Resistance, page 18
As soon as they were seated, Claude began by asking what I knew of the women and girls who had been residents—inmates more likely—of this place in its previous incarnation. He was sure that many of them were very young.
I could only agree with him, I said.
‘Biologically speaking, we’re capable of going from childhood straight into parenthood,’ he said, frowning at me. ‘A girl close to Poppy’s age can bear a child.’ Lisa reached for his hand. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ he went on, ‘is that parenthood is often thrust upon us even when we don’t have the things we need: a place to live, an income to support you, people to help. The self-belief to stand up to those who want to take your child away.’
The room grew silent, save for the dull crescendo of traffic as the lights at the intersection turned green. The traffic moved on, the outside noise faded, and for a few suspended seconds I heard only the sound of Claude’s breathing.
His mother was fifteen, he said, when she gave birth to him in the bush hospital in M. She was alone in the delivery room, her mother having been refused entry, and the sole midwife having ducked out, only minutes before, for a restorative cup of tea. He liked to think that he timed his birth well, Claude said. They had a few minutes alone together, his mother and he, until the midwife, returning to find him not only birthed but in his mother’s arms, whisked him away into cold sheets and coarse blankets. Sometimes he felt those cold sheets still: a shiver of memory, a neural circuitry embedded in his brain at the moment he was taken from her. Warmth to cold, heartbeat to silence, blood to water.
As the midwife swung open the delivery room door and gasped, How on earth did you do that so bloody quick? his mother put her mouth against his ear and whispered, I’ll find you one day. So the story went. It wasn’t much of a story, more a state of mind, a low-level rumbling, a hazy awareness that something wasn’t right. Aside from the indisputable fact of his birth—he was here, wasn’t he?—there were no events to add weight to this tale, at least not on his side. His birth mother would have told a different story, if she’d ever been granted a voice. Between not knowing and not telling, the story slept but didn’t die; instead it lay waiting.
And so, Claude continued, in the spare room of his adoptive mother’s house, he discovered his birth certificate. His adoptive sister, sitting among Ada’s trinkets and keepsakes, then told him what she knew. That she knew and he didn’t, that Ada had confided in her instead of him—this was the insult to the injury, the salt to the wound.
This was the first event, Claude said, the discovery of his adoption: the first event in the story that was now his to tell. One event was then followed by another. Not a chain of events, he said, shaking his head at me. That implied a linkage of cause and effect. Instead there were coincidences and random repetitions, strange signs and symbols that all signified the same thing: that he needed to hurry, that time was running out. His mother was dead, long live his mother. He made enquiries, he waited in queues. Forms were completed, letters were sent and received, and all the while his guts boiled, his muscles seized, his head threatened to split in two. Anger, Claude said, was a physical affliction.
I asked how he came to hear the story of his birth.
‘Are you changing the subject?’ he asked.
I asked him why he thought I would want to do that.
‘Because my anger is inconveniencing you.’
Did he think his anger was inconveniencing me personally, I asked, or was it more to do with my role as the court-assigned therapist? I said it was an important distinction. I understood that he might perceive the court—and all it represented—to be uninterested in his feelings. I could live with that perception, I said. But if he believed that I, his therapist, would rather he didn’t express his feelings to me—well, that was a problem.
‘A problem for whom?’
For us both, I said. But more for him. The therapeutic alliance was based on trust, I went on. It would be difficult for him to trust me if he believed that I was uncomfortable with, or uninterested in, his emotional state. He would be asking for another therapist, someone a good deal more empathic, and rightly so. All I could say at this point was that I wanted to hear everything he had to say, and I was sorry if I had not made that apparent before now.
We sat for several minutes in silence. I could tell by the quality of the silence that his anger had dissipated. I waited, composing myself. I’d taken a risk in confronting him like that. In talking about process, I’d taken hold of the beast’s artificial hide and stripped back an edge to give Claude a glimpse of the cogs and wheels that clicked and whirred—or grated and halted—beneath. He was thinking about what I’d said, and what I’d shown him of myself. He’d believed me; this I could tell. We’d averted our crisis of faith: his in me, and mine in the process.
