I kissed her forehead,
the way she kissed me every night before bed,
and I closed the door.
The sun still shone brightly …
And that’s why I go to birth classes with Emma,
why I feel I can’t leave now.
Maybe it doesn’t make sense.
It’s like a death.
Or a birth.
Annabel and the car
Last night
I got in our car
and drove.
Just me.
No Jack. No Emma.
I drove along Turpentine Road
up to the quarry.
I parked, turned the radio up loud
and lay back.
I figured I had two choices.
I could keep driving and not come back.
Jack can have the money and the beach
and whatever else he can invent.
I’d leave the car outside his house
and go back to my life.
My other choice was to say no to Jack.
To simply say no.
The baby will be born,
with or without him here.
And Emma will be a good mother,
and there’s George and Craig and quiet Beck.
Lots of children don’t have fathers
or mothers.
Jack should know that,
more than all of us.
Craig
Emma says
her son’s not living on a farm
all his life
and he’s not picking apples
or praying for rain
or busting a gut fixing things that
can’t be fixed
and he’s not
wearing the same shoes winter and summer
’cause that’s all he’s got.
And Emma says
if it’s a girl
she’s not marrying a farmer
or cooking all day
for kids who vomit it all back up
and she’s not spending nights
watching TV and dreaming,
or getting pregnant at sixteen
and looking after brothers and sisters
and fathers and family.
Emma says all this
and I’m thinking this baby
better be born soon
because it’s got a lot of living to do
and a lot of learning on what
not to do.
Birth classes
Ten farmers in flannelette shirts
and me
sit on our knees in a circle
at the CWA hall.
Ten farmers’ wives lean back
against their husbands.
Emma leans against me.
I hold her hands in mine
and talk quietly,
repeating the instructor’s words.
Sometimes I add my own.
Silly stuff like,
‘She’ll write books.
She’ll call you Mum and me Uncle Jack.
She’ll grow up smart.
He’ll grow up smart.
He’ll never pick apples.’
I just talk away.
Emma holds my hand tighter,
offering me encouragement.
I don’t care what the farmers think.
I hold Emma’s hands and talk.
We both close our eyes
and listen.
The perfect sky
I stop the car
a few kilometres from the farm,
at Broken Lookout.
Emma and I sit on the warm bonnet
and look at the distant farm lights.
We don’t say much.
Birth classes take it all.
I tell Emma about my mother.
Dead. Nine years now.
I tell her how I remember everything about her.
Her hair, her soft voice in the dark,
her way of looking at my sister and me.
I tell Emma I’ll never forget a thing.
Not because my mum’s dead.
Not because I miss her.
But because she’s my mum
and it’s important.
And before she died,
she taught me that.
She taught me what’s important
and what isn’t.
And I’ve never forgotten.
And that’s what mothers do, I say.
We look at the lights some more
under the perfect sky.
I try to remember every detail
of what’s important.
Annabel and George
Jack and Emma were at birth classes last night.
I was in the shed, again.
Reading. Dreaming really,
of the beach,
of the world away from apples.
And George knocks at the door of his own shed.
He wants to talk.
He’s worried Emma will leave after the baby,
after we go.
She’ll leave this farm, this land,
and him and Craig and Beck
and home.
George is scared.
His voice is tight, his eyes darting.
I tell him to wait.
I tell him to look at Emma
and how she walks
and how she holds her stomach when she walks
as if she’s protecting the child,
as if she’s afraid to let something precious fall.
I tell George to trust his daughter
and her hands.
I tell him those hands won’t fail.
And I pray I’m right.
Annabel
After George left
I couldn’t read anymore.
I sat on the hay bales
and tried to work things out.
But all I could think was that
I felt like an intruder,
here on the farm.
For weeks we’d been helpers.
When George couldn’t get pickers,
we worked.
When Emma needed someone for classes,
we volunteered.
But now,
with George wandering his farm
like a lost man,
waiting for Emma and Jack to come home,
I knew.
We were intruding.
It was all too private.
