Elsie was at the sink, scrubbing a particularly stubborn lump of chook poo from an egg, when the front door opened, and Millie came bustling inside with Aida following close behind.
Elsie lifted an excited Arthur from where he was sitting beside her on the bench so he could run to Aida and Millie. ‘How was school?’ she said.
Millie dumped her satchel on the floor and Elsie was about to crossly remind her, as always, that her school bag didn’t go on the floor for someone to trip over and break their neck when the look on Millie’s face stopped her. That, and Aida’s expression: a plea crossed with a warning.
Elsie said, ‘What happened?’ but Millie shot her a thunderous look and stormed from the kitchen. The children’s bedroom door slammed.
‘That’s bad mannered,’ Elsie said darkly. ‘What’s going on?’
Aida heaved Arthur up onto her hip. At four years old, he was losing his toddler appearance; now he was long and slender like a cat, and his feet dangled down Aida’s thighs. Aida said, ‘Her teacher told her off.’
‘What?’
‘And made her sit in the corner of the classroom instead of playing outside at lunch.’
Elsie frowned. ‘What for?’
Aida glanced down the hall, towards the bedroom. ‘Apparently Millie was “rude”. Although I’m interpreting this from a storm of temper in the first minute after she came off the bus. Then she went silent and wouldn’t say anything else.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s mad.’ Aida set Arthur down and came around the bench. Leaning against the cupboard, she crossed her arms. ‘I think I made it worse.’
‘Give her a minute, then we’ll sort this out,’ Elsie said. ‘No, Arthur you can have a snack when Millie comes out of your room.’ Arthur whined briefly before running off down the hall to try and wheedle Millie out of her room. Elsie picked up the kettle to fill it, but Aida put a hand on her arm.
‘I think you need to talk to her right away. At school they . . .’ she stepped back again and sighed. ‘They did family trees today.’
‘Oh,’ Elsie said.
‘Yeah.’
Elsie’s heart raced as she left the kitchen. The children weren’t allowed to slam doors – Elsie had received ringing slaps across her bare calves on the occasions she had lost her temper and done so as a child – but she tamped down that swell of irritation and knocked on the closed bedroom door before opening it.
The children’s bedroom was divided into halves, with Millie’s bed on one wall, Arthur’s on the other. Between the two beds, a lace-curtained window looked out onto the lavender hedge at the side fence. A strip of wallpaper with elephants, zebras, giraffes and monkeys printed on it ran around all four walls. Each bed had a small dresser at the foot and a bedside table with three drawers and a lamp on top. Alongside Arthur’s bed, toys and chaos littered the floor; a single rubber boot, a scattering of Lego pieces, a small, rattly tin tambourine that Aida was insistent should be confiscated and well hidden. Millie’s bed was an example of order – quilt smoothed flat, two dolls and the stuffed one-eyed bear lined up neatly behind her pillow. About ten inches above her mattress along the wall, brightly coloured pencil sketches and collages of coloured paper were taped in a neat row.
Millie was sitting cross-legged on her bed. Her pencil box was open in front of her and she gripped a pencil and was scrawling into a scrapbook.
Elsie sat on the edge of the bed. Millie’s hand stilled but she didn’t look up. Across her page was a thickly scribbled thatch of brown, with bursts extending out from the sides of a central trunk. It looked as though Millie had been trying to cover up the entire page with pencil.
‘Is that a drawing of a tree?’ Elsie asked.
‘It was,’ Millie said. ‘Now it’s just a mess.’
‘Want to tell me what happened at school?’
‘I hate Mrs Mabel.’
‘Right . . .’
‘She made me stay inside at lunch, and everyone laughed at me.’
Elsie felt a flush of hot protective anger. ‘Why did she do that?’
‘Because she’s horrible.’
Elsie paused, then tried a different tactic. ‘Aunty Ay said you made family trees today.’
Millie pushed the book towards her. ‘This was my tree, but I got it wrong. Mrs Mabel said I have to do it again. But I’ve made a mess in my book.’ Her voice broke and the last words came out dangerously tremulous.
