Black Chalk (6 page)

I don't want to judge her for it. I don't want to judge myself. We were both young. But whereas I can now separate the break-up from her subsequent behaviour, I then saw the one as vindicating the other: her coldness was ridding me of any lingering doubt.

It took bullets to break the barrier we'd erected. Bullets flying over me, past me, around me, while she hyperventilated and bled.

***

My mother put down her papers, got up from her chair and stood tall next to me, her shape darkened by the light coming from the window. I shut my notebook, keeping my writings and drawings to myself.

‘I went to see Eric's mother this morning.'

The weight she put into those words made me want to stop her then and there, but I took a closer look at the stillness of her eyes and the line of her lips, and realised it was already too late.

‘I know you like her, the poor woman. So I wanted to see her, and tell you what's happening outside this place. Hospitals, they can…'

‘I know,' I said to fill in her pause. I didn't need to look around me to understand her: I knew my hospital corner all too well. Feeling she hadn't finished, I ignored my misgivings and prompted her on: ‘How was Eric's mother?'

My mother's smooth face hardened for an instant. She held her hand up as if to tell me to be patient.

‘I went to see her after our morning meetings. That's a support group we started right away, but we can't invite her along. Some parents are blaming her, and that's easy to understand. Still, I thought she'd appreciate a friendly face. Do you understand?'

She looked at me expectantly, as Eric's mother and her pained smile came into my mind. I turned away.

‘It's not her fault,' I said. I could see my mother raising her hand again from the corner of my eyes, but the words out of my mouth triggered more. ‘It could have been any of the other mothers. The ones who are crying now, they could be the ones feeling guilty.'

‘Don't say that!'

‘It's true!' My voice rose, and the old man turned to look at us. He didn't matter; what I was talking about was more important. ‘Why blame her? It could have been anyone, imagine if it was you—'

‘Don't say that!' she hissed. A deep line spread down her forehead, her cheeks creased, and wrinkles quivered around her mouth. ‘I don't want to hear anything like that.'

Her sudden intensity cut my thoughts short. When I got over the shock, I looked at her and chose to keep quiet: I could see the anger draining from her face with every word she uttered.

‘But you're right,' she continued, ‘we should forgive her. Not all families are as strong as ours. And she's lost a son too…' On that thought, her voice found the softness I craved. ‘I knocked on her door this morning. No one came to open it, so I went around the back and found her sitting on the terrace, out in the cold. She wasn't even wearing a coat. She didn't recognise me at first; she shouted at me to go away. I think she gets a lot of media people, more than we do. She eventually let me in, but that's after I told her who I was three times.' My mother shook her head and stopped for a second. ‘She remembered you; she said, “Nate, the cricket player”, and that's all she had to say about you.'

She looked calmed: her lips had dropped open, and her brow was now smooth.

‘Maybe she needs to be alone,' I whispered.

‘Sometimes we feel like that even though that's not what we need. We're lucky, Nate, because, whatever we do, we have each other. I know you don't want to think about it, but I have to tell you that there are a lot of people out there,' she waved her arm at the window, ‘who won't leave us alone, and who don't care at all how we feel.' She dropped her arms by her side. ‘You're getting better slowly, and those people want answers. Don't you think we should be ready for them?'

She stopped on that question, waiting for me to take her up on her challenge, before she went back to her chair. But if I looked deep in thought, it was because I was starting to realise that there were topics my mother considered out of bounds, and I needed to grasp where those boundaries lay.

After my mother left and the caterers gathered our dinner trays, I thought of Eric's mother. I couldn't remember her name, and yet she was always kind to me. She was away working for the most part. When at home, she left Eric to himself. But she always did all she could to make me at ease when I saw her. A week before the 10th of February, I'd brought my bat to Eric, to see whether he could help me repair it. It was an old bat, a bat I'd used in the middle many times, over many seasons. Its weight and its pickup were too familiar to give up. With it, I could dig out yorkers, read shooters, attack googlies.