Maybe we were wrong,
wrong to offer with the classes,
I’m not sure.
Only now, maybe,
they needed each other,
not us.
Craig and his mad dad
I think Dad’s going mad!
True.
Last night I saw him
wandering around the house
in his overalls and slippers.
It was a full moon
so I could see good
and you know what they say
about a full moon – it makes you mad!
Well, Dad’s walking around the yard,
and he wanders out to the orchard.
He picks an apple,
a big juicy apple,
and I think,
fine, he’s going to eat it.
But no.
He starts tossing it in the air,
higher and higher,
and he catches it every time.
Now Dad hardly ever throws balls
and never, but never, throws apples.
He’s always telling me
not to drop them into the bin
in case they bruise,
and here he is, a full moon,
playing catch with an apple.
Very weird.
He’s out in the orchard forever it seems,
just walking around
with this apple,
tossing it from one hand to the other.
And this is the best bit –
he walks back to the house
and he looks up
and sees me at the window.
I’m thinking I’m going to get it
for being up so late,
but all he does is cup his hands,
like this,
meaning he wants me to catch the apple.
So I lean right out the window
and Dad throws it, perfect!
I catch it with both hands.
I take a big crunchy bite
and Dad smiles
and waves goodnight.
It was a good apple too.
A good apple, picked by a madman,
on a full-moon night.
Craig and cricket
At school today,
sports day,
we had our cricket final
against Blairthorn School.
Most of the school was there,
you know,
cheering us on.
I got out for a duck.
I lifted my head, as usual,
and got clean bowled.
But when Blairthorn were batting
and it was getting tight,
their best batsman
hit this huge shot
and it was going for four, or maybe six,
and I ran around the boundary,
dived full-length, sideways,
and caught it!
Everyone cheered
and my duck was forgotten
and now we stood a chance of winning.
It was a good catch,
my second good catch in twenty-four hours,
don’t you reckon?
Emma and the right way
I’ve been thinking hard.
It’s all I can do right now.
Think. And wait.
I needed Jack and Annabel
on this farm two months ago.
They came out of nowhere
and gave me hope.
The way they were, together.
Everything they do is positive.
They’re not like the kids at school.
I needed them.
I needed help with birth classes.
But now,
I’ve been thinking about Dad.
I’ve never thought about him.
He just was.
I worried about Mum, wherever she is.
I worried about Beck and Craig, without Mum.
But Dad, look at him.
Three children, no wife,
a farm that barely pays
and he gets up every morning,
sits on the veranda
watching the sunrise,
and he counts himself lucky.
And when I come home pregnant
he doesn’t yell or rant or blame.
He just keeps on going.
He looks almost proud of me.
Now he worries I’ll leave.
He worries Jack and Annabel leaving
will mean I’ll follow,
maybe not after them, but away,
anywhere.
But he’s not saying anything.
He’s going to let me choose,
I know.
It’s his way.
It’s the right way.
Guts
Maybe I don’t have the guts to leave.
It shouldn’t be too hard.
Mum left.
She packed and was gone in a day.
Vanished.
I could do that,
only I’d write and phone
and maybe come back,
you know, later.
A girl, pregnant or not,
could get lost in the city.
And it couldn’t be worse than here,
could it?
Bloody Mum. I hate her.
I hate her for going so easy.
For going and staying away.
Craig and Beck still hope she’ll come back
some day.
I can see it now.
I leave home
for the city,
I’m walking down the street
and guess who’s walking towards me.
And what do I say to her?
‘Hello, Mum,’
or,
‘Hello, Grandma.’
Now that would be funny.
So funny I’d have to stop myself
from hitting her,
from telling her what I really think,
but maybe I don’t have the guts
for that either.
But when I look at this farm
I keep thinking,
it’s not whether I have the guts to go
but
if I have the guts to stay.
Emma and leaving
Last night
Jack told me about the beach
and his plans,
and the more he talked,
the more nervous I got.
I don’t know why.
I can’t tell.
I just listened.
I listened and dreamed.
And that’s what I’m doing now.
