The Anatomy of Wings Page 15

  That first day she ever thought about running away she didn't listen to the group discussion. Instead she imagined running away. She tried to work out how she'd do it; her first plan was to stow away on an ore train. Then she would become a famous string artist to support herself when she got to wherever she was going.

  She didn't know what Monica had been doing but it was wrong, she knew that. She imagined her father's honeyed voice asking Monica about it. He would ask her to tell him why God had made Eve with breasts.

  “Go away and think about it before you answer me,” he would say.

  He would sit down like a king in his chair and wait for her to come back, his face as calm as born-again Jesus. His disappointment with Monica would not be spoken; she would simply wither beneath his stare.

  But he wouldn't find out. He wouldn't find out because she wouldn't tell. From across the circle Monica watched her. Philippa looked back into her sister's green eyes. They watched each other. It was like a thunderbolt straight out of heaven.

  But the outside, the stippled desert behind the hills, the faded crumbling channel country, the Great Dividing Range, crowded in at the darkening windows of the youth group hall. Outside was as impenetrable as Noah's sea. They would never make it. They watched each other and knew that they were stuck.

  Their father was the last to come. The headlights turned into the darkened car park, wheels crunching on the gravel. Her sister beside her had an earthy smell, sweaty and wild, like one of Noah's animals. On the way home, in the silence, the black night pressing itself to the car windows, they reached for each other's hands.

  “YOU'VE GOT TO GET HER OUT OF THIS TOWN,” MRS. IRWIN SAID OVER THE FENCE, SWATTING A FLY FROM HER FACE. She was an expert on raising good girls.

  “It's no place to raise girls unless you've got your eye on them every hour of the day,” she said. “You can't turn your back on them. Send her to boarding school. Send her for the next semester. That'd be my advice. Thank the Lord my girls have never given me an ounce of trouble.”

  “I couldn't bear it,” said Mum, wiping the sweat from her brow, shielding the sun from her eyes, “for her to be so far away.”

  Beth hadn't come home. She was riding up and down Amiens Road waiting for Marco. She stuck out her tongue and tasted the sulfur from the mine stacks. It caught in her throat. She rode with no hands, coughing and wiping tears from her eyes.

  “Where've you been?” he said after he had slammed the car door.

  “I wasn't allowed out yesterday or the day before.”

  “It's been days, more than two.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I've been wearing this. I've been thinking of you.”

  She pulled out the pendant from under her T-shirt.

  He held it in his fingers with a look almost like regret.

  “Show me yours now,” she said.

  “I lost it,” he said.

  Inside he put his finger up to her mouth and then kissed her. It was no good, she thought. It was too late. She couldn't save him. She raised her arms, he slipped off her shirt.

  “Did you really lose it?” she asked afterward.

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “I don't believe you.”

  “You're going to get yourself in trouble,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno,” he said.

  She moved back on the bed. She dressed herself.

  “I don't reckon you should come round here anymore,” he said.

  He didn't say anything for a while after that. He turned away from her. He sat on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette. She watched his profile: his lustrous black hair falling over his eye, his long eyelashes casting shadows on his cheek, cigarette held up to his carved lips. He let the ash drop to the ashtray on the floor.

  “You better not come round here anymore,” he said again.

  He sounded angry this time. She went to ask him why but he put his hands over his face in exasperation.

  “You're too young,” he said. “You shouldn't be doing shit like this. I could get in trouble, you know. Everyone's saying I could get into trouble.”

  “What should I be doing?” she asked.

  “Maybe in a couple of years,” he said, but he shook his head at the same time.

  “Suit yourself,” said Beth.

  The Irwin girls were getting out of their car when Beth rode into Dardanelles Court.

  “Don't look at her,” Mrs. Irwin said to her daughters and loud enough so Beth would hear.

  Mum was lying on her bed half waiting, half dreaming.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. Her voice sounded sad.

  “Just riding,” Beth said from the doorway.

  “Are you telling the truth?”

  “Yes,” said Beth. “I didn't do anything bad.”

