Joyous and Moonbeam (2 page)

Funny sort of day, today. As in good-funny. Later on, anyway.

Not at the start, though. Not when Bracks orders me out of class first thing for one more lecture (which sucked because a) what more is there to say? and b) I was working on my exhibit piece in Art and I
love
doing that) then makes me sit in the office for hours with old Madam Clickety-Clack typing attendance records until Bracks finishes meeting number fifty-eight for the day and can drive me over to the workshop, shelter, whatever it is. More lectures on the way, same-old same-old. This is
about giving back to the school community, Ashleigh. This is about restoring your good name, restoring our faith, becoming the person you used to be.

Sorry Miss, I know you're doing your best and I can even respect that but it's such a load of you-know-what. Becoming the person you
used
to be? Why would anyone want to do that? Doesn't that mean reversing? Going backwards? Not growing? Keep the wings tucked and stay static, people! Yes, that's you, you're the one in the photograph, the one stuck in time.

Of course, that's what schools want. Schools and parents, working in tandem. They see this ideal when you're – I don't know, eleven, twelve – a cute kid with pig-tails and ribbons and a goofy love-the-world smile and pretty books and neat writing and nice colours in your paintings, and that's it – that's who you are. Branded for life. And if you dare step away from the ideal, step outside to someplace else, it's
such a shame!
She's
changed so much!
So
different!
Used to be
a lovely kid, but now
…

But now. Crap-crap-crapola.

It's not Bracks's fault. She's just – the system. The way things are and probably always have been. A billion years as part of the institution has bent her into shape. Sometimes, when she's rabbiting on, I tune out and look at her, look hard to the inside and I think, Lady, I bet you were like me once. I bet you gave people hell. ‘Cause beyond the
façade, Bracks is kinda edgy. Got that look behind the eyes, hovering on the accepted side of crazy. Just. Like she's controlled on the outside but knowing underneath. She can be a hard old cow but I'd much rather spend time with her than other teachers, and certainly my parents.

Yeah, I guess I respect Bracks. Which is why I'm doing this, recording this stuff. Get it out, she said this morning. Sometimes our thoughts sit inside and become viral. You need to open doors, let them go.

I don't mind that idea, viral thoughts. I know exactly what she means. Diamond number one.

So we drove there eventually, over the river, back towards the industrial estate, around a few corners then went inside this big brick place, old-looking. There was a guy called Santorini, the boss, fat bloke with a really soft voice. I could hardly hear him when he said stuff about
space
and
respect
, which was kinda predictable, then something which wasn't: We are all disabled. Weird, but I know that's what he said because he repeated it: We are all disabled. Then he said, Ashleigh, these people are profoundly disabled. But we all carry disabilities of some sort.

Interesting idea, made me think. Diamond number two.

Then Bracks weighed in with a story about a writer who saw a beggar and said, There but for the grace of
God go I. I swear, that woman has a quote for every occasion! Anyway, if they were trying to make me feel guilty, it worked. Because I did, I felt guilty for being – okay. Physically, mentally, whatever.

But I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that.

I didn't mind Santorini. He took me on a tour, with Bracks tagging along. The workshop used to be a factory apparently, a flour mill. So it's all brick walls on the inside and chipped paint on concrete and really high ceilings, cold, echoey. Some of the rooms are offices and others are spaces for the
clients
(his word, I asked about the
patients
and he said, No, no, we never call them that). There's one really big workshop on the ground floor with benches and machinery and tools and stuff. Santorini said they only use that one under strict supervision whereas most of the other activities can be done independently, although they do have CCTV in every room. Fair enough, I suppose. Gotta look after the
clients
, keep them safe from mad outsiders. Like me.

I only saw a few – the
allowable
ones – and they seemed okay. You get these stereotypes in your head that people with mental shit going on will naturally look different, sort of damaged, maybe even a bit lopsided. And it'll be obvious, like I'm gaga so I dribble and my eyes cross and I smell bad. I met Troy, David, Mark and Jeremy.
They were quiet. Polite. Normal-looking. Soft voices, like Santorini. Didn't really look at me, just kept on doing whatever they were doing. Making stuff. It was like grade three craft afternoon – balls of wool and icy-pole sticks.

Peaceful, though. Schools are such un-peaceful places, with all the positioning that goes on, people trying to be better than other people, the put-downs and pedestals, pecking-orders. I hate that bullshit but you can't stop it. It's genetic – how people are, not just at school, people generally. All of us. Like my parents, particularly Mum. Ever since the Jamie thing emptied her out, her entire life has been about scrambling over anyone who gets in her way.

