Painted feather flower
Meaning: Tears
Verticordia picta | Southwestern Australia.
A small to medium-sized shrub with pink, cupped flowers that are sweetly scented. Once established, it will only live for around ten years, with a profuse display of bright flowers over a long season.
I’m–here. I’m–here. I’m–here.
Alice listened to her heart, the only way she knew how to steady herself and calm her emotions. It didn’t always work though. Sometimes hearing things was worse than seeing them: the dull thud of her mother’s body hitting a wall; the nearly silent, tiny exhalation of breath from her father when he hit her.
She opened her eyes and looked around for help, clamouring for air. Where was the storyteller from her dreams? Alice was the only person in the room, alone except for the machines beeping frantically at her side. Panic stung her skin.
A woman came rushing in. ‘It’s okay, Alice. Let’s sit you up so you can breathe better.’ The woman reached over her and pushed something on the wall behind her. ‘Try not to panic.’
The top half of Alice’s bed rose until she was propped up in a sitting position. The pains in her chest began to ease.
‘Better?’
Alice nodded.
‘Good girl. As deep breaths as you can manage.’
Alice breathed, as fully as she could, willing her heart to slow. The woman leant against the side of the bed, holding two fingers lightly against Alice’s wrist while she studied a little watch clipped to her tunic.
‘My name’s Brooke.’ Her voice was kind. ‘I’m your nurse.’ She glanced at Alice and winked. Her cheeks disappeared into deep dimples when she smiled. Ripples of blue and purple eyeshadow glittered in the folds of skin above her eyes, just as Alice had seen mother-of-pearl shimmer between the crags in oyster shells. The beeping slowed down. Brooke let go of her wrist.
‘Is there anything you need?’
Alice tried to ask for a glass of water, but couldn’t form the words. She gestured for a drink.
‘Easy-peasy. Back in a tick, love.’
Brooke left. The machines beeped. The white room filled with a hum of strange noises: distant pinging; staticky voices, some calm, others urgent; the whoosh of doors opening and closing; squeaky footsteps, some running, others ambling. Alice’s heart began to knock against her ribs again. She tried to slow it down with her breathing, with her eyes closed, but it hurt to breathe too deeply. She tried to call out for company, for help, but her voice was no more than vapour. Her lips cracked; her eyes and nose burned. The weight of her accumulating questions hung from her ribs. Where was her family? When could she go home? She tried to speak again but her voice would not come. Her mind filled with an image of white moths flying from her mouth in the ocean of fire. Was that a memory? Did that really happen? Or was it a dream? And if it was a dream, did that mean she’d just been sleeping? How long had she been sleeping?
‘Easy, Alice,’ Brooke said as she hurried back into the room with a jug and cup. She put them down and took Alice’s hand as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘I know it’s a shock waking up, love. But you’re safe. We’re taking good care of you.’ Alice looked into Brooke’s mother-of-pearl eyes. She wanted so much to believe her. ‘The doctor’s on her way to see you.’ Brooke rubbed slow circles on Alice’s hand with her thumb. ‘She’s lovely,’ she added, studying Alice’s face.
Soon after, a woman in a white coat came into Alice’s room. She was tall and willowy with long silver hair swept off her face. She reminded Alice of seagrass.
‘Alice, I’m Dr Harris.’ She stood at the foot of Alice’s bed and flipped through papers on a clipboard. ‘It’s very good to see you awake. You’ve been a very brave girl.’
Dr Harris walked around the bed and took a little torch out of her pocket, which she clicked on and shone back and forth between Alice’s eyes. Alice instinctively squinted and turned her face away.
‘Sorry, I know that’s not nice.’ The doctor pressed the cold pad of her stethoscope on Alice’s chest and listened. Would she hear the questions inside? Was she suddenly going to look up and give Alice answers she wasn’t even sure she really wanted to hear? Tiny holes of fear widened in her belly.
Dr Harris took the buds of the stethoscope out of her ears. She murmured a few things to Brooke and handed her the clipboard. Brooke hung it on the end of Alice’s bed and closed the door.
‘Alice, I’m going to talk to you now about how you got here, okay?’
Alice glanced at Brooke. Her eyes were heavy. She looked back at Dr Harris and nodded slowly.
‘Good girl.’ Dr Harris smiled briefly. ‘Alice,’ she began, pressing her hands together as if she was praying, ‘you were in a fire on your property, at home. While the police are piecing together what happened, the most important thing is that you’re safe and recovering so well.’
An awful pause filled the room.
