Chapter One

Living Next to Lulah

Nette Hilton

Fungus, aka Colin Bucket, is dead.

I probably never called him Colin. Or Col. Just Fungus. And other names.

Makes no difference. He’s dead.

And I killed him.

I leave my bike in the long grass. The road doesn’t stop being a road till it gets to the rise and then it’s a track.

I pause here and look at the cemetery below me. The track winds down and drifts between the rows of headstones. Eucalypts hover around the perimeter like anxious grandmas with their hands full of worry beads.

I’m still wearing the T-shirt I wore today.

‘Get dressed,’ Mum says, standing in the doorway of my room. She stoops and collects a green dress.

‘Here. Wear this.’

‘I’m not going,’ I say.

‘You’re going.’ She sends the green dress sailing across to my bed. I let it land and know that I’m going to put it back on the stack that I’m chucking out. ‘We’re all going.’

I see Nate behind her, trying not to look too keen to go to a funeral. He’s already picked up on that it’s not the thing to do. And Jarrod’s not complaining because it’s a good excuse not to go to work.

‘We’re not even related,’ I say.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ari! Just get dressed.’

She steps around the clothes in the doorway, my chuck-out pile, and lifts the hoary old charm I’ve got round my neck, hidden under my T-shirt.

‘What’s this about?’

‘Nothing,’ I say and I tuck it back in.

‘It’s one of Yette’s, isn’t it?’

The charm itches at me like the fingernails of an old woman, Yette’s nails, and reminds me what I’ve done.

‘Don’t do this to me now, Ari!’ Mum starts and then stops herself. ‘Tell me that it’s not about all that other … stuff …’

Yes, I want to say. It is all about that other stuff. And I don’t want to think about it, not now, not before the funeral. That’s what the charm’s for, so the fingernails can rasp away and take care of it.

‘He was your friend, Ari. And he’s related to Lulah.’

‘Distantly,’ I say. ‘Very distantly.’

‘Doesn’t alter the fact that he was your friend. Why wouldn’t you want to go?’

‘He wasn’t my friend!’

You’re not supposed to say stuff like that about dead people. Especially this one. But it’s the truth and no good pretending otherwise. If it had been different, none of this would be happening. I feel the mean, tight little ball that is me snivelling out.

‘And he wasn’t your friend either,’ I say. ‘You didn’t like him. You called him a thieving little snot when he stole money out of your purse!’

Mum rears up then. I think she’s going to lash out and hit me but she checks herself in time. She always does, but it scares the shit out of me just the same.

‘Get dressed, Ari.’ Her voice slices through me. ‘We’re leaving in ten minutes.’

I wait until I hear her clump all the way along the verandah and in through the lounge room.

‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ I yell and then hope she doesn’t hear me. I pick up the only black T-shirt I own. It has ‘Barbie is a Slut’ written across the front in bright pink script.

‘Here.’ Jarrod flings a shirt my way. It’s black and has a cobra with a skull trapped between its jaws emblazoned across its back.

‘As if,’ I say.

I hear Mum’s footsteps. They’re headed this way and I pull the shirt on over my head. I slip my denim jacket over the top. The snake is hidden and the skull can grin at no one.

‘I’ll be next door,’ she calls when she sees me. ‘We’re all coming back to have a coffee … or whatever …’

Knowing Mum and Ruby, they’ll only be drinking coffee until the freeloaders leave, then they’ll be breaking out a cask or two.

I don’t want to go. I don’t deserve a place in a church.

At least the shirt fits.

I’m the snake in the grass. The one that shouldn’t be there.

I take the jacket off and anyone watching will see the cobra-head with its mouth full of skull.

I don’t care.

An old bloke taking a short cut through the cemetery sees it and I see him look away too quickly. He’ll look again. He’ll be watching me now. Shirts like this shout that the wearer is worth watching. A losers; a violators of public places. He’s probably thinking I’m here to smash up a few headstones or pee on an angel or something.

I turn around. He looks away again and scurries up the track and out the opening to the road.

