunday, Nan was telling Mum about Pop, who had died in a car crash just before I was born.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about Paulie’s father,’ Nan rasped to Mum. ‘He wasn’t a perfect man. He drank too much and spent far too much time at the club. But he was good with the boys and he put food on the table. And that’s all you can ask from a husband or father.’

  Mum lowered her head. ‘I want more than just the food on the table. Sometimes we barely manage that much.’

  Nan threw her hands in the air. ‘What do you want, Helen? The flippin’ fairytale?! This is the nineties for godssake. You’ve got a kid to consider, so you can’t go worrying yourself in knots because your marriage isn’t all roses and honeymoons.’

  ‘Things just aren’t right between Paul and me anymore.’ Mum gripped her mug to her chest, her knuckles white.

  I remember staring at Mum’s hands. She had, and still has, beautiful hands. Soft, not too slender, with long white-tipped nails. On this day they were wrapped around a blue-and-purple pastel mug with a picture of flying kites on the front.

  ‘That’s the problem nowadays. You want everything to be instant, easy.’

  ‘We’ve tried to make it work, Kath. Honestly, we have.’ Mum struggled to control her voice.

  ‘No tears, please, Helen. Not in front of Jessica.’ Nan cut me a slice of jam roll and handed it to me on a serviette. ‘Here you go, honey. Eat up, or it will go to waste.’

  ‘I’m going to move out,’ Mum said.

  ‘On your own? What about Jessica?’

  ‘She’s coming with me.’

  ‘Paulie isn’t gunna want that.’

  ‘He doesn’t know yet. I’m gunna tell him tonight.’

  ‘Where will you live?’ Nan demanded. ‘What about Paul?’

  ‘We fight all the time, Kath. He comes home drunk most nights. He smokes around Jez no matter how many times I ask him not to.’

  ‘He’s still a boy, Kath. He’s only twenty-two, for God’s sake. You expect too much of him,’ Nan scolded, and sucked hard on her cigarette. ‘Stick it out for a few years and things will settle down.’

  ‘Last weekend he didn’t come home at all! Three nights in a row!’ Mum shook her head bitterly.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Helen. He’s my son.’ Nan sighed and brushed her greying honey-coloured hair behind her ears. ‘He has a good heart. He adores that little girl.’

  ‘Oh, bullshit!’ Mum spat. ‘He’s at work or he’s at the tavern or he’s at a mate’s place or he’s feeding our grocery money into those bloody pokies. He’s never home long enough to know her and —’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Nan raised her voice.

  I shoved the last piece of cake into my mouth and slid out of the kitchen table booth. This conversation had become boring to me. I went over to the bird cage that hung in the corner of the kitchen, near a sunny window, and peered in at the little yellow canary hopping back and forth along its wooden perch. The bottom of the cage, lined with newspaper, was covered in little green-and-white droppings. There were two little feed tubes clipped to the wire on the side of the cage, one for water and one for birdseed.

  Nan’s house smelled like old people. Mothballs, antiseptic cleaning products, lavender toilet spray. The pot pourri of fragrances made me feel
dizzy. The bright light from outside, although muted by white gauzy curtains, hurt my eyes and I had to look away. My belly started to hurt and I felt hot all over. I turned back to the kitchen table, still seeing bright white spots in my vision.

  ‘I feel sick, Mummy,’ I said, urgently. ‘Mummy? I don’t feel well.’

  Mum and Nan were in a heated debate, their voices barely controlled as they fought to be heard. I walked to Mum’s side and placed my head in her lap.

  ‘Mummy, please.’ I tugged at her elbow, looking imploringly up into her eyes. ‘I don’t feel well, Mummy.’

  My mother looked down at me, blankly, her eyes red-rimmed. ‘We’ll be going soon. Just let me finish my conversation with Nan.’

  ‘Can I go outside?’ I asked.

  ‘No, darl. We’ll be going soon.’

  I sat on the linoleum floor under the canary cage, and plaited and unplaited the fringe of a worn grey rug, which is where, several moments later, my glass of cordial, ham and butter sandwiches and jam roll came back up.

  ‘Oh, Jesus! Jessica!’ My mother exclaimed.

