The Words in My Hands, page 22
I indicate our half-drunk cups of BioSpore. “It doesn’t seem like they’re any closer to getting their act together.”
“The board collected all that money from the Australian government for rations, and they still couldn’t give us actual recon. Just the unprocessed ingredients. That’s a crime! I trusted them. Piper, I gave them my life. And in return, they’ve thrown me onto the street. I could have helped save them … if they’d just let me.”
“Mum, you need to accept that they’ve shafted you. Why would a big corporation that prioritizes profit start prioritizing people now?”
I sound like Marley. I like it.
“Hmm. I suppose. Are the beans ready yet?”
I check them again, but they’re still hard pebbles. Mum and I sit up for another half-hour, until all the twigs for the stove are gone and the flame dies. The beans are slightly softer. Experimentally, I test one between my teeth. There’s a thin coating of powdery stuff, like potatoes, around the edges, but inside it’s like a rock. Nup, I’m definitely not eating that. I spit it out.
“These are going to take hours to cook,” I say. “Where will we get the fuel?”
Mum shakes her head. Neither of us can face another go at the BioSpore, which has turned back into rubber in the bottom of our cups, so we go to bed as hungry as ever.
On my way to visit Robbie and Marley, I notice the bushes along the Merri Creek are getting smaller, with few dead twigs left under any of my favorites. I snap off some small branches instead, even though green wood doesn’t burn so well. It’s late afternoon and the bike path is packed with cyclists and families walking together. On the other side of the path a man is crouched under a different bush, collecting twigs so fine they’re almost just dry grass.
“Did you get rations?” I ask Robbie when she opens the gate.
She grins, her eyes sparkly. “We’ve got bread!” she signs.
“They gave you bread?”
She shakes her head, miming opening the rations packet, discovering the recon components, and tossing them aside in disgust. Then she sees a packet of wheat, and her fingers jump up and down in her palm in excitement. She kisses the imaginary wheat packet, rips it open, and sets to work—grinding the grain, kneading, waiting while it rises. Finally, she bakes it, and the smell is heavenly. “Come and taste it,” she signs, grabbing my wrist and leading me to the outdoor kitchen.
The loaf, wrapped in a tea towel, is dense and deep-brown, not the fluffy white I was expecting. Robbie cuts a thick slice, spreads it with butter and something dark from a jar, and hands it to me. And it’s perfect: rich and heavy, the butter creamy and the other stuff tangy and sweet. My head clears.
“What’s this?” I ask, pointing to the jar.
“Chutney.” She mimes making it in summer and putting away the jars for later when food is tight. “Did you get wheat?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “kidney beans.” I mime our disappointing experience last night, doing my best to infuse it with the same level of emotion Robbie did.
“You need to soak the beans in water first. Then they’ll be much faster to cook. Raw beans can make you really sick.”
Why doesn’t it say that on the packet? We could have saved all those twigs! I hope biting a bean wasn’t enough to infect me. I mime trying to read the nonexistent words on the packet, and Robbie laughs.
“You can also grind them and make bean cakes.” Robbie gestures for me to follow. She hands me a small but heavy stone bowl with a rounded stone stick, and shows me how I should use them to crush the beans.
A pair of arms slides around my waist and I twist my head around in surprise. Marley! He kisses my cheek and pulls me close against him. Again I’m flooded with a feeling of rightness. How I wish I could stay here with these two. Robbie knows how to do everything, the flow of food is consistent, and the beauty is intense.
Once I’ve finished my bread and Marley has downed a slice too, he asks if he can steal me away. “Come and see my room.”
He takes my hand and leads me upstairs. His room is tiny, set into the roof so you can’t even stand upright, except in the middle. But it’s homey, even though it’s filled with stuff like an electric guitar and big black speaker boxes and a visi-screen that’s bigger than I’d have expected for this little cottagey house.
He also has a double bed, which triggers the unpleasant image of him and Kelsey in it together. Marley sits down on it, and I sit beside him. “When did you get a double bed?” I ask.
“I’ve always had one. This is where my other mum, Van, lay to tell me stories while I was falling asleep.” Marley gestures to the side closest to the window.
“Do you think about her a lot?” I ask.
Sadness crosses his face. “Less as time goes by.” He swallows hard. “I wish I could hear her voice. Or ask her questions. There are so many questions I should have asked her.”
“Like what?”
“Why she wanted to have me. She was really against over-population, so it seems strange she’d want a child. And yet it was hardly an accident!”
I touch his shoulder gently. “Why not ask Robbie?”
“I have, but she just says Van wanted nothing more than to have me, and that she was so happy when she got pregnant with me.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Ten.” Marley’s eyes are shiny. He rubs them fiercely and says, “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”
“Okay.” Damn. I wanted to ask what happened. “Umm … How many girlfriends have you had?” I ask.
“I dunno. I’ve never counted. First I was with Matilda, when I was seven and she was six.”
I put my hands on my hips. “That doesn’t count. I mean real girlfriends.”
“She was a real girlfriend! We kissed!” Marley puckered up tightly and pecked the air. “What about you? How many have you had?”