Eric had carved a chunk out of the toe, replaced it with part of another bat, sanded down the result, and was applying glue when I heard his mother calling us. I knew she'd never walk down to the shed. As I expected, Eric didn't react, his whole attention turned to applying glue. I took it upon myself to walk out of the shed, up the hill, and ask her what I could do for her.

‘I made you boys orange juice,' she said, pouring me a glass.

The fresh pressed juice tasted sweeter than the bottled juice I usually drank. I told her it reminded me of half-time orange slices during the football season.

‘I like it when you come over,' she said, holding on to the jug.

Feeling she wanted to talk, I sat down.

‘It's nice here,' I said.

‘You like it?' she asked, doubts in her voice. She always had doubts in her voice. Of all the mothers I knew, she struck me as the most resigned. Everything that happened to her seemed to be another piece of evidence against fate. It was the way things were, she would say, with a sigh and a shake of her head. Like the three times she couldn't take me home, all in the same month, and she told me, each time in the same voice, that that sort of thing only happened to her. Just when she needed a car, her husband was late, and the other car wasn't working.

‘I can make you something to eat if you want,' she said on all three occasions, putting her keys down and looking through her cupboard. ‘Pasta?'

But Eric was never hungry, so I waited until my mother came to pick me up. For Eric's mother – I know her name wasn't Mrs Knight – the only thing she could do was suffer gracefully until her husband came home.

‘I like the field,' I said the time she made us orange juice.

‘It's a field because Eric won't mow it. I keep on telling him to do it, it's his job, but he doesn't listen, no. He just stays in his shed and ignores me…' She trailed off and I felt uncomfortable. ‘But I'm glad that you're his friend. It's good for him.'

I wanted to grab the jug and bring it down, but she held on to its handle.

‘How do you think he is?' she said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Is he doing well at school? Is he happy? I know he's not happy here, but a few more months and he'll have his own place. So, what do you think?'

I waited for a second, hoping she'd add something and I wouldn't have to answer her, but she looked at me expectantly.

‘He's fine,' I said. ‘Maybe a bit stressed, but he's fine. Why do you ask?'

‘He doesn't tell me these things anymore. It's always the same. He used to when he was little but then he grew up and now he doesn't tell me anything anymore,' she sighed, letting go of the juice.

I brought it back down and drank most of it, Eric being too busy with the bat.

***

My ward waited for the doctors. Patients drifted through the days and into the nights together. Teams of nurses watched over our beds and left at the end of their shifts. On the stroke of mealtime, caterers wheeled meals in and wheeled trays out. Janitors pushed their buckets around the halls, and slopped their solutions on our floors. At the appointed hour, rule-abiding visitors stormed in and snuck out. And my mother outlasted them all.

Doctors swept through in the mornings. In packs, they discussed our bodies. Orders passed from old to young, from young to nurses, from nurses to patients. And we obeyed everyone: doctors, young and old, nurses, caterers, janitors.

And once more, we were left waiting.

The nurses fascinated me. I watched them, listened to them, and jotted down thought after thought. At first, I was amazed by their professionalism. They were dancers gliding through a routine. When, every quarter of an hour for a whole morning, the old lady to my left called her nurse to ask her the same question (where is Henry?), I was a little awed to see her nurse, a red-haired woman with a Polish accent, respond to each call with the same mixture of competence and care. It was in the way they never needed to run; they knew exactly how to do their job.

Then I noted that my quiet little ward didn't have a single male nurse, and I asked myself whether that changed their reaction to doctors. There were many female doctors walking around the hospital, but most of the doctors who came to our ward were men, and all of them were given an odd sort of impunity. When they weren't there, the space firmly belonged to the nurses. But as soon as a man in slacks and a shirt appeared, a badge hanging from his neck, the place changed; even a student carrying his books under his arm could sidestep around three nurses, walk behind their station and consult a wad of confidential papers.

