Dad didn’t come out of his room all night, not even when I knocked, so I lay down in the hall outside his door. It was as though my brain couldn’t register what had happened yet my body curled up around the truth and held it still.
You have thoughts of running away when you’re a kid. Something makes you so angry, you convince yourself you have to run away. You pack a bag – probably with nothing suitable for anything beyond an hour stuck underneath the tree in the front yard – and you tell your parents you’re leaving. You actually manage to leave through the front door and they don’t stop you. They don’t say anything to try and keep you home, in fact, they agree with you. ‘Go on, Button, leave if you want. I’m not stopping you.’
You’re determined and your steps are fast-paced, backpack fastened behind you. You stride down the footpath, out the front gate and make it to the corner of the street where you stop. You hesitate. And the feeling changes. It’s not what you wanted at all. And you know you didn’t really want to run away, but your parents didn’t stop you and now you have to go back.
I only did it once that I remember. And spent an hour in the front yard thinking I’d make them worry just a little, before going back inside. Mum hugged me and, other than that gesture, continued on with her day as if nothing unusual had happened. She didn’t mention it to Dad.
Only Sally said anything about it. She laughed and teased me all afternoon saying, ‘I knew you wouldn’t go through with it. You don’t have what it takes. If I ever planned to leave, you wouldn’t catch me coming home in a hurry.’
I always wondered what made her say that. Even then she had secrets she didn’t share with anyone, not even me.
For hundreds of years the secret of silk was protected in China by threat of death. And it took marriage to break it, when a Chinese princess was persuaded by her fiancé, an Indian prince, to smuggle cocoons out of China in her hair. It seems to me that marriage, the having of it, the breaking of it, the disgrace and shunning and shame of it, has so much to do with everything.
Barry had told Dad that Sally had left home without a word to anyone. She had been missing for five months and Mum hadn’t told us. After the phone call Dad had only managed to speak to Mum via an Aberdeen council member. When Dad asked why he hadn’t been informed earlier, Brother Marcus replied, ‘In our eyes Jan has no husband and Sally has no father. The Aberdeen are her family.’
I don’t know where that left me.
I woke to the sound of a key turning in the lock, the front door opening and Amona’s cheery voice, ‘Hello, I’m back!’ She laughed and began chatting as she walked down the passage. I didn’t process what she was saying. Somewhere in my mind I realised she had let herself in.
‘Hello,’ she called.
‘Ruby?’ she said, finding me in the passage. She knelt down beside me. ‘What’s going on? Where is your dad?’
‘Sally,’ I said. ‘An accident.’
I felt her hand on my shoulder as she stood up and opened Dad’s door. ‘Oh Brett,’ she said.
‘It’s my fault,’ said Dad.
‘It’s no one’s fault,’ said Amona.
Later we sat together in the kitchen.
‘I’d been cleaning out the garage so Amona could park her car there,’ Dad said. ‘While she was gone I was supposed to talk to you about her moving in.’
‘We don’t need to do anything right at this moment,’ Amona said. ‘I’ve booked your flight, Ruby,’ she added, ‘I’ll take you to the airport this afternoon.’
‘I still don’t understand why you aren’t coming with me,’ I said to Dad.
‘Your passport is in the top drawer,’ he said avoiding the question.
Amona reached over the bench and held his hand. ‘You know he would,’ she said so Dad didn’t have to deal with the details again. ‘The Aberdeen . . . he doesn’t want to make things worse.’
Somewhere I might have registered the sense of what she was saying but at that moment I felt like my father had abandoned me and Sally. What did it matter what Mum wanted? She was his daughter, too.
‘She’s completely involved in that religion, Ruby,’ Dad said, by way of explanation. ‘They’re . . .’ he fumbled for the word.
‘They’re a cult,’ I said. I stood up to go to my room and pack. I heard Amona say, ‘You have to know that it kills him, Ruby. Not going with you.’
Before we left for the airport Dad pulled me close to him. I felt his arms around me, holding me tight, not wanting to let me go. ‘Barry said he’ll meet you at the airport. Call me as soon as you land.’
I felt abandoned. I needed my dad with me. It was like he was sending me away. If he didn’t have the guts to stand up to some church just to see his daughter who was in trouble, I wondered what I could expect from him if I truly needed him. What if Mum refused to let me come back home? He’d loved one daughter from a distance; it wouldn’t be so hard a second time. I packed a few clothes and everything of value: my scrapbook, MP3 player, passport, diary, all my savings, The History of Silk. I don’t know exactly why, but I packed Pearl’s red coat, too.
