T
HE ROPES
‘Miss Amelia Hayes, welcome to the Land of Dreams!’
The boy grinned at me and motioned me into the same tiny room I’d been interviewed in.
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ said the manager, and she closed the door.
The boy and I regarded each other for a moment. I judged him to be about twenty. His features were unremarkable, but his face was open, immediately warm and engaging; he seemed to twinkle.
‘I,’ he said, ‘am Chris, your friendly staff trainer.You’ll be with me for three four-hour shifts. I will call you
grasshopper
and you will call me
sensei,
and I will give you the good oil. Right?’
‘Okay.’ I smiled. It was hard not to.
‘Now,’ he said, fumbling in his pants pocket. ‘Where’s your . . . ? Got it.’ He pulled out a name badge that said
Trainee
. ‘This baby is yours for three days, and after that, if you play your cards right, you’ll get your very own to love and cherish for all your days.’
He approached me and fastened it to my shirt. I wasn’t sure where to look.
‘Just so you know, I’m open to all kinds of bribery.’
‘Good to know.’
‘Now, let’s get out there.’
Chris taught me how to pack groceries in such a way as to incur the overall least amount of wrath from the customer. However, he stressed, you can’t please everyone. He taught me about the more obscure fruit and vegetables: swedes, rambutan, jackfruit, persimmon, durian, tamarillo, dragon fruit, star fruit, okra. And the many different kinds of apple: fuji, Braeburn, pink lady, bonza, jonathon, Sundowner, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith. Then there were brushed potatoes, washed potatoes, desiree potatoes, new potatoes, kipfler potatoes and pontiac potatoes. At the beginning, he said, I would have to look up the different codes for each of them, which would be tedious and slow, but soon enough they would all be in my head.
Chris also told me that every so often I would have a complete jerk come through my register.
‘The important thing to remember,’ said Chris, ‘is It’s Not About You. Some people are just pricks. And that’s not only true in here.’
On the third night of training it was time for me to serve my first customers. Chris stayed beside me for the first few and then hovered close by for an hour, twinkling encouragement and appearing at my side if I was struggling with anything. At about eight o’clock the rush had finished and he sidled over.
‘I think you’ve earned a break, youngster.’ He smiled and put up the closed sign on my register. ‘I’ll buy you a Coke.’
We sat drinking our Cokes in the deserted food hall of the shopping centre. All the shops were in darkness with their security shutters down.
‘So, Amelia, how old would you be?’
‘I’m fifteen. Almost.’
‘Wow, you really are a youngster.’
‘Guess so.’
‘You like school?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I like it most of the time. Not maths though.’
‘The best thing about finishing school is not having to do maths anymore.You mark my words.’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘Favourite subject?’
‘English. Definitely. My teacher this year is a bit weird, but still . . .’
‘Your love is strong and true.’
I looked at him. ‘What?’
‘For English.’
‘Oh, yeah. For sure. I just hope I don’t get her for senior English.’
‘Got someone else in mind?’
‘Miss McFadden. Everyone wants Miss McFadden.’
‘But they can’t all have her.’
‘No, they can’t.’
It’s really easy to talk to him
, I thought.
‘What about you?’ I asked.
‘Me. I’m in my last year of Arts at New South.’
‘What do you take?’
‘Double major in English and sociology. Honours in sociology next year.’
‘Then what?’
‘Oh, don’t you start,’ he said sharply.
Chastened, I drank my Coke.
‘Got brothers or sisters?’ he asked.
‘Older sister, Liza. She’s away at uni. Charles Sturt. Lives in Bathurst in some share-house.’
‘Half her luck.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m with the folks.’
‘You don’t get on?’
‘They’re nice people. It’s not
bad
. It’s just . . . It’s gone on too long. But there’s no other choice. So . . .’ he trailed off.
‘And my other sister has just turned three.’
‘Three! Wow.’
‘I know.’
‘Contraception doesn’t work in the top drawer.’
