Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (11 page)

I looked at Mum. I’d even be quite pleased to talk to her right now. I tried it. ‘Mum. I’m bored.’

‘Yes.’ That’s all she said. A great help.

Food. Didn’t people eat from boredom? I ratted around in the pantry. There were enough supplies in there to feed an army — or a family of four-point-
something
for a month. Which brought me to the question of dinner. Part of me fought like hell against the idea of cooking. Like, why should I, and why me? But the bored and hungry parts won. I picked up packets of stuff — rice, lentils. ‘Hello lentils. Nice to meet you. I don’t believe we know each other.’ I put them back. Macaroni, spaghetti, some sort of dry stuff called soup mix, sugar, flour, sauces, tins, tomato paste and a whole lot more.

I settled for the macaroni. It had a recipe on the packet for macaroni cheese which was good because I didn’t trust that old
Edmonds
book with its falling-out pages.

I cooked, I did the listening watch, and by the time Dad and Noah rolled in, the macaroni cheese was looking pretty damned good in the oven. I knew it had lumps in it, and that the macaroni had kind of fallen to bits when I mixed it with the sauce, but they could discover that for themselves.

Dinner went like this. ‘You’ve done well, Min,’ from Dad. He left the lumps lined up around his plate.

‘Only because I wanted to eat. Don’t get big ideas about me being the cook.’

Silence from Noah.

‘That was good, Min. Thank you,’ from Mum. She ate a teaspoon-sized bit.

Five minutes of silent chewing.

I deemed it time to liven up the party. ‘Noah, I found your plants.’

Kapow, boom!

‘What plants?’ Dad demanded. ‘Noah? Did you hear me? What plants?’

Me (all friendly and chatty): You might as well tell him because I kicked them to bits.

Noah howled and lunged across the table at me. Dad roared at him. ‘Sit down!’ He grabbed Noah in a headlock and wrestled him back on to the chair.

Wow! I hadn’t counted on violence from my beloved sibling.

He snarled at me and spluttered like a drunk turkey, but he was slightly handicapped by not having the moral high ground. What he was standing on was as full of holes as the ground under the trees and his brain had cleared enough in his three days of enforced abstinence for him to know it.

‘Bitch!’ he hollered.

I got up from the table, leaving my plate right where it was. ‘You better believe it, brother. And you can do the dishes.’

And so ended another day of riveting television from the Hargreaves family.

In the morning Dad was making breakfast when I hit the kitchen. The room was warm, it smelled of bacon, eggs sizzled in the pan — what a picture of domestic harmony. I hope the cameras caught it all because the camera never lies.

Mum was still in bed and there was no sign of Noah, surprise surprise. Dad disappeared and I could hear the murmurings of calm and patient from him and exactly nothing from Noah. Dad reappeared. Noah snarled his way into the room not too many minutes later.

‘You stink,’ I said.

Dad sniffed. ‘Go and have a shower, son.’

Noah sat down — didn’t grunt, didn’t answer, didn’t shower.

‘Breakfast after your shower,’ Dad said, doing calm and patient again.

Noah got up but headed for the pantry not the bathroom. ‘Where’s the bread?’

Well, well — here was another delightful surprise. We’d eaten all the bread and when that happened, we had to make our own.

‘Why didn’t you say something last night?’ I asked Dad. ‘We could’ve put the breadmaker on.’

He tried for a hearty grin but to my expert eye, it was just a touch frazzled round the edges. ‘There’s no breadmaker, Min. We do it by hand.’

He was learning something, I guess. He hadn’t said
you
— meaning
me
— do it by hand.

Noah must’ve been hungry. He tried to score some bacon. Dad fended him off. ‘Shower then food.’

Noah caved, but it’s my bet that not a molecule of soap touched his skin. He came out with wet hair and the stink intact. Dad gave him food.

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘do not even think about leaving me here by myself to make bread.’ I glared at him.

He glanced out the window, then at the sofa where Mum hadn’t yet appeared. ‘All right. Just this once. Till you get the hang of it.’

I smiled and felt as dangerous as a shark. ‘I’ll make it every third time.’