I know he means boyfriends, but I deliberately misunderstand him. “My only girlfriend has been Taylor, my bestie. Only she’s not really my bestie anymore.”
“Why, what happened?”
I shrug. “I’m worried about her. I think her boyfriend is stopping her from doing what she wants. He seems to keep her on a tight leash.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“I know. He seems to be loaded. He has heaps of food, and I wonder if he’s using that to get her to do what he wants.”
“How can anyone have heaps of food right now? That sounds seriously dodgy.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on with that.” I hesitate, feeling unsure, but then press on. “She seems to have totally ditched me. And I know I should just be worried about what she’s caught up in, but I can’t help feeling really hurt. Why aren’t I important enough to her to stand up to him? I can’t imagine letting any guy come between me and her.” I feel better as soon as I’ve said it.
Marley purses his lips. “Ouch. Have you told her how you feel?”
“Sort of. But I just felt like I was pulling her in one direction while he was pulling her in another. I don’t want to be part of the problem.”
“Yeah. Sometimes I think we have to accept the ebb and flow of friendships. They don’t always last forever.”
I know he’s right. But it still doesn’t feel right to just forget about Taylor, leave her behind me.
I run my hands through my hair thoughtfully, and Marley copies me, his fingers tangling in it. He catches my eye and the mood changes when he pulls it gently, teasing.
“You evaded my question before,” he says. He pushes me down onto the bed, leaning over me.
I twist to free my hands. “What question? I would never do that!”
“How many boyfriends have you had?”
Oh. That. I’m surprised he even needs to ask. “A big fat none. It’s not like I’ve had boys lining up to get with the Deaf girl.”
“What?!”
I shrug.
“Are you saying that because you’re Deaf, no boy would want you?”
“Well, maybe, yeah.”
Marley sits up again. It’s hard to sign while we’re both lying down. “I don’t know what planet you’re on, but being Deaf does not make you any less desirable. In fact, it makes you seem amazing, clever, and alluring. You can lip-read, for god’s sake. Mystical talents abound!”
I blink and sit up too. “Well, you didn’t see it like that at first. You said yourself you didn’t want to be with me because I’m Deaf.”
“Not because being Deaf makes you unsexy. Because I’m a twisted mess of confusing emotions that I needed to work out. It took everything I had to try to convince myself that I wasn’t madly in lust with you. Trust me, I’m not the only guy who’ll feel this way.”
My mouth falls open at this, but before I can reply Marley wrestles me back down and we’re kissing, his breath hot in my mouth, flavored with bread and chutney and something else I can’t quite place. I close my eyes and lose myself in the softness of his lips and tongue. His hands slide up my back, and it feels as though he’s holding not just my body but my soul too. I tangle my legs around his, squeezing him tight to me, pressing my face into his neck and scratching my fingers down his chest over his shirt, then back up under it.
His skin against mine is electric, tingling. I inch his shirt up until it’s bunched around his armpits, and when he pulls it off I take mine off too, so we’re both just wearing jeans, except I have my bra on.
We hold each other, our lips grazing together, his eyes a direct line into mine, until Marley leans over and switches off the light. After that all communication is body language, except when I turn on my wristlet to message Mum. “I’m staying at Taylor’s tonight.”
Sunday 15 November
As soon as I get home, Mum hands me a package. I hot up when I see the contents: a tiny pill that will protect me from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases for three months.
As soon as I’ve put my hearing aids in, Mum starts. “Don’t ever lie to me again!”
“Mum! I didn’t …” I stop. I’ve never been a good liar.
“You haven’t seen Taylor in months, and all of a sudden, just after you get a boyfriend, you’re sleeping at her place?”
I slump. “We didn’t have sex.”
“And I’m not encouraging you to. Take it slowly. But swallow that. I don’t want you pregnant. And don’t lie to me again.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
She gives me a look—a good, long, hard one—and hugs me. I hug her back. Then she turns away, fiddling with her wristlet. There’s a blare of disjointed white noise: her news feeds.
I pull out my journal. Soon after, Mum tosses an empty recon box at me. She’s excited. “Piper! You nivatol me!”
I fumble my hearing aids back in. “Pardon?”
She holds out her wristlet. It frames a photo of me and the pond, the colors even more vibrant than in real life. You can see every detail of my skin, and tangled, greasy hair, and yet somehow in the photo I look striking and compelling.
I switch on my wristlet and tap through to the news.
NEWSMELBOURNE
McBride’s Daughter Rejects Recon in Bid to Solve Food Crisis
Piper, the 16-year-old Ddeaf daughter of former Organicore scientist Irene McBride, has turned her back on manufactured meals and is taking her chances growing wild food. In a move that’s proven popular with her neighbors, Piper’s created a thriving community garden on the on the grassy island down the middle of her Northcote street, which she expects will provide an abundance of vegetables, eggs, and meat for the community.
Piper, an artist whose work you may be familiar with from posters across the city, has designed and created an appealing space, bringing together isolated community members. Neighbors contribute tools and skills to support her vision, and take turns protecting the garden from potential vandalism.
