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YOU SIT on the edge of the mattress. You lie down and look at the ceiling and then you sit up again. The bedroom that’s only your bedroom now has only got your bed in it and a chair and the built-in wardrobes. You made the walls bare today, all the posters of Led Zeppelin you had up you took down, pictures of David Bowie Boys Next Door Angels and The Models, it’s stupid they’re stupid music’s stupid and bands and rock stars, you can never be like them, now there’s only tiny holes in the wall and a blister on your finger from the drawing pins. There’s something crawling over the floorboards, the carpet didn’t stretch to your room you don’t know if it’s a beetle or a spider you don’t look you just stamp on it and then you try to guess but you can’t tell. The room looks better empty.
You stand up and look in the wardrobe mirror and think to yourself that you should have been born a boy your shoulders are that broad. It’s probably from playing sport even though you don’t play anything any more, you didn’t make the State side for lacrosse that time because you got really out of it the night before and couldn’t get up in time for training but you didn’t care, you wanted to quit the team anyway and you stopped playing netball ages ago, maybe your shoulders will slim down a bit. Looking at yourself you’re tight inside, you make faces in the mirror and shape your body into different poses trying to see what other people see, wondering what it is they do see when they look at you, if they can tell what’s going on inside just by looking. You count how many steps it takes to cross the room. Seventeen steps long, twelve across, two hundred and four square steps of flat space. That’s what you’ve got. That’s all you’ve got. A rectangle of floorboards that belongs to you, seventeen steps long and twelve steps wide. The sliding door of the built-in wardrobe is half-open, a fury in you sudden and flashing pushes it back hard and you pull out all your clothes from the dimness inside. They need to be rearranged, from anyhow to ordered, all in colours red orange yellow green purple, you grade them from light to dark you’re making it neat, you’re making it tidy, you’re making it the way it should be. Then you line up your shoes you’ve only got six pairs no wonder they never match anything, no wonder you can’t look the way you want, you line them up from the highest heel to the lowest and when it’s all lined up properly the clothes and the shoes and the colours in the half-dark of the wardrobe you slide the door fast across and close it all up. On the dressing-table you put your make-up into neat rows. Foundation, three different ones, one for day one for night one for shading areas of your face. Your eyeshadows, you put them in rainbow formation like your clothes, two rows of colours across the dressing-table surface, then your blushers from pink through to brown. Then your seven lipsticks. Then your eyeliners, black kohl charcoal kohl grey pencil dark brown light brown and your lip-liners too. Mascaras next, four of them, blue brown black and extra thick, all of these things to colour yourself in to the way you feel, your brushes from the fat soft powder brush to the really fine eyeliner one, your pencil sharpeners and your tissues for blotting, it’s all in place now like it should be.
Hasan rings you up and says where’ve you been? You say just here, he says why haven’t you called me? You say I tried. He says I’ll come and get you we’ll go to Kingston okay? You go okay. You haven’t seen him for weeks now you don’t really want to see him but he rang you so he must want to see you and at least somebody wants to see you, it makes you feel a bit important or something. He comes around in the tropical-green Torana later on that night, you don’t bring him in you just call out see ya mum and shut the door. He looks you up and down he’s smiling he pinches your arse and says still fat, you go shut up, he says only joking. You get into the car. You hate the colour. This is for you he says and hands you a red rose in a cone-shaped plastic thing with fake lace painted on it. Nobody’s ever given you flowers before. You sniff it you say you got this for me? He goes nah, I got it for my mum, what do you reckon? and you go gee, thanks and you smile at him. You light a cigarette for him, the car’s going fast down Royal Parade the leaves on the trees making the night all mottled, he says I just want to see someone before we go there okay? you go yeah, sure and he parks the car in Jackson Street just behind Fitzroy Street. He says wait here so you do. He’s gone a long time. He comes back to the car appearing out of nowhere and says come inside. The Tuis he gave you on the way make everything shift and sway, you gather your body together and go inside there’s some other guys there, Ace and Snake and Gill who you’ve never met before, you have a hot knife the hash all spicy, you’re in a loungeroom darkish the carpet’s got holes there’s an old black and white movie in the corner on a crate there aren’t any windows, the dimness a strange blue seeping in through your skin. Hasan’s in another room somewhere with the others they’re gone a long time leaving you by yourself. The shadows from the corners start creeping up on you, you move your feet to the door through the kitchen to another door and you open it. There they are, faces looking at you quickly Hasan on the edge of the bathtub sleeve up belt tight fist clenching eyes wide then angry he says get out!
The walls are glossy yellow it’s a small square room. A television for watching training videos is on a high shelf there’s two tables the chairs that swivel are bolted into the floor it’s the staff room, you’re having a half-hour break you’re doing an eight-hour shift Leonie’s on her break too telling you about her boyfriend who’s in the Army Reserves. She asks you if you’ve got a boyfriend. You think about saying yes so she won’t act like there’s something wrong with you like you know she will but you can’t be bothered lying because then you’ll have to keep it up so you say no. She looks at you like she doesn’t believe you. You’re too pretty not to have a boyfriend she says and you look at her like you can’t believe she said such a stupid thing but you say thanks anyway because it’s a compliment too even though you know you’re not pretty. Then you say I used to have one and she goes oh yeah and you say but we broke up and she goes sounds like it was serious. He asked me to marry him you say and she looks impressed. Then you say but he went to prison and she looks even more impressed and you think to yourself how stupid you are to use Dave to impress people but sometimes you just want to make people shut up and who cares if you’ve got a boyfriend? You see Leonie, you look at her face the way she wears her uniform how skinny she is how ugly she is you think to yourself how you never want to be like that, going out with some stupid guy hanging off his arm talking about getting married and babies and Tupperware parties and hens’ parties and shoes and bridal showers and baby showers and what the boys do on bucks’ nights and what they ate for lunch and what they’re going to have for dinner and what diet they’re on this week and hasn’t such and such lost a lot of weight? Leonie’s only been working at McDonald’s for a few weeks but you knew her before that, sometimes she used to go rollerskating when you used to go. Her sister was Kerrie Blake who was really fat, pale pink and white with black hair and tiny features in her fat face. You and Kerrie were really good friends you did everything together at skating. You’d go around asking people to lend you a dollar or even twenty cents because you lost your tram fare somebody stole your wallet, you’d start in the middle of the crowd Kerrie would go one way you’d go the other you’d ask lots of people until you had quite a bit then you’d put your money together and you’d go to the pub on the corner and ask a passer-by to go into the bottle shop for you, you’d only ask men it was easier to get a bloke to do it for you. You’d get Brandovino or Stock Gala Spumante or both and you’d drink together sharing every drop usually with Belinda and Kathy and Grace and later the boys. Then one night Kerrie bashed you up for something that you didn’t even do. Well, you did do it but you were in the right she was wrong. Kerrie had said to you one night that she hated Bluey he was a bloody boong he was just a suck. You must have told Bluey when you were really drunk because you can’t remember but he went to her and called her a fat bitch in front of everybody you were at the station waiting for the train, they started having a fight Bluey skinny in his tight denim overalls black curly hair around his head acne on his face calling her names, Kerrie dressed in black with her handbag on her shoulder telling him she didn’t say any of that and then calling you a fucken little scrag yelling why did you lie? and you going I didn’t lie, her punching you in the face telling you to stand up and fight, you just sitting there on the waiting bench not fighting back because your dad always told you to turn the other cheek and anyway Kerrie was your friend you didn’t want to fight plus she was three times your size. The next day light blue bruises came up on your face, you had to wear foundation so nobody would see. It was a bit embarrassing at first working with Leonie because you weren’t like you used to be in those days any more, but she never brought it up except to say how good skating was and how fantastic it was then hanging around with the West Street Boys, even though she was just Kerrie’s little sister hanging off the edge of it all, nobody paying any attention to her, at least that’s how you remember it, and now here she is, talking to you as though you were both the same, as though she was the same as you. She is never going to be like you and there is no way you are ever going to be the same as her. Ever.