‘There now,’ Elsie said, anxious to avoid a tantrum before tea. ‘We can take the page out of the book and I’ll help you make a new tree.’ Millie sniffled and Elsie said tentatively, ‘Did Mrs Mabel say why you had to stay inside at lunch?’
‘She said I back-chatted. But I didn’t! I just wanted to put Ay on my tree, and I asked Mrs Mabel where Ay should go. But she said that if Ay is your friend who lives next door, she isn’t allowed to go on my tree at all.’
Elsie gulped. ‘I see.’
‘But I said Ay practically lives with us, I see her every day. So I want her on my family tree. But she said I wasn’t allowed. That my tree had to be right. So I got angry and said . . .’ she mumbled something into her shoulder.
Elsie prompted nervously, ‘You said what?’
Millie picked up the pencil and began scribbling again, the strokes racing off the sides of the page. ‘I said family trees are stupid.’
Elsie exhaled with relief.
‘Then I had to sit in the corner while everyone else went out to play.’
Mille broke into sobs and Elsie’s relief turned into boggy, stomach-curling guilt.
For a brief time Elsie entertained a mental image of throttling Millie’s grade-four teacher. She could almost feel that high-buttoned collar beneath her fingers, the wrinkles on that dour face turning puce. Or maybe Elsie could strangle her with that large silver crucifix that always swung at her ruffled bosom. Then she remembered the strict Catholic nuns who had caned Elsie’s fingers for stumbling over words from her Catechism, and knew Millie had the small mercy of a so-called secular school at least.
But would that mercy extend to tolerance of a student’s mother who loved another adult – an adult of the same sex, at that – in addition to their lawfully wedded? With a sense of hot dread she recalled the prim, rebuking expression of Gloria Watson as she had removed Elsie from the knitting group. For suspected unbecoming behaviour.
‘If Aunty Ay isn’t a real aunty, like Aunt Rose and Aunt Lila, then who is she?’
Elsie looked down at the scribbles across her daughter’s page, the indecipherable mess. How apt it was.
‘She’s Mum and Dad’s friend. Sort of like an aunty, only not related by blood.’
‘I tried to explain that to Mrs Mabel, but she said it didn’t make sense.’
Elsie took in Millie’s indignant face, the tear-stained tracks on her cheeks. If a teacher could humiliate and punish Millie for mislabelling an aunty, how would a teacher react if they discovered a child’s parents often shared a bed with an extra woman? Found out that woman was also a parent to the child, shaping her growth, influencing the way she learned about the world?
Millie picked up her pencil and tapped it on the page. ‘Mum? What is she?’
Elsie wanted to tell her the truth. She realised she wanted Millie to understand, so that if she understood, it would be easier for Millie to keep it to herself. But how could she do that to such a young child? She pictured Millie at school today, tucked into the corner of the classroom, facing the wall and weeping while listening to her friends playing outside, the heartless taunts and jeers of the other students. Millie could face a lifetime of such ridicule and exile. Or worse – what if the teacher told the authorities?
The children might be taken away from them.
Just like Aida’s baby had been taken away from her.
Elsie’s body went cold. No, there was no way she could explain it to Millie. The only way to protect her child was if Millie simply did not know the truth. What she did not know could not hurt her.
So Elsie lied.
‘Ay is just my friend, that’s all. Aunty is a nickname.’
‘A nickname?’
‘Exactly. Like how your name is Millicent Eloise, but we call you Millie. Or sometimes honey.’
‘So-o-o,’ Millie said slowly, ‘what do I tell Mrs Mabel?’
‘You don’t have to tell her anything. You have a mum and a dad, and you have aunties and Uncle David.’
‘Where do I put Ay?’
Elsie looked down at the page of angry scribbles. She touched her fingertips to the grooves where Millie’s pencil had pressed so hard it had embossed the paper.
‘You can leave Ay off the tree, honey.’
‘But I don’t want to leave Ay off my family tree.’
‘I know you don’t. But it’s a family tree, and Ay isn’t . . .’ she paused, gathered herself. ‘Ay isn’t family.’
So this is what self-loathing feels like, Elsie thought.