How the Light Gets In (4 page)

‘Honey, are you
sure
you’re all right?’

I am trying to think of something to say and then I notice Margaret has small breasts. Through her thin, white t-shirt, I can see brown, erect nodes for nipples, like the hard dark knots found on trees. She has become flesh. I can’t help but think what it really is to be a human being; how perishable the body is, what goes on, and how it will end up.

‘I’m fine.’

Margaret smiles. ‘How about you try some re-fried beans? They’re nicer than they look.’

They’d have to be.

‘They look nice,’ I say, afraid I might vomit.

When we get to our table, I have three chicken wings on my plate and they look like the elbows of that girl in the wheelchair. When Bridget sees my plate she stands up.

‘Mom, I’m going to get her something. Don’t let her move.’

I hate it when people say ‘her’ or ‘him’ in place of a person’s name.

Bridget goes away and comes back with more salad than my entire family (aunts and uncles and cousins included) have eaten in a lifetime.

‘Thanks,’ I say, with no clue how to manage a lettuce leaf. What are those little white crunchy cubes? Are they edible?

James goes back for three more helpings. As he chews his food, an especially red pimple close to the right corner of his mouth seems to grow. He touches it between mouthfuls, as though it were something worth taking care of.

It’s growing dark when we arrive at Flo Bapes’ house. We sit in a lounge room with eight other host-families and their exchange students. Flo stands before the gathering next to a whiteboard and writes up the rules of the Organisation. Along the back wall there are three bowls of punch, with pieces of pineapple floating around in them.

Each of the exchange students is asked to stand up the front and introduce themselves. I am last, and I say some stuff I’ve been rehearsing for a long time. In front of a crowd I’m not as nervous as I should be.

I talk about Sydney and I make people laugh. There’s no greater pleasure as far as I’m concerned. When I sit down,
Henry pats my back and says, ‘That was very well done.’ James is staring at me sceptically and Bridget is plaiting her hair.

In small, barely legible handwriting, Flo writes the following on the whiteboard:
No drinking, No smoking, No driving, No
drugs, and No hitchhiking!

An exchange student in the middle of the room says, ‘I can’t read that.’

Flo frowns. ‘Well, I have to write small so I can fit it all on!’

Flo is an example of a smudge: a person with no definition, no clear lines of personality; a dull, untidy mind containing bad copies of original thoughts. You could spend a year locked in an empty fridge with a smudge and learn nothing. But the worst thing of all about a smudge is that they talk all the time and never listen. My sisters are smudges.

It’s too hot in Flo’s house and I begin to have a vivid fantasy about the airport. I daydream that we stayed longer in O’Hare’s airconditioned terminal and that Margaret and Henry took me into a duty-free shop and asked me to pick out a present. ‘We’d like to buy you a welcoming gift,’ I hear Margaret say. ‘Pick anything you like from one of the shops,’ says Henry. ‘We’ll come back and get you in a few hours.’

Suddenly my daydream is interrupted by a storm, and cracks of thunder that dent the sky. I stand up in the middle of one of Flo’s never-ending sentences and go to the window. The storm is close and the room is transformed by it. There’s crashing, war-like thunder and zigzag lightning. This is my favourite weather.

I wish I had taken the ‘wake me for meals’ eye mask from the aeroplane. I could lie on the floor, put the mask over my eyes and listen to the storm until somebody carried me home and put me to bed in my new clean white room.

Flo starts to stammer. ‘Oh d-d-d-dear.’ Her nostrils flare up
like prawn crackers dropped in hot oil. ‘I’ll have to speak up,’ she says, almost crying with frustration.

People shuffle to the back of the room and reach for corn chips. I can no longer hear Flo as she drones on under the storm’s perfect music.

Margaret and Henry are standing with me by the window. We do not speak. Henry is standing close to me. We look out. There’s another long and booming crack of thunder, which sounds like a keg of beer being dragged along the concrete outside the pub on the corner of my street in Sydney.

The lightning is so close it seems to strike the front yard of the house across the road. Margaret steps back from the window but Henry and I stay where we are.

‘What a storm,’ says Henry, with awe in his voice.

Heavy rain pelts down on the driveway.

‘I love rain more than anything,’ I say.

‘It’s so clean,’ he says. ‘Isn’t it clean?’

‘Yeah,’ I say and it is as though our neurones have taken a shower. I look up at Henry and smile, and he smiles back.

‘No spiders now,’ I say.

I’m thinking of the nursery rhyme.

‘Let’s see,’ says Henry as he opens the large window all the way. The room becomes quiet and still. People are looking at us, at Henry and me, for the rain is getting in and the sound of thunder drums against the walls.

‘No. No spiders now,’ he says, and he is close enough for me to notice that his voice smells like rain.

I have read that a sheep raised by dogs will eventually learn to chase cars. But how long does it take to learn the tricks of another animal? How long will I need to live with the Hardings before I unlearn the tricks of my own family?

