Deborah Forster

This is the story of cousins Ada and Heather deciding on their futures by making mistakes, like most of us do. Things become other than we imagined.  Futures rest around us like mist and change is aways there.

The girls have entered the drunken state when everything is funny. Things are normal until suddenly there’s shooshing at the possibility of outsiders. Marie Gravel takes the torch and steps through the wall of the grass to investigate. She strides away past Ada lying over by the big boulder and Ada sees the retreating light making looping moons on the ground. Ada is cold in the shimmering evening and now all at once it seems she’s being torn apart by people. She knows this, but not really. Though she’s drunk, she can hear the voices of those who hurt her deep in her brain. She wants her clothes. She is shivering with shocking force. And she vomits until there is nothing left.

It isn’t long before she hears a woman yelling: ‘get outta here you little bastards’. Ada is by the rock, trying to be invisible in the moonlight. And then a kind of frozen truce falls on her as if she’s been left on a battleground and soon she is covered by something warm and someone holds her hand and gets her up.

 

Last week

Heather and Ada live by the water and catch the bus at the general store each school day with Isobel, Fiona, Augusta and then there’s Kathy, sometimes. They live round about, though Kathy is on a dank little farm back a bit. They went to the same primary school and now the same high school.

Kids spend up twice a day and keep Elsie Silversmith’s shop going. She’s tall with limp grey hair and a long face like a baking tray. Right now, she’s having real trouble controlling the smell of change in her. She blames it on chemotherapy, or she might just be dying. There’s stress incontinence too, strange little spurts come upon her when she’s not ready for them. Since the cancer, she knows she’s less herself and wonders where she went. These days she even wears pyjamas in the shop just because they’re comfortable. She hates the idea of getting all rigged up for a bit of a walk. Sweat was made to dry, not to make more washing. And at night she heads down the long quiet road by the river with the stars spilling white across the net of the sky. With her little torch, she roams, a shaggy free-range spirit in a dressing gown trying to make time last.

 

Elsie posts sayings on a blackboard outside her shop. Lao Tzu mainly but the occasional western philosopher gets a go. Today on the black board in loopy letters is Lao Tzu: ‘Be gentle and you will need no strength.’

That afternoon Elsie threw in her coins in the Book of Changes ‘the flood covers even the tallest tree’ which seemed conclusive. She held her old bronze coins feeling the power of the time heading towards her.

She sees Heather and Ada coming down the road  and wonders when Ada Adams is going to see through that young Heather Cameron, no better than she ought to be, a little minx been stealing my produce for years. Thinks I don’t see. Must think I’m mad.

She opens the creaking fly wire door to the worn dark of the cool shop and muses on being  more gentle.  She did once know a gentle woman. Looked a bit like young Ada, beautiful as tomorrow but oh that was long ago and far away, now she’s Elsie, the mad woman behind the counter,  back from the dead via a roundabout route.

When the girls, who are cousins, come by raising dust and swinging bags, Heather sees the blackboard and declares, ‘God, what an absolute load of crap! Bloody Else,’ and drops the bag, grabs the chalk and scrawls: ‘Be gentle and you will need MORE strength. Ha!’

‘Oh oh, I can tell you she’s not gonna like that, Het.’ Heather, eyes darkening picks up the bag and takes off and Ada remembers her role, she’s not there to doubt her cousin, she’s there to laugh at jokes. Heather has one side, and you must be on it with her. So, she agrees with the new words and laughs. ‘Good one. Yeah, a bit boring, eh?’ She steps back because Elsie might see them and then it’d be on. And maybe the consequences have already begun, yesterday their pasties were as dry as dust.

She links her arm through Heather’s, steers her to the bus shelter, grabs a drink each from her bag and shoves one at Heather. ‘Mum doesn’t even know I took ‘em.’ The complete thrill of disobedience. She bites off the corner of her’s, spits it out and sucks at the sweet stuff.

