Names for Nothingness (10 page)

As a child, Caitlin had rarely resisted doing as she was told, but when she made her mind up, there was nothing anyone could do to change it.

When she was ten years old, she told her teacher that she did not want to do PE anymore. The teacher refused to believe her.

At the start of the next class, they all stood out on the oval.

‘Caitlin, you can be one of the captains; Joseph, another.'
Miss Heide had clearly forgotten their earlier conversation, and she waited for Caitlin to walk to the centre of the field and select her softball team.

Caitlin took her bag and sat under the Moreton Bay fig. Everyone watched her. No one said a word.

‘Caitlin,' Miss Heide repeated.

Caitlin's voice was calm. She did not want to take part. She would just sit and read. She hoped it wasn't a problem.

‘I beg your pardon?' Standing above her in a tracksuit, whistle clenched between her fingers, Miss Heide demanded an explanation. ‘Are you ill? Do you have a medical certificate?'

Caitlin shook her head in response to both questions.

‘Then you will do as I tell you.'

Caitlin did not move.

‘Right.' Miss Heide blew her whistle loudly in Caitlin's ear. ‘Up,' and she pointed to the oval. ‘Ten laps.'

Caitlin shook her head once again.

Miss Heide's fingers pinched into her flesh as she hauled her onto her feet and told her to go straight to the principal. ‘Tell him I sent you.'

Standing opposite Mr Smythe, Caitlin tried to explain. She did not like PE, she did not like the way in which certain people were always humiliated. She did not believe they should pick teams, with the same few always left to last, alone and unwanted on the oval. She did not like the races they were made to run, the way in which they had to compete with each other, and she didn't understand why they couldn't just do physical things without having to bring in winning and losing all the time.

‘Who is the teacher?' Mr Smythe asked, and Caitlin dutifully told him that her name was Miss Heide.

‘Precisely,' and he looked across his desk at her. ‘You are the pupil and she is the teacher. So you do as she says, and not the other way around.'

But the matter did not end there. The next week Sharn was called in to discuss Caitlin's behaviour.

‘If it were any other pupil, I would have no hesitation in suspending her,' the principal said. ‘Quite simply, this cannot continue.'

Catching the bus home, Sharn asked Caitlin why she couldn't just do the classes as she was instructed. Sharn understood (and supported) her objections, but now she had made them, surely she could see that there was little she could do to alter the way the classes were run.

‘It's just school,' Sharn said, irritated because she had had to miss an entire afternoon's work, and with Liam once again failing to pick up any editing jobs, they simply could not afford to lose the pay. ‘You have to do things you don't want to do. It's part of growing up.'

Caitlin stared out the window.

‘So, you'll do as you're told?' Sharn asked.

Caitlin refused to answer, and Sharn knew that they had hit an impasse, that this was one of those situations where nothing would make her daughter budge. Her sigh was loud, audible to the passengers in front, and she pushed the stop button with an agitation that was evident to Caitlin, who glanced, slightly nervously, in her direction. This wasn't their stop. But she followed her mother anyway, crossing over to the other side of the road, where Sharn immediately hailed another bus, one that was heading back in the direction from which they had only just come.

‘What are we doing?' Caitlin asked.

‘Going back.'

And she marched straight into the principal's office without even knocking.

‘We have to come to a solution,' she said. ‘There's nothing you or I or anyone can do to change Caitlin's mind, so it
seems to me we have two choices. We either let her sit out of class or you expel her, and quite frankly neither of us would want the latter.'

Mr Smythe put down his pen.

PE was compulsory, he explained, and therefore letting Caitlin out of class without a medical certificate would present a problem.

‘Well then, I'll get one,' Sharn said, and she was about to leave, satisfied that the matter had been resolved, when Caitlin stopped her.

This was not what she wanted, and her voice was hushed but determined. She was making a point, she said. And if they tried to get a doctor to give her a certificate, she would say that she was not sick and that she did not want one.

The exasperation on Sharn's face was unmistakable.

‘Okay,' and she turned back to Mr Smythe. ‘Why not let Caitlin do some other form of physical activity, something on her own, for christsakes? I mean, she could be there with the others, but she could do yoga, anything.'

Mr Smythe was about to argue, to raise another objection, but Sharn stopped him. ‘There's no point,' she said, and she turned to Caitlin. ‘I know her.' They both looked across at Caitlin who stood, silent, by the door.

Caitlin knew then that the battle was won.

They worked out an arrangement, but she did not listen, no longer interested in the discussion now that she was certain she would not have to participate in an activity she found to be repugnant.

‘You know something?' Sharn said as they headed home. ‘You are fucking unbelievable,' and Caitlin just looked at her mother, uncertain as to whether her expression was one of frustration or admiration.

Wearing Fraser's clothes, Caitlin stood at the entrance to the kitchen. Liam was cooking dinner and Sharn was out on the back step drinking a beer.

‘Where have you been?' he asked, and she said that she had been at the house, saying goodbye to Fraser.

If he was surprised at the directness of her response, he did not show it.

‘Hungry?'

She shook her head and pointed towards the back door; she wanted a few moments to talk to Sharn first.

It was cool outside, and she could hear the neighbours trying to get their child to bed. Sharn looked up briefly at Caitlin standing behind her.

‘Whose are these?' she asked, pointing at Caitlin's clothes.

‘A friend's.'

‘You went there after school?'

‘I haven't been to school.' As Caitlin spoke, Sharn turned, putting her beer down as she did so.

‘Oh, for godsakes, Caitlin, why on earth are you stuffing it up now?' Her eyes were almost black in the evening light, but Caitlin could see the anger and impatience in them, and she found herself taking one step backwards.

