The Lost Child (3 page)

Dad plops onto a kitchen chair, pulls off his smelly socks and drops them on the floor. Once he rolled them in a ball and tossed them through the open door to the bedroom for me to catch like a football. Once he threw them out the kitchen window. Once they landed on the chimney clock and fell onto the stove. Tonight, he throws his pants at the sink. He takes off his shirt, rolls it in a ball and tries to hit the wall. Mum picks up his socks, his shadow legs and shirt and walks them to the laundry trough.

When Dad is in a throwing mood, I keep very quiet. When he is in a throwing mood, Mum talks to herself. ‘It's stew from the lamb flaps. I thought we'd get some rain this morning, the garden needs it, but it blew over. I ran into the Old Girl at the post office, her ankle's on the mend. She should stay off ladders at her age. Not that anyone can tell her.'

Then Dunc is back with the milk. ‘Look,' he calls from the porch. ‘Look what I can do.' He is blocked from my view by the frame of the door, except for his arm holding the billy.

He is doing his milk trick!

Mum turns from the stove. Dad's fork stops at his mouth. Dunc's arm is the spoke of a wheel, silver and shining, spinning up and around and over his head and still the milk stays in! He says it has to do with centrifugal force. He says I can't try because I am a girl. He says the dangerous bit is when you slow down.

Just then Fluff shoots under Dunc's feet and into the kitchen. From under my bed the lion cub gives a loud
Mi-ao-ow-ow,
more like a howl. Fluff's fur bristles into a brush. He stands on stiff legs and hisses into the bedroom, hisses at me in bed, at the lion under the bed.

Dunc's arm stops turning too soon, stops with a jolt. Milk splatters the table, the walls, runs down the dresser, slides over the lino and settles in a white-paint puddle at Dad's feet. Fluff steps through the milk, flicks his paws and hisses some more.

Dad's hand snakes out and scoops Fluff off the floor as if he is a ball of Mum's soft black knitting wool. Pushing back his chair, he lifts Fluff above his head and throws him hard against the chimney wall.

Fluff is not as soft as knitting wool or socks. He cracks like a chopped mallee root before he falls to the floor. Before Mum closes the door.

Dunc opens his sloppy gob full of porridge and milk and mouths words at me that Mum can't hear. ‘You're a drongo fart,' he says when she leaves the room. ‘How do you think it was for me? Having to take that cub back to the circus with everyone knowing I've got a thief for a sister?'

I wonder if hateful words can split open a head if there are enough of them. I wish his ears would fall into his porridge. I make myself look into his eyes so that he can read my mind but he is red-faced angry, as if he has been saving it up for a long time.

‘Don't speak to me ever again,' he says. ‘From now on you're DEAD. Understand?'

That night I am dead and in bed before Dad comes home. Dunc has been sent to bed too but it is still light outside and I know he is reading comics or sorting his egg collection on the sunroom floor. I am colouring Noddy's hat a nice bright blue. I am not wearing Dunc's heart crown and from now on I never will. I am not sure how to get the colour right for Golly's skin.

Dad's jeep stops in the street and Mum fumbles his plate off the simmering saucepan and sets it on the table. Golly's skin is really a kind of brownish grey. I can get the colour right by mixing black and blue. It is important not to colour too close to the lines.

Dad clumps in without taking off his boots in the laundry porch. His boots scratch the lino like chook claws. He shoves his plate and knife and fork into the centre of the table. Mum turns from the sink, her face a squashed grape. Dad arranges things that look like sticks, all around the table edge. When he's finished, he stares at Mum without saying a word. I slide down in my bed and hide in the silence that squeaks up a storm on the roof, that is a ticking clock in Shorty Manne's voice, that calls out to Mrs Shorty in spoggie talk.

‘That's the last time you're going to whip my kids.' Mum folds the tea-towel into a cushion and turns away to wipe words off the bench, over and over. Then I know! She's chopped up Dad's whip! His Muswell Cup whip! His whipping-whip!

‘She's a mongrel thief.'

‘She found a pound. I asked Mary Campbell. She thought she was buying you a present.'

‘She's a mongrel liar, and a mongrel thief. Whatever people say about me, they'd never say that.' He picks up a bit of his whip, a handle piece, plaited and thick. He is facing the doorway, facing me. ‘This…is the only thing'—his voice croaky as a frog—‘You knew…' His eyes bulge too. I am afraid he might cry. I press fingers into my ears but still his croak breaks through. ‘Big Red… you bloody knew…the Cup…you knew…'

Mum stops her wiping and stands at the sink fidgeting with the tea-towel. Her fear creeps into my bed as if it has nowhere to go except into me. She says: ‘I'm not having my kids whipped.'