Heather’s still sulking. ‘Really, it’s fine Adie. Thanks.’ In the coolness of the moment, Ada gets a magazine out of the bag and starts rifling through the captured lives within. She leans over a page with a famous pregnant person and says, ‘geez looks like she’s giving birth to a whale’.  Sniping at beautiful humans brings a thaw and soon Heather joins in.

That morning is soft and unravelling and others arrive for the bus straggling in like chooks, Annie and Gus are laughing about something. They wait for Kathy, as usual, because her mum is always late. She usually looks a mess and when she trips up the steps to the bus, people laughs snickery little laughs. They know Kathy is poor which is something to be ashamed of. Her older brother Ray is in the last year of the school and at least he’s nice and seems clean. He smiles at Heather and his eyes are dark.

Three ducks land on the water, skidding and pleating the water but the cousins are engrossed in the celebrity magazine. Soon they have to bunch up on the back seat. The ducks fly away low and light, sepia feathers rowing upwards.

 

Heather always loved Ada despite their mothers’ issues. Her easy way with people and even her temper when she doesn’t get her own way. It can be exciting but she’s the girl everyone wants for a friend. She knows what to say.  That their grandfather Hector is a lunatic, is not his fault. There’s a darkness in the family and maybe he started it.

Hector Cameron was a shoemaker in Glasgow. Poor, until  he got behind in the rent and a mate suggested he become a fence. He took to selling stolen good easily, doing well. Then he got the nod that he was about to get done for a truckload of stolen cigarettes and it seemed the loop of opportunity was closing and he’d end up in jail. He gathered his kids, Colin and Sharon, and took off to Australia. Sharon, Heather’s mother, doesn’t remember much, just the heat that greeted them. Colin wonders what happened to his mother and Hec who doesn’t forget a single thing, can’t remember that.

Hec is disappointed with granddaughters but supposes that girls must have at least some of his magnificent genes, maybe even the warrior ones.

Sitting by the bay one day chucking pebbles, the girls are idly talking.

‘You know how everyone goes on about genes? You know grandpa and mum? I reckon genes are like a virus because you have no say about getting them just like when you’re sick and a virus gets you. You have no choice with genes.’

Heather laughs and Ada lands a pebble on a boat instead of the water. It clanks. They wait to see if anyone exits the boat to yell.

‘Whoops, so they can sue me. Won’t get much, eh?’ They both laugh.

‘Me, I feel the warrior gene rising. Aye, the Scots one. I tell you Adie, it feels pretty good, though your dad is the best of the lot and he’s just English.

 

Sharon married Mick Adams because he was gentle and sensible and not bad

looking with his fairness and  his green eyes and his strong arms. A man like that was a novelty in her parts. These days they seem to disagree about everything from budgets and repairs to taking the dog to the vet. Underneath, Sharon thinks they still like each other. But Sharon is restless.  She tells her daughter; ‘I could have had my pick of boys. You look like me. I hope you realise that. I just went for your father because he was quiet and sensible.’ She’s washing the floor. The mop head jerks and slaps.

Ada stands in the doorway waiting to come in. ‘Adie, how would you feel if I had another baby? Would you help me?’ She leans on the mop and Ada is outlined in the doorway by the blue day. Panic rises in her.

‘What? You’re not, are you?

‘Just seeing how you feel about it. If I am, I’ll let you name it, if you help me.’

‘Mum, of course I don’t want to name anyone anything. Mum, you’re not, are you?

‘Well, you never know love. Life is a funny damn business.’  A fine spray of dirty water flicks across the skirting board which irritates Sharon.

‘Go on get in then, and for God’s sake tidy up that room. It’s a sewer.’

