P. O’Reilly - The Fine Colour of Rust

I keep squinting at them as I wade in, but I can’t make out their faces. Then I feel an eddy of water around my knees and before I can move someone has grabbed my ankles and I’m under, flailing around in the murky water, trying not to swallow any. I make it to the surface for a breath before Jake sits on my head. Even underwater I can hear his shrieks and Kyleen’s unmistakable snorting laugh. I finally manage to stand up straight, my feet anchoring themselves on the squelchy bottom where the silt oozes in silky bands between my toes.

‘Very funny.’

‘Yep,’ she says between snorts.

Further out, the bottom of the waterhole falls away and the water is dark and deep. Even on a day like this when half the town has swum here, water from the depths still swirls in cold ribbons to the surface. I leave Jake playing with Kyleen and her little girl near the edge of the waterhole and I swim out and roll on to my back where the water is cooler. The sun seems to have less power here.

Up on the hill I can see the lonely family still huddled together. They’re moving about now, gathering their things and putting them into plastic bags. They start making their way back to the road, but instead of walking down through the people bunched around the banks of the waterhole, they skirt the long way around the top of the hill until they reach the bus stop further down the ridge. I close my eyes and float for a while, trying to block out the sounds of kids screaming and parents bellowing and the rustle and crackle of the grass and leaves in the heat.

Melissa is waiting when Jake and I clamber back up to dry ourselves with our dusty hot towels. She’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeved top and her face is scarlet with the heat. I wonder if she’s nicked herself shaving again. It would be typical of a child of mine to decide that self-mutilation of the legs wasn’t enough. Why not shave your arms as well? And your stomach and neck while you’re at it?

‘Where’s Taylah?’ Jake asks her.

‘Gone home.’

‘Sweetie, I’ve got a spare T-shirt in the boot, why don’t you put that on.’

‘I want to go home. You said you were only going in for a dip.’

I stretch out my hand to help her up. She ignores it and pulls herself up with the aid of a tree branch, then winces and brushes her dirty hand on her jeans. I can see that nothing will make her happy today. Melissa was always Tony’s little girl. When he left I didn’t know how to make it up to her. She’s grown old in the time he’s been gone. I offered her a puppy for her last birthday and she refused it.

‘Why?’ I asked her.

‘Because it’ll die. And you never know when.’

At home Melissa goes off to her room and Jake hangs around the kitchen while I boil the water for frankfurts. I get him buttering the bread and I lean out of the kitchen window, trying to catch some air on my face. Across from our block is a small farm. Fancy clean white sheep appear in the paddock one day and are gone the next. The farm owners don’t speak to us. A few times a week I see the wife driving past in her Range Rover with the windows closed. She wears sunglasses and dark red lipstick. I can’t imagine her crutching a sheep, much as I try.

I’ve spent some of my great fantasy moments being that woman, usually on days like this when I’m hanging out of the window and moving my face around like a ping-pong clown to try to catch a breeze. In my imagination I’ve sat in her air-conditioned dining room, laughing gaily, my manicured hands and painted nails flitting about like coloured birds as I discuss the latest in day spas. I’ve waved goodbye to my tiresome yet fabulously wealthy and doting husband, and changed into a negligee to welcome my lover, the Latin horse whisperer who lives above the stables and takes me bareback riding in the moonlight. In this dream, my boobs are so firm that even the thundering gallop of the stallion cannot shake them.

‘Mum,’ Jake interrupts as I’m about to drift into my other world.

‘Mmm?’

‘Melissa’s crying.’

‘Don’t touch the saucepan,’ I say, turning off the gas. ‘And butter four more pieces of bread for your lunches tomorrow.’

She doesn’t want to open the door when I knock, but I can hear the phlegm in her voice, so I push the door open anyway. Melissa’s sitting on the carpet beside her bed. I go and sit beside her, my bones creaking as I lower myself to the floor. It’s a little cooler down here, but I’m still sweating. Melissa’s face is all splotchy and snot is coming out her nose. I pull one of my endless supply of tissues out of my pocket and wipe her face. She tries to push my hand away.

‘I’m not a baby,’ she sniffles.

‘I know.’

We sit quietly for a few minutes and eventually I slip my arm around her shoulders and kiss her forehead. She leans in to me and sighs a big shuddering sigh.

‘What’s up, kiddo?’

‘Nothing.’

We sit for a while longer. Her breathing gets easier and slower. She’s not going to tell me anything, that’s obvious, so I decide to finish making tea. When I get to the kitchen, Jake’s so hungry he’s ripped open the packet of frankfurters and is gnawing on a cold one.

‘Did you do girl talk?’

‘Where did you hear that line?’ I’m trying not to laugh.

‘Norm told me that’s what girls say they do, but really they’re gossiping about how to get boys.’

‘Well, Norm’s wrong. And I’ll be letting him know that next time I see him.’

‘Why don’t you marry Norm?’

‘Because he’s a hundred years old and smells of tractor. Why don’t you marry Kimberley? You play with her at school every day.’

‘Yuk!’

‘Yeah!’

At least that’s sorted.

When she finally emerges from her room, Melissa eats two frankfurts in bread, dripping with butter and tomato sauce, and a few forks of salad. After we’ve washed up she drifts back to her room to do her homework. I’ve pulled all the flywire screens shut and I make the kids hold their breath while I go around the house spraying the mozzies. In Melissa’s room I glance over her shoulder. She’s on the internet, looking at a page about the United Nations.

‘Mum, were you around when the United Nations started?’

‘Possibly, if I’m as old as I feel. But no, I don’t think so. Are you doing a project?’

She nods. She switches screens to show me her essay and I see that at the top of the page she has made a typing mistake and it says The Untied Nations. I like that title. It makes me think of Gunapan, a town lost in the scrubby bush, untied from the big cities and the important people and the TV stations and the government. Gunapan keeps struggling on the way it always has and no one takes any notice at all except to cut a few more services. There are probably thousands of towns like us around the country. The untied nations.

‘Why don’t you look up the collective noun for bush pigs?’ I must learn to use the computer better myself.

‘I did – it’s a sounder,’ Melissa says.

‘What a great word! Sounder. Sounder.’

‘It’s not that good, Mum.’

‘Sounder, sounder, sounder. A sounder of bush pigs.’

‘Mum, I have to do my homework.’ She heaves an exasperated sigh that would do a shop assistant in a toffy dress emporium proud. ‘Please, I need some peace and quiet.’

A good mother would be culturing organic yoghurt or studying nutritional tables at this time of night, when the kids are asleep and the evening stretches out ahead, empty and lonely. I’ve checked every channel on the TV and tried to read a magazine, but it’s all rubbish. I’m too hot to concentrate on a book. I should be planning spectacular entertainments for the visit from the education minister, but that seems too much like hard work. Now I’m bored. I sound like Jake. Bored, bored, bored. If I was a bloke, I’d wheel the computer out of Melissa’s room and look at porn for a while.