just_a_girl (9 page)

My granny likes to tell stories. About when she was just a girl. These stories are on permanent loop. I hear them repeated. Over and over. Like her brain is a scratched
record that keeps jumping to the same place. I’ve never seen a record player. But dad tells me this is what happens. They get stuck in a groove all the time.

Once Granny was reading a magazine out loud to me. She was sitting in the sunroom. She said,
Oh look, here’s a test to see if you have Alzheimer’s.
She’s always paranoid about getting dementia. She used to do sudoku and word puzzles in the paper every day. So she sits down and does the test. Murmurs the questions and answers aloud. Adds up the score in her head.
Oh, I haven’t done too badly at all. Nothing to worry about there.
She keeps reading her magazine. Then 10 minutes later she says,
Look, Layla, here’s a test to see if you have Alzheimer’s.
And she goes through the questions again. She does the same test all morning. But she passes it every time.

Granny’s favourite stories are about trains and the war:

Story 1: Granny was catching a train after seeing her boyfriend off on a ship. This was granddad. He’s dead now. She had travelled to London. Huddled in a corner silently weeping. Trying not to let others see. A large hand reached out and patted her knee.
There there, lassie,
he said.
It’ll be okay, he’ll be back.

How did you know?,
my granny asked him.

Oh, I see girls like you on the train every day.

Story 2: Granny was staying with relatives and heard an air raid siren. They all went down to the train station. Into the tunnel at night. Deep underground.
Many women were carrying little bundles. Tiny babies wrapped up against the cold. They were lining the walls rocking their babies. Of course it was the safest place for them. And the funny thing was, no-one was afraid, no, there was lots of joy. We all sat there singing. And it
was like being at Church. None of the babies were crying.
If you had a child under six you were given a big steel-topped table. By the government.
As big as a double bed. To hide under when the bombs came.

Story 3: Granny was sitting with her cousins on the train to Liverpool. Across from her on the seat,
a couple were going at it hammer and tongs. Having sex there, right in front of me. Hammer and tongs. During The War. That’s what it was like,
she said.

Granny likes to try and shock me but it never works.

Davo always wants to have sex on trains. He’s tried to drag me into the loo a few times. But only when his mates are there. I go along with it. But hello! I’m not having my first time there. In the stink of male piss. Tampon wrappers straying on a broken sink.

Sometimes on Fridays if it’s hot we sneak off early from school. To the bright sands of Coogee. I’ve got a new bikini. It’s red with little white stripes. From Penrith to Central he begs me. To have sex on the beach with him.
Sex on the beach, sexonthebeach, sexon on on, on and on.
That’s the thing with Davo. He gets something fixed in his mind. There’s no hearing the end of it. He’s stuck like a broken record too.

And for the record, I don’t do it. He never talks to me on the trip back.

I have a favourite game on the train trip home from school. I sit opposite an older guy. Businessman type. The kind who commutes for a hundred grand a year. I slowly unwrap a Chupa Chup. I only like those ones with
vanilla. I put it in my mouth. Oh-so-slowly and lick and twist and turn. Oh-so-slowly, lick and twist and suck and turn. I take it out and make eye contact quickly. Then look out the window and continue. Twist. Turn. I do it soooo innocently as if caught in some girly dream. As any schoolgirl would. I lean over and pull up my socks. Smooth my checked uniform. Hitch it up a notch. He can’t keep his eyes off my mouth. He is completely drawn in by me. He thinks I am tasting him. He wants me all to himself. He wants me to twirl and twist and turn for him. He can’t wait. And he can’t help himself. He thinks about my lips as his daughter opens the front door. Wearing the same school uniform. My favourite part is the hard vanilla crunch. At the end where I show him my sharp teeth.