You don’t even want to look but you have to, they’re on you you can’t believe it but you have to believe it because there’s one right in front of your eyes, it’s real it’s really there your skin’s all crawly and you can’t feel yourself or where you are. It’s a crab. You’ve got a crab. You’re on the toilet your pubes were itchy you looked down as you were scratching, there was this little black lump in your hair so you picked at it and it came off, on your thumbnail all these little legs wriggling you nearly screamed but you stopped yourself just in time, you squashed it against the wall, it really is alive blood came out and then you found two more. There’s insects in your body. They’re on you in you and you scratch really hard and you search through your pubes for more, you scratch and you scratch you can’t feel yourself scratching it’s like it’s somebody else’s body doing this and you’re watching from a bit of a way away but you’re really close as well and it is your body, it’s your body and there are insects living in it.
You shouldn’t have done what you did but you did and you don’t care. Everybody hates Linda now. It wasn’t like you bitched about her or anything, you just made people slowly turn against her. You’d say things like I don’t know what’s up her arse these days or she’s not talking to me and I don’t know why or look at her, she’s pretending not to see me and gradually everybody started to ignore her or just be false to her and you would never catch her eye. You really want to still be friends with her you don’t even know why you’re not, she just stopped being there and you didn’t have anyone to talk to properly about things, you still talk to people but not talk talk like you did with Linda, you always told each other everything, she knows everything about you. The boys call her dog now behind her back they never used to everybody really liked Linda and sometimes Mladin makes barking noises if she’s around but pretends he’s doing it to someone else if she tells him to shut up. She hardly ever comes up the shops anyway you don’t either any more but sometimes it’s all right even though it gets a bit boring they’re all still doing the same things, and you left school so did Linda so you don’t get to see her there either. The last time you walked part of the way home together from the shops you talked a bit, she’s working permanent part-time at K-mart now and her mum’s thinking of selling up and moving to Coolaroo her dad left but her nonna’s still there. Tina walked home with you too and when you both turned the corner to go into your street and said see ya to Linda, Tina said she reckons Linda’s up herself and you said yeah and Tina started walking like Linda saying ooh, I think I’ve got a packet of Cornflakes up my arse and you just laughed.
Tina’s really really pretty and part of her’s Egyptian, it’s not like you’re jealous or anything but it’s true and she’s got a better figure than you everything’s in the right place, you wish you looked like her even though she reckons you’re prettier and she always wants to borrow your clothes. She teaches you how to say hello, how are you? my name is Josie in Greek and thelis kaffe thea Kethe, Kathy is her mum’s name, you learn how to say fuck off and die dog as well. When you go over to her place her mum is usually cooking sometimes you help her make tarama, the breadcrumbs sandy the roe all red and shiny and salty, and you get to eat spanakopita oktopothi sweet potatoes and at Greek Easter there’s red boiled eggs. They’ve got a TV room in their house it’s like the loungeroom only much smaller they always have the volume up really loud and the colour as bright as it will go, they only use their loungeroom when visitors come over you’ve never been in there but you’re not a visitor Tina reckons. Her dad’s really fat and dark brown, he waters the concrete on Sundays he shouts at everyone everyone shouts back, her mum’s really fat too even though she keeps going to Weight Watchers she’s got blondish hair she dyes it, you helped Tina do her roots once she’s still really pretty and her sisters are pretty too. One of her sisters used to be in the Major Road Sharps she had a skinhead haircut and wore big platforms all her clothes were tight her boyfriend had a V8 but then Sharpies went out of fashion and Anna grew her hair and got married. In Tina’s house there’s always the smell of food and only half the lights in the house are on they even watch TV in the dark you never do that your dad does but only when he’s sleeping. When Tina comes over to your place she always says hi Mr Cregan if he’s home and sits down and has a chat with him she says she feels really sorry for him you say why? Linda hasn’t been around to your place for ages, last time she came around which was so long ago you can’t even remember she brought her little sister with her, Kim was only seven. She went to the toilet you and Linda helped her wash her hands in the bathroom. Kim put her finger on the wall took it off again and said it’s dirty. Linda looked at you quick then away again and said Kim, you looked at the wall the old pink wall with drip marks a patch of paint peeling the mirror rusty on the edges from behind, the ceiling steamy from Maureen who’d just had a shower, you said it’s not dirty it’s just old, feeling like you were lying even though you weren’t you said again it’s just old and Linda left the bathroom holding Kim’s hand not looking at you.