‘I’m so very sorry, Alice.’ Dr Harris’s eyes were dark and damp. ‘Neither of your parents survived. Everyone here cares about your well-being and will look after you until your grandmother arrives …’
Alice’s ears stopped working. She didn’t hear Dr Harris mention her grandmother again, or anything else she said. She thought only of her mother. Her eyes, filled with light. The songs she hummed in her garden, their haunting sadness. The turn of her tender wrists; her pockets filled with flowers; her warm, milky breath in the morning. Being in the nest of her arms, on cold sand under hot sun, feeling the rise and fall of breath in her chest, and the rhythm of her heart and voice as she told stories, spinning the two of them into their warm, magical cocoon. You were the true love I needed to wake me from a curse, Bun. You’re my fairytale.
‘I’ll see you on my next round,’ Dr Harris said, and, after glancing at Brooke, left the room.
Brooke stayed at the end of Alice’s bed, her face sombre. A hole was burning through Alice’s middle. Couldn’t Brooke hear it? Roaring like fire, hissing and raging, swallowing everything inside? A question repeated over and over in her mind. It hooked through Alice and tore bits of her away.
What had she done?
Brooke came around her bed and poured a cup of pale juice, handing it to Alice. At first she wanted to smack it out of Brooke’s hand, but once she tasted the cold sweetness, she tipped her head back and swallowed. It hit her stomach, cold. Panting, she held her cup up for more.
‘Easy does it,’ Brooke said, hesitantly pouring more.
Alice drank so fast some juice dribbled down her chin. She hiccupped as she held the cup out for more. More. More. She shook the cup in Brooke’s face.
‘Last one.’
Alice nearly gagged swallowing the last mouthful. She lowered her cup shakily. Brooke grabbed a sick bag and flicked it open just in time as Alice vomited up streams of juice. She fell back on her pillow, heaving.
‘That’s it.’ Brooke rubbed Alice’s back. ‘Nice and steady. Good girl. One breath at a time.’
Alice never wanted to breathe again.
Alice slept fitfully. Dreams of fire left her drenched in cold sweat. When she awoke her heart was so hot she felt it might melt her chest right open. She scratched at her collarbone until her skin bled. Brooke clipped her nails every few days but it didn’t stop; Alice clawed at her skin night after night until Brooke brought fluffy gloves for her to wear to sleep. And still, her voice would not come. It was gone, evaporated like a salt puddle at low tide.
New nurses came to visit her. They wore different pinafores from Brooke. Some walked her around the hospital, explaining that her muscles had weakened while she was sleeping and needed to remember how to be strong. They taught her exercises to do in bed and around her room. Others came to talk to her about her feelings. They brought picture cards and toys. Alice didn’t hear the storyteller’s voice again in her dreams. She grew paler. Her skin cracked. She imagined her heart was withering of thirst, drying out from its edges to its raw, red centre. Every night she fought her way through waves of fire. Mostly, she lay in her bed and stared out the window at the changing sky, trying not to remember, trying not to question anything, and waiting for Brooke to arrive. Brooke had the best eyes.
Time passed. Alice’s voice was lost. She could not eat more than a few forkfuls at each meal, no matter how much Brooke fussed over her. Her unasked questions took up all the room in her body; the same one frightened her the most.
What had she done?
Though she hardly ate, she drank jug after jug of sweet juice and water, but nothing washed the smoke or sorrow away.
Soon dark purple smudges appeared like storm clouds under her eyes. Nursing staff took her for walks out in the sun twice a day, but the glare of the light was too much to bear for more than a few moments at a time. Dr Harris visited again to explain that if she didn’t start eating, they were going to have to feed her through a tube. Alice let them; her unasked questions hurt more than any tube ever could. She had no room left inside her to care.
One morning Brooke squeaked into Alice’s room in her pink rubber shoes, her eyes twinkling like the summer sea. She had something in her hands, hidden behind her back. Alice looked at her with weak interest.
‘Something’s arrived.’ Brooke grinned. ‘Just for you.’ Alice raised an eyebrow.
Brooke made a drum-roll noise.
‘Ta da!’
In her hands sat a box tied with strands of brightly coloured string. Alice propped herself up in bed. Her body tingled with faint curiosity.
‘It was at the nurse’s station this morning when I started my shift. Nothing but this tag, with your name on it.’ Brooke rested the box on Alice’s lap with a wink. It was delightfully heavy.
Alice untied the string bow and opened the top of the box. Inside, nested under swathes of tissue paper, was a pile of books. Their spines faced upwards, the way flowers in her mother’s garden turned their faces towards the sun. She ran her fingertips over the lettering of their titles, gulping when she spotted one she knew. It was the book she first borrowed from the library, about selkies. In a surge of energy Alice heaved the box upside down. The books tumbled onto her lap. She sighed with pleasure, scooping them into her arms. Thumbing through the pages, she breathed in their musty paper-and-ink fragrance. Stories of salt and longing fluttered around her face, beckoning to her. When she heard the squeak of Brooke’s shoes on the linoleum outside her room, Alice looked up in surprise; she hadn’t heard her leave.