“We didn’t know each other before Piper started this,” says neighbor Connie Sato, “but we’ve found food production can be a pleasure.”
The garden is an exciting model demonstrating how communities can work together to address the food crisis while adding beauty to our streets and strengthening human connections. Piper encourages News Melbourne followers to contact a group called Transition Towns to learn more. “The first step is to make compost,” she advises.
If Piper can do it, anyone can—and, in fact, only blocks away a copycat garden is being created by another local, inspired by Piper. Her inability to hear has not prevented her from creating a little oasis in the city.
Breaking news: McBride’s Garden Scheduled for Demolition. In a heartbreaking move, as we prepare this story for the feeds, the local council has classified Piper McBride’s community garden as “litter” and insists it be removed. What do you think? Share your views.
There are more photos, all stunning: Taggert, close-ups of the chooks, my compost poster.
“What’s this about rejecting recon?” Mum asks.
I shrug. “I never said that. Though maybe I will reject it now, after trying home-prepared BioSpore!”
“Hmm. I guess it’s a sensationalist way to hook in readers.” Mum looks me over, her eyes narrowed. She seems … approving. “You’ve done a good thing, Piper.”
Did she need to read about it in the feeds to get that? She’s seen me out there day after day, but she’s thought I’ve just been faffing around with a pile of weeds and a bunch of dropouts. I guess I have been, and I am a dropout—but Amber makes it sound glamorous.
“Maybe now you’ll forgive me for not going to school?”
Mum shakes her head. “I still think you’re making a mistake there, Piper. But it’s your life. I can’t stop you.”
Mum’s so stubborn—she will never change her mind. But will the council, with all this publicity?
My wristlet buzzes. It’s Madison, from school. I haven’t thought of her in ages. “Seems you are on to bigger and better things. Way to go, girl!”
I raise an eyebrow. She never spoke like that to me at school. I like her casual, friendly tone, and it strikes me as a pity that I never knew she talked like this back at school. In fact, the whole school thing suddenly seems unbearably sad. How different things might have been if I’d understood my classmates and had been able to have actual friendships with them.
My wristlet buzzes again. It’s Alice, my art teacher. “So exciting to read what you’re up to! I hope you’re keeping up with your journal. Drop in some time and show it to me.”
The next message is from Taylor. “Pipes, you’re famous! And now you have a boyfriend called Marley?!! We have so much to talk about. Sorry I had to rush off the other day. I can’t wait to hear it all, truly.”
I blink hard, then fire back: “Yep, can’t believe I have an actual boyfriend. You sound … different. Is everything okay?”
To my astonishment, she answers right away. “How’d you know? Beau and I had a fight. He was in a mood, driving dangerously—I think he wanted to scare me. So I got out of the car, and he drove off! Asshole.”
Driving—his own car?! “Where are you? I can meet you.”
“Footscray. Thanks, but I’m walking. Almost home. He’ll calm down and get over this, don’t worry.”
“I’m worried about you. What kind of boyfriend dumps you in Footscray? Not cool. And what do you mean by dangerous driving?”
“You know, going fast, slamming on the brakes, doing skids. I hate it when he does that. But it’s only when he’s mad, and he didn’t dump me, Piper—I got out. So that’s my fault.”
“Today wasn’t a one-off?” This is bad. Can’t Taylor see that? “I get having food is awesome, but …” I start cautiously.
“I know, I know. It’s complicated, though. Not easy to extricate myself.”
“But you want to? Leave him?”
“Argh. I have to go—I’m home.”
“Taylor, don’t go in! I can help you sort things out. Come over! Or let me come to you.”
“It’s just not that simple. Pipes, I need to go deal with this. Love you.” She signs off with a kiss, and once again she’s gone.
I sigh shakily, feeling a little sick. I miss her so much, and now I’m even more worried than I was before. I consider telling Mum, but … what could she do? Taylor didn’t ask anything about Marley, either. It’s unbelievable that I have my first boyfriend, and I haven’t even told her how it happened.
My wristlet continues to buzz intermittently all afternoon—everyone I’ve known seems to have something to say. I watch the feeds too, as people log their dismay that my garden will be demolished. Amber adds another update saying that News Melbourne will be seeking commentary from the council.
I show the update to Mum, and she rewards me with a cup of milky, sugary tea. We’ve worked out we can have two cups each a day. We ate the eggs on Thursday, beans on Friday, and Mum, it seems, polished off the last of the beans without me when I didn’t come home last night. There’s nothing left now but the BioSpore, and it’s dinnertime …
I open the packet again and look at it doubtfully. It’s meant to be full of calories. Calories = energy, right? I carve off a slab and try eating it plain, no flavoring powder, no heating, no nothing. I might as well be eating a rubbery brick, and have to chew and chew, which is gross, but it doesn’t actually taste bad. It’s just … an effort. And it does make a difference—I feel the calories hit my bloodstream.
I hand a slice to Mum. “I think this is the only way we’re going to get energy right now. Next time you get rations, try to get a pack with wheat in it. We can make bread.”
“You can’t tell what you’ve got till you open the pack,” Mum says. “And it’s not like I have a say. They just hand me my package, same as everyone else.”