All around me is quiet. There’s no one in here but me.

I stop at the stone child with her hands clasped together in front of her and trace the path of her stone curls. She’s lovely but I don’t know how much I want a little kid to be standing praying over my bones when I’m the one under there. I want one of the big ones. A full-blown Gabriel with his wings spread out like a cloak, who’ll throw long shadows over me and let me sleep in peace.

I move further along the path until I reach the Presbyterian section. The Catholic section’s further along and up the hill. I sit for awhile on a vault that’s cool under my legs and smell the tiredness of flowers at the end of the day.

I breathe deeply and close my eyes.

The funeral is over and the mourners have gone to Ruby’s house.

I try to think about it. I want to find the feeling that let everyone else cry.

I try harder and dig my heel into the soft soil beside the vault. I dig a little hole, and hit harder until the hole spreads, and I remember stories of old graves caving in and I stop.

I can remember nothing except how the snake pressed closely and coldly at my back through the whole thing.

I wonder if it’s a message.

I get off the vault and dig a sharp jab into the ground with my toe. It doesn’t collapse and I want to hit it. I try to think about coffins and old bones and great chunks of cement crushing the whole lot, but the thought won’t grip. My brain’s too busy churning around thinking about finding Fungus.

I don’t know what I’ll do when I do find him.

Say I’m sorry?

I didn’t even like him and he knew it. He’ll definitely know it now he’s dead.

I don’t want to find him.

I wish I didn’t have to, but I don’t think I can live my whole life with the feeling of a snake on my back. It’s too close to my heart and I think of the poison that might leak out and nobody would be able to see it.

Nobody would be able to help me.

Except Fungus.

I try not to think about him being mad at me as I set off. I close my eyes as I walk and let my fingers trail from headstone to headstone to guide me on my way.

I breathe deeply and think, if he’s here maybe I’ll feel him and I’ll find him easily.

I already know he’s not over there, where the ground is freshly turned and the grass hasn’t had time to root down from where it’s been so carefully lain. I know he wasn’t there today even when we all were.

I move on. I’m rainbow walking. Looking for the shadows of shadows. I realise that this is something that I don’t consciously do. It’s like breathing. It’s always happening. It’s not something you need a bumper sticker to remind you about.

I don’t think about breathing and I don’t think about rainbow walking. It just happens. But right now I’ve switched myself into it to see if it will help me find him. It’s a bit like telling an asthmatic to breathe deeply. Knowing what to do isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem.

I want to tell him I didn’t mean it.

It’s a bit late to take it back because it’s happened now, but at least he’ll know I didn’t mean it.

Around me I feel murmurs of blue, but they’re old blues that are probably a bit frayed around the edges.
I walk on through this older part of the cemetery. I open my eyes. Someone has been to visit Elizabeth Grazier. They’ve left lilies at her feet and I see that it is her 105th birthday. She is one hundred and five today. I pat her headstone as I pass and wonder if one of the blues was her.

Further on I pass Mr and Mrs Amos. They’ve been here for decades and Mrs Amos has tilted herself slightly away from Mr Amos and is leaning a little too closely to Matthew Collingsworth. I don’t feel any of them here though.

Further along the rows I see someone arranging a vase of flowers and tidying the weeds that clamber up the rough stone. There’s nobody drifting there and I pass quietly because I don’t want to be noticed. I’m not supposed to be here.

Mum doesn’t like me coming here. I tell her I’m old enough to take care of myself, but she still reckons it’s too quiet and lonely and all sorts of pervs could be hanging about. Jarrod called me a perv ever since because he knows I come out here sometimes.

I stop in the exact spot where Yette explained it.

‘Tell me what you feel,’ she says as we walk down the track.

I don’t want to go but she tugs me along behind her and I stumble. She stops while I right myself and she brushes my skirt smooth again. Her voice is quick and excited and her cheeks are round and shiny with the heat. Her eyes are diamond bright and she doesn’t look away as I raise my hand to point.

