Tree Palace (10 page)

Moira hung the washing on the line of wire between the house and an ironbark. She didn’t rush to finish and get the sun off her neck and arms. The stinging was going through her system nicely. She would rather have that sensation than an argument with Zara. An argument was more likely than a thank you and a kiss, a hoot of excitement. It was probably best to forget the job idea completely. Yet what then for Zara?

Enough sun-stinging and putting it off. Shane and Midge had gone to get a new tyre for the trailer for the Mortlake trip and Rory’s bike was gone. She had privacy. Mathew was asleep in the house.

She ordered herself to put up the last pegs and go have the conversation this minute. Boil up some tea, add lots of sugar and take it into Zara in the new cup and saucer—so prettily gold around the rim and delicate and red with painted flowers.

She ducked through the flap, eyes closed in dread as she said, ‘Sweetie, look what I’ve got. Brought you some tea and look what I brought it in.’

The girl was not in bed. There was green-tinged light circulating with dust and motes. The window flap on the swaying back wall was open. A breeze flowed through. Zara was on the ground, hunched over a mirror and snipping at her hair with scissors. She had cut it to boy-style shortness. Chopped, uneven. She was kneeling in the offcuts.

‘Zara, don’t!’

She didn’t listen and kept cutting. Moira put the tea down, spilling it, and again told Zara to stop cutting but she kept going.

‘Your lovely hair. Now look at it.’

‘I want new hair.’

‘You got lovely hair.’

‘I hate it. It’s dirty.’

‘A wash would have done.’

The mirror was the shaving mirror Shane used to get tidy—plain glass on the one side, magnified on the other.

‘You went through Shane’s things?’

‘Just a lend.’

‘Sweetie, please. Let me do it. You made it a mess.’

Zara’s fingers wouldn’t easily slip free of the scissor handles, the narrow loops. A knuckle got caught. But she let Moira take over. She straightened her back and held the mirror up to watch the scissoring.

Moira wasn’t ready to start. She wanted to show off the crockery and relay her good news. ‘Look at this. This is real classy,’ she said, lifting the cup out of the saucer dripping tea, a plop on the plastic floor. ‘Nice, eh? Now have a sip and you’ll be sipping from something classy. Go on. It’s got plenty of sweetness.’

Zara drank with a slurp.

‘Don’t do it in that way, sweetie. Hold the cup like this, between this finger and your thumb, and press like this and up and sip without all that noise. There you go. That’s proper. Good. Like a lady.’

They both sat on their heels while Zara sipped. The girl was pale and looked ill or sad. Moira couldn’t tell which. Probably sad because she had appetite enough for drinking tea with hungry sipping. Emptying the cup and holding it out requesting more.

‘That’s a good sign,’ Moira said. ‘I’ll bring more after I’ve told you the news. I want you to listen and keep quiet and not get upset or argue. All right? Promise?’

She recounted the conversation with the tall girl and the Indian woman—such a grand lady with all that drapery and jewellery. Such an unusual people, Indians: the middle of summer and they dress in drapery like it was winter.

Then the main news. ‘I’m not saying it’s a certainty. I’m saying it’s a chance at doing something. An interview at a supermarket. That doesn’t come along every day. A chance for a job and earning money.’

Zara shook her head: no, it doesn’t. Then shook it again to reject the idea.

‘Why not, sweetie?’

‘Why would they want me?’

‘Why wouldn’t they want you? You’re too smart to lie around doing nothing all day. You need something and this is something.’

She moved close to Zara to speak at a whisper. She wanted to say how working at a job might put her in the right spirits to love Mathew. Instead she used her cunning hat. ‘You told me you want to leave. Well, here’s the way to get money to do it.’

‘You think?’

‘We put our heads together we can give it a red-hot go. We’ll have to fix this hair, though. Can’t have hair like this for an interview.’

She budged Zara’s shoulders to position her more into the light. She rose up on her knees and began cutting the jagged edges even.

10

Shane and Midge knew what a résumé was. They’d shared the same one for years for their rotation. There was nothing on it but made-up stablehand work and casual labour but it kept the government happy.

‘How can you have a résumé when you’re fifteen? You’ve done nothing. Got born. Got pregnant,’ said Shane.