‘Grow up, Min.’ No calm and patient for me.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘From where I’m sitting,
grown-up
doesn’t have a lot going for it.’ I could have said a lot more — like if I had to grow up then I wanted my boyfriend with me and seeing as how he and Mum
weren’t using the double bed, then could Seb and I have it? But in the interests of self-preservation I opted for, ‘I’ll feel like growing up when you sit down and talk to me about what’s going to happen with this family.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he said and shut his mouth with a snap that Lizzie, Jax and Addy probably heard at home in their nice, warm houses that had telephones and computers and life.

Dad made Noah help him make bread. I did the listening watch. Dad found a jar of yeast in the pantry, which apparently you need for bread, and lucky for us it had a recipe on its label just like the macaroni had. It takes even longer to make bread than it does to cook a roast, and when it’s cooked, it’s awful — solid and sticky in the middle.

‘If we had a computer we could look up how to make bread,’ I said.

‘Well, we haven’t,’ Dad said. ‘Come on, Noah, we’ve got work to do.’

‘I’m hungry,’ Noah said.

Dad chucked the loaf of ugly bread into the backpack. ‘We’ll eat on the job.’ This could possibly have been a result of Mum turning up and collapsing on to the sofa twenty minutes before the bread was cooked.

‘How’s the meat?’ I yelled to his disappearing back. Must have been fine because he didn’t come back and say it was or it wasn’t. I didn’t go and check.

Another day to fill. I did the Mum chores and the chicken chores — had a nice little chat with the chooks, collected six eggs. ‘Good chooks,’ I told them. They chatted back and I gave them another weed to supple
ment their otherwise boring diet which, so Dad assured me, was wheat and more wheat.

Which took me back to considering our diet. What I craved right now was bread and meat. ‘It’s just because I know I can’t have them,’ I told the camera, ‘but man — do I want them.’

I wandered back into the house and had a moan to Mum before I remembered I wasn’t talking to her. Oh, what the hell, there was going to be plenty of time not to talk to her when we got off this bird-shit place.

‘Make some bread,’ she said in that faint voice.

‘No point,’ I said. ‘That stuff Dad made was a disaster. We should’ve brought a breadmaker.’

‘Try,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll help.’

By which she had to mean tell me things rather than get up and dance around the kitchen. Oh well, why not? The idea of producing a fantastic loaf of bread and waving it in Dad’s face appealed. I set to work.

Turns out that Dad had been a tad on the impatient side. He hadn’t given the yeast enough time to rise. He hadn’t kneaded the dough enough — I quite liked the kneading — very tactile and my hands came out soft and clean although I decided not to think about what was now in the bread that used to be on my hands. And last of all, Dad hadn’t cooked it long enough.

‘Give it a sharp tap,’ Mum whispered, ‘It should sound hollow if it’s cooked.’

I did and it did. Minna Hargreaves, baker extraordinaire! I pulled it out of the oven and put it to cool on the table. Damn but it smelled good.

Mum smiled at me. ‘Well done, Min.’

I grinned at her, I was so pleased with myself. ‘You want a bit while it’s hot?’

She closed her eyes. ‘No. Thanks.’

She looked ghastly, worse than yesterday. Was morning sickness hereditary?
Never have babies, Minna, just in case
. I crouched down beside her. ‘Mum? You look real bad. Can I get something?’

Her eyes were still shut. ‘It’s just the smell. Turns my stomach. Don’t worry. Be okay soon.’

Yeah right. I carried the bread into my bedroom and shut the door on it. The only thing to do was open the doors and windows in the kitchen and blow the smell away and since there was a bit of a wind it didn’t take long.

I had bread for lunch. I swear it was the best bread ever, what with the butter melting through it. I thought of Dad and Noah and the ugly bread. ‘Enjoy,’ I shouted.

They came back at 4.25 by the kitchen clock, one minute after I’d decided that I was as musically talented as I was artistically.

‘I’m hungry,’ Noah grunted.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Dad asked, back turned to Mum.

I put the guitar down. ‘Whatever you want to cook.’

That didn’t go down any better than I bet the ugly bread had. Noah snarled, attacked the pantry and vanished along with a packet of gingernuts.

Dad sat down at the table, gave a sigh that was pure theatrics, hauled out some calm and patient and said, ‘Minna, this is not the most ideal of situations. I’m asking you to please make the best of it. I need your cooperation here.’

