Like a House on Fire (25 page)

If I had a bike I would of written about that instead.

On Saturday mornings early my mum says I'm allowed to watch cartoons then she goes back into her room. When I peek in as I go past I see an orange shawl over the lamp and a bare foot sticking out of the bed from under the doona. It is Shane's foot, he has a snake tattoo on his ankle. Do you like my tattoo? he said once, lifting up his foot to show me. I said didn't it hurt? and he said yep it sure did. He made me read out the words under the snake and said and don't you forget it, that's the truth, babe.

If you get something written on your skin it's like you imagine yourself blank like a piece of paper, ready for words, but the bones in Shane's ankle bumped up underneath so the letters were crooked. The snake had fangs that were much too big, like a cartoon snake, when they open their mouths their jaw goes right back and the fangs fill the screen and that's impossible. The person they're attacking starts running in midair without going anywhere and first you hear bongo drums and then the noise they're supposed to make when they run really fast.

One thing about the early Saturday cartoons is that sometimes they show the old ones about the cat chasing the mouse. He makes up all these plans to get the mouse but never gets him, then they wreck the house again, running over and over again past the same lamp and the same chair. Sometimes the cat or the coyote gets big red sticks of dynamite and it always happens that they get it wrong and the dynamite blows up their head. Anyone knows you wouldn't survive that but they do. They just shake their heads, which have gone black like someone's dropped a packet of black powder onto the floor and it's split open, then suddenly they're back to normal. They can still run so fast they're a blur.

Live fast die young leave a pretty corpse is what Shane's tattoo says. A corpse is a body like on NCIS. I don't know how you'd stay pretty if you were dead. I watch the cartoons listening for when Shane gets up so I can run and get dressed because I don't like being just in my pyjamas when he's here. It just feels funny.

My birthday today. I got my present from my grandma. As soon as I saw it I knew it wasn't the tin. It was a long plastic packet of coloured pencils all different colours but when I coloured with them it wasn't the same. With Georgia's Derwents it feels soft when you colour and it goes on dark and strong. These pencils feel gritty like there's sand in them and no matter how hard you press the colour isn't very good. Say thank you to your grandma, said my mum, for your lovely pencils. Grandma said they're just what she wanted, aren't they, Tyler?

Mum said that next year I can have a party and we can go to Lollypops Fun Centre. Ellie said that place is for preschoolers, and Mum said well, Maccas then. We had a birthday afternoon tea because Ellie couldn't stay home for dinner, she had a shift at Subway till 9.30. She whispered to me in the kitchen sorry, Tyler we'll do something good next year, just you and me, don't worry. I said I didn't care because I had cupcakes at school today. Shane wasn't there tonight because Grandma doesn't know about him yet. Mum says she'll introduce them when the time's right. She says Grandma always interferes and wrecks her chances when it's none of her business so don't tell her yet. Ellie asked her why not and she said first Shane has to get his parole period out of the way and get his gold star for staying clean. Maybe that's why Shane comes over to our place to have a shower and get changed. Much later when I was in bed Ellie came in and woke me up and said come into my room. We lay in her bed and she opened a bag from the mall and inside were two little mirror disco balls and two torches. We put batteries in and shone the lights on the mirror balls and sparkling dots went everywhere, all around the corners of the room, spinning. It was like we were floating in the solar system. It was lovely and warm in Ellie's bed.

Thank you for making the cupcakes today, Mrs Carlyle. It was great when everyone sang.

My mum says she is going to have a new job. Centrelink is running it and it is sewing. She is good at sewing and she already has the overlocker Aunty Jacinta gave her to make tracksuit pants and tops two years ago.

It is very heavy and she has to lift it up onto the kitchen table. Ellie asks her what she's sewing and Mum says designer things. She says it is support to start her own small business.