‘I'm not going to go anymore.' She spoke softly but with certainty as she explained that she had made her decision and that nothing anyone could say would change her mind. ‘I know that it's right for me,' and she wished that she could see even a shadow of understanding in Sharn's face, but there was none.

‘So what do you intend to do? Get a job?' Her words were sharp and sarcastic. ‘You clearly have it all worked out.'

There was not a sound from the kitchen. Liam had retreated, leaving the dinner to simmer on the stove as he stepped back into another part of the house, wanting to remove himself from any potential conflict.

‘I have joined a faith.' Caitlin's words were calm in the silence. They did not, she felt, adequately explain the true breadth and depth of her decision, but she could think of no other way to articulate what it was that she had become a part of. Because it was more than just a faith, but there was no simple way to say this. She had gone to a place that was completely removed from the life she had been leading. That was the truth, but it was a truth that escaped the reach of her entire vocabulary, a reach that she had always found to be impossibly inadequate.

For a moment, Sharn said nothing. In the rapidly descending darkness, they just looked at each other.

‘A faith.' Her repetition of Caitlin's explanation was enough, and Caitlin waited, one hand on the railing, for what would follow.

‘And what do they want from you? Because you have no money to give them. Although I'm sure they'll find some way of making you work for them.'

Aware of Liam's presence behind her now, Caitlin turned, and as he touched her shoulder she knew he was trying to indicate he was there for her, that he would not desert her, despite his aversion to conflict.

‘And even if you don't have to hand over a pay cheque, they'll have you serving some con-artist's every whim.'

Sharn was standing now, looking directly into Caitlin's eyes.

Caitlin's gaze did not flinch. ‘They don't want anything from me,' and as she spoke, Liam took a step forward, trying to reach for Sharn, to calm her.

‘It didn't sound that bad to me,' Liam said.

Sharn recoiled. ‘You knew about this?'

Liam nodded.

‘And you didn't tell me?'

‘I made him promise not to.' Caitlin stood between them,
wanting only to prevent Sharn's wrath from turning on Liam, because this was not the point, it was just a useless flurry of anger that would not get any of them closer to understanding.

‘Well, you can't stay here,' and even in the darkness, Caitlin could see the fury in Sharn's face. ‘I'm not going to add some crazed despot guru to the list of people I have to support.' She moved to push past them both, but Caitlin did not step aside.

‘I'm going to leave, anyway.' There was no anger in her words.

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Liam said to Caitlin as he tried to hold Sharn still. ‘Of course you can stay.' He lifted his hand from Sharn's arm to place it on Caitlin's shoulder.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘I've arranged to go and live at the house. I'll be there until I can join the others up north. Truly, it's all right.' She had not wanted to leave like this. She did not want Sharn to feel guilty once she had gone. It was not what she had intended, and she needed this to be clear, to be understood by all of them.

But it was too late. When Sharn chose a path, she chose, like her daughter, to follow it to its conclusion, and it was rupture that she wanted, anger and hurt, and she looked at Liam now.

‘How could you have not told me?' Her words were sharp in aim and brutal in impact. ‘You are not even her father,' and Sharn turned and walked back down the stairs, down to the darkness of the garden, the gate that led onto the street slamming shut behind her as she headed out to the road and away from both of them.

S
OMETIMES,
S
HARN WOULD TRY TO ADMIT
to her failings, to articulate them out loud. Tentatively, she would begin to describe her inadequacies, perhaps to Lou after work, sometimes to Liam, only to have them dismissed by the person to whom she was talking.

‘But we're all bloody hopeless,' Lou would say.

She would stop speaking then, knowing it was not as simple as Lou would like to believe. Because Sharn did not see her own failings as ordinary human errors. They were something darker, they were much more shameful, and she could not accept such easy words of forgiveness.

She knew she was not kind, she was not good at listening, she was sharp; and that was the worst part: to know, yet to continue being that way.

She had never been good at any of it, at being with Caitlin or Liam, or even herself. Caitlin learnt very young not to need
her. To survive, she had to be self-sufficient. In that shack by the river, Sharn let her cry. Sometimes she sat outside, wanting only to get away from her. When she came back in, she did not talk to her or comfort her or hold her. She kept her clean. She kept her fed. And she could do no more.

She wondered what Lou would really think if she knew how little she had been able to give, and her own awareness of this darkness made it impossible to listen to kind words from others, to forgive herself.

When Sharn fell in love with Liam, she wanted to change the way she and Caitlin were with each other. But too much had been set in stone, and Sharn could not bring Caitlin back; Caitlin just kept her distance, polite, good, and completely remote.

But, still …

‘Caitlin,' she often wants to say. ‘It's me. Please, Caitlin.' But, if the truth be known, Sharn is scared of her. Caitlin has every reason to hate her.

Once when she was a child, Caitlin wrote a story for school. ‘When I grow up'. I will not be my mother, she wrote. And worse still, it was not written from spite or anger, it was simply her seeing how wrong Sharn had always been, how inadequate.

Liam used to show Sharn the films he had made. Him, Caitlin and her. Reel after reel, and although she would sit and watch, ostensibly enjoying the images of their life, there were times when she wanted to say,
but can't you see, that's not how it is?

‘Look.' He would point towards the screen, delighting in a smile from Caitlin as she got off her toy truck and ran to Sharn.

‘This is the bit,' and he would lean forward as Sharn grinned at the camera, a larger-than-life image of her holding
Caitlin in her arms, the sunlight clean and clear around them.