Slights (9 page)

  He didn't tan your hide.

  I wore my favourite trousers. Mum had presented me with my first dress, a cornflower blue thing with yellow lace. I hid it in my pillowcase and they couldn't find it, so I got to wear my trousers. And a jumper one of the Grannies knitted for Peter; he hated it. The pattern on the front was supposed to be a teddy bear asleep in bed; Peter screamed, said, "He's dead, he's dead." He knew more about death than me. He had been at the funeral in the backyard of our little cat, Muffy, who had gone to live in a cave, I was told. I knew she was gone; I couldn't understand where to. I watched from my bedroom as Dad dug the hole and then put the cat in. Peter said some words. After Peter stopped talking they all came inside and we had ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. The whole Muffy episode made death mysterious, fascinating, some magical thing. I always expected little Muffy the cat to appear once she'd dug her way out of the dirt. We never got another cat, or animal of any kind. Once I lived alone I thought about going to a pet shop and bringing a new cat home, but was concerned the creature wouldn't like me.

  I forgot about Muffy until I saw a white cat on Play School. It must have been a few months later. Around my birthday.

  "When's Muffy coming out of the cave?" I said to Mum.

  "Who?" She had forgotten the cat ever existed. I think she had that ability; things, people, vanished when they died. She wiped them from her memory so she didn't have to suffer. This helped me to understand all the fathers Mum bought home. The boyfriends, uncles. She wasn't being disloyal to Dad; she had simply forgotten him. She could have as many lovers as she wanted

  I wanted to tell Peter but he was busy and didn't deserve to hear.

  Peter gave me the jumper. I loved the teddy on it; he never woke up to yell and always stayed the same. And even at five I knew this would happen;

  "Peter! Isn't that the jumper I knitted you? Didn't you like it?" said Granny Walker. It was a great jumper.

  We had bowls and bowls of potato chips, nothing else at my fifth birthday party, though I think the adults ate sandwiches in the kitchen where I couldn't see.

  Auntie Jessie was there; we told jokes on the front step. She wouldn't come out to see my roads in the backyard; she would never go into the backyard. All the kids in the street were there, although I hated them. The little weak girl from next door, Melissa, and a little girl with red hair and pink ribbons who I only remember because she hit me for taking the last cake.

  I had four more birthdays like that, and then Dad was killed. Birthdays weren't the same, after that.

  On my eleventh birthday Eve gave me jewellery for the first time, and I found a new jumper folded by the swings. It was a black jumper, a colour much sought-after but often forbidden.

  "Black is nice, though," I said to my mother. "The fairies left it as a birthday present."

  "You had your birthday presents," Mum said, but I hadn't. All I had was my first present from Eve. Mum lost track of time after Dad died. She didn't remember things.

  "Anyway, it isn't a school colour," she said. She wore the softest colours, pale pink, mauve, baby blue. She thought it made her look younger. And after a year in mourning she would never wear black again.

  I wore my new black jumper to bed, to school, at home. It became encrusted, stiff with filth, but I would not let Mum wash it. Then, a month or so after I found the jumper, I tired of it. The boy who had left it in the park had already been punished for his loss, and did not want the ruined gift back. I didn't want it anymore. I was done with it. I left it where I had found it. It became a football, and a soak for blood, and a pirate flag. It stayed in the playground for two years, part of the playground equipment, unrecognised and left alone by adults.

  After my Dad died, Grampa Searle changed. He was lighter, and he'd lost his fear. Dad used to tease him, make taunts about his quiet life. His boring life. Mum would get mad, because her dad was dead, but my dad had never concealed his disinterest in Grampa's life. When my Dad died, Grampa became silly, he laughed a lot, talked and joked and everybody else loved him too.

  I had the fantasy that we were not popular in the suburb we lived in, which is why the families refused to come to our birthday parties. The other children in the street avoided us. Peter and I played together most often at school, and would fight anybody who wanted the exercise. That's what should have happened.

