Stolen (19 page)

After a while you sat up and wiped your hand across your forehead.

“Let’s get a drink,” you said. “Too hot out here.”

I followed you back to the veranda, but didn’t follow you inside. I wanted to think for a moment, about our conversation the day before, about whether it really had been you in the park that night. Sometimes I thought it made sense, other times it didn’t.

You’d left the door open and I heard you in the kitchen, gulping thirstily from the tap. You returned with two full glasses. You handed one to me. I took it, but didn’t drink. I watched your shoulders tense when I put the glass on the floor. Then I sat on the edge of the couch. You were about the right height to be the guy in the hoodie. But this story of yours, this way that you knew me … it was too big, too crazy. And there were still so many things that didn’t make sense. Why then? Why follow me all those years? Why me?

“Why did you leave Australia?” I asked. “Why even go to Britain in the first place?”

You didn’t answer. You stepped slowly up to one of the veranda posts and leaned your forehead against it. You tried shutting your eyes. But I kept pressing, wanting to find you out.

“Why?”

You shook your head, your fingers tight around your glass. Then, quickly, you turned to me.

“I got a letter,” you said. “OK?”

“What letter?” I watched your fingertips turn white from their grip. “What did it say?”

Your mouth opened as if to tell me, but you took a sharp breath instead. “I don’t know….” Your fingers were clenching so tight around the glass, I thought it would crack. You followed my gaze and looked down at them, too. “I don’t know how she found me.”

I shifted on the couch, suddenly interested. “Who found you?”

You thumped the glass down hard on the railing, and it smashed inside your hand. Your eyes opened wide as you looked at the jagged pieces in your palm.

“My mum, OK?” you whispered. “She found me.”

A trickle of blood ran down over your wrist. You watched it, and the glass fragments made a dull
clink
as you dropped them on the floor. I looked at the four even-sized pieces before looking back at your hand. You had curled it up, but there was still blood leaking between your fingers. Your eyes remained wide, confused. You reached down to pick up the pieces but then saw me looking and flinched away again, quickly putting your hand in front of you where I couldn’t see it. You turned your face away, too, your shoulders raised up, tense. One more word and you might explode. I waited awhile before speaking, and when I did my words were hesitant.

“I thought you said your mum disappeared, after you were born?”

“She did.” You hunched over your fist, uncurling it, checking the damage. “But she found me,” you whispered. “I don’t know how. Not long after I turned seventeen she sent me a letter.”

“Why?” The word was quieter than a breath. But it hung between us. Your back was as stiff as the post you were leaning against. Nothing about you moved.

“She said she wanted to see me. She gave me her address: 31-a Elphington Street. London.”

“That’s near me.”

“I know.”

“So you came to see her.”

“I tried. My foster parents lent me the money.”

“What happened?”

“They were glad to be rid of me.”

“I meant with your mum.”

You turned. Your face was contorted from the emotions you were wrestling with.

“You really want to know this?”

I nodded. In three strides you were across the veranda, slamming the door behind you. Then I heard you in the house, walking heavily, opening a drawer. I waited, tense. The door swung open again, bashing hard against the house wall. You pushed something into my hands: an envelope.

“Read her letter,” you barked.

I fumbled with the envelope, my hands suddenly shaky as I pulled out the thin pages inside. A photograph fell out, too, landing in my lap. I picked it up.

It was faded and old, slightly crumpled around the edges. It was of a girl, a girl about my age, holding a baby tight to her chest. She was staring boldly at the camera, as if challenging the person taking it. I gasped a little as I studied her long dark hair and green eyes. She looked a little like me. The baby she was holding was tiny, wrapped up tight in hospital blankets. But his eyes were as blue as oceans, the one curl on his head golden.

I looked back at you, my eyes lingering on the blond hair falling in your eyes.

“… You?”

You slammed your hand against the veranda post, making the whole structure shudder.

“I wanted you to
read
it!” You snatched the pages from my lap. “Give it back if you’re not going to.”

You took the photograph, too, though you were careful not to bend that. You placed it gently inside your shirt pocket, and put the pages in after. You talked quietly, like you were talking to yourself.

“She wrote to ask me to live with her,” you explained. “She said she’d been alone too long.”

“And what happened?” My voice was barely a whisper.

You leaned over me. Carefully, you uncurled your fingers and stretched them to my face. I saw the dark blood on your palm, hardening already. I turned my face away, but you pulled it back toward you, forcing me to look at you, your palm cupping my chin, your fingertips in my hair.

“Thirty-one-a Elphington Street was a squat,” you sighed. “Shit on the walls, and dead sparrows in the fireplace. Some dealer almost killed me when I knocked.”

“And your mum?” The words were hard to get out between the tight grip of your fingers.

“She wasn’t there. Apparently, she’d left the week before I arrived.” Your eyes darted away, remembering. “I tried to get another address for her, but no one would give it to me…. They said she was involved in too much shit, they didn’t want to know her anymore.”

I tried escaping from your grip. You wouldn’t let me. Just gripped tighter, and moved your lips closer to my face, your breath sour like your rolled cigarettes.