I sat down across from him. ‘Dad — I’ll start cooperating as you call it, although I reckon I’ve done a heap more cooperating than some people around here. Anyway, I’ll do it when you start talking to me about what’s going to happen to us.’ Challenge issued. Cards on the table. Gloves off. Eyeball to eyeball.

Did he take it up? No. ‘Minna, how many times do I have to tell you — there’s nothing to discuss. We’ll sort it out when we get home. Finish. End of story.’ He held up a hand. ‘No. Don’t say anything — you know what I expect of you. It’s not for long, just bite the bullet and do it.’

Well, we were into clichés and no mistake. I got up. No way was I going to tell him there was three-quarters of a loaf of the best bread in the world sitting in my bedroom, and if he thought he could get away with steamrollering me, he was in for a disappointment.

He stood up. ‘I’m going to check the meat. You sort something out for dinner.’

All right, Daddy darling — lesson coming up in how to cooperate while not cooperating. I grabbed the big bag of rice from the pantry and dumped it on the table. I chose the rice because it didn’t have any helpful recipes printed on it, and it didn’t give any hint of how to cook it.

He came back.

‘We’re having rice,’ I said.

‘Good. But I want you and Noah outside for a bit. The meat’s coming along well, but we need to turn it to get air to the bits that have been under the pegs.’ At least he didn’t ask me to get Noah. I got the camera
instead and obediently trotted outside, like the good little girl I wasn’t.

Noah came, snarling and crunching. We went outside, a merry threesome, a picture of family harmony and togetherness. I sat on the verandah and pointed the camera down the line.

‘Leave it, Min, and come and help.’ Dad.

‘You do your job and leave me to do mine.’ Me delivering a masterly thrust because it was good for him to be reminded that this whole farce was his grand idea.

He turned his back and gave Noah a hurry up.

They worked, I filmed. I was about to shut the camera off when we heard a noise — a deep throbbing carried on a hell wind.

‘What’s that?’ Noah spoke! I aimed the camera at him. Was I getting my brother back?

‘Don’t know,’ Dad said. They stopped working and we all stared upwards to the hills. We didn’t have to wait long for the answer to the mystery.

A cloud of the blue birds with the white tummies zoomed over the tops of the hills, down the valley, all of them carried on a blast of wind. They cruised towards us, hundreds and hundreds of them. I filmed them hurtling onwards, blown on the wind or flying — or maybe a mixture of both. They darkened the sky and then they were over our heads and the wind that carried them hit us and tore at our hair and clothes. It swiped the camera sideways in my hands.

And then they were gone.

‘What was
that?
’ Noah again — not sulky, not grumpy
— but covered in bird shit which might not do much for his temper.

I focused in on Dad. He wore a selection of bird shit globs too, but he was staring at the meat. I focused on that and started to laugh. ‘Behold! The great meat disaster of Isolation Island!’ I zoomed a shot along the line, taking in the straggly remnants that had survived the wind blast, and lingering on those that wore globs of bird shit. Not one paper cover remained.

I jumped up and walked the length of the line. ‘Nine pieces left intact and without decorations,’ I said. ‘You want to keep them, Dad?’

I got a great shot of his face — fed up, disbelieving but then he let loose one of his rip-roaring belly laughs. That did it. All three of us ended up rolling on the ground laughing till our sides ached.

Then we went inside, cleaned off the damage with water that must’ve just got a whole new sprinkling of bird shit and we cooked dinner together. Rice, tomato sauce and tinned fish. Not the best meal ever, but not the worst either.

I didn’t tell Dad about the bread. I gave Mum a cup of tea and a water cracker. Another day down. Would Mum be well enough to travel tomorrow? Would we go home tomorrow? Not if that hell wind kept up.

The hell wind still raged in the morning. Dad dug out an anemometer which he reckoned would tell us the wind speed. He held it in his hand out in the wind, the little arms on it whirred madly and the dial showed that we had a wind of 95 kilometres an hour.

Dad and Noah couldn’t work outside; Dad had tried and it blew him flat. I wanted him to do it again so I could film it. He declined, but what do you know? — Noah said he would. We took off and left grumpy father in the house with sick mother. Maybe they’d talk to each other and maybe pigs would fly.

