Deeper Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinking.
    ‘I mean,’ Anja was standing close beside me, her elbow clunking against my upper arm, ‘I know it’s still raining, but I thought maybe we could go do something.’ She bent her head towards me. ‘You know? Pick some passionfruit or something?’ As far as I knew, there were no passionfruit to pick, but Anja was twitching at the edges, just a little, on the verge of some big emotion. Oftentimes her dad got to drinking and things at home unravelled. It had been like that from the beginning. She’s spent half her life at my house.
    ‘Let’s go then,’ I said, grabbing my dad’s old raincoat. ‘You want an umbrella?’
    I knew she wouldn’t. ‘Nah. I’m soaked already.’
    At least in summer it was so warm it didn’t really matter how wet you got. I didn’t want Hamish to come ’cause I knew Anja probably needed to get things off her chest, but he was glancing anxiously at the storeroom. Evidently, he didn’t want to get stuck with Mum.
    ‘You want an umbrella?’ I asked him.
    He looked down at the clothes he was wearing. Mum’s oversized jumper, still hanging down low at the neck. Feminine on his broad shoulders. They were the only clothes he had.
    ‘I guess so.’
    Outside on the veranda I hunted for the umbrella. It was black and a bit buckled. I shook it out for spiders and then handed it to him.
    ‘Thanks, Mema,’ he said, really looking me in the eye. Hamish had a steeliness that mostly stayed beneath, but every now and then you’d catch a whiff of it. I nodded back at him, but I was thinking about my mum hiding herself in the storeroom.
    Anja grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard, and then we all stepped out into the rain.

4.
    When I brought the stranger home, I knew it would unsettle Mum. More than the flooding rain and more than Sophie’s tears. More than the thousand and one irritations of our quiet life—no electricity, leaking roofs, crazy animals and dirty, wet footprints all over the wooden floors.
    There were some things no one knew about my mum, some things no one knew but me. That’s how it is when you live with someone forever—you become accustomed to their every move. Every sigh is full of nuance and even the tread of their feet on the floor has its own temperament. No doubt Mum felt the same about me. Secret habits emerge from the darkness and even the most hidden thoughts find an open space. This familiarity was among the things we never spoke about, and lately the list was getting longer. Privacy was a deep thing for my mum, though the town had always watched her. She didn’t shrink away from the stolen glances at her big, overripe body, but she liked more and more to be alone.
    There were things that everyone knew about my mum. That she made huge earthen pots out in the shed, curved and dark and heavy. That the sale of a single pot could make good money at the fancy city galleries, but that she didn’t make too many sales. That her tongue was as sharp as a razor’s edge, but her touch was gentle and sure. That for a bit of wood-chopping, or roof cleaning, or grass slashing, or even a basket of fresh bread and vegies, she was good for a roll in the hay. Even at her age, even now.
    And so it was that sometimes I would happen upon her, pressed up against a fence post, skirt riding high, while some lonesome neighbouring farmer breathed in the smell of her. And though it wasn’t a secret, I caught my breath every time.
    The secret things I knew about my mum, and the things that everyone knew, had played on my mind for some time, since I was real little, I guess. Sophie and my brothers had such trouble at school, juggling all those knowns and unknowns, that by the time it came to be my turn, Mum didn’t send me.
    ‘What’s the world got to offer you, Mema?’ she asked. ‘I’m not playing that game anymore.’
    You don’t even need a reason to home-school. You don’t have to be a conscientious objector. You just have to prove you do it. And Mum had no trouble