  This is what did happen; I played alone, elaborate fantasies, while Peter excelled at football. He had friends all over the place. We weren't friends. We rarely spoke, had nothing to say to each other. Peter, Mum and I sat at the table for every meal, but when we learned to read we brought books to the table and Mum allowed it, bringing her own magazine or book. Never the newspaper – she didn't want to know the news. My dad was the news bringer. He read it to her, analysed it, told her the opinion she should hold. With him gone she did not feel she had the filter necessary for the news. After he died, she never read it again. Peter and I did not bring newspapers into the home; newspapers were not read.

  It was months later Mum asked where the black jumper was.

  "I gave it to a poor kid," I told her.

  She nodded. "That's good. We don't like black around the house," she said. She cut large pieces of the meat pie she had spent the day cooking, and watched us pick out the mushrooms and eat the rest. I heard her say to Auntie Ruth, "I doubt if they've ever tasted mushrooms, but they saw their father always quietly leave the mushrooms aside." My dad never criticised her food. When she gave him mushrooms, and she did it every few weeks, he never asked why she persisted in giving him the fungus he despised.

  "They used to grow in the hole we called a bathroom," he told her. "More than once, when Dad wasn't working and we had no food, we ate those mushrooms. I really don't want to see them again."

  But she couldn't help it. Maybe it was a small power she had over him, because the struggle for power was definite if subtle. Now we put our mushrooms aside. "Eat your mushrooms," Mum said.

  "Mushrooms grow in the shower," I said. I realise now Dad was probably lying about eating mushrooms out of the shower. Mum loved them.

  Dad commented often on Mum's cooking, making sure Peter and I were aware of how lucky we were, when delicious dishes arrived on the table.

  Mealtimes were always pleasant, because we enjoyed food. We loved good food; I continue to enjoy bad food as well. Dad told us terrible stories about his mother's cooking; how she made fried sandwiches using rancid lard, how her jelly never set, how her casseroles were soups and her soups stews. When the family went to visit Granny Searle, sometimes we got the giggles just thinking about it. Dad loved it the most, and that always made me happy. Dad trained me to ask, "Excuse me, Granny, what's for lunch?" and my tiny child's voice being so rude cracked them up every time.

  Granny Searle knew what the joke was, and she provided lots of shop-brought goodies; pies and sweets, bread, all things nice. We liked going to Granny Searle's the best, because everything she had was bought. She didn't even make her own custard or scones.

  She sang to us, sat us on her knee and sang her beautiful songs. We sat there, rich with shop food, and our Granny gave us shivers of pleasure with her songs. Our Mum tapped her foot, danced sometimes, smiled. Our Dad sat across the room and stared, fingers steepled. Every song he said, "That's enough, Mum," but it never was.

  Peter and I never gave ourselves to it completely. She was old and she smelt funny. We watched our Dad. We fought on Granny's knee. "You're too big to sit there anyway," our Dad said, and we waited until it was time to go home. I sometimes wondered who did the belting in that house; Granny and Grampa Searle both seemed so weak. Granny had a flat hard hand, though, and her eyes could go mean and scary if she wasn't happy.

  Sometimes Mum, Peter and I would stay with one of the Grannies for a holiday. Dad didn't come with us, and we didn't stay away for long. A weekend, usually, so we didn't miss a minute of school. Not that it made any difference; Peter would get As and I would get Cs no matter how many hours we spent at school. I liked to pack my own suitcase. Once Peter gave me the bear jumper, the granny knit, I packed that.

  Mum said, "Good thinking, it can get chilly on the beach," when she saw my jumper. She didn't know I only had Dad's spare uniform in my little case. Peter immediately ran upstairs to get a granny-knit, of which he had hundreds and I had only one.

  "Stevie ruins clothes so," Granny Searle said once, as if that explained why they never knitted for me.

  One thing no one ever explained to me was why Dad didn't come with us. Shift work wasn't the reason; he didn't work when we were away. I knew because of the clothes in the dirty clothes basket. No uniforms. Sometimes a going-out suit, or muddy, sloppy clothes, sometimes just pyjamas. Mum and Dad always seemed happy to see each other after a short holiday.

  We liked Grampa Searle, hated Grandpa Walker until he died when I was five, and Peter and I could never love the Grannies very much. They were too old. Their skin was loose and scary. They wore ugly clothes. They smiled with false teeth. I didn't mind the things they gave us, but I didn't care for them much. There must have been a time when they were younger, not so ugly, but we could not imagine it.