She shows me a pattern and it is not clothes, it's a doll. Sort of like a doll anyway. Like a prep kid's drawing, just a round soft shape with big eyes and two useless little arms sticking out the side. Mum has rolls of felt and soft velvet, stretchy fur material for the clothes. The dolls are called
Glamour Plushies
.

Designer plush toys, Mum says reading from her pattern page. They're just for fun. I'm going to sell them in that shop with the cushions and teak furniture in the mall, that Asian one.

Are they the scissors? is all Ellie says. The ones that cost forty-five bucks?

Mum says I told you I would pay you back so lose the attitude. She lines up material on the table and Ellie just turns away rolling her eyes.

Mum tells me the scissors are just for special sewing, not for my school stuff or craft things. She says that will wreck them. There is a special tag that gets sewn onto the dolls when they're finished with a card tied on it that says: ‘Glamour Plushies are soft, loveable critters that teach us that beauty is only skin-deep. When you adopt one of these adorable soft monsters you are showing your warm-hearted side, a valuable lesson presented by cutely irresistible toys designed and created with great care.' Mum says you will have to help me round the house more, Tyler, so I can get my first order finished for the assessment. I have to make twelve.

So I cook the chicken with the simmer sauce while she cuts out the pieces and says we will eat dinner on our laps tonight so I can leave the overlocker and all my work on the table OK? And I say OK even though we always eat dinner on our laps anyway because Mum is hooked on Survivor
.

The stuff for the Glamour Plushies takes up all the room on the table so I have to do my project on the glories of Ancient Greece on my bed after dinner. It's hard to write neatly.

Mum hears me snipping and rustling when she comes down the hall to her room and calls out they better not be the good scissors.

They're not. They're the plastic ones that don't cut. Pictures stuck down with the glue that doesn't stick, coloured in with the pencils that don't colour. Sorry, Mrs Carlyle.

Mum nearly finished two whole dolls today when I got home from school. She said the overlocker doesn't really work properly on the felt so she's worked out how to do the blanket stitch by hand. The dolls have big round eyes and little mouths like cats or big open mouths with teeth and they stick their arms straight out the side like they're running towards you afraid. Out of like a fire or away from a scary thing. They are not dolls, they are more like cartoon monsters. Ellie was doing her homework in her room and I went in there. Her room is nice and she bought some curtains for herself at Spotlight and a hot pink mosquito net. I looked at Ellie's homework which is so hard because she is in Year 10. It was science and she had written, red blood cells plus white blood cells plus platelets plus water equals blood. There was a picture of platelets and they looked like biscuits. When I get to high school I want to do art in the art room where they have easels. I saw them when we went to Ellie's school for parent-teacher. You stand up and paint and they have huge pieces of paper you're allowed to use, as many as you like. And also a pottery wheel. It's those things that make me want to go to the secondary school even though there's hundreds and hundreds of kids there. I get worried I might forget where my locker is in all those corridors. You get a locker with a combination so that only you can open it. Maybe the other kids want to steal your stuff. You would never know who because there are so many kids there is no way a teacher would notice that or even remember everyone's names. Ellie says she just does the subjects that are going to get her good marks, not art, so that she can do something at TAFE or uni. That is why she works part time too, to save all her money. When she and Mum fight Mum says set your sister a good example, and Ellie says I'm setting her the best example I can, which is how to get the fuck out of here.

When we went back into the lounge room for dinner Shane was there. He said here they both are. How are you, Tyler babe? All the cans of beer he has brought are stacked in the fridge when I get out the cheese for the spaghetti. He is in a mean mood I can tell because even though he is smiling his mouth is wrong.

He picks one of Mum's dolls out of the box and looks at it and says you've got to be fucken kidding me.

People pay forty bucks for these says my mum without looking at him, and he laughs and says jeez they saw you coming, didn't they. She just keeps sewing the hair on one of her dolls and says you wait.

