The Styx. Patricia Holland

too long she starts screaming and ripping out her hair. Then I have to feed her. It’s all so messy. That fat slag Sharon, she just reads magazines and eats,” Aunty Zeb said.

      “Yep, she’s the aide slash nanny. Government-funded because Sophie isn’t toilet trained. I mean, how stupid can it be, sending her to school when she can’t talk—it’s just wasting the teacher’s time, and what a waste of money.”

      Aunty Zeb flicked back her dyed-too-black hair that needed a wash, lit a cigarette and had a swig of wine to wash it down, while her friend had her talk turn.

      Aunty Zeb’s real name’s is Debra. She has very dark black hair, dark black everywhere except for sometimes she’s got a white stripe down the middle. Everyone calls her Deb. Except me. My mind calls her Zebra, Aunty Zeb.

      “Yeah, too right, hey.” It was Aunty Zeb’s turn again now. She had a voice not unlike Fran in the US sitcom The Nanny. Same strangled-screechy voice, but Australian strangled-screechy.

      “Rose was a total pain in the arse. She was a bloody boong for Christ’s sake, and not a young one. She was older than him, you know. She was right up herself, thought she had some sort of God-given right to make extra demands for things just because she had a spastic daughter.”

      Aunty Zeb sucked and swigged again, while her friend had another turn. While she was suckin’ and swiggin’ she fiddled with her hair and didn’t notice the blob of cream cheese she was rubbing into it, then “svsssssstttt” Aunty Zeb’s cigarette said, as she dropped it in the almost empty milk container. It was her turn again.

      “Yeah, thank God he got rid of her. His mother, yeah, you’ve met Aggie, hey? Yeah, she was shocked shitless when he said he was going to marry her. I mean, sure, sleep with her if you must—after all it’s a family tradition—but marry her!”

      A waft of fresh cigarette smoke floated my way. And a glug glug glug new glass of wine. Aunty Zeb was just warming up.

      “Aggie didn’t never acknowledge Rose, hey—her own daughter-in-law! Didn’t go to the wedding. Hardly ever spoke to either of them again. Never invited them to Christmas do’s, hey,” Aunty Zeb said, not at all sadly, and she wasn’t finished.

      “Aggie doted on Sophie, but—our girls too—but she was totally gaga over Sophie. Never seemed anywhere near that keen on her own sons. First-hand knowledge of white male squattocracy with her father, I reckon. Yeah, well she married an outsider, too, hey.”

      Aunty Zeb always seemed particularly happy chatting on the phone. You could get a full family history, just listening in.

      Rememory 23

      I loved that bus ride to school. It was heaven. Hot. Stinking with boy sweat. Very bumpy because it was old—the bus I mean—and did I say hot? So stinkin’ hot. But to me it was my rescue boat out, and people talked to me. Well they did eventually, after a few bus rides of gawking and talking about me.

      “Mum says she’s retarded.”

      “Mum said it’s a waste of time sending her to school. One step away from a vegetable, Mum said.”

      “Spastic,” they all said.

      After they got all that out of their systems, the kids started looking at my eyes instead of my chair.

      “Hi, Soph, what’s going down today?” Gus was the coolest, hottest boy at the school. “You goin’ to lead the march for sports day? I’ll push your chair if you like?”

      I mean how cool is that. He was probably the first kid, ever, to treat me normally. And I love it when he bends down to look me in the face. He never stinks, and he has very white teeth. It was his mother who made the vegetable comment—and they have an ultra-size Bible open on its own stand right inside their front door. Go figure.

      At the start, Mrs Stephens, the teacher, always had a po-face about me being at the school. She always treated me well though, and precisely followed the Education Department’s guidelines. She’s a good person really. Just a bit stilted. And she should wear her hair out more often.

      As a teacher, she often morphed into Mr Stephens’s role, head­mastering things.

      “Sophie’s computer has arrived. When we get it set up, she’s the only one who can touch it though. We’ll need to make sure we keep the others right away, to keep it safe,” she said.

      Nooooooooooooooo. I don’t want to be different, I thought. They’ll all hate me, and all the parents will go on about it being a complete waste of money and special treatment for spastic boongs and not fair that their kids aren’t treated equally.

      Mean-wellers often divine wells of meanness.

      Rememory 24

      How did I feel back then? There’s not a word for it. You’d have to have something like Rett Syndrome and have the pain thing and the epileptic thing happening, to have made up a word to reach that feeling. There are probably almost words for the people who died at Auschwitz. The survivors write about it. Do they find words that properly fit?

      Are there words for when, every day in every country right now and forever ago, people are locked up for life, people are tortured, people have no say in anything they do or what happens to them? Are there enough words for that? People with Rett, people with other syndromes and diseases that lock them into an unconnected body—unconnected except to feel scared, panic, pain, horror and hopelessness. They know it will never end. No one’s going to save the virtual vegetables. I don’t think there are any survivors to write about that. I don’t think enough words exist. Yet.

      But I was saved. By that thing in the box sitting there for three weeks because no one knew how to use it, and as I was the only one allowed to use it, it was a waste of time and effort in working out how to set it all up. And it was taking up space.

      Rememory 25

      Miss Ellis, the Regional Education Director, was cruising the Mango Downs neighbourhood checking up on things. The town of Man­go Downs was named in the 1880s after the chestnut racehorse, Go Mango, who lay down at the start of THE bush race of the season, and refused to budge until the race was over. The racetrack, originally on the edge of a cattle station, was dubbed Mango Downs, and the name still stuck when it grew into a town.

      I’m not sure what it was like back then, but these days, Mango Downs isn’t really the sort of town you cruise to for fun. When you drive into the outskirts, your brain is primed for relief after an hour of one paddock of cows after another, after another, after another. But the relief response dries up when you’re faced with hot, dusty, scumbag-looking houses, shacks really. They look abandoned, but they’re not. Lots of dead cars, lots of skinny dogs, mostly related. Lots of fat women, probably mostly related too, in stretched to cruelty dresses, too short, far, far too short (the dresses, not the women). The only other female dress option is the I’ve-given-up dress, the low socio-economic version of the filmy, hostess dress that has relaxation in mind. In this case, it simply has heaps of relaxation room in mind, for future expansion.

      I can never understand the high pregnancy rate among the towns­women. But I suppose the blokes aren’t much better—worse probably. Even more of them is on show. Gut-popping bellies flopping over stubby shorts, bra-less man-boobs, arse-crack lined with black and yellow cheesy bits. Sometimes, when they bend over, you’re sure you get a glimpse of scrotum. And they all wear dirty thongs on their feet—heavy-duty double-plugged flip-flops. You get the picture. And they drink a lot. A lot, a lot. And don’t smell nice.

      Miss Ellis rang to let Mr Stephens know she was coming. Even good people need a watchdog to keep them honest (not in the pinch­ing money sense). She would have her assistant, Brad Jenkins with her, she said. Brad was hot and young and ambitious and smart, and he was Miss Ellis’s right-hand man. They both seemed to like it that way.

      Miss Ellis had been around. She was