When a baby was born, Claude began, who was to tell the birth story: the mother, the accoucheur, the witness, if any, or the baby themselves? A mother’s birth story was the essence of subjectivity. The pain of labour and the imperatives of the body distorted time, place and person. All that remained was a wretched fear of death, made all the more wretched by a mother’s longing to live, to be united with her child once and for all, to see her child’s face, to hear that first cry. The sheer terror of that battle. He’d watched Lisa fight it when she gave birth. What story could mothers tell, save that of survival?
His birth record, the one they deemed to be official, was destroyed long ago, when a water pipe burst in the M hospital basement. By the time the records clerk descended the basement stairs a few hours later, the water was already a metre high. Only the files of those with family names from A to F, stored on the highest shelves, were saved from devastation, Claude said. The others were floating in the rising water, those histories disintegrating, never again to be put back together.
I told Claude that I had an image of him floating through life, just like his paper file, somewhat untethered and unsure and, although not disintegrating—he had Lisa and his children to prevent disintegration—still somewhat porous and taking in water, until the day of that fateful phone call that caused him to leave the farm. It was the phone call that tethered him to himself, I believed. It could only have been news of his birth mother, I said.
I waited for a response—a word of confirmation, a flicker of an eyebrow, a whoop of joy?—but none came.
I knocked on Nalini’s door. I heard her footsteps cross the room and, when she opened the door, I saw Poppy and Theo bent over a card game on the floor. ‘Sweet kids,’ Nalini whispered. ‘Sort of old-fashioned. Clever, too.’ She would fill me in properly later, she said.
The children entered my room with me and went straight to Lisa and Claude. Their greetings were subdued but I noticed how both children trailed their fingers along each parent’s arm, over their wrists and into their palms, where they held hands for a moment. It seemed like a recalibration, a grounding.
We would all now swap places, I told the children. Lisa and Claude would be next door at the cafe, and I would call them to return if any of us needed them.
The children sat side by side, watching with a formal solemnity as their parents left the room. Theo swung his legs rhythmically and Poppy unzipped her backpack: I read these as good signs.
Poppy pulled out an exercise book. She had written something for me, she said. I’d been asking a lot of questions about their trip to the desert, and she thought she would write a story about something that happened. She’d already read it to Theo, and he’d agreed with what she’d written.
I asked if she would like me to read it aloud, so she could hear it in someone else’s voice.
‘Lisa and Claude have already done that,’ she said. ‘You can read it to yourself.’
POPPY’S STORY
I’d fallen asleep in the car as we drove past the ocean and when I woke up we were far away from the water. There were no houses, hardly any trees, and the ground was red and dotted with sharp grey bushes. ‘Hello, sleepyhead,’ Lisa said, looking through the mirror at me. I could only see her eyes. ‘We’ll stop in a minute,’ Lisa said but Claude kept driving.
I said I was thirsty and had to pee.
‘Claude,’ Lisa said. ‘We could all do with a break.’
Claude made a little groan. ‘All right, all right,’ he said, and the car skidded on the stones at the side of the road and I heard them fly up against the car doors.
‘Too fast,’ Lisa said, after the car had stopped. There was dust coming through the windows. She turned around to me and Theo. ‘Are you all right?’
I said there was dust in my mouth.
Lisa passed me a lemonade bottle filled up with water. We’d drunk the lemonade the day before. We hardly ever have lemonade. That’s because it isn’t good for us to have a lot of sugar. But Claude had bought a bottle at a shop the day before, because he thought we would like a drink straight from the fridge and, anyway, it’s all right to have sugar once in a while. The water was warm and tasted like a swimming pool. ‘Hey, Pops, look at Theo,’ Lisa said. ‘Isn’t he adorable when he’s asleep?’