Dad gives a spluttery laugh. ‘I never touched her!'

‘You would've. If I hadn't got her out of here. You did it to Dunc.'

‘It never hurt me.'

Now Mum splutters too. ‘You said you had welts for weeks.'

‘Toughened me up.'

Mum shakes her head, unties her apron and hangs it on a chair. From nowhere a piece of whip hits her hard in the back. I slide further down in my bed: now there will be yelling and no stopping. Then Dad is in the bedroom, flicking on the light. And straightaway Mum hisses, ‘Sylvie's asleep,' and flicks it off again.

Dad is at the wardrobe, grabbing Mum's fairy dresses with the net petticoats that she wears to the dance. Hangers fall to the floor, and still he grabs more. ‘You and your fancy dresses. Workin' my guts out floggin' crays around the Mount. Floggin' apples around here to make an extra quid.' Mum grabs at her dresses but still he bundles more. ‘Everything saved for best. For one day. For never. Well,' he calls as he stomps through the kitchen, dresses piled high in his arms, ‘never's just come.'

As Mum runs after him, I leap onto her bed. My stomach wobbles in fright, but it is the best leap. Outside, a big bowl of stars hangs over our house; dresses are piled in the drive. Dad strikes a match. Mum's dresses flare up in a fizz of flames, in a cloud of crackling and sparkling. Dad reels back and his shadow prances around the tank-stand, the shed, walks along Shorty's fence. He is a giant with thrashing arms and legs and no head. Shorty's dog barks at the giant, the stink of him, the blazing sky.

Slowly the flames die. The giant shouts: ‘Whaddya doin'? Get back to bed.'

Under my blanket, I choke on dead fairies. There is a cry in my mouth but no sound in my head. It is Dad's cry, shouting at Dunc to go back to bed.

Then his jeep starts up. ‘Don't come back!' Mum yells from the back door. ‘Go and live with her. See if I care.'

Who is her?

Mum stands at the sink and looks out the window but it is black mirror glass and there is nothing to see except her face staring back. Sid McCready rides past on his squeaky bike. Dunc's bed squeaks as he climbs in. Mum snaps the blind down fast and covers up her face. Through her fingers she sees me at the door and pulls a chair close to the stove.

‘All right,' she says, ‘come here.' She sits me on her lap and holds me tight. The fire is warm on my back but Mum is all cold bones and stiff arms. She squashes me close to the soft part of her neck where she smells of Pears soap and black nights.

‘It's not much to ask,' she says, squeezing me so hard that my bird cries out inside. ‘Not much.'

Mum tells Mrs Winkie about the whip and about the horse Dad gave her when they got married and lived at Bindilla, how he broke that horse in himself. ‘Knew it had a novice on its back. Tetchy the whole way. Then it just reared up and threw me. Split my head open on a rock.' Mum searches through her hair with her fingers. ‘I've still got the scar.'

‘Some present,' says Mrs Winkie.

Mrs Winkie is really Mrs Winkie Campbell. Her chins wobble when she walks. She has tiny feet with pudding toes. She married her cousin, which you shouldn't do because it makes your children slow. She has nine children—Mary, Lizzie and Colin—and plenty of others who've grown and left home. Sometimes Lizzie can be a bit slow. We are playing with our dolls on the floor and Lizzie wants to play mothers and fathers. She says I can be the father.

‘This is a game without fathers,' I tell her.

Mrs Winkie says: ‘I remember when he turned up at my place with that whip in his hand. One of the times I was glad to be a good axe-handle wide. I stood in the door with Dunc crouched behind and I looked him in the face and told him a whopper without thinking twice.
He's not here
, I said
. Haven't seen him since
early afternoon when he rode past on his bike.
I waited until I heard Mick drive off and I sent that boy home with three Hail Marys following him. And no doubt you had him in bed before Mick got back with his itchy whip.'

Mum snuffles a cry. ‘You did the right thing,' says Mrs Winkie, reaching for Mum's hand. ‘Don't think you didn't.'

Marilyn has wet her pants. I give her a good smack and Lizzie smacks her doll too. Our dolls cry out with wide staring eyes. They cry louder than Mum, drowning out her bird squeaks. I am deaf and dumb like the fat girl in the Hammets' house.

‘He wasn't always like it,' says Mum.

‘The war,' says Mrs Winkie.

‘It was only Darwin. Only for a year.'

‘He was there for the bombing.'

