A Language of Limbs

limb one

My sixteenth birthday passes through me unknowingly. I have my head in a dumpster when I find a newspaper with the date on it: 28 April 1972. Four days have passed since the garden shed. Or is it five? Six?

Happy birthday to me, I say.

I wonder how the day passed through my parents. Strangely, imagining that they had cared is so much more painful. I realise that hate and love sometimes come wrapped up and intertwined.

I fish from the dumpster two brown bananas and a cookie tin. Prying the tin open, I find, to my sheer joy, Arnott's assorted biscuits. They're stale, but I don't care. As I shove the first into my mouth, I can't help but laugh at the irony. My mother, too, would have thrown these away, never allowing anything to go stale in her kitchen. It's mothers like her prematurely throwing things out that allows for daughters like me to survive.

I crouch down behind the bin and ram biscuit after biscuit into my mouth, barely chewing, so they form thick wads in my throat. Down the alleyway, a girl walks past in her school uniform. She turns her head and I lean into the shadow of the bin.

I think of school. Chalk words and diagrams on the blackboard are already beginning to warp and fade, becoming memories of a memory. Yet the feeling of being in the library, surrounded by shelves of books, feels achingly fresh. When I remember that the book I was reading, Orlando, will now sit on the shelf indefinitely, half-finished, I am overcome by grief. In these half-known truths, there are endless endings, and I mourn the open-ended ending of everything I ever knew. Perhaps that's how endings happen. We like to think of full stops and final pages, but so often the book is forgotten or lost, leaving us on a half-formed thought with nothing to close the

A rat scurries past me. I shriek and jump to my feet, looking back down the alleyway. The girl is gone. Just like that. Off on her way to school.

When I wake in the afternoon, I pick up my biscuit tin and walk. Down the alleyway. Along the street. A school bus turns a corner. More school kids. I feel a pang of anxiety because, once upon a time, the school bus was the only place I found it difficult to survive. School was fine. I was good at school, excellent even. Surely good enough to get a university scholarship. I paid attention in class and handed in my homework ahead of time. A teacher's pet. A nerd. A freak, because I spent recesses and lunches in the library, alone. Reading poetry and writing, thinking one day one day one day. The school bus was the twenty hot, sticky minutes that bookended each day. The time when I sat, sweaty, telling myself if I was quiet, maybe they wouldn't know.

Did I even know?

I remember how nothing necessarily felt wrong, until it suddenly felt right. How I'd kissed a boy at a school dance and thought, well, that was something. How I was high off the nerves and mistook the feeling for excitement. How it wasn't until I kissed her, down by the creek, all murky water and mangroves, that I understood.

I exist,

otherwise.

That I felt out of time because everyone else's was circling forward, while mine was beating backwards. The library and the classes and the school bus and the dinner table all became a kind of dream that I sleep-walked through. At night, when I would meet her in the garden shed, I woke up.

Like seeing a painting upside down, trying to make sense of it. Appreciating it, even. Until the painting is inverted and the image becomes crystal clear. Now I can't even remember what the world looked like before it made sense.

Another school bus is approaching. It's this easy, I think, to obliterate oneself. I take a deep breath and step forward off the kerb.

The bus driver slams on his horn. I jump back as the bus whooshes past. The driver shakes his head at my stupidity, then continues down the street to a future I will never know. A half-known truth. A story with endless endings. I can't go back for fear my father might kill me. Or for fear that he might not?

When I picture the alternative - going home, brushing over, pretending none of this ever happened - I think, I would rather die. Going back into the upside down feels utterly impossible.

So, I stick out my hand, out of time, thumb up, backwards, until a ute pulls to the kerb and a man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth winds down the window. Where are you going? he asks. I think of the furthest place I know from here. Brisbane. He says, I'm heading west. I ask, can you take me to the highway? He shrugs. Sure, get in, and reaches across to unlock the passenger door. The cabin reeks of yellowed smoke. Thanks, I say, closing the door. He pulls away from the kerb and tells me his name is Steve, then jokes that his missus would kill him if she saw me in his ute. I ask bluntly, why? Not because I don't know, but because I think it's a stupid thing to say. He laughs, the sound bubbling in his throat. He says something about my black eye, but I'm not listening because his eyes are sliding all over me. I tug at my shorts, stretching the fabric so that it covers my knees. He reaches across and pulls my hand away. The fabric lifts. He grins.

