A Girl in Three Parts Read online

There’s no point asking Matilde why Joy didn’t turn up at the church. They never share the details of their lives with each other. And anyway, as angry as Matilde might be at Joy for upsetting me, I suspect she’s kind of glad for herself that after I made her sad by choosing Joy, that other grandmother only went and let me down. Matilde’s not saying that, at least not with her words, but sometimes her thoughts escape in little wafts into the room, and I can’t help but breathe them in when she’s rolling her pastry and mincing the meat.

  And now, six days on, my mad at Joy is being eclipsed by worried about Joy. She’s never been away for this long before, not without telling me.

  “Where exactly did Joy go in Wendy’s V-Dub Beetle, when she was meant to come and meet us at the church?” I ask Rick, finding him fixing the dripping tap by the back door. “I never thought she’d let me down like that.”

  “She didn’t mean to let you down, Al,” says Rick, looking through his toolbox. “Let’s just say she had an important job to do.”

  “More important than being my sponsor?”

  “No, I didn’t say that.” Rick wipes his brow with his sleeve. “She intended to get there on time, but things didn’t go quite to plan—and, well, she needed to take a break afterward. She’ll be back before long.”

  But how long?

  Without Joy next door, that part of my heart that revolves around three separate suns is spinning off course and knocked out of orbit.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  The following Monday Sister Josepha writes in big yellow letters on the blackboard: The Gold Rush. Dusting her hands and creating a chalk cloud, she says that we should all choose a partner because we’ll be pairing up to make a goldfields village out of matchsticks. The Popular Group pounces on Kimberly, and the rest of the girls look around hungrily for the scraps. I’m going to wait for Patricia to get back. I’ll just get going on it alone for both of us until then.

  “Can I be your partner, Allegra?” asks Mary-Anne Wilson.

  “I’m already partners with Patricia.”

  “But you can’t be partners with Patricia. She’s left. She’s moved to a different school.”

  “No she hasn’t.” I know Patricia wouldn’t just leave without telling me. “You’re making that up.”

  “No I’m not. You can ask Sister.”

  And so I do, approaching Sister by the board.

  And afterward I wish I hadn’t.

  Patricia and her mother had to move suddenly…yes…that’s true. They’ve gone interstate, Queensland, or was it Tasmania? No particular reason was given…the school got a message at the end of last week…there was no time for Patricia to collect her belongings. These things happen sometimes….

  “But would you like to keep the plaster-of-Paris mold Patricia made of her hand?”

  The nightlight-in-the-dark-alley part of my heart flickers, dims and shuts down. Giddy sick rises up in my throat as I feel my way back down the wavering aisle between the desks, holding Patricia O’Brien’s hand tightly by the chalky thumb.

  I pass Kimberly and she makes like she’s coughing into her closed fist, muttering only loud enough for me to hear: “Sucks for you. The abo’s gone walkabout.”

  Everyone else has paired up, so now I’m stuck with Mary-Anne Wilson, the girl with bits of dried cereal on her tunic who eats Perkins paste…Every. Single. Day. And now Mary-Anne’s looking satisfied! Satisfied that she knew before I did that Patricia has left me for a new school. And satisfied that I’m stuck with her as a partner. I know I should be kind, I know I should be full of God’s grace, but Mary-Anne Wilson is smelly and annoying and completely useless at gluing matchsticks straight.

  And so I’m left to endure the last term of St. Brigid’s as I began.

  Friendless.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There’s a big rush job. The biggest rush job ever. So big that Rick and I have eaten Matilde’s leftover beef and cabbage casserole for dinner three nights in a row.

  Matilde only leaves her sewing machine to take hurried bent-over steps to her ironing table and back again. The stop-start throb is filling the house so that every brick is humming, floorboard vibrating and lampshade murmuring, and my jawbone is buzzing—late into the night and every hour of every day. I don’t like the sound of that machine anymore. I fall asleep to it in the dark and wake to it in the early light of the morning. I’m feeling headachy and exhausted.