‘They know that now.’
We laughed.
‘She’s super-gorgeous though,’ I said, my heart swelling a little at the thought of Jessica’s soft chubby cheeks and philosophical musings. That morning she had approached me while I ate my toast.
Amelia.
She laid one of her hands gently over mine.
My hands don’t come off. They’re attached to my body
. So true.
‘Got a boyfriend?’
‘What? No. How would that even happen?’
I hadn’t really talked to a boy since primary school. My only male contact was with the pushers and shovers on the bus, and they fell short of every expectation.
Talking to them wouldn’t be like this
, I thought.
‘Got a girlfriend?’ I countered.
He twisted the ring-top on his Coke can and then pulled it off. ‘No.’ He threw the can in the direction of a bin a few metres away. It missed, clanged against the metal and hit the ground.
‘We’d better get back in there.’
I nodded and pushed back my chair.
‘Oh, and you should join the union, youngster. It doesn’t cost much and by God you’ll get screwed around here.’
The weeks went on and I settled into the routine of going to work after school. It was a little harder to keep up with school work, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied by late-night caffeine hits and working through the odd lunch period. Chris often brought drafts of his uni essays in to work for me to read during my breaks. His favourite course was The History of Popular Culture. His essays were littered with references to his favourite films, which I soon learned were along the lines of
Alien
,
Rambo
,
Platoon
,
Apocalypse Now
and
The Godfather
. So different to what we were studying at school. He asked me what I thought of his work and he listened to my replies.
‘So, youngster,’ he said one day, fixing me with an eagle eye. ‘Why did Barnes shoot Elias?’
‘Why did— Who?’
‘Barnes! He shot Elias. Why?’
‘I don’t know what you’re—’ ‘Don’t – do
not
tell me you haven’t seen
Platoon
.’
I obliged, and remained silent.
‘What do they teach you at that school?’
Another day, in line to pick up our pay slips at the back office: ‘So the mothership in
Alien
clearly draws on feminist theory don’tcha think?’
I don’t watch scary movies. I mean it. Not ever. They make me scared. Scared of being alone in the house. Scared of being alone upstairs at night. Scared of walking home from work in the dark. Penny can watch scary movies and be completely unaffected. She can watch
The Silence of the Lambs
in bed and then fall sweetly asleep. I didn’t sleep for a week after we watched it last year. Never again.
‘It’s not
horror
, youngster; it’s science fiction. Trailblazing science fiction.’
Each conversation with Chris seemed to prompt an exhausting mix of excitement and forehead-slapping embarrassment at my inability to keep up with the references and in-jokes. Real or perceived. I go to an all-girls school where people are bent on studying. I wasn’t used to talking to boys at all, let alone grown-up ones with university essays to write and incredible charisma. So, so far out of my depth.
S
UMMER
I worked Christmas Eve, as did Chris and most of the other casuals. He finished his shift an hour before me and spent a good half-hour doing his man-about-Woolworths routine: entertaining the girls; engaging in serious-looking talks with the managers, his arms crossed, nodding with a furrowed brow; counselling Ed at the service desk about his life choices, or lack thereof. It was amazing how he was able to talk to anyone and everyone with confidence. I wasn’t the only one who revelled in the easiness of talking to Chris. Everyone had a better shift when Chris was on.
After the routine had concluded he disappeared into one of the aisles for a couple of minutes, and reappeared carrying a bunch of flowers. He walked past the checkouts on his way to the exit.
I was focused on the task of maneuvering a huge frozen turkey into a plastic bag, but I was acutely aware of his movements. (It was a skill I’d developed. At any given time, in addition to performing my checkout duties, I could tell you where Chris was, where he had been and when he was due to finish.) It looked as though he was going to walk out without saying goodbye or Merry Christmas or anything.
At the last moment he paused at my checkout, threw the flowers down on the counter and muttered, ‘Those are for you, youngster. Merry Christmas.’ And barrelled on out.
