Borrowed Light Read online

  She may as well swat me. Jeremy often sings in the bath, ‘Shoo fly, don’t bother me, I do not want your company’. Sometimes I worry that he feels like I do.

  Once I tried to talk to Mum about the ladies. ‘You’re too young to understand,’ she said. But she let me join a meditation class she runs on Thursdays. That was a disaster (of the temporary kind). We all lay on the floor with our shoes off, me and ten women, while my mother took us down some stairs and into a cellar—imaginatively speaking, that is. It was quite pleasant on the second stair, where she said some wild lavender was growing. Could we smell it? So restful it was, wriggling our toes in the carpet, hearing gentle sighs all around.

  But when we got to the fourth and fifth stair, we were going below ground, and Mum’s voice became softer. It was musty in this place, where no lavender grew, and I could hardly hear her. I was dying to open my eyes. The silence was suffocating. You could even hear people swallow. ‘Be aware,’ my mother whispered to us, ‘don’t fall asleep. Look around. Remember.’

  Suddenly there was a loud fart, like a car backfiring. I jumped. It was the lady with the floral dress. She was fast asleep.

  Everyone pretended they hadn’t heard. I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I might as well have tried to stop breathing. I kept my mouth locked for a while, but I kept hearing that fart in all the silence and soon the laughs were ripping my throat open, huge tugging lions of laughs and in the end I just gave in and lay there on the carpet, shrieking. It was the best laugh I’ve ever had.

  Afterwards my mother wouldn’t speak to me.

  I tried to tell her that it was only because I was so relaxed by her meditation, and I’d loved the lavender bit. And that later, in my room, the laughs had turned to sobs, because I’d felt so lonely laughing on my own. But she wouldn’t listen. She’s only interested in her ladies’ sorrows. I realise now you can only join her secret circle of sorrow if you are forty and over. If you’re exactly like her. Otherwise she doesn’t want to know.

  My mother has some secret mission to mop up the sorrows of all the women in the world. She hasn’t bothered with training from health courses or naturopathy or Gestalt therapy or religion—nothing with a certificate and a bit of respectability. Not my mother. She trusts nothing. Only her own ‘instincts’. And the muttering of the dead. She writes pages and pages in her diary about her discoveries—perhaps she’s inventing her own therapy. She spends a lot of time staring into space, looking for signs from the natural world. Putting it down like this, she sounds quite creepy. But I suppose I’m used to it. Jeremy’s the one I worry about.

  It’s not that she doesn’t do things that mothers are supposed to do. She makes our lunches and cooks our dinner, and asks us about our day. She doesn’t look like the mother in the Addams Family. Although, come to think of it, she is rather willowy and dark and intense-looking. And sometimes, I have to admit, she forgets to comb her hair. She wears it long, like mine, but she has quite dazzling streaks of grey in it now. When she remembers to brush it, her hair flows down her back like wine. I tell her to heighten the colour in it, that a deep burgundy would look great, but she says she couldn’t be bothered, that I shouldn’t care so much about appearances—then I get a lecture on spirituality etc., and the inner world, so I drop it. Dad just raises his eyebrows, and shakes his head in that ‘Oh, she’s hopeless’ way. He tries to share a conspiratorial grin, but that irritates me too. I’m not going to be on his side, old fussyboots.

  No, the thing is, she might ask questions but she doesn’t listen to the answers. When Jeremy or I start on a story—what someone said at school, what happened at swimming lessons, her eyes glaze over, settling into a vacant stare.

  I call it her dead bird gaze.

  I’d never tell her about me. About my misfortune. I don’t know her well enough.

  IT WAS HARD to finish dinner, that Wednesday night. Now I had a proper diagnosis, I surrendered to the nausea that had been bubbling away. I excused myself and ran to the bathroom. I flushed the toilet to disguise the noise and was sick into the tumbling blue water. After that, I could face the avocado salad. Mum says avocado possesses every vitamin known to man, so we eat it a lot. I was voraciously hungry and on the verge of throwing up at the same time. It’s a dreadful combination of sensations, if you really want to know.