  This afternoon I take tea to Matilde.

  Tea I make without Rick’s help.

  Tea I lay on the tray in Matilde’s favorite mug with hot honey toast.

  Matilde does eat my honey toast now. Actually, it’s all she eats. And sometimes she almost forgets to take the pins out from her pinched-in lips before she mindlessly washes down small nibbles of toast with gulps of warm tea.

  Rick says it’s the looming summer season that’s caused the rush job. But Matilde tells me, when I bring in the tray, that she’s sorry it will be the same casserole again tonight but there was a mistake at the factory with the sample sizes and if she doesn’t finish eighteen perfect pieces by Tuesday, she won’t be paid a red cent for this job or for the last three she’s done for Bolton’s Fashion House.

  “Why don’t you just be bátor and tell them that’s plain unfair, Matilde?” I’m holding out my palm for the pins.

  “Mr. Linton doesn’t factor in fair, Allegra. There are very many outworkers besides me who would do this work for far less than what is fair.”

  “Linton!…Mr. Linton?” I’m starting to piece things together. “The Mr. Linton you saw at the church?”

  Suddenly the weird nod Kimberly’s father gave Matilde on my Confirmation day makes sense.

  “Yes, yes, that is Mr. Linton. The bully from Bolton’s Fashion House.”

  “Matilde, that man is Kimberly from the Popular Group’s father! She is the meanest girl in our whole school. She is horrible. She’s the one you told me just to ignore.”

  I’m picturing Kimberly cooling herself with the milk delivered from her father’s bumper-year fridge. And now I know that that very man is a bully and not paying Matilde a red cent for the work she’s done.

  I’m remembering Kimberly sniggering with the Popular Group when Patricia struggled with her spelling words. I’m feeling the flush of shame from Kimberly taunting me in front of the Popular Group because of what I have in my lunch box.

  I’m sucked out by Kimberly saying Sucks for you. The abo’s gone walkabout.

  I’m burning at the hot sting of Kimberly announcing at the Mother’s Day stall that she has an alive mother to buy for.

  Not a dead mother.

  Not a dead mother.

  Not a dead mother like me.

  I’m still holding Matilde’s pins in my left palm. I pick up one with my right hand, rolling it between my fingers and thumb, until it starts to scrape across the birthmark on my wrist.

  Not a dead mother like me.

  “Just tell him, Matilde. Just tell him he has to be fair.”

  “Allegra, calm yourself! I need this work. Without Bolton’s Fashion House there is no chicken paprikash, there is no goulash soup. There will be no electricity, no hot water. There is not even this house, our home here, at Number 23.

  “Do you know what a mortgage is, Allegra? Well, because your grandfather cared for the gambling more than his family, I have been left to pay a very big one all on my own.

  “This work pays for your piano lessons, your swim-squad training, and it will pay for your university education so that you can become a doctor and be respected and never have to put up with this or the Bully Boltons of this world.” Matilde is pushing her foot hard on the throttle of her sewing machine.

  “I don’t need those piano lessons, or squad training, and I don’t even want to go to university. I hate Kimberly and now I
hate her father. He can’t be mean to you. She’s so mean to me, Matilde. He can’t be mean to you.” It’s then I notice that blood is dripping from my pulse point onto the fabric falling at the ground around Matilde’s feet.

  “Allegra, what are you doing with the pins? Allegra! You are bleeding all over my fabric. Allegra!” Matilde’s voice is as loud as it goes. “Allegra, my God, Allegra!”

  The back screen door slams and there’s Rick.

  I run to him and he scoops me up in the corridor. His chest is strong with a thin layer of gentleness wrapped in a soft T-shirt that soaks up my tears. He takes me to the bathroom and runs cool water over my wrist. He applies pressure with his big thumb, and when it stops bleeding, he peels a Band-Aid, saying: “Put on your togs, Al Pal—we’re going for a drive.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I’m alone with Rick in his van. It’s not often that it’s just Rick and me, and we haven’t even told Matilde we have left. I have an after-tears headache, and my body memory tells me I’ve had one like this before, but my mind memory thinks it must have been a very long time ago, at least before I started kindergarten.

