Aida Glasson tentatively followed her mother across the threshold. Drywall dust coated the linoleum floor and the air was redolent of fresh paint and chalky plaster flushing. Late morning sunlight sieved through plain lace curtains.
Her mother’s heels made a pert clip-clip as they stepped into the empty front room. On the far side the modest kitchen was arranged: bare laminate benchtops, a new electric stove, an empty space where the refrigerator would sit.
Aida fought a flash of panic and turned to her mum. Seeing Aida’s expression, Dorthea Glasson gave her an attempt at a smile.
Setting the suitcase on the floor, her mother said, ‘Your father will bring a refrigerator up tomorrow, so in the meantime you can make do without milk or cold meat. I’ve packed plenty of sardines, there’s bread there and some canned peaches . . .’ Her head bobbed as she glanced about the room, as though mentally assessing the situation and finding it good enough. Her dark hair was set so unyieldingly that it moved as one solid entity along with her head. ‘We’ll bring that small round table for the kitchen here, and I think Dad said he’d bring up your armchair from the living room.’ Dorthea tried for another stiff smile. ‘So you’ll have that bit of home – won’t that be nice?’
Aida swallowed and nodded, not trusting her voice. She walked a slow circle around the rest of the empty space. A dining setting could go there, by the screen door. A couch and perhaps, one day, a television set in that corner.
It was a fantasy image, of course – an imaginary picture for someone else in the future. No ample-cushioned couch or the luxury of a television set would furnish her time here. For Aida there would be only the basics – food, brought weekly by her mother, a roof over her head and walls between which to hide. A calendar on the wall where she could mark off each passing day.
Aida crossed to a screen door off the kitchen and peered down the length of the house, towards the backyard. Knee-high nettles and giant capeweed scrambled amongst leftover builder’s rubble: broken cladding, chunks of unearthed quartz like loose teeth, ochre clods of clay.
‘There’s no fence between the two houses,’ Aida pointed out with dismay. ‘Look – they’re so close together. I could practically spit onto their matching side door. Does anyone live there?’
‘Don’t say spit, it’s unladylike. And I don’t know. Your father has done the best he can at short notice. I’m sure the fence will be up before you get too . . .’ her mother sniffed and checked the integrity of her bouffant. ‘And besides, if I were you I’d not be worrying about matters of the neighbours. Best you keep to yourself.’
Aida said, ‘I won’t show my face in daylight,’ and drew her finger in an X over her heart.
Dorthea ignored her petulance. ‘You won’t be too lonely – I’ll come up every Saturday.’
‘You’ll be too busy.’
‘It’s not forever,’ Dorthea said, becoming sharp. ‘And you know how much worse it could be.’
Aida didn’t answer. She needed to look somewhere other than at her mother. Fishing a cigarette from the pack in her handbag, she paused to light it, then stepped into a narrow hallway leading off the living area. Off one side of the hallway was a bathroom and a laundry, and along the other were two small bedrooms and what had been listed as a ‘study’ but was little more than a broom closet. The bedrooms had thickly piled carpet coloured in a rich bronze, and more generic lace curtains. Standing at the foot of the new bare-mattressed double bed, in the only bedroom with a wardrobe, she heard her mother’s footsteps behind her.
‘Help me get the rest of your bags out of the car. I need to be at Glenda’s for tea at five. And for heaven’s sake, get an ashtray.’
And so Aida did. She helped her mum retrieve the rest of the worldly possessions she’d been permitted to take: a small pile of skirts and dresses, her sewing machine and threads to adjust them in the coming weeks. A handful of novels, a small wireless radio. A bunch of scarves like slippery snakes, stockings. Two sets of bed sheets still wrapped in their store packaging; the quilt she’d made herself when she was thirteen with the red, gold and green fan pattern. Deliberately, in her last act of defiance, the only photographs she’d plucked from her shelves in her bedroom had been those of her childhood pets – a Doberman puppy named Blackie who had lived with her for only ten days before vanishing after he had pooped beneath the kitchen table, and her now-aging tabby cat, Freckle, who would probably not even notice Aida’s absence, who would pay no heed to the quiet step of her parents, now alone in that house again, as they had once been before she was born eighteen years ago.