When I go to bed I hear him and Mum laughing and bumping into the walls as they come down the hall and my mum sounds happy but it makes the stones feeling come back to my stomach. I must have fallen asleep because I feel a hand on my shoulder shaking me and I come awake and my stomach is squeezing like when you're sick. It is Ellie and I feel her hair brush my face as she leans over me and says get up and come and sleep in my room. I say why and she whispers just come on.

In her bed she lets me have the purple heart-shaped pillow. She shows me a little smooth stone in a box she puts under the pillow and I ask her what it's for and she says bad dreams.

I didn't know Ellie has bad dreams too. Sometimes I dream of a wolf. He's coming for me and his eyes are on fire and he's looking everywhere for me but he can't find me. I don't tell Ellie about this but I say sometimes I feel like I have a stone inside my stomach. Ellie doesn't say anything for a while then she says, hey, what are those pencils called that you like? I tell her Derwents and she says we'll get those, you wait.

Today we did mammals. Mrs Carlyle said she got a puppy once that was homesick leaving its mother and it cried. She said she wrapped up an old clock inside an old fur collar she had and tucked it into the puppy's basket with a hot-water bottle. The puppy thought the clock ticking was its mother's heart beating and the fur was her warm furry coat next to it. It seemed like a mean trick but Mrs Carlyle said soon the puppy went to sleep and learned to sleep by itself after that. She said it seems cruel but all animals have to learn that and some leave their parents the day they are born, but not mammals because they have to drink milk. That puppy used to like to sleep in the laundry basket full of dirty clothes. When the bell rang she said, whoops, we forgot to do our worksheets, all I've ended up doing is telling you stories because you are such good listeners.

That puppy thought the clock and the fur and the hot-water bottle was his mum. And maybe the clothes in the clothes basket had a smell that made him feel better. The Plushie dolls are supposed to make you feel warm-hearted too so maybe people will buy them to cuddle like a puppy. Birds like budgies can't be cuddled but they must still know you love them. Ellie says we used to have a cat when Dylan and Zac were still here before I was born but it ran away. Ellie says, I don't blame it.

My mum is still sewing the Plushies. She says she has a deadline and she has to prove she can do it so she'll be accepted on the job-creation program. She said if Shane thinks he's so shit-hot why doesn't he fix her car and do something useful? Shane is nearly living at our place now and she said if he thinks all he has to do is turn up with pizzas and five weekly DVDs he's got another think coming. But then when he comes she goes quickly into her room and comes out with perfume on.

While she is in there Shane beckons at me and when I go over he leans down close to me and whispers I've got something for you but don't tell the others, hold out your hand. He gives me a Mars Bar. His voice is so different when he is telling a secret. It is all soft and like you're best friends and I want to believe everything he tells me. He says don't tell Ellie because she will get jealous. Next time I might put it under your pillow so always check when you go to bed OK? In case I've left a surprise for you. Then when Mum walks back in again he says shhh, here she comes and I can't help it, I smile. I hide the Mars Bar in my bag.

Ellie did a magic thing tonight. Mum had the five Plushies she had finished laid out on the table and she was painting their lips red like in the photo and Ellie said do you want a cup of tea? Mum was just sitting there not saying anything and I realised she had stopped painting and was scratching at her hair like it was itchy just scratching and pulling not answering. Shane was in the living room watching TV and Mum was just sitting there with her chin tucked down all hunched and sad with the dolls lined up. Her hand scratching harder and harder in her hair. I felt like when I turn the key in my music box until it's really tight and if you keep turning one more time it will snap and break, just one more twist. But Ellie came over very quietly and looked down at the monster dolls that were meant to make you feel warm-hearted. They all had big black eyes that just stared and I could tell Mum was thinking they looked creepy or dead and it's true they did.

Ellie put a brush in the white paint and put a little dot of white in the dolls' eyes. I don't know how she did it but it changed everything. It was like a little speck of shine. I heard Mum sigh then her hand came down and felt around for her cigarettes. I felt loose again like remembering that inside the music box the ballerina is waiting to dance to the whole song and it will just get slower and calmer all the way to the end.