‘See that dark-green two-storey? That’s the one.’
I hadn’t anticipated the place to have layers. I was used to flat-dwelling, nothing but bare fa?ades and a few rooms. There was no light coming from the front windows like the other homes, nothing to suggest there was life inside.
‘Go to the backyard,’ John rushed.
‘And do what?’
‘At some stage I’ll come to you.’
For the first time since our meeting, he seemed nervous. I couldn’t have that around me. I nodded, even smiled at him, to put him at ease.
He crossed the street, made his way to the house and knocked on the door. An elderly tub of a woman wearing a blue bonnet opened the door, filled the frame with her hips and stomach and John took her hands, kissed them. He was loud when he said, ‘Good evening, dear Abby.’ The wife. She looked away from him, like he was wearing a vulgar mask, and John burst in, shut the door.
I counted to three, crossed the road, jumped over a small white fence, made sure no one was passing by and got close to the house. I smelled a flood of kerosene snake out from the door gap. I put a hand on the door. The wood was warm and at the top of the door were brass numbers: 92. I turned the handle. Locked. I ran to the side, slid my way to a window. The sun dropped. Through the window I could see inside, could see the top of a black-shine sofa and, above that, a painting of a horse in a field, the muscular beast kicking its legs behind, all its anger. I saw John reach out to shake a tall man’s hands: the way they eyed each other, the way the tall man grinned and bared teeth. I knew that was Andrew. I sized him up best I could, took stock of his balding head, the liver spots on top, his cranky arms and thin frame. My papa had been shorter, sturdy-shouldered, weak in mind. And I could take on Papa. Andrew wouldn’t be a problem.
John and Andrew shook hands, shook hands, shook hands, let go. In between them came the maid. ‘Bridget,’ I said. The thick dark hair of her, her broad shoulders, her hard-knock chin. Maids always came near the things they shouldn’t. Bridget looked right at the window. I bobbed down, hit my elbows against the side of the house. I moused into a ball on the ground, tried to disappear into darkening night. Ants crawled up my arm, bit me good, and the grass underneath me was summered, dry and upright, prickled. I waited and waited, then looked through the window again. The room was empty, as if what I saw before was ghosts.
I went to the backyard. Along the fence was a full-bloom pear arbour, the sickly-sweet smell of half-eaten fruit thrown to the ground. I thought of the worms underneath churning earth, climbing over each other until their soft jelly bodies rolled into one. I pulled a pear and ate, juices on fingers and chin. There was a sharp twinge towards the back of my mouth and I reached my index finger inside, felt another loose tooth. I took hold, pulled and twisted, threw the tooth under the pear arbour.
All around me crickets thrumped their little throats and the moon started to show, covered grass with a balmy sheen. There was a barn to the left of the yard and a large rug hanging over the clothesline. My leg began to itch and I scratched, enjoyed the way my skin came under my fingernails, the way I piled myself up. I watched the back of the house, watched windows light and dim with kerosene lamps, watched Bridget move from room to room. When she was upstairs in the attic she removed her bonnet, pressed herself against a window, looked out into the early night. I wondered if I waved my hands, would she see me out here in the shadows? I bet she knew about Emma’s and Lizzie’s father problems. I had a mind to ask her about them. The conversations we could have. How easy my task would be then. Bridget stood up there in the window and I moved towards the house. I tried to lift the windows on the first floor, all locked, and then I tried the basement double doors, twisted the handle back and forth. Locked. I twisted the handle again and felt resistance. I let go and the handle rattled. Someone behind the door. There was a key in the lock, some grunting, and I ran to the pear arbour, flattened myself along the ground. The basement door opened like an earthquake and there was a kerosene glow. A woman stood there. She held the lamp high, watched a moth swarm the light before sweeping it away with the back of her hand.
The woman came outside, came right into the yard, and I could hear her breath, shallow and nervous, something bubbling inside her. She wiped her fingers across her eyes, like she’d been crying, and she put the lamp on the ground, let out a deep belly-sound of anger.
I lifted my head a little, hungry for her noise. This was a feeling I knew. The things you could do with it. She did it again and said, ‘As the Lord liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.’ I lifted my head higher, started to raise my chest off the ground. I realised then that this was Lizzie. She had problems indeed. Somewhere around us I heard, ‘What on God’s earth was that noise?’ and Lizzie covered her mouth with her hand and scanned the yard, made me bury myself back into the ground. Crickets hammered, Lizzie shined the light on the rug, went close to it, picked up a wicker slapper that was leaning against the house. Lizzie, with her back turned to me, started beating the rug with the slapper, over and over, grunting from effort, her shoulders round and fierce.
‘I am not those things. I am not those things,’ she spat out, a freight train across country, no slowing it down.
I pulled myself onto my hands and knees, slowly began to crawl towards her, wanted to get close to her to smell anger, find out just how much problem-solving I would have to do. Lizzie cried out, made the rug swing like a dead man. I was halfway to her when John appeared in the basement doorway. He lifted his lamp high, caught me on all fours. He sneered, shook his head and I stopped still.
‘Lizzie, what’s going on?’ he said.
‘I can’t do this anymore.’ She beat the rug.
John walked to her, put his lamp on the ground then took Lizzie by the shoulders. ‘Now, now,’ he cooed. ‘You can do anything.’
‘Why does he always have to put me down?’
‘Why does anyone do anything? Don’t listen to him.’ John looked over towards me and I slowly crawled back to where I’d come from. I flattened into grass. He armed her tight, hushed her, told her, ‘I’m going to help you feel better. Do you like the sound of that?’ John held her tighter, nuzzled into her, made Lizzie narrow into him like a cat. ‘Yes.’
They stood for a time and then Lizzie asked, ‘Am I a good daughter?’
‘The very best, I’m sure.’
‘What do I have to do to get Father to see that?’ The strain in her voice.
‘Just continue to be yourself. He’ll learn his mistakes soon enough.’
‘Maybe he will,’ Lizzie said. Crickets hammered the yard. ‘I’m surprised to see you today.’
‘I told you I’d be coming.’