My Life As an Alphabet Read online

  ‘I do not want you to buy me any more birthday presents, Rich Uncle Brian.’

  His face sagged. That probably wasn’t his fault. There must be a dominant gene responsible for face-sagging that runs in the male line of the family.

  ‘Why ever not, Pumpkin?’

  ‘Because you are a dark and brooding cloud, Rich Uncle Brian,’ I said. ‘I speak metaphorically. No offence.’

  He sighed and gazed at me with eyes of liquidy sadness. He stroked his moustache. He jingled coins in his pocket. I felt the need to clarify.

  ‘I’m a gel pen kind of girl, Rich Uncle Brian, rather than a solid gold Cartier fountain pen kind of girl. Your presents are too expensive.’

  ‘I can afford them.’

  ‘But I can’t afford to receive them.’

  ‘You want me to buy you gel pens?’

  ‘No. Dad buys me gel pens. It’s what he does.’

  ‘So what then?’ He spread his arms wide. ‘I can’t not buy you anything, Pumpkin. You’re my only niece and I love you.’

  I considered his point and deemed it fair.

  ‘Give money to charity on my behalf,’ I said. ‘There are starving children all over the world. Save lives, Rich Uncle Brian, rather than giving me things I don’t want and can’t use. That would be the best present.’

  There was some argument. RUB likes things you can see and touch and hear and smell. Preferably expensive things. He wasn’t impressed with the idea of saving the lives of people he had never met. You couldn’t see, touch, hear or smell that kind of present. But I got my way. Now I receive regular reports on irrigation projects in Africa, educational programs in Asia and improved health outcomes in remote indigenous communities. They are better than gel pens and that is saying a lot.

  So. One dark and brooding cloud dissolved away, but another remains.

  My sister Sky died on the fifteenth of June. Tomorrow is the anniversary of her death. She would have been seven.

  No one has ever discussed this, no one has drawn up a plan or a schedule, but over the years, a routine has been established for the anniversary of Sky’s death. On the Saturday closest to the date [and tomorrow coincides exactly] we dress in our best sombre clothes. We drive to the cemetery. We spend a few hours at her gravestone. If it is sunny, we spread out a blanket on the grass. If it is raining, we take camping chairs and umbrellas. Dad paces back and forth, back and forth, and doesn’t say anything. Mum cries, normally without making a sound. I watch Mum and Dad, go for a walk and wait for time to pass. It always does. Eventually. Then we drive home and Mum retreats to her room, Dad retreats to his shed and I retreat to my dictionary or Dickens. Very often we have not exchanged one word.

  Mum pushed a bowl of Weet-Bix towards me. Dad had left for work and I had half an hour before the bus for school. Mum was still in her dressing gown and I had the clear impression she’d stay in it for the rest of the day. The bags under her eyes were enormous and heavy. They needed castors and pull-up handles.

  ‘What do you want for your birthday, Pumpkin?’ she asked.

  ‘Can I have anything?’

  She busied herself with the teapot.

  ‘Within reason. You know we don’t have much money.’

  ‘This won’t cost anything. I would like Douglas Benson From Another Dimension to come with us to the cemetery tomorrow.’

  Mum put the teapot down. She had her back to me, but I could tell her body had tensed. She was as inflexible as wood. Silence stretched.

  ‘No,’ she said finally. Just one word, squeezed out, hard and cold.

  ‘Why not?’

  She turned towards me and put fingers to the corners of her eyes. Rubbed, like there was a pain there somewhere.

  ‘You know why, Candice,’ she said. ‘Pumpkin’ had been abandoned in favour of ‘Candice’. This was not a good sign. ‘Family only. We do not invite friends. We do not have a party. We do not celebrate. We pay our respects.’

  Most times, I let Mum get away with this. I avoid confrontation because it is always ugly and best avoided. But today, for some reason, I felt the need to argue.

  ‘So why don’t we invite Rich Uncle Brian then?’ I asked. ‘If it is a family-only thing.’