  Beth went to the fridge and poured some wine from the cask into a tall glass. She filled it up with orange juice, then she went outside into the garage. She opened up Dad's tool cupboard and took out the methylated spirits and added a little. Just a dash. There was something she wanted to remember but she couldn't remember it. And something she wanted to forget.

  She was expelled from school after the midyear holidays, just before she turned fourteen. The principal summoned both Mum and Dad to the school to discuss the matter. Mr. Vernon, who was the principal, called in Mrs. Simpson, the deputy principal who dealt in girl matters. She sat beside Mum and took her hand.

  “I don't believe you and nothing you can say can make me believe it,” said Mum.

  “The teacher who witnessed it has worked here for many years, Mrs. Day,” said Mr. Vernon. “She would not make up such a serious allegation.”

  “Well, you've got it wrong,” said Mum.

  Dad sat very quietly. He examined Mrs. Simpson's blue-stockinged legs and the school motto on the wall: TO STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE. It was embroidered on a banner in blue and yellow thread in fancy running writing. Dad was shocked. He scratched his head.

  “Jean,” he said so she would stop.

  Mum wouldn't stop.

  “We could go to the police over this,” she shouted.

  She untangled herself from Mrs. Simpson's hand and stood up.

  “It's called slander, I think. Is it slander, Jim? Jim, is it slander?”

  “Mrs. Day,” said Mrs. Simpson, “please sit down. We need to discuss the best course of action.”

  “It can't be right, can it?” asked Dad.

  “It's not,” said Mum.

  “Did you know she was sexually active?” asked Mrs. Simpson.

  “She isn't,” said Dad. “Is she?”

  “We have no alternative but a full-term suspension,” said Mr. Vernon, who had had enough, “for an act, or acts, such as this, whether you believe it or not, on school grounds. You'll need to contact the Catholic school to see if she can attend there for the second half of the year. If you want that, of course.”

  “Or when you have thought about it,” said Mrs. Simpson, “because I know this is very shocking to you, we can sit down and discuss it further. How would that be?”

  She patted Mum on the shoulder. Mum shrugged her pat away and stood up. She walked to the door.

  Dad stood up and said thank you but then shook his head apologetically. Beth was waiting outside in the corridor.

  “Here she is,” said Mrs. Simpson quite cheerily.

  Beth unfolded herself from the chair.

  “The suspension will start from today,” said Mr. Vernon. “Elizabeth is welcome back in the new year for grade ten as long as she can prove that she understands such behavior is completely unacceptable. Do you understand, Beth?”

  Mr. Vernon talked to Beth like she was a teenager but he couldn't help but imagine it whenever he saw her. He stroked his tie slowly and then loosened it at the neck.

  “Yes,” she said, and she looked him right in the eyes to frighten him.

  “Don't think we'll be coming back here,” said Mum.

&n
bsp; “Jean,” said Dad.

  “Don't,” said Mum.

  “Christ,” said Dad.

  “I mean it,” said Mum.

  “God,” said Beth, closing her eyes.

  Nothing was said in the car until Dad pulled into the drive-through liquor store and asked for a carton of beer. The liquor store attendant, Mandy, asked him for racing tips for Saturday.

  “Hello, Jean,” said Mandy, bending down and looking into the car.

  “Hello, Mandy,” said Mum, smiling her neighborhood smile.

  When they drove into the sunlight again Mum brought her hand up and pinched the bridge of her nose to hold her brain in.

  “Tell me it isn't true,” she said.

  “Jean,” said Dad, almost lovingly.

  Beth shifted in the backseat and looked at her chewed-down nails.

  “What I don't understand,” she said slowly, “is why the boys didn't get expelled for as long?”

  Mum finally took Nanna's advice and tried locking Beth in her room after she got expelled. She only locked her up for two hours. She locked her up suddenly and without warning. She followed Beth down the hallway and then quickly pushed her into the room, grabbed the key from the inside of the door, and locked it from the outside. No one saw it coming. No one said anything. Mum was breathing like she had just run around the block.