Foundation’s great to wear it covers everything up so no one can see anything and if you shade it the right way you can make your face look thinner. Sometimes it makes you feel as though your skin can’t breathe but you’re getting used to it. You like doing your make-up to match your clothes, you like it when everything is co-ordinated, colours match shapes match and nothing’s out of place. You’re getting dressed you have to go to Social Security in Glenroy to get on the dole you don’t earn very much from McDonald’s. It was good to leave school you were glad to get out of that place now you can get a job, a proper one. You feel like you can really do something in the world now and the days feel really different, they go on forever inching by in the afternoons or flying by really quickly night and morning blurring sliding into one another and around again. You’re looking for your eyeshadow the Autumn Tones set that you got from Myers last week you can’t find it anywhere. It’s not where it should be on your dressing-table it’s not in the bathroom bloody Maureen’s probably got it she’s going to get it you’re sick of her pinching your stuff. You’re in her room looking for it flinging everything about going through her drawers where is it? In your room you search everywhere and then you search again shit where is it? You’ve got an appointment at two o’clock, it’s twelve o’clock now, you have to give yourself at least an hour to get ready and it takes an hour and a half to get there by the time you walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus, you’re really pissed off you can’t go out with only half your face on and you have to wear the Autumn Tones because it’s the right shade to match your clothes you want to look right it’s important you have to look right, you’re really pissed off. Back in your room you just keep chucking things around, your clothes your moccies and all your stuff the books you’re reading, the newspaper goes everywhere and your shoes your room becomes a mess a mass of colours papers piles scattered all over the floor, you can’t find it anywhere so now it doesn’t matter Social Security can get fucked, you’re not going to the appointment Maureen’s gonna get it.
She’s stretched out in front of the heater limbs asleep she’s breathing deep, after you and your sisters brushed her hair after tickling her after dinner, the shape of her profile cradled in her own arm. Mum, you say, and there’s no answer. You get a cushion and put it under her head, lifting gently, taking care of her. What time is it? she murmurs eyes closed hair curly you say eleven-thirty I’m just going to bed. She stretches out making a sleepy noise rolling over, then grabs you quickly by surprise she starts tickling you, laughing eyes awake now and sparky, you tickle her back and lie on the floor together laughing. It’s fun with your mum sometimes you grab another cushion and belt her with it gently on the head telling her to get lost she picks up the one from the floor, you’re standing she’s kneeling pillow fight flapping soft blows she’s going for it laughing laughing until you give in until you run up the hallway she’s chasing you, you shut the door saying suffer mum, you can’t get me, you’re puffed out funny smile on your face catching your breath and giggling, hearing her giggling on the other side of the door.
You’re walking up the hill the same hill that you’ve walked up a million times before the hill that’s always been there, the sunlight’s bright in your eyes flashing through the afternoon. You get to the top and you stand there for a bit just looking around. You look up and see sparrows on the telegraph wires all feathered and light with bones of air. You see the clouds changing whirling away into nothing slowly. You think about the sky and wonder if you’re really just a figment of someone’s imagination maybe the whole world is just someone’s imagination, and if they stopped thinking about you maybe you wouldn’t be here any more. Maybe the whole world is your own imagination and if you stopped believing in it you’d stop being here so you try, you try to stop believing you try really hard here at the top of the hill on the corner the houses going in all directions except for up, but you’re still here. You’re always going to be here. As if you could think up the whole world anyway. There’s millions of people who live in ways you could never imagine there’s places in the world that you don’t even know about there’s no way that just one person could think all this up making all those different things happening at the same time all at once, those lives being lived and people dying and being born and working and building and saving and hoping and making things important to themselves. And animals the bush the jungle the deserts and insects, billions of insects buzzing and flying and whirring and creeping everywhere, there’s outer space and underground, there’s below the sea and through the air, there’s crowds and emptinesses, you wonder why you have to be here when you can’t make sense of anything, tiny things close-up big things far away and stories in the newspaper about things you try to understand, and all these things on telly. TV shows everything you read about or hear about on the radio but it never shows you you or where you live. It doesn’t show your house your loungeroom it doesn’t show the hole in the bathroom wall that’s just rotted away. It doesn’t show the garage in the long grass that your dad bought in bits and never built, doesn’t show the driveway that you haven’t got or the things that never happen happening all the time. It doesn’t show him getting carried in by some stranger from the pub falling all over the place, it doesn’t show you holding your mum when she’s having a cry or the way Theresa looks at you when you know she thinks you’re bad and it doesn’t show you how you’re supposed to believe in anything. There’s only Pot of Gold on telly really loud in the afternoons, news and football at night movies on until the morning and Countdown when you’re lucky and when he watches it the volume’s always up high making your ears go crazy. You’re there with all these things in your mind, the sparrows have gone there’s just the telegraph wires crossing the sky, the blue of it gets right into you and you stand there, letting it.
Busy busy all night crowds of people cars banked up in the drive-thru a thousand-dollar rush hour legs aching now you have to clean, cold fries brown thickshake puddles, pickles on the windows and the walls, there’s melted sundaes ashtrays more than full and rubbish spilling out of the bins. A group of guys come in, think they’re tough think they’re gangsters. You look again you know them that’s okay but you’re not giving any free food away, you nearly got sprung last time so they better not ask or give you that look, you hate it when they expect it you never give it to them when they do. You serve Johnny and Turgut and sure enough they want free stuff but you tell them the manager’s watching. Then there’s this guy standing at your register. He’s watching your hands move over the counter making you notice yourself and him at the same time. You can’t take your eyes off him. You smile you blush you say can I take your order please? and he says don’t I know you? serious I mean and you go yeah we went to school together for a year you’re Nick Jarvis. He goes what’s your name? you go Josie, he goes Cregan, you go yeah and he goes wow, right and you’re looking at each other, you’re bouncing all around inside frozen and hot at the same time and he goes wow and laughs and says it’s good to see you again, do you always work here on a Friday night? you go usually and he says wow, right. You serve him his food you give him extra fries extra topping on his sundae and only charge him for the Big Mac. It’s quiet again he’s sitting down you have to mop the floors, the water slopping, steam and suds and hot on the tiles. Nick comes over you keep mopping you start talking together you ask him what he’s doing now. He says he’s working he’s boning at the Sunbury Meatworks his cousins are boners there too that’s how he got the job, you talk about school what everybody’s doing now and who you still see, his family have just moved back to Fawkner, it’s really nice talking to him you’re really nervous but it’s all right his jeans are really tight you keep looking at them you can’t help yourself as you’re mopping away your knees are getting twitchy you mop harder then he says I’ll do that for you, he’s really close he takes the mop he starts doing the floor not too much you’ll get in trouble if the manager sees, you keep talking and it feels right, so right to have him there and then he says you’re Stretch’s girlfriend aren’t you? and you say no way, not for ages then he doesn’t say anything there’s just the sound of the mop on the orange tiles sloshing. Then he says if you like, maybe we could go out some time and you go oh yeah, that’d be good and you’re so happy and he’s smiling back you’re so glad your hair is blonde now and you’ve got make-up on tonight too and he says well, good, we’ll go out some time and you go yeah, yeah great and Johnny comes over and says come on we’re going see ya Josie thanks for the food we didn’t get and you go don’t be such a scab and Nick says good seeing you and you go me too and you watch him leave, seeing the way he walks, the way he turns around and gives you a wave and the rest of the night is bliss.