I saw Barry waiting for me as I walked off the plane. I felt like a traitor, my heart hammered so hard at the sight of him. He was like a magnet. I tried to think of Eric Barrada to dampen my own feelings, but even his incompetence couldn’t turn off my heart. Maybe attraction was aligned in heaven before our birth because there was no other way to explain my feelings. There were millions of boys on the earth. Why did it feel so strong? I had no right. And it was tasteless, feeling this after what happened to Sally. But, then, she had left Barry as well as me.
I still hadn’t slept and the world felt like foam around me. My head was groggy and my throat felt tight as I walked towards him. He raised a hand, tentatively, in my direction and I remembered that I hadn’t ever technically met him. There was no way I could have known what he looked like. Except, maybe, from the newspaper article Sally had sent through. I realised that would have been just before she ran away.
I flicked my hand in a return wave and tried to smile, but Barry could hardly look at me when we came face-to-face. If we weren’t meeting in these particular circumstances, I could only assume he found my appearance so offensive he was trying to hide his loathing. He flushed, cleared his throat and coughed, reaching down to take my carry-on case from my hand. He turned quickly, walking away from the terminal, my bag trailing behind him. I followed, realigning the handbag on my shoulders.
‘Oh god,’ I said, stopping beside him. ‘No one told you, did they. About . . . me.’
Barry slowed his walk, turned towards me, glancing quickly at me before looking away.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It must be a shock. Seeing me.’
‘It’s all right,’ he mumbled.
‘People never talk about the important things. Don’t you think? We blabber on about everything unimportant, but—’ I stopped, laughing slightly. I don’t know why, but I placed my hand on his shoulder and he had no other option but to stop. I stood in front of him. ‘I’m actually nothing like her. Sometimes I wish I was because people always want to think the way you look on the outside accounts for what’s inside but you can’t judge a person by . . .’ I trailed off. ‘I’m so sorry. I haven’t slept and . . . I’m so sorry.’ I turned to walk ahead of him until I realised I had no idea where I was going. Out of nowhere I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I was so angry with myself because it just wasn’t fair to be blubbering away to a stranger who was already freaked out.
‘I don’t know where to go,’ I said, my voice wavering. I dropped my handbag and rubbed my face, trying to swallow my tears down. But it didn’t work and out they came anyway, trickling out from the corners of my eyes. My body betraying me.
‘It’s all right,’ Barry was beside me. I felt his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him. And in the middle of the airport, somewhere between the terminal and baggage claim, Barry wrapped his arms around me and held me while I cried. Those tears should have been for Sally or Dad or Mum. But I think they were for me. I felt invisible.
In the car Barry was quiet as the world seemed to speed past the windows. He glanced at me every now and then, a nervous smile appearing on his face. I was careful not to be looking at him when he turned towards me.
My mobile phone rang. It was Dad. It was so good to hear his voice, until I remembered the situation.
‘Call me after . . .’ he didn’t say it, but I knew he wanted me to call him after seeing Sally. He should have been there with me so I hardly said a word and hung up quickly.
‘Can you tell me everything?’ I said to Barry.
He didn’t say anything straightaway, just leant his elbow on the window and flicked his fingers against the steering wheel.
‘What do you know?’ he asked.
‘Not enough. I mean. Last time I was visiting her she told me about you. That must have been just before she left.’
I saw Barry’s body react, pulling back against the seat.
‘Why did she leave?’
‘To tell you the truth I didn’t know that much about her,’ Barry said. ‘I’m sorry for that. I feel like such a . . .’ he fumbled for the word. ‘Well, I don’t feel exactly right about it, that’s all.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I might not know what happened since that last time I saw her, but I do know Sally. She’s always been like that.’ I didn’t elaborate but I could sense Barry understood what I meant. ‘Even when we were younger, she was like that.’
Barry nodded, absently.
‘I don’t think she let anyone know much about her.’
‘I liked her, Ruby. I liked her a lot.’
I know it’s possible to have two halves of one thing fighting for equal space, and that’s how I felt hearing Barry say that. Right there beside me was, perhaps, the only living example of a Romeo left in the modern world. But he liked Sally.
I began to tell him things about us. About her. Just silly things, things that came to me as we travelled and I talked. I told him about stealing her ribbons and the time she saved up her pocket money to buy the old lady who lived next door to us a cordless phone so she didn’t have to get up to answer it all the time. It was only second-hand but, still, that’s what Sally had done. And I told him how I’d sewed her that dress so she could go to Mathew Grayson’s formal. And how they’d had sex in the parking lot and it hadn’t meant that much to her. I told him everything I could think of. I didn’t censor anything about her and, on balance, I was thinking how much of Sally was wound up in her extremes. And that was who she was.
