Heat and Light (11 page)

I reached for my clothes in the darkness to go to the bathroom. I had lost all sense of anything outside the room, her roommates may have come back, the days may have changed. I put on my underwear and my chinos at once, and tenderly reached for her tank top on the floor and pulled it over my breasts.

I went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut the door behind me. I sat on the toilet seat and looked down between my legs, amazed at the glistening wet mark on my underwear, like glitter. With toilet paper I explored the extent of my wetness. My legs were still shaking. I saw the tag inside my pants.
This colour will continue to fade
, it said.

Anything Can Happen

A few weeks after Lucy moved in she said we needed a new broom. I was on my laptop, probably looking up sneakers on eBay, and I didn’t pay much attention. The next few times she mentioned it I don’t think I bothered even looking at the broom. To me, it was a faceless constant. I knew my mother had given me the broom and I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with it.

For months Lucy made sure the broom was on shopping lists and waiting-for-the-bus conversation. Though she was all talk, no action.

‘Why don’t you just get one?’ I said when I was fed up.

‘I don’t want to carry it home,’ she said.

I imagined her tiny frame carrying it over her shoulder. Neither of us had cars then. I knew she was looking at me and my boxing arms still sweaty from the gym. She was butching me up, just as I femmed her up if I felt like a chip sandwich when I got home from work late or when her sister was coming over and the toilet hadn’t been cleaned.

Lucy knew my mum had gone. It was in October, Mum had just got laid off at the post office and I had taken her out to plane-spot from Toona Lane. It was also my twentieth birthday so it was probably more of a thing I chose for myself. We sat there in the car and the planes shuddered any space we thought we had from the sky. Poor Mum. It had been the only job she’d ever liked and they hadn’t called her Denise.

We got out of the car. What happened in those next few minutes is that Mum moved before I could notice and I didn’t start chasing her straightaway because I had no shoes on, and I didn’t know she was going to do what she did.

In short, she got over the fence and onto the runway; she stood there wearing her Aboriginal flag T-shirt, there was a small Qantas plane, coasting, and they stopped to let her on.

Without an explanation or a backward look at me, my mother surged forward into the space and was collected. All preparations were completed, the plane gained speed, then height, and soon it was tiny in the distance, looking like an asterisk on a page.

I tracked the plane and found out it was the weekly flight to Port Hedland. I bet she’s happy there and she has got a new job already. She doesn’t send postcards but I get a throaty voicemail every now and then.

But that’s not what really happened, Lucy says – and what can I say, doesn’t she think I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my head, but that’s what I remember.

Lucy asks so many questions I can’t answer that I don’t bother talking about it anymore, it’s easier that way.

After Christmas we finally saved up for a second-hand Suzuki Swift and I’m driving us to Bunnings to get some plants because we’re all ‘settled’ and shit, when Lucy mentions it would be nice to get the broom while we’re here.

We go down a few of those long aisles. It’s not with the ‘garden tools’. There’s just spades and rakes.

‘Of course,’ I say out loud. ‘These are for outside use. They don’t sell brooms here, Lucy.’

‘I would use it for outside as well.’ Lucy sniffs. ‘To sweep up those little yellow flowers that always spread across the concrete like confetti.’

‘Why don’t you ask someone, then?’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘I need a drink,’ I say. ‘It’s the driving.’

I leave her by the fertiliser and go to the cafe and get a flavoured water from the fridge. The woman doesn’t look up from making coffees even though I know she’s seen me. I’m sure I’m not the only homemaking lesbian she’s seen today, though she doesn’t serve me until after a man and his two kids come over.

I find Lucy in the outdoor section wrestling a peace lily.

‘Where have you been? I needed your help.’

‘Getting my drink, where do you think? I wasn’t just twirling my thumbs.’

‘Twiddling,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to spend all day here.’

We end up having a full-on couple’s fight and draw a crowd. Obviously something deeper is driving Lucy to behave like this for a broom, though I of course have my own hang-ups about it.