You don’t see him for about three weeks after that, you keep hoping he’s going to come into McDonald’s on a Friday night so you swap shifts to make sure you’re there but he doesn’t come in. You’re walking down Anderson Road with Tina one afternoon doing nothing, Johnny’s station-wagon slides up beside you the tinted passenger window rolls down and Nick sticks his head out and says hey want a lift? and you nearly die. You haven’t stopped thinking about him for three weeks it’s been Nick Nick Nick in your head you’ve written his name over and over practising what your new name would look like if you were married to him even though you know you’re never getting married you can’t help thinking what if you were and had kids and what they’d be called and you’re so horny for him and now, here he is. You and Tina get in the car, Johnny does doughnuts in the paddock swinging round and round dirt scrunching gravel wheels and dust. You’re sitting in the back seat directly behind Nick, it’s getting later everything is softly darkening you see the way his hair curls itself to his head the way his T-shirt sits on the back of his neck across his shoulders you want to just lean over put your arm around him all warm and kiss his ear he’s so beautiful, but you don’t, then he turns around and gives you the bong that he’s packed for you. You go to Edwarde’s Lake in the bumpy EH you’re all laughing you’re all talking shit. You feel yourself going a bit shy especially now you’re a bit stoned you’re glad Tina’s here she’s good at talking she’s really funny so you don’t have to say anything and anyway it feels more important to say nothing. Then, suddenly, you all go quiet, all at once, and everybody stays in the silence. You see Nick look out of the window and up, up. You wonder what he’s thinking as you let yourself ride on his thoughts, the thoughts you don’t know, to the stars to the dark travelling from him with him to up there and back again and you know that you know him and he knows you and that it really means something and at that very moment he turns around to look at you. You’re there, in time, looking like that in the knowing of each other in Johnny’s car at Edwarde’s Lake in Reservoir with Tina next to you, the lake outside and a breeze.
It’s 3.36 in the morning little numbers made of bright lines red in the black flick and change stretching time right out you can’t sleep you’re too hot too cold too hot again and your mind is never-ending. Now it’s 3.37 the bed is making you itchy so you scratch. You got all dressed up tonight, your nice leather shoes your cord jodhpurs the really expensive ones your black angora top with buttons down the back and your mum lent you her earrings the special ones that she’s had since she was eighteen. Nick had rung you up during the week to ask you out, when you got off the phone you swooned in the chair and told your mum all about him. She helped you do your hair you don’t usually let her help you but tonight it was really good and she said you looked very nice when you showed her what you were wearing turning around swish spinning on your toes laughing down the hallway and she liked your make-up too. Nick was picking you up at eight o’clock you were ready by quarter-to-eight there was no way you were going to be late you didn’t want him to see you without being ready for him. Waiting. Eight o’clock. You knew he was playing footy today he probably got held up at the barbecue afterwards you tell your mum. Eight-thirty. Quarter-to-nine. You ring him up your hand trembling. He’s not home he went out a little while ago, great, he’s on his way, shit, you hope you look all right so you go to the mirror and go over your face. Nine o’clock. Quarter-past-nine. At ten o’clock you’re still sitting in your bedroom nervous waiting for him to arrive. But he doesn’t. At midnight you go to bed.
You feel the hot skin of your tummy stretching from hip to hip under the blanket, up and over the bumps of your ribs you feel the nipples on your breasts that are too small, all you want is Nick. You throw the blankets off they’re annoying you, you get a shiver you pull them back up. You feel a sharp pin-point prickle on your back, then another one, you roll over and lie on your stomach but that prickles too. Then your feet, so you rub them. It stops a bit then starts again. Your legs are itchy too, you rub them, everything is prickly like you’re getting bitten, little tiny ant bites you’re rubbing your skin there’s ants in the bed you jump out quickly they’re on you, you throw the blankets off jump out switch on the light brush the sheet and the mattress down checking for ants, you shake out the bedclothes there’s nothing there you’re sure they were there crawling all over you but there’s nothing. Nothing. You look at the mattress you look at it again you lie down on it carefully and pull the covers up it prickles a bit but it’s okay, it’s okay, there are no ants you keep the light on just in case. It takes ages getting to sleep you try really hard but you keep going over everything, maybe you got the wrong night maybe he meant next week he said he’d pick you up maybe he meant he’d meet you there he didn’t come you’re all empty inside like you’re nothing. You’re still itchy you can’t stand it in the bed on your skin like this and sleep is never going to come but it must have without you knowing because when you open your eyes again it’s 7.42 on the clock radio and everything is green and weird.