I finished and felt like a balloon floating high that had been pricked. Flat and heavy and unsure of everything. Except it felt good to share her with someone. The real Sally. Not someone I pretended she was for Mum’s sake or Dad’s sake. Or someone I stitched together for Becky and my friends.
Barry sat with what I’d said for a while. And then he began to talk.
‘I don’t know what we were to each other, really. She was the first girl. You know. My first. And it came out of nowhere. Sometimes I don’t know what part of it really happened and what part didn’t.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. Barry had brought the car to a stop and I’d only just noticed we weren’t moving. He swivelled in his seat and looked at me.
‘I won’t lie to you,’ he said. ‘When I saw you walk off that plane,’ he shook his head and smiled.
My heart melted. ‘I can’t believe no one told you we are identical.’ I laughed.
‘It’s something she’d do,’ he smiled.
‘I know.’ I was still laughing.
‘You do look exactly like her,’ he said. ‘But when I listen to you talk, you’re . . .’ he paused. ‘Well, you’re not her.’
‘She was the most brazen person I knew,’ I said. ‘She had guts, she’d walk up to anyone, do anything.’
‘I haven’t felt this comfortable talking to anyone in a long time,’ Barry said.
His face flushed and he turned back to face the steering wheel and, despite my bad intentions, I said, ‘I know she really liked you, Barry. She told me.’
He was quiet with that. We were parked outside the hospital and Barry reached for the door handle. He went to open the door and then stopped, bringing his hand away and turning, again, to face me. ‘I feel responsible for what happened, Ruby. I think she left because of me. There were things I could have said and done differently.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I said, thinking I could say the same thing.
‘No. You don’t understand. I mean. All the time, she was . . . well,’ he says, deflated. ‘I’m hopeless with words.’
‘Go on.’
‘I think she wanted to leave but needed a reason to stay. I should have stood up for her, you know.’ He was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were going white. ‘She needed to know someone would always stick by her no matter what. And, instead, I said that if she needed to leave then that was all right. I gave her my car and the caravan.’
‘Is that how the police found you, then?’
‘They were still registered in my name.’
There was one part of this entire conversation we were both avoiding. And we knew it.
‘People of your mum’s showed up at work,’ Barry said. ‘A car full of these guys in suits got out and came into the office asking for me directly. They grilled me about Sally and what I knew. Jeez,’ he said. ‘That was a few weeks after she’d left. All I knew was that she’d gone. I didn’t know where.’
‘So what do you think happened?’
‘I have all these horrible thoughts,’ Barry said, ‘about what might have been happening and I had no one to talk to about it. Growing up I had this habit of making up stories to fill in things I didn’t know. I began to think of stories about her. Some of them I didn’t want hanging in my head.’ He stopped and breathed deeply. ‘Bloody hell. You must think I’m a complete moron,’ he said, running a hand through his hair.
‘No. Really. You couldn’t be further from the truth.’ He didn’t look convinced. It was hot in the car and I wound down the window for some air. And then I worried it might break us out of that cocoon into the real world and I didn’t want that. I wasn’t ready to get out of the car and face what was inside.
‘She was coming back to you,’ I said, not knowing if it were true at all.
‘We’d better go, Sally,’ Barry said, not registering the slip.
I think of Sally, sitting behind the wheel of the car, taking a quick glance in the rear-view mirror to see that the caravan is still following behind, before leaning forward to turn up the music. The window is down and her hair blows around her, free and unrestrained. The music runs through her veins and she’s singing at the top of her voice. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she uses her left hand to fumble on the passenger seat for the packet of cigarettes and she manages to open the pack and take out the last smoke and put it in her mouth. She catches sight of the speedo but doesn’t register the excessive speed because, as she flicks the lighter, the small erupting flame almost catches her hair alight. ‘Shit’, she says, taking her finger off the lighter switch. The flame disappears and she laughs again, shaking her head to catch the wind full on, blowing her hair back from her face. She lights the cigarette easily this time, throwing the lighter on the floor on the passenger seat side. She holds the cigarette in between her fingers, both hands on the wheel, pushing her back against the seat to stretch her muscles.
