‘For crying out loud,’ said Nana May, hands clapped to her head. ‘Dusty, you cannot wear jandals. Your Mum would be so upset.’
‘Whatevs, Nan. She’s not here to tell me off, is she?’
‘Dusty!’ Nana’s tired eyes closed for a moment.
‘It’s true. If she wanted so much say about what I wore, she should have stuck around,’ I said.
‘Come here, darling.’ Nana held out arms, knotty like kindling. Her cheeks bulged like a puffer fish as she let out a sigh so long that my fringe lifted. ‘I know you’re angry. But time is a great heal—’
‘Nana, don’t say that.’ I put up my hand. ‘People only say that when they can’t find anything else to say. She left me. Left you. I hate her.’
‘Perhaps just wear your Chucks. It’s time to go, darling.’ Nana’s spotted hand hovered at my cheek.
‘I don’t want to go, Nana.’ The words were gritty, like couscous in my mouth. I jammed clenched fists into the over-stretched pockets of my knee-length, knitted cardigan. Mum hated the tattered cuffs. Hated the apple-sized holes all over. Good job, I thought. Teach her to leave me. Just like that. Not a word to anyone. Gone.
A pair of bored looking angels sat on top of the tall, crumbly, concrete pillars that stood either side of the entrance.
‘Well, you two look interested. Not!’ I spat.
Mrs Woods from Bible class told us that God sent angels to take souls home. What a pile of crap. How did I ever believe that? How did I ever want to be an angel when I grew up? I remembered looking over my shoulder every morning to see whether my wings had grown. I was so dumb when I was eight. ‘Brain, stop it,’ I growled.
Light rain sprinkled. Skinny shards of sunlight squeezed through the grim, grey clouds. I picked my way along the sodden track. Slicks of mud flicked up the backs of my legs. Plump drops from colourful umbrellas dribbled over my cheeks. Dripped on my head. Down my neck. I ducked, but the drip, drip, and more drips made me want to wrench the brollies out of those hands and stamp on them until I busted them to death.
I’d never noticed people’s hands before. Some had long fingers with gold bands that bound them together as husband and wife. Never to be parted. Like a mother and a daughter. Huh!
Other hands were slim. Finished off with polished nails and bulky rings that winked in the watery sun. Some were large and square. Fingernails blackened. Scarred and dinged from hard work like my Grandad’s. Wrinkled hands, like Shar-Pei puppies, were my favourites. Like my Nana May’s. Smooth hands seemed ordinary. Probably from ordinary lives.
‘Jesus, Dusty, who gives a crap about hands?’ I yelled. Didn’t care who heard.
You do, bellowed the voice in my head. I did. I did give a crap because these hands pissed me off.
‘Where have all your hands been?’ I shouted. Spread mine like Jesus did in pictures in Bible storybooks.
Startled silent faces stared back. Nana May’s head, covered in her strange plastic rain hat that opened like a fan whenever she used it, bobbed through the crowd toward me. I dropped to the ground. Mud squished through my fingers. ‘Where were all those hands?’ I cried again.
Nana squeezed through the people. Raced to her only grandchild. A grand-daughter she’d named after Dusty Springfield, her favourite singer.
She kneeled beside me. Splotches stained her Nana-type pantyhose when she shifted to sit. People dodged us, faces frightened. Concerned. No one stopped.
Time paused for a second or maybe longer. I stared hard into my Nana’s face. When did I stop noticing her? Why would I choose now to look again? I was so close I could count her eyelashes, smell pain older than I’d been alive. But I smelled mine more. I guess teenagers are like that.
Her seventy-two-year-old face was lined and familiar and funny. Eyes watchful. Murky like an early winter’s day from the cataracts trying to steal her sight, ‘right from under her nose,’ as she would say. Hair white and wispy and all whipped up like a snow freeze.
I was fourteen. Loved fashion and hair and pretty much only anything that concerned me, now I thought about it. ‘Nana you should dye your hair like Marnie’s grandmother does,’ I would say. I told my nana she was too young to have white hair.
‘Who says?’ would be my Nan’s answer. ‘No way. Hair dye will kill you dead,’ she’d say. ‘Causes brain cancer.’
I’d picture my Nana May with pink hair. All stroppy and cool like her.
Fragments of life had landed on my Nana’s skin leaving little marks like the grubby kisses I used to give her. I thought of the random things she’d said over my life. Like how when I was little she’d said she had royal blood and, if she pricked herself, she would bleed blue blood. I was so proud I thought I would burst. A Nana whose blood was blue. Like a felt tip pen. I wished and wished Nana would cut herself. I’d never seen blue blood before.
Nana was especially hilarious when it came to cell phones and computers. She’d forget their names and call everything a Hurdy Gurdy. If she asked me to pick up or put away my Hurdy Gurdy, it was a bit of guessing game really.
Once I showed her a spoiler of Coronation Street on my laptop. That gutted her. ‘All the surprises in life are ruined,’ she wailed. ‘Like babies and that Hurdy Gurdy thing that tells you whether you are having a boy or girl. Excitement. Dead as a dodo. Dead, like Grandad Frank. Bloody old fool he was.’ But, I’d see her eyes glisten like lip-gloss.
Life with Nana had been all tea parties and tantrums. My Mum and I had always lived with her. Saturday afternoons, she bustled about making brownies and vegetable soup, radio revved. I never heard many songs though, just people ringing up to talk about stuff. Boring stuff. Oh, and horse racing.
