The Anatomy of Wings (27 page)

T
HE NURSE PUT TWO BOBBY PINS IN NANNA'S HAIR, WHICH NANNA WOULD NEVER HAVE DONE.
Her hair was pinned back on either side of her face like a little girl's hair. It looked a bit like the way Mum did mine each time we visited her. We looked at each other with our pinned-back hair and sent that thought to each other. I thought I almost saw a tiny smile on the good side of her mouth.

Because she was eating proper food like mashed-up potato and mince and pumpkin and not just biscuits her face had filled out and she didn't look so tiny and crinkled. She looked younger. She had to do exercises with a ball in her bad hand, which was getting better, and she had to walk with a stick.

“Lift your leg, lift your leg,” said the nurse when she made Nanna march along the hallway because sometimes she dragged it a little.

Nanna let me walk with her stick when she wasn't using it.

Mum did most of the talking. She talked more than she had talked in the whole year put together. She talked about what would happen when Nanna got out of the hospital. First she would stay in the spare room at Aunty Cheryl's house and then when she was better they'd draw up a roster and they'd look after her in the flat. We had a spare room in our house too, Beth's room, but Mum didn't offer that. That room stayed just the way it was with the door shut and when I walked past it I always tiptoed as though I might wake someone up.

Mum only talked about what was going to happen, not what had happened. She talked so there were no gaps in the one-sided conversation. Sometimes Nanna looked at her and nodded and sometimes she just stared out the window.

Mum told Nanna she'd gone to see Mr. Barnes about me. She said there had been a letter but she was going to nip the problem in the bud. Nanna took her eyes from the window and looked at me.

“I'm going to get Jenny back to ballet soon,” said Mum. “And maybe, I was thinking, athletics, you'd like that, wouldn't you, Jenny? Danielle has some poems in the Talent Quest. You did a beautiful one, didn't you, look at me, Danielle, about a sad
harlequin doll. Bring it next time and we'll show Nanna. We'll fix up everything that has fallen by the wayside, won't we, girls?”

It was good to hear Mum talking again but it was strange also because her voice didn't sound exactly like it used to. It reminded me of a teaspoon tapped against a teacup; it had a hollow fragile ring to it. It could break very suddenly. Danielle and I were wary of her. We stayed a safe distance away from her arms.

Dad came to the hospital once after work. He smelled very clean and he had his ducktail combed very neatly and his sea-green eyes made part of me melt inside. I couldn't let go of him at first after he asked how is my favorite chickadee? Danielle ignored him. Mum kissed him on the cheek. I saw him take in her curled hair and her good jeans and embroidered shirt with shoulder pads. Nanna made him come close to her and he looked almost frightened but she only wanted to kiss him.

“Well then,” said Dad quite a few times.

He squeezed Nanna's hand-strengthening ball. I leaned against him with my back like a lizard sunning itself on a rock because it felt very good.

When it was time to go Nanna practiced holding my head in two hands.

“You must keep trying,” she said.

A
NTHEA LONG WON:

“Y
OUR NANNA AND I HAVE BEEN THINKING,” SAID MUM.
“We know what to do about Beth.”

It was the second-to-last day. Mum told me to go to the caravan park and get Beth and bring her to Nanna's flat. She said Mrs. Bell knew we were coming. She had phoned and left a message at the Blue Tongue Lounge Bar. I didn't want to go. Nanna told me to stop frowning or the wind would change. I went to Angela's first. She had a flat tire so I had to double her on my bike. She said she wasn't allowed in the caravan park but she came anyway.

When we turned into Campbell Road I had to stop doubling because the road was on a hill. Up ahead I saw Kylie pushing her bike and I looked at Angela and held a finger to my lips even though Kylie was nearly half the street away. I didn't want her to turn around and see us. Kylie has special powers, which are known as extrasensory perception or ESP,
just like Uri Geller's, and she turned around straightaway and saw us.

She stopped pushing her bike and waited for us to catch up.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To the caravan park,” I said.

“Mum says I'm not allowed to go there,” said Kylie.

We got to the top of the hill, and the caravan park with its tall fence came into view.

Mrs. Bell's boyfriend, Kevin, came to the screen door.

“Hello, hello,” he said. “Who've we got here?”

“Is Beth in there?” I asked. He already knew who we were. “She's got to come to our nanna's.”

Kevin pretended to look around behind him at the interior of the caravan. He was being smart and I didn't like him. His glassy blue eyes glittered. Beneath his smile there was the smooth dry skin of a snake.

He opened the screen door and came down one of the steps with the smile still on his face. I looked between his legs to see if Beth's bag and flip-flops were lying on the floor.

“I haven't noticed her,” he said. “But if you think I'm telling a fib you can come inside and check for yourself.”

“No,” I said. “Is Mrs. Bell here? She's expecting me.”

“Expecting you, hey?” said Kevin. “Lar-dee-dar.”

“Come on,” said Kylie. “She's not here.”

“She might be,” said Kevin.

We stood very still. He ran his fingers through the hair on his chest. He sat down on the bottom step in front of us. He lit up a smoke.

“Mrs. Bell might be inside having a lie-down,” he said. “Why don't you go inside and have a look?”