I’m dreaming.
Only sometimes it’s hard dreaming
when
Beck needs help with her homework
and Craig’s talking nonstop
and Dad’s burning the dinner
and my own kid’s kicking his way around my belly.
So I’m not thinking good
when Beck,
bloody Beck,
she who never says a word,
looks up at me over the pages
and says,
‘You’re smart,
you know that, Emma?’
And it all makes sense,
even to smart old Emma.
A young orchard
It wasn’t what Beck said,
but that she said it at all.
I knew.
I’m staying here.
No dreams of fancy clothes
and cafes
and movies
and working in a sleek office tower.
It was old lino
and peeling paint
and apple pies every dessert
and my baby eating apple mush
and Craig and Beck and Dad.
But it was more than that,
it was me.
Me without Jack and Annabel
and some excuse to leave.
Me without Mum and the fear
of loneliness and boredom.
Me, making my way.
And Joseph, or Josephine.
Me, taking that bloody bus
the twenty kilometres
and the baby in childcare
while I study hard,
harder than ever before.
And me getting out of here,
my way,
when I’m ready,
with my child.
Me, getting out but
not like Mum,
running so fast
she’s too scared to look back.
Me, getting out but
being able to come back.
Me and my home.
Me and the baby,
happy in the orchard
picking those stupid apples
if we choose.
Or me and my baby
leaving,
finding another orchard,
a young orchard,
and making it ours.
Annabel
When we first came here,
Jack and I had a picnic every Sunday.
We went to the channel
or across town to Brown Creek,
we lay on the blanket in the sun
and slept, or drank a few bottles
and dived into the chill water.
Today we asked Emma along
and she said no.
She said no in a strange way,
and I think I know what she meant.
Here at Brown Creek
I lean
over and pick up a few rocks.
I aim for a boulder on the far side of the creek.
I say to myself, as Jack sleeps,
if the first one hits,
we leave this week
and drive, nonstop, to the beach.
I choose the biggest rock
and let rip,
and my aim is true.
Now
Jack wakes,
and I tell him of the boulder
and my perfect aim.
I tell him I’ve decided,
we leave this week.
We fill the car with petrol now,
just to be sure.
I tell him I’m not angry
or crazy.
I tell him I’m ready,
and he should be too.
I tell him to think of our two years together.
Think of us leaving uni and ending up here.
Think of us making love on a stack of hay bales.
Think of the mornings in the orchard
and the taste of dew-fresh apples.
Think of him and me and Emma at birth classes.
Think of Craig and his painted cows.
Think of Emma here on the farm
and the rich soil of family.
And it makes sense, I know.
I hit the boulder with one throw,
and it made a strong ringing sound
that echoed back across the creek.
We’re leaving.
Emma and her dad
Jack and Annabel
have filled their car with petrol at last,
and gone on a Sunday drive.
A picnic, like young lovers.
They asked me along.
I said no.
I said, ‘Stay young lovers together,’
and they looked at me funny.
Dad’s working on the tractor again.
Beck and Craig are in the treehouse,
playing quiet for a change.
I take Dad some tea
and this cake I made,
which wouldn’t win any prizes,
but it’s okay –
I don’t want to be a cook or anything.
Me and Dad sit by the tractor,
the dogs hang around for food
and the afternoon settles
on an orchard stripped of fruit.
The season is over.
Jack and Annabel can go whenever they like.
They’ve been waiting,
the whole farm’s been waiting,
waiting for me to have this baby.
I start talking to Dad
about my baby,
about Mum leaving us
and never coming back.
I tell him about school
and the long afternoons in Maths
when I dreamed myself away,
away anywhere.
And about Jack and Annabel,
smart and ready,
and I’m wondering where all that smart comes from
and I figure some from parents,
some from school and some from a place inside you.
I tell Dad
I got smart from him,
and I’m smart deep inside,
but from school I got nothing but pregnant.
I can curse school for that or curse myself,
but what’s the point?
So I think school deserves more
and I say to Dad
I want to go back to school