It is me who surrenders. I take Lucy to our next Sunday-shop stop, Woolworths, and buy her a spanking-new sixteen-dollar broom.

I push it into the back seat of the car and I feel that twinge of remorse when it fits sideways and I can shut the door.

When we get home, Lucy spends so much time sweeping our floorboards she’s late for work. After she leaves I feel alone, but I also feel alive.

I find myself missing a lot of things about my mother. Like how she would come over with a twenty-four-pack of toilet paper when it was on special at Aldi. She sewed the same holes in my favourite jeans. She would ring me up at work when she saw a storm on the radar and warn me about leaving. She brought over her neighbour’s lemons when I called her up with a cold. She liked to make Lucy and me stuff, especially clothes. She knitted Lucy three scarves the month we first started dating. Lucy says she could have got out then.

Lucy only got to meet Mum a couple of times. The first time we went over there, Mum had the TV on one of those bride-themed reality shows. Lucy made a face while we sat there. I told her I’d show her downstairs and the yard. She brushed her lips to my ear as we walked down the stairs and said, ‘I just can’t stand not touching you.’ We ended up getting it on in the laundry and in our disorientated state did not hear Mum come down. We hadn’t turned the light on, and we stood there, wrapped into each other, as Mum, not seeing us, moved to within metres and put the washing basket down next to the machine. We watched Mum fill the machine, unable to move or we’d give ourselves away. We heard Mum whispering to herself, ‘Oh, no, Delise, why did you have to say that?’ Also, ‘She sure is pretty, almost too pretty,’ and, ‘Do I ask them who’s the man, who’s the woman?’

My mother turns up everywhere now. In the pop-up ads on my browser and on late night talkback radio. I know there are people I look unconsciously at for motherly figures. Possible candidates include: my Taekwondo instructor, my doting but vague colleague, my long-lost Aunty and the middle-aged checkout chick.

That night Lucy comes home at her usual time and I am used to her routine of cleaning up all over again as if it was somehow forgotten in the hours she was gone. Through the darkness I look down to see that the neighbours have left their washing on the line. We watch the basketball on the Olympics and drink Japanese beer. I am amused by the pole vault and Lucy is in awe of the gymnastics. I put my face into Lucy’s beer-smelling hair and we go upstairs and sleep.

We both know how important time together is. I work days and she works nights. Lucy and I didn’t have a spectacular beginning, but we don’t mind. We were friends and now we are partners. There wasn’t really a moment I could say we got together. I just know we started sitting close on the bus to town and sleeping at each other’s places. She is my first girlfriend and I am hers and I don’t think about last because that’s too much right now but she knows she has my heart – and at the moment that only equates to how we coloured in each other’s Cons with our shapes and initials.

In the morning I lay fresh eyes on the broom Mum got me, and with these fresh eyes I’ve come around to the fact that it is kind of broken and it needs to go. There is not enough room in our flat for sentimentality, that’s what I used to say. To Mum actually. I didn’t enjoy her gifts when I got them. I give the broom a proper funeral and choose a numbered bin outside our complex for it to rest in until tomorrow morning when the collectors come.

I have a memory chain of Mum that I can only recall through photographs. I was five and it was summer and Dad was never around. Mum walked me around the block every morning and we spent time in the playground. We went to the milk bar to pick up groceries and when she had some spare money she would get me a fresh apple juice. We went everywhere together. We wore matching headbands. She made me a crocodile costume for my birthday. We went on a trip to the mountains and I was scared of the cows on the way. The tooth fairy came in the night. Then I started grade one at the school down the road. We cried together. She said she’d be there waiting at three, even earlier. She always was.

She read to me every night so I wasn’t lonely in my dreams. It wasn’t usually from books, but stories she created. Not about princesses and dragons and magic carpets. About the cheeky gecko named Larry that came to our bathroom window and the emu that could fly.

Lucy is very pedantic when it comes to our place. She notices when I mess with the fridge magnets, even just a little bit. She won’t allow shoes in the house and when I come home from gym I can’t sit on the couch, or even just lurk around, until I’m showered. Lucy delights in a perfectly kept home and garden.

