The Words in My Hands, page 20
I frown. This isn’t what I was expecting. “Is … is he manipulating you? He won’t let you go out?”
Taylor shakes her head, twirling some hair around her index finger. “He just likes it when I’m around. And I have to be ready to go out with him at a moment’s notice.”
I flick off my hearing aids. There’s no point subjecting myself to the blare of the café if I can’t hear her words. “That’s controlling. That’s a red flag, Tay.”
“No, it’s not. He’s not. He’s just … well, maybe a bit. But it’s my own fault, I choose it. I like hanging out with him too. I’ve got this. I’m fine.”
“So fine you can’t even see your best friend? Or is it that you don’t want to see me?”
Taylor sinks her face back into her hands, and if she answers, I can’t tell. So now I realize that things haven’t been easy for her either—but surely it’s worth standing up to Beau for me?
Eventually Taylor lifts her face again, her eyes weary. Are they red from rubbing, or has she been crying? She doesn’t say anything, and hurt sits heavy in my stomach. I could never have imagined being relegated to last priority in my best friend’s life like this.
I swallow. It’s clear nothing’s about to change, and that she doesn’t want to talk more about Beau, so I change the subject. “What have you been eating? How come you aren’t thin too?” Just a few months ago this would have been an insulting question, but everything seems different now.
“That’s the thing. Beau has plenty of food. It’s a good reason to keep him happy.”
“But how? It’s not like you can buy it in shops.”
“Beau has … knichas.”
“What? Connections? The black market?”
Taylor shrugs. “Maybe.” She glances at her wristlet and springs forward. “I have to go. He’s waiting for me.”
I try to take her hand, but with a kiss to my cheek she’s gone.
If I had to choose between food and my best friend, which would I pick? My hunger gnaws at me. I’d like to say my best friend, but I can see it’s not that simple.
Monday 2 November
Two days later, I discover huge orange stickers plastered all over the chook house, security platform, and even the rocks around our little garden pond.
I feel numb as I survey the garden. The mandala’s beds are now a vibrant mass of green, with tiny yellow flowers sprouting between the zucchini and cucumber leaves, and white flowers that look like little butterflies scattered along the pea vines. The chickens are larger, their down now replaced with proper feathers. Zoe’s crouched beside their plastic pen, at work building them a more permanent home from upcycled planks of fake wood. My head throbs suddenly, and I realize I haven’t had a headache in ages.
Zoe sees me and writes in the dirt, “I explained it’s a community garden. They just said they’re doing their job, and to take it up with the council.”
Was this all for nothing?
Will we get to eat anything before they destroy it all?
Zoe puts a strong arm around me. She’s speaking, but of course I can’t understand her without seeing her face. I shrug and she lets me go and writes in the dirt again. “I bet it’s just hot air.”
I think of Sprouted Earth and I’m not so sure. Why is the council putting resources into this when there’s a food and fuel crisis to solve? Surely they can see that we need other food sources?
I was headed to the bike shop, but I’m too upset. I go back inside instead, putting my hearing aids in. “Mum, the council is going to destroy our garden!” I show her a photo of one of the orange stickers. “Is this Organicore’s doing?”
Mum’s up to her elbows in cold water, washing our sheets. Her T-shirt is dirty, and her hair hangs limp and unwashed. I’ve never seen her look so unkempt. She shakes her hands dry, takes my wrist with ice-cold fingers, and squints at my wristlet. “That law was made years ago. Surely it’s a normal part of the council’s work, to keep our streets free of litter?”
“It’s not litter, Mum!” I shout. “It’s a community garden!”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I know you’ve been working hard out there. But it is public land.”
“Doesn’t that mean it belongs to the public? Can’t we use it how we want to? Mum, can you suggest to the Organicore board that since they can’t meet demand right now, they get behind some laws that will make it easier for us to produce our own food?”
Mum sighs and puts her hands back into the pot, swirling and rubbing the sheet against itself. “Bob Forsyth just called. You remember he got my job when we didn’t make it to Sydney? Well, he says the job is a joke. He hasn’t been paid, or received anything like enough recon. The apartment is a dump and the electricity has been disconnected. He says Organicore knew they couldn’t afford him and basically tricked him to work for free. I think Organicore has bigger things to worry about than council littering laws right now. I’m not sure the company is going to make it.”
“Lucky we didn’t go to Sydney then.”
Mum raises an eyebrow at me. “Yes, perhaps it is lucky,” she says dryly. But I can tell she’s not about to thank me for the change of plan.
Since the orange stickers appeared on Monday, the neighbors and I have made sure there’s always someone in our garden. What if they decide to come early and bulldoze the lot? Today it’s my turn, with Taggert “assisting” me, and we’re giving the garden a drink. He tugs at my arm and I look up to see a boy a bit younger than me walking … a goat! On a leash! I remember the woman with the cow. People are finding clever solutions to their hunger.
Taggert and I settle on the security platform with some of my art stuff. There are a couple of cushions up here now, and a candle stub. It’s homely. Taggert draws a bunch of red scribbles inside a rough circle, and I sit thinking about what Mum said—that the council sees our garden as rubbish. If we put up my educational compost poster, and they read it, might they come to understand that this place is actually valuable?
