Slights (12 page)

  He creates stir fry without stirring, tosses the lot like a pancake. He makes soufflés, mousses with little surprises to make his guests gasp, soups with just one ingredient. He spends hours in the kitchen, and I must say the food is good. That's his gift from Mum.

  Mum and I spent a pottering day. To tease me, she drove past the school every time we went out or came home, and laughed to see me tucked down in my seat.

  We started making lunch, chicken drumsticks, it was, because it always was when I was home. Dad appeared in the doorway, looking perfect; hair in place, no cuts from shaving, his uniform crisp. I got off my stool and ran to him, because I loved the smell of his clean uniform. I hugged him, buried my nose in his tight belly. He stroked my hair.

  "What's she doing home?"

  "She's still sick." Mum didn't tell him I had wet the bed again. Dad thought I should be over that by age seven, though he wet the bed till eight, Granny Searle said.

  "Sport today, is it?" he said to me. I wasn't big on playing sport. I preferred to be umpire. You didn't have to run as much and you got to be the boss.

  I was never a popular choice as umpire. Too strict. One kid didn't talk to me for three years after I called him out at cricket. "It was off my pad," he told everyone who'd listen.

  Dad ate his lunch, listening to Mum and I talk. I talked all I could, because he didn't often hear much from me. He didn't know my marks at school, who my friends were. He didn't know I was already a detective.

  I knew, for instance, that he had gotten home two hours later than usual this morning after his shift; that there was blood on the uniform he had been wearing, and that he smelt like rum. These clues told me the story that he had been with a dead body yesterday, one of the bad, mean ones nobody wants to touch, and that he went drinking afterwards to forget. I knew that someone had given him a nice leather belt, one which he wore that day and then never again. One regret in my life is that I never told him. I was so scared of being a show-off I never told him my guess. It wouldn't have made him live longer, but he would have known I was a smart detective, not a little girl blobbing biscuit dough onto the tray. I think it was at that moment I decided I couldn't cook. I wouldn't cook. I wouldn't learn.

  "I think he found a body last night," I told Mum. "And he went to the pub afterwards."

  "Is
that
it? I hope so," she said. At seven, I didn't know what she meant. Years later, I realised she thought Dad was having an affair. Dad left at three o'clock; he always did. Mum kissed him goodbye, then we went to pick up Peter from school, and for a treat we all went and had an ice cream by the river. It was often relaxed in the afternoons and evenings, just the three of us.

Grandpa Walker died a few months after I had my appendix out, but they wouldn't let me go, even though I was more grown up after being in hospital and nearly dying. I had a babysitter for three days and saw nothing. Peter came back with terrible stories of them putting Gramps in the ground and covering him up. He came to stay once a year, at Easter, and only then. He liked things ordered; liked his life planned. On the morning of his return to his own house, his bags would be sitting in the hallway at dawn. He always booked a morning bus, so Dad had to drive into town horribly tired after his shift, then drive home alone. Grandpa Walker never let Mum go, "You've seen more than enough of me," and she didn't ever stand up to him.

  And then he died when I was seven.

  I shudder now to think of how young Nadine, the babysitter was. Fourteen; it seemed so grown up to me at the time. She was very pretty, and knew about make-up already. She had a big bag full of it.

  I still considered myself to be a boy. I was tough and felt no pain; the other kids tested me with pinches, tweaks and pins.

  Nadine wanted me to be a girl. She trawled through my cupboards to find dresses and pretty lacy tops, and dressed me up, put all sorts of makeup on my face. Brown foundation, blue mascara, blue eyeliner, pink blusher, blue eye shadow. I looked like a doll.

  Nadine called her boyfriend Rick. He was quite old and smelled like Dad did when he came home from work. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, he smoked cigarettes and let me taste what it was like.

  He tickled her a lot and whispered in her ear. She kept saying, "No, no, not like that." He laughed.

  I can see it very clearly, still. I sat on the floor and watched them, fascinated by the touching, the talking, the smell of them. She had her legs curled under her and he stroked her thigh, hid his hand under her skirt. She liked that. I liked watching it. Her face was happy and so was his. He knew I was watching; he kept glancing over at me as he kissed her. He showed me his tongue. He took off his Tshirt and dropped it to the floor. I moved slowly, not wanting to disturb them, take their attention. I grasped his T-shirt and pulled it to me. It was warm, damp in places, and I tucked it into the diamond space formed by my entwined legs.