 

So now they’re cold to each other, Ada is disgusted that her own mother could let herself get pregnant. Revolting. That she could do it with her father. Part of the problem between her father Michael and her mother is that he’s just a boring old Mick Adams, of run of the mill extraction. And maybe he’s lazy, shy and for a while, he stumbled along from one job to the next, but now he’s settled and he never said he wasn’t average. Mick’s thing was kindness, and his intention was pure. He just really loved Ada and that was it. He loved being a father, it was the best thing that had ever happened. He didn’t hope for anything for her except that she be happy. Being herself was more than enough. Apart from Ada,  he liked timber. ‘Well,’ he’d say, if asked ‘I like real things not manufactured. I like timber and stone, all the old stuff.’ He worked in a joinery workshop making kitchen cupboards from real wood.

 

Every morning, he baked the sourdough bread baked using his thirty year old starter. ‘Older than you are love,’ he’d often say. The kids loved to see the bread cooling on the wire rack by the oven when they got up. Steaming hot inside and the brown crust cracking like hot soil. When he got home, he messed around with the bread, got it proving for the night and then went out with wood and metal in the big shed in the yard. He’d have Ada and her mates in with him, give them something to work on, just to get them talking, he’d say to anyone who wanted to listen and watch how they went with the sandpaper or little hammers standing on the bench he made for them.  He’d often play Creedence, on the low. He pointed out the little birds, the willy wagtails and the striated Pardies visiting the yard looking for insects in the grass and in the big Banksia in the back corner by the fence.

He liked the world and took them fishing on the billabong when they were younger. She remembers the little red folding stool and how he would bait the hook.

One day she asked, ‘Dad, was that a live worm before it went on the hook?’

‘Yes, it was alive Adie and now it’s not.’

‘Well, it’s still wiggling Dad.’

‘Probably nerve endings small mate. Adie you’re only six, you don’t need to know everything just yet. Give it time.’

‘Well, it makes me sad that the worm died. Can you make it come back to live again?’

‘Well no, I can’t do that but I can make sure you catch a fish so it doesn’t die for nothing.’

‘How do you do that?

‘Well it’s a secret, but I’ll say it to you, cause you’re my Adie.  You’ve got to turn around twice and hope for the best.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Will that really work Dad?’

‘Let’s give it a go, eh?’

They did and laughing, Ada got dizzy and needed catching by her dad.

She hooked a tiny silver perch and they let it go to swim into the glossy green.

 

 

He had few words thought Ada, but they all meant something.

He made Ada’s bike from scratch and painted it sky blue. At the time, she’d rather have had a bought one, but she said loved it. It’s in the jumble of the shed with all the other things he’s made, pogo sticks, skateboards, a maypole. Nothing worked all that well. Mick Adams reckoned it was the making that was important, not the selling.

 

It comes to Ada that maybe she should do something grown up to confirm the advances in her body and her mind to blot out the imminent pregnancy of her mother.  Maybe the changes are in her heart too. She’s growing, and it feels like she’s swallowing the world. She can be anything she wants to be. She’s smart enough to maybe even go to university. Sure, her mother is a pain but she still believes in education and wants her to do well. She says Ada will be a writer and Ada thinks spitefully; ‘Every family deserves at least one writer to tell the truth.’

She’s not sure about the writer business. She likes reading, maybe she’ll be a teacher and force kids to love it too.

So, losing her virginity is constantly contemplated, but for the practical reason of a lack of decent boys, it must be shelved. Heather said that’s for a special person one day, which makes sense she supposes because Heather is planning to do that. But then isn’t that’s what their parents did and look how that worked out? Aren’t they trying to live different lives? Be rebels. Maybe they are.  And then it comes to her in a blinding moment:  they will all get wildly, gloriously drunk! That’s it! She’ll refer this to Heather. Heather gets this kind of thing. The advice of a friend, she believes is worth more than anything. She writes in her journal: ‘Speak to H.C. about the possibility of a ‘partay’ and other matters. Do Not Forget!’   The journal has a flimsy little lock. Still, she locks it and that gives her confidence to write her deepest thoughts.

