It happened to people on television, or those tall black kids at my school – the Sudanese ones – who lost their mother and father and everyone else except an aunt or something. They weren’t in my class, so I didn’t know them, but I’d heard the stories. How did people actually live through it? The ones who lost their whole family? Was it the same pain multiplied? Could that even be possible?
In the kitchen Toby’s book lay open on the floor and his toast crusts scattered across the tray of the highchair.
The woman – what was her name? – patted me. ‘Do you think you could stack the dishwasher? I’ll just step outside and call your mother’s workplace.’
Was she crazy? I slumped on a chair and listened to her making the call just outside on the verandah. There was a Vegemite handprint on the highchair.
She was back in a moment. ‘It’s better to do something.’ She flipped open the dishwasher and sped around the kitchen, passing me things. Over the clank of dishes I strained my ears to listen to Mum and Dad’s phone calls. I heard low voices, but not the words. Then I heard Dad start crying.
The woman paused and closed her eyes at the sound. Then she kind of shook herself and handed me Toby’s plastic toast plate. Her eyes were red. ‘My heart is breaking for your family. Our foundation provides lots of help and support. You won’t have to do it all yourself.’
I shoved Toby’s plate in the dishwasher. ‘OK.’
When the dishwasher was full I turned it on. Wiped the benches. She even got me cleaning the stove. When it got really quiet next door she went and had a look. Came back a few minutes later.
‘I’ve sent your parents upstairs,’ she said. ‘They said for you to come up when you’re ready. Is there anyone you want to call, Jarrah? A friend who could come around?’
‘I’m fine.’
Someone knocked on the glass door and she let him in. It was that guy from Mum’s work. I’d met him once. She introduced herself to him. Meredith, and Chen, that’s what they were called. He hesitated and nodded at me.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ he said, twice. I think he’d been crying.
‘They’re resting now,’ Meredith said. ‘Maybe you can come back later?’
He shook his head. ‘I want to do something. I’ll make some food.’
She nodded and he starting pulling stuff out of the cupboards and the fridge. It was weird.
‘You feel like giving Chen a hand?’ she said to me.
‘No thanks.’
She put her hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m just trying to help, Jarrah. You can come and see me for support. It’s free. I know you’re in shock now, but it might help in the coming days.’
Did she mean things would feel worse in the coming days? I looked outside. The whole pool area was surrounded with that police tape, flapping in the breeze. There was still one cop under the shade of the palms. He just sat there, staring at the water.
‘Are you hungry?’ Chen asked.
I shook my head. ‘I’m going upstairs.’
‘Good,’ the woman said. ‘Be with your parents. You should stay together.’
I left them in the kitchen and climbed the stairs on tiptoe. At the top I stopped. Down the hall, Mum and Dad’s bedroom door was ajar and it was really quiet in there. Did they know I was standing at the top of the stairs?
One of them had made the worst fuck-up that was ever possible. I would never have let it happen, but one of them had. One of them had lost my brother.
My breathing seemed loud in my own ears. I couldn’t go in there. My feet wouldn’t move. Instead I turned left and crept along the carpet to the open door of Toby’s little room at the end of the hall, tucked under the roof with a sloping ceiling.
His familiar smell hit me first. Actual molecules of Toby still circulating in the air. Toby’s pyjamas on the floor, Toby’s bedclothes rumpled and heaped on his tiny bed – the one he’d only moved into three months earlier – as if he might be hiding under them, tricking us. Toby’s plush monster, manky and dribbled on.
When my feet would move, I stepped inside and shut the door. Mum and Dad had each other. I had bits of Toby in the air.
A parent’s pain must be the worst, right?
I grabbed the plush monster, lifted up the cotton quilt that had covered Toby in his sleep, and climbed under. Curled into a ball, surrounded by the smell of him. I pulled the covers over my head and hunched in tight. Then I jammed that monster against my open mouth and it ate my howls.