Later, Brooke silently wheeled a table into Alice’s room and angled it directly over her bed. It was laden with colourful dishes. A pot of yoghurt and fruit salad. A cheese and salad sandwich, all the crusts cut off, and a small pile of crunchy chips. They glistened with oil and salt. To the side, a box of sultanas and almonds. And a carton of cold malted milk with a straw.
Alice met Brooke’s eyes. After a moment, she nodded.
‘Attagirl,’ Brooke said, locking the wheels of the lunch table before leaving the room.
Keeping the selkie book close, Alice riffled through the other books and picked one. She opened the cover, shivering with delight when she heard the spine crack. She reached for a triangle of sandwich and closed her eyes as she sank her teeth into the soft, fresh bread. Alice couldn’t remember the last thing she’d eaten that was so good. The creaminess of salted butter and tangy cheese. Crunchy lettuce, sweet carrot and juicy tomato. Ravenous, Alice stuffed the rest of the triangle into her cheeks, struggling to chew around bits of bread and carrot poking out of her mouth.
After taking several sips of malted milk to wash down her lunch, Alice let out a loud burp. She smiled to herself in satisfaction and, with her belly full, turned her attention to her book. Though she was sure she’d never read it before, she somehow knew the story. She ran her fingertips over the embossed cover. It showed a beautiful young girl sleeping, holding a thorny rose in her hand.
The next day, when she was nearly finished Sleeping Beauty, Alice glanced from her book to see Brooke and Dr Harris hovering outside her room with two strange women. One was in a suit with heavy square glasses and bright lipstick. She had a folder thick with paper in her arms. The other woman was in a khaki buttoned-up shirt, trousers the same colour, and solid-looking brown boots, like those her father wore to work. Her hair was threaded with grey. Whenever she moved it sounded like little bells were chiming; a collection of silver bracelets hung from her wrists, tinkling against each other as she used her hands. Alice couldn’t stop staring at her.
The group turned to enter Alice’s room. Alice focused on her book. When they came in she didn’t look up. The little bells tinkled and chimed.
‘Alice,’ Brooke started. Her voice was too high. Alice didn’t understand the tears in Brooke’s eyes.
The woman in the suit stepped forward. ‘Alice, we’ve come to introduce you to someone special.’
She kept her eyes on her book. Briar Rose was about to be saved by love. When the lady in the suit spoke again, her voice was too loud, as if Alice was hard of hearing.
‘Alice, this is your grandmother. Her name is June. She’s come to take you home.’
Brooke pushed Alice in a wheelchair through the hospital and out into the bright morning. Earlier, she’d disappeared from Alice’s room while the woman in the suit was talking. June had just stared at Alice and fidgeted a lot. Alice had read enough about grandmothers to know that in her King Gees and Blundstones, June did not look or behave like one. While her bracelets didn’t stop chiming, she hardly said a thing, not even when the woman said it was June who’d sent Alice her box of books. Dr Harris said June was Alice’s guardian. She and the suit lady used that word a lot. Guardian. Guardian. To Alice, it conjured images of lighthouses. But June didn’t look like she was full of guarding light. Her eyes were the most distant Alice had seen, the kind of horizon so far away that you can’t tell the sea from the sky.
Outside, June was sitting in an old farm truck in the visitor car park, waiting for them. Beside her was an enormous, panting dog. Classical music poured from the open windows. When the dog spotted Brooke and Alice it leapt to its feet, barking, filling the truck’s cabin with its bulk. June started and turned the volume down, wrangling herself around the dog.
‘Harry!’ June yelled, tried to hush him. ‘Sorry,’ she called, fussing as she clambered out of the truck. Harry kept barking. Before she could stop herself, Alice lifted her arm to signal ‘quiet’ to Harry – Harry, not Toby. When he didn’t respond and Alice realised her mistake, her chin quivered before she could stop it.
‘Oh no,’ June cried, misunderstanding the expression on Alice’s face. ‘I know he’s big, but you don’t have anything to fear. Bullmastiffs are gentle.’ She crouched by Alice’s wheelchair. Alice couldn’t look at her. ‘Harry’s got special powers. He looks after people when they’re sad.’ June stayed there, waiting. Ignoring her, Alice busied herself with her hands in her lap.
‘Let’s get you in the truck now, Alice,’ Brooke said.
June stepped back to let Brooke help Alice out of the wheelchair and up into the passenger seat. Harry leapt up to sit beside her. He smelled different from Toby, sweet and earthen, not salty and damp. And he didn’t have long, fluffy fur either, nothing for her to curl her fingers into.
Brooke leant through the window. Harry panted happily at her. Alice sucked on her bottom lip.
