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Authors: Joanne Horniman
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legs.'
Aunt Em goes inside to make more tea. And Flora seizes Stella by the hand and they waltz along the verandah and inside the house, down the hallway through the shadowy interior to the blinding light at the back door and back again. Emma gets up to watch, seeing the shape their two bodies make togethel; a whirling circle with hands clasped high; they are two indistinct female figures.
Em is arrested in the act of slicing a long brown pear down the middle by Flora, who takes her laughing and protestingfor a slower whirl, leaving the two halves of the pear and half a pawpaw and the steaming teapot on the kitchen table.
A rooster crows from Flora's farmhouse over the way and a black and white dog, a border collie awned by the man who comes to do the garden, runs round and round outside on the grass.
Em's cat has curled up on the seat of a bentwood chair: The pear sits on the table, long and narrow at the top, as curved as a woman below its waist, a pattern of black seeds at its core. The dog is black and white and so are the tiles. The roundness of the twinned dancers is echoed in the pawpaw. Emma is taking all of this in so she can perhaps paint it one day - all the patterns and resonances - when Stella comes to her and, with an expression of slow delight, holds out her armsfor Emma to join in the dance: join in and not just be a watcher: And Emma takes Stella in her arms and is at once astonished by the child's thinness and lightness: Stella is insubstantial andfine and strong and Emma is reminded of Aunt Em when she hugged her at the station.
When they finish their dance and come to rest at last in the sunlight on the back step, Flora applauds and exclaims, âStella's a star!â And Stella smiles and impulsively reaches up and kisses Emmafull on the mouth. Emma pushes Stella away, shocked by how soft and innocent and erotic a kiss can be.
T HE YEAR I started high school 1 went about with a red woollen beanie pulled down over my ears. I wore it night and day, in school and out, despite the heat of summer. The school wasn't strict about uniform, and a lot of girls wore woollen beanies that year.
âYou'll overheat your brain,â said Claudio. âIt will make you stupid.â I stuck out my tongue at him and rolled my eyes in towards my nose.
I came home from my first day at high school and stood alone in my room. This will go onfor six years. Six, whole, never-ending-years . Six years seemed like the rest of my life. It wasn't that I minded school. It was simply the thought of the never-endingness of day following day, each of them the same. The inevitability and rhythm of it.
The red beanie was a comfort. I knew it made my face look fatter, but it flattened down my mop of curls. I liked the snugness over my ears, the give of the wool as I hauled it on over my head. It gave off a comforting animal odour, a sheepy but human smell. It wasn't feminine. I could be a woodcutter in that hat, or a fisherman.
âLucky thirteen,â Lizzie said on my birthday. But I didn't feel lucky. I felt stolid and stodgy. I wanted wonder and excitement and difference. I wanted to be outrageous and outsize and out of bounds. Magic Happens said stickers I saw on the backs of cars and kombi vans. But when, I wondered, and how.
Lizzie saw a notice on a board in Mullumbimby:
FEMALE DESEXED CAT NEEDS HOME
LIKES TO BE ONLY ANIMAL
GOOD RATTER
HER NAME IS ARTEMIS
Without warning, she arrived home with Artemis in a cardboard box.
âOh Lizzie,â sighed Emma. âIt'll kill birds.â
âShe,â said Lizzie. âShe's a she. And she's a good ratter.â
Artemis shot out of the box and around the kitchen like a firecracker, and finally came to rest on top of the refrigerator, which was to become her preferred place, amongst the bottles of rescue remedy and pots of tiger balm.
Claudio was away camping in a forest, filming people chaining themselves to bulldozers. He arrived home late one
Aunt Em goes inside to make more tea. And Flora seizes Stella by the hand and they waltz along the verandah and inside the house, down the hallway through the shadowy interior to the blinding light at the back door and back again. Emma gets up to watch, seeing the shape their two bodies make togethel; a whirling circle with hands clasped high; they are two indistinct female figures.
Em is arrested in the act of slicing a long brown pear down the middle by Flora, who takes her laughing and protestingfor a slower whirl, leaving the two halves of the pear and half a pawpaw and the steaming teapot on the kitchen table.
A rooster crows from Flora's farmhouse over the way and a black and white dog, a border collie awned by the man who comes to do the garden, runs round and round outside on the grass.
Em's cat has curled up on the seat of a bentwood chair: The pear sits on the table, long and narrow at the top, as curved as a woman below its waist, a pattern of black seeds at its core. The dog is black and white and so are the tiles. The roundness of the twinned dancers is echoed in the pawpaw. Emma is taking all of this in so she can perhaps paint it one day - all the patterns and resonances - when Stella comes to her and, with an expression of slow delight, holds out her armsfor Emma to join in the dance: join in and not just be a watcher: And Emma takes Stella in her arms and is at once astonished by the child's thinness and lightness: Stella is insubstantial andfine and strong and Emma is reminded of Aunt Em when she hugged her at the station.
When they finish their dance and come to rest at last in the sunlight on the back step, Flora applauds and exclaims, âStella's a star!â And Stella smiles and impulsively reaches up and kisses Emmafull on the mouth. Emma pushes Stella away, shocked by how soft and innocent and erotic a kiss can be.
T HE YEAR I started high school 1 went about with a red woollen beanie pulled down over my ears. I wore it night and day, in school and out, despite the heat of summer. The school wasn't strict about uniform, and a lot of girls wore woollen beanies that year.
âYou'll overheat your brain,â said Claudio. âIt will make you stupid.â I stuck out my tongue at him and rolled my eyes in towards my nose.
I came home from my first day at high school and stood alone in my room. This will go onfor six years. Six, whole, never-ending-years . Six years seemed like the rest of my life. It wasn't that I minded school. It was simply the thought of the never-endingness of day following day, each of them the same. The inevitability and rhythm of it.
The red beanie was a comfort. I knew it made my face look fatter, but it flattened down my mop of curls. I liked the snugness over my ears, the give of the wool as I hauled it on over my head. It gave off a comforting animal odour, a sheepy but human smell. It wasn't feminine. I could be a woodcutter in that hat, or a fisherman.
âLucky thirteen,â Lizzie said on my birthday. But I didn't feel lucky. I felt stolid and stodgy. I wanted wonder and excitement and difference. I wanted to be outrageous and outsize and out of bounds. Magic Happens said stickers I saw on the backs of cars and kombi vans. But when, I wondered, and how.
Lizzie saw a notice on a board in Mullumbimby:
FEMALE DESEXED CAT NEEDS HOME
LIKES TO BE ONLY ANIMAL
GOOD RATTER
HER NAME IS ARTEMIS
Without warning, she arrived home with Artemis in a cardboard box.
âOh Lizzie,â sighed Emma. âIt'll kill birds.â
âShe,â said Lizzie. âShe's a she. And she's a good ratter.â
Artemis shot out of the box and around the kitchen like a firecracker, and finally came to rest on top of the refrigerator, which was to become her preferred place, amongst the bottles of rescue remedy and pots of tiger balm.
Claudio was away camping in a forest, filming people chaining themselves to bulldozers. He arrived home late one
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