Mum wipes her nose and drinks from her Queen cup.

3

‘Get on with it, Cele,' says Dad. ‘You're eating into my drinking time.'

Aunt Cele moves her camera stand and looks into the box on the top. ‘Be eating into a lot more if you'd had to book in at the Institute like everyone else.'

‘Wouldn't have got me within cooee.'

‘We know that, don't we, Nell?'

Mum makes a clucking sound in her mouth and fluffs out my dress. She says it's a good opportunity, and good of Cele to take our photos in her own time. Cele says she'll get better shots here because the Mechanics' Institute is a dark hole even with backdrops and lights set up on the stage. Though it's not as bad as some of the places they have to use, travelling around some of the towns.

We are arranged against the sunroom wall, down the garden end, away from Dunc's bed. Dad's leg is close to mine. His hand rests on his knee. I try not to look at that hand.
He didn't mean it
,
he was drunk,
says Mum inside my head
.
My stomach is a heavy lump. Dad has had a bath and put on his grey suit. ‘Hasn't seen the light of day since Spog Ward's funeral,' he tells Aunt Cele.

Aunt Cele straightens his tie and smiles into his eyes. ‘Well, that's a crime, Mick. You look a million dollars. Doesn't he, Nell?'

Mum pulls up my socks and folds down the tops. I wonder if a million dollars is the same as a million pounds but I don't ask.

‘Pardie's got a new
Phantom
,' says Dunc. ‘He's waiting to swap.'

‘Well, let him wait,' says Mum.

‘Pardie Moon's a weirdo,' says Dad.

‘Mick!' says Mum.

Aunt Cele puts her head on one side. She has slip-sliding blue eyes and red lips. ‘Sylvie, smile. You look gorgeous. You too, Nell. Two pretty pink peas in a pod, same eyes.' She looks into the camera. ‘Heads up. Ready now? Watch the birdie. Chee-ee-se.' She snaps, flashes, snaps. ‘Lovely,' she says, ‘and cheese again.' And we cheese and flash and blink, all of us, and Dunc by himself, and me by myself, and Dunc with me and both of us holding hands and cheesing even though I am dead, and then one of Mum and Dunc and me.

‘Now one with Sylvie, Mick, and that'll just about do it.'

Dad looks at his watch. ‘I'm already done.' He stands, squashing my skirt against his chair as if it is a frill-necked lizard neck that he can stomp on if he wants, as if it is nothing. I fluff out my skirt until it is a perfect frill and I am a mouth in the middle that will bite off his leg if he steps on me.

‘You're hopeless, Mick. Can't sit still for a second. Same as when you were a kid.' But Aunt Cele smiles at Dad and he smiles back with boy-shy eyes, the way he never smiles at Mum or me.

Mum tells Dunc to change before he goes out to play. In the bedroom, she widens her eyes and smiles at herself in the mirror. She is beautiful, like the Queen, everyone says. I am freckle-nosed with a small mouth, squinty eyes and my dead ends. Lizzie has straight black hair. Faye Daley and Colleen Mulligan have sausage curls. I am the only one with a perm.

‘Come on,' Mum says with a sigh, ‘better get you changed too.'

In the kitchen, Aunt Cele says she'll have a beer like my father. He is still wearing his suit. ‘So who's this galah you're travelling around with, Cele?'

Mum says I can have a biscuit outside. I dawdle near the door and she says she can see through walls and doesn't want crumbs on the floor. I sit on the back step and listen through walls but I can only hear Dad and Aunt Cele laughing with loud bursts and no words in between.

Over our fence, on the other side of Shorty's house, I can see Mrs Major bending around her backyard. She is Wanda the Witch. The dead rose bushes in the front garden are witch's wands, everyone knows. The well with the tin cover near the back door is where she drowns children—probably Mr Major too because no one's ever seen him and that's why the well smells. And the creeper all over the lean-to has a crow's nest hidden deep in the tangles and everyone knows black crows never nest in towns unless there's a witch with a cat who needs them for spells.

Two rosellas swoop into our peach tree and fly off again. Fluff is buried under that tree. Mum says if Lizzie asks about Fluff, I'm to say he ran away. Mrs Winkie knows about the whip and Mum's dresses but not about Fluff. Mum says the world doesn't have to know everything. Fluff gets stuck in my throat and makes me cough.
Not another cold
.
What's wrong with you?
There are ants running around my sandals and crawling through cracks in the cement. I put my head between my legs and think about ants living together in one big nest and how I'd like to live in the Skull Cave in the Deep Woods with the Phantom and his family and have Phantom powers.