You’ve got the taste of bananas in your mouth you don’t even like them they’re very fattening. You eat chocolate even though you shouldn’t but if you don’t eat anything else the calories balance out. Maybe this taste is in your mouth because of the pill, you’ve been on it for six weeks you’d rather not be on it but it’s better that you know for sure even though you keep forgetting to take it at the same time every day sometimes you even miss a day so you end up taking two or three at once. Helen’s on the pill so it must be all right but she’s on it for different reasons she’s on it because she gets really bad period pains and she’s anaemic she’s been on it since she was seventeen. Rosie’s on it too, you found them in her drawer once before you knew what the pill looked like, seven yellow tablets lots of white ones in a circle with the days marked, you said what are these? she said mind your own business and stay out of my drawer. Sometimes you miss Rosie and Helen but not very much it’s better without them being around but you do miss driving at night with Rosie. She saved really hard to get her car, after she left school she got a job as an apprentice chef at a really good restaurant in the city, it’s an old red Austin. She’d take off her P-plates and you’d go everywhere listening to Status Quo AC/DC The Angels or Gary Glitter, all around the city the suburbs finding all these places you’d never been to before, odd streets wide streets teeny houses with no gardens big mansions great big sweeping-hill-streets factories smoke and nightly knocking noises cranking strangely in the wind coming through the car window, the brand new second-hand red Austin window that doesn’t go up the whole way lots of room in the front seat your own ashtray in the door the suspension’s not very good Rosie’s a fast driver sometimes your head would hit the roof and Tina would usually come too. Tina’s on the pill as well you both went to the same doctor. She asked all these questions like how long have you been sexually active? are you currently sexually active? do you have a regular sexual partner? how many sexual partners do you have? You felt like you had to tell her everything but you lied and told her you had a boyfriend. You got it. So did Tina. Tina reckons she wanted to go on it because she hated frangas, you’ve never used them so you don’t know what they’re like. You hope you don’t get fat on the pill, that happens sometimes.
Numbers fly through your mind zooming by and swooping, you match them together adding subtracting dividing and multiplying, big numbers can mean nothing at all and little numbers can be enormous. Everything’s made out of numbers tonight dancing in your mind. You’ve got nine letters in your middle name Patricia and six in your surname, that makes twenty-three and two and three make five, if you don’t count your middle name it makes fifteen, one and five is six divided by two is three, in your family you’re third out of five, your parents had five children in seven years. They’ve been married for twenty-one years that’s three times seven. Together their ages make up ninety-two, that’s seventy-one years altogether that they didn’t know each other. Seventy-one is a prime number, nothing else fits into it. You’ve just opened up your third packet of cigarettes that makes it over forty that you’ve had today. You’ve had thirteen cups of coffee thirteen is a prime number too. You’re up to two hundred and fifty situps twice a day that makes it five hundred, three thousand five hundred in a week and still you’re not skinny. You’ve fucked with twenty-three guys and you’re seventeen, they’re both prime numbers, your dad is forty-six he looks like he’s seventy. Two years ago you were in Year 10 now you’re not in anything. You first met Nick three years ago and you didn’t even know each other, now you’ve known him three months and it feels like forever. He’s got fourteen letters in his full name Nicholas Jarvis, one and four add up to five, the same number as your first name, he’s the oldest out of three. He came around to visit you at five-thirty yesterday smiling saying sorry he went out with the boys and got really out of it he felt really bad the next day for doing that to you, you said that’s okay Nick, but then you say but you could have rung, he says I know I know I’m really sorry, he’s here right in front of you saying these things, he does really like you. He comes in you make him a coffee and you sit in your room and you start to talk, you talk and you talk like you always do when you’re together you show him some of your drawings you never show them to anyone he says they’re really good, there’s one of a man smoking there’s one of trees at night there’s one of your hand one of your foot and one of your face in the mirror, there’s another one of a window with all these hands trying to come in with a border of spiders around the edges. It’s a record cover you say to Nick, you did it as a project for art when you were at school.
You go up to his place he dinks you on his bike the boy’s ball bar underneath your bum uncomfortable, hanging on to the handlebars, his arms keeping you in the warmth of him, close, the footpath bumpy the evening wind wrapping around you moving. At his place you go into his room and play his singles, Swingers Stray Cats Madness and then some Patti Smith. He says I really like your drawings, you go really? He says I do drawings too, you say show me, he goes nah, they’re stupid, you go come on, he goes really? you go yeah, he says okay and gets a book out from under his bed. You tell him they’re fantastic, they’re mostly tattoos he says. They’re all done in black ink, swirls and swords and skulls, there’s one of a heart not a loveheart it’s a real heart with flames coming out all around and three daggers pointing inwards, there’s one of the sun the sun’s an eyeball rising through clouds that become chains and another one of a rose with its petals being plucked by a black swallow, the thorns of the stem are dripping blood, it makes you sad you say oh, that’s sad, he kind of laughs and says you reckon? and you go yeah. He says a mate of mine’s a tattooist he might pay me, you go that’s great, Nick says maybe, but I wouldn’t know what to charge, they’re like a piece of my mind or something and you go yeah, I know what you mean. You stayed there for ages talking smoking listening to records, then he dunk you home again it was after midnight you’d been with him for nearly seven hours and there’s only four more days until Saturday, you’re really going to go out this time.
*
Watermelon’s juicy pink suck on it wet crunch spitting out pips. You like watermelon you’re sitting on the front porch eating a chunk of it even though it’s after one in the morning you can’t sleep it’s too hot your belly was growling Nick is in your mind. The TV’s still on coming through the windows making the concrete glow and dim in Late Movie rhythm you see the trees in the streetlights their arms up in monster pose. You’re getting bitten by mosquitoes but you don’t care maybe if you don’t care enough the bites won’t itch. Watermelon drips on your skin the moon’s out the crickets are going and stopping near and far and everything in your head just keeps going round and round and round. Then Fabio pops into your mind. You haven’t thought about him for ages. You see his face his hair you feel the way you kissed together and how you fucked that time your first time the only time with him and you wonder what would have happened if your love had come true. You see the alleyway where you all used to drink, the alleyway behind skating with corrugated iron on one side the brick wall on the other with everybody’s name graffitied on it. You see your name up there too you wrote Josie woz ere but that’s not what it said that night the last night you went skating instead it said Josie is a slut Josie is a slut Josie is a slut written one under the other. Eleven times. You didn’t know who wrote it you didn’t say anything to anyone you didn’t want anyone to notice even though everybody did and nobody said anything about it and you just went inside and stayed there the whole night rollerskating rollerskating in circles.
