Best Australian Yarn: A Smatter of Facts by Anne Vick

My mother had a theory. She said we were given a finite number of words to be spoken at the moment of our birth. When the last of this number was spoken, we would die. This accounts for the people who die suddenly, who die young or who die randomly as the result of an accident, she said. To my mother, life was a matter of numbers. There were numbers everywhere on the farm. There were cattle to count and multiply, silos that needed their capacity calculated, fence posts and fencing wire conundrums to be solved. The vegetables were tessellated in their garden and there were twenty four steps to the wash house that could be stepped out in ones, twos, threes, fours, sixes and eights. There were numbers everywhere that soothed and straightened my mother but we had bellyache bush in the paddocks. My father, who should have known better, had given my mother the plant as a pretty piece for her struggling house garden. My mother, who should have known better, had tended and loved the small plant and watched in awe as it spread its lush leaves and flowered with profusion. She was thrilled when it self-seeded, when its numbers multiplied, and tiny belly ache bushes popped up throughout the garden. She only started to worry when the bush started to sprout in the paddock closest to the house. The bellyache bush shot its tiny seeds into the air and sprayed them around like shotgun pellets. Its seeds were toxic and bitter but were covered with a sucrose shield. The tiny ants carted them gleefully to the subterranean fortresses, ate away the sugary coating and left the bitter seeds deep underground. The bony cattle ate the bellyache bush and became sick. Most were stricken with diarrhoea and vomiting, and the sickest, thinnest cattle died in agony. Soon the bellyache bush covered the poor pasture, choking out the thin grass and taking all the moisture it could find. My father tried to poison the bush but while the top leaves withered away, new shoots grew underneath. He set fire to it but this only served to germinate any seeds laying in wait in the ant dungeons. He rang the people at the Ministry who came to look at what he had started, then walked away shaking their heads. My father, the coward, took the only course available to him. He manually cleared the bellyache bush and before it had a chance to regrow, he sold the farm cheaply to people from the south. We moved to a city by the water. The house was small and dingy. My mother cleaned and cleaned it but it only looked sadder. I missed the farmhouse and complained of the seediness of this house. My mother asked me if I was warm and dry, if I had enough space, if I felt safe during the storms. When I answered yes, she wanted to know what else I could need in a house. A little history? I asked. Did all the history in the farmhouse help us? Did the ghosts of my grandparents make you feel safe? How can a house make you feel more acceptable, more worthy, more secure when it is man made? My mother grew fascinated by the sea and the seven rhythm of the waves. She walked every morning searching for treasures and walked home the same way so she only left one set of footsteps. Piles of seashells and driftwood lay along our windowsills and the scent of the rotting sea filled the tiny house. She classified them according to colour, size and shape and often changed the arrangements to satisfy her latest criteria. Help me collect, said my mother but I refused. She dragged me to the beach but I hated it. She’d thrust shells in my hands and cry, Look! A Fibonacci sequence! See? An Archmedian spiral! There! Perfect symmetry! But the smell of the dead creatures whose homes I held made me weep and retch. My mother joined walking groups, environment groups and reading groups in an attempt to find an interest but she found the women too shallow or too passionate for her taste. The women who accepted her into their groups eagerly on the phone, cooled when they came to meet her. My mother was obese. Reubens would have laid her on a brocaded bed, lit her from above and painted her lemony-pink skin with gold. But to these women who lived by the sea, she was appalling with her vastness and her spongy grasp. Their words dried up when they spoke to her and they smiled inanely. My mother walked away, coward that she was. She took to the trams instead, which rattled along important streets in the city. She chose her tram according to its number. If she were feeling low, she would take the 64 tram so she could sit and think of square roots, doubling patterns and prime numbers. If she were feeling fractious, she’d pick the 65 tram for its lack of comfort and scowled her way around the city. Then she’d play the madness game. Upon boarding a tram, you must find a seat which faces the largest population. Plant yourself firmly in the seat and place an enormous bag on the adjoining seat. Starting quietly, read the names of the streets you pass aloud. Once the audience starts to shift and sneak glances at you, you may then begin to raise your voice and shout any place name that you please. Choose names that have four syllables. Barcelona, Guatemala, Madagascar and Ontario are good examples. You have five minutes only and must disembark after this time. Why do you play such a stupid game? Why are you wasting words? I would yell at her when she came home, giggling at the people on the tram. I want people to know me, to talk about me in their homes and places of work. I am nobody otherwise. But people do know you. You’re widely published! And who reads them? Only frantic students and dusty academics. I want people to speak of me as a person. But that is not who you are! You are not a mad woman on a tram. You are a respected author! That is not who I am either, she would say. I was sent to the local school and crammed into a classroom filled with more people than I had ever seen. The noise was overwhelming. The air was stuffy with squeals and secrets from the neighbourhood. The room was clammy with spices, unwashed bodies and curling sandwiches, and chalk dust turned the sunshine hazy. The children laughed at my languid country ways and at recess I checked the chain link fences, kicking the posts low to test their stability. I sat stupefied in the classroom. The teachers’ voices were white noise. I knew the answers to their questions, but my mind was a caged bird and my hand refused to rise to their queries. When I returned my homework or story writing tasks they had set, the teachers scolded me