Moira glared at him and he said, ‘I’m just saying.’

They were eating lunch at the kitchen table. A loaf of white bread with the fresh sticky feel still in it. A slice of cheese and a shaving of raw onion between two slices. Moira drank tea from her new cup and put peanut butter on bread for Rory for whenever he showed up. Midge hardly ate his slices. He’d got out of the habit as a jockey and to watch him you’d think he was still wasting for rides: he removed the cheese and onion and ate them with the bread only picked at.

‘When she comes out don’t say nothing about her hair.’

‘Why not?’ said Shane. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with it. It was just an accident. So don’t say nothing.’

Shane spoke with his mouth full. ‘She’d be able to pay her way with a job. My advice is
cash
. See if they pay cash. Keeps everything off the records if it’s cash. That’s my advice.’

‘She hasn’t got the job yet. But we’ll work a line on them. I was thinking we’d take Mathew with us and I’d stand there with him and it makes us look, you know, family people.’

Midge nodded. ‘Indians have big families.’

‘How do you know?’ mumbled Shane.

‘Cause there’s millions of them.’

‘Taking the baby could make her look slutty.’

‘Shane, shut up.’

‘I’m just seeing through their eyes.’

Midge said, ‘Might see a baby as a steadying thing.’

‘Thank you. There’s one gentleman here.’

Moira saw Zara and went
shh
to Shane in case he spoke. The girl was outside and didn’t enter when Moira called, ‘Come in, sweetie.’

She’d lit a cigarette and was standing in the sun, the smoke like steam coming off her. Midge stared through the glad-wrap pane and thought he was looking at a stranger. A boy, not Zara. He stood up and went to the doorway. He shook his head at how short hair changed a person so. Left them still pretty but more serious-looking in their features, and harder. He could wear his jockey helmet twenty-four hours a day to slick his mop and he’d still be the same Midge. He liked the idea of being someone else.

‘You cut her hair, Moira?’ he said.

‘Most of it.’

‘Good job. Could you do me?’

‘I’d be happy to. Just make an appointment. Can I get you some noodles, sweetie?’

Zara nodded with an uttering of smoke.

Moira lit the gas, put water on and peeled the lid off a tub of noodles. She bit the corner from its sachet of spices and patted them on. She sensed Shane was about to offer a hair comment, never mind her request not to. His chewing had slowed from having to mind his face bruises. His swallowing was slow and squelching. He leant back in his chair until the front legs lifted up and he could crane and get a better view outside.

‘Shh,’ Moira said.

‘Didn’t say a thing yet.’

‘Good.’

‘I was going to say congratulations to Zara, that’s all.’

‘You can do that.’

‘Congratulations, Zara. You never know, they might give you free groceries. Or you might be able to sneak some out. See if they’ll pay you cash, that’s my advice.’

Zara stubbed out her cigarette in the ash plate and lifted her chin for a long exhaling. When her breath was clear of smoke she smiled. ‘I’d have a uniform, wouldn’t I? And I’d have money.’

For this situation Zara’s age should go up to seventeen, Moira said. Seventeen sounded adult-like. What’s more, seventeen was the limit for leaving school. If you can say to the Indians you’ve left school then you can say you’re all theirs and not distracted by school commitments.

‘You think we’d get away with seventeen, sweetie? I think so. You think so, Midge?’

‘That short hair makes her sort of, what’s the word, tougher.’

‘Tougher’s good. That’s like older.’

‘No more school?’ Zara said.

Moira shook her head. ‘You always skipped it anyway. They come after you, we say we’re only travelling through. ’

‘No one’s bothered so far,’ said Shane.

‘That’s right. Seventeen it is, then. And we’ll have to spruce her up nice and all clean and well dressed?’

Zara said she had no good clothes. She’d go check but she had nothing that was up to scratch. It was a supermarket job, Shane quipped. Not a beauty contest.

She went into her tent anyway. She left the flap up for more light and pulled out the cardboard boxes of her clothes and chewed her lip at them. When Moira came in with noodles and tea Zara took the noodles and slurped a mouthful in an absentminded way while concentrating on her clothing. She removed her T-shirt to try on a top that was meant to be white but was grey from so much washing. Her pasty skin had pinkened. Her cheeks had flame in them now and her eyes were wide and bright.