  Peter did cruel mimicries of them, which Dad found hilarious but Mum didn't like.

  "If it wasn't for them you wouldn't be here," Mum said.

  "Yeah, we'd probably be rich," Peter said. He used to be naughty. Then he wasn't. I don't know what happened. One day I'll ask him.

As if.

  I'd sit on Granny Searle's old knees, hearing her sing, but watching Dad, because there'd come a moment when he'd scratch his index finger on his knee. I'd leap off Granny, run across the room, throw myself at his chest. He'd hold me like a rope, all wound up, and I'd breathe in the smell of his throat.

  "The usual path to destruction," he always said, because I always knocked over the high table, or stood on the cat, or something. That was the word he used; to. I remember it clearly. I wonder now. Why didn't he say path
of
destruction? Why path to? Oh, God, didn't I have a choice in anything?

  Our two Grannies had been friends before our parents ever met; they got Mum and Dad together. There was no jealousy between them; no competition. And when Dad died, and Granny Searle grieved, Granny Walker was such a comfort the two could comfort Mum. To them we must have seemed shocked but unaware of the real implications of our father not being around.

  They took over a lot of parenting roles. They even went to parent/teacher night so Mum wouldn't have to face it. Before, Dad did me and Mum did Peter. Dad never told me what the teachers said. He winked at me, "Good girl," and piggy-backed me around the house. Mum hated her children being assessed by strangers.

  "How do they know what sort of boy Peter is?" she said one time to Dad. "They see him as a student and nothing more. They don't see him the way we do."

  "What did they say?" Dad said. He stroked her hair to calm and comfort. He loved to touch her, stroke her. She was so very lucky. I didn't have hair like hers or else he would have stroked me too.

  "She said he lacked courage," Mum said. She pulled Peter to her, squeezed him. "We know that's not true, don't we, Peter?" He nodded, but wasn't sure.

  "He's weak," I said. "I can beat him up any time."

  "Of course you can. You're the toughie of the family. You'll have to keep an eye out for Peter, protect him sometimes," Dad said. He was teasing me. I loved it. I threw my chest out, stamped around the room. "Who goes there?" I shouted. "Who goes there?" I didn't know the meaning of the question; I had heard it shouted somewhere and liked the sound of it. I kicked an imaginary opponent.

  "Stay away from my weak brother," I shouted. Dad laughed and clapped. Mum laughed too, but she said, "Mustn't tease your brother."

  The year Dad died, the Grannies were proud to head off to the school to talk about us. We stayed home with Mum and ate chocolate mousse for dinner. "This is the life," Mum said. Some people use clichés, nothing statements, when they want to be reassured, when they know something is wrong but they won't admit it. "It's nice, just us three," she said.

  "I love it, just us three," Peter said. He sat with her on the couch. I can still summon the anger I felt, and the shock. They had forgotten.

  "I wish Dad was here and you were both dead," I said. "I wish you were buried and dead."

  "Stephanie!" Mum said. She was white. She always thought she was the favourite.

  I had made a tactical error; I didn't need to be a grown up to see that. I had aligned myself with a dead parent. It seemed hysteria and guilt would help.

  "I like Dad the best because you like Peter the best," I shouted, and ran up to my room. My last glimpse was of them looking like Siamese twins on the couch.

  Mum came after me minutes later. She climbed into bed with me and squeezed me. She said a hundred times, "I love you, Stevie." But I knew she didn't mean it.

  The Grannies came home while I was asleep, so Peter had the pleasure of giving me the news in the morning.

  "You're in so much trouble, Stevie,"

  "Am not."

  "Am too. Granny Searle said the teacher said you were terrible. My teacher said I was clever and likeable."

"That's cos you give her all your lunch money."

  "As if. Anyway, your teacher said there were concerns."

  Neither of us were sure what concerns were. They sounded like something neither of us wanted.

  It was very quiet at breakfast. Usually the Grannies don't shut up. I heard how quiet it was and I decided to play in the park till school time. Mum came and found me. We sat in the car while they talked about me. Mum said, "What do they know? How could they possibly know what my daughter is like?"