Thirteen Pearls (10 page)

Kaito ambled along the jetty carrying his bamboo flute. The black pearl dangled in the hollow of his neck above his T-shirt. He smiled. ‘You found my spot.'

‘This is your spot?'

‘It's okay; I share it with special people.'

‘How did it go down at the plant?'

‘Good. Hard work. My shoulders are aching.'

As far as I knew, oysters made pearls out of bits of grit and people extracted them. How hard could that be?

‘What do you actually do? How do you get the pearls out?'

Kaito laughed. ‘Red would have a fit to hear you simplify it like that. Harvest time isn't for months. What Leon and I do now is turn and clean the oysters in their racks, check to make sure they're healthy and clean all the gear. We 're also getting ready to collect the wild shells. Red has to apply for licences and prepare his boat for a dive crew. That's basically Leon and me. It's intense though – we harvest west of Badu Island and usually do about ten dives a day.'

I couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for anyone who got to do ten dives a day. ‘But you love it, right?'

Kaito shrugged and toyed with the flute. ‘My mum's from a pearling family in Broome, and Dad worked on my grandfather's pearl farm in Japan since he was old enough to swim. Then he started cultivating pearls in Australia. It's in my blood.'

‘So why aren't you working on your family farm then?'

Kaito seemed embarrassed. ‘They own quite a few farms actually. Dad started off in Japan, but the nacre isn't as good on Akoya pearls. Australian south sea pearls are the best quality – the nacre can be ten times thicker. I came here because my father has a very strict way of doing things. He doesn't want to try new techniques or experiment. I wanted to learn more about farms outside my family's operation.'

‘Doesn't it annoy your dad that you're helping out someone else?'

‘He doesn't like it,' Kaito agreed, gracefully dropping to sit beside us. ‘But Mum thinks it's good for me to learn in other places. Besides, Red wants me to come back and seed his oysters in June. My father won't let me do that yet on his farms.'

‘Why not?'

Kaito's flute lay across his lap and he scraped up a loose chip of concrete from the jetty and turfed it into the water. ‘It's very hard. Takes a lot of skill. You have to implant the oyster with the nucleus. If you get it wrong you can kill the oyster. We use a piece of shell from a freshwater Mississippi mussel—'

‘You're kidding me, right?'

‘No. And it's very expensive. That's why my father doesn't trust me yet. He always sends out technicians from Japan. It's a delicate operation that has to be done in sterile conditions. It takes care and precision, otherwise you can damage the oyster or leave it vulnerable to infection. You have to treat it with respect and nurture it so it thrives.'

‘Sounds like you're talking about a person.'

He smiled and gazed up into the mangrove canopy with half-closed eyes. ‘The more I learn about molluscs the more I like them. Oysters are sensitive. That's why this is such a good place to cultivate them. Protected from rough seas. Not many people. Not much pollution and the tides bring organic nutrients to feed them. And best of all – they make a gem out of a piece of grit, or mica. How many people do you know who can take something that's really getting under their skin and make something beautiful out of it?'

He had a point. I thought about the oyster, as Kaito saw it; a metaphor for life, for a higher truth. Could I make something beautiful out of this time with Aran the monster brat? Could I accept Uncle Red's rudeness and nurture it in some way, transform it into something that made me a
better
person? Vague chance for the former. Buckley's for the latter.

‘Just think about it, Edie.' A little shiver went through me at his tender use of my name. ‘Pearls are the only gem made by an animal rather than a mineral. And that animal is making it out of irritation. It's poetic. Think about all the ways we invoke the idea of pearls – pearls of wisdom, pearls being the tears of heaven, pearls representing purity. All the trouble people will go to – to produce a single pearl.' He waved his flute and added, ‘I like that – so much effort to make a small and precious thing. It's very Japanese. And it gives me hope that maybe human beings might be able to get it together; to make something beautiful from grit.'

‘I'm hopeful,' I agreed. ‘That's why I'm building the
Ulysses
. I know it's nuts out there and everything's falling apart and it's all going to get worse, but I believe it's still worth seeing.'

I stretched my legs straight out and rested back on my hands, checking that Aran wasn't getting too bored where he sat throwing twigs and leaves at the baby sharks, before continuing, ‘There was this guy who came to our school once. He was wearing this filthy tracksuit and had a full-on stare and the grooviest clumping thongs made out of car tyres. He told us that he 'd inherited half a million dollars and had thrown it out the window to strangers below and then he 'd made a vow to never use cars or planes or trains or anything else that polluted the world.'

‘How did he get around?'

‘He reckoned he walked everywhere and that he ate from dumpsters behind supermarkets and saved seeds from fruit and planted them all along the roadsides. And I think he was telling the truth because one time I saw him at Rusty's Bazaar and I was eating a mango. When I chucked the seed into a bin, he dived in after it and got right up in my face and said, ‘This is gold.' Then he told me he 'd built a catamaran and lived on it; he wanted to let the wind and the ocean decide his future.'

‘So that's why you're building your boat?'

I shook my head. ‘I'm building my boat because my parents cursed me with the name Edith. I
have
to do something daring and original.'

‘Don't be so hard on yourself – Edith is cute.'

He'd spoken lightly, in a friendly way, but heat prickled my cheeks. I turned to gaze at the baby shark streaming through the mangrove roots, grateful for the cool green shadows.

Aran laughed. Had he understood? Had that freaky little-kid-intuition kicked in? Could he read emotions, like a dog or cat? Had he understood that we were flirting and that I was embarrassed?

Kaito rested his flute lightly against his bottom lip. ‘You want me to play you something?' Although he looked at Aran, I felt as if he was talking to me.

Aran nodded.

