Read Online Plenty by Ananda Braxton-Smith - Free Book Online

Things
    Nana Mad was in the creek with her back to the sandbank. Her white hair glowed silver in the redgum shadows – and she was singing. As Maddy stood wondering what to do, Nana’s thin voice suddenly pierced the thick heat and warbled even above the birdsong. Her song was full of strange trills, swoops and drops. Some teenagers started to copy the sound of her song – and then everybody on the sandbank was laughing. When she heard them laughing, Nana stopped singing.
    She turned and saw the people laughing. She tried to smile. Then she rocked on her knees and sat down hard in the water. Her eyes blinked around the crowd like a child who thought she might be in trouble.
    And then she saw Maddy.
    “
Koukla
,” she called, trying to get up. “Come here.”
    There was something wrong with Nana. Her hands were gripping the air. They flapped at her sides like she’d forgotten what to do with them – forgotten how to get up. The people on the sandbank had stopped laughing and gone back to their normal day.
    Maddy’s chest filled with an ache. The look on Nana’s face both scared and pulled at her heart. She didn’t know what to do. But Grace had gone ahead, splashing straight down into the water, so Maddy followed. Nana Mad was hers, not Grace’s.
    They waded out into the middle of the creek, moving quickly from sunlight into the shadows. The creek bed grew slippery with silky mud and stones. In the middle, they held hands to keep steady, but they still fell and when one did the other did. Nana watched them come with her hands in her lap. When they reached her, she said
hello
like they’d come for tea.
    Maddy and Grace tried to lift her from the creek bed, but each time they overbalanced. In the end, by burying their feet deep in the mud, gripping one elbow each and heaving, they got Nana first onto her knees, then onto her legs and then walking. Dripping and panting, they led her out of the creek and back onto the sandbar.
    Her clothes were in a pile near the mess left by the ants.
    “
Elenaki
,” Nana said, combing Maddy’s hair back from her face with her fingers. “Look at you. Brush your hair.”
    She said the name with drawn-out vowels and a big roll at the back of her throat.
Kkhh-eh-lay-nah-khi
. That’s why Maddy didn’t understand at first.
    “Who’s Elenaki?” she asked.
    Nana laughed, covering her mouth with her hand, like it was some big joke.
    Dressing Nana was like dressing a doll. Her arms bent too easily or not at all. She’d worn gumboots without socks and now one of her damp feet was stuck. Through the whole fuss all she wanted was to pet Maddy and call her Elenaki and
koukla
.
    “Promise,” Nana Mad said, shaking Maddy’s arm. “You won’t go away.”
    “No,” said Maddy. It seemed the right thing to say. “I won’t.”
    At last Nana’s foot slid into the gumboot, and Maddy and Grace led her back along the Wilam track. Sometimes Nana wouldn’t lift her feet and seemed confused about what they were for. They had to clear the path of its thick bark ribbons or she just walked right into them and fell over.
    When her parents had said that Nana was forgetting things lately, Maddy had thought they meant people’s names or where she put her purse – things like that. She had never imagined this kind of forgetting. She wondered if Nana would forget what other parts of her body were for. She wondered if Nana would forget to breathe.
    She didn’t know what she would do if that happened.
    But as they walked, Nana Mad turned to Maddy as though Maddy had the answers to all the questions she couldn’t remember. The trust in Nana’s face made Maddy proud somehow. She took Nana’s arm with a stronger grip and stood taller so her grandmother could lean heavier.
    Like she’d seen Nana lean on Mum.
    And then she realised.
    “It’s
Ellen
,” she whispered to Grace. “
Elenaki
. It’s Ellen. She thinks I’m Mum.”

    They went further. Nana grew quieter. She started eyeing Grace Wek.