Then Nick’s face is in your mind again, you want him, you don’t want to be alone but you are, you’re so sure you’re meant to be together, how can something feel so real and just suddenly not be there any more you want him with you right now, he isn’t, you can’t believe he’s got a girlfriend, you’re bursting when you see him, bursting with love, when you’re with him all the old everything just disappears there’s only him and you know he feels the same, he has to, the way he looks at you the things he says and you know what each other is thinking and you make each other laugh and you went to Chinatown for dinner, you had wine you’d never had wine before, not out of a bottle and you made up stories about all the other people in the restaurant, you laughed and carried on sharing cigarettes you were the last ones to leave. He lifted you up and half-ran half-staggered down Little Bourke Street hot in his arms you kissed forever and walked through the city all the buildings in their familiar places in the sky purple and yellow and private at night, later on walking from his place to yours through the school oval rolling around in the grass, clothes and skin and sliding, going for it, then easy and quiet with each other and careful, and now you haven’t seen him for a month, he’s never there when you ring he never rings you, you were so happy together that night why isn’t he with you and now you hear he’s got some girlfriend they’ve been going out for over a year you hate her you’re better than her she doesn’t know him like you do. You see his face looking at you in your mind clear and beautiful and you don’t believe anything you don’t know what to believe. The concrete is suddenly still. Darkness settles on you the TV’s finally off. You stand up go onto the grass it tickles under all the bones of your feet. You take your mind into the night and think about the way you can’t tell what colour anything is. Even though you know what colour things are, at night they’re not, they become something else. Nothing is green nothing is orange, or yellow, or blue, everything is just dark, all different kinds of darknesses and you wonder how you would paint the kind of things you see if you were a painter, how would you paint the dark? You feel it move through your mind into your body getting into your breath your bones, down through your stomach into your legs your ankles into your hands making your fingers twitch from the inside, wrapping itself through your hair, colouring your blood the colour of night, all the shades of darkness making you part of it you’ve got no edges it’s filling you right up taking you into all the secret places that you never let anybody go inside you, taking you to all the secret places in the world making you know everything and nothing, you know that you are everything and nothing at the same time. Something big is suddenly happening to you, this feeling of the deep, it’s like you’re being touched by god or something except you feel really stupid saying that, it doesn’t feel right to say god you don’t even think you believe in god it’s not god you don’t know what it is, this darkness, this sudden special knowing inside you, now it’s on the outside as well, you feel like you’re being held, enveloped, soothed by the arms of the dark all around you. And then it’s gone. The mozzies are buzzing and biting, the crickets are doing their thing, you hear your dad snoring through the walls of the house and you’re just you, out in the garden after one in the morning holding a wet and sucked watermelon rind wishing Nick was here.
You look at him and you can’t stand it, you hate him sitting there in his armchair all yellow slurring his thick brogue piss words stinking and you go over to him because your mum asked you to help her get him into the bath he won’t budge Josie love and he needs to be cleaned up. You kneel at the side of his armchair and say in a voice that’s soft and quiet come on dad I’ll help you get up. His chin’s on his chest his neckbones sticking out the back you look at his hair grey and yellow and stringy with his scalp all poking through and say come on dad. He puts his hand on top of yours his skin’s cracking brown splat freckles the whole thing swollen, you put your other hand on top and hold it a little bit and he says let me go love I just want to go, your mum standing in the doorway just standing looking at him not even blinking. You say come on dad a bath’ll do you good you’ll feel better after a bath. Your mum on one side you on the other you get him to the bathroom his daggy-bum pants hanging off him. His jacket stinks his shirt stinks he’s being very stubborn he used to be a boxer. You used to hold onto his little finger he’d lift you up two of you hanging off the one hand, two of you on the other and the littlest one on his shoulders all laughing and screaming taking you up the hallway tucking you in clean sheet smell and a scratchy kiss and stories. Now his bones are sticking out of his body, scrawny yellow baby-bird body tufts of old orange and grey hair poking out here and there and don’t look don’t look at his dick so you don’t but then you do, you can see it anyway just hanging there hairy old pubes he used to be so muscly now he’s nothing his skin sliding over his bones, you and your mum make his legs bend and hoist him over the edge. When he’s rigid it’s worse than when he goes floppy-doll because you can’t do anything nothing bends nothing moves but now he’s in the bath, you and your mum got him in splashing slipping water everywhere on your face your jeans you’re trembling finely all over he should have died years ago. Your mum picks up the sponge and squeezes water on his head he roars his big roar and your mum says I’ll take care of him now Josephine love and you say all right looking at her hands the sponge the water wriggling over his shoulder bones. All right.
Birthdays are no big deal you cried when you turned sixteen but that’s about it. You’re seventeen now you’re really old you feel really old like you know so much stuff about everything, the world and inside yourself, you didn’t really get much from school except that you were good at Maths but you were good at Maths anyway not that it matters you can’t use it for anything. It’s hard to tell people the kind of things you know, so you don’t. Sometimes, not very often, you feel really little, you feel like you don’t know anything like you’re a baby, bewildered and soft, but you don’t let it last for long and anyway, Theresa’s the baby. She’s all excited she’s turning thirteen today. You don’t do a lot of things with Theresa you don’t really think about her very much you hardly ever see her she stays in her room most of the time and you’re not home very often anyway. She always does things with your mum, sometimes you wish she wouldn’t so that you could but you know she’s the littlest so she has to, your mum has to take care of her more. Your mum got a birthday cake for her with HAPPY BIRTHDAY THERESA on it from Ferguson’s and she got a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken as well you never have Kentucky except on birthdays and two of Theresa’s friends are here, the special tablecloth is on the table. You got her a kaleidoscope you know she likes things like that. The kaleidoscope is like being in a dream being in magic, one eye full of changing turning shapes and colours and sparkling things and nothing else comes in. She got a beach towel from your mum and dad, you helped your mum pick it when you went to Northlands to get some jeans the other week. It was awful buying jeans with your mum you ended up not getting anything. You wanted to get black Lees and your mum said black? she didn’t just say it though, she said it as though she was saying revolting. You tried them on anyway and she said aren’t they a bit tight? you said that’s how you wear them mum, she wanted to come into the changeroom and everything and on the way home you didn’t speak much then you lit up a cigarette and she didn’t say anything. The next week you went to the city with Tina you always go to the city together shopping or walking around or going to the pinnie places, you went to Just Jeans where her sister Anna works and you got jeans and a new T-shirt and a denim skirt, Anna gave you the skirt for free folding it up in your jeans saying ssshh! and you tried not to look obvious when you left the shop. You were going to give the skirt to Theresa but then you wanted it for yourself so you got her the kaleidoscope instead.