Kaito gave a few breathy notes and then it seemed as if everything slipped into timelessness: the sharks slowing their chase, the light rippling softly on the water.

Aran listened, transfixed, until Kaito handed him the flute and let him make blunt, breathy sounds.

‘Did your father teach you to play the flute?' I asked.

Kaito shook his head. ‘Dad's not musical. I heard the shakuhachi when I was a kid and someone told me that it was first played by the emptiness monks. It was meant to empty you out.'

‘You're good,' I said. ‘Aran's over the moon.'

Kaito smiled. ‘Get a lot of practice up here. Lot of long, dark nights. Have to make our own entertainment.'

If I was Tash I might have giggled or rolled my eyes or come up with some sassy rejoinder, but I wasn't. I was Edie, and perhaps I was only imagining the way he had emphasised the words ‘long' and ‘entertainment'. I was uncomfortably aware of the saltwater smell of Kaito and his neatly tapering ears that joined a sharp jaw, the black pearl dangling against his smooth, hairless chest. His eyes had become as unreadable as Aran's.

I leaped to my feet and grabbed Aran's hand. ‘Come on kiddo, I think it's time we tackled that mountain of sheets.'

I left Aran in the kitchen with his elephant while I piled the stinky sheets into two plastic tubs, located a box of washing powder and found a hose to attach to the water tank.

When I returned, Aran's face, clothes and the floor around him were covered in a rainbow of red and green and yellow and brown smears. A torn family-sized packet of M&Ms littered the concrete floor. The packet was empty; he 'd eaten the whole lot.

I picked up the empty bag and waved it in front of his nose. ‘That is so
not
okay, Aran!'

Aran stuck out his technicoloured tongue.

I grabbed him and grappled him over to the sink, battling thoughts about washing his mouth with soap. Instead, I wet a tea towel and wiped his face hard.

He screamed and kicked and scratched me with ragged, dirty fingernails. The kid might only be four but he could sure pack a punch. My skin smarted and beads of blood welled up in a line along my forearm.

Aran continued to scream: long, incoherent howls of rage.

I spun him around.

‘Aran. Enough.' I tried to keep my voice calm, but could hear my pitch rising.

He banged his fists against me and screamed louder, piercing my ears.

‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.' My words were quick and fierce.

Then I found myself doing something I would never have imagined I'd do. Seizing his bony shoulders, I had an overwhelming urge to shake him. Shake him hard and yell into his face. His little body suddenly stiffened and he stopped fighting and crumpled like a rag doll.

I released him and backed away slowly. The kid was four years old. I was becoming the kind of carer my dad busted people for! What had happened to my self-control? How had I transformed, overnight, from no-nonsense Edie into a screaming, child-abusing crazy woman?

From the floor Aran was staring at me with huge, frightened eyes. His mouth hung slack.

I bit my bottom lip hard, trying to hold back the tears. This was meant to be an easy gig – six weeks of child-minding and I would have my boat. My beautiful
Ulysses
. A wave of homesickness washed over me. Not so much for Dad or Mum or our crumbling house, but for my boat. My dream. My future. I'd been gone for less than forty-eight hours and I had become a stressed-out freak. No wonder Aran looked so scared.

I knelt and, without touching him, said, ‘Sorry. I'm really,
really
sorry, Aran. I don't know what you want and I don't know how to make you happy.'

He stared with big solemn eyes and I felt something twist in my gut. I couldn't do this. I wasn't cut out for it. And why the hell would his mother leave him here, on an island surrounded by an ocean teeming with sharks and crocs to be looked after by my uncle, the emotional robot?

The way I figured it, there were only two choices. Either I bit the bullet, infuriated my ogre uncle and told him I wanted to go home. Or I stuck it out. My head was still clouded with anger, my whole body shaking. As soon as I made my decision, the horrible, headache-inducing weight of hot sticky air lifted to release me. I'd wait until after dinner and then drop the bomb, just before bed so there would be minimum discussion.

At the gritty tread of someone entering the home–shed, I glanced up.

Leon did a double take seeing both me and Aran on the floor, smeared with tears and food colouring, silent and staring at each other as if each of us were the devil.

‘You okay, Edie?'

I felt pathetically grateful that his first concern was for me.

‘Fine.' I could hardly croak it out.

Aran scuttled out of the kitchen and switched on his blowup-the-bad-guys game.

Leon lifted his eyebrows in question.

I shook my head. I did not want to cry. I did not want to collapse into humiliating wussdom in front of Leon the good-hearted lion. He was so cheerful and casual and in control; it made me feel even more of a failure.

Calloused fingertips grazed my bare shoulder. ‘Do you need to talk about it?'

I shook my head. Then I burst into tears.

Leon pulled me up from the floor, with an effortless tug, and swept me into a sweaty bear hug. He stroked my hair. I hoped it didn't still smell like wee and tinned spaghetti.

‘It's okay, mate,' Leon murmured. ‘It's all good.'

‘It's not,' I howled. ‘I'm crap at this. I can't do it. I'm going home.'

He pulled away so that I could look into his eyes.

I ducked my head and wiped my nose on the wet tea towel.

‘Mate, this is what it's all about.'

‘What do you mean?' I retorted, wishing now that we could rewind with a few critical alterations. His strong arms still wrapped around me, only my hair would be glossy and soft, smelling of organic coconut conditioner.

Leon waved his arm to gesture at Aran transfixed by his computer game. ‘This is life. Life is a challenge. If you're serious about sailing the world solo, you gotta toughen up.'

He sounded like my dad; I mentally unwrapped his arms.

‘Aran's not a bad kid. He 's in pain. You're a great girl, Edie. I hardly know you, but I'm good on gut instinct. Think of Aran as a puzzle. You got to find the code. And once you crack it, the kid will be eating out of your hand.'