It is my second day with the Hardings. We’re sitting, after dinner, at the dining-room table, and I’m facing the opened doors of the piano room and library. I imagine the scene at home: Mum, Dad, Erin, Leona, Greg and Steve, all in the boxy lounge-room, all smoking; so much smoke you can hardly see, the burning ends of their cigarettes glowing, moving from lap to mouth, somebody waving at the smoke to see the TV screen. No windows open.

Margaret removes two small sheets of notepaper from the pocket of her jeans and puts them on the table.

‘I think Flo said some interesting things about conflict management last night,’ she says, as she turns a page and looks at Henry. ‘I might be able to use some of this stuff at work.’

Bridget sighs. ‘Work, work, work,’ she says. Margaret pretends not to hear, or care.

Henry puts his hand on his neck and clears his throat.

‘We should probably explain some of the house rules for Lou. Then we can get on with having some fun.’

James looks at me, to see what my face is doing.

‘We have breakfast every morning at seven-thirty, as a family,’ says Henry, ‘and we’d like you to join us.’

‘Bridget,’ says Margaret, ‘would you explain to Lou what happens on weekends?’

Bridget sighs again. ‘Can’t she just do what she wants? It makes no difference either way.’

Margaret looks at Bridget. ‘We try to go to each other’s games and concerts,’ she says. ‘Bridget has jazz ballet, basketball and French club and James has science club and debating. We hope you’ll come along and support them in their extra curricular activities and that they’ll get along and support you.’

Henry puts his hand on Margaret’s leg. ‘And Margaret sings in the local choir …’

In the silence that follows, nobody bothers to speak for Henry. He stares at the table for a moment then takes his hand from Margaret’s leg.

‘We’re a busy family. It might seem odd to you at first but we keep our schedule on the fridge.’

Margaret smiles as though this is happy news. ‘You might like to have a look at it later. We’ve put your name on it so that you can add your own appointments.’

Bridget says, ‘But you don’t have to put stuff on the schedule. It’s just so we know where everybody is. It doesn’t really matter.’

James looks at me. ‘Do you think you’ll join the debating team?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Want some ice-cream?’ asks Bridget.

‘Yes please,’ I say.

Margaret picks an apple from the fruit bowl and slams it down on her side plate as though to declare war on the idea of dessert.

‘Not for me,’ she says.

Bridget brings in the ice-cream and Henry and Margaret go on talking about meal times, the dishwashing roster, cooperation, teamwork and mutual respect. I look around at the spotless dining-room; the piano, the bookshelves in the library, the wainscotting and the framed family photos on every polished surface.

I realise I’m not speaking enough and look for something to talk about.

‘Who do you think would win in a fight between an apple and an orange?’ I ask.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ says James.

Henry smiles at me. ‘The orange,’ he says.

‘Yeah, because it has armour!’ says Bridget.

We all laugh (except James) then nobody speaks again.

Margaret drinks the last of the iced tea then gets back to the business of the rules.

‘There are really only a few other things that you should know,’ she says. ‘When school starts there’s a two-hour limit on watching TV and the weekend curfew is ten o’clock.’

Bridget sighs. ‘Don’t call it a
curfew
, Mom. This isn’t
apartheid
.’

Margaret smiles. ‘I think Lou understands what a curfew means in this context.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I have the same curfew at home.’

In Sydney I stay out until the early hours of the morning playing cards, listening to music and drinking, without ever having to call home.

James grins at me.

‘Hey! Why don’t we have a sing-a-long and Lou can sing.’

James’ only aim is to make me blush again, but his parents don’t see it.

‘What a good idea,’ says Henry.

‘Do
you
sing?’ asks Bridget.

‘Duh,’ says James. ‘It’s only all over the information we got.’

‘Not really,’ I say.

James laughs. ‘Yes you do,’ he says. ‘You wrote it down as your number two hobby after reading.’

Margaret is staring at the floor by my feet as though waiting to see what will fall off me.

James is right. I wrote everything on my application forms. I was in an altered state of super confidence when I was filling them out. I thought that being in America, surrounded by wealth, the new air, the very idea of a fresh start, would obliterate all my fears. I thought I could change identities like a double agent.

‘I don’t really sing in front of people,’ I say.

James laughs again.

‘That’s pretty stupid. What’s the point of singing if nobody ever hears you?’

Margaret doesn’t stop him. I feel like a red walnut about to be cracked open by James’ next sentence and I would do anything to make him stop. I start coughing. It’s not real at first, but soon it is. Before I know it, I’m in the middle of a violent coughing fit.

Margaret goes to the kitchen to fetch some water, but when she returns, I have run up the stairs to the bathroom. I drink some water and the coughing stops. I need to use the toilet but there is no lock on the bathroom door. I take a chair from under the window and shove it under the door handle.

Margaret comes to see how I am. The door handle rattles. ‘Are you all right in there?’

‘I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Okay,’ she says.

I wait until I hear her footsteps on the staircase before I go outside.

