Thyla - Kate Gordon [4]
blankets (I did not like them)
meat (I did like it, very much)
sandwiches (not so much)
walls (I did not like them. I wanted to jump them)
trousers (I liked wearing them and hated wearing skirts, even though something inside me told me that I should prefer skirts)
bright light (scary)
darkness, when I was alone in my room (even more scary)
and, finally:
parents (gone. ‘Dead?’ ‘I don’t know.’)
When I told you the last one, you looked at me with an expression that was curious and strange.
‘What?’ I asked, and you told me, ‘Nothing,’ and I wished, right then, and very hard, that I knew more about you. You knew absolutely everything that I knew about me, and I knew nothing about you. I didn’t ask, though. I didn’t want you to think that I was prying. I didn’t want you to tire of me and leave me.
I was good, so good.
And still you abandoned me.
‘The book is for when you leave here,’ you said. ‘For when you go to school.’
This is the last piece we remember together before I started at Cascade Falls College. I’m sorry it isn’t a nicer memory. I was angry. I didn’t want you to leave me. Even so, I could have been nicer.
You drove me out to the school. I knew that it was not your job to do this, and I should have been grateful, but still I couldn’t soothe the anger enough to speak even one word to you on the way there.
The journey took forty-five minutes instead of the ten minutes you told me it would. There were two reasons.
Firstly, the journey was by car. Now, I was sure I had been in a car before, though the word wasn’t familiar. Certainly, when I saw the car, I recognised its shape, more or less. But when you asked me to get in the car, a heavy terror enveloped me. I didn’t want to. The thought terrified me. I refused. I sat down on the side of the road and shook my head.
You said, ‘But it’s just a car, Tess. You’ve been in a car before, right?’
I buried my head in my arms. It was worse than the television. At least other people were stuck in the television, not me. It wasn’t right to get in a metal box like that. It would move, but how? I wouldn’t do it. You couldn’t make me.
A low, rumbling growl escaped from my throat. I bared my teeth. I crouched down, close to the ground. I would not go.
But then, of course, after fifteen minutes of you stroking my hair and saying, ‘It will be okay. Be brave. You’re a brave girl, Tess. You can be brave about this’, I got in. I am brave. So I got in. When the car moved, I screamed and clawed at the windows, but I settled down eventually into just being grumpy.
We also made a few detours on the way to Cascade Falls. You wanted to show me more of Hobart. Or maybe you didn’t want to say goodbye yet.
When I had said goodbye to Vinnie, he’d just grunted, and looked anywhere but at me, as usual. He’d said, ‘If we find anything out, we’ll let you know. And if you remember anything, please let me know. It’s important.’
He marched from the room.
I poked my tongue out at his back.
Vinnie made me mad. I wanted him to like me. I felt like he should like me, but I seemed to annoy him. I had never wanted to stick my tongue out at you. But that day, the day you left me, I felt you were just as bad as Vinnie. I felt you had never cared at all.
Thoughts were crashing about inside my head.
How dare you leave me? You’re the only person I can trust! You’re the only person I feel safe with! How could you be so mean? What will I do without you?
I will be so lonely at this school. I will be so afraid.
I couldn’t remember ever having gone to school before, though you said I must have. I spoke well, and I knew about things like the camera obscura. I must have learned these things somewhere.
And, to be sure, I did remember some ‘school’ things. I remembered wooden desks and pots of ink and long, pale uniform dresses, and chalk squeaking on blackboards, and a pinch-faced schoolmistress telling me to ‘stand up straight’, ‘don’t say “what”, say “pardon”.’ When I told you this, you said it sounded like scenes from a historical movie.