  “Go to your room,” she said, looking at us.

  Danielle and I sat on our beds opposite each other, listening over our heartbeats.

  Mum said it was so Beth would learn to stay at home, the way you lock a cat in the bathroom of a new house. Mum also said it was because Beth had done a disgraceful thing. She stood at our door and spoke to us calmly while Beth started knocking in the background.

  No one had ever been locked up in our house before except for the time Kylie got stuck in the toilet and became so hysterical that Dad had to remove the sliding lock with a screwdriver. But that didn't really count. Aunty Cheryl said Kylie was so smart she sometimes forgot how to do simple things. Dad said the lock must have jammed. Beth said it was because Kylie was a retard. She got sent to her room for saying it but not locked in.

  A dreadful feeling filled the house after Beth was locked up. It felt like she would never be let out. She would stay there for the rest of her life. Dad would cut a flap in the door for her meals to be pushed through.

  But Beth started knocking slowly on the door, like someone truly trapped, suffocating in a small space, sending a message for help. Something in the knock was also a message to our mother. I can knock forever, it said. The knocking filled the house. Every now and again Mum told her to just keep doing it and she'd never get out.

  Then she got Beth's bag and went through it in the hallway outside of the door. We heard Mum drop the contents, one by one, to the floor. The light plunk of a packet of cigarettes hitting the linoleum. Mascara and lipstick tied together with a rubber band. A fistful of loose change clattered against the wall. A dollar note drifted into our room.

  “I'm going to burn this bag,” shouted Mum.

  Beth kept knocking.

  “Let her out, for Christ's sake, Jean,” said Dad.

  He had to turn the volume up on the television so he could hear it over all the knocking and throwing of things.

  When Mum let Beth out she was like a cat that had been kept in a closed space. She leaped out of the room. She fought off Mum's arms and ran down the hallway. Her face was swollen from crying. Her mascara was running down her cheeks.

  Mum chased her into the kitchen.

  She grabbed Beth by the braid and with her other hand opened up the Drawer of Everything and took out a pair of scissors.

  “Mum,” shouted Danielle, but Mum had already started cutting.

  Beth and Mum got tangled in each other's arms and legs and they fell onto the floor. Mum kept cutting even when they were falling, even though you should never run or fall with scissors. The scissors were blunt. It took her a fair while to cut through Beth's braid. All the crockery shook in the cupboards.

  Mum was crying very loudly as she cut. Beth had stopped struggling.

  “Jesus Christ, Jean,” said Dad when he came to the kitchen door.

  Beth sat up with her new hair. Mum looked at her with the braid held in her hands.

  After Beth had picked up her bag from the hallway floor and put back all her things inside, she banged the back screen door open and shut and wheeled her bike across the lawn. I lay on my bed and tried to sing a song. I tried to sing The gypsy rover came over the hill, but I only got as far as the valley so shady because then the song got stuck in my chest. It lodged quite close to my heart.

  Mum swept up the stray blond hairs with a broom. She wrapped up the braid in gladwrap. There was nothing left in the kitchen to show what had happened there.

  EVERYONE TRIED TO FORGET WHAT MUM HAD DONE IN THE KITCHEN. Uncle Paavo was whistling as he sat down at the table for Beth's fourteenth birthday. He was the happiest anyone had ever seen him. He'd even brought a small packet of barbecue-flavored Samboys to lunch. In the pocket of his starched shirt there was a gold pen as though he might have to suddenly write something down. His very white skin had a bluish tinge. He had combed his thin hair down with water and his collar was still wet.

  “Good on you, Par-voh,” said Dad, shaking his hand.

  “Here is the spirit of the Lutheran,” said Nanna under her breath.

  Mum made everyone stand in the kitchen in front of the radio at quarter to five. She'd put a special message over the radio for the birthday girl. The song they played was “Mickey.” We stood at attention to listen to it. Mum raised a warning finger at Danielle when she moved.

