Creepy and Maud (14 page)

The teacher asks me if I want to see the nurse. I hear Mr Lowe standing close to me and I hear him say the
words. My eyes are still closed. He is loud; the room or my head is humming beneath him, a counterpoint to his snappy syllables. He tells me to open my eyes. I cannot. I choose not to. He is bothering me. Open your eyes. He says it again. I think if I open my eyes, my eyeballs will fall out of my head and roll away and I will never look in a mirror again. I will never be reflected again. And then an appalling thing happens: I start to cry.

I have not cried in so long, I do not recognise the burning of it. I make no noise but my eyes and nose are running. It feels like an unfurling. It hurts wonderfully. Almost as good as pulling.

I can hear someone saying get-her-out-of-here. Then I hear howling. Is that me? How astonishing. That is the only word for it. I do not think I have ever used that word before in my life. It is a Nanna word. It is a Creepy word. He stuck
astonishment
in his window once, after my blinds went up. He wrote: ‘I am all astonishment.’ My Nanna said ‘How astonishing’ when they told her she had Alzheimer’s. It is wonder I feel, and surprise. I am all astonishment. I am bawling and someone is pulling me to my feet and I feel weightless and heady and liberated by this shrill girl inside me. The inside of my head is a prism, all sharp edges and bright colours, and I think I am going to pass out. And then I hear the crash.

It turns out I was not the only one astonished. I do not see it happen (my eyes are still scrunched), but from the shouting around me I can work it out. Mr Lowe grabbed me by the upper arm and hoisted me to my feet. I still have the little bruise where he pinched me. He did not mean to. It did not even bother me. It bothered Creepy. Creepy crossed the room in strides and, before anyone knew what was happening, punched Mr Lowe square in the face.

When I open my eyes, Creepy is standing closer to me than he ever has before. He is breathing funny, in little gulps, and his hands are shaking. Mr Lowe is on his back on the carpet and his lip is split open. One of his shoes is off (do not know how that happened) and there is blood on his shirt. He has one hand on his chin and the other on the back of his head. I think he has hit his head on the monitor behind him. I am shocked silent, except now I have the hiccups. I think: I did not even know Creepy was in this class.

Then there are people everywhere. Teachers, kids, some guy in a boilersuit who might be a gardener. There is even a canteen lady. Where have they all come from? Mr Lowe is being helped up and into a chair. I feel a little bit sorry for him. He looks like he might cry. In all the fuss, nobody realises Creepy has gone. I do not see him leave, but suddenly he is not next to me anymore.
He must have just walked away. Then everyone is being ordered back to their places and Mr Lowe is being led out of the library amid lots of shooshing and deferential back-patting as if he is an invalid, or the Pope. Ms Tryst hisses ‘Stop that!’ at me and I realise I am still hiccuping. My throat is getting sore from it, actually. The hiccups are finger-snapping loud, and when I try to stop myself I burp instead. No one pays any attention when I walk outside.

I am sitting here under a Moreton Bay fig tree in the quad. Dad told me it is a Moreton Bay and said it is taller than God. I settle myself between two of its cool grey buttresses. It feels like I am being held tight. For all its hardness, I am sure I feel it give a little around my shoulders, as if it is taking my shape into consideration, as if I could become a part of its cells and sinew. Or it could become a part of mine. The ground is littered with fat purple fruit, split and oozing, leaving sticky bloodstains on the grass. It makes me think of Mr Lowe’s lip, which makes me think of Creepy.

I think about staying here forever. I wonder if these living flying buttresses will eventually grow around me, the roots drawing sustenance from the sugar and salt in my own blood, my body withering as nitrogen and potassium are leached from me to maintain this bigger-than-God beauty that will outlast us all. I’ll
become as leathery as these leaves, as shiny as sun in a puddle, and only my eyes will peep out and see everything I am happily excluded from. They will look for me, I will watch them walking past and hear them calling my name, but they will never think of looking inside the tree. Even if they did, they would never chop it down to scoop me out. This tree is too important for that.