I looked from the flowers to the exit and back again.
I wiped the icy turkey residue from my hands onto my pants and moved the flowers underneath the register. They had a Woolworths staff-purchases seal on them, and a sticker that said
Reduced for quick sale
.
After work I walked home hugging my flowers with a queer fluttery excitement in my chest.
‘Who are those from?’ asked my mother, in front of a gaggle of Christmas Eve relatives, as I walked in the front door.
‘Um, a . . . someone from work.’ I managed.
She raised one eyebrow. ‘Well. We’d better put them in a vase.’
I was distraught when they died a few days later and Mum insisted they be thrown out.
All December I’d looked ridiculously forward to shifts when Chris would be working, especially if he was on a checkout within earshot of me, or better still in front of me, so I could watch him chatting to his customers, doing that thing he did. He could have a conversation with absolutely anyone.
He was not to be messed with, though, for all his chumminess with the managers. The store’s aircon busted a few days before Christmas and several of us checkout staff almost fainted from the heat, thanks to the heavy-felt Santa hats we were required to wear. Most of us cursed and bitched as we wiped away the sweat that ran down into our eyes, but we continued to scan and pack groceries. Not Chris. He petitioned management to have the Santa hats abandoned until the aircon was fixed. Management remained unmoved and said the Santa hats were an important part of creating a Christmassy atmosphere. Chris went to the union. Pretty soon the Santa hats were a thing of the past. Chris, the hero of the hour, personally removed the Santa hat from my overheated head, waved it triumphantly in the air and threw it under the counter. He winked at me, leaned in and whispered in my ear with playful conspiracy, ‘Rage against the machine, youngster.’
And, almost imperceptibly, his hand touched my arm before he returned to his own register. It was the first time that any of his skin had touched any of mine.
Working alongside Chris transformed five hours of boredom into a wonderland of banter and laughter. I surreptitiously scanned the roster to see which shifts we were rostered on together, and always made sure my hair was washed and as anti-frizzed as possible on those days. When school and uni holidays began, we worked a lot of the same shifts. That fluttery feeling in my chest felt as though it was starting to bruise my rib cage.
The final nail in the coffin of my sanity came one afternoon towards the close of business. Chris was lounging over my register chatting to me. I think we were talking about social hierarchies in high school as compared to social hierarchies at university.
‘I’m not saying that Beautiful People don’t have the right to
exist
,’ I remember saying. ‘I’m not saying that they should be rounded up and taken to an island. I’m just saying that they are never, ever to be trusted because they can never know what it’s like not to be Beautiful and their priority will always be being Beautiful with other Beautiful People.’
‘So you think that everyone should know their place and be happy in it, and not seek to have any congress beyond that?’
Bianca (who was the Service Supervisor, and so the boss of us) barked at Chris from down at the service desk, where she was delicately adjusting the uniform red bow tie of one of the better-looking checkout boys. ‘Chris! Back to work!’
He didn’t move straight away. He looked at me and, with full eye-contact for maximum impact, said, ‘You are the real thing, youngster. I hope you will never change.’ Before moving slowly back to his own register.
I know a compliment when I hear one, even if I don’t fully understand the nature of it. The hammer shot that last nail in with one strong blow.
One afternoon in January I sit on the couch watching TV with my little sister Jess. She is three years old and she likes to watch TV snuggled up to me. All right, all right –
I
like watching TV snuggled up to her. We are watching
Play School
. Apart from wondering what ever happened to Hamble, I’m not really paying attention. I’m mulling over the last few weeks at work, in particular thinking about Chris, when it comes to me. The whir and fog in my mind suddenly clear and leave three words standing tall and indisputable:
I love Chris.
My tummy feels weird. I sit there pondering for what must be a long time, letting Jess watch the older kids’ programs that are on later and later. Eventually my father comes in and starts making a whisky and soda for himself and my mother. Whisky and soda signals six o’clock and time for me to get up and set the table for dinner. In love or no.
