Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 32

Now I’m going to school, every school morning, Mum’s jasmine screams at me, “Get up, get up!”

The bus leaves at seven fifteen am sharp from our boundary cattle grid, a few kilometres down and along the main road, and I hate being late. My father is always late. Sharon, “the nanny”, was government-funded during school time as my full-time aide, but I may not talk about her much, as it makes me angry and she is irrelevant. I have to have an aide because of all my one-on-one contact needs: sitting on a chair, wiping of the nose, feeding of the food, getting on and off the school bus, the carting up and down the stairs, and all the unmentionable “toileting” aspects. But anything else, and it’s not her job, she reckons. The rest of the time—admittedly there isn’t too much of that—she sits around looking bored. She hasn’t even got a driver’s licence!

To get things rolling every weekday morning (except school holidays and days he was too hungover to make sure “the nanny” got up), I would march up and down the verandah—half a metre at a get-up-fall-down time—tottering from foot to foot, lurching from wall to chair, hanging on by leaning, desperately flappin’ at anything, until everything dissolved, and I thumped on the floor, to start all over again. I’d scream until he got his act together to drive us to the bus stop. He’d tell people in a sweetly amazed voice, “It’s amazing, she seems to know when it’s time to go.”

Derrrrr. There’s a frickin’ clock in the kitchen—you spastic.

My cousins—my father’s brother’s kids—were always at the bus stop on time. I spent a lot of time at their place over the years. They lived ten kilometres down the road—it was a dirt road back then—on the opposite side, on the rubbish-country side, my father called it. Their property was twenty thousand acres of undeveloped bush. It was a nightmare to muster, but carried a fair few head of cattle, a few thousand at least. Their house smelt of cats’ piss and rats. Just about every day after school at the bus stop, their mother, Aunty Zeb, would bring little treats for them—Kinder Surprises, lollipops, gingerbread girls—but not for me, even though she knew she was picking me up too. She always, at least slightly, resented me—lots really. I was a non-person, and I think she didn’t want to waste her money. I’m still not sure what hold he had over them. He probably paid them to have me after school, so he wasn’t tied to the bus run. That’s the only thing that makes sense.

I overheard Aunty Zeb once, talking to someone on the phone.

“It’s a pain in the arse having to have her with us all the time,” Aunty Zeb said. “But I have to admit, half the time I forget she’s there—unless I can smell her. No, she isn’t toilet trained at all. She just sits there, then if I forget her for too long she starts screaming and ripping out her hair. Then I have to feed her. It’s all so messy. That fat slag Sharon, she just reads magazines and eats,” Aunty Zeb said.

“Yep, she’s the aide slash nanny. Government-funded because Sophie isn’t toilet trained. I mean, how stupid can it be, sending her to school when she can’t talk—it’s just wasting the teacher’s time, and what a waste of money.”

Aunty Zeb flicked back her dyed-too-black hair that needed a wash, lit a cigarette and had a swig of wine to wash it down, while her friend had her talk turn.

Aunty Zeb’s real name’s is Debra. She has very dark black hair, dark black everywhere except for sometimes she’s got a white stripe down the middle. Everyone calls her Deb. Except me. My mind calls her Zebra, Aunty Zeb.

“Yeah, too right, hey.” It was Aunty Zeb’s turn again now. She had a voice not unlike Fran in the US sitcom The Nanny. Same strangled-screechy voice, but Australian strangled-screechy.

“Rose was a total pain in the arse. She was a bloody boong for Christ’s sake, and not a young one. She was older than him, you know. She was right up herself, thought she had some sort of God-given right to make extra demands for things just because she had a spastic daughter.”

Aunty Zeb sucked and swigged again, while her friend had another turn. While she was suckin’ and swiggin’ she fiddled with her hair and didn’t notice the blob of cream cheese she was rubbing into it, then “svsssssstttt” Aunty Zeb’s cigarette said, as she dropped it in the almost empty milk container. It was her turn again.

“Yeah, thank God he got rid of her. His mother, yeah, you’ve met Aggie, hey? Yeah, she was shocked shitless when he said he was going to marry her. I mean, sure, sleep with her if you must—after all it’s a family tradition—but marry her!”

A waft of fresh cigarette smoke floated my way. And a glug glug glug new glass of wine. Aunty Zeb was just warming up.

“Aggie didn’t never acknowledge Rose, hey—her own daughter-in-law! Didn’t go to the wedding. Hardly ever spoke to either of them again. Never invited them to Christmas do’s, hey,” Aunty Zeb said, not at all sadly, and she wasn’t finished.

“Aggie doted on Sophie, but—our girls too—but she was totally gaga over Sophie. Never seemed anywhere near that keen on her own sons. First-hand knowledge of white male squattocracy with her father, I reckon. Yeah, well she married an outsider, too, hey.”

Aunty Zeb always seemed particularly happy chatting on the phone. You could get a full family history, just listening in.