My hands are wet, my fingers webbed with hair. I look down and there is blood. At first I think it might be fig blood but it is mine. I did not even realise I was pulling. My hiccups have gone.

The school nurse and the principal are walking towards the tree. Walking in a fast, brusque way. For just a minute, I think they will not see me. I imagine I am just eyes gazing out of the heartwood, and so I am completely calm. I am even smiling when the school nurse kneels down in front of me and takes hold of my hand.

Coda: I am astonished eyes in the heartwood.

The apple never falls far from the tree. I do not think anyone has ever actually said this to my mum and dad, but I know that is what they are thinking. Or at least thinking of each other. And at each other. Sometimes they think it so loudly, it starts a fight. My mum and dad do not fight like Creepy’s mum and dad. There is no screaming, door slamming or sound of breaking glass. It is stillness and sarcasm and innuendo. My mum says ‘What are you insinuating?’ a lot, and Dad says ‘Nothing,’ and Mum goes all shuddery like she is a magnet for the blame. Considering I am the cause of this hostility, I am surprised how little I am mentioned or consulted. If they asked me, I would tell them they are not to blame. But they have forgotten about the bad apple in their fixation
with finding the rotten tree. And because all of this is so quietly done behind closed doors and camouflage smiles and ploys of normalcy, everyone on the outside thinks my parents have everything under control.

About the time Nancy starts talking about a residential program, my mum starts to see how being the tree from which the apple fell can work to her advantage. She joins a support group for parents of mentally ill children and starts wearing her blame face all the time. Soon the only thing sticking to her is pity and compassion. People feel sorry for her. Maybe they should. She is treated like she is special, like the survivor of a terrorist attack, or something. She starts having her own sessions with Nancy. When she talks to me, it is with a precision usually reserved for retards or people who do not speak English. She is all heavy vowels and blistered consonants.

She does not tell me where she is taking me. She has been to see Nancy. I am at home because apparently I am unwell. Creepy is at home because he has been suspended. He does not look like it bothers him at all. He has achieved Kyle Sully status by popping Mr Lowe, so he is probably glad to be able to stay home. He hates attention. He probably blames me for the whole incident. Anyway, he looks happy enough, lying on his bed, reading, Sylvia curled up on his chest. I hear Mum
coming and snap the blinds shut before she opens my bedroom door. I am complicit in the whole Sylvia thing now. I am the silent partner. The accomplice. My silence has made me the co-conspirator.

Anyway, Mum just stands in the doorway and says we are going out. She does not say where. I assume she is taking me to see Nancy. It would not be the first time she has taken me to an unscheduled session. I had an unscheduled session after they peeled me out of the arms of that Moreton Bay fig. I did not care. I felt good. Even sitting in Nancy’s office that day, I could still feel the dimples the tree had massaged into my upper arm fat. I sat there hugging myself, running my fingers lightly over my corrugated flesh. I was serrated and alive. Well, they nipped that in the bud pretty quick. Nancy gave me tablets. I had to take two right then and there, and then all those sharp edges, all that keenness whittled into my heartwood by tears, hiccups and burps, was filched. I became a spectator again. I saw myself becoming smaller and smaller until all my aliveness was just a memory, or a memory of a dream. It was not unpleasant or pleasant. It was just a nothingness.

So that is where I think we are going. Mum gives me two of those tablets (she stands in front of me and watches me swallow) and says we are going out. I am to put clothes on, and a hat, and we-are-go-ing-out.
We-are-go-ing-out.

I do not remember the drive, only the arriving. I-think-this-is-nice. We-are-at-the-shops. Mum and I have not been to the shops together for a long time. Nanna used to take me to the shops. We would go to a cafeteria in a department store and Nanna would buy us chips and gravy and cream buns, and she would push her arm deep into the self-serve display cabinet to find the buns that had the most cream on them. Suddenly I am craving chips and gravy and cream buns and Nanna, and I start feeling a bit sad. But we are at the shops and this is nice.

