Down By The RiverA Story by KWP thoughts welcome It was when mum called me out of the river for lunch I noticed the shiny black car pull into the campground. I hoped that other children would tumble out of that big car, as much as mum likes to take me camping, she doesn’t like to swim in the river or play with me. She reads books all day, sometimes I think she forgets I’m here. Mum’s watching the car come to a standstill and says quiet, but loud enough so I can hear, ‘that’s all we need, the rich city people in their Range Rover’s crashing in on our party.’ Mum has never been a fan of people with money. I think this has more to do with the fact that she never had any and less to do with the person she likes to present to the world. Mum is known for her charitable ways, always baking for the needy, offering her time to local fete’s and generally making herself known in the community as the go to for any kind of support. Behind closed doors, I get to see the real mum. She drinks a lot of Jack Daniels, I even sometimes smell it on her breath at breakfast time. She swears a lot when she drinks and sometimes she starts throwing things at the wall. Every so often she slaps and hits me. ‘I never wanted a little baby girl’, she screams. I get the feeling she’s blaming me for everything that’s not right in her life. After she wakes up from drinking too much she sees the marks on my arms and legs and then she acts real nice for the next few days until the bruises fade. That’s the reason we came camping to our usual spot again, mum’s trying to show me what a good person she is. It’s better than being at home anyway. I’m sitting in the sun eating lunch, mum’s yelling at me to get in the shade. The flies are everywhere. I reckon the blowies are fifty times bigger than the ordinary flies at home. And boy, they are fierce. Them and me have a competition at who will eat my devon and tomato sauce sandwich faster. Sometimes one manages to slip inside my mouth, I splutter everything out with the feeling that blowie is still in there for the next ten minutes. I’m watching the goings on of the city people who are now busy unloading their big, tall car. They sure have a lot of stuff. Mum and I pack everything in the back of her tri-coloured bubble Volkswagen. That car and I have grown up together. There’s a man, and I guess it must be his son. His son looks to be around the same age as me, he’s wearing a checkered collared shirt and long khaki pants. I reckon his outfit is a bit over the top for a camping trip. I’m smirking to myself when I look down and approve my own faded, falling apart along the seams shirt mum got me three years ago when we stayed a week in Byron Bay. It was really lucky mum was dating a guy named Nic back then. Nic was a hippy and he helped to organise music festivals. By that I mean, he lugged stage equipment around the country then set it up from festival to festival. Nic had a body odour that was a mix between roadkill and sweaty wild pig, he had dreadlocks and he always had a joint on the go. Like all guys mum’s hooked up with over the years, Nic stayed a bit, then left. One thing I always notice when there’s a man around, mum’s like a different person. She’s like a solar flare fresh from the sun, lifting everyone in her path, this, until she’s alone again. The city man and his well-dressed son start unravelling their tent. I don’t think the man has put up a tent too much in his time as he seems to be making an awful big deal about ordering his son here and there. I’m still swatting the blowies away and licking leftover tomato sauce from the corner of my mouth with my tongue when it strikes me to go and offer my services before the man blows a head gasket in his brain. I have no idea what a head gasket is, but the old Volkswagen blew it’s head gasket last month which meant I have forgone the childhood right to any kind of pocket money for sweets for the rest of my life mum says. I’m walking over, trying to avoid the bindi patches so my feet don’t get spiked. For some reason don’t want to do the bindi dance in front of the fancy dressed boy. ‘Look’s like you could use some help,’ I say, mimicking how my mother sounds when she feels it’s time for community duty, except, unlike her, I don’t need to make up for any wrongdoings. Fancy boy stares. Big googily eyes. His mouth rests open, but he says nothing. I entertain the idea that seeings as I haven’t yet heard him say a word in the entire time since their arrival, he could quite possibly be mute. The man on the other hand momentarily stops, looks over his shoulder at me and says with a clipped upper lip, ‘we will be fine on our own thank you.’ This reaction kinda stuns me a bit. Whenever mum offers a helping hand, men jump at the opportunity. I carry on undeterred. ‘You can’t put the poles in until you have all the sides pegged down.’ I say picking up a handful of pegs from the pile and pushing one into the ground with no more than a bit of shoving. ‘It rained last night so the pegs go in nice and easy.’ I say the very same thing mum said to me this morning when we arrived. ‘Here,’ I say handing fancy boy some pegs, ‘you go over to the opposite corner and put one in. Before you put it in the ground you have to pull the whole tent out so it becomes flat and tight.’ He looks at me kinda blank. He does what I told him anyway. I look at the man who obviously decides I know what I’m talking about because he quickly pegs in the other last two corners. ‘Need some help?’ It’s Mum. Once again, she can’t help herself. So much for rich city people crashing in on our party. The man turns to see mum walking towards him. I watch his eyes drag themselves up with reluctance from her well filled out tie-dyed bikini top to her face. ‘Well, I’d never say no to a bit of help.’ He’s like a different person talking to mum. I’d seen this often enough, mum could really turn it on when she wanted to. She’s turning it on right now. I step back and away. This is no longer my chore. This is now under the realm of adult stuff. ‘You wanna go for a swim in the river?’ I ask fancy boy. He asks his dad, who says ‘yes, but be careful’ like maybe he had never swam in an actual river before. Fancy boy goes behind the big black car to take of his shirt and put on another pair of shorts. I don’t know why he needs to hide. The sun on fancy boys white flesh makes a glare so intense I have to shade my eyes. Next to him I looked like an overcooked sausage. Fancy boy doesn't know how to avoid the bindis. He manages to get a whole foot full within five steps. He does quite a show of bindi dancing. ‘Sit down, I will get them out for you.’ I tell him. He sits and one by one I pull out the brown needles sticking into the bottom if his foot. There are so many bindi’s, they must hurt a lot. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask, not looking at his face. ‘Joel.’ ‘I’m Chakrika.’ ‘Funny name.’ ‘It means Goddess Lakshmi. It’s Indian.’ ‘Still a funny name.’ I can say a great many things to reply to his, what I consider rudeness when I am pulling bindi’s out of his foot for him -but I don’t. ‘All out. Now watch where you step this time, there’s bindi’s everywhere.’ I leave him to get up on his own and as he does I run to the river, bounce off both my feet at the waters edge into a dive. The familiar coolness brings an underwater smile to my face as I swim wide-eyed in the murky river water. When I come to the surface I spin in the water to see Joel still at the edge. ‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’ ‘Looks dirty.’ ‘It only looks dirty on the edges where the bottom is all squishy. Once you get out here in the deep it’s fine.’ He looks unsure. ‘Come on in Joel.’ I scream as if my trill voice will coax him in faster. He moves one foot in front of the other so now both his feet are standing right in the squishy bit. That’s the reason I dive right in, so I don’t have to deal with the squish. He’s screwing up his face. I laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’ He asks. ‘You, you are in the squishy bit. Do you know what the squishy bit is?’ ‘What?’ ‘It’s where all the duck pooh sits at the side of the river.’ He scrunches his face again, this time, he looks irritated. Next thing he runs a bit then dives under the water and comes up right next to me. ‘It’s not really duck pooh. But you have to admit it sure feels like it could be.’ I say bouncing up and down off the bottom of the river bed. I’m still laughing when he flings himself high in the air so he can dunk me under the water. He doesn’t hold me under though, so I know he isn’t trying to be mean. When we get out of the river my fingers and feet look like the skin on my grandmothers cheeks. I love my gran so much. Mostly because she seems to live the life that she speaks. Not like mum, I think she’s still trying to master the art living. I grab my towel and wrap it around me to stay warm. Joel and I walk back over to where mum and Joel’s dad are now sitting drinking wine under the shade of Joel’s giant tent. Joel’s dad is talking, mum is playing with her hair and laughing. She’s still in her bikini top, even though the suns almost gone and it’s much cooler than it was a couple of hours ago. Both mum and Joel’s dad acknowledge Joel and I, but only briefly. It’s like we have walked into a private conversation. I can almost feel mum’s eye’s pushing me away. ‘Why don’t you and Joel go play cards while David and I make dinner?’ How did I know that was coming? Joel and I are now on what I would call good terms for people who only met a few hours ago. He’s soft like a white fluffy rabbit, not at all possessing one dash of bravado, which I like. He’s the real deal. It’s like he knows already that he doesn’t have to be anybody other than himself. I don’t get the same feeling from his dad. Especially when his dad is talking to mum. ‘Are your mum and dad married?’ I ask, clarifying for my own sake the fate of my mother’s destiny with his dad. ‘My parents are getting a divorce.’ This information seems hard for Joel to convey. Leads me to believe it must be a relatively new thing. ‘What about you?’ ‘What about me?’ ‘Are your parents married?’ ‘Nah, I have never known my father, mum says it’s not worth me knowing him.’ ‘That sucks.’ We settle into a layer of necessary quiet. I’m thinking about what it would be like to have Joel’s dad as my father. I don’t like the idea. I wonder if Joel is thinking the same. Our parents are doing their best to flirt with each other and ignore us. They are pretending that we either don’t understand what’s going on, or we do understand and they can’t be bothered to do a damn thing about it. That’s the thing about being a kid, when we’re left to figure out things for ourselves, we can and we do but actions are taken or not taken on our behalf whether we like it or not. I kinda look forward to the day I can stand alone, away from mum and make my own decisions. ‘You know how to play Sevens?’ I ask and start shuffling the cards.
© 2016 KWPReviews
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Added on October 16, 2016Last Updated on October 16, 2016 Author
KWPSydney, NSW, AustraliaAbout'The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are sec.. more..Writing
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