  ‘And you know the answer to that as well, Candice,’ she snapped. ‘Do not be deliberately stupid.’

  ‘Why can’t we celebrate?’ I added. I knew this conversation was headed for disaster, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Sky should be celebrated . . .’

  ‘Her name was Frances.’

  ‘. . . it should be a cause of joy that she lived, not an excuse for misery because she’s dead. I am tired of feeling sad, Mum. I am glad I knew her, but she’s gone . . .’

  ‘Please stop, Candice.’

  ‘. . . and it’s time you accepted that. Sky is dead, Mum, but we aren’t . . .’

  ‘SHUT UP!’ I had no time to duck and it probably would have done me no good if I had. The teapot missed my head by a few centimetres and smashed against the wall behind me. It exploded and I felt the prick of porcelain shards against my neck. The shattered handle rolled between my feet, rocked a moment or two and then was still. I raised a hand to my neck and plucked a small sliver from my skin. A thin smear of blood glistened on my index finger.

  Mum put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wide. We looked at each other for what seemed like minutes, but was probably only a second or two.

  ‘I’m going to school,’ I said. I picked up my backpack and headed for the door. Mum remained frozen, but as I left the kitchen she shuddered and rushed after me.

  ‘Candice,’ she said at the front door. But I was already halfway down the path.

  ‘Candice, please. I’m sorry, Pumpkin.’

  I said nothing. I didn’t turn back. Not because I was angry with Mum. Not because I didn’t want us to make up. I kept walking because I didn’t want her to see the tears in my eyes. And I didn’t want to see those that I knew were in hers.

  ‘I’m more of a theoretical scientist,’ said Douglas Benson From Another Dimension.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t do physical experiments or mess around in labs,’ he continued, as if such practices were vaguely unpleasant and undesirable. ‘I think. All my science is in my head.’

  I examined Douglas’s head. It was certainly a strange shape. He wore his hair very short and this allowed all the peculiar bumps and depressions of his skull to stand out in relief. Imagine a face drawn on a potato and you’ll get the general idea. It was easy to imagine this knobbly orb internally overcrowded with splendid things, jostling for room and position and bulging out due to lack of space. I considered what he said and it struck me that being a theoretical something was a perfect state of affairs.

  Take Darren Mitford, for example [see ‘C Is For Chaos’]. He doesn’t bother with actually being a student in any practical way, like listening, or writing. This saves him time and effort. Maybe he is a theoretical student and it is all in his head [I don’t think there is much in there, mind you, but a theoretical student wouldn’t have to prove it]. I could be a theoretical supermodel or a theoretical postie. The possibilities are exciting.

  ‘Nonetheless,’ continued Douglas, ‘such a machine would not be difficult to build.’ He put one finger to his mouth and rubbed at his lumpy head with the other hand. ‘An automatic fish-food dispenser. Hmmmm. A simple timer that releases a valve once a day which in turn dispenses a programmed amount of food directly onto the water’s surface. Child’s play, really. Why do you want it, Candice?’

  ‘I worry about Earth-Pig Fish’s religious temperament,’ I replied. ‘I am attempting to encourage any atheistic tendencies she might have.’

  Douglas Benson From Another Dimension stopped scratching his head and looked at me as if I were mad. In practice, rather than theoretically.

  ‘I see,’ he said in a way that showed me he didn’t.

  ‘Would you like to come to my birthday party on Sunday?’ I said.

  ‘Than
k you,’ he replied. ‘Is it going to be a big party?’

  ‘You, me, Mum and Dad,’ I said. ‘So twenty-five percent bigger than previous years.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that is thirty-three-and-a-third percent bigger,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’ll take your word for it. It’s going to be full of drama, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there is a chance I might die a violent death,’ I said.

  Douglas scratched his head again and squinted at me. I could almost see his thoughts squirming under the surface of his scalp. His head theoretically rippled.