Noah pointed to a spur halfway up the hill. ‘That’s where Dad bit the dust.’ I dropped behind, the camera trained on him as he jogged upwards, came out of the
shelter of the spur — and wham! The wind knocked him sideways, flat on to the ground. He crawled back towards me, grinning. ‘Let’s make a land yacht. Man, it’d move!’ He stood up. ‘We can work on it today — in the shed.’ He gave the last word just a touch of emphasis. Aha! I’m not stupid, I could work out that it had to be the shed where I’d bashed his plants to pulp.

We ran back to the house and I beat him because I was so excited about doing something different, getting away from the house and Mum lying there looking like death. Stupid me. Why did I think Dad would let me escape?

He kept on washing the breakfast dishes, didn’t even pause. ‘No, Min, I’m sorry, but you have to stay here.’ A meaningful glance at Mum.

‘No way! If somebody’s got to stay, then it’s your turn or Noah’s.’ I headed for my room. I’d even put on the disgusting overalls — anything to get out of the house, to do something different.

Dad’s voice hauled me up short. ‘Minna, you are to stay and look after your mother. End of story. No arguing.’

I wheeled around, ignoring the whimpers from Mum’s direction.
That’s what you think, Father dearest
. ‘Why?’ I eyeballed him. ‘Explain to me just why that is fair. Why me and why not you or Noah.’ I stamped a foot, remembered the cameras, strove for calm and said, ‘You said we weren’t going back in time.’ Another deep breath. ‘Keeping me in the house just because of my gender is out there in old-time land, wouldn’t you say?’

One thing I have learned in my fourteen-odd years of
life is that if you’re a parent, you don’t have to fight fair.

‘No,’ he said, ‘and that’s final.’

He walked out, followed by Noah who grinned at me.

I whirled around, snarled at Mum, ‘Don’t think I’m staying around to hold your hand. You dropped yourself — no, actually, make that you dropped us into this horror story, so lie there and enjoy it.’

I didn’t look at her, tried not to listen to her as I left the room. Let her lie there with the cameras recording every last tear. Served her right.

Boredom and the cold drove me out of my bedroom after what was probably only half an hour, but felt like a million half-hours.

Mum was shivering. I fed the fire, filled her a hottie, got her a blanket. God, I was a good daughter and she’d better remember it for all the rest of the days of her life if either of us managed to survive this incarceration.

I cooked — didn’t want to for a good number of excellent reasons, but (a) it gave me something to do, (b) I got hungry and (c), which I wasn’t about to broadcast to the entire nation, I got a buzz out of it. Minna Hargreaves was turning into a domestic goddess. Who would have thought it? Not Jax or Addy or me in my wildest dreams and I would never, ever admit it to Lizzie, not even if she threatened to cut off my hair with nail scissors. Seb would be impressed — a hot girlfriend who could cook. That had to be an attractive package.

I made soup out of the dried stuff in the pantry which didn’t use up a lot of my time even though it took hours to cook. The smell upset Mum. I opened the sliding door.
Cold, it seemed, was preferable to sick.

Cooking gave me plenty of time for thinking and plotting. Bloody Dad was not going to get away with making me a prisoner and a slave. And he could bloody talk to me about The Situation. What, Why and How were things I’d like to know. I glanced at Mum and tried a How question on her. ‘Mum, how come you went off with another man?’

A sigh and a twitch of the eyebrows doesn’t constitute a satisfactory answer in my opinion.

I took her a cup of tea and tried a What question. ‘What’s going to happen when we get back home?’

‘Don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you, Min.’

She drank a third of it then let the rest go cold and scummy — which was appropriate, cold and scummy being a good description of our island paradise.

I ate soup and superior bread for lunch. Mum ate a teaspoonful and said it was good, a judgement I didn’t agree with, but she muttered, ‘Salt,’ and that cheered it up astonishingly.

I gave up being snooty about the Edmonds book. I discovered you could make pudding out of rice and dried milk powder.

Dad and Noah powered in all happy and charged up from their day of fun in the shed.

‘Have you finished the yacht?’ Dad would have to let me ride on it, and what a blast that would be.