‘I have hopes for this possible event. Maybe after getting drunk I’ll be another person. Truly grown up, more serious and better. I have so many hopes for the future. Dreams of university (don’t tell mum she thinks it’s her idea) and I might get my teeth fixed too one day. Anyway, it feels good to be stepping into your own future and not waiting for anyone else to do it. I know I’m growing up and I want to mark it.’ She places the red (for love) diary at the back of her underwear drawer, piles up her underwear over it and closes the drawer. No one will ever look there. That night she dreamed she was sleeping and she looked down on herself covered in a quilt made with twelve leaves of snow.

~

Ada likes to think she’s tough but at this age her skin is hatchling fair. On the other hand, Heather is dark and shiny as a young seal. She moves as if she owns things. Looks people in the eye.  They spend afternoons in their bedrooms giving each other little facials, which is really just squeezing each other’s blackheads. They have no tweezers, so their eyebrows are still in good shape. They talk about parents, school and teachers, boys and aliens because they ardently believe in aliens, and they think that living by the water, they’re way more likely to be abducted. It stands to reason. Aliens like secluded places. It’s obvious.

The ‘X Files’ is their favourite show and both dream of Fox Mulder. They love Oasis. Hate Blur. Liam Gallagher is their man. Noel seems nice and they agree, sadly misunderstood. They are into make-up with a hot passion but they have no money so they steal a bit from their mother’s purses when they can and share. The last purchase was a little capsule of blusher which they smear on their beautiful cheeks until they look feverish. They believe boys are amazing and revolting. There’s just something so weird about them. What are they really? Are they aliens? Luke Waters got into a fight and punched someone in the head and knocked him out and they were astounded.

 

On Sunday afternoon when the creek is high from all the rains, Ada suggests The Plan for getting really, really drunk.

‘You know I said I wanted to do something about being older, you know changing. Well, I reckon we should get blind drunk! Pissed as farts. But there, one thing, I think we should just have girls. More fun and less distractions.’

They’re sitting on a fallen tree. The water is pushing itself along without care or consequence. Fish noses surface and leave small circles. The girls wear school jackets but their feet are wet from the squelchy ground.  Heather’s not hard to convince, she’s just amazed that Ada has come up with it. She stares at her, eyes shiny with excitement.

‘Yeah, wow, unreal. I am definitely in. It sounds far out.  I never thought of getting organised. You are brilliant Ado and a I dub you Queen for your brains.’

Some kind of restlessness has them in its clinging grip. Getting pissed!  Yay, it absorbs them. It’s just a step on the ladder to being adult. ‘You have to know how to handle your booze. Time we learned. Everyone says so.’

‘You definitely do.’

 

The week

 

The fourteen-year-olds sit sprawled on their bags in Bridie’s Cove named after a girl who drowned in the river before they were born. Sometimes they make a game of seeing Bridie, rise up before them, dark plaits full of wet sticks. Massive drowning eyes.

They share a packet of yellow Twisties, puffy as caterpillars and count them with mathematical precision onto each half of the split apart bag. Heather’s in charge because she bought them from Elsie at the general store. Her mood had not improved and the smell of sweat hung in her shop like a squad of ghost runners. Heather says, ‘Mum says your sweat smells worse when you’re on chemo.’

Can this be true? ponders Ada looking over towards the shop.

After disposing of a few Twisties, Heather says, ‘well, Ado, still wanna do it?’ Crunch.

‘Yeah.’ Ada smiles, ‘reckon I do.’  But Heather believes she detects avoidance.

Crunch go two more Twisties.

‘Really? You don’t sound like it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to Adie.’ The pause yawns and then she says, ‘honestly Ada, no backsies! I told you at the start.’

‘I said I would, and I bloody will! Anyway, it was my idea and I wanna see what the big deal is.’ She laughs, covers her mouth, and keeps her hand there and can’t admit even to herself that she’s gone off the idea. That she has a dark feeling about it now. She tells herself this is just her, always thinking the worst about everything and everyone. Everyone says so. Heather pulls Ada’s hand away from her face and laughs at her feeble disguising tactic.