My daughter has accused me of being too self-sacrificing, she said I always put everyone else’s needs before my own and that in the end it makes me tired and resentful because I never get what I want, and sometimes I look at her and wonder,
Where on Earth did you come from, my precocious child?,
because her insight can be profound, but often I don’t want to find it from my own daughter because I saw a therapist for long enough, thanks, but then I hear myself offering to drop something off for someone at Church or give them a lift when it’s going to make me half an hour late for an appointment, and I used to hate my mum for always being late, as if she had the right to make people wait for her, so that I never heard the school bell ring at the start of the day and the number of detentions I had because she was out of it on the couch, and when I was really little she was always smashing glasses and banging doors and I wanted to be on hand so she didn’t hurt herself, so I’d be waiting in the wings with a dustpan and broom carefully cleaning up the shards, while she ranted and accused me of being a spoilt brat until she fell asleep in
front of the TV again, and she got so fat around the middle that I couldn’t help push her to bed any more, and she was always mad at me because we didn’t have any money so I did the paper round when I was seven, and I used to love being out on my bike in the early morning light skidding on the dew, because it was one less hour in the day I had to spend near her.

But then sometimes when I got home after school she had carefully cleaned away the rot of the night before and was in the kitchen chopping vegies and talking about what goodies she had found at the markets for tea, pretending that she liked cooking and was a good mother, and we were safe as houses if there was no cask in the fridge, but otherwise I’d lock myself in my bedroom with tapes of Wham on loud and wait for the sounds of destruction into the night, and I’m both sad and not that Layla never got to know old Violet, you know, I always thought her name had an ‘n’ missing, but she was too much to deal with for a little girl, and I hope that she has found some peace wherever she is, as long as she’s a long way away from me.

I like to listen to Tori Amos on the train.
Precious things.
It fires me up for school. When I first heard those lines I thought: this chick knows what she’s talking about. It’s one of those songs I can have on repeat all day. Just over and over. Dad has quite a good music collection on his iPod. He lets me copy what I want. I’ve discovered some great old music that way. Early Rolling Stones. Michael Jackson. I prefer it to what’s on
Video Hits.

I liked Michael Jackson way before he died. A few months ago no-one was into him but now they pretend they were his biggest fans. He was so gorgeous when he was young. I just don’t get it. Why he wanted to hide that face.

A few years ago dad took me to my first concert at the Opera House. He came to Sydney just for it. And it was Tori Amos. It’s hard to believe that one performer can suck you in. I had quite a crush on her after that. Dad said he would turn for her. Fuckadoodle, if mum could hear that.

I love how she sits at the piano. She doesn’t exactly sit. She perches on the edge of her piano stool. And moves backwards and forwards with her thighs. Swinging her hair back as she attacks the audience. Every word is just so full of passion.

I’d love to play
Precious things
for Mr C. I might send it to him on YouTube. We’re on a first name basis now. Mr C and I. But I find it hard to use his first name. Because it makes me laugh every time I say it. It rhymes with
heaven.
Mum probably thinks god planned it that way. So I think I’ll stick with Mr C for now.

I wish I could sing but mum says,
You don’t have a musical note in your body.
I hear the music in my head as if it’s perfect. But it comes out of my mouth strange. At least I know it though. Not like those losers on
Australian Idol.
Who audition and actually think they’re the best. When they can’t sing a note. Their mums tell them.
You’re the greatest singer in the world.
When they’re four years old. And they believe it for the rest of their lives.

I wonder what that suitcase guy listens to. He’s on the train again this arvo. He must have a weekender. I was hoping he’d talk to me after The Moth Incident. But he keeps looking away as if he doesn’t even remember. He always has his headphones on. He’s got this really cool MP3 player. It’s kind of metallic and really tiny. It might be Japanese or something. Because I haven’t seen one like that before. But he’s not like other guys on the train. Usually they have their music so loud it’s like
doof doof doof.
You have to move to another carriage just to escape the bass. But with him it’s so quiet that I can’t hear the music. And I’m dying to know. It’s probably some alternative Japanese
band. Or classical music. Very quiet. But he doesn’t give anything away. He just sits there really neatly. Reading his book.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
He hasn’t finished it either. He balances it on his knees. Because it’s hard to lift up. It’s as thick as mum’s bible. Your arms get tired just holding it.