‘Not yet,’ said Dad. ‘It’s going to take time.’

Noah grinned at me. ‘Complicated. A girl wouldn’t understand.’

I got my own back. He got less of the lunchtime soup
than I did and I made sure he knew it. The pair of them chowed it down then shovelled in the rice delicacy.

Dad: Excellent, Min. What a trooper you’ve turned out to be.

Noah: Any more?

‘Thank you, Min.’ A whisper from Mum but she managed a whole tablespoonful. I grabbed some off Noah’s plate in case she felt like it again the next day, then I eyeballed Dad.

‘Dad, we need to discuss this whole, entire, sucky, stink pus-filled situation. Starting now.’

He leapt up from the table as if he’d sat on at least three species of poisonous cacti. ‘Not now, Min. Time for the listening watch. Noah, do the dishes.’

I wasn’t fooled, not for a second. ‘The watch isn’t for another ten minutes. But okay, afterwards will do just as well.’

He yelled at Noah again to get him moving, glared at me and grunted, ‘I’ve said, no point in discussing anything till we get home.’

I inhaled long and deep. ‘Dad — that’s the whole point — what’s going to happen when we get home? Who will live where and with whom?’ And I hoped my beloved English teacher would register my correct usage of whom. It didn’t impress Dad though.

‘Leave it, Min. There’s no point.’

‘There is a point,’ I said. ‘I want to discuss it. It’s important.’ I took myself over to where he sat at the radio and I prodded his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise the shape of the tip of my index finger.

He shook me off. ‘For Pete’s sake, Min. Accept it —
there’s nothing to discuss. We’ll sort it out when we get back. Leave it.’

‘No!’ I hollered. ‘And while we’re at it, let’s talk about the miserable life you’re making me lead when there’s absolutely no good reason for it.’

He shoved back the chair, stood up, said very calmly and patiently, ‘You can do the watch — I know you enjoy it.’ And wham! He was out the door and striding off into the windy darkness.

Noah sat at the table and sniggered.

Over the next couple of days nothing changed. Minna Hargreaves, prisoner of Isolation Island. Each night the pair of them came back to my home-cooked delicacies, including a pavlova that I had with huge patience whipped by hand, and reported that no, the yacht wasn’t finished yet but who would have thought that a purée of tinned peaches would be as good as cream on a pav? Well done, me.

On the fourth day, the wind dropped and I put into action the plan I’d brewed during the days of wind. I ran out of the house before Dad and Noah had finished eating the toast made from more of my magnificent bread. ‘I’ve got food, I’ve got water and I’m not coming back all day,’ I yelled as I escaped.

I had the camera too. I filmed a bucketload of stuff that would bore Cara to death — leaves, twigs, birdholes, trees, grass, weeds, etcetera, etcetera. I went to the shed and filmed every aspect of the yacht. Looked to me like it had old pram wheels. ‘I’m guessing it’s the sail that’s complicated,’ I told the camera. I panned over a variety of scrappy boards lying on the ground. ‘These
would appear not to have worked.’

After that excitement I spent hours lying on the grass in the sun thinking about Seb and about my friends. I thought too about The Situation. I’d tackle Dad again tonight — make him talk to me about what the hell was going to happen when we got off this jail. When I started thinking about school I figured it was time to get up and do some more filming.

I only went back to the house when the sun dipped low enough to make the air too cool for comfort.

Dad smiled at me when I came in. ‘Enjoy your holiday?’

I sent him an I-can’t-believe-you’re-serious look. ‘What’s for dinner? I’m hungry.’ Which was a cunning repetition of how they greeted me each evening.

But Dad just smiled again. ‘Egg foo yong, coleslaw made with our very own cabbage, and scones.’

I ate and I was impressed. ‘Hey Dad — this is excellent. Let’s rotate duties — you know, take it in turns to stay in the house and …’

‘No,’ he said. End of conversation. End of smiles. ‘And keep an eye on the garden, Min. I’ve weeded it but you’ll need to do it regularly and keep it watered too.’

I ignored him.

‘There’s a slug in the coleslaw,’ Noah said. ‘No — make that half a slug.’

‘What did you make for Mum?’ I asked, wishing I’d examined my coleslaw before I’d scoffed it down.

