Waiting for the bell to ring, crouching on a sticky icy bench, the chill from the asphalt squirming through my shoes and socks into my veins.
8.50 am. A blur of yellow and green uniforms jumping ropes, chasing and playing handball, all puffing blankets of steam. Doing anything to stay warm. The classroom with its rickety heater is tempting, for a change.
The bell finally peals, Mr Lowder’s heels reassuringly crunch the asphalt up onto the verandah. In our class lines, hands behind backs, the usual whispering, chuckling. Callum nudges Billy hard in the ribs, Billy kicks back, Mrs Hickey yells. Giggles and curses. After we sing the anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’, Mr Lowder clears his throat, opens his mouth, closes it. Go to your classes, he says, and is gone. Teachers trade glances. That was weird. Mr Lowder’s normally the most talkative of principals.
Sareena elbows me. ‘It’s because of Lily,’ she says in her lowest voice.
Lily. Missing for days now.
Mrs Hickey holds her cane tight as we push and shove our way into class. Whacks it sharp on her desk and bellows, ‘Be quiet!’
‘No news on her?’ I whisper to Sareena.
‘Get up here now, Bryn!’
I trudge to the blackboard.
Mrs Hickey’s beehive is strangely untidy today. Lily was her favourite, her class captain.
‘I told you to be quiet!’ she snarls; slaps the back of my thigh, spins me towards my seat.
My cheeks are blood red and the boys chortle. Sareena makes a sad face, I rub my hurting skin through my tights. Fight back tears.
At recess we girls huddle. For warmth, yes, but more for secrecy. The little bottles of milk waiting in the playground are cold and mercifully uncurdled. We’ve just finished a scripture lesson so with heaven on my mind I pray that Lily will be found. But after Father Vincent tongue-lashing us with the seven deadly sins I’m not sure Jesus is listening.
‘Mum said Lily’s dead,’ says one girl.
‘How does she know?’
‘They saw a dirty old man in the park where she plays. He had long hair. And a dog. Someone said he stunk.’
‘Maybe she’s just left home. I hear her father – you know.’ Sareena makes a sign of chugging beer into her mouth.
‘He was always nice to me,’ says another.
‘You didn’t even know her!’
‘I know her better than you. So there.’ Tongues are poked.
They argue over what she was wearing when last seen, whether she’s been kidnapped, or perhaps Joe the bus driver’s to blame. Heads nod – a real weirdo, all he does is grunt and yell. We move onto where Lily’s body will be found. In the brown stinky swamps of the Georges River, the fields of Holsworthy army camp, maybe behind the toilets at the shopping centre – it’s so dark and reeking there Mum always makes us hold on. Sareena mentions the body found on the poky East Hills beach a few years ago – maybe Lily’s there, wrapped in reeds or eels, and won’t be found till summer. Maybe a shark ate her.
‘No sharks in the Georges, you idiot.’
‘I saw one at Milperra last holidays!’
The bell rings again, girls skip and squeal, boys shove. I’m rubbing the back of my still-smarting thigh, and glance towards the toilet block, miles away up a long path – now I don’t have time to pee and Mrs Hickey won’t let me go during class – and strangely am mesmerised by the intense white winter sun glaring over its grubby walls. A shadow appears from behind the girls’ side, waving at me from the glare, it seems, and I step forward, peering. It’s a little girl, freezing no doubt in only a thin cotton uniform, and I realise she’s not waving, she’s gesturing at me madly to get away.
‘Get to class, girl!’ yells Father Vincent, and stamps one of his pointy leather shoes.
I wonder whether to tell Sareena about the person – ghost – whatever – but I know she’ll laugh at me. She’ll say it’s my imagination playing up again.
‘Come to the loo with me,’ I beg her at lunchtime.
‘You weirdo,’ she laughs, though she knows I’ve always been nervous about the expanse of wild bushland at the end of our sports field. Nana, Mum, everyone threatens us with all sorts of horrors if we even go near the bush. Sareena stares at it for a while, thinking like me of last week when it was filled with men in uniform, searching for Lily. Now it’s empty again, teeming with the unknown.
We’re patting the cows, their heads poking through the fence from the farm next door. We sneak our hands through the barbed wire with leftover bits of lamington, but they sniff and shake their huge skulls.
The toilets are empty except for two giggling kindy girls in a stall trying to spell out some rude graffiti. They shut up when we appear, and scuttle away.
‘No reason to be worried here, you big scaredy-cat,’ says Sareena, her arms crossed. Despite my cries she skips down the long path, but I’m busting to go. After washing my hands I step again into the blinding sun, now so strong the distant bush is a haze – and jump when a voice calls my name. It whispers Go. A huge fat ghost gum slumps against the toilets’ back wall but I can’t see anyone behind it. Perhaps the voice came from a cubicle. Or from the boys’ side. My heart in my throat, I hurtle back along the path, stumble and topple but jump up swiftly, keep running.