  We don’t speak. We just drive. My eyes are stinging. My wrist is throbbing. We both just look straight ahead. The sun is getting low behind us and the ocean is a silvery stretch before us. We are driving the same route I rode on the back of Lucinda’s bike that day we went to the beach and discovered that Rick was a Riffraff. I roll down the window, and the salty breeze settles my catch-up gasps so they become deeper, steadier, breaths.

  It’s a relief to be with Rick, alone.

  Away from Matilde and her pins.

  Away from Joy’s hollow chimes.

  I don’t care if Rick is a Riffraff; he’s my dad, and right now it feels like that counts. Rick stops the van in the car park that looks out over the beach. He studies the waves for a while, for what feels like a stretched-out while. Then he goes to the back of the van and arrives next to my door with a surfboard under his arm.

  “Okay, Al Pal, let’s have a paddle.”

  The tide is a long way out, and a glassy film of water on the sand reflects the last shimmer of the day. Silhouettes of surfers with long shadows carry boards toward the water, screechy seagulls barracking them in. We walk out together to where small waves are breaking, and Rick lifts me up onto the front of his board. I lie on my tummy, and he tucks in behind me and starts paddling steadily. The waves come to meet us, licking my arms, my chest, my legs and the small of my back. The water is cooling me down even on the inside. We keep moving out to where the waves are growing. They start breaking over my face. The water is washing away the sting, the throb and the headache. And soon we are beyond the white foam with just clear green water between us and the horizon. The water is a long stretch of endlessness.

  Suddenly Rick turns the board to face the beach and paddles with purpose. He paddles hard, he paddles fast. I can feel the muscles under his arms brushing my ankles. There’s a silver-lipped wall growing behind us. Rick gets us into its curve, and from there the ocean’s power takes over and we are carried forward. Sound is suspended. Time is suspended. We are suspended.

  And we take off. Rick and I are on a wave together. We fly.

  Everything lifts inside me, and that part of my heart pulled down by gravity swiftly elevates so that it’s hovering above me. We catch more waves like this: maybe eleven, maybe twelve, it could be thirteen. It’s the best feeling in the world. And a whole lot of opposites seem to collide: it’s cool but warm, fast but slow, scary but safe.

  Finally the setting sun beckons down its glow. We’re the last ones in the water, and it’s only Rick’s suggestion of hot chips that stops me begging to catch “just three more waves.”

  Sitting on the sand, still damp, wrapped in one towel, we take turns to dip our hands into a warm parcel of hot chips.

  “This is a good place, Al. Waves are great at washing away the stuff you don’t need. And you know, sometimes they kind of give you answers.”

  Rick passes me an extra-long chip. I wonder if I should tell him that I did see him here once before, but instead—surprising myself—I say: “Why did my mother have to die, Rick?”

  It’s Rick’s turn for a chip but he doesn’t take one.

  “Sadly, sometimes, these things happen, Al,” he says in a quiet voice. “But hey, you have me. And you have your two grandmothers….What have they told you about your mum?”

  “Nothing. They don’t talk about her, except Joy says that she’s watching over me from heaven. I tried asking Matilde about my mum a long time ago, but her face set like cement. She suddenly got busy with a bunch of urgent chores. I knew not to ask again.”

  Rick looks across the water for quite a long time. “Okay then. I won’t fob you off. What would you like to know?”

  “How did she die? Was she sick?”

  “You could say that, Al Pal.”

  Now I miss my turn at the chips. “Did she love me?”

  “Yeah, she did. She did love you, Al, a lot. She loved you like a lioness. She was so stoked to have a baby girl.”

  “Were you stoked to have a baby girl?”

  Rick turns his head to the side, away from the waves, and looks straight at me. “You bet, Al Pal, and I’ve been stoked to be your dad ever since.”