‘He’ll need to pee, too,’ I said. ‘I’m going to wake him up.’
I said his name a few times, then when he didn’t wake, I pinched his arm, but not too hard, until he opened his eyes. I could see him trying to work out where he was. His bottom lip went all quivery so I said, ‘It’s okay, we’re all here. We’re on an adventure, remember?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and climbed out of the car and straight away peed on the ground. I walked away and went behind a big rock. There were long skinny shadows on the ground and a wind that seemed to come from somewhere far away that made the spiky bushes shiver and the dust blow up against my legs, and I felt sort of scared and excited at the same time.
I went back to the car. ‘Where’s Claude?’ I asked.
‘Gone for a walk,’ Lisa said.
‘Why didn’t he take us?’
‘I think he needed some quiet time, Pops. He’ll be back soon.’
We had some more water and we ate a banana. It said half past four on my watch. ‘Can Theo and I go for a walk too?’ I asked.
‘You might get lost,’ Lisa said, but I could tell she was thinking about Claude.
‘What if I make sure I can still see the car?’
Lisa put her hands on my shoulders. ‘Okay, Poppy, I trust you. Be careful of snakes and be back by five o’clock. I’m going to wait here for Claude.’
Near the car was a sort of path dug into the dirt. It looked like a dried-up creek. We walked along it and I kept turning around to make sure I could still see the car. Lisa was watching and we waved at each other. Then Theo ran ahead. I yelled at him to stop but of course he didn’t. The wind was blowing colder and stronger and a big cloud of dust came spinning towards me so I closed my eyes. When I opened them Theo had gone.
I could still see the car but Lisa wasn’t standing near it. She must have been inside. I thought I should run back to get her but then I thought if I did that Theo would be further away. So I decided to look for him myself. I knew he was wearing a blue jumper which was a good thing in the desert. He’d be easy to see. I was yelling his name but the wind was so strong and so loud, it felt like it was pushing my voice back inside me. Also, I couldn’t hear Theo, which was bad, because I thought he might have fallen over and hurt himself and couldn’t walk, or maybe got bitten by a snake and was dead. But what I really thought was that he’d vanished. He’d walked through a secret door into another world, like the children in the Narnia books. It’s not like I’d ever thought Narnia was real, but it felt different standing out there. It felt like the strangest things you could imagine could actually come true. I looked at my watch and it said five to five. There was a pressing, bursting ache in my stomach. It escaped from there and began moving up into my chest. ‘Poppy Agostino,’ I told myself, ‘this isn’t the time to panic. Use your brain to find your brother. Look for tracks in the dirt.’
I tried to picture where Theo had been before I closed my eyes. He was dragging a stick, so that would have made a track I could follow. He wouldn’t have stayed on the path like me, he would’ve just gone wherever he wanted. But which way? Ahead I saw some very big rocks off to the left of the path. It looked like somewhere Theo would go looking for caves. I tried to find some clues on the ground, like tracks or a broken branch, but there was nothing. I walked a bit further and from the corner of my eye I saw something bright and flickering, low down, like something was fluttering on a bush. I ran towards it and found a piece of silver paper caught on a spike. It looked old, so it didn’t belong to Theo. But then I saw the mark of a stick in the sand, and next to it I saw a footprint. I was so happy.
I followed the trail but the sand stopped and the ground was hard again and there were no more tracks, but still I kept going towards the rocks because I was sure now Theo was there. It was almost dark but I could still see my way. I called out again, ‘Theo, Theo,’ when I reached the rocks. The wind wasn’t as strong and I heard my voice clearly. It echoed, against the stone.
