Read Online The Lost Child by Suzanne McCourt - Free Book Online Page B

bleeding!’ yells Shirley Fry. ‘Someone get Miss Taylor.’
    I wince and jump around a lot. ‘I think it’s broken.’
    â€˜Of course it isn’t,’ says Colleen. ‘You can’t break a shin.’ She goes on and on about shins and splints and how her mother used to be a nurse, but it keeps her mind off gussies.
    I tell Mum that I have to stay home the next day because my leg hurts too much to walk to school. She takes off the bandage, sticks on a Band-Aid and says it doesn’t look too bad. I am sitting with my leg stuck out in front and she is kneeling in front of me. I think of all the presents she could have got for Colleen except her old gussies, and why didn’t she? I think of never having a birthday party like Colleen, not once, not even a cake. She looks up and I feel a frightened kind of power that makes me want to kick her hard in the heart. But her eyes drop back to my leg and she smooths the Band-Aid flat. ‘All right,’ she says.
    The day after, I’m playing near the gate when Colleen steps off the school bus. ‘You still haven’t told me,’ she says, pushing up close with her breakfast breath.
    â€˜At Min’s in Muswell,’ I say, backing away. ‘My mother says you should have returned them straightaway. It’s too late now.’
    At lunchtime, I’m skipping when she says it. ‘Anyway, you weren’t really wanted. My mother says they only had you because they were trying to save a breaking marriage. She says your father’s been playing around for years.’
    My feet don’t miss a beat. Swish, skip. Cicadas scream from the lemon gum tree. Spurts of dust rising like smoke off the melting asphalt. I skip towards Lizzie, who is skipping too. My arms ache and my legs are jelly. I think of Mum at the cafe making ham and cheese, ham and tomato sandwiches, wiping the laminex, counting out clinkers and jelly beans. I think of my dad playing around for years and what does it mean and how can I stop everything from breaking?
    After school, I leave my case under the counter and tell Mum I’m going to play in the park with the Daley kids. She says: Do you want a milkshake don’t get dirty be home by five .
    On the swing facing the sea, I swing as high as the cypress pines. I can see the smile of Eastern Beach, the jetty rising and dipping, boats bouncing on their moorings, my father’s boat the biggest of them all. The sky falls into the sea and clouds spin out of the trees. I think of days when I play in the park and Dad comes into the bay, cutting too close to the reef and heading too fast for his mooring. And later, when he pushes his crays down the jetty, his laughter sparkles on the sea like daytime stars, but he never sees me.
    The Coorong slides by with pelicans and black swans floating upside down, with wattles drowning in the glassy water. On the other side of the bus, there are scrubby brown plains where Dad caught the brumbies for bait; there are dirty brown sheep and a man waving from a red tractor. Soon there is Lake Albert and Alexandrina named after a dead king and queen from England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, all the pink countries.
    When I wake, there are grey streets and brick walls with no windows. There is a station and a man with no legs sitting on a cart selling newspapers, and Mum says, Don’t stare ; there is a van selling pies in pea soup called a floater, and no, I can’t have one. After freshening up in the ladies we catch a train that rattles past houses with white walls and red roofs, row after row with low fences, rosebushes and square lawns, all the same.
    Outside the gate, Mum straightens the bow in my hair. ‘What’ll it be this time? Always living beyond their means. Always something new, bought on the never-never. Why’d I come?’
    I don’t know.
    We walk up the path and Mum knocks on the door. The veranda floor is polished