After the tour Santorini said that I could start in Room 12 with Mr Bowen. I asked, Is there anything I should know? And he said, No, just remember what I already told you – space and respect. Off you go. So I did, and when I looked back it was weird, I swear Bracks was crying. She was wiping her eyes and Santorini was patting her shoulder and it – it made me feel funny, like I'd looked through a window and seen something I shouldn't have. Anyway, I found Room 12 and I found Mr Bowen. He was making pin-cushions and I think it's safe to say, even now, after one day, that he was nothing at all like I expected.

Joyous, My Special

I am writing these letters so that you can understand things. I have to write because it's too hard to tell you face to face how it is and Mamma would probably cry. Anyway, it's good to write letters because letters don't judge or comment. They listen to you, like pets in that respect. And you, Joyous, you don't judge or comment either and I'll always be grateful for that.

Writing about pets reminds me of the farm by the river at Kinsville when we had lots of pets. Some of them not officially our own but adopted, like the ducks.
Remember them? They used to walk in a line from the pond to the paddock then back again. Little ones following their mamma in the early morning. Once you said to me, Mamma, are the ducks happy? And I said, Yes, yes, of course they're happy, because they're doing what ducks do. That's all that really matters, I suppose, do what you have to do and don't let anyone else make you do otherwise. It's not fair on a person to make them do otherwise, especially when being who you are born to be is so hard anyway. So, Joyous, I will use these letters to you to explain about how things came to be and how things will also be in the future and to give my view on events and happenings and on the way there might be one or two biggish surprises, so I'm sorry for that in advance but that is the way of the world.

Every life has its number of little sadnesses and its one or two great big sadnesses and my great big sadness was certainly the day your dadda had his accident. I've said it before to you but I don't believe I can ever properly tell of the love that lived between that man and I. Of course, as you know, we met outside the church just nearby my old home town and he was a tall man with slick fair hair and a smile that went with an attitude. He beamed, as I've always said, strong from the inside. I remember looking around at all those other people in their dark suits and long faces cause it was a Wesley church, you know, Methodists,
and we never smiled too much except for your father with his inner beam. All these other people and they were shadows, like still grey trees in the bush, and your father all glossy white and like a bird. A male swan maybe, or even a cockatoo with its squarky laugh. I stood there with my new silver purse hoping he would pass by and perhaps greet me and when he did it was like a spirit or a spell. I can still remember the smell of him – coconut oil – and every time I smell that when someone passes me in our street or in the shops I am reminded and I want to cry even today at 54 years of age. So your father stopped and in those days in our little town it wasn't proper for a young man to be too forward with a young woman, so we were very polite, not saying too much beyond the weather and things, but we both knew, oh, how we knew.

His name was Thomas Bowen and he had been away for a long time down south with his father because his father was a fisherman who used to go out trawling. When Thomas was a little boy the Bowen family lived not too far away in a place called Wilton where they ran the post office. Then the mother died. Her name was Rene and she had a long sickness and history of cancer. So Murray Bowen sold the post office and went away in his grief and went out on the trawlers searching for a hard life, a man's life, because he couldn't stand the land or the hurting. The land was memories, I suppose, and I know the hurt
of that feeling well. Thomas – your father – spent most of his time with an aunt by the name of Bella whom I never met because she passed on in 1968 after a kitchen fire accident. That was when Murray Bowen quit the trawler's life and came back to his home town, Thomas saying because he just didn't know what else to do. He was a lost man with a lost son and they lived together in a cottage near the river which is not there anymore. They had no money, just doing for work what they could. In 1972, in summer time, was when Thomas came alone to the church, not, as he said, hoping for some salvation but just to meet some new people. He met me alright. I was turned 18 and he was 23 and the most polite, sweet, good-looking man you could ever wish to meet. That's all I did that summer, fall further and further in love with Thomas Bowen, the man with the coconut oil smell and inner beam walking by the river cottage and picking bunches of wild flowers and jumping off the rope at the eastern water hole when it was hot, as it so often was, and finding out who and how we were.

When you fall in love like that, Joyous, and I really hope that one day you will, it's like opening a new book, a beautiful book with each page being different and surprising and joyous. Each page something to behold, a gift from God. That's what Thomas Bowen and I did that summer. Carefully, lovingly unfolded the pages in our book of
togetherness, one by one, slowly, quietly, knowing how strongly it mattered. We were never disappointed. Never at all. So that's the first part of my story to you. Very important and the best of everything, as you will see.

Lots of love, Mamma

Go back, you say, mister, go back. Joyous can remember going-back-stuff like school days but not to do so much of that because going back there is very hard to be working around a little. Schools were not liking Joyous because they were not so dandiful. Schools were honkingly big places made of concrete and angered eyes and hard pieces. Lots and lots of hard pieces like other boys and lunchtimes and not understanding and too many words for Joyous to be hearing, words like icy rainy bits falling down from the sky.

