Chapter 13
It didn’t take long before I proved myself wrong.
Again.
In fact, it was just the next day.
Mum was taking herself off to the Budgong Community Group ‘to meet the neighbours’. “Want to come, Coco?” she said brightly as she changed into her cleanest pair of jeans and scraped the mud off her Blundstone boots which didn’t look like they’d seen actual daylight through the muck that had been all over them for weeks. I think she was trying to build bridges, do some bonding. That sort of thing. “It might be fun.”
I shook my head from my pillow where I was having yet another lie-down. “Not for me thank you.” For once I wasn’t actually trying to be rude but Mum took offence.
“I was just asking. You don’t have to take that tone, you know.” So much for the bonding. “Fine. Stay home,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
I gave her a half roll. “Later, then,” and flopped back onto my bed. Neighbours, I thought. Ha. I’ll bet they’re all farmers over 85 who haven’t been out of Budgong in 40 years. Mum’s going to be bored as.
Once again, I had to eat my words.
Mum came back, more sparkly and full of life than I’ve ever seen her.
“You won’t believe how great these people are,” she raved to Dad. “Beautiful people. And so welcoming. And we’re invited to visit Ness who lives on the property over that way.” She gestured out past the creek.
“Is she on her own?” asked Dad.
“I think so,” said Mum. “I’m not quite sure, but from a couple of things she said I think she lost her husband young, and then she was with a guy who ended up being violent. He’s gone now. But he wasn’t the father of her kids.”
“Kids?” said Charlie. Her eyes looked bright. “How old?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “From the sounds of it they’re a bit younger than you guys. A boy and a girl. But we’ll have to see when we get there. It’s dinner, tomorrow.”
I was unimpressed. Dinner out with little kids? How fun could it be? On the upside though, we might get a decent meal. I had to say I wasn’t thrilled with what was coming out of the camp kitchen in our shed every night. Mum kept saying that things would be different once the house was built, that it was tricky to cook imaginatively with no facilities and hardly any fridge or bench space but to me it was just another sign that our family’s standards were slipping. Actually, our standards were falling, tumbling, plummeting and cart wheeling off the edge of a cliff. Our family had no standards left. They’d all given up, packed their bags and moved away.
But I wasn’t about to say anything. The week before, when I criticised the re-heated stroganoff served with slightly stale bread, Mum yelled at me for about 20 minutes including telling me to stop being so ungrateful, to lose the attitude and to try cooking myself. Then she made me wash up. The yelling didn’t have much effect but the cold, chunky, greasy water made me more careful about what I said at meals.
Dinner date night arrived and Dad had to pull himself away from his precious building work to come. I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing out there all day with bits of string and pegs and a bunch of tools that measured stuff. Apparently it was something to do with foundations and a slab. So Josh told me, anyway.
“It’s the most important part of the house,” he said.
“You think?” I said. “For me, it’s the colour of the paint on my bedroom walls. But, whatever.”
I went out to take a look because I figured I should show a little bit of interest. I wasn’t going to help build the thing but I could be magnanimous and make an appearance here and there. Unfortunately I tripped over a peg and got into trouble with Dad.
“Coco, no,” he said. “Be careful. Muck it up and the house could fall down. Maybe you just need to go somewhere else right now.”
Fine, I thought. I’ll go. I still wasn’t actually talking to Dad so I didn’t answer him. But I did make a point of touching the peg with my toe before I ran away to get ready.
As it turned out, there was a benefit to going out, even to a nothing-special house in Budgong-in-the-middle-of-nowhere with no-one but tiny children to entertain me all evening. This was it: I got to dress up! It felt like breathing fresh air again to get out my suitcase and actually choose clothes that looked nice. For over a month there had been no one to impress and nothing to dress up for and I was feeling myself turning into a fashion-deprived has-been.
I dug down a few layers and carefully got out the new skinny jeans from my birthday. The shirt took a bit more thought. I had to try on at least eight before I settled on layering three tops over each other. Then I added some bling by pinning a massive silk rose to my shoulder and pulled my hair up into a messy bun. It’s always surprising how long messy buns take to do. Sadly my white lace flats, which would have been perfect, were ruined. I’d had to chuck them out after the toilet debacle on the first day. But I had another pair in rose-coloured satin that I’d been saving for a special occasion.
“Ta-dah,” I said, coming out from behind my curtain. “What do you think?” I did a twirl into the middle of the shed with a big smile on my face.
And then I saw Charlie.
The smile fell off my cheeks and onto the gravel floor.
“No way!” I said. “You cannot wear that!”
I know that Charlie and I have always had different attitudes towards clothes, but let me just say that on this particular night she had reached a whole new level of low. When we lived in Sydney, she used to at least try to get it right. But what I saw in front of me was a frumpy, comfortable dag.
“What is that shirt?” I said, looking at something she used to wear to bed. And then, horror! “Are those Mum’s jeans?”
“Yeah, they fit me,” she said proudly. “They’ll do, right?”
I gave her the full roll, Mum or no Mum.
“Charlie. If you ever have to ask if ‘they’ll do’, you know that they definitely don’t,” I said. “It’s a rule. The second rule is this: for the rest of your life, while you ever go out with me, and especially while either of us are still single, I will dress you.”