‘Blues,’ I say. ‘And over there a bit of green.’

‘And what else?’

‘Trees and grass and those things over there…’

I don’t know what she wants to hear. It’s like asking me what a footstep feels like.

‘Can you see your colours like you see the trees?’ she says.

I look harder. ‘No.’ I put my hand out and touch yellow as it sweeps by me. ‘I just can feel them.’

‘All the time?’

‘Sometimes.’ I hold her hand tightly. I haven’t been to this place before. Colours drift by me. Around me. Behind me. ‘I can feel them everywhere in here. There’s so many …’

‘Yes, my darling.’

She hugs me up in her arms and twirls me around and my feet fly out behind me. I want to hold them back but I can’t. They’re string legs tacked onto an old woollen doll. She puts me down and stands still, holding me till we stop being dizzy.

‘For me,’ she says when we finally walk on, ‘it is like ringing in my ears. It’s there all the time but only sometimes do I notice.’

I like that. I wish my ears would ring.

‘I think I want to go home now,’ I say, but we sit on a slope instead.

‘Your grandmamma is too old to be spinning big girls around. We sit here for awhile and I catch my breath.’

Yette sits with her toes pointing to the sky. Her shoes are neatly tied with laces. School shoes on an old lady, except hers have got a little chunky heel under them. She lets her shawls slide back and I see her vest bunched up in the middle of her chest. Her hands are neatly folded together in her lap. The wind picks up and loosens long strands of her hair and it catches in cobwebby patterns across her shoulders. I see how old she is. I think she is very strong for someone so ancient.

‘There,’ she says and I feel a darker blue drift across me. ‘Tell me the colour of this one?’

‘Dark blue.’

‘But what is this that we feel?’

I shrug. Nobody talks about it so I don’t know.

‘Do you not wonder?’

I shake my head. It is just something we feel. Like knowing water is wet.

My legs are straight out and the grass is prickly against my bare skin. I bend them.

Yvette leans closer and I know she is going to tell me something secret and I feel a cold shiver pass quietly across my neck.

‘It is the passing of spirits,’ she says. ‘Ghosts. You have the gift.’

I don’t like the way her breath is so close. It smells old and musty as the wool in her shawls. She frightens me, but she is my father’s mother and I think I shouldn’t be afraid of her.

But old people don’t tell secrets to children. Not secrets about ghosts.

‘I want to go home.’

She holds me. Her old, crow’s-foot hand rests on my hair. ‘It is safe,’ she says. ‘You are always safe. You are chosen. Like me.’

I want to run down the slope but I am frozen to this spot. I don’t think I can walk through those drifting colours alone.

‘I want to go home! You’re a liar!’

She takes both my arms in her firm grip. ‘Do you think I would tell you this to frighten you? Do you think I would make up a lie so you would want to run away from me?’

Her shawls swallow me. They choke me with their old, dead smell and I tear at them and run away down the slope. She scrambles to catch up but I keep going. My footsteps pound as hard as my heart as I race along the track.

‘You’re mean and old and stupid!’ I roar back at her. ‘I’m going to tell on you!’

She catches me then. ‘They don’t believe these things,’ she says. ‘It is best to know this now!’

A twig cracks under my foot. The man with the flowers and the gardening fork looks up. He shades his eyes to see me better so I move down towards the newer end of the cemetery.

There are no colours here and I think that maybe the young ones are too busy to hang around places they’ve already been for too long. They come back sometimes, but their colours are quick and timid and playful, like the tails of comets. They make me smile but I have to be careful not to let anyone see.

They don’t believe. Yvette was right about that.

I stand still and try to imagine ringing in my ears. I try to imagine hearing something that is always there. I tilt my head and search around me for the touch of a colour that says Fungus.

There is nothing.

I open my eyes. The man on the other side of the cemetery is watching me, his trowel in his hand. He probably thinks I’m going to nick something. I wave to him as I set off up the track that will lead me back to the road.

There’s no point staying.

Fungus isn’t here.