Such a strong, rare moment, thought Moira. A moment like this, when your idea had led to something, was a moment when you felt the world was
your
world. That it spoke your name for once and gave you its full attention. Moira wanted to thank it as she would thank a person. How do you thank the world? She said thank you silently, mouthing the words. Her idea might not lead anywhere but her daughter was out of bed and had the beginnings of a smile.

Yet there were matters to be raised. Moira realised she was afraid of Zara. One wrong word and that smile would vanish. She must choose her words cleverly. Not too firm a touch to them. Not too soft. Look at the ribs on the girl. She was thin, her stomach sunken. She had breasts but they might as well not have been breasts. So small. Not the breasts of a mother.

‘Do they hurt at all?’

‘What?’

‘Those.’

‘No.’

‘Are they hard? Cause you don’t want them hard from the milk going bad.’

‘They’re not hard.’

‘Let me check.’

‘Don’t.’

Afraid or not, she pressed on: ‘Don’t you have an urge in you? Just to hold him?’

‘What?’

‘Your son.’

‘No.’

‘But if you held him.’

‘No.’

‘If you fed him.’

‘No.’

‘Just tried to.’

‘Go away.’

‘You better think about something, then. You better think about the next time you open your legs.’

She took a rectangular packet from her pocket. She slid the contents out. A blister pack of pills. She tossed them onto the bed.

‘These are mine but I don’t want them. When you run out we’ll get you more. I can only handle one of your babies at a time.’

Moira wished she’d not said all that. She wanted to go back into the tent and erase the last two minutes. Bring back the pleasant job dream. But she was standing in for Mathew, that was how she saw it. Babies don’t know what’s happening to them. You have to feel their feelings for them. Be angry and hurt and bitter on their behalf. She cried on his behalf. He wasn’t much of a crier. He cried when hungry and when that was over he slept with perfect peace. She cried the tears she thought he would have cried if he knew his mother had rejected him and much worse.

She did it behind the house, among the washing which was already dry and sun-rough. She could cry there in secret as if pretending to collect clothes. When no tears were left she unpegged all she could hold over her shoulder and went into the house to sort them. Shane was there but he was plotting a map route with Midge: how to get to Mortlake fastest and stay off the policed main roads. She dropped the washing on the big bed and lifted Mathew from the little one. He was fidgeting his way out of sleep. Mouth and eyes trying to work themselves open. Moira kissed him and held him close, the creamy smell of his body and sour nappy odour. She laid him among the washing, stepped into the kitchen and lit the gas. She changed him while his bottle boiled. She wiped him clean with jerry-can water and dusted on some talc.

He cried while his milk was getting ready and Moira let him cry instead of her usual hurry to stop him. He had a right to do it. It was only the hunger crying but she told him he had a right and should cry like hell and no one could blame him. Shane complained—‘He’s got a set of lungs on him’—and she ignored the comment.

When the formula was mixed she sat on the bed and cradled Mathew, letting the teat drip onto his lips to give him a taste for it. He didn’t latch on and suckle straight away. He began to, then stopped and grizzled. He’d got into the habit of spitting the teat away and taking a while to be restarted. She reached out with her foot and swept the door as shut as it would go. Its bottom jammed on the floor and never fully closed but there was privacy enough to put Mathew on the bed and unzip the back of her dress. Moira let it fall forward over her arms and onto her waist. She sat and unclipped her bra and lifted it up so her breasts came out and she could settle the baby into position with his mouth under her left nipple. She dripped formula onto the nipple and tilted his head so he could be teased into feeling it against his lips and want to take it. ‘Come on,’ she whispered.

When she felt him suck hard enough she leant back and replaced her nipple with the bottle.

11

A few hours later the north heat was blowing again. The tree rapids sped up and flung away unwanted bark. The sun reached a low-enough angle to begin reflecting blueness off the caravan. The wind made the caravan quiver, which made the blueness quiver as it entered the house. Moira closed the shutter across the glad-wrap window and put a brick against the open door to stop it swinging and banging. She heard Limpy barking in his pipsqueak yap. It was wilder than usual. She expected Rory was exciting him with a ball or lizard carcass. She yelled out the door, ‘That you, Rory?’