I pull a folded copy of the poster from my journal and deliberate over where to put it, settling in the end for gluing it to a board cut from a plastic box, which I tie to the chicken-wire fence, Taggert holding it in place. Once it’s up we stand back to admire our work. It makes the whole garden look more professional. I think that maybe if we add a bit more art, it will make the place look loved and cared for, so next I spray our favorite stencils onto several more plastic boxes and attach them to the chook fence and the security platform.
Halim comes out and nods, as though we require his approval. Archie comes to fetch Taggert, who makes him admire our work too, and Gary emerges from a house down the far end of the street and ducks his head awkwardly when I tell him again how much I love his pond mosaic.
I feel a slight rumbling under my feet, like when a tram goes past, and everyone turns toward Westgarth Street. There are six horses pulling what looks like a truck flatbed, loaded high with something secured beneath a tarp and crisscrossed ropes. Behind the truck walk several soldiers. The sight is so astonishing that we all traipse to the end of our street to get a better view, where we find the street lined with other people like us, staring.
Archie says something and Gary writes on his wristlet to interpret. “He thinks it might be rations. They’re setting up in the town hall up on High Street.”
A woman in her late twenties wearing a neat high-necked suit, with short curly hair and warm dark eyes, rolls up to us in a wheelchair. She’s cleaner than the rest of us, though her shirt has small stains on the ruffles and the cuffs are grubby. She seems to know Halim, who introduces her to Archie and Gary, and gestures to me. The woman does a double take, wheels her chair around, and holds out her hand for me to shake. Her mouth moves and she stares at me intensely, but I don’t catch her words.
“That’s Amber,” Gary types. “She’s been wanting to meet the person who started our garden. She says it would make a good story.”
Amber takes Gary’s lead and taps away on her own wristlet. She’s the fastest one-handed typist I’ve ever seen. “I work for News Melbourne. I was wondering if I could interview you?”
I shrug, surprised, then meet her eye and nod.
“Now?” she types.
I hesitate. I’m not wearing my hearing aids. I could go and get them, but she seems unfazed by my Ddeafness, and I figure we can find a way to accommodate my inability to hear and the fact that she probably thinks I can’t speak. I give her the thumbs-up and she gestures for me to go in front of her, pointing to a house a few doors up from Halim’s. As we pass the garden, she stops and points to the orange stickers, shaking her head.
“I don’t think our garden will be here much longer,” I type on my wristlet.
“That’s why I want to interview you. I’ve seen you all out here, working together. The council should be encouraging this! They might be reluctant to go against a positive story from News Melbourne.” Amber rolls her chair up the rim of concrete onto the island and stops in front of my compost poster. “Is this your work?”
I nod and she gives me an emphatic thumbs-up. “I thought you couldn’t publish anything on Cesspool that goes against government policy,” I say, tripping on the gutter as I do so. That’s what I get for typing while walking, but I manage to right myself.
Amber nods. “It’s bloody annoying having to find ways around their censorship! It’s a fine line, but I think I know how to get this through. We’ll make it a human interest story, about you inspiring the community with a solution to the food crisis.”
“If you want to blog freely, why not just post on the old internet?” I ask.
“Then I’d lose my job at News Melbourne.”
She leads me to the front door of her very ordinary-looking old Edwardian terrace house, front steps replaced by a ramp. When I step inside, though, I see the whole place has been gutted. There are bare wires everywhere, the room is lit like daylight with bright fluorescent lights, and one side of the house is filled entirely with technical equipment—two huge visi-screens side by side, speakers rigged in each corner, a countertop littered with microphones, video cameras, and styluses. News Melbourne must pay well.
She gestures for me to grab a stool and place it in front of one of the visis, then hands me a portable keyboard. “I’m going to record my questions with my voice, then I’ll type them for you, okay? You can type your answers, and I’ll get someone else to read them up for the audio-feeds.”
I nod, suddenly intimidated. What if I don’t know what to say?
But it turns out I’m a bit of a natural. I tell her all about how my desire for food slowly morphed into a community garden for our street. How it’s beautiful now, a little oasis in the city. How it started when I attended the Transition Towns workshop, then met Robbie, and how next thing I was making compost and it all grew from there. (I don’t mention my complete emotional meltdown at the workshop—or the fact that I first tried looking up food-growing on Cesspool and failed.)
Amber soaks it all in, giving what looks like a professional laugh every now and again, just like she’s on a live video feed. “I think a great many people out there are with you, Piper, on wanting to grow their own food. So, peeps, Piper is quite the artist, and as well as creating a beautiful garden, she’s done an incredible series of drawings showing the techniques she used to create it.” To me, she asks, “Can we include your compost poster? I think our audience would be very interested to see it.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I think we’re good to go. Thank you, Piper.”
“But we didn’t get to the orange stickers … ?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get everyone to fall in love with you and the concept, then we’ll make a heartbreaking announcement that the council has decided to dismantle your garden. It will get a reaction. Trust me.”