and said I must not allow my parents to help with my work. I rewrote my work including errors and improbable storylines about unicorns and puppies and the teachers were pleased. Much better, they said. This is your own work at last. I never wasted another precious word on them. At school, I played the silence game. To play this game, you must remain silent. The game allows for the use of facial expressions and movements of the head as these do not count as words. The aim of this game is to stay silent as long as possible. One hour is good, one day is excellent. After this time it may be necessary to check a mirror to ascertain you are still visible. The longer you remain silent and the more often you play this game, the more words you save and the longer you live. The teachers took a more than usual interest in me. They looked at my farm clothes and frowned. They looked in my school bag and checked that I had enough to eat. They tried to encourage me to speak, to make friends. They wrote notes home to my mother, but she laughed at these letters and told me she had no interest in meeting dried out women who took themselves too seriously. Do they know who you are? Do they know who I am? Do they know who your grandfather is? Oh no, mum! I shouted. And don’t tell them. And my mother laughed and laughed. The school concert came and my parents had to attend. They sat through Preps struggling to be cute and sad children trying to coax music from enormous instruments. They watched as my grade sang and I stood woodenly, a dusky shadow, in the back row. They were ambushed as they tried to leave. Mr and Mrs Jackson? We were wondering if we could talk about your Lucy. The teachers’ eyes widened and their voices ascended into squeaks as they stared at my parents. Oh no, I’m Elizabeth Mandeville and this is my partner, Steven, corrected my mother.She waited for them to react to her name. One teacher raised an eyebrow but quickly pulled it down, assuming she was mistaken. She hurried on to hide her confusion. We would like to set up an interview time. Why? said my mother. The child is bright enough. She is having trouble making friends. She is having trouble fitting in. Fitting in? My mother hooted with laughter. Look at us, she said. We are not people who fit in. We fit around, she said. We fit around other people. We fit around a group. We fit around conversations. There is never enough room for people like us to fit in. Let the child be. After the concert, I brought a plant home from school and planted it in the corner of our garden. Every child got one, a gift from a grandfather clearing out his greenhouse. Jatropha Gossypifolia. Ja-tro-pha Go-ssyp-i-fo-lia. I sang it in my mind all the way home. I watched it flower and poked at the new plants as they spread. I felt the power of my father’s past tingle on the ends of my fingers. My father was unfarming farmer who finally got a job in a cheese packing factory. He would come home not smelling earthy and sour but of bitter chemicals and plastic. He hated his job but loved the workers. At smoko, they taught him to swear in a dozen different languages and he taught them to swear in his. They told him of their lands, of their multi-eyed gods, of Allah, of Nirvana, and of oppression. He told them of giant serpents, of wood spirits, of foolish animals and of oppression. When he invited them to come and eat with us, they smiled shyly and told him that was not the way it was. He missed the wide spaces of the farm and strode out along the city streets at night. He kept his head high, trying to ignore the police cars that slowed and followed his progress. He saw the shopkeepers’ eyes sharpen when he walked into their doors and saw them move around to better watch him. At the bottle shops and pubs, he shrivelled at the smirks on faces. A nice drop of plonk that one, they’d say when he took his wine to the counter. I prefer the ’94 Cab Sav but I can’t see it on your shelves, he’d say, deepening his voice and dragging up rounded vowels. Well, you’d know, they’d sneer. In the end, he’d send my mother to buy the wine, to buy the milk and paper but she fared no better. Keep away from the chocs, they’d say and laugh. She was shocked by their rudeness but burned in shame. She was as powerless as my father. In the end, he strode along the streets only in daylight hours and played the invisibility game as he did. To become invisible, the rules are simple. Learn to blend. Keep your thoughts well hidden and your face vacant. Walk in the shadows and keep away from anything bright. Keep your voice low and your opinions moderate. Move quietly and without haste. You will see others playing this game but you will need to look twice to see if they are really there. You may nod at other players but do not attempt contact as you will spoil their game. Extra points can be scored if you can block off all the city noise and hear only the conversations. You will know you have won this game when people cannot remember if you were at a certain place, at a certain time or not. You have won when you have heard of whispered fears and secret hatred never intended for your ears. My father became so good at this game that he often faded on the weekends and only became completely visible again when it was time to go to work. I often lost him in crowds when we shopped in the markets and wasted words shouting for him only to find him standing next to me. When he and my mother sat on the sand together, he became her shadow. She was large and well lit, and he seemed thinner and even darker beside her. By the time spring came, we were starting to settle. The accusatory phone calls about the farm had ceased and everyone had a game to play. I had befriended a girl who could play the silence game well and we sat together in class as soundless bookends. By now my plant was in flower again, surrounded by miniature copies. I showed my mother, proud of my gardening skills. She sat back on her ample heels. Where did it come from? she demanded. I got it from the school. The teachers gave one to everyone. It’s bellyache bush. You should have known better. No! I screamed. It’s Jatropha Gossypifolia. No. I’ve seen it many times before. My eyes were streaming as I ripped the plants from the ground and flung them at her but it was too late. My mother was weeping. She told my father as soon as he came home. I heard them packing throughout the night, my mother counting boxes and arranging them in symmetrical piles, and in the morning we were ready to go, cowards that we were.