Lucy really shits me when she DJs our car and bus trips. There is no sense of the unknown about it, every song is measured. At the traffic lights I try to talk to her about my family but she’s not listening.

My dad was eaten by a tiger. He had just started on a new dose of medication for his heart condition. He was camping with a friend at the time and they said when my dad saw the tiger he just started charging at it. The tiger had dropped from a tree right in front of them. This tiger had developed an appetite for humans. It was a long struggle between the tiger and Dad. Post mortem he had bites to his thigh, chest, throat and face. They found some of the possessions Dad had on him. He had a photo of me in his wallet.

I remembered my mother, Lucy and me sitting around the dinner table.

‘So, Lucy, what do you do?’ my mum said, piling more greens on my plate. She had a habit of not allowing herself to eat until everyone had finished.

‘I work at the entertainment centre,’ she said. ‘I collect people’s tickets.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Mum said. ‘And are you studying?’

‘No.’

Mum started unloading the dishwasher.

I said, ‘Lucy studied teaching. Early childhood.’

‘And do you have any plans to get into teaching?’

‘I didn’t finish,’ Lucy said pointedly.

They talked about me. The big news was that I was getting my wisdom teeth out on the coming Friday.

‘I’ll pick you up at eight,’ Mum said.

‘Thanks—’ I started.

‘That’s okay,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve already arranged to take her there, and I’ve taken the night off work, too.’

My mum looked at Lucy with a surprised expression. ‘You don’t have a car. And she was going to stay the night here.’

‘It’s okay, Luce,’ I quickly said. ‘You can come in the car with us.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mum said. ‘I was going to get my hair done at the Gabba while I was waiting for you.’

Lucy’s normally sweet face looked then like a run-over pie. I remembered Mum had made the same face when she commented on my new laptop bag and I said Lucy had made it for me for my birthday. They were both fighting not to be obsolete.

I flip open my laptop to check the time in Port Hedland. It is 10 a.m. and I bet Mum’s on the beach, shades on so no one knows she’s thinking of a daughter left behind. I go out to the street and open the lid of the third bin. I push up on the edge and the bin holds my weight as I do a sort of improvised exercise, all the while looking down into the dark throat of the bin at the handle of the broom. It isn’t long until Lucy comes and asks me what I’m doing.

Lungs

In order, this is where I feel it. Hands, feet, lips, tits. The sun’s left and it’s gone cold on me. I walk back into the store, up the aisles and to the dry space we’ve blocked off at the side, in the deli section. Mark’s spread all the towels and items from the clothing section on the floor. I pick up a hoodie and put it around my shoulders. It’s slightly damp and smells like prawns.

‘Cold?’ Mark laughs at me. ‘It’s fucking January. It’s fucking Rockhampton.’

I sit down with my back against the wall.

Mark comes up beside me. ‘It’s the wet clothes. You should change.’

‘You put ’em all on the floor.’

‘Nah, not all of it. Go see for yourself. Underwear and socks and some other things.’ He looks at me. ‘Look, I know we’re probably both going to start getting cold. But I’m thinking we should light a fire, they’ll see us then, too.’

I notice he’s still wearing his name badge.

‘How we going to do that?’

‘You would know, wouldn’t you?’ Mark says. He rubs his hands together, cups them to his face, makes didgeridoo sounds.

I look away from him and get up. ‘I’m going to go look in the car park again. See if I can get into one of those cars.’

‘We’ve already tried that like a hundred times.’

‘Yeah, well.’ I want to say it’s better than sitting here with him next to the cheese.

We have had nothing in common before this day apart from being the only oldies working at the checkouts – well, old compared to the rest of the lot, fifteen-year-old high-school kids. Management usually put one of us at the cigarette counter, as we’re supposed to be responsible.

A few moments later the lights go out. We swear and reach in our pockets for our torches. When they turn on we both catch each other looking shocking against the white walls.

‘I’ll go down,’ I say, my intention in the first place. ‘There must be a second switch.’

Mark holds his hands up in the air. ‘This will be interesting,’ he smirks.

