The Anatomy of Wings (9 page)

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you want me to bring you some food?” I asked.

“No, do not worry for me.”

“I don't want you to starve,” I said.

“I have starved before,” she said. “After the War of Brothers everyone starved. Paavo, he was as thin as a skeleton. Men and women, they would do anything, anything, Jennifer, even for some flour. Things you cannot imagine.”

She had told this story one million times before. Especially at the dining room table if we didn't eat every last centimeter of our meal.

“This is not starving,” she said, pointing to herself.

“OK,” I said.

At the front door she held my hands. I was in the sunlight again and she was in the shade.

“Let us be honest with each other,” she said before I went.

I
T WAS HARD TO BE HONEST WHEN THERE WERE SO MANY LIES.
Everyone had their own explanation for why things turned out the way they did. Everyone grabbed for a scrap of the story and held it. Now, when I am older, I hold on to pieces so shiny that they must surely be untrue.

And other parts much darker.

If I am to be honest.

The party was at a house on Amiens Road. Before they went they made sure their center parts were dead straight. They put eye shadow on. Beth wore Miranda's red pedal pushers and black corduroy vest. Miranda applied rouge to Beth's cheeks and then wet her fingertips in her mouth and rubbed it in. Danielle and I sat on the living room floor. Danielle had to kneel because of her brand-new Milwaukee back brace for her curvature of the spine,
which Dad was paying her by the hour to wear. She put the money in a jar marked with pen
PERM.

She had come back from Brisbane with it, as well as a sketchbook and new watercolors and two new dresses. She wanted to have radical back surgery rather than wear the brace. She was going to research one hundred science books to find a cure. She fought with Mum every night, she said she did not want to be a cripple.

The brace was a hard plastic shell that encased her torso and three steel rods, one at the front and two at the back, that joined a metal ring that circled her neck. She wore it under her clothes. It was fastened by various metal screws and leather belts.

We were marrying Malibu Barbie to a Luke Skywalker action figure when Miranda and Beth walked past. The radio was on. Mum was ironing.

“You're both very dressed up,” Mum said. “Where are you two off to?”

“We're just riding to show Tiffany,” said Beth. “We'll be back soon.”

“Can I come?” I asked.

“No,” said Beth, but she said it too fast and too loud and Mum heard her.

“I'll just ride with you for a little way,” I pleaded.

“Oh, let her ride with you,” said Mum. “Just to Tiffany's and then she can ride back. Hasn't Tiffany got a little sister she could play with?”

When we got outside Miranda and Beth rode very fast down Dardanelles Court and I had to pedal standing to keep up with them.

“Why aren't you going to Tiffany's house?” I shouted.

“Be quiet,” said Beth.

Amiens Road, where Marco lived, was only three streets away. There were cars parked on the footpath and a tangle of bikes near the gate. There was music coming from inside.

“You have to wait outside over there,” said Beth, pointing to the gutter on the opposite side of the road.

“Why?” I said.

“If you go home you'll tell Mum, won't you?”

“No,” I said, but I mustn't have sounded certain enough.

Miranda rolled her eyes.

“Why did you have to come?” she said slowly.

“Up your arse with a can of sars,” I said slowly back.

They left their bikes and went up onto the patio and knocked. I sat on the gutter on the other side of the road and watched them. A boy came to the door and took them inside.

I waited. I left my bike on the footpath and walked up and down the gutter of Amiens Road. I looked for interesting things. I found a box of Redheads matches with three left inside, which was interesting because
three was my lucky number. If Dad ever asked me to pick a horse for him when he wasn't sure who was going to win I always said three.

Inside the house a group of girls banged their hips into Beth as she passed. They were big girls, grade 10 girls, with black bands on their arms and blue ink tattoos. She tried to ignore them. They stared at her from where they sat in a circle on the living room floor. She drank the beer Marco gave her. A John Cougar tape played in the tape recorder in the kitchen. Miranda and Beth lit their cigarettes and they were glad they had practiced.

Outside I found three burning beans, which was a good find. If you rubbed burning beans very hard on your clothes they heated up and you could put them on someone else's skin to burn them and they were a good weapon to have in case you ever met a stranger who was trying to kidnap you.

“What would you do if a stranger pulled up in a car and asked you to get inside and said your mother wants me to bring you home?” Mum often asked us.

“No thank you,” we said.

“And?”

“Keep walking,” I said.

And burn him with a burning bean.

“And what if he said he had lost his kitten and could you help him find it?”

“No way, Jose,” I said.

“Good girl,” said Mum.

“What if he really had lost his kitten?” said Danielle.

“Don't start,” said Mum.

Inside the house the beer wasn't cold. Beth forced each mouthful down. It tasted warm and rich, like drinking earth. Marco stood beside her. His little mustache twitched every time he smiled at her. She flicked her cigarette on top of a full ashtray and some of the ash fell on the floor.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don't be stupid,” said Marco.

She put her fingers up to her lips, which were tingling.

Her cheeks flushed.

She felt like part of her was vanishing.

Inside the house long shafts of afternoon light fell through half-open venetian blinds. She passed her hand through them, through the slow-turning dust motes. She watched her cigarette smoke scroll its way to the ceiling. The tough girls watched her from the floor.

Marco gave her another beer.

“Yum,” she said, and he laughed.

He had skin like marble. It gleamed in the kitchen. His black hair fell across his eyes. He pushed it back with his hand. He stood in the slab of sunlight and was illuminated.

Miranda sat on top of the kitchen bench. Tony was telling her again about his car: the upholstery, the wheels, the wings, the side detailing. How fast it would go. From zero to one hundred. The tape player.

“No, I'm not kidding,” he said. “A tape player.”