T
HE
K
ATHY-VIRUS AND
OTHER ANOMALIES
‘Fishing off the company pier’, as I have overheard Chris refer to it, is a common practice among the casual staff at Woolworths. Bianca, for example, is twenty-three and has been going out with Andy from Groceries, aged eighteen, for some months. This is in addition to the bow-tie adjusting she indulges in on a regular basis with most of the other male staff members. Like I said earlier, Andy is a pretty quiet guy. I imagine he just does what he is told. They must both get something out of the relationship – I just have no idea what it is.
‘Sex,’ says Chris, when I ask him. ‘They both get sex.’
Lots of the younger girls have crushes on Ed, who, even I have to admit, is pretty good-looking. He is also aloof, adding to his appeal. Sadly for the girls, he is generally too stoned to take advantage of their attentions. Chris can frequently be seen leaning over the counter of the service desk berating him. ‘You have to be in it to win it, Edward!’ and the like.
The yawning six-year chasm between my age and Chris’s is not the only fly in the proverbial ointment of this ‘loving Chris’ business. I’m not even sure what ‘getting’ Chris would involve, all I know is I want him. I want to be enfolded by him somehow, and to possess him. To have unfettered and exclusive access to him all the time. To feel how I feel around him all the time. To know that he loves being around me too. To feel more of his skin on my skin.
But Chris seems to be in perpetual pursuit of another girl from work called Kathy Rushworth. She’s twenty-two and studying primary education at the same university as Chris. Like Bianca, she is a supervisor, and so is sort of Chris’s boss. He refers to his long-standing crush as the Kathyvirus, as it seems to take a relapsing–remitting course.
‘Got a
raging
case of it today, youngster,’ he mutters, pushing a trolley of stock past my register with white knuckles, watching Kathy talking animatedly to Stuart Green from Groceries at the service desk.
The following week Chris declares, ‘It’s in remission!’ and declines Kathy’s invitation to go to the pub after work. Instead, he hangs around after his shift advising me on my English assignment.
Kathy is dark, pretty, small –
elfin
even – and completely uninterested in Chris. Except, strangely, when the Kathy-virus is in remission. Then she bombards him with a campaign of arm-touching (signature move), bow-tie adjusting (borrowed from Bianca) and leaning over Chris’s register giving him her undivided, head-cocked-to-one-side attention. An immediate relapse of the Kathy-virus invariably follows.
That Kathy needs a can of reduced-for-quick-sale Spam pegged at the back of her head, and I reckon I’m the woman for the job. They’re stacked within easy reach of my register.
After glaring at the Chris-and-Kathy spectacle for the whole shift from my dress-circle vantage point at checkout number seven, I walk home through the deserted mall and dark streets.
Fifteen-year-old checkout girls are in no position to compete with someone like Kathy. Even Street-cred Donna would be struggling to make serious inroads with Chris (which, by the way, I am totally convinced she is. I am not the only youngster looking up to Chris with a thumping heart. She just shows it differently. I can spot a rival at twenty paces). She has recently added a tattoo of barbed wire encircling her upper right arm (as a sixteenth birthday present to herself) and has her mother’s name tattooed on her other arm. You can’t see her tatts – her work shirt covers them. Chris told me about them.
My sixteenth birthday is months and months away. I have no tatts. I don’t smoke. I have no idea how to wear make-up and now that my older sister has moved away to live on campus, I have no one to teach me. I don’t stand a chance. I know this.
I turn my key in the front door and grunt a greeting to my mother, who is folding laundry in front of the TV. Dad is away this week.
I sling my heavy backpack to the floor next to the couch, sit down beside Mum and take my shoes off.
‘How was your day?’ I ask her.
She doesn’t answer. Never a good sign.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
I wait uneasily. ‘Bad day at work?’
‘No.’
‘Jess chucking tanties?’
‘No.’