  He kicked his shoes off with each foot, unbuttoned her blouse, hid his hands in there as well. She didn't say no; she liked this. He rolled the shirt off her shoulders. She had some pimples on her chest and hardly any bosom. She wore a mauve bra. (A first bra, I discovered later. I got a training bra too, eventually, which I didn't like to wear. It cut into my shoulders and sat in pleats on my chest. The pleats made it clear I was not yet ready for a bra. The boys didn't even try to flick my bra strap until some girl in my PE class told them about my pale green number. Then they laughed. Called me Ironing Board.) But I didn't know what a bra was then. I didn't know about nipples or breasts, how they could change, harden, darken, as Nadine's did once her bra was off. I slipped my hand under my singlet and felt my nipples. They were soft, but I touched and touched and they formed little peaks I could roll between my fingers.

  "No need to hurry" she said. "We've got three days." Those words sounded exciting.

  I learnt a lot those three days. If I was quiet, she never knew I was there, but he always did. I still think of his face, have foolish fantasies of him landing on my doorstep. This is what should happen:

  "Remember me?" He is only a few years older in my dream.

  "Yes," I say. I invite him in to the house I share with a friend.

  "My housemate is away for three days," I say, and again we are both happy to hear those words.

  Nadine was very sick after drinking Southern Comfort when they were at my place. He laughed at her and so did I. Neither of us would clean it up. We let it dry on the walls and the floor, for her to scrape when she felt better.

  He talked to me while she was asleep. We sat up at the kitchen table. He had a beer or two. I had green lemonade, glass after glass of it, and I didn't want to sleep.

  He told me some wonderful things while Nadine was asleep.

  He sat with his bare chest and hardly looked at me. I know he was just talking, that he loved to talk, but he was the first adult to tell me anything.

  He told me about love, how some people fall in love over nothing, whereas others were careful, saved up the love.

  I think he told me things he didn't say to anybody else. He told me to be one of the careful ones, because the only people who can really hurt you are the ones you love.

  "Like her," he said. He didn't even point. I knew who he meant. "Just cos I fucked her she thinks it's love." Fucked was a good word. I thought it meant the whole lot, the kissing, holding of hands, the lot. I got poor Pauly in trouble, later, when he kissed me after school.

  "He fucked me," I told my mother proudly. I told my father too.

  Nadine liked being fucked, mostly, but then she'd cry for no reason. She was kneeling on hands and knees and he was fucking her in the poo hole. She cried and cried.

  "I said I wouldn't like it," she said.

  "I like it," he said. They did it again later and she cried again.

  He told me how to get into pubs, how to know what sort of person people were, how to get a seat, a drink, the last of anything. He told me how sexy a tattoo was and how guys liked girls who made a bit of noise. Not ones who cried. He went out to get junk food once. It was hamburgers and chips and it was the first junk food I'd eaten. It was so delicious, so salty it made me thirsty, and he bought me red lemonade. We didn't check if Nadine wanted any.

  My mother called on the second evening. She was very sad, softly spoken, and didn't listen to me. I said, "Is it OK if my friend drinks Daddy's whisky?" and she said, "Yes, of course, poor little thing, Grandpa's gone, isn't he. Won't be back." She began to cry. My Dad took the phone from her and spoke kindly to me.

  Dad said they would be home in the afternoon, and that we would go out for hamburgers. Peter, too, had been introduced to the wonders of fast food.

  I gave the whisky to Rick. He had been getting bored. He was sick of her being sick, and I was only a little kid. He told me dirty jokes I didn't understand but never forgot, like the one about the prostitute who got more money from her customers because when she had their dicks in her mouth (surely not? Why would either party wish that? I did not ask him to explain) she said, or mumbled, if you do the joke properly, "Gimme fifty bucks or I'll bite your cock off." The men would give her the $50. Until one guy, who said, "You give me $50 or I'll piss down your throat."

  "And that's where I got this," said Rick. He showed me a $50 note. I was very impressed. My collection was $4.50 in 20 and 10 cent pieces. I planned to buy a bike as soon as I could.