From far away I thought the rocks were glowing, red and pink and orange like they were on fire, but now up close they were dark and shadowy. They felt as if they were hiding something, and I began to wonder if I would see Theo again. Then I was thinking again about a magic door, like I could step through a gap between two of the giant rocks and I would go into another world, and it might be a good world or a bad world but whatever it was it would be real, as real as everything else around me. And I weaved between the rocks, going deeper and deeper into the centre of them, and the air got colder and colder, and I thought any minute I would step through the door, and then I went around a corner and saw Theo, sitting on the ground. I shouted his name and ran to him, and he looked up at me like I’d been there with him the whole time. ‘There’s a lizard,’ he said. ‘I’ve made friends with him.’
I dropped down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. I was so happy he was alive and still in this world with me. But I also felt a bit empty, like I’d missed out on something amazing, and now it would never happen. ‘Hey, you scared the lizard,’ Theo said. ‘He’s run away.’ And suddenly I was angry with him for running off—Theo, not the lizard. ‘We need to go back,’ I said, and I pulled him by the arm, but I didn’t want to get too angry because I didn’t want him to start crying and run off again. ‘Lisa and Claude will be searching for us.’
‘I’m hungry,’ he said. When he put his hand in mine, it was cold like ice, and the moon came up and shone between the rocks so they glinted like big teeth in a giant’s mouth. It was a full moon, fat and hanging low like a juicy orange on a tree.
We ran between the rocks and Theo fell and scraped his knee but I pulled him up and we kept running hand in hand. I knew if we kept going in the same direction we would come out into the open again. I was worried we could end up on the far side of the rocks, which would be very very bad, but I was pretty sure we were retracing our steps and I was right because when we came into the open I straight away saw two beams of light. ‘That’s our car,’ I said to Theo, and I hugged him because I was so happy to know we were safe.
I congratulated her on her story. I felt I was there in the desert with her, I said. I had a question for her that I hoped she wouldn’t mind me asking. Stories could be completely factual or completely made up or somewhere in between, I said. Which type of story had she written?
Everything was exactly as she remembered it, she said. That’s why she’d put in the details about drinking the water and eating the banana. They weren’t particularly interesting details but she was trying to write the truth.
I was also wondering why she chose to write a story instead of just telling me what happened.
‘Because there were things I might have forgotten to say if I hadn’t written it all down,’ she said.
‘Why was it important that you remembered everything that happened?’
‘Because it felt special,’ she said, ‘to be in the desert, the four of us. I didn’t want to forget it.’
‘What made it feel special?’
‘To feel small but also strong,’ she said.
‘It was a scary time,’ I said, ‘when Theo got lost.’
‘Yes. But that was the most important part.’
‘Why was it so important?’
‘It was about knowing what you have to do, even when you’re alone and afraid you can’t do it. Knowing it and doing it, no matter how scared you are.’
‘Are you still frightened, Poppy?’ I asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but only about one thing.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That Theo and I will be taken away.’
8.
The girl sat next to her father. She often looked at his face: her expression as she watched him was more grave than anxious. She seemed wise beyond her years, but that wasn’t necessarily cause for concern, I told Erin.
‘It troubled you, though?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I suppose it did. I thought she might have been parentified.’
‘What eldest child isn’t, to some degree? So you checked it out?’
‘The parents are solid,’ I said. ‘They make decisions together and follow through on them. They support each other in front of the children. They don’t appear to hand over a lot of responsibility for the younger child to the older. They aren’t in any way authoritarian, but neither are they incapable. They seem respectful of their children, respectful to the extent that at first I read it as detachment. But it’s just that they’re listening quietly to what their children say.’
‘No wonder it seems strange,’ Erin said drily.
I told Erin what Poppy had said about her father, that he used to throw her into the air and catch her when she was a baby. She knew that she couldn’t really remember it—she was too young, she told me, with a teacher’s expression—and yet, when she thought about what her father meant to her, it was as if the memory were as tangible as one of yesterday. It was as if she remembered the sensation of being airborne: the freedom and joy of being weightless without any of the fear because she knew, without the slightest doubt, that she would be caught again as she fell.