Silence.

‘You didn’t make her anything?’ I asked. ‘Did you give her a cup of tea any time today?’

‘I did,’ Noah said. ‘She drank half of it.’

I scraped back my chair, glared at the father person busy filling his face and said, ‘I can’t believe you! You belong in the ark and I hope you fall overboard and drown.’ I squatted beside Mum — lying on the sofa without a rug. ‘Want something?’

‘Piece of bread. Cut very thin. Thank you, Minna.’

I cut the bread so thin it looked like lace. I made a cup of tea.

‘Thank you, Minna.’

I helped her out to the facilities and then to bed. Dad ran water into the sink and ignored me. He looked around for Noah. Scarpered. Gone. Absent.

‘Dry these, will you, Min?’

This, I decided was an admirable time for The Talk. I’d read several well-researched articles that said doing dishes together provided family bonding time. Accordingly I ambled across to the sink. ‘Dad — what’s going to happen when we leave here?’

He wriggled his shoulders and splashed around in the suds. ‘We go back home.’

‘All of us? To 95 Tiber St?’

A pile of cutlery hit the draining tray. ‘No. And get busy, Min. I’m running out of room here.’

I swiped at a plate with a fairly grey tea towel. ‘So who will live where and with whom?’

He snorted, or it might have been a water pipe spluttering. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out.’

He was getting terse and snippy, but damn it, this was important. I dealt to another couple of plates and persevered. ‘That’s all very well for you to say. You can
decide your own fate but we have to do what you say. Or Mum. Have you talked to Mum about it?’

He let the water go, then turned a full-bodied glare on me. ‘There. Is. Nothing. To. Talk. About. Accept it, Min. You’re getting tiresome. Leave it.’

‘But Dad …’

He cut across me. He gave me the full dose of calm and patient and a stronger dose of determined. ‘Watch this.’ He snatched a cup from the draining board and hurled it on to the concrete hearth surrounding the woodburner. It shattered into a million pieces. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is what your mother’s actions have done to our marriage. Now do you understand that it’s over? It can’t be glued back together— not with talking, not with patience. Nothing.’

I thumped a hand flat on the bench in a puddle of water. Drips flew out and splashed him. ‘I’m not
talking
about your dumb marriage! I’m talking about the other stuff …’

He wouldn’t let me finish. ‘There’s no other stuff we can decide right now. We’ll have to wait till we get home.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘So leave it. Okay?’

I pushed his hand away. ‘Why won’t you listen?’ I pointed a dripping hand at the shattered crockery. ‘
That
is what my heart feels like! Do you understand
that’s
what the pair of you are doing to me?’

But he wouldn’t budge. ‘I’m sorry Min. I didn’t create this situation, remember. You’ll just have to learn to accept it.’

I wiped the tea towel over the bench, over and over. ‘No. I won’t. I hate it. I hate you not even looking at her.’
Thump crash on the horrible red Formica. ‘I hate you not helping her when she’s so sick. I hate the way you turn down your mouth and say
your mother
like it was my fault she’s my mother and you had nothing to do with it.’ Thwack. The cloth hit the deck.

Stalemate. What else did I expect?

He just said, ‘I’m sorry about the
your mother
thing. I’ll refer to her by her name in future.’

I gave up, turned away from the sink without finishing drying — and nearly walked smack-bang into Mum hanging on to the door frame. Tears dribbled down her face.

The next day was back to normal — if you can call being stuck in a house with a sick mother normal. Dad, the yellow-bellied slug, got up extra early and left the house before I could pull another swifty on him. Noah slept or at least stayed in his room, making the most of Dad’s absence. I thought about disappearing but, really, there was no point because there was only more of the same to disappear to.

So I did the chicken chores and the Mum chores and I cooked. I made eggs with cheese and spinach, which was silver beet, but Mum reckoned it would work.

Not the greatest success as a meal, but Dad and Noah ate it and didn’t moan. I ate the eggs and tried not to wish it was the chicken I was eating. Izzie, Bizzie and all the rest — I couldn’t eat them, not even if somebody else chopped their heads off and pulled out all their feathers.

I concocted some weird combinations. The menu for the second day of calm after the wind was stuffed baked potatoes and pancakes.