According to the Organisation’s rules, I’m supposed to tell Margaret or Henry where I’m going
whenever I leave the house
but
I need to be alone, urgently. I go right out the front door and start walking around the neighbourhood.

I like to walk around the streets at night and fantasise about being in other people’s houses.

It started when I was nine and I wagged school one day. The night before, my sisters pulled my trousers down to my ankles in front of their boyfriends, because I used a big word. My mum just laughed, and I hated her.

I got on a train and travelled as far as I could on one ticket. It was a hot day and the sun curdled the asphalt, drugged the crows on their wires and made people smell of vinegar. The sun also made the day easy to remember.

I had my face pressed to the train’s window and made curtains out of my hands. The train sped through green suburbs. I saw back yards and gardens filled with toys and sheds and swings and swimming pools. I wanted to get off the train and into one of the lives I could see from the window.

I got the idea then that I would one day live in somebody else’s house and be adopted by somebody else’s family. I had engaged in a great deal of adoption fantasy before this, but this was much more than daydreaming about who my real parents might be: famous writers, royalty or billionaires. This was about getting out for good. More exciting than my favourite book,
Papillon
, and more treacherous than
The Great Escape
.

I got off the train and walked until dark, in the silent lam-plit streets and cul-de-sacs. I walked slowly past front yards filled with the homey blue lights of televisions flickering through lounge-room windows. I became hungry as I watched the shadows of people moving behind net curtains, their shadowy shapes slow and drowsy, as though they rolled and turned beneath heavy sheets.

I knocked at the front door of a two-storey house and said, ‘Could I come in? I’ve run away from home.’

I wanted the woman who answered the door to acknowledge my craving without words or questions. I wanted her simply to get it.

In this big house, the family had been watching a movie together. The mother took me into the living room and told me to sit. The father turned off the TV and it hissed to a disappointing black. The small children – a girl and a boy – did not speak nor look at me. I said, ‘This is a nice house.’ The mother sent her children to their bedrooms. I wanted to follow them up the stairs and find a bed of my own. I wanted the mother to say, ‘This is your bed. You can stay here tonight.’ But the mother had a hard voice. She wanted to know why I was out on the street alone when it was so late.

I told her that I wanted to sleep in a bed in a nice big clean house. The father stood by the door. He had a nasty double chin and I didn’t want to look at it.

‘Has something happened to you at home? Are you in trouble?’ he asked, the crease in his chin bobbing.

For a moment my body believed that something cruel and dreadful had happened to me at home. I considered acting out a lifetime of imagined torture.

‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing has happened. I just wanted to see what it was like somewhere else.’

‘I’d better call your parents,’ said the mother, but I refused to give her the number and wished that I had cried or lied.

‘Can’t I just be a visitor for one night? Couldn’t I just stay on the couch and watch the TV with you in front of the fireplace and then go to bed?’

The mother walked to the phone in the entrance hall. ‘I’m calling the police,’ she said. ‘Your parents will be worried about you.’

I curled into the corner of the big leather couch and held onto my knees. I stared at the black TV screen.

I wanted a cushion behind my back and a cup of hot chocolate in my hand. I wanted to eat some of the bread and butter pudding and ice-cream the children had left on the table, but the mother called the police and told them that a runaway had come to her home.

When the receiver dropped into its black cradle the curtains ballooned suddenly with cold fat misery.

I ran into the hallway and picked up a small red coat that was lying on the floor. I held the coat – too small to wear – against my chest and ran to the train station.

Since then, I have fantasised so vividly that sometimes I believe I have spent the evening in the company of rich strangers. I go home after nights of walking the streets and looking into people’s windows and I feel a distinct urge to ring them to thank them, or write them a letter to tell them how I am (perhaps enclosing a recent photograph of myself and my dog).

On my way to school each day I use the same laneway and pass a house whose kitchen window has no blinds and is always open. I crouch in the laneway and peer inside. I watch the family of four – mother, father and two young boys – as they eat their porridge and toast and drink their orange juice.

The smell of the scene haunts me. The way the father reads the paper, and the mother reads a serious magazine, makes my heart expand in my chest so much that I can barely breathe. I ache with wishing I could climb inside, or that they will see me one day and ask me to live with them.

Sometimes, as I walk the streets of neighbourhoods far from home, I get so hungry my mouth fills with water. Then I go home and deep-fry chips and shallow-fry eggs, cover them in tomato sauce and eat in my bedroom with my eyes closed while my mum and dad and sisters sit in the lounge-room, yelling ‘Get fucked’ or ‘That’s fucking stupid’ at the eleven o’clock news.

As I walk up the drive of the Harding mansion, I can see my family again – all of them – chain-smoking in the lounge-room, the air thick with smoke, and I no longer care what happens to them.

Henry is sitting on the leather divan near the phone in the entrance hall, waiting for me.

‘There you are,’ he says, his face strained with the effort of concealing worry.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I just went around the block to get some air.’

‘That’s no problem,’ he says. ‘You’re home now.’