You’re on the tram it’s the number 19 you’re on your way home from the hospital he’s been in there six weeks so you thought you should go. You’ve got your hair peroxided at the roots it’s black on the tips red in the middle cut really short up the back and it sticks out around your head so that you look like a flame, a burning flame. You love your hair like this you just got it done last week and you did your make-up to match. The woman sitting opposite you keeps looking at you. Inside you you just keep telling her to get fucked, you’re looking out the window. She’s watching you. Your skin crawls prickling up your back around your jaw. Stupid bitch her stupid shopping bags her Homy-Ped shoes. The tram tracks are shining the shops are passing it’s a Saturday afternoon and quiet. You look at her. You start at her feet then her knees you give them a good long stare through her skirt her hands fiddling with the shopping bags. You look at her stomach her tits fat and bumpy in her bra through her ugly jumper, her neck her chin her lipstick pink and her stupid mascara. You check out her perm she’s an ugly bitch her plain gold sleepers. She’s not looking at you now so you keep staring at her until she does. She does. Straight into you, you stare straight into her you hate her you smash her face with your eyes you tell her that she is nothing with your eyes, that she should die she is nothing nothing nothing and you hate her, hate her. She looks away from you. She’s blushing. You’re glad. You got her. Your father’s face is trying to get into your mind but you don’t let it. You look at your reflection in the window then at the moving road through it then back again at your face again really close to check your make-up. You’re a bit shiny so you get out your compact. You’re still holding the cowboy books that you bought for your dad but didn’t give to him. There’s a fly buzzing around the window it’s really giving you the shits so you hit it with the books but it only half-dies and you don’t care you just let it buzz like that, watching it.
*
You ring Hasan, go to see him feeling like something should be hurting but it’s not. Everything’s cold at his place, incense smell with another smell lingering sweet and clingy underneath it. Room like a cartoon room, angles and floorboards, overhead light, spiderwebs on the window. Sit around the candle, you’re not the only one here, Mladin and Gino, Snake and Gill too. Hasan does you last. The needle breaks your skin sinking into you, tilt back strange light noises inside leaving now, and gone.
There’s this big waiting feeling inside like something is going to happen, something important but it isn’t because nothing is happening. The feeling is stretched tight, things that you say bounce on the tension, everybody’s doing things but nothing happens even though you know it’s going to it has to you can’t feel like this for nothing. It’s stretched across the houses the roads the school the shops, when you go into the city to walk around it’s holding the city together the buildings in their exact places in the ground in the sky. When you walk the air is holding you in making your movements definite you can’t move loose through the people the noise, you’re walking on definite lines the lines of waiting stretched tight over time, you’re waiting so hard it feels like time doesn’t even happen doesn’t even move and everything is going on and things are getting faster, hurtling, they’re taking longer by the second the minute the hour, standing still then gone before you know it.
Happiness bubbles up in you like a fountain making laughter come out of your mouth, little bubbles of laughter that pop into the air. It’s funny, everything is funny everything is bullshit. Your dad’s in his bed he doesn’t sleep in the loungeroom not for ages now it looks really different without him in it, he’s bright yellow and delirious he’s home again he’s yelling sometimes, everybody just ignores him. You can hear him from your bedroom the sound makes the bubbles inside you froth and leap about and spill out of your mouth. You think about Nick, how he sucked you in, nothing he said nothing you did meant anything it was all bullshit, how everybody must know and you see yourself as they probably do, stupid, even though it’s really them who’re stupid, boys, not just Nick, but you feel like it’s you who’s been the stupid one and you laugh more at how stupid you’ve been, believing what they tell you, you’ve always believed what they’ve told you, you laugh like everybody else must be laughing at you, more and more, all the bubbles spilling out of you in a big wave, little ones, big ones, popping.
You visit Linda the first thing she says is what did you do to your hair? you go I dyed it, she goes I’ll say, you haven’t seen her for ages you’re sitting in the kitchen you’ve got nothing to say. You’ve lost weight she says, you go you reckon? she goes you bet, you say I’m still fat, she says I’m fat, you say no you’re not, she says I am so, I’ll never get skinny, you say I’m still overweight, she goes you can’t tell, you say but I know. Her grey cat comes into the kitchen she picks it up and says catch any big moths lately Smokey, hmmm? You sip your Nescafe take a drag of your Winfield and go puss puss puss in a sweet sucky voice. Linda asks you if you want another coffee and you say okay. She puts Smokey down and goes around the bench to fill up the kettle. Smokey looks up at you, you look back, you like cats, the way they look at you like they can really see who you are and you know that if they like you they really do like you they’re not just pretending and they’re really independent but they’ll always come back, they’re very particular especially Siamese. Smokey isn’t Siamese Smokey isn’t anything Smokey’s just a cat they’re the kind of cats you like best, the cat cats, the ones that just are. Linda says sugar? and you go no thanks, she knows you don’t have sugar you don’t know why she asked. Then she goes milk? and you go Linda and she goes only stirring, I know and you go ha ha, good one. She passes you the coffee and sits back down. She says she’s been to visit this clairvoyant who reads jewellery, you say wow, Linda says yeah, it was really interesting and then you both say nothing again. You ask her what she said, what did she say? you say and Linda says she said I have to sort out the good from the bad and the old from the new, mum was there too, she reckons it means my friendships. You say maybe she meant your wardrobe and Linda laughs and says yeah, god, I could do with some new clothes. You say how is your mum? and Linda says okay, dad’s back and she makes a face and then says how’s your dad? Okay you say, he’s okay. You say a bit more stuff but it’s not stuff that really matters then she goes and guess what? you go what? she goes guess! you go what?! she goes you have to guess, so you go okay, ummm, you’re getting married to Sylvio, she goes yes and you go what! She says not straight away, we’ll get engaged first, we’ll do it properly. You look at Linda like you’ve never seen her before, you see her as though you’ve never even been friends. To Sylvio? you ask before you can stop yourself, he’s so…why don’t you just live together? She says we want to get married, not looking at you, patting the cat on her knee. You say well, that’s great, congratulations Linda, I mean it it’s great.