I jump out of Steve's ute as it's rolling to a stop at a traffic light. I trip and land in the gutter. Hear him cackling as he revs the engine behind me. He yells out, prick tease! As I scramble off the road onto long grass that itches, I'm panting, not out of fear, but out of rage. Rage at his seedy smile. Flashed teeth. His hand on my leg. Rage at that ridiculous laugh, like he's king of the highway. I want to kick him in the jaw. To stomp on that stupid grin. I kick a picket fence and scream.

Hey there. you alright?

I turn around. A man is walking towards me. Over the sounds of cars whooshing, he says, pretty impressive that was. Piss off! I yell, giving him the finger. At that, he steps closer. I look at his thick arms, bloated belly, broad shoulders, fat neck and think, yeah, I'll give it a shot. I puff up my chest, becoming huge with air, and clench my fists. He raises both hands above his head. Hey hey hey, he says. I'm not going to fight you. Bloody hell. I scream, Stay back! And he does. He stops in his tracks, hands still above his head. I'm Dave, he says, I'm a truck driver. I bring fruit from Queensland down to Sydney. I eye him up and down. He's wearing a suit, pressed shirt and tie. His thin hair is combed to one side. I say, you don't look like a truck driver. Dave looks down at his outfit and chuckles. Yes, well, I've been at a funeral, he says. Then his voice cracks as he tells me, someone I loved. someone I loved very much. I notice his pink cheeks, his bloodshot eyes and puffy eyelids. My breathing is sharp, quick ins and outs, but I feel the knots of rage inside me loosening. My body is undoing, undone. I collapse back onto the grass. Let out a big sigh.

Slowly, Dave kneels beside me. I see him take in the sight of my face. He sighs at the bulging blue of my flesh and gently asks me, you got a home? I point to my swollen eye. He nods, silent. Then he says, where are you headed? He's gentle with his words in a way that feels at odds with his meaty body. Where are you headed? The laugh that comes out of him is rough, but genuine. I'm going to Sydney, he tells me. Me too, I answer. Well, he says, that's lucky for me. That's my truck. He points to a nearby petrol station where a big orange truck is parked. Dave tells me that he's about to drive it back to Sydney and that he could really use the company, after the funeral, and I actually believe him, feeling in my gut that this is OK, that he means it, because his eyes aren't grease rubbed all over my body. His gaze is a still and quiet grey, like a slow sea taking on the colour of clouds.

Dave asks me my name. As I'm about to answer, it dawns on me that I can be anyone. I am everyone and no one. Then, because he's looking at me, anticipating my response, my mind goes blank and I blurt out his name, Dave. He laughs, ha! Dave is smiling but he shakes his head. Two Daves, he says. Both going to Sydney. Yeah, I say, holding my breath. Then, he chuckles again and says, what are the chances! And I feel myself relax, perhaps even smile.

The cabin is high up. I feel like I'm spying on unsuspecting drivers, and I guess I am. Dave reaches into the centre console and pulls out a bottle of Coke. Want one, Dave? he says, cracking the lid off the bottle as he drives with his elbows. I remember that I am Dave, that he's talking to me. Yeah, I say, please. Dave passes me the bottle and pulls out a second. There are lollies in there too, he says. Help yourself. He takes a swig of his Coke. Ahh! he says, patting his round belly. Then he lets out a loud burp. I take a gulp from my bottle. The Coke fizzes in my mouth. I burp too. It burns in my nose. He reaches across and clinks our bottles together. Cheers, Dave! I respond, Cheers, Dave! And then we're both laughing.

Out the window, wide stretches of bush rush past in strokes of...