AJ Ponder
Vanessa jumped up and down with excitement. ‘Andy, look, it’s Mummy,’ she yelled, trying to pull away from my hand. ‘Mummy, Mummy, today at kindy I learnt rain makes the flowers grow. That’s why it’s no good being hot all the time. Mummy, Mummy, where’s Sookie? Did the vet make her better?’
Mum looked over to a cardboard box on the passenger seat.
I knew what it was. I truly did. But I asked anyway. ‘Where’s Sookie?’
‘Mummy, did the vet make her better?’ Vanessa repeated.
Mum sat in the car, tears streaming down her cheeks as her eyes flicked over to the cardboard coffin. ‘No, dear. Sookie, she’s gone away. She’s – not with us anymore.’
‘Like Daddy?’
‘No, she’s gone – she’s dead. You need to say goodbye.’ With a great effort she got up and reached over to the passenger seat.
‘It’s OK, Mum,’ I said, taking the box and almost dropping it. It felt weird, like Sookie was alive and sliding around on the inside.
‘Andy, just put it on the steps for now,’ Mum said.
I had hardly put it down before Vanessa rushed over to flip the lid open, as if this was a special present just for her. Not quite ready to look yet, I turned away.
‘But Mummy, Sookie’s not gone. She’s right here.’
I adjusted my glasses and peeked in. Sure enough, there she was. Silver-grey fur. Cold nose. Eyes closed as if in sleep.
‘Mum? Is she really dead?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Andy. We’ll have a funeral and bury her in the backyard, but first you really should say goodbye.’ Mum stroked Sookie’s head and murmured something I didn’t hear, because – and I admit it – I was crying. A little.
But not Vanessa. She just nodded. ‘OK, Mummy.’ Her little three-year-old hand reached out to caress Sookie’s shoulder, ruffling the sleek fur. ‘Goodbye Sookie. Can I go now?’ she demanded before I’d gathered the nerve to say a final goodbye. I didn’t think I was going to. Only the ruffled fur was – wrong. Carefully, I stroked it back into place.
‘Can I go now?’ Vanessa kept on repeating.
At last Mum sighed. ‘I’m going to go and dig the grave. Andy, you could help or look after Vess. Your choice.’
‘I can dig, too,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m a big girl. I’m almost four.’
Just great. She was useless. Hardly able to pick the spade off the ground, she cheerfully cried, ‘I’m digging. I’m digging a hole all the way though the garden and out the other side.’
Ten seconds later she reviewed her progress, chubby fingers poking at the broken dirt. Satisfied it was sufficiently scratched, she wandered off.
‘I know Sookie will want some flowers,’ Mum said, taking the spade.
‘Why?’ Vanessa asked, face screwed up as if she was doing extremely difficult maths.
‘Because that’s what you do when people – best friends – die. Sookie was your best friend wasn’t she?’
A solemn nod. Then she began picking daisies and buttercups, while I trailed behind. ‘Do you like milk, Sookie?’ she said, twirling a buttercup under Sookie’s chin.
Where’d she heard that? Not me. I would have asked, ‘Do you like butter?’ That’s much more sensible. Well, it is with people anyway.
Mum called me over. ‘Your turn.’ She was wiping sweat away from her eyes. I couldn’t help but notice she was digging close to the retaining wall, a fair way away from where Vanessa had started.
‘You even make a dent in that soil?’ I asked. ‘I think Vess chose a better spot.’
She shrugged and handed me the spade.
Why is it that in the movies digging always looks so easy? Because it’s not. We took turns for over half an hour in the hot sun. I wished for about the hundredth time that I was a manly male with lots of testosterone instead of a tiny little geek in glasses as the spade clashed against the drought-hard ground and clattered off rocks, jolting my arms and my head until I ached all over.
Finally, Mum was satisfied and we stopped for drinks. Fizzy lemonade with slices of lemon, while Vanessa sorted through her ragged collection of flowers. Then it was time. Mum and I said a few words each about Sookie – how she had wormed her way around our legs, demanding food, attention, the door opened for her. How she hated pills, had claws sharper than razors and teeth fierce as knives. A ghost in the night, a shadow in the day.
I lowered the box into the grave while Vanessa recited some old poem she’d heard somewhere. ‘To every thing there is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that planted.’
Which you have to admit is pretty odd for a three-year-old. But Vess is like that.
Mum wiped away a tear. ‘Shall we put the flowers on?’
Vanessa shook her head and clutched the ragged pile of daisies and buttercups in her lap. ‘Sookie doesn’t like flowers. She told me.’
‘Why don’t we put one on, anyway?’
A flower was solemnly chosen and placed on top. Then the dirt. Vanessa looked on wide-eyed, before she too started pushing the dry soil into the hole.
‘Is this right, Mummy?’
Mum nodded and looked over to where Vanessa had scratched the soil. I knew what she was thinking. ‘Vanessa is not quite right.’ And yeah, she was a little strange. Maybe all kids are strange. Mum sometimes says I’m not quite right either.
Then, when we were almost finished, Vanessa dropped all her flowers into the dirt. ‘Will the flowers grow too, Mummy?’ she asked. ‘When will Daddy grow? It’s been ages.’
We just ignored her; she says daft things about Dad sometimes. I don’t like to think of him. He shouldn’t have left us. It was sad enough Sookie being dead, without thinking about how much I miss him, too.
Finally, we went inside, and I felt terrible. Like the cat was in my stomach, clawing her way out. Nothing would ever take Sookie’s place. She was a terror sometimes, and I had some scratches to prove it, but I loved that cat. She was always warm on the end of the bed. And liked to be stroked just under the chin.