The more I watched them, the less I noticed their work. I was certain of it: they were all avoiding Pauline, the cropped-haired, perpetually burned nurse, who talked loud enough that, deep in my corner, her voice still broke through the background whirl. They had a way of gathering in groups when she wasn't there and splitting as soon as she came back, of sniggering, whispering and laughing that reminded me of Anna and Laura, of Jordan and Rebecca, and of all the other social queens I'd come across. Pauline, on her side, threw herself into her work. She was consciously conscientious, always commenting on how good her work was, how sloppy others' was.

From my bed, I tried to come to Pauline's defence. One morning, when they were short a nurse and she was covering my bed, I called her over and told her I felt hot.

‘Hot, darling, of course you are. Look at how tight those blankets are! Who did that to you? You need to breathe. Here, let me get this right for you.' She busied herself, shuffling my bedding, all the while telling me how much better it was going to be. ‘Some people don't realise, but these blankets are heavy. You have to ask yourself what they're thinking.' She shook her head and tsk-tsked. ‘How's it now?'

‘Much better,' I lied.

She put her hands on her hips:

‘Of course it is.'

At the end of her shift, she was still mumbling sheets and blankets and her colleagues looked annoyed. My notebook on my lap, I gave each nurse a line and I followed their movements until I had a pattern in front of my eyes. Then, holding the paper at arm's length, I searched the page. There was an eye and a nose here, an arm punching a wall there.

***

Two weeks after I turned fifteen, I told my mother I was going to get a tattoo.

‘Don't you need my permission for that?' she asked.

‘Normally, but Tom knows a tattoo parlour where they don't ask for your age.'

‘Is Tom getting one too?'

‘Paul, Tom, and me.'

‘And what sort are they getting?'

‘Tom's getting a Maori design. And Paul's getting the same thing.'

‘What are you getting?'

‘An eagle. Here.' I tapped my shoulder. ‘I saw one I liked in the shop, but then I changed it. It's better, I think. Do you want to see?'

She studied my face. Then she turned away and I saw tears coming.

‘Nate, you don't have to get one because Tom and Paul are getting one.'

‘I'm not! I want to get one for myself.'

I watched her crying, and I felt like crying too, but the tears wouldn't come.

‘What am I going to tell your father?' she said.

‘I can talk to him.'

She grabbed my hand:

‘Think about it first. Tattoos, they don't go anywhere. You grow old, they grow old. Do you want the same tattoo when you're sixteen, when you're thirty, when you're sixty? And you want to go to some tattoo parlour where they don't check how old you are… How good are they going to be? What if they make a mess of it?'

That night, I did as I promised her I would do: I thought about it. Every time I looked at my design (an eagle's neck, head, and beak in as few strokes as I could manage), I yearned to have it on my shoulder. But then I remembered my mother's words, and I told myself that she was right – it would wrinkle with age. By the morning, I couldn't remember why I'd wanted one in the first place.

‘So you don't want one anymore?' she said.

‘No. I'm only fifteen. Who knows what I'll like by the time I'm eighteen?'

‘Yes, exactly what I was thinking,' she said quickly, but then she started again, a questioning, almost disappointed touch in her voice. ‘Are you sure now? You told me you were sure you wanted one last night.'

‘Oh, you know, that's just Tom and Paul.'

‘Right, yes. You're right, of course, tattoos look silly anyway.' She glanced at me. When I nodded, she added: ‘You could get your ear pierced if you want.'

***

I wasn't a week in hospital by the time my mother made me watch television. She came to me, found an articulated arm tucked under the bed, and rotated it until a screen appeared in front of our eyes. Plugging in some earphones, she gave me the right, took the left, and turned the television on. It was all happening before I had time to say anything.

‘Daytime television,' she said switching through the few channels available. ‘You might have to start watching
Neighbours
, or cooking shows even.'

I thought of protesting but from the tense resolve in her face, I knew what she would say – this is very important, Nate, please do what I tell you, don't argue now – at first with the same artificial ease, but as I pled my case, her words, her face would only harden up before they would budge. There was only one reasonable option: I turned away.