Monday 9 November
Arriving home from the bike shop after work, I discover a woman with a huge camera crouched in the middle of the island, snapping close-ups of our plants. Taggert watches from our driveway, holding his little plastic watering can.
The woman sees me and straightens. “Piper?”
I nod, wary. Is she from the council? Documenting our trespass? Taggert waves to me, and I check both ways for cars (a fairly pointless exercise these days) and gesture for him to join me.
The photographer types on her wristlet: “I’m from News Melbourne. Amber asked me to get some photos to go with your story. Would you mind?”
I touch my hair. It’s filthy. So are my clothes. But the photographer indicates she doesn’t want me to change a thing. She has Taggert stand a little closer to me and takes lots of
shots of us, first with his watering can, then up close with the chickens and squatting among the plants in the mandala beds. She asks Taggert a question, but he doesn’t reply, and when she looks at me I just shrug.
I try to see the garden as the photographer must see it. It looks loved and inviting. The herbs’ leaves around the pond now mostly cover the dirt. We’ve started a second mandala garden bed on the other side of the chook pen, two piles of compost currently working their magic to soften the ground. The chickens are bigger, pecking happily at the ground. The security platform is now home to a thin camping mattress and a sleeping bag, as well as recon boxes holding our next batch of seedlings.
I peer into the pond, wondering if any tadpoles have hatched. Robbie said they might, but I can’t see any yet. Even without live creatures, though, the pond adds a magical air to the place, and that’s not lost on the photographer, who snaps several shots of me leaning over the water.
The photographer makes her exit, and I sag. All this will be gone come the new year. And then what will I have left?
Working at the bike shop must have really taken it out of me yesterday, as I’m so weary this morning I can’t drag myself out of bed. If I could just eat a huge meal … recharge.
I’ll go to the shop this afternoon, I tell myself.
I’m still lying in bed, listless, when Mum stands over me and gestures for me to put on my hearing aids. I feel too tired to process any sound, but obligingly shove them into my ears.
“I’m going to the rush center in High Street—I’m starting work tomorrow. I want to check it out.”
“Going where?”
“Rations center.”
So the rumors were true! “When are we getting rations?”
“The center opens tomorrow. I’ll be managing the lineups.” Mum looks brighter than I’ve seen her in ages.
“I thought you were going to manage the whole place?”
“Apparently not,” she says dryly, “but at least it’s a job.”
“That’s great, Mum,” I say. “I can’t believe it—we’ll have recon delivered today and rations tomorrow.”
“Organicore isn’t delivering today. They’re contracted to provide recon as part of the rations instead.”
My newfound energy drains out of me.
When Mum’s gone I ditch my hearing aids and check the recon cupboard, but there are only empty boxes inside awaiting recycling. I don’t even have weeds for a tea.
I flop onto my belly, and my mind wanders to Taylor. I want to message her, but don’t want to be just another pressure on her—Beau tugging her one way, me the other. How can I be supportive, kind? My gut tells me I should be worried—I think again of her red-rimmed eyes. But she was gone so quickly, and given she basically denied there was a problem, what can I do? Maybe just stay in touch …
I snap a photo of my milk thistle and send it to her. “Weird fact: this weed tastes surprisingly good with potato.”
The light above me flashes on and off. Huh? I glance at the door, which is slightly ajar, with a hand snaking through the gap. I know that hand—gold skin, pale hairs. Marley!
What an awesome way to get my attention! It’s so respectful. Mum or Taylor have always just walked right in if I don’t hear them knock. I’ve never known for sure if I have privacy.
Forgetting my exhaustion, I jump up. It is Marley. But his eyes are swollen, his shoulders stooped. I hold out my arms to him and he almost falls into them. I inhale deeply and lay my cheek against his hair, breaking my own rules.
“What’s wrong?” I sign when he shifts away from me. I take his hand and lead him inside. He’s never seen inside the guesthouse before. It’s not cozy and lovely like his place, but I don’t care. I’m just glad Mum’s not home.
“I broke up with Kelsey,” he signs.
I stare at him, unable to suppress a beautiful bubble of gladness from rising in my chest. I keep my face serious. “Why?”
“I gave up.” Tears squeeze out of his eyes, and he makes no effort to wipe them away. “I thought I could do it—be someone I’m not, you know. A hearing person. A normal person.” He glances around, spots my bed, and sits down. “She’s nice. She’s lovely. But she doesn’t get me.” Marley picks up my journal and absently runs his finger over some doodles I drew earlier.
“Did you two have a fight?” I ask, sitting next to him.
Marley shakes his head. “This morning she asked how Robbie and I fight, if we can’t yell at each other.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Fighting in Auslan is the same as fighting in English! It’s not some glorious spectacle to ponder over with excitement! I told her it was over.”
I can’t help but feel sorry for Kelsey. What if I ask him some question about Ddeafness and he responds by ending our friendship? But on another level, I get what he means. I remember Gary telling me how well I spoke. I knew he only meant to compliment me, but there was something underneath it, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, that made me deeply uncomfortable. Something about knowing I can’t trust hearing people to give me an honest assessment of my voice? Not that I care. But there’s a divide there. An “us and them.” And Kelsey asked her question from the other side of this divide.