‘Come on kid. You’ll see. You’ll love it. Start of a whole new career. Might become a major piss pot like your mum.’

She smirks, cruelly, Ada thinks.

‘Sorry, no offence, but truth is truth.’ Both their mouths are circled with yellow crumbs. Heather swipes hers with the back of her hand and then tries to clean up Ada, who won’t let her. Heather’s gone further than she meant to. Ada hates references to her mum. She’s allowed to joke about Sharon but no one else is.

‘Think of it as an experiment Ado. Life is changing!’ Heather hoots and digs at the ground with the broken end of a biro and makes an effort at regaining ground, stands up and offers her hand to Ada.

The master plan grows, and other girls join in but they need some help with organising. They asked Helen Nguyen, who with her homemade tattoo of the sun on her wrist and a blunt blue fringe, is seriously cool. Surprisingly, she refuses and ticks Heather off for good measure. ’Drinking is for idiots,’ she says, but Heather fails to pass this on to Ada. The big decision is who to ask next and in the end they go for Lucy Canton which meant Marie Gravel was in as well and of course, then Marie just took over. Lucy and Marie went to a local school for slack-arsed molls.  Lucy was the one girl they knew guaranteed to say yes. Everyone knew she’d been pissed many times. And that she knew a thing or two about things. Marie was tall and had a blowsy confidence about her, though she was not their friend and Ada was wary. Ah but she was good at connections and on the plus side, her mate Lucy Canton reminded Ada of a stork. In Lucy’s confidence there was comfort. If she had managed this many times, then surely Heather and Ada could manage it once.

‘Bring your own lemonade. Get cranberry juice.  Oh, I’ll get it. You can all give me seven fifty. It’ll be sweet. Makes vodka taste better. Trust me, you’ll thank me.’ Ada wondered why they all must give seven dollars fifty, not to mention cranberry juice but she damps down the feeling of being ripped off and manages not to look suspicious. She seems neutral which is what she was going for. She locked scared up in her heart.

 

Ada doesn’t speak of her dreams to her mother who always seems to be busy or nasty. She sees herself among the leafy walls, studying poetry at Oxford like a real English writer, having afternoon tea sometimes out of flowery cups.  But then she loves helping people so maybe  she’ll study medicine. When she mentions it at breakfast one morning. Her mother sneers, ‘Honestly Ada, how can that be afforded?’ When she laughs, it seems to Ada, her mother has finally managed to become a truly unpleasant person.

Heather will probably end up working for Grandpa Hec at the truck business. She already helps and he has nodded his approval despite her gender. ‘She’s bright enough for a wee lassie.’ Ada heard him say this to her mother and a crimson flush of pleasure for Heather passed through her. Sometimes Ada thought that being smart was protection against being female. She’s still young enough to think that this will help. And she knows she’s smarter than Heather anyway.

 

On the Friday night, Ada counted seven dollars fifty out of the Commonwealth  money box tin shaped like a big city bank. She transferred it to her coin purse with the lucky anchors. They had all paid for the grog separately earlier on. Getting dressed was now the hardest part. She put on her best top, a bright blue bat-wing affair and immediately took it off. It was too good to mess up. She decided on her third best top, the yellow with a faint metallic line to it and her good jeans. She lay flat on the floor and did them up with the aid of a coat hanger hook inserted into the tag end of the fly and dragged the unwilling zip up cursing her fat bum. Apparently there’s half a size give in jeans according to the girl who sold them to her though they’re still tight even though she hadn’t eaten all day.  Thongs or ballet flats?  Ballet flats. Plastic cups stolen from the kitchen. Mum didn’t even notice. Sharon didn’t notice much but Ada noticed her knitting in the lounge in front of staccato laughing on the TV. Her hands were illuminated by the small light and her head was bowed over the yellow wool. She was knitting a beanie for Ada’s birthday. She believed Ada liked the colour yellow and her fingers flashed through the yarn. Thoughts of a new baby seemed paused.