  We had dinner early, because Dad was going away at the crack of dawn the next day. He likes to have plenty of time to pack and fuss and check he has all his socks. ‘Be Prepared!’ is his motto. He must say it at least fifty times a day. He doesn’t object to avocado salad because it’s an efficient fruit. You can economise with avocado, he says. I bet he’d eat space rations if he could. He prides himself on his big O—Organisation, that is. Mostly he makes jokes about Mum’s cooking. Not the funny ha-ha jokes, more the sneery, condescending snipes that leave an uncomfortable silence, while you decide whose side you should be on. I feel sorry for Mum then. She looks down at her plate, but when she looks up again she’s wearing her dead bird gaze.

  It didn’t matter to me that my father was going away the next day because I wasn’t going to tell him my terrible news, anyway. I couldn’t imagine such a thing. He’d be outraged at my lack of Organisation. Where was my preparation? My pre-planning? My feasibility study? Distant stars like him have absolutely no empathy for moon behaviour. They don’t understand that we are helpless against the stark gravitational pull of other bodies, and are doomed to follow.

  That evening I went into my room and lay on my bed. I was panicking. Often I do my worrying here, but that’s pale pink compared with the scarlet of panic. It makes you feel like you are dying and need an ambulance. That your heart’s going to explode out of your chest. Red everywhere. It’s like listening to a siren that won’t stop. I just wanted it to stop.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ the doctor had said. His voice rang in my head. The lungfish gasped at me from the glass. Two words that were going to change the rest of my life. Two words, but they made a sentence.

  I would have to make a decision. I would have to decide. But there was nobody to ask.

  I MET TIM AT a party. I’d been nervous for two weeks, ever since I got the invitation. The girl who invited me was two years older, and she drank green ginger wine like milk. She had five earrings in one ear and seven in the other. She looked like a warrior, and she said ‘Well, fuck me!’ whenever she was surprised. She was surprised quite often, and her exclamation always sounded more like a threat than an invitation.

  Anyway, I still don’t know why she thought of me.

  Perhaps she did that quick glance thing, (being way over the age of eight) and thought I looked passable—a decorative asset for her party, like streamers to hang over the windows, and balloons at the gate. Or maybe she just needed more girls.

  A week before the party I decided to buy a new dress. After all, it’s not every day you go to the house of Miranda Blair, urban warrior extraordinaire. I thought of getting an orange streak in my hair, too, and maybe some black lipstick (like Miranda) but I knew, deep inside, that a moon like me couldn’t carry it off.

  Still, I must have been feeling daring, just a little bit nuclear, because I bought a bright red dress. It was really short, too, and its silky skirt shone and rippled round my hips like petrol on fire.

  ‘You’d have to be mighty sure of yourself, to wear a dress like that,’ a customer said as I left the shop. I cringed, right down to my bones. You could accuse me of anything, but not that, I swear.

  I wore it, just the same. But it was hell, if you really want to know. As I walked into Miranda’s hallway, I could hear the music blaring from the rooms up ahead. I was alone. There was a full-length mirror on the wall, and I glanced to see if I had any parsley between my teeth. God, I looked like a lonely flamingo, picking its way through a forest of bottles. Those absurd long legs were as skinny as stilts. I hung onto the wall for a moment, wishing like mad I’d worn the old black dress that covered my ankles.

  The house o
pened up into a huge room, crammed with people. I quickly searched the faces for someone I knew. No one looked back at me, or smiled, or even lifted an eyebrow. Maybe there was a policy not to talk to flamingos.

  I wandered over to the sliding glass doors, and peered out at the night. There was a chance I could look cool and a bit mysterious, standing on my own, contemplating the sky.

  Actually, there was a luscious full moon that night. It shone steadily down on the lawn, picking flowers out of the dark. I haven’t always been so derogatory about the moon, you know. I admire its generous nature, offering a torch to the night, sharing its light around—even if it is borrowed.

  It was a relief, the night sky. Such a comfort, like an exotic but well-known family you can confidently return to. There was Venus, and to the left, Jupiter, both glowing with the steady shine of planets. Long ago, Grandma told me that the song ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ was surprisingly accurate. ‘Planets shine and stars twinkle,’ she’d said, ‘depending on how turbulent the atmosphere is, of course.’ I saw stars quivering with life and turbulence.