  When I was old enough to understand the joke, when I was an adult, I discovered that there were some women who would have said, "Give me $1000 and I'll drink it."

  "Have you ever played Dare, Steve?" Rick said.

  "No," I said. I knew the older kids played it and were punished if they were caught. It was something fairly naughty, and the younger children never heard the details, so we couldn't copy. I had asked Peter once, but he knew nothing. I knew more than him.

  "Dare is where I tell you to do something, and you have to do it, and then you tell me to do something and I have to do it. Some losers play Truth or Dare, where you have to tell the truth about something, but I could never see the point. I mean, how are they going to know if you're telling the truth? It's too easy," Rick told me.

  He was the first adult who didn't tell me lying was a terrible thing. I realised, years later, to my advantage, that adults give you a lot of guilt about lying because they can only tell if you're doing it if you are guilty and shifty. Adults are better at lying because they have less guilt; a perfect liar is one who feels no guilt at all.

  "Okay," I said. "You go first."

  He laughed. "Game, aren't you?"

  He drank some more whisky and I drank some more red lemonade.

  Then he said, "You like watching us, don't you?" He shrugged his shoulder to indicate Nadine upstairs.

  "It's different," I said.

  "You could say that." He thought, looked at me. "She feels really nice inside, soft and wet. I dare you to stick your finger inside her."

  I was relieved. That was nothing; easy. I had been expecting to climb the roof, say something rude to Mrs Beattie the mean shopkeeper, or take my clothes off.

  We walked the stairs slowly, making noisy giggles and he fell over once. His breath was whisky like Dad's, so I felt safe.

  She was lying on my bed. There was still vomit everywhere. My room stank. She had a pink jumper on, and a wrap-around skirt. She had her legs tucked up and the skirt tucked all around, like she was in a cocoon.

  "I dare you," he said.

  I avoided the vomit on the floor and carefully tugged the skirt out from between her legs and the bed.

  Bit by bit I revealed her flesh.

  "Go on," he said. He was right behind me. I wasn't sure exactly what to do. I had watched carefully, but it was hard to see where he put his fingers.

  She wasn't wearing underpants. All hers had been thrown out, unwearable, and mine were too small for her. Rick said he'd go out and buy more but he never did.

  She had a bit of hair, down there, otherwise she looked just like me.

  She was loose and floppy. He helped me turn her on to her back and he moved her legs so they were apart and her knees were bent to the ceiling.

  "Go on," he said.

  I kneeled on the bed beside her and got two fingers ready. I touched them to the hair and felt the split. I ran my fingers along the split until they came to the hole. It was hot there, and sticky. I didn't like it.

  "Go on," he said.

  I pushed my fingers inside, and it felt like a warm, muddy hole. I pulled my fingers out then put them in again. She groaned, opened her eyes, saw me.

  "Stevie?" she said.

  He put his hands on my shoulders and moved me away.

  "One for the road, eh?" he said. He was very modest about his own body. I never got to see his penis. He fucked the babysitter again, wiped himself on her skirt, did his jeans up.

  He went downstairs and got Dad's whisky, gave me $5 and left. I never got to Dare him which was lucky, really, because I couldn't think of anything. Well, I would have liked to ask him to adopt me, but I would never ask that. In my later fantasies, I thought of plenty of things. I had many fantasies about Rick, although I never saw him again.

I didn't bother lying about what had occurred to my parents. I kept my own part of it fairly quiet, though, didn't mention the $5, bottles of lemonade, or my first foray into the adult game of Dare.

  My parents took great pity on Nadine. It was apparent I was unharmed, so she did not deserve to die. She had to clean up the mess before she went home, and her mother was told. I was asked to describe the boyfriend, like he was a criminal, and I did it so badly no one would ever recognise him. Nadine continued to mind me for a few years, bringing quiet, intelligent boyfriends over, who were kind to me and to her, but they did not excite me. Those three days were too much for her. She must have realised that sort of life was too fast. She was a babysitter, and would become a private nurse later on. She didn't live in nurse's quarters, didn't join the parties, the friendship, the support. She didn't like that stuff. She liked talking quietly, not drinking.