She smiled cheerfully. “Whatever you say, oh great one. Dress me up.”
The first thing to be replaced was the disgusting shirt. I gave her one of my own tops still laying on my bed.
“You should chuck this out. It’s so over,” I said, pulling the rejected shirt away from Charlie. She clung to it for a second but then relented and let me have it. I went to put it in the plastic bag of kitchen scraps but Dad grabbed it.
“No! We’ll use it on the building site,” he said. “Can always do with extra rags.” He smiled at me but I shrugged and turned away.
“Come on, I’ll do your hair,” I said, ignoring Dad and turning back to Charlie. I sat down with her at my feet and plaited across the back of her head down into a side braid.
“That’s much better,” I said. “Here, put some makeup on.”
She groaned back at me. “Really? I just can’t be bothered.”
“Please? For my sake? At least mascara. Come on.” I pleaded with her. She grumbled but let me grab my makeup bag and half a minute later, sitting next to a candle for the light, I had a sister I wouldn’t have been embarrassed to introduce to Saffron and Tiger and the girls. Well, not very embarrassed anyway.
With no proper mirror in the shed it was hard to get a full head-to-toe view, so I showed Charlie her polished face in the hand mirror.
“You’re right,” she said. “That’s heaps better. I’ve kind of forgotten how to do it. You’re so clever.”
“It’s what I do best,” I said and examined my own make up. Yep, it was all smooth with no mascara blotches. I smiled experimentally to check the stretch on my lipstick but quickly closed my lips when I saw my teeth. Ick. I must ask Mum when I can go to the dentist and fix all that, I thought. Definitely has to be before I go back to Sydney.
“Hey Coco, let’s take a picture,” said Charlie. “You can use your iPod. Mum, can you do it?”
We stood together as Mum snapped away. “You girls look very nice,” she said, just before Charlie made a silly face and held up her two fingers in a V.
“Ha ha, let me see that,” I said. Charlie’s eyebrow was raised and she looked almost manic. “If we had Facebook I’d post that, it’s so funny.”
“Imagine the loss to the world,” said Josh. “We are all the poorer for not seeing your selfies on the internet.”
I shrugged. The night after the ‘getting sent out of the shed into the wild-horse-and-hokey-people-infested-paddock’ incident, I had laid in bed and decided to try to learn to be cool with Josh. Do that thing where you heap burning coals on your enemy’s head, whatever that means. Do unto others and so on and so forth. I knew I wouldn’t succeed but I was determined to try. It wasn’t worth all the hassle I was currently going through to keep reacting to his teasing.
“Whatever,” I said and gave him a really cheesy grin, stretching my smile from ear to ear. I could see from his face he was just waiting for me to bite back so that he could come at me with the next insult, but when I didn’t retaliate he looked surprised and stopped. Success! I thought, and nearly wrecked it by laughing at him. I stopped just in time and instead walked away with a secret smile.
“Are you guys ready?” Dad held the swinging kerosene lantern. (Yes, you read that right. Kerosene. Besides the candles, this was the only light source in our shed. I’m talking flammable fire hazards and unsafe, polluting chemicals. Plus the flames made dark black marks on the lantern glass and it was my job to clean them every day. And, despite all this, Dad still said, “Aaaah, this is the life,” as he sat in the dark every night, trying to read the next chapter of his book, Eco-tips for Renewable Resourcefulness; A Home Builders Manual by P. Blah Blah Codswallop’ by the light of the puny little kerosene flame, batting away the mosquitoes and drinking some sort of green tea concoction that he’d started on ‘for antioxidants’. Seriously, the man became deranged when he took that redundancy. One of my next tactics, when and if I ever got to a library or, heaven forbid, to the internet, was to look up his symptoms and try to convince Mum to have him committed so we could get back to our normal lives.)
“Come on, we don’t want to be late,” said Mum. “Ness said 6.30ish and it’s 6.35 already.”
“Doesn’t the woman have a proper name?” I asked. “Isn’t she Vanessa? What is with the whole ‘Ness’ thing? Does she like people to feel like they’re being efficient, missing out on two actual syllables of her name?”
“Coco, just try to be nice please,” said Mum, frowning. “Give the lady a chance. She’s lovely, and she’s had some very hard times. It’s very kind of her to invite us over. This is a great chance to get to know the neighbours. You guys might find some friends.”
“Yeah, friends who are ten year-olds...” I muttered.
“I didn’t say they were ten,” said Mum, heating up.
“Coco!” said Dad. It was a warning. I ignored him.
“You said they were younger than us though,” I said. “Ten, eight, four, two, what does it matter. We’re hardly going to be friends, are we?”
Mum’s face went tight. “Look, young lady. Skip the attitude please,” she said. “I don’t know what your problem is. You’ve been like this ever since we got here, and you’re getting worse.” She put up her finger to wag in my face. “I know you didn’t want to come. But we’re here now, and nothing’s changing for you for at least a year, so get used to it.”
She spat out her words like she could hardly control her voice. I knew better than to challenge her, because quite frankly, the idea of cleaning out that pit toilet made me vomit into my own mouth, plus my new resolution was to be cool, so I turned away but I couldn’t stop a half eye roll spreading out over my face as I did.
“Onward and upward. Let’s go out to dinner,” I muttered under my breath. But I made sure it was very, very quiet.