  Saturday was sunny, so I put on a dress with a bright floral pattern. Rich Uncle Brian had bought it for me a while ago for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained. I looked at myself in my wardrobe mirror. Dirty blonde hair [though I’d just washed it], freckles, flat chest and stick-thin arms and legs. I didn’t look like a theoretical supermodel. I looked like a practical one. I found a fascinator tucked at the back of a shelf in the wardrobe and secured it, as best I could, with hairpins. Rich Uncle Brian had once taken me to a horse race and had bought it for me. I hadn’t worn it then because it looked like a television aerial stuck to my head and I was sure it would have scared the horses. It still looked like a television aerial stuck to my head. I finished my outfit with a pair of bright red plastic sunglasses and examined the final effect.

  I resembled a scarecrow with a television aerial stuck to its head.

  It would do. I went down to the kitchen, prepared for an unpleasant scene. It didn’t happen.

  Mum and Dad were already there. Dad was getting in pacing practice. He wore his only suit – which was dark and shiny. Mum was dry-eyed, probably because she felt she was an expert in tears and didn’t need to rehearse. She wore a black dress. She was as thin as me, but her skin was pale, like sunlight hadn’t kissed it in years. It reminded me of cheese left too long in the fridge. Mum looked me up and down and a tendon bunched in her arm. Her mouth opened. Her mouth closed again. Earth-Pig Fish couldn’t have done it better. There was silence.

  ‘We’d better go,’ she muttered finally.

  It was a ten-minute drive to the cemetery and no one said a word. Dad parked, unpacked the picnic blanket, a backpack and a bunch of flowers and we trooped through the small gate and along a path winding between headstones. Still no one said a word. Sky’s plot was in the middle of the cemetery and I was pleased about that. I liked her at the centre, rather than relegated to the wings. Dad put the backpack on the ground, unfolded the blanket and laid it across the grass at the end of her plot. Mum removed the shrivelled flowers in the vase by the headstone and carefully arranged the new flowers in their place. Then she filled up the vase with water from a bottle she carried in her handbag. Dad started pacing. Mum knelt on the blanket. No one said a word. Again. Mum’s shoulders started to shake, though she made no sound. I read the inscription on the headstone, but I kept the words in my head. I always do. I have my routine as well. ‘Frances, beloved daughter and sister.’ Then the dates when she lived. A short time. Sadder, somehow, for being chiselled in stone.

  I stood. Dad paced. Mum knelt.

  I wondered what lay beneath the mound of grass. Was there anything left of Sky by now? Worms, and skittering things that like the dark and the damp and the soil, would have been busy. Bones, probably. That’s all that would be left. A tiny skeleton, a jumble that could never be put back together. It is difficult to pay respect to bones. Or to words on a headstone. Because Sky could be somewhere – I hoped she was somewhere – but I knew the somewhere wasn’t here.

  I looked up. The sky was fretted with the silhouettes of leaves. Towards a hidden horizon lay a canopy of light, all powdery blue. But over our heads a dark and heavy cloud loomed. I watched the way smoky tendrils curled and shifted in its centre. Suddenly a fat blob of water smacked my forehead and made me flinch. And then another. And another. Dad stopped pacing and hurried to the backpack. He took out three umbrellas, the kind that telescope open at the flick of a switch. He opened one and gave it to Mum. She took it automatically. She held it above her head, but other than that one action, didn’t move a muscle. Dad handed me another, took the last one for himself and opened it. He resumed pacing.

  I switched my gaze from the cloud above to the tightly furled contraption in my hand. The rain was falling harder now. The silence in the cemetery was replaced by the pitter-patter of falling drops. A lock of hair plastered to my cheek. I liked the rain. It felt as if I was under the world’s largest shower. Cold. The leaves on nearby trees shone greener, washed and polished by the rain.