  ‘I told you I was sick, Mummy,’ I whispered, tears rolling down my cheeks.

  NINE

  Mum started working at the club part-time when I was about twelve or so and since then she was down there nearly every day whether she was working or not. I suppose it made her feel like she had a life. She took me out to dinner there on Sundays because she said we were too broke to go to Chinese. The club had big bistro meals, pretty much everything deep fried, with an all-you-can-eat salad bar for ten bucks, and Mum got a staff discount. The salad bar was so shit—nothing fresh, just coleslaw, pasta salad, potato salad and tinned beets. I don’t know why they even bothered really. It was just a token effort for anybody who wanted to eat ‘healthily’, but I totally think the same trays of salad sat there all week.

  We put our orders in at the bistro and found a table outside so we could smoke. Mum bought me a lemon squash with bitters and herself a glass of white wine. I wished I could have a beer or a glass of wine, but Mum was all about keeping up appearances in her workplace. She handed me a cigarette, though, and I smiled gratefully.

  ‘Just don’t make a habit of it,’ Mum said.

  We lit our smokes and leaned back in our chairs, puffing away in silence for several moments.

  ‘So . . .’ Mum tapped her cigarette ash into the ashtray. ‘Feels like ages since we’ve done this, hey?’

  ‘Has been,’ I said. ‘So busy with school this year. I fucking hated it.’

  ‘You did well.’ Mum smiled. ‘I’ve been meaning to say that since I got your report card.’

  ‘I tried.’ I grinned. ‘Well, sort of. Telly took a high priority. So did Facebook.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. And hanging out with Lukey, playing computer games, listening to music.’ Mum ticked off on her fingers. ‘You still did okay, though. Imagine what you could do if you really tried.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I wanted to ask what you were thinking about for Chrissie this year,’ Mum said. ‘We could have a lunch at our house?’

  ‘Yeah, sounds okay.’

  ‘What about your pressie? Anything in mind?’

  ‘A puppy!’ I put on my best pleading face, even though I already knew the answer would be ‘no’.

  ‘You’re barely home, Jez!’ Mum sighed. ‘I’d be stuck feeding the damn thing, training it, playing with it. And what about all the vet bills? Puppies are so expensive and . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I sulked. ‘I’ve heard the speech a zillion times, Mum.’

  ‘Is there something practical you want?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, being a smartarse. ‘Socks and undies, please. I would just love socks, undies and maybe a new toothbrush.’

  ‘Are you going to give your dad a visit?’ Mum asked, ignoring my sarcasm.

  I paused, using my straw to poke ice cubes down into the bitters that had settled at the bottom of the schooner glass.

  ‘I guess so. If he wants to catch up.’ I shrugged again. ‘Have you heard from him?’

  ‘He’s more likely to ring you than me.’

  ‘I haven’t heard from him.’

  ‘Well, send him a text and see what he’s up to.’

  ‘Yep, I will.’

  My dad liked me to call him Paul, or Paulie, mostly because it made him feel more like my ‘mate’ than my father (gag). He lives in Queanbeyan with his girlfriend, Tanya, and their two Rottweilers, Bonnie and Clyde (really original, I know). I don’t even really know what Paul did for a living. I know that he works in the public service, something to do with building services or maintenance or some shit. He was always moaning about the long hours he worked, dropping hints about how much he was being ‘robbed’ by Child Support, and asking me questions about what Mum spent her money on, trying to catch her out for fuck-knows-what. Paul and Tanya were totally obsessed with money, not that they had a whole lot to show for it except for the usual middle Australia shit: an eggplant-coloured lego house decorated with Fantastic Furniture package deals, a car each (second-hand, but fairly recent models), and a holiday at Batemans Bay once a year. Woop de doo. They were really just total bogans who happened to have landed themselves decent-paying public service jobs, so they thought that gave them the right to act super self-important and above me and Mum, and that was like shit on my shoe.