 

On the Friday night, Marie Gravel suggested Vodka Cruisers ‘guaranteed to knock your socks off ladies. You all got your money for the cranberry juice? Good. Here’s the hard stuff, lucky for you, my brother works in the bottle shop.’ She laughs a little ‘ger ger’ laugh and changes gear into ‘Whoo weee!’ as if she were some kind of cowboy rounding up cattle.

It was late September with the school year pulling in and the day felt contained as if a tarpaulin had dropped over it. The regretful moon stayed high in a corner of the grey sky watching. And the cold wind was sharpening itself on the river. It cut through trees leaving young leaves moving like small flags. Near Bridie’s Cove, circles of tall grasses make rooms and these circles of light against the dark river reminded the kids of cubby houses.

The girls settled in a circle and Marie does the honours. She’s brought a torch and an empty  lemon cordial bottle and she starts the mixing. Excitement rips through Ada, who has completely forgotten she ever doubted. ‘This is so great! I feel so… I don’t know. It’s great.’ She slurps the drink down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘It’s so sweet! Just like cordial!’  After one cup, they were drunk.

Heather is impressed. ‘You’re pissed! You are Aids, pissed as a damn fart.’ The laughter surrounds them like the wind and everything seems the colour of cranberries. They don’t notice the cold.

‘I am not pissed! Anyway know-all, how do you know?’

‘My brother says it’s when your lips go numb.’

‘I’ve never had mum lips. Numb lips.’ Hilarity.

‘I’ve never had that.’ Ada wonders how that would feel.

Heather stands. ‘I want some more. Watch this.’ She picks up the vodka and downs two big gulps.

‘Don’t waste it idiot!’ Marie is up and taking it away from Heather.

Heather exclaims: ‘Holy Cow, this stuff really warms you up.’

 

#

 

Elsie Silversmith never sleeps much anymore. Time is not as it once was and she gets caught up in the endless night, sleeping in snatches and the knowledge the end is upon her.  She heads out with her torch for company. Likes to spot possums and frogs about their business.

She doesn’t bother changing. One night she hears a bit of to do in the distance and is drawn there and  wanders into the remains of a party, a ghost. Bottles, cans, jumpers, sleeping kids. Near one of the circles by a big stone, she hears crying, some kind of pain going on.

She pushes through the grass and there is Ada and two boys, Ada is shaking and Elsie is flooded with rage. ‘Get out of here you little bastards or I’ll kill you I swear to God I will.’

And the boys are gone. Ada is weeping in the floods of  heartbreak. Elsie grabs around trying to find her clothes like blind woman. The torch is catches Ada in it’s arc and she has been so used, Elsie feels her heart sliding out of her. When she gets a piece of clothing, Ada holds it to her shaking and thanking this person who is dressing her. She feels the stringy bra and then her top. Elsie jerks her top down like a mother dressing a toddler and she feels around for what might be her jeans on the ground and gets them back on somehow. They never find her undies.

As if she were a baby, Elsie puts her in her own polar fleece dressing gown. She draws her up to her feet and shivering, they walk away towards Ada’s house.  Ada vomits again: dry bile.

‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘You must go to the doctor, darling. Get checked out.’

‘What happened?’

‘Some boys attacked you.’

‘Why?’

‘My sweet girl, you just happened to be there, that’s all.’

 

Ada wonders how she got home that night, though it wasn’t so far. How she got dressed enough to get home. She fell into bed in that silly metallic top full of vomit and a mud coloured dressing gown that smelled just like Elsie Silversmith. She was bleeding. She will never be able to have children now. That they will talk about her and mock her as a way to enhance her misery.  Such thoughts bomb her randomly. She keeps the thought of death in mind as a comforting possibility.