Her movements folding the clothes are jerky and angry, and she slams every folded item down on its pile. Her face is tired, her mouth a straight line.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask again.
‘Nothing!’
I won’t get it out of her. I’m short on time anyway. Got hours of homework and it’s almost nine thirty.
‘Is there any dinner?’
‘In the oven.’
I eat standing up in the kitchen, rinse my plate, collect my backpack and climb the stairs. When I reach the top it is dark, except for the green glow of Jess’s night-light in the end bedroom.
English first
, I think as I snap on my bedroom light.
My English teacher, Mrs Cumming, who I have for the second year running, has a very ‘interpretive’ approach to the Year Ten syllabus. She’s decided that the first text this year is Sylvia Plath’s
The Bell Jar
. I’m halfway through it. The main character has tried to kill herself a couple of times now. She’s also
really
uncomfortable with the fact that she’s a virgin. She looks around and divides people into two categories – people who have had sex, and people who have not. That’s something I can relate to a bit. No one in my immediate peer group has crossed that Rubicon (I don’t think!) but still, I live in the world. And I’m in love with a twenty-one-year-old. So it crosses my mind. Whenever anything to do with sex comes up in conversation with Chris, he gives me this sympathetic look, like he doesn’t want to scare me, or confront me. Like I’m too delicate.
Scare me!
I want to shout.
Confront me! I’m not so breakable – go on, try!
I am nowhere near sold on
The Bell Jar
but keep ploughing through it because Chris nodded his approval the week before.
‘Sylvia Plath, eh? Hardcore.’ He came into the staff-room on my break and saw me reading it.
‘Yes. Yes it is hardcore.’
‘This is the weird English teacher, right?’
‘Yes. Yes, she is weird.’
‘Want a coffee?’ He got a stack of styrofoam cups out of the cupboard and prised the lid off the massive tin of International Roast so generously provided. Yuk.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
I closed the book and waited for him to sit down. A cup of International Roast with Chris at 8:15 p.m. on a school night. Plastic chairs in a windowless room. It was the high point of my day. It was the high point of my life.
The margins of all my exercise books are filled with letter Cs in various colours, fonts and incarnations. I stare out of classroom windows, wondering what he is doing. I imagine him at university, taking lecture notes, hanging out with his friends at the uni bar, putting in his two cents worth at the sociology tute he loves. And, of course, talking to girls. Grown-up girls at university. Girls who can go drinking with him after class, girls his own age whom he could confidently introduce to his family and friends. Girls who know how to dress and to wear make-up. Girls who have had sex. Girls who study the same texts as him. Girls who stand a chance in hell.
I’m quieter than usual during the lunch period. I lie on my back on the grass, my head resting on my school backpack, surrounded by the voices of my friends, and look up at the bright blue sky. Penny sits next to my inert form, talking to Ally and Eleni, but occasionally she waves a hand in front of my face, and shakes her head, laughing.
‘She all right?’ someone asks.
‘Sure,’ says Penny. ‘She’s just in her happy place.’ Penny drops her hand onto mine and briefly squeezes it.
The six lanes of traffic on the other side of the fence hum to my right. I close my eyes and imagine Chris brushing my hair away from my neck with warm hands. I open my eyes again. My lips feel like they are burning.
At work, I hear that Street-cred Donna’s dad has belted her and kicked her out of the house. Egged on in large part by the stepmother. Her real mother re-married and moved to America when Donna was twelve. Up ahead of me on register twelve Donna is serving customers, her eyes puffy and her shirt un-ironed.
During my break, I walk out to the back dock, eating my muesli bar, and happen upon Chris and Donna. She’s crying. Her face is streaked with eye make-up, her shoulders are shaking and she smokes with nicotine-stained fingers. Chris is gently stroking her back. Catching sight of me over the top of her bowed head he wordlessly waves me away.
I wonder, despicably, if I invent a similar crisis will he stroke my back too?