“Eventually I got a number I could reach her on. I held that scrap of paper in my pocket for days before I had the guts to call, until I knew the numbers off by heart. When I did, I got this old woman asking if I had any money, and when I said no, she said she didn’t know who I was talking about. But that voice of hers …” You took a breath. “… It sounded half-dead: drunk, or drugged, or something … like Dad had sounded sometimes.” You paused. “You know, I often wondered if it was really her that answered, if that was her voice.”

I held your gaze. Slowly, I tried moving my face back, away from you a little.

“I kept hunting, though,” you continued, not noticing my movement. “Kept searching in those squats and shelters, trying to find her. Fuck! I’d never seen snow before I got there, I fucking hated it after the first day. I didn’t have any money to get home, or anything else to do, or anyone, so …”

You broke off then, finally letting me go. I moved my jaw around, testing the damage. Your face was concerned when I glanced up. You stretched your fingers toward my cheek as if you wanted to touch it again.

I shook my head. No. Your face twisted up, and you slammed your hand down hard into the cushion next to me. We both watched it there. It was only a few inches away from me, and it was shaking. After a moment, you took it back and put it in your pocket. You moved away, back to your post looking out at the land.

“Is that when you found me?” I asked quietly. “Back in London, after you couldn’t find your mum?”

You didn’t answer. Instead you stomped across the veranda and jumped down into the sand. You threw a punch at your punching bag, then crouched over into yourself and threw several more. You growled as your injured hand connected. Then you slammed both arms against the bag and headed out to the Separates. I listened to the rhythm of the bag bouncing back and forth before it slowed, then stopped entirely. Sometime later, from inside the rocks, I heard an echo of a sound that could have been your scream.

It got to late afternoon, the time when you normally fed the chickens; you still weren’t back. I picked up the box of seeds and nuts from the porch area, and went to do it myself. I had to go through the camel’s pen to get into the Separates. It was the first time I’d been in there without you. The camel was resting, her legs bent underneath her. She raised her head when I entered.

“There now, easy girl,” I said, trying to sound like you.

She was so big that it was hard not to be a little nervous around her. I stepped carefully through the pathway to the rocks. I wondered if you were still in there. And, if so, where? I had the feeling you were watching me.

I got to the clearing. It was noisier there, with the wild birds beginning their late-afternoon gossiping. A lizard basking on a rock retreated quickly to the shade as I made my way to the cages. I went to the hens first, leaving the rooster until last. He was strutting around his cage like he was gearing up for a fight. I yanked open the lid to the hens’ cage and stuck the food in. They clustered around my hand, their warm feathery bodies soft against my skin. I liked the way they clucked and gurgled. They sounded like the two old ladies who were sometimes on my bus home from school; those ladies twittered and murmured, too, only instead it was about their favorite TV shows. I missed those old ladies. I wondered if they’d noticed I was no longer on their bus.

I decided to name the chickens. The two fat gray ones I called Ethel and Gwen, after the bus ladies. The thin red one was Mum. The fatter red one was Anna. The large orangey one I called Ben (yeah, OK, so it’s a boy’s name), and the sick, whitish one was Alison, after Granny. I called the rooster Dick, after you.

After I’d stroked the hens for a while, I shut the lid to their cage and moved across to the rooster. His beak was between the cage wires, trying to peck at me. I flicked a bit of dirt in his direction, then tried opening the latch. He was onto me immediately, drilling his beak sharply into my fingers. I stepped back, throwing him off.

I heard your laugh from over near the fruit trees. You were leaning against the rock, your legs propped up on a tree. You were as still as the sandstone behind you.

“You need to pick him up when he does that,” you said. “Carry him until he calms. Either that, or hold him upside down.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

You shrugged, came over. As you knelt in front of his cage, Dick tried to peck you, too. He leaped into the air, thrusting his sharp feet toward you.

“Ninja chicken, isn’t he?” You grinned at me, rolling your sleeves up. “We’ll see about that.”

You reached into the cage. Instantly Dick was onto your hand, clawing at you, biting chunks out with his beak.

“Goddamn rooster!”

You tried dropping him. But Dick clung on. I turned my face to the side, hiding my smirk. You flung your hand around, trying to shake him off, but that rooster dug his claws in like his life depended on it. He tore a deep gash over your knuckles. You tried to pull him off with your other hand, but Dick kept fighting. He screeched and squawked, enjoying the carnage. You yelled back. It was a full-on battle all right, like the ones on nature shows between the dominant males of two herds. I felt like I should be cheering the rooster on, enjoying each scratch he gave you.

Finally, you managed to get your other hand around his wings. You pinned him like that. I waited, wondering if you would squeeze any tighter, whether you would really get back at the mad bird. But you just dropped him into the cage, chucked the food at him, and shut the lid quickly. You kicked the wire with your boot. Dick flew at the roof, whacking himself against it and plummeting back to the ground, squawking wildly.

Your hands and arms were bleeding and swollen from the scratches, your eyes wide.

“You’re right, he’s a killer,” you said. “A rooster with some serious issues.”

You shook your head, perhaps surprised that another creature could beat you like that. You held your injured hands out in front of you like a small child might. Blood wept from the gash over your knuckles and ran over your wrist. A couple of small chest feathers were stuck in it. You tried mopping up some of the bleeding with your other hand, but that only opened up a scratch on the back of that one, too.

“Ow,” you said. Then you looked up, really turned those big blue eyes on me. “I think you’re going to have to help me clean these,” you said.