Ada blames only herself but still she hates those who did this. Her shame is overwhelming and transformative. She has lost herself and it seems her only chance is to stop anyone knowing and to make that happen she must be cool. For two days she shakes and can’t eat. Her head pounds and she’s feverish with snot pouring from her nose. It’s as if her body had set up emergency stations and decided it all.

 

Ada’s mother Sharon still speaks with the soft rags of her Scots accent. She’s a book-keeper at the big panel beaters in the nearest town and it’s a good job, but right now she’s ringing the boss and saying her daughter’s sick and she needs to stay with her. That Monday morning, she sat beside Ada stroking her forehead and reading to her from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, their favourite childhood book.

‘Ada my love, you have the flu. Let’s get you into the shower to cool you down.’

When Ada leant on her mother she felt the beginnings of a life recast. She understood something. Understood that she was different now. And she knew she would forever love her mother, now that she had seen her as she really was.

This was the love that would carry her forward.

In the shower, sitting on the tiles, she wept until she could weep no more. Her heart was a groaning ruin and she had become old, but still she wouldn’t let her mother help her out of the shower.

‘No Mum, I’m right. I’ll be fine.’ Sharon sat on the floor in the bathroom leaning on the wall while Ada had her shower. Sharon was thinking about the modesty of the young and smiling to remember herself at that age before she’d had the kids. As modest as a little snowdrop, she thinks, where does that go?

 

A kookaburra shoots like an arrow through the mist. It’s been raining for days and the heavy river winds through dusty paddocks, silver and speckless.

On Monday Heather just opened the door to Ada’s house and let herself in  and then she opened the door and stuck her head into Ada’s bedroom just like that and the sight of her made Ada shake all over again. She saunters over to the bed and plonks herself down.

‘I said hello to your mum out there. She’s even making you chicken soup! And what about this dressing gown?’ She laughs as if anything could ever be funny again and Ada watches this shadow of her cousin blabbing on.

‘C’mon Adie. You right? You’re a bit weak arncha? You should be better by now. Hey? I felt a bit crook for a while on Sunday, but a bit of bacon and eggs fixed me right up.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. Dangled her blue thongs loose on the end of her toes. ‘C’mon now Ado.’ She speaks consolingly, unbelievably as if nothing has happened. Ada thinks she’s fishing.

Ada’s bedroom is a tangle of punk posters and baby bed pink linen with rose buds which she’s had since she was a kid. Her pillowcase is Broderie Anglaise, and her mother made it for her tenth birthday. Lace curtains shade the window from a closing sky, all grey and dappled with white. Her face is still swollen, and her eyes are lost. She tries not to look at Heather because it reminds her, because looking at Heather enhances everything. In time she does say something and her voice is hard.

‘You know what happened Heather, don’t pretend you don’t.’

Shocked, Heather gets up.

‘Honest Ada, I do not know anything. I went with Marie to the circle near the river and we had a Ouija board and a candle. Guess what? We spelled out B.R.I.D.I.E.  and it moved like crazy so I reckon it was the girl who drowned in the cove. Must be. How weird is that?’

Ada turns away and seems to be absorbed by Liam Gallagher on a poster. The sun appears and light leans briefly into the room. Ada keeps her eyes on the poster, on the handsome sulky face, and Heather says,

‘So what did happen then?’

And Ada says frankly and with every semblance of telling the truth, ‘I got sick that’s all Het. I just got sick.’

 

The next week on a Thursday afternoon after school sports, had been cancelled because rain had cloaked the oval. They were all wet, except for the lazy ones who ran to the shelter. Heather and Ada were  still in their wet gear they saw from the bus that the blackboard at the general store had sprouted yet another Lao Tzu via Elsie: ‘When I let go of  what I am, I become what I might be.’

‘What do you make of that Adie?’

‘Dunno, sounds like a good idea though.’