He shifted himself slightly on the bottom step, opening up a narrow passage for me to squeeze past.

“Or you,” he said to Angela.

Angela was squinting her eyes against the sun. We both stood where we were.

“Come on,” said Kylie under her breath.

“Well do you know where Beth might be or not?” I asked.

I started chewing on a fingernail. Kevin looked me up and down. He sighed and shook his head.

“You're a funny little thing, aren't you?” he said. “I'll tell you what. You come inside with me for a minute and I'll show you a surprise, then I'll tell you where she is.”

I took a step closer to him. He opened up his mouth too crammed with teeth and smiled.

“That's right,” he said. “I won't bite.”

I took another step toward him but then heard the sound of feet crunching on the gravel. We turned
and saw Mrs. Bell coming toward us. She had her head down and she was carrying two shopping bags.

“Shit,” said Kevin.

Mrs. Bell walked straight past us and dropped the bags in front of Kevin's feet.

“This is the last week I feed you,” she said. “One more week and you don't get a job and you're out on your arse.”

Kevin laughed and picked up the bags and went inside.

“And you can tell your mother to keep her nose out of our business all right,” she said when she turned to me. “Her slutty daughter hasn't been here for a week. She'll be at that Wright girl's place. You got that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Tell her it's not my fault her daughter spreads her legs for anyone. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Shit,” said Mrs. Bell. “Get out of here.”

After that Kylie said she had to go home or her mother would be very angry. Angela said she couldn't come with me to Michelle Wright's flat because she had lied once already, a big lie about the caravan park, and she knew her mother was going to find out. “How can she find out?” I said.

“She can just tell,” said Angela. “The lies just show up in my face.”

I tried to look for the lie in her face. I couldn't see anything except her shame at what had been said. Maybe that was what she thought her mother would see.

“Na-nu,” she said at the end of Campbell Road.

“Na-nu, na-nu,” I said in return.

Michelle Wright lived in a long row of brick flats. There was a sign on the front of the letterboxes that said
PALM COURT
and beside them stood one very tall palm tree. Michelle's boyfriend was lying on the sofa through the screen door of their flat. His legs spilled over the edge. His head was turned slightly toward the light of the television. When I knocked he didn't move. He called out to Michelle. Beth's bag and flip-flops were on the floor so she couldn't lie to me.

I stood among the work boots waiting while Michelle told Beth I was there. When Beth came to the door she was angry. She didn't open up the screen door but talked through it.

“What do you want?” she asked.

She had her hair in braids. She had a cigarette in her hand. She blew smoke through the mesh at me.

“You have to come to Nanna's flat because she wants to talk to you. Mum said it's nothing bad.”

“Why can't you people leave me alone?” she said.

“I don't know,” I said, and I felt very stupid.

She turned and put on her flip-flops and picked up her bag.

When we rode along the streets toward Nanna's flat Beth didn't talk to me. She rode ahead. I told her about haikus we had written at school and how Spartans lived in barracks and they were usually only men and what kind of weapons they used. She turned to me and looked so angry and so sad that I stopped talking and I put my head down and I pretended to check if my foot brakes were working.

Nanna opened the sliding glass door. She'd got dressed up like it was a special occasion. She wore a silk shirt and a good skirt, not her usual tracksuit. Beth put her hand across her stomach as though she had just had a sinking feeling.

Inside Mum was waiting on the sofa with her hands in her lap. The living room felt very small. There was not enough oxygen for us.

“Sit down then,” said Nanna, patting the space on the sofa beside her.

She smiled. A smile on Nanna's face was very unusual. She opened her mouth up over her white false teeth. A little bit of the too-pink plastic gum showed. Her eyes wrinkled shut. She looked like she had a bad pain.

Beth tried to look unconcerned but let out a sob.

I could tell she hadn't been expecting it. It was loud. She covered her mouth but it didn't stop another one escaping.

“Oh God,” said Mum.

Nanna held out her arms.

Beth crossed her arms and shook her head.

She started crying. It was out of the blue.

“Come,” said Nanna. “Do not cry alone.”

When her head rested against Nanna's breast she cried onto her white silk shirt. Her arms hung limply at her side. Her hair fell across her face. Nanna made me get a handkerchief from her dressing table drawer. She made impatient hand motions at me to be of some use. She tried to lift up Beth's face to wipe it but gave up because Beth was crying too much. Tears fell down Nanna's face and Beth's face and Mum's face. The Virgin Marys watched from the cabinets with their bored expressions. The ceramic dogs with their black eyes and pink noses smiled.

Gradually the big swell of tears passed. Nanna pushed back Beth's hair from her face. She wasn't trying to look unconcerned anymore. She stayed with her head resting against Nanna's breast. Mum reached out and touched her arm. It was a hopeful kind of touch. A pleading kind of touch. But Beth didn't return the touch. I wanted her to return it. Instead it made them both cry a little more.

“There you go,” said Nanna. “It feels better to cry, doesn't it?”

Beth sat up and steeled herself for it. Nanna gave her the hankie and she wiped her eyes. Here would come all the unsaid things. An inventory of all the disappointments she had caused. A catalog of all her shameful acts. I hung my head waiting for it too.