The girls titter. Ask me why I suck my own blood, and point at the tomato sauce dripping from my meat pie, the wet bloody scratch seeping from my torned tights.
‘You know,’ says one, ‘I’ve heard that some of those Lebanese kids like blood. Maybe it’s them that’ve taken Lily.’
Heads nod, and the kidnapper turns Italian, then Vietnamese. ‘Prob’ly one of the Yugoslav knife-chuckers,’ says another. ‘Could even be relos of that German kid in fifth class – weren’t his grandparents Nazis?’
Sareena rolls her eyes – her father’s Serbian – and I pull out my rope and we skip away together towards the comfort of the tuckshop’s old ladies.
Next morning Mr Lowder looks haggard. He only lives about three feet away from where we’re standing – in the principal’s house that’s been there since the school was built a century ago – yet he seems as tired as if he’s walked for hours. We’re all hoping we’ll hear something about Lily, but he’s abrupt again, just reminds us to have our costumes ready for the fête next week.
The fête. I do not want to go, but my mother won’t budge. She’s spent night after night sewing yellow crêpe-paper into a dress for me, a tight white paper ribbon for my waist, and her frustration at the constantly tearing paper is maddening. Last evening I told her I was bored with it all but she snapped at me to shut up and stand still and hold my arms out as she yet again tried to get the pins and stitching right.
As we board the bus at 3 pm the girls boast and whine about their costumes, about the biscuits and cakes their mothers are making for the fête stalls, about the anticipated circus rides and ferris wheel and clowns.
Saturday, day of the fête. The crêpe cuts into my armpits, the belt is ripping already, Mum snarls at me to not breathe. In a circle in the playground we stand waiting for the signal to move, the boys in black cotton suits and ties and white shirts holding our hands, their palms damp with sweat even in the chill, their hair greased down, and I thank god that at least it’s not raining. It feels like it’ll snow though – the goosebumps on my naked limbs are blue. Mrs Moore’s piano plays and we step mechanically back and forwards in a folkdance, parents applauding. Billy squeezes my hand so tight it aches, but he isn’t looking at me, he’s too busy silently counting steps. Finally the dance is over and I sigh hot clouds of relief until I feel water hit my thigh. That dickhead Callum is hiding behind his mother – the parents aren’t watching us anymore, too busy discussing poor Lily – and they don’t notice Callum shooting the girls with a water pistol. My dress is quickly soaked: the water turns a sickly yellow from the crêpe, runs down my thighs, down my calves, and Callum is pointing, guffawing, screaming, ‘She’s pissed herself, look!’ And I’m sprinting towards the toilet block.
But there’s a queue at the toilet, some hovering 6th-class girls are grinning and swearing, so I run into the sports field, towards the bush. I need to hide, disappear, drop dead, I’m burning, dying with embarrassment.
The sun’s gone, black clouds threaten, but I catapult into the bush. Strictly no entry! the sign says, as the teachers constantly remind us, but I don’t care. I’d rather Mrs Hickey’s slap than the smirks and ridicule of the boys, the other girls, my brothers.
4.30 pm. I hear my mother calling, hear Mr Lowder, but I stop wandering and hide within a trunk’s broken skeleton. I’m never coming out.
As the sun turns its back on me, as slithers and crackles hiss through the undergrowth, I change my mind. I want my Mum, Daddy, my warm bedroom with its posters of Black Beauty and my electric blanket. I’m freezing. I climb from the damp trunk and tread cautiously towards where I think lies the school. The bush, gloomier, broader, is watching me, revealing nothing, but as I hobble deeper I know I’m lost. Branches rip at my calves and the blood gets icier and panic makes it difficult to breathe.
Then I halt abruptly.
A green woollen school cardigan hangs untidily from the low branch of a wattle. It’s torn, but still bears the metal badge, the gold words Class Captain gleaming.
It’s Lily’s.
I peer at it, steadying myself against the the raggedy trunk of a eucalyptus.
Then I flinch as a Batman mask juts from behind the trunk.
So close I can hear it breathing.
I open my mouth to scream, but the mask runs a finger across its throat. I can hear its whisper. ‘Tell no one.’
Then Mr Lowder’s voice cuts through the clattering silence, calling my name, and the mask turns to flee and stumbles, falls on its chest, its pointy shoes high in the air, then crawls up and disappears in the wildness. As Mr Lowder hugs me I point my trembling finger at the cardigan and he nods, then carries me and the cardigan back to the school yard.
I dream of the mask that night, and for many nights after.
But I tell no one.
A week later we see on the 5 pm news that a man has been arrested for Lily’s abduction. The cameras push their way towards him and I can see he’s young, bewildered; ‘A bit of a simpleton, I hear,’ says my father. As the boy shuffles up the cobbled steps to Liverpool courthouse he trips on the untied laces of his gym boots.
Gym boots. Perhaps he owns pointy leather shoes. But as I consider telling Dad I see yet again the mask, the finger slicing his throat, and remain silent.
Photo by Rob Griffin on Unsplash