You watch your dad die on the loungeroom floor one night in his pyjama pants flat on his back arms flung crucifix pose. It’s darkish in the loungeroom the light bulbs have blown, orange light comes in lopsided rectangles from the kitchen from the hallway. All day long he’d been jabbering blathering away in gibberish with eyes that didn’t know you except from some distant place in his mind that was gone, gone into mush, couldn’t make it to today, to now, and you were frightened, giggling and jerky catching your mum’s eye all the time her saying I don’t know what to do. He goes to the toilet. He’s gone a long time. Sale of the Century is on, Tony Barber’s smiling. You stayed home today it’s been very hard on your mum him like this. Your dad has been talking all day all day saying wifebiscuitcuppateacuppateawifemineyeshaveabiscuit nodding away and all this other non-stop stuff you can’t catch can’t hear won’t hear don’t want to know. He went on and on and then he took his false teeth out he looked taller suddenly younger strangely he couldn’t talk without his teeth so he started talking in sign language his eyes moving in time to his jaw, no sound he didn’t dribble his hands were describing curly things definite things things you couldn’t catch in the air. He got a pencil and wrote then the same things the same words very important words shaking all over the paper shaking trembling copperplate. Handed it to you. You showed your mum, the two of you sitting at the kitchen table working out what it means he’s been writing these notes for hours. He goes to the toilet. He’s gone a long time. Maureen and Theresa are home from school none of you look at each other for too long you all just kind of waft around the house going from room to room. Blankety Blanks is on now cheap tin laughter bubbling faces. Your mum is knocking on the toilet door knocking knocking saying John are you all right? trying to open the door let me in you hear her saying then she calls you. You’re there, trying to open the door it’s stuck there’s no sound coming from your dad. You run now. Get a chair go around to the laundry get up on the chair at the little window, the toilet window you take out all the pieces of glass in the frame diagonal sliding them out carefully handing them to Theresa, you hitch yourself up on the window looking in. There he is. Lying on the floor. Curled around the toilet he looks snuggly his hands are loose. Head in the corner against the door and wall. If you’d pushed the door any harder his neck would have broken. You can’t fit in the window can’t get to him, your sisters and your mum try too. You ring the ambulance and they’re there, suddenly. The big ambulance officer fits in the window you can’t believe it, they get him out in half a minute stretch him out on the loungeroom floor you all take turns holding the drip. Everything still, trapped in your mind like a painting, like a cartoon. He just caved in, became dead. Was gone. Even though they got his heart started up again you know he’s still dead because you didn’t see him go back in. He couldn’t leave they wouldn’t let him, he can’t come back in either he just has to hang around you can see him. Not see him see him like you can see his body there on the carpet plugged in making the little light flash and beep beep it’s not like he’s solid or anything, you can see him as though you’re not there either, from the place in your mind where there’s no such thing as shapes, only knowing.
*
There’s bunches of white in your mind moving around bumping into each other, big clumps of white and everything is soft like flowers big soft white flowers. White roses white carnations, daisies and those big white lilies with the yellow things, little tiny garlic flowers heads hanging shy, moving through your mind, covering your father’s coffin. You didn’t wear black today you’re wearing green instead, your mum said you didn’t have to, she’s in navy blue. The yellow of Theresa’s skirt plays gentle on the pew and when she bends to kneel, Rosie’s shirt is purple, the maroon and pink and orange of your other sisters’ garments swirling around you on either side. The swirl keeps swirling, gathering with it the voice of the parish priest and the murmurs and snifflings and shufflings of everybody all around and way back to the end of the church, little coughs and little cryings of the other people and in between there’s your Aunty Edna’s voice trembling high and sweet singing ‘Amazing Grace’ wrapping itself around the sounds. The swirl carries you through everything, lifting your stiff body, rigid back knees that don’t like moving and a head that will not bend, lifting you from the pew into the kneeling position then back to sitting, then back to kneeling, then to sitting again, standing kneeling standing, the swirl is the thing that makes you move, the colours billow like wind, shrink into pinpricks burst out again. Faces come into the swirl, faces you forgot you knew as well as the ones you do know, all the families are here. The families from the picnics the barbecues the dances the Gaelic football, the other children who aren’t children any more, the aunties and uncles and misters and missus, swirling swirling, your Aunty Ruby’s make-up flaking and the smell of your Uncle Charlie’s jumper close then gone again into the swirl. The faces become flowers, white and soft and everywhere, the colours of the swirling curling gentle on their edges, your still straight body standing there getting hugs and other people’s sympathy.
At the cemetery the swirl is tighter, it whips away the words from the mouth of the priest and flings the handful of earth onto the coffin in the rectangular hole dug fresh, it makes your mother cough, it makes her really little, it makes your sisters far away, holding themselves, separate, it makes the flowers disappear into the ground. The colours of the swirl all mix together nothing is bright any more, nothing has edges, the ground splits and shifts in front of you then comes back together again, you feel a falling feeling inside you, but it’s the swirl that catches you, holds you in, safe.
The wind is rattling the venetians it’s making everything blow about outside, the bones of the house are creaking, the walls are leaking sorrow. The mirror that’s rusty on the edges from behind mottles and clears, mottles and clears with the blinking of your eyes. You look at yourself and see your dad’s face in there quickly, then gone. You look at your hands they’re the same colours as your dad’s used to be pinky brown freckles blue veins, little hairs shining you’ve got the same colours you’ve got the same skin. You’ve got his voice, his ringing booming voice waving around inside, you’ve got his big laugh, you’ve got his stories you’ve got the country that he came from in you and the movement of the ship over the long stretch of water that brought him here. You look at your eyes he’s looking out of them you see the house they worked for, the house of him, the house you live in where he died. You see your mum in you the way she smiles or doesn’t, you see the way she loves you and you know that she is you as well, her skin her face her country and the children she had who are you and not you. You see yourself in your sisters’ faces their smiles the shapes of their teeth, where their ears go and how their hands move in time to their voices, the rhythm of their voices is the rhythm you speak in too, up and down and whispering green and white and roaring gold and living, and the wildness of the wind that brought your mother and your father here is the wildness of your hair, the strength in your legs as you run the pumping of your lungs, your heart. And you know all this, you know it true and deep, you know you are all together, but still, you keep on just being you. You keep on still being alone. And it’s all right to be alone like this. Through the eyes of your father looking out at you in the mirror you see yourself strong, and growing, and you know how much you matter, how much you’ve always mattered, and that to be alone like this means you’re a part of everything. A new shape is in you now, a shape you’ve never felt before stretching and pulling from the centre to the edges bringing all these things together, and behind you is your mum, real and warm in the bathroom, hugging you, letting you cry.