  Someone turned up the music. I could feel the drumbeat thumping through the floor, into my feet. It pushed into my body, thrusting its heartbeat over mine. It was like a drug, that music, it could take you over, and I wished to God it would. It pulled me down from Venus and Jupiter and the quivering stars, but it did nothing to cover me. Over the music I heard someone laugh, and then someone else, and suddenly I was convinced they were laughing at me. Maybe I was ridiculous standing there in that neon dress, blaring like a Coca Cola sign.

  I tried to stretch down the hem of my skirt. My cheeks were on fire. I wished I’d stayed home with Jeremy.

  I wondered if he’d worn his bike helmet to bed. Surely Mum would have noticed.

  The lights were dimmed, and I watched couples slow-dance into the shadows. They looked like figures in an oil painting, the colours of their limbs fading into each other, so you couldn’t see where one body began and the other finished. I would have given anything to dissolve into someone like that, but I bet all my bones would get in the way.

  That was when Tim emerged, out of the shadows. I’d seen him at school—Timothy Cleary, surfing idol, skin like honey, eyes like magnets. Unattainable as planet Jupiter. But he was walking toward me! Maybe he’d mistaken me for someone else. I couldn’t bear to see his face sag with disappointment. I nearly fell over his feet.

  ‘Hi, I’m Callisto May,’ I said, all in a rush. I edged him over to the light where he could see me better. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

  ‘Someone like you,’ he sang. It was an old sweet song, and he had a lovely voice. I wasn’t a good judge, though, because I would have given him a Logie award even if he’d sung like a gorilla.

  There is a God after all, I thought fleetingly, and made up my mind to tell Grandma. But I knew she’d say it was just the power of pheromones.

  We chatted for a while, our voices straining over the beat of the music.

  ‘Are you a good friend of Miranda’s?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. You could see the muscles in his shoulders gliding under his skin. He must be very strong from all that paddling in the surf, I thought. I bet he could pick me up with one hand. I felt a delicious ripple of excitement, like notes rising up the piano.

  ‘Yeah, I guess so, we’ve known each other for years. She was my girlfriend for a while.’ He grinned. ‘She’s a gutsy lady!’ His voice was admiring.

  I nodded in a nonchalant manner. But I was alarmed. That piece of information changed things for a moment. I wondered if Tim approved of blowing up garbage bins and bullying Year 7 girls. I hoped he wasn’t as dangerous as Miranda. But he smiled at me again and lifted a curl from behind my ear.

  ‘You have great hair, Callisto.’

  I put garbage bins and bullying firmly away.

  ‘Do you go to Whale Beach much?’ he continued.

  I had a sudden vision of Tim and his friends sitting on their towels, looking at girls in bikinis as they strolled past. I’d heard that they rated the girls one to ten. Big breasts scored high. I shuddered and stepped back for a minute. The hair in his fingers pulled tight.

  ‘Ow!’ I gasped. I said it under my breath, so I don’t think he heard, because he went on holding the hair.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you there,’ Tim went on. ‘We go most weekends—you know, the guys, José, Phil, Bob and me. There’s the best waves at Whale Beach, and José brings his dog sometimes. He can have a good run around in the park there, off the leash.’

  ‘What kind of dog is it?’

  ‘An Alsatian. He looks fierce but he’s as gentle as a possum. I used to have a dog, but he died last year.’

  Tim’s eyes were suddenly shinier, and he looked down at our feet. I took his hand and pressed it. It was very warm and I could feel the pulse in his wrist. I wondered if I should ask him what kind of dog his had been, or maybe he didn’t want to talk about it. But if I didn’t ask, he might think I didn’t care. I couldn’t decide. Also, that little beat under my finger was distracting. It made me see that Tim was vulnerable, he was a human being like me, dependent on food and drink and air to keep that beat going. We had something in common, as long as I kept holding his hand.

  We let the music into our conversation then. It filled the sea of dark between us with just the right words. I stopped agonising about the dog.