Nana loved to place bets by telephone. She told me it was her investment account. ‘Come on you beauty! Come on!’ she’d yell, arms cutting the air like a Tai Chi master. I’d cheer too. Hard. Loud. Then, there’d be a spell of quiet. Lots of quiet when Nana’s horse lost. ‘Bloody useless nag,’ she’d mutter.
‘Did your horse lose again, Nana?’ I’d ask.
‘Yip darling, Nana’s horse only had three legs.’
That gave me a shock. ‘Why did you choose a horse with only three legs Nana? What happened to his other leg?’ I’d asked, concerned.
‘I don’t know, Dusty. But I’m going to chop his other three legs off when I catch him,’ she’d blazed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The sun was out now.
Nana and I sat on the track among puddles and patterned footprints. The umbrella people stood in a knot further along. They glanced over their shoulders and then, heads touching like Siamese twins, they whispered. Probably talking about Nana and me. I had to admit we must have looked like retards.
The mud on my legs had dried. Tight. Like my heart. Nana put her arms around me. Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew perfume made me feel like I was cuddled up in her bed with Moon on my lap and her snoring halfway through The Velveteen Rabbit.
‘Remember the night when we got Moon, Nana?’
She nodded and mopped up my tears with a linen handkerchief doused in Eucalyptus oil. I coughed. Nana still never used tissues. ‘You could have caught your death,’ she said, her voice wrinkled and creased.
Moon came to us one storm soaked night. Huddled under our back steps. Eyes large and yellow like small moons. His fur was slicked like a wetsuit against his tiny, shaking body. I pleaded. I begged. Cried to bring him inside. Nana was unmoved. Said, ‘Nope, don’t even think about it, kiddo.’
At midnight she found me crouched under the steps wrapped in my duvet and cuddling the kitten. Both drenched. ‘Give me strength,’ said Nana as she hauled me and our new family member inside. I shivered so hard that night I thought my teeth would snap off.
Who are all these people, Nana?’ I nodded my head to the backs of the crowd.
Nana looked at me. Eyelids with bumpy bits of flesh flicked up. ‘Friends. Relatives. Work colleagues. A couple of old boyfriends.’
‘Ew! Gross,’ I said.
‘That’s Mr and Mrs Hawthorn over there. The ones at the back with the State Insurance umbrella,’ said Nana pointing. Patches of dried mud and bent blades of grass covered the heels of her palms. ‘They were our neighbours in Trafalgar Street.’
I shrugged.
‘Don’t you remember them?’
I shook my head. ‘Why are they here now?’
‘What do you mean darling?’ asked Nana shifting. Her face twisted. She straightened her legs. Soft navy shoes smeared. Saturated. ‘Nana’s too old to sit like this anymore,’ she said.
‘Where have they been all this time?’
‘Sorry, darling, I still don’t understand what you mean.’
I broke off a stalk of paspalum, sticky in my fingers. Whipped it back and forth across my muddy knees. ‘They never came, Nana. Not once.’
The rain drizzled.
‘God’s tears,’ said Nana squinting.
‘Where were they to hold Mum when she couldn’t stand? When she couldn’t shower by herself. Where were these hands to hold her cup or fork?’
Nana May’s voice quivered like plucked strings on a harp. ‘People deal with things in different ways.’
I glanced at my mud-caked toes. ‘Should have worn my Chucks, aye Nana?’
‘Your Mum would probably get a giggle,’ said Nana.
‘Why did she have to die?’
Nana’s head shook. Slow like a funeral walk. ‘I can’t answer that, darling.’ She squeezed me. ‘Help Nana up.’
‘Man, we’re so dirty now,’ I said.
‘A peck of dirt hurt nobody,’ said Nana. Nana always mended the sore bits in my heart. ‘Let’s go and say goodbye to Mum,’ she said and kissed me, lips sticky. I smelled strawberries.
‘Nana!’
Nana’s eyes looked frantic, like Moon’s when he’d been caught in the rubbish bag. ‘What, Dusty?’
‘You’re wearing my lip gloss.’
‘Cool aye?’ she winked. ‘Might dye my hair pink too,’ she said. But I caught her pain. I’d forgotten. She’d lost someone too.
I stared at the pearly box below. Wished I could climb down and crawl in beside her. Rest my cheek against hers. Plait the last few strands of her hair. Paint her fingernails different colours while she slept so she’d snort like a donkey when she woke. I wished I could say sorry for every door I slammed. Say sorry for all the times I left so I wouldn’t see her. Smell her.
‘Do you think Mum hates me?’ I asked kicking at a pile of soggy, red dirt.
‘Good Lord, child. No. Why would you ask that?’
‘I went out. I shouted at her. Said I wished she were like my friend’s mothers. Not stuck in bed. And then. You know.’
‘It was her time, child.’
‘But she was all alone.’ I reached into Nana’s pocket for the hanky.
‘I knew your Mum better than anyone. Gave birth to her. Loved her more than life itself. Mum died the way she lived, baby. On her own terms.’
I liked how the peonies smelt. Felt in my hands. Petals. Silky. Pink ones to be exact. Mum’s favourites. I opened my cupped hands the way you do when you set a bird free. They twirled. Pale. Fragile. Bruised. They landed like a flurry of butterfly kisses onto her coffin. My hands felt empty, so I reached for Nana’s and ran my thumb over her emerald ring.
‘Bye, Mum. I hope you don’t get those angels,’ I said, thumbing behind me. ‘Hope your angels smile at you.’