Now

She’s out in the backyard, squatting over a pile of sticks. She just turned up one day, said her mother was drunk, again, and she was hungry. A stray bloody kitten. I mean, I thought twice about it. Who wouldn’t? I asked if she remembered her mother’s number. I asked if I could walk her home. Fine, I said eventually. Then come in and help me light the stove. I’ll make us some scones, I guess.

She comes most mornings now. Early. Arrives out of the bush down by the fenceline, slips through the wire, and walks through the empty paddock. By the times she gets up to the house, she’s wet to the knees, and there’s a dark line through the silver-dewed grass.

I’ve started making jam. She’s just a kid, and a scrawny one at that. She acts like sugar lights her from within, like it’s the best thing she could imagine ever happening to her. It’s only marmalade, I say, because I’m ashamed I have no strawberries, just the orange tree covered in aphids and sooty ash out by the clothesline. The fruit hasn’t been sweet in years. Thought it might be a bit tart?

It’s become a game. I pretend she is Paddington Bear, and she pretends she hasn’t heard of him. I ask when her mother wants her back, and her mouth sets in a small hard line. I do not ask about school. But there are moments, sometimes, when she’s still sitting at the kitchen table fingering up the last drops of jam on her plate, when she tells me things. Small things. The name of her old puppy. The best cicadas to catch. The kind of ice cream cake her brother promised to buy on her birthday, but the shop was all run out.

I’d thought he was younger, the way she said it. Like it was cute. I told her she could bring him next time, if she wanted, and she’d frowned at that. Looked around like she was assessing the place. The old fridge with its topping of greasy dust. The cracks in the window. John’s old show ribbons pinned above the door, the reds and blues all faded and the gold writing rubbing off. The jars and junk on the shelves. Maybe, she said.

Some days, my skin feels so dry, it’s like I could go up at any moment. Poof. I don’t notice most of the time, but some days, I feel very, very old.

I used to know this town. These people. All of us spread across the valley, all of us rising at the same time to get the milking done. And I was one of them so I didn’t have to think too hard to understand any of them. But I still have no idea who her mother is, can’t even think where she might live.

John’s ute is still parked by the house. I’ve thought about it. As if the pile of junk would even run now. As if I could drive through the fog of cataracts, find the girl’s home somehow, and deliver her to a mother who would turn around and love her. And I thought I’d left that all behind, the urge to fix what wasn’t mine.

In the end, John wouldn’t even take his pills. Hid them under the bed like I was a bloody warden. Everything had already been sold off then, except the land. I hated him, I think, for giving up so easy. For expecting me to follow. Or maybe I just miss the cows, the purpose I used to have.

I watch her from the kitchen window, talking to herself and swinging her little head as she plays.  When she finally comes in, she’s holding the little bunch of sticks. Look, she says, pressing it into my hands. I made you.

A doll.

Two arms. Two legs. Bunched grass for the head. A dry tip bursts from the chin, like the long hair I used to pluck, the one that won’t stop growing. My hand goes to my face to hide it. As if I could hide anything from those clever young eyes.

Very nice, I murmur, because she is still looking up at me, waiting for praise, because she is so very hungry and ready to grow, and it is clever, really, how she’s managed to make the thing, tying those limbs with nothing but knots of grass.

Embarrassed, I ask her if she’s going to take it home and show her mother. Then, to correct my mistake, Or your brother?

He’s not around much, she says. Anymore.

And I understand then. That he’s older. That he’s the kind of brother who cares enough to make promises but not enough to keep them. She says it careless, but I see the hardness in her face, and I can guess well enough what it hides.

An ember in me. Orange lines cracking a darkened husk.

I’d make him stay. And I don’t hide my anger. Everyone in her life had left her. I wanted to shake them all by the collar. Chain them down and force them to really look at her. Bring him, I tell her. Next time you come. Tell him I want a word.

He won’t come.

You’re a smart girl, I say. I’m sure you’ll find a way to convince him.

Everything is lit then. I am crackling, fairly humming. And this, this is the magic they talk about. The life she gives me. The life I do not want to give up, or not yet. Perhaps I am too hungry. She looks away. Her attention drifts over the room like a net. But I have her thinking now, I know it.

I set the doll on the counter, next to the stove. The old Aga is still warm, still sending up smoke. And I wait as she works it all out, how different it could be.

________

Jane O’Sullivan is an Australian writer. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Passages North, Bull, Peatsmoke, New Flash Fiction Review, Milk Candy Review, Flash Frontier and Micro Podcast. She lives and works on Bidjigal and Gadigal Land in Sydney and can be found online at janeosullivan.com.au.