  When I was a kid, I enjoyed going to visit my dad because he would take me out to Maccas or KFC and to the movies. This stopped after I started high school. Firstly I stopped eating meat and secondly Paul started feeding me the line of ‘you’re old enough to entertain yourself’. It’s like he figured my childhood days were over so he was relieved of parental duties that involved actually trying and I didn’t want to spend time with him just because we were related, or feel the need to like him just because we were related. But I must have had a soft spot for Paul because I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell him to fuck right off (a scenario I’d played through in my head more than once). I think it was because he wasn’t really a bad person, just deluded and self-absorbed and a bit of a douchebag. It’s kind of ironic that Mum left him because he was an alco but now he’s doing the whole middle-class bit and Mum is a total booze hag. Seriously though, I reckon I’d rather be a drunk than spend my life with my head up my own arse.

  Our meals arrived. A bean burrito for me, a chicken schnittie with veg and chips smothered in diane gravy for Mum.

  ‘Yuuuum,’ I stuck my knife and fork into the burrito and disembowelled it; tomato sauce and kidney beans spilled all over my plate.

  ‘Good?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Greasy as fuck,’ I said. ‘Good shit. How’s your dirty bird?’

  ‘Greasy.’ Mum nodded and smiled. ‘We better walk this off tomorrow morning.’

  Mum ate one-handed, mashing the food with her fork and shovelling it into her face, chewing as she loaded the next forkful.

  ‘Yeah.’ I looked at her sceptically. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You got your father’s genes.’

  I didn’t really like being reminded of being half my dad’s creation, but I suppose it was better than being fat. ‘How’s work going?’

  I didn’t really know what else to talk to Mum about. I could tell sometimes she struggled to find common ground with me, too. It’s kind of weird because we were close in age for a mother and daughter. Mum had me when she was seventeen and raised me almost single-handedly. But we weren’t like those mums and daughters you see on telly, like the ones on Gilmore Girls, where Mum is Daughter’s bestie and it is so freakin’ lovey it makes you want to vom.

  ‘Work’s good,’ Mum said. ‘We’ve been busy, so I’ve been getting rostered on five or six nights a week.’

  ‘Yeah, cool.’

  ‘And the work Chrissie party is next weekend.’

  ‘Oh, nice.’

  ‘You could probably come if you wanted to.’

  ‘What night?’

  ‘Next Saturday.’

&
nbsp; ‘Aw . . . Saturday night . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I get it. Something better on.’ Mum smiled tightly.

  ‘It would all be oldies, anyways. I’d be bored shitless.’

  ‘Actually a few people are bringing their kids. I thought maybe I could introduce you to Katie Jamieson’s kid, he’s a year older than you, right into skateboarding and stuff.’

  ‘I know Scott Jamieson, Mum. He’s a total douche.’

  ‘He’s a good-looking kid.’

  ‘A good-looking douche. And the douche cancels out the good-looking so he’s just a douche.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mum raised her palms in resignation. ‘I was just saying.’

  ‘Why don’t you take Shaz to the Chrissie party?’

  ‘Well, actually I already invited her over for Christmas day at our house.’

  I let my jaw drop open exaggeratedly to display my disdain. Shaz was Mum’s super bogan friend whom she’d known since high school, a nasal-voiced old booze hag with acrylic nails and a spiral perm who, in her own head, was freakin’ Samantha from Sex and the City, but to everyone else was just a tactless trashbag who spent way too much time talking about dick than was tasteful for a woman in her mid-thirties.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I whined. ‘Why does Shaz have to come?’

  ‘She doesn’t have anybody, Jez.’

  ‘That’s her fault for being a gross mole . . .’

  ‘Jez.’ Mum’s tone became threatening. ‘Don’t start. She’s been a good friend to me.’

  ‘A good friend to get shit-faced with and tart onto gross club bogans.’

  I never liked Shaz, not even when I was a kid. Until they popped out kids of their own and stopped hanging out as much, Mum’s other friends, Linda and Kaye, treated me like their little sister. I was allowed to stay up after Sex and the City had finished on the telly and drink ‘mocktails’ made of red cordial and Sprite and ice, and Linda and Kaye would get out their make-up bags and paint my face with blue eye shadow and red lipstick. But Shaz, when she thought I wasn’t listening, would ask Mum, When are you gunna offload the kid so we can have a proper night on the town? And she was forever trying to get me into bed and to sleep so they could ‘really get the party started’. I wished Linda and Kaye would hang around with Mum again, and Shaz would find herself a hubbie and spawn. Fat chance of that happening.