Rebecca Lim: Mercy

Then the world telescopes, narrows, grows flat, becomes less than the sum of its parts again. Carmen’s heart slows, her breathing evens out. My left hand has ceased to ache and I release it, sit straighter.

Still every eye in the bus is turned on us. Are ‘we’ friends? Who is she to me?

Still struggling to get Carmen’s face under control, I slur, ‘Bad migraine.’ In my last life — well, Lucy’s — I got migraines all the time. For someone like me, who doesn’t feel the cold and never gets sick, not the essential me anyway — it had felt like intermittent war breaking out in my head.

As if Lucy’s mind and body kept finding ways to turn on me, determined to finish me off. I don’t miss being Lucy, though I wish her well and hope she’s recovered from my casual trampling upon her life. No doubt, in time, I will forget her, too.

My weak response is enough to satisfy them all, because eyes swing away uninterestedly, the noise level in the bus climbs back up to a jet-engine roar in my ears, and the sharp-faced blonde snaps, ‘That’s so retarded,’ before turning huffily to speak to somebody else and leaving me blessedly alone.

Like a facsimile of a human being, I turn awkwardly to face the window and discern farmland flying by beneath an iron sky, punctuated by dead trees and outbuildings, the occasional chewing cow, ordinary things, the grass by the roadside growing taller and coarser the farther we travel. Red soil gives way to sandy verges, vast stretches of salt plain. I imagine I can smell the sea and wonder where we are. Not Lucy’s domain of smelly high-rises and disgruntled pushers on skateboards. Not Susannah’s toney mansion with the round-the-clock, live-in help and the hypochondriac mother who would never just let her be.

The land is as dry as Carmen’s eczema-covered skin.

Without having to think about it too much, I scratch urgently at the rough patch near her right wrist until it begins to bleed steadily onto the cuff of her long-sleeved white shirt.

Some things, I’ve found, the body simply remembers.

We finally pass a sign that says, Welcome to Paradise, Pop. 1503. Beyond it, a hint of dirty grey water, white caps rolling in the distance.

The name causes a little catch in my breathing, though I can’t be certain why. I do not think I have ever been here before, in the way that I can sometimes recall things, impressions really; 16, 32, 48 lives out of context.

Perhaps the town’s misguided civic optimism is something that amuses Carmen. For I get flashes of my girls, my hosts, my vessels, from time to time. They are with me, but quiescent, docile. Maybe they believe they are dreaming and will shortly awaken. Some do occasionally make their way to the surface — like divers who have run out of air, breaking above the waterline clawing and gasping — before simply winking out because the effort is too great to sustain. It makes things only marginally easier that there is not a constant dialogue, a rapprochement, between us. Still, I am very aware that I occupy rented space, so to speak, and it informs everything that I do, everything that I am. I am never relaxed, because I am never wholly comfortable inside a skin that is not mine.

It is so far from it, Paradise, this small, dusty town laid out in a strict grid and set down on the edge of a swampy peninsula, nothing pretty about it, that seems to just peter out into the ocean. The high school we pull into — all low, boxy buildings, cyclone fencing and endlessly painted-over graffiti — sits on the town’s barren outskirts, making no attempt to blend in with the landscape.

The bus shudders to a halt, there is a hiss as the front door releases, and a restive ripple of movement from the people around me, like an animal stirring.

I have not spoken for over an hour, not having trusted myself to form the appropriate words. When someone snaps impatiently for the second time, ‘Carmen Zappacosta’, it is only the blonde girl’s loud, derisive snort that has me raising my head slowly and then my hand. When I let it fall again, it hits my lap with a dull sound, like dead flesh.

I narrow my eyes. It is the teacher with the grey hair and hatchet face speaking. She shakes her head before continuing sourly, ‘House rules are no drinking, no smoking, no sleeping with any member of the host family. Over the years of this little “cultural exchange” program, we’ve had stealing, people going “native”, emergency hospitalisations, immaculate conceptions.

Miscreants will be dealt with ruthlessly. And do try to remember why it is that you’re here — as representatives of St Joseph’s Girls’ School. You’re here to sing and that is all. Am I clear, or am I clear?’ The coach is a sea of rolling eyes of every colour as people rise excitedly to get their things. I watch to see what remains and then take it, stumbling after the others as if the bus is a pitching sailboat.

On the way out, I catch the driver’s eyes — like burning holes beneath his meticulous comb-over — and he sees that somehow I know, because he looks away and will not look at me again, even though I stare and stare. Can no one else see it? That misery that envelopes him like a personal fog.

‘Call me when you get over your little episode,’ hisses the frosty blonde over her shoulder as I fall down the stairs behind her under the weight of Carmen’s loaded sports bag, almost landing on my new host father. I register that he is a strong-jawed, dark-haired man of unusual height dressed in khaki pants, a casual shirt and dark blazer.

Nice looking. What is the adjective I am looking for?

That’s right. Handsome.

I know he is waiting for me because I’m the last girl to get off the bus. All of the other girls are already shrugging off their blazers, letting their hair down, making eyes at their host brothers, sussing out the situation.

‘So this is Paradise!’ I hear the blonde girl exclaim flirtatiously.

If I were to be truly convincing, I should probably be doing the same, but I’m no good at flirting — there’s no sweetness in me — and it is a simple triumph just to stand vaguely upright. I am aware that I am listing slightly and make appropriate, but subtle adjustments to my posture.

The man Carmen has been entrusted to does not notice; he maintains his kind smile, his steady, patient expression.

Neither does he notice the indefinable distance between himself and all the other people gathered in the parking lot. Eyes dart his way constantly, there is talk, talk, talk, mouths opening and closing, sly laughter, disapprobation, but he does not see it. Or chooses not to. Instead, he takes Carmen’s bag out of my dead grasp and shoulders it easily.

I follow him numbly, just putting one foot in front of the other; every step I take upon the surface of the world imprinting itself upon my borrowed bones.

After stowing Carmen’s bag in the trunk of his car, the tall stranger opens the front passenger door and gallantly sees me settled before taking the driver’s seat.

When he puts out his bear-like hand and says kindly, ‘Hello, I’m Stewart Daley,’ I must remind myself to do the same. Not observing the conventions can make you seem like an alien.

‘Uh, hi, uh, Car-men, um, Zappa … costa,’ I mutter awkwardly, searching for the girl’s name in my recently laid-down memory.

If he wonders why I’m having trouble pronouncing my own name, he’s polite enough not to show it.

But the instant my hand meets his, I absorb a sensation like liquid grief, a kind of drowning. It is completely at odds with the man’s friendly exterior and fills the space between us like floodwater surging to meet its level.

A wild thing has suddenly been let loose in the car, a wordless horror, screaming for attention, and I cannot help but pull back as if the man is on fire.