  “Well, why aren’t you in charge, Rick? You know, like a normal dad. Why does Matilde get to make all the big decisions? And Joy the leftover ones? You don’t get to make hardly any. We don’t even really live together.”

  “There’s a bit of history there, Al.” Rick looks down at the sand and after a while he says, “When your mum died, I kind of fell in a hole, you know….I wasn’t really coping. I wasn’t looking after myself too well, and Matilde and Joy took the view that I wasn’t up to looking after you all the time. So they stepped in, and I kind of…got pushed out.”

  “I don’t want to make you feel bad, Rick.” I really don’t.

  “Nah, you never make me feel bad, Al.” He leans in so that our heads are touching. “I can’t say I blame Joy and Matilde for taking over back then. It probably was the right thing to do. But when I picked up and got back to work, sorted myself out…things just seemed stuck, being done a certain way. We were all stuck…and it’s just continued like that ever since. I don’t have to tell you that your grandmothers are both pretty strong forces, especially when it comes to you.”

  “Am I like her at all, my mother?”

  “More and more, Al. The look of you, the way you see the world and that big heart of yours. Your mum was always trying to make things right for everyone around her, just like you do, especially the people she loved.”

  “Did she do stuff with me?”

  “Doing stuff with you was her favorite thing. See that rock pool?” Rick is pointing over to our left. “She’d swim around there for hours with you on her back, even before you could walk. I can picture your chubby arms clinging around her long neck, your beaming smile matching hers. She would dive down under the water and you’d go too…chortling as you surfaced and caught your breath. You had complete faith, just seemed to know she’d keep you safe.”

  Rick is describing one of my dreams.

  One that I’ve had forever.

  One where I see my mother’s back, shoulders and arms but I can never quite see her face.

  Do the waters within me remember being underwater with her?

  “Did she love you?” I ask.

  My dad picks up a fistful of sand and lets the grains fall slowly onto my toes.

  “Well, that was a bit more complicated. But yeah, on a good day, she loved me.” His rib cage is expanding next to mine.

  “I reckon she would have loved you every day, Rick.”

  Rick pulls the towel tight around us so that I’m nuzzled in under his arm. We sit like that for a long t
ime. He throws a chip to a seagull, and before long we’re surrounded by squawking birds, and even though it’s nighttime and tomorrow is a school day, Rick seems in no hurry to get me home to Number 23.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Our essay “A Day in the Life of a Gold Prospector” is due today. Sister has to rush to the office to get the whistle before playground duty, so she asks that when the lunch bell rings, we each leave our work on her desk. I’m putting some finishing touches on mine and I look up to find I’m the last one left in the classroom. I place my essay on the top of the pile. And there, poking out near the bottom, is a border of Oriental Blue and Primrose Yellow that could only be the finicky work of Kimberly Linton. Her handwriting is curly, her headings are artistic and her drawings are detailed and three-dimensional. It’s a guaranteed A-plus.

  And now it’s a scrunched-up ball in my pocket.

  I open my lunch box in full view of the entire sixth grade and enjoy my liverwurst sandwich more than usual while watching Kimberly a few benches away relating a story with a happily angled head and no sense of what might be coming her way. I tingle at the thought of what’s in my pocket. I want Kimberly to be puzzled, doubted, punished. For once I want to crush Kimberly Linton with all her performing and perfection and popularity, just long enough to make her pay. Make her pay for what she did to Patricia in a few short terms, make her pay for what she’s done to me for seven long years and make her pay for what her father is doing to Matilde.

  We have free reading in the afternoon, and Sister is at her desk marking our essays.

  “Scott Perkins, I don’t have an essay from you.” Sister doesn’t sound one bit surprised.

  With eyes fixed on his Wheels magazine Scott mumbles: “I accidentally left it in my dad’s car.”

  “Well, make sure you bring it to me first thing in the morning. That’s another demerit, Scott. You’re just one away from a week of picking up papers. And, Kimberly, dear, I can’t seem to find yours either.” Sister’s voice softens.