Mister, there are lots of many examples, like the time
a boy who was being called Matthew Berrings, who had a square red face and big hands like two big tuna-fish, did say, Oi, Mong, come around here, got something for you. So Joyous did go trustingly, which Mamma says try not to do, but I can and I am. And then other boys who said they were his mateys did hold me with arms against the side of the gymnasium and Matthew Berrings unzippered his pants and peed on Joyous's legs. I do recall it was wet, hot and stinky, and in the sunshine being the brightest yellow I had ever seen but a funny kind of pretty like a curvy rod of gold, and then they all were laughing fit to burst at the seams and Matthew Berrings said, Let's shit on him, too, which is not a word Joyous wants to use but that is what came out from his square red face so it's righteous.

Yes, mister, it was a hard, hard piece of time with the sun be hurting my eyes and wet legs and badness smells like toilets then Mister Jameson was walking around and they all skedaddled and Mister Jameson said, Bowen, isn't it? What, had an accident, son? Honestly. At your age. And that did make it harder some more because Joyous had to be walking behind Mister Jameson through the playing-yard with wetness and smells and confusion and boys be calling Joyous new names like Pisser and Bog-brain and Stink-bomb and head down like an arrested person. Although it was being good later when Mamma did say, No, Joyous, you were no arrested person but a big film
star man on the red carpet, which was working it around a little so that's the plain and simple kookity end of that.

But yes, mister, yes, Joyous can be going right back to Kinsville and knowing that before the poorly judged whip-around and Sammy-K coming for companioning, Mamma did say that there was just her and me and it was beneficial. Mamma is liking to use the words with the
shl
sound: special, artificial, beneficial, because the
shl
sound is softer and does be soothing before sleeping. When Joyous was a just a slip of a lad and filled up to the brimsome with all that world-wondering, Mamma was calling out, Joyous, My Special! Which I did like because it was being sounded like an official title, like you might say, Grand Pooh-Bah Lord High Everything Else Of Titipu. Which I did see once on a singing movie on our old black-and-white TV that Sammy-K later did smash with a hammer because he was being angered about the burned sausages late home for tea so we did get another one with colours a bit further on when the angry was gone.

Back then, before Sammy-K, we lived away from the city in a farming house on the land. Joyous doesn't remember it all because that is a mental impossible like hard sums but I do be remembering pieces of the places and what I was doing like a movie-camera in my eyes and the places are being like a patchy quilt like on Mamma's bed with different stories in each square. Back then,
before Sammy-K, there was a hill behind our farming house and it was being shaped like a bread-loaf, a round cob, says Mamma, and every night I do recall seeing the sun go behind the bread-loaf cob-hill and we used to be watching it for colours spreading like ink made of bronze-silver-gold like the running and jumping medals and then the pink and deep-blue ocean colour. One perfect night Mamma did say the sunset looked like a raw-sketch ink-blot which Thomas Bowen had taught her and which I didn't be understanding but was about bright colours and being the same in mirrors, which was very dandiful and still is today.

On the other side of the farming house I do recall was a tall tree that I called my kingdom because it was all alone and quietness and special. Joyous used to be climbing up the kingdom tree which was low and wide, a green cloud, and smelling sharp like toothbrushes, then I would be rolling the bottom part of my shirt into a bag and collecting the dandiful red petals because these were being the dollars and cents of the kingdom, and Mamma would be swapping me cup cakes with icing on for a baker's dozen of petals. And that was the best place for Joyous without hard pieces and being a rich king in my kingdom with red petals and a view and not too much to be working around a little, none really.

The farming house was being made of blue stuff called
bluestone which was rough rock but smooth that looked soft like river-water from a distance afar then behind the house was Mamma's garden which she said was her own kingdom like my tree. It was being very dandiful. Mamma was a honkingly good grower because she had the green fingers and it did take Joyous a long time to understand she meant good growing fingers, not real green ones like a goblin or the giant at the top of the beanstalk. Mamma was wondrous at strawberries and Joyous remembers these well because their juice was the most googlish sweetness I've ever been tasting as it went over my lips like a flood and into my collar and shirt and that made Mamma laugh, my white shirt with the skinny red lines of strawberry juice. Back then I do remember that Mamma's laugh was a sound to behold and Joyous is saying so because it is not to behold much anymore, not since the accident or not since a long time earlier when Sammy-K did say that the city was the future and the place where they were belonging which somehow Joyous doesn't think Sammy-K ever meant to be part of for me.