Before I step out I put on the hoodie properly. I kick through the water swirling around the supermarket floor. I get outside, where the water is at knee-height. The water rises as I step down the ramp. At least it’s warm water. It doesn’t feel too good against my hands, though. My skin and Mark’s skin are peeling. We’ve already gone through one bottle of moisturiser.

When I’m down in the car park, something brushes against my leg and I’m unsure if I imagined it or not. I resist the temptation to squeal. I don’t want Mark coming down here and thinking I can’t do the job.

I see the generator and turn it on, and it’s a relief when the light floods from above. It’s then that I see it, the thing in the water. It’s some sort of fish or eel. It’s bobbing along in the water, head in the shallows, its eyes just under. It does a few circles, the tail gliding it through the water. Its movements are weak. I need to get it out.

‘Oi!’ Now that the lights are on, of course Mark has come down to check on me. I see his torso, his green shirt coming down the ramp.

He’s in his usual form. ‘What are you doing with that?’ is his first reaction. Next is: ‘If you’re going to get it out of there, we may as well eat it.’

‘I’m getting it out,’ I reply, nodding. I pick it up and it holds steady in my arms. I wade through the water.

Mark steps in front of me. ‘No no, you’re an idiot. Is this like what happened with the Lancer? Oh, fuck me.’

Yesterday, when my clothes were still half-dry, we were out of the store, the storm had just passed and we were checking out the damage to the roof. Things were going past us pretty quickly. Anything from wood to signposts to fridges. I saw the sailing red Lancer, a few metres out, moving steadily. It looked empty, but then, in the back window, a small face came up, hands pressed against the glass. A young boy, maybe six. I yelled and I went in the water, chest down, but Mark got me by the hair and I struggled long enough to watch the car go.

Mark’s still talking to me. ‘You got to stop this. No more of it.’

I find some heat in a high cupboard, usually stocked with bread. It was one of the items that went first, when they announced the possible flood, the evacuation. I wonder if people outside the store are still eating the bread, or whether it’s gone off already. I curl up in the shelf and nurse the space between my arms in which I carried the lungfish out of the car park.

There was a picture of it in one of the magazines, I remember. We’d made a stack of the mags up high in the office. I hadn’t read them yet. I wasn’t ready to commit to weight loss and crosswords and Sudoku. In this
National Geographic
magazine, it had a picture of the lungfish and its name. The lungfish I held had those tiny pin-like eyes. An expressive face, for a fish. While we moved, I felt the rough cuts underneath its belly. I encouraged the lift of it and it wobbled out of my grip. I saw its tail leap over the white traffic pickets. I think it made it but I can’t be sure.

I had a kid when I was fifteen and I dropped out of school. I was kind of blacked-out then. I gave birth to a baby boy, and I named him Samuel. He was so tiny and he died at two weeks old from complications to his heart. They said complications to his heart
but I just thought about how I never really wanted him in the first place and that’s what really killed him. I was too young then. I didn’t know what to do. I have been working at this supermarket for a long time now and I keep an eye on the fifteen-year-old girls. I wait for them to make the same mistakes that I did. But none of them do.

The boy I saw in the Lancer was real, I know, not just a figure of a never-really-was mother’s imagination. In our base spot in the deli section, I hear Mark is playing around with the radio, trying to get a station. I listen through the crackle for a mention of the red Lancer. I think of leaving Mark, to search for the boy inside the car. The lungfish will come with me, too. It will grow into a dolphin-like thing, and I’ll travel on it over the river this flood has made.

Mark comes down the aisle. ‘Look what I’ve got! Condoms!’ He tosses me a packet that I don’t reach for. It hits the water and floats. ‘Not that we’re going to need them if we’re going to repopulate the planet.’

I finally tell him to fuck off.

I get up from the shelf, put my hands in my pockets and shuffle around the store.

The water is receding and soon they will find us. I’m not sure if the lungfish will matter then: other people’s and community’s battle stories, the contagion of trauma, will outdo it. I feel it in my chest.