 

On the glass door, a cardboard note stuck down with masking tape read ‘consider a bag of chips for afternoon tea’. Kids streamed into the shop needing no further persuasion and Elsie Silversmith served each one of them with a disguised almost devout attention. Each one was worthy, each was hers. It’s amazing when you’re dying how interesting everyone becomes. These were her kids and she was their guide. Her fine hair clung to her head, and it seemed all her other hair had gone, her eyebrows and lashes were memories.

 

Heather wanted a proper talk with Ada. As they got off the bus, she grabbed her cousin’s cold hand. The day was strangely hot for this time of the year and jumpers were tied around kids’ waists, but Ada wasn’t feeling it. Her jumper was on and still her hands were like ice. Elsie watched the girls through the wire door. She too felt the cold and wore her old flannelette shirt, jeans and slippers. She’d sent a small bag of jelly babies out to Ada via one of the small  boys she liked. He handed it to Ada with a note saying: ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step’ and she held it, puzzled like a prisoner who’d been given a favour for absolutely no reason.

Coming home two days ago she opened their miniature house letter box and found her underpants, streaked in dry blood and shit. Looking at them took so long, she believes she forgot how to behave, until some switch kicked in and she grabbed them and stuffed them into her bag. If she’d been getting better, that was over now. Ada retreated into another place and since then was coasting in her fear and misery.

Now, at the bus stop, she was absorbed in something else and looked past Heather’s ear. ‘Look Hetty, I’ve got to get home. I said I’d help.’  Heather watched her walk away down the warm track with little bugs darting in the syrupy afternoon and she understood two things; she had lost her friend and  the difference was only beginning.

 

When Elsie died a eight months later, Mick Adams, Ada’s dad said he’d make the coffin. He had some nice spotted gum in the shed, smooth as cold butter it was. Been saving it for something  special but some voice told him you can save things for ever and the next thing you know you’ll be dead and that  gorgeous spotted gum will be useless to you. No, he reasoned, better to do what’s right now. He’d  worked this out late in life, really only in the last little while since Ada got sick. Whether it was sick she was or something else, he didn’t know. He could only help by being solid for her and so he was solid. She seemed to love Elsie Silversmith and that was enough. The poor old bat would have the best coffin he could make.

 

He worked on it after he got home for a couple of days and Ada came out to watch him in the slant of sunlight in the big shed that was she reckoned, the safest place on the planet. Gum trees swaying and birds jabbering.

‘I liked old Else a lot.’

‘I liked her too and she certainly was different, roaming around in her pyjamas and slippers. Fair Dinkum, she did not give a shit what anyone thought of her. Fantastic old woman, should be more of ‘em.’

Something occurred to him, so he stopped shaving the wood with the big plane and out of breath, looked right at her.

‘Was she kind to you Ada?’

She was quiet, picking at the threads in the hole in her jeans that had always reminded her of Iceland, and it occurred to her that she could really go to Iceland one day and read books all day or see the northern lights and maybe fall in love with a handsome Icelander named Thor. The scattering of ordinary thoughts concentrated something. She really was still here. Some decisions make themselves.

‘Not so long ago when she was already sick. I met her one night she was out roaming like an angel in her dressing gown, looking for people to help and she helped me. She always cared about others, about us kids.’

Crying in the afternoon with your father seemed okay to Ada that day and looking back she thought she felt the pain pulling away from her, off to harbour somewhere else in her. Mick didn’t understand all the tears lately but as he always did, felt completely thrown by them. What she said today didn’t seem to make things much clearer.  He could only think that an arm around your shoulder never goes astray so he put his arm around Ada. ‘Look little mate, if you want us to do something for you, we will do it, ah but you know that already eh?’ After a while, the planing continued, and the stiff white curls dropped to the dirt floor.

On Elsie Silversmith’s coffin Mick Adams took the liberty of inscribing Lao Tzu. He changed the gender in the original lines because he thought the old bloke wouldn’t mind and beside things have changed, so running down the coffin like a branch he carved: ‘A leader is best when people barely know she exists.’

 

 

Ends