But this image I have could all be a lie. We’ll never know. The only thing anyone knows for certain is that she was driving Barry’s old car, his old caravan on the back, coming back from whatever faraway place she had been to, heading towards Darwin. On a lonely stretch of road, she lost control of the car, swerved off the road and crashed head-on into a tree. When she was found, she still had a pulse, but it didn’t take long for the doctors in the hospital to realise she would never regain consciousness.
Her heart pumped a cocktail of drugs through her body to keep her blood at the right pH level and her lungs expanding and contracting. But nothing could repair the damage to her brain. Or take away the stain of blood that burst and flooded inside her head, robbing her of any chance of making it out alive.
I followed Barry closely as we walked through the main doors of the hospital, down the corridor that smelt like disinfectant and false hope. We waited at the elevator and I pressed the ‘up’ button too many times. We watched the lights flick from one number to another, one floor to another, until it stopped, doors opened and we walked out.
I don’t know if it was my imagination or not but I felt Barry press close to me as we neared the group of people waiting at her door. Our shoulders touched, our fingers brushed each other’s as we moved to let an elderly couple pass us by.
I couldn’t see Mum at first, among the group of about ten people or so. They stood beside the door, holding hands. Their heads bent down, nodding in agreement with Brother Daniel who led them in prayer. I stopped well before them, felt my feet cling to the floor like glue. I could deal with Sally, with Barry, with what had happened, but Mum and the Aberdeen were a force I felt too small to negotiate alone.
Barry noticed my hesitation and stopped soon after me, and turned back. Dad should have been here with me. I don’t know what Barry was thinking or what he thought of me or my family. We hadn’t discussed Mum at all. But he knew something of what the Aberdeen were like.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, holding his hand out towards me. I wanted to believe him. Absolutely. I reached out and took his hand. And I saw Mum look up from the group.
As Barry and I approached the Aberdeen group and my mother, Barry dropped my hand. Mum stepped forward and hugged me to her. Her arms felt stiff and angular and desperate. She ran her hands over my hair and held me like I was a child and cried.
Brother Daniel stood behind her, resting a hand on her head, and asked me to pray with my mother. Trapped, I felt no option but to close my eyes. I didn’t hear their words, only my own heart thumping hard. Eventually I pushed away, through the crowd, towards Sally’s door. Before opening it I looked though the window to see her blanketed body flat on the bed, connected to cords and cables, surrounded by machines.
I turned to look for Barry but I couldn’t see him through the crowd. ‘I want to go in by myself,’ I said to Mum. I felt her inhale sharply, although she said nothing. As I stepped into the doorway I felt her behind me, ignoring what I’d just asked her. ‘By myself,’ I said again.
I watched her face dissolve into fresh tears. She shook her head and tilted her chin towards me. ‘Well,’ she said. But I was determined.
I crossed the floor to Sally’s bed and took her hand, sitting down on the chair that was angled towards her. I don’t know what I expected, but part of me hoped I would find they had gotten it all wrong. That, once I saw her, it would be all right. I squeezed her hand, but there was no response. Her body felt warm but empty. I could not feel her at all. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open. She looked like she was asleep. Just asleep. And could wake up any moment.
I had been looking at her face, holding her hand. Avoiding that other part of her altogether. And I thought about that image I had of her in her car, coming home with her music playing, her cigarette lit. Stretching her back and gripping the steering wheel, aware of the pressure low in her stomach. She felt the restless flutters of her baby, testing its legs or arms. The feeling spread a glow around her body. She put one hand on her stomach, took a drag, caught an image of what it might be like to hold him. She fantasised about striking it rich and having everything they’d ever need so they could stay free and independent from the world. But the feeling melted and the taste of the cigarette soured in her mouth and the music hurt her ears and she was tired of driving. Her body slumped back in the seat and she watched the road. Endlessly stretching on before her. She remembered a time when she thought Barry would be the one and how she had no idea how to hold on to that. She hoped he’d take her back.
Then there was only the impact of the car around the tree.
I looked down from Sally’s face to that small bump rounded under the blankets, level with my eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I whispered.
I could hear my mother on the outside of her door. Her sobs and the low-voiced reassurance of Brother Daniel. ‘What did I do wrong?’ she said, over and over.
‘Everything is God’s will,’ responded Brother Daniel.
I could feel the tension around me, like a nylon thread stretched tight. It was wrapped around us, caught in our limbs, Sally and mine, pulling in opposite directions, cutting our skin. It was as though she had climbed the Faraway Tree and disappeared through the clouds into some other land. Only it had taken her away. Without me.
‘Wake up,’ I whispered. ‘Please wake up and come back. Or take me with you.’