All I wanted to do was go to my room and play videos, and maybe cry a little, but Vanessa was demanding. ‘Mum, do you think Sookie will like the dark?’
‘What? Andy! Can you look after Vess for a moment?’
Damn. And I was about to escape.
‘Can we go see Sookie?’ Vanessa asked. Mum had escaped to the kitchen, no doubt pouring herself some medicinal shots of brandy.
‘Not now,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘But she’ll be lonely out there by herself. Don’t you think we should dig her up now?’
‘Vess, she’s dead.’
‘Yes, but when will she wake up?’
‘She’s not going to wake up.’
‘OK.’
Still no tears. ‘Dad woke up.’
‘Dad didn’t die. He left us. Remember? Mum said he needed to find some new friends.’
A little nod. A wooden castle was about to reach the sky when Mum came back, weaving, but only a little. ‘It’ll shoon be time for bed, darling. You want to get into your pyjamas?’
‘OK. But I need Sookie on my bed tonight.’
‘How about Ted sits on the end of your bed and looks after you?’
‘No. I want Sookie.’ She looked at Mum with a challenging glare and put her thumb in her mouth.
‘Yuck,’ Mum said, pulling it out, all covered in saliva and disgusting. ‘Get – changed – for – bed!’
I could see Mum’s hand was itching. She would have hit me. But Vanessa’s a girl, or she’s too little, or something. Mum didn’t even hit her when she threw herself down on the floor and started kicking and screaming. I’d have joined her if it could bring Sookie back, but it doesn’t work that way.
Mum walked off again, and I thought she was leaving me to it. But she came back with Ted. My Ted. And placed it on the end of Vanessa’s bed.
I protested. Of course, I did.
I protested even more when, in the morning, Ted was gone.
Night after night, Mum placed a sacrificial toy on the end of Vanessa’s bed. Mostly mine. And night after night the toy disappeared, or came back battered, like it had been dragged about on the floor for hours.
The drought finally broke in a downpour that turned afternoon into an eerie twilight, as the rain battered itself against our house. Vanessa stared out the window as if she’d forgotten what rain was like. ‘The rain is what makes things grow,’ she said.
Then the power went out. We had cold beans for dinner and Mum sent us to bed early, muttering something about flooding.
In the night, the wind and the rain and the thunder got worse. I rushed into Mum’s room – but she wasn’t there. A light was on in the kitchen, a candle propped up in a bowl of water. She was collapsed over the table, bottle in her hand still dripping.
I checked on Vanessa, too. She was just a little lump curled up under the covers. I didn’t blame her. That’s where I wanted to be. So I went back to my room, pulled the pillow over my ears and did my best to ignore all the noise. Even when the house rattled, and the walls creaked.
In the morning, I looked outside. Something was different. A slip had come down overnight. The rumbling hadn’t just been thunder. The whole retaining wall was gone. Sookie’s grave was gone too, and I realised I hadn’t visited it; not for ages.
‘Vanessa,’ Mum cried. ‘Vessy!’
I rushed to her room, but she wasn’t there. ‘Vessy, Vessy, where are you?’
Gone to the loo? ‘Vessy?!’
No.
Maybe she got her own breakfast again, and messed up the kitchen like she always does. ‘Vanessa! Vessy?!’
No.
‘Stop playing hide and seek,’ Mum said. ‘You don’t have to go to kindy today.’ An excellent bribe – she hates kindy. She says the other kids all tease her for being different and having no friends. Probably because she listens to the nonsense the kindy teachers say, and remembers it all by heart, like the stuff about water and growing flowers.
The strange poem went through my brain. It was from the Bible – I knew because I’d looked it up on the net. ‘To every thing there is a season – a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.’ What? Really? Is that what she thought we were doing?
I rushed outside. Mum was on my heels. Stumbling. ‘What are you doing – it’s still raining!’
There on the path, right next to the slip, was a toy rabbit. I picked it up and Mum began to scream. ‘I gave her that. Vanessa! Vanessa!’ she hollered, but we had already looked everywhere else.
Eventually rescue workers came. They stood and looked at the slip. Looked at it again with lots of stares and mumbled conversations.
Mum started digging anyway. ‘Stop that, Mrs Hope. You’ll interfere with our readings.’
A machine beeped over the surface. Long-handled brooms poked the fresh cliff.
‘It’s not a big slip,’ Mum yelled. ‘I’ll do it myself.’
I rushed out to help her, and the rescue workers followed. Testosterone was probably what did it, because if Vess wasn’t my sister and just some strange girl then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have risked my life like that.
The foreman shook his head as we uncovered a giant rock. As if he knew she was dead, but wasn’t about to say so. Eventually the boulder was dragged away, and then there was movement in the lee of it – that means the sheltered side – and the earth collapsed a little.
Everyone jumped back as a dirt-encrusted hand clawed out of the earth.
‘Zombie!’ I screamed. My feet rooted to the spot.
The thing writhed and pulled itself upright, a bundle of slime and fur clutched to its chest. ‘Mum, we planted Sookie, but she didn’t grow.’
I’d never seen a zombie before. But I was pretty sure they shouldn’t speak, so I stepped a little closer. The smell was horrendous, like sick and vomit and rot and a garbage dump all piled into one as Vanessa blinked muddy eyelids and cuddled Sookie’s maggot-ridden corpse close.
There was this eerie silence. I think people were struggling to believe it. Vanessa was alive. But it was very weird as she stayed there, playing in the mud. ‘I found Sookie,’ she said, poking at a maggot. It wriggled away blindly. ‘She didn’t grow like a flower. But look, she’s got lots of new friends.’
I expected Mum to yell at her, but before she could, Vanessa asked with her usual straightforwardness, ‘Mummy? Can we dig up Daddy, and meet his new friends too?’