I do not remember the walk from the car, just the arriving. We are at a hairdresser. There are not many people here but they take me right to the back, down by the basins. A lady with long nails is touching my head. I do not like to be touched, but compliance is best. She is lifting sections of my hair, moving it from side to side like the pages of a magazine. Like she is reading me. She is talking to my mum. I hear the hushed debate over washing. We do not want to lift any of these scabs. It is a matter of hygiene, this is not a sterile environment, has there been infection? I say ‘no’ and then realise no one is talking to me. Mum puts her hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Ssshhh, darling.’ I do not think she has ever called me
darling
before. I am thinking about that when
the lady with long nails leans into me and says in a wet whisper, ‘I’ll use warm water, darling.’ Now everyone is calling me darling. Something is wrong.

She fills a pink squirt bottle with warm water and starts wetting down my hair. It feels really nice. I close my eyes. The water makes me tingle, each spray sending tiny droplets crawling through wiry follicles to my scalp. I picture them finding their way, minuscule water bombs exploding on my head, their wet bounty snaking down, down, down to my neck, into my ears, into my eyelashes, into my bra. It is like infant baptism. Why do babies cry about it when it feels so nice?

It is the sound that makes my eyes fly open as if I have received an electric shock. I hear the precision sigh of metal on metal and then a loud crunch. Sort of the same sound that eating cereal makes inside your own head. The lady with the nails is cutting my hair. I see the first fistful come away in her hand, dark with moisture, the colour of my own blood. She drops it on the floor. I am so surprised, I cannot speak. I open my mouth to try and say the fat ear-piercing ‘no’ in my head, but nothing comes out. I am stuck in slow motion. My brain cannot keep up with nail-lady’s scissors. The scissors are electric blue stainless steel. They sound beautiful, opening and closing with a swish like a dancer’s petticoat. I am distracted. I cannot speak. I am crying.

I watch my reflection in the big mirror as I become someone else. What will I do when I can no longer recognise my own reflection? The scissors sound louder and louder and my head echoes with the sound, like a bell ringing, a drum thumping, my own pulse firing. I am crying a jagged, abortive wail like an old car engine that will not turn over in the cold. My crying is bungled. I-can’t-get-it-out. I-can’t-get-it-out. I shut my eyes tight. I try to take myself away. I will myself to float up out of the chair into a-sus-pen-ded-life. But I can’t. I am anchored here in a foggy half-life instead. I start to mutter and do not recognise the words: ‘S’il te plaît, maman, non. S’il te plaît, maman, non’. Mum hisses, ‘Stop it,’ and pinches my hand. My eyes fly open at the pinch-pain and I see a wasted, swollen stranger glaring back at me in the mirror. I am gone. I am shorn away like a cliff face.

I do not remember the journey, just the destination. I do not know how long it all took. I am the baptised infant crying in the arms of a stranger, held over a precipice and wet for the sins of my father. I want to spit in the font but I have no spit. I am all dried up.

We go home and no one says anything and I do not open my blinds for two weeks.

Coda: Please, Mummy, don’t; please, Mummy, don’t.

After World War II, French women found to have been collaborating with the Nazis had their hair cut off.

The next time I see Nancy, she is shocked. I have not looked at myself in two weeks; I hung scarves over my mirrors like you are supposed to when someone dies. Well, I have died. I forget my own face. You would not think that were possible but it is. I have forgotten what I look like until I see Nancy and see that flicker of repulsion, see the ever so slight hesitation in her eyes, hear her voice splinter in such a way that she has to clear her throat and start her sentence again. She asks me to wait where I am. She wants to speak to my mum alone first. Then she gives me a tight-lipped pity-smile. I hate her for it.

When Mum comes out of Nancy’s office, she is angry. We leave straight away.