Dead Straight Meanders

Nanna had wide shoulders for a lady and smelt like freshly mown grass. Her eyes were spectacularly green, baby grass colour, she never wore makeup the way mummy did, her boots sounded like a hammer if they hit on stuff by accident. There were fine lines in her leathery skin like the lines on a leaf from up close. With skin so brown she always looked how people did when they got back from the beach, but she said it was from working out in the sun all day and you could even get burnt on a snowy mountain. After dinner nanna would always give her a plastic bag with a chocolate bar and little packet of cashews and a two-dollar coin inside. The cashews were soft and weren’t salty. Then nanna would go with mummy and daddy to the rumpus room. Upstairs Suzy-love, go and play with your fairy dolls. Every so often someone’s voice got loud enough to hear, usually mummy’s voice, before things were quiet again, quiet even in the middle of a sentence.

And just once she had crept to the stair above the creaky middle one to listen except that in the excitement of being a spy she didn’t make out many words, mostly just the racing heartbeat inside her head. How long this time, how long this time, she did hear. When she slept it was on her stomach and she liked to be facing the wall. If she was facing a wall it made her feel safe and sleepy. If she wasn’t facing a wall she heard her heartbeat so loud, like drums or soldiers marching. At nanna’s her bed was in the middle of the room and against the walls were chests, wardrobes, a sewing desk with an old-looking lamp. Heavy things you couldn’t move. Out to Warrandyte with you precious girl, mummy and daddy would come into her room and say, out to the cows and the chickens. Nanna will take you to school and daddy will come and get you in just a little while. The little while was usually one week but often two and once it was nearly five weeks. How would you like to feed the chickens, nanna always said. They miss you.     She said she would like that but had to try hard not to cry. Then the porch went black and the headlights came alive again. There were no lampposts on the road to nanna’s; it was always so black.