Beth listened to his voice. She watched Miranda. Miranda kept pushing her long dark hair over her shoulders and looking up at Tony. She was telling him about the horse her stepmother's boyfriend had promised her. She was excited. She described in detail what colors the horse trailer would be. But Tony didn't look that interested. He told her to come outside and look at the car.

“You better come with me,” Marco said, motioning with his eyes to the girls in the circle on the living room floor, “or they'll beat the shit out of you.”

Outside I found a feather that could have been from the wing of a whistling kite. I needed to take the feather to the town library because Mum wouldn't buy me
A Field Guide to Australian Birds,
volume 1 or volume 2. It was a long feather that was honey brown. I immediately looked in the sky to see if the bird was still around but instead there were just two very plain sparrows.

The whistling kite has a very distinctive call. It sounds like it is asking the question “Where you?” It
even sings the question in a proper tune. It sings Where you? Where? Where? Where? Where? It sings it higher as it goes. It is my sixth-favorite bird in the world.

There was a mirage at the end of Amiens Road hovering glass blue above the pavement but the closer I walked to it the farther it moved away. I went back to my bike and sat down.

Inside Marco closed his bedroom door and put the chair in front of it. His teeth were very white. They shone inside his mouth. Everything was overflowing in the bedroom. Clothes spewed out of open-mouthed drawers. The sheets tumbled onto the floor. Newspaper stuffing erupted from half-unpacked boxes. He lay on the bed beside her.

A lady came out of the house behind me. She was about my mother's age but brown-haired and very plain. She had no lipstick on. She had dark-rimmed glasses like Nana Mouskouri's.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes, thanks,” I said, and I picked my bike off her footpath because I thought maybe she was angry at me because she had nice grass almost like on a bowling green. My mother would have liked her lawn because, after Hobbytex and dancing, watering the lawn was her third-favorite passion.

“Are you waiting for someone?” she asked.

She didn't sound angry.

“My sister,” I said, and pointed to the house across the road.

“Oh,” she said. “Do you want to wait inside? It's very hot out here.”

I fingered the burning beans in my pocket and tried to imagine burning her but it didn't seem right.

“No, thanks.”

“Well come onto the porch and I'll bring you a drink,” she said, and I followed her.

On the front porch there was a tile on the wall that said
HOME SWEET HOME.
The lady went inside and I stood outside and waited and she came back with orange soda in an old Vegemite glass, which was comforting because that is exactly what our mother did with old Vegemite jars. We sat on the steps together.

“How many sisters have you got?” said the lady with Nana Mouskouri glasses.

“Two. And five cousins but only one that lives here. She is only a little bit retarded.”

“Oh,” said the lady.

“She's pretty normal really. Only sometimes she has rages.”

“Oh.”

“And my other sister just got curvature of the spine and has to wear a Milwaukee back brace
twenty-three hours a day even though she is trying to find a cure.”

“I see,” said the lady. “This sister here?”

“No,” I said. “That's Beth. She's normal. Only last year she fainted at the lake and my nanna said she may have seen an angel.”

Inside Beth felt scared. She was scared by his glowing kisses, which were small. It was like being nibbled by a fish. He kissed her all along her jaw and lightly on the mouth. His whiskers tickled her face like a feather. Whenever he stopped he drew his head back and looked at her with a half-puzzled smile. The sun shone through the blinds. His face was crossed with lines of light and shadow. Sometimes the shadow fell upon his eyes. Sometimes across his mouth.

He was shaking hard. She tried to push him off but he held one arm across her chest. His breath burned her skin. He pulled down the red corduroy pedal pushers. She watched the white ceiling. A dirt-colored cloud moved slowly between two slats of the blinds.

When he had finished he lay beside her.

“You're not supposed to cry,” he said. “You're supposed to enjoy it.”

In the backyard Miranda waited beside Tony's car, which had no wheels. After a while Beth came
down the back steps and waded through the long grass toward her.

When she came out of the house on Amiens Road that day Beth's eyes were bluer than I had ever seen them. She smelled like Winfield Greens and Dad's beer and something else.

“I didn't think you'd still be here,” she said after she called me down from the Nana Mouskouri lady's front steps.

We rode the long way to the corner shop. She bought chewing gum and a bag of lolly hearts and she gave me a packet of candy cigarettes. My first lolly heart said
YOU
’
RE COOL.
Miranda's said the same. Beth's said
BE MY SWEETHEART.

“It's a sign,” said Miranda.

“No it isn't,” said Beth.

“You did it, didn't you?” said Miranda.

“Yes,” said Beth.

I lit up a candy cigarette, which is a practicing cigarette for smaller children.

My second heart said
YOU
’
RE BEAUTIFUL.

“And you are,” said Beth. She tucked my hair behind my ear.

We left Miranda at the gate to the caravan park and then wheeled our bikes home. We crossed Campbell Road and entered into the back of Memorial Park. I kicked a rock with my foot. I
counted my steps. Beth didn't say a thing. She didn't say don't tell Mum.

That side of the hill always made me feel lonely. The path was rocky and choked in parts by lantana. Campbell Road disappeared quickly even though we could still hear it. The bush closed in along the path to get a better look at us. Crooked rain trees bent over and rattled their seedpods softly above our heads. Cicadas changed their tune as we passed. The only noise was our bike tires and our feet crunching on the path.

When we turned into Dardanelles Court the sun was only just starting to set and Mr. O'Malley was singing while he swept his front yard. He sang “Botany Bay” very slowly; each word hung in the hot summer air and then dissolved. When Mr. O'Malley saw me he put out his hand and I sang a few lines with him from where I stood in the middle of the road but Beth walked ahead like she couldn't even hear us.