  “Wasn't that lovely?” said Mum when it had finished. She had her hair curled and her Frostiest Taupe lipstick on.

  “Do you like that song, Beth?” asked Aunty Cheryl. “We hoped you did.”

  “It's all right,” said Beth, “I suppose.”

  Danielle had begged for the party without her Milwaukee back brace. Nanna turned her attention to her once the table was laid with all the food.

  “Your back will never mend without this brace,” she said.

  “Mum,” said Danielle.

  “Leave her alone,” said Mum.

  “I will pray for your spine,” said Nanna.

  “How annoying,” Danielle said.

  “Shhhh,” said Aunty Cheryl, “just let her do it and it will be over and done with.”

  “Our Father,” she said. “On this the birthday of our beloved Elizabeth let us pray for Danielle's backbone. That if it is your will on this day it shall straighten and mend. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Beth.

  “Why'd you say that?” said Danielle.

  “I just said amen,” said Beth.

  “You were being a smart-arse.”

  “Please,” said Mum.

  “She was,” said Kylie. “I saw it.”

  “No law against saying amen,” said Beth.

  “Amen,” said Nanna.

  “Elizabeth,” said Dad. “Give it a rest.”

  He didn't look at Beth when he said it but stared at the wall. Since Beth was expelled he never looked at her. He avoided her. Even when he passed her in the hall, when he'd woken up to go to night shift, he didn't say anything. He just looked at the floor.

  Beth was enrolled in Our Lady's Secondary College for the next semester, which made Nanna very happy. Our Lady's had smaller classes and very strict rules and no Miranda Bell and no boys. Nanna was so happy when she found out that she danced in our kitchen while Mum stood resting against the bench with her arms folded across her chest.

  “If there was a Presbyterian school I would have sent her to that,” said Mum. “I have terrible memories of that place. I would have sent her anywhere but there. A Hindu school, a Methodist school, a Lutheran school. I just want a girls’ school.”

  “Yes,” said Nanna. “Yes. I know. But here she will go into Our Lady's every day and you will see, you will s
ee, Jean, that it will change her heart.”

  If Catholic girls’ school didn't work Beth was going to boarding school.

  “You must promise me you won't gloat,” said Mum to Nanna.

  “I will not be a goat,” said Nanna.

  “Everything is bad enough as it is.”

  Beth attended the party like she was a stranger. She looked bored. She yawned. The mascara was smudged around her eyes. Mum hadn't wanted any of Beth's friends to come. She had said let's just keep it simple.

  It was Nanna who noticed that my voice was gone. Not when the cake came out and I could only mime “Happy Birthday,” but after. Danielle had been strapped back into her brace and was crying on her bed because she didn't want to be a cripple. Beth had gone outside to lie on the trampoline. Everyone else was sitting in the living room waiting for the end of the party.

  Nanna asked me to sing her a song. I said I was too busy, I had stuff to do.

  “Stuff to do?” said Nanna. “Don't be silly, sing me a song.”

  “Sing us a song,” said Uncle Paavo. “The one I like is ‘Morning Has Broken.’ ”

  “Come on, darling,” said Mum.

  “That's not like you, chickadee,” said Dad when I stood in front of them all and shook my head slowly from side to side.

  “Shut up,” I finally said. “All of you.”

  I went out onto the front patio and sat on the steps. I didn't have the strength to break anything. I had a song inside me. It was the pointy edge of a “Gypsy Rover” pressing into my heart. I sat very still and panted.

  “What is going on?” said Nanna.

  She came onto the steps beside me and her lightweight tracksuit made a rustling noise when she sat down. She opened her handbag. I heard the zip. I kept my eyes screwed shut. She handed me a handkerchief.

  “I'm not crying,” I said.

  “Yes you are,” said Nanna.

  “No, I'm not.”

  She took one of my unprotected hands and put it in her Hand Press.

  “Where has your singing gone?” she asked.

  “How would I know?”

  “Is it stuck in here,” she said, and one of her crooked bony fingers touched my chest.