‘Be a good girl, Alice.’ Brooke touched Alice’s cheek gently, before abruptly turning her back to the truck. She went to June who was standing a short distance away, and together they talked in low voices. Any minute Brooke would turn back, march over to the truck in her pink rubber shoes, throw open the door and declare it was all a mistake. Alice didn’t have to leave. Brooke would take her home to her desk and her mother’s garden, and Alice would find her voice somewhere down by the sea among the scallop shells and soldier crabs, and she’d bellow loud enough for her family to hear her. Any minute now, Brooke would turn around. Any minute. Brooke was her friend. She wouldn’t let Alice go off with someone she didn’t know. Even if she was a lighthouse.
Alice watched them intently. June touched Brooke’s arm and Brooke returned the gesture. She was probably comforting June, explaining it was all a big mistake – Alice wouldn’t be leaving. Then Brooke handed June Alice’s bag of belongings, which consisted entirely of books, and turned back towards the truck.
‘Be good,’ Brooke mouthed to Alice, lifting her hand in a wave. She lingered by the entrance with the empty wheelchair. After a moment, she pushed it towards the automatic doors and disappeared through them.
Alice was struck by dizziness, as if Brooke had walked away and taken all the blood in her body with her. She’d left her with this stranger. Alice rubbed her eyes to push the tears back in, but it was no use. She’d made the mistake of thinking her tears disappeared to the same place as her voice. But now they streamed down her cheeks as if they ran from a broken tap. June stood at the passenger window, her arms hanging at her sides as if she didn’t know what else to do with them. After a few moments she opened the passenger door, stowed Alice’s bag behind her seat and shut the door gently. She walked around the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat to start the engine. They sat together in silence. Even Harry the enormous dog.
‘Let’s head on home then, Alice,’ June said. She put the truck into gear. ‘We’ve got a long drive.’
They pulled out of the car park. Exhaustion tugged on Alice’s eyelids. Everything hurt. A few times Harry tried to nose her leg but she pushed his face away, turned her back to both of her companions and kept her eyes closed to shut out her new world.
Brooke jabbed the elevator down button and rummaged through her handbag until her fingertips grazed her emergency packet of smokes. She gripped them in her fist. When the elevator pinged, Brooke walked in and punched the button for the car park harder than she meant to. Again she recalled the happiness on Alice’s face at the sight of that box of books; the light that filled her eyes made the lie Brooke had told about where they’d come from worth it. Alice was with her grandmother now. Her family, Brooke reminded herself, was what Alice was going to need most.
In her whole life, Brooke had never witnessed anything like the aftermath of what had happened at the Hart property. Police were calling it a perfect storm: dry lightning, a child left alone with matches, and a family trapped in the cycle of a man’s violence against his wife and daughter. Brooke hovered nearby when the police approached June to explain: Clem had beaten his child unconscious in her bedroom then, realising there was a fire, dragged her outside before going back in to rescue Agnes. But by the time the fire brigade and ambulance arrived, Agnes couldn’t be resuscitated, and Clem died at the scene shortly after from smoke inhalation. At that point June was such a sickly colour that Brooke had intervened and suggested a break.
The elevator reached the car park with another nauseatingly cheery ping. Brooke took deep lungfuls of fresh air, holding off from lighting her smoke. That poor woman, Agnes. Only twenty-six years old, and in such fear of her husband that she’d made a will for guardianship of her children, one of whom would never know her. Brooke pressed a hand to her stomach at the thought of him, the baby boy, pulled from Agnes’s dying, beaten body. She swallowed a rising wave of bile. How could a husband do that to his pregnant wife, to his young daughter, to his unborn son? What would become of Alice, the daughter who survived fire?
Images of Alice unconscious, beaten and inhaling smoke overwhelmed Brooke. She threw her smokes and lighter into a bin, got into her car and left the hospital in a squeal of tyres on concrete, desperate to put as much distance as she could between herself and Alice’s empty room.
The summer dusk was thick and balmy. Along the seafront the Norfolk Island pines teemed with parrots screeching drunkenly, singing their sunset song. Brooke pulled over and wound down the windows to inhale the heavy fragrance of salt, seaweed and frangipani. Alice had mumbled incessantly about flowers when she was in the grip of her night terrors. Flowers, phoenix birds and fire.
‘C’mon,’ Brooke muttered to herself. ‘Get your shit together.’
She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and turned the key in the ignition. Speeding away from the sea, she cut the corners of the empty streets in her neighbourhood, pulling hard into her driveway. Once she was inside, Brooke went straight to the phone, lifted the receiver and began to make the call she’d been dreading all day. She willed herself to press the last digit of Sally’s phone number, which she’d known since she was twelve.
Blood pulsed in her ears as the dial tone turned to a ring.
And her light
stretches over salt sea
equally and flowerdeep fields.
Sappho