  I flicked the switch on my umbrella and it bloomed into a canvas flower, bright with yellow and green stripes. I twirled it so the stripes merged and blurred into each other. Mum knelt in her little cone of dryness. Dad paced and took his dryness with him. I felt the rain trickle under my collar and run down my back. The umbrella spun before my eyes.

  I danced.

  I watched a movie once. An old movie. A man was dancing in torrential rain, jumping and splashing in puddles. He used his umbrella, not to keep dry, but for balance. I loved that dance. It made words. It said, I don’t care. I am happy and the rain cannot change that. The world is wonderful. Throw whatever you like at me, I refuse to bend before it. I am happy.

  So I danced. I jumped in puddles. I swung the umbrella in swooping arcs. I smiled and held my head up to the crying sky, welcoming it.

  Mum knelt. Dad paced. I danced.

  You know the phrase dysfunctional family?

  Welcome to my world.

  N

  IS FOR NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

  Douglas Benson From Another Dimension gave me breasts for my birthday.

  It was certainly a change from gel pens and I told him that.

  ‘It’s certainly a change from gel pens,’ I said.

  He switched from one foot to another. I had never seen him embarrassed before, but I had read about the signs. Flushing a strange and unnatural shade of red, shifting from foot to foot, unable to make eye contact. Douglas scored three out of three.

  ‘They’re very nice,’ I said, gazing at the two strange items on my lap. ‘They are the nicest artificial breasts anyone has ever given me.’

  That was true, but he spotted the flaw in my statement immediately, probably because he thinks a lot and has strange knobbly lumps on his head.

  ‘I bet they’re the only artificial breasts you’ve ever received,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That is true,’ I replied. ‘Certainly.’

  He shuffled some more.

  ‘I made them myself,’ he muttered.

  ‘Fancy,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just that . . .’ he went in for more shuffling. I started to worry about bald patches on the carpet. ‘You’ve mentioned . . . you know . . . how you were worried about . . . you know . . . things not happening . . . you know . . . there.’ He made a general nod to where my chest might be, though, to be honest, the nod was so general and directionless he could have been indicating the cabinet where Mum keeps a collection of glass animals. I couldn’t remember mentioning my lack of breasts to Douglas Benson From Another Dimension, but then again, I can’t remember everything I’ve ever said. Douglas blurted on, like he had a speech and wanted to get it out before his courage deserted him. ‘So I did research on the web about . . . you know . . . and what they should be made of. Then it was a simple matter of engineering. They inflate . . .’ He said this with pride as if inflation would win over the most cynical of bosomless doubters. He almost made eye contact. ‘. . . so you can go from . . . you know . . .’ He held his own hands against his chest and then moved them out a considerable distance. If I inflated them to that size I’d fall forward and puncture them. I didn’t mention this because it would be ungrateful. ‘Whatever you want,’ he finished.

  ‘They are very nice,’ I said. ‘I will wear them to the party.’

  ‘Really?’ He was so happy he looke
d at me for a couple of seconds before his eyes slipped away. ‘Facsimile Mother said I was mad. She insisted I get you something else.’ He handed over another present and I unwrapped it. It was a calligraphy set which was brilliant and an exciting variation on gel pens.

  ‘Thank you, Douglas Benson From Another Dimension,’ I said. ‘They are lovely presents.’

  Douglas had turned up at nine in the morning because I had planned a day out for my birthday. Mum and Dad wanted something simple and straightforward like chicken parmigiana at a local restaurant followed by a birthday cake, a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to you’ and an early night. But I insisted. It was my birthday after all.

  ‘You want to wander around a marina in Brisbane, Pumpkin?’ said Mum. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Rich Uncle Brian will be there,’ I said. ‘And he wants to see me on my birthday.’

  Mum scratched her head. ‘Well, I can understand that, but couldn’t you arrange to see him separately? You know he and your dad don’t see eye to eye. Couldn’t he take you out first and then the three of us could do something later? Go to a restaurant, for example.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s my birthday and my choice.’ This closed the discussion as it was designed to do.