And I should know because I still have it in my bag. My book has a different cover. Just the arc of a cat’s striped tail. I still have a long way to go. It’s a very strange story. The characters go round and round. The main guy is at a loss. He seems to lose everything. His cat. His wife. And then he meets a girl. Who’s obsessed with death. And they talk about everything and nothing. Sometimes the book is about war. It makes me feel like my skin is peeling off. Sometimes I have to put the book down. Because I don’t want those images running around in my head.

He’s further through the book than me. I want to get mine out and start reading too. I want to know what he thinks of it. I want to ask him a question. Does he know where the missing cat is? It might make him laugh. But it would look too obvious.

I think he might sneak looks at me now and then. But his eyes are super quick. Maybe he’s a martial arts expert. And has learnt to move his eyes without anyone seeing. As quick as his hands.
Haaaii-ya!
I want to sit next to him. Just say,
Hi. What are you listening to?
in a casual voice. Perhaps then he’d take an earpiece out. Hand it to me smiling. But he sits on the single seat at the back. No seats around him anywhere to start a conversation.

That’s where the shy people always sit. You can see the desperation in their eyes. If that seat is already taken. They
pray as they roam the carriages. Hoping the next single seat is free. Otherwise they might actually have to sit next to someone.

And TALK, which is a scary thought.

Mum’s started raving about moving house. She’s decided she wants to live in Bella Vista. It’s like McMansion City. Every house has its own security system. The perfect strip of shaved lawn. Like living in a zoo. I keep pretending that I don’t want to move. But if I was down there I could drive to school. When I have my licence and a car. And I could sleep in every day. I’d also be closer to the city. It’d be nice to have a bigger house. Where my bedroom isn’t next to hers. Some of those places are humungous. Fuckadoodle, Rusty could have a whole floor to himself.

But I don’t know how she’s going to afford it. She’s always whinging about money. About being a single mum. And praying loudly for more work. She said the only good thing about the divorce. Was that dad paid off the house.

And when I get into uni. I’m outta there anyway. I’m gone. It’s only a few more years. I keep thinking about uni. But I’ve got no idea what I want to do. Some teachers have said I’m good with words. I can string a sentence together. I like to read. But I don’t like talking about books all the time. Like we do in english. It takes some of the magic away. I like to just play with them in my imagination. I like getting inside other people’s heads. Knowing what they’re thinking. Using it to turn them inside out. Maybe I could do psychology. Maybe mum could be my client. And we’d sort out our ‘toxic relationship’.

The other thing about Bella Vista. The whole suburb is made up of Riverlayers. So there’s no chance of making
friends there. I’ll be the outcast. Who doesn’t go to church with her mum any more. It’s not just that they’re religious.

You can’t talk about
anything:

I guess you could talk about your favourite music. But then again they probably just download all the latest hits at Riverlay. Stick your finger down your throat and gag.

Mum keeps telling me the house she likes is just round the corner from Mr C’s place. So I’ll be able to drop in on him and Chelsea whenever I feel like it.

But she’s the one who’s obsessed. She dresses up for him. She really thinks he has hidden desires for her. But he can see right through it. He’s only using her to get to me. But I can see right through him. I’m only using him to get to ... I’m not sure yet.

Boys my age just don’t listen. Except Marco. Bring on university. Maybe they’re better when they leave high school.

Now take a close look at Mr C. There’s a line of young hopefuls out the door at Riverlay. He can have his pick. They think he’s a rock star and he knows it. I’m surprised he doesn’t grab the mic and start singing sometimes. Or twirl the drumsticks for a 30-minute solo. Join his wife in a big rock anthem.

Sometimes words just aren’t enough.

Maybe I’ll go along to church again. Just to see him perform one more time. But I wonder just which god he’s worshipping. The lord of big bucks and sweet girls. How can god-if-there-is-one let him behave like that. All his
talk of family values and look how he treats his wife. But he reckons she knows and doesn’t care. That she’s happy in her own world. With the lights camera action. Adoration of all the women in the church.

If I was a god I’d wipe them out. It doesn’t help the cause at all. I wonder if there’s another religion in the world, a church where people like me fit in.