  Later, Tim went to get a drink and I wondered if he’d ever come back. I needed to go to the toilet, but what if I missed him when he returned? I stood there squeezing my thighs together.

  And there he was, blue eyes from a postcard sky, threading his way carefully through the room, bringing two glasses of green ginger wine.

  I wish I could say we talked all night, but what with the music and the phenomenon of irresistible attraction between two bodies, we began kissing quite soon.

  That was something to remember, that first kiss. Tim put his arms around me—honey-coloured, with little golden fireflies of hair—and drew me toward him. He looked at me, carefully, for thirty whole seconds. That’s a long time—you try it. While he was looking, I counted silently. It was less excruciating that way. No one had ever looked at me for that long. Except Jeremy, perhaps. But that’s because he was dying for me to tell him what happened when a planet collided with a meteor swarm.

  Once, a reporter came to our school and interviewed lots of students. ‘Pretty Callisto May,’ wrote the reporter a week later in the newspaper. Can you believe it? Everyone else just had their name in the paper, without the adjective. I read that phrase over and over again. There it was, in black and white, a judgement made by the world. Well, I couldn’t agree. What about my spiky hips, my disappointing breasts? I wanted to run after the reporter, ask him if he’d noticed the hairiness of my arms, my scrawny legs, with the knobble-bone on the ankle that could cut paper. Where were the womanly curves? Couldn’t he see the shadow of a moustache? Did he usually wear glasses? No, if he’d taken more than a glance out of the comer of his eye, he never would have written, ‘Pretty Callisto May’. That was for sure.

  But at Miranda Blair’s party, on the 3rd of March, Tim Cleary looked at me for thirty seconds. When he was finished, he still wanted to kiss me. I smiled so much my face ached. I was caught in his gaze, trapped in sunlight. Every cell of me was in focus, every movement seemed larger than life. I was exquisitely aware of my breathing, my treble clef nostrils, the itch under my tongue, the twitch beginning in my mouth. I felt beautiful for the first time. Tim Cleary picked me out with his eyes, he selected me, me! and suddenly I was alive.

  His mouth was hard and soft at the same time. I was amazed that a boy’s lips could be so silky, like the most secret parts of a girl. And behind the lips were the teeth and jaw, pushing and determined, carnivorous. I was excited, scared, breathless, thrilled. He didn’t close his eyes while he kissed me. Neither did I. I wasn’t going to miss anything. His eyes stared into mine. I didn’t know what would happen next
. But I would do whatever he wanted. He’d given me the best gift in the world. I leapt for it eagerly, borrowing his warmth and making it my own, the way the moon borrows light.

  SCHOOL WAS VERY different after the 3rd of March. Miranda Blair, urban warrior, let me join her tribe. I ate my avocado sandwiches with her on the wooden seats under the oak tree. I stood on guard at the toilet door while she had a smoke. I bought some black nail polish. And I got my ears pierced.

  Grandma said that if I was so determined to do my ears she’d take me to the hospital herself—she has a friend who is a matron there. I bled profusely as if I were in a major car accident. As I said to my mother when I got home, I don’t know why I can’t just do things normally, and go to a chemist like everyone else. It’s over in two minutes, isn’t it?, with that little gun the chemist uses, and you haven’t got white-coated doctors rushing around talking about transfusions. My mother just shrugged and muttered something about Grandma’s absurd faith in doctors and then she did her dead bird gaze. Still, it gave me another bloodthirsty tale to tell the warriors. I was becoming an expert in tall tales.

  Miranda had wanted to know all the details about my night with Tim. I’m sure she still fancied him herself. ‘What did he say? Did he lick your earlobes? Did he put his tongue down your throat?’ Miranda and her friends orbited about me, like satellites around a new sun. Every time I told a new Tim story, the awe grew like a sudden rise in temperature. I couldn’t quite believe it. It made me glow, even if it didn’t feel real. I gave them little bits, like seeds spat out. I tried to keep all the juice to myself. I couldn’t exactly remember what Tim had said that night, but I was becoming a whiz at making it up. I remembered only looking into his eyes and seeing myself, like Venus emerging from the sea.