Unexpected Gifts

2 years before

When I woke the air descending to my lungs via my nostrils gave no clue that life as I knew it, the quiet predictable succession of moments, was about to skew into the realm of interesting.

The first noise I heard was Mum’s Monday morning voice gliding down the walls of the hallway and sliding past the door-jam into my bedroom: loud, yet appreciatively not shrieking.

‘Wake up, sleepy head. The school week has started.’

Things were normal now, or as normal as you can get when a spouse and a Dad dies. Insurance paid off the mortgage, which meant there was no stuffing our life into cardboard boxes and taking the trek over the bridge. There’s safety on our side of town, where everything is as orderly as a manicured lawn.

Of course we miss him, but as Dad would want, life has to go on. It can take some time though. Death intruding with such close proximity steals the blissful ignorance that attaches itself to any form of risk taking.

Mum’s voice slides into the bedroom once more. ‘Come on honey get up. You’re now running late.’

It’s not that I dread Monday morning, it’s just that I’m noticing a sameness about it; the regularity that comes with knowing the tuckshop queue on the first day of the week will be long.

By this point, Mum pops her head in the bedroom door. ‘You know, good regular habits established in these formative years go with you your whole life. Psychological well-being starts in childhood.’

‘MUM,’ I say, peeling back the bedcovers. ‘I’m 15.’

‘Yes, yes, I know your birth certificate says you’re 15. Your bra size says you’re 15 - but your brain is still developing right up until you’re 25 or more. You want a good life don’t you?’

I sigh out a ‘Yes, of course, Mum’ in my stop-lecturing-me voice.

My usual 20-minute bathroom stop is followed by a grab for the popped toast as I sling the schoolbag over my shoulder and scuttle out the door.

‘Bye, Mum. Love you.’

‘Love you too sweetie. Have a great day. Remember: Good choices equals a good life.’

Those of us who live close ride our bikes to school, and the others have the misfortune of having their bum cheeks massaged by the springy seats of the rickety old bus.

Annie used to come by bus. She had been my BFF since Grade 7, the start of high school. Two holidays ago, she and her family moved to live with her Grandma. ‘It’s not forever,’ she promised. ‘Only until Grandma gets better, or worse,’ she added, dropping her voice in the - we don’t like to speak about the possibility of death tone. With one last tangle of arms and a trickle of tears we said our goodbyes. ‘Skype me,’ she bellowed out the car window as the family drove off.

I was standing at the bubbler near the bike racks, where I used to wait for Annie, when I first sighted that auburn coloured hair, flying wildly in the wind, atop a bike that was careering down the hill. Unkempt, untethered and very nearly reaching the bike chain. Surely it had never been cut, and surely it often got tangled. What a deliciously satisfying chore it would be to de-knot that hair. In my town an aspiration to be a hairdresser was a girl going places.

I didn’t have to look around to know, like me, every other girl in the school had their hair up and tied with school-issued green ribbons. Private schools shamelessly curtail the kind of fashion freedom this girl enjoyed. 

And then I saw it!

Shut the front door. Green, grey and white stripes with the peter-pan collar. She’s coming in here.

The bike made the turn through the school gate, and was heading straight for the rack. I was close enough to see that those big brown eyes had that look about them like they grew up in a city, or somewhere with a lot more going on than here in Burnsby. I’d seen that look before in Annie’s cousin’s eyes who had visited during the last holidays. That was some summer: Especially for Annie’s neighbour, Matilda. She was only 14 and hooked up with the cousin. All the parents found out. Her Mum was mortified. Annie kept saying ‘I can’t believe she did it for the first time with a boy who: one, comes from the city, and two, has a tat. What kind of kid gets a tat?’

The owner of the auburn hair had alighted by this point, parked the bike, and was scrambling into her schoolbag and dragging out a green ribbon and then a hair tie. Within seconds it was pulled back, tied-up, and adorned. She was now one of us. 

At that moment the bell chimed, and everyone scrambled to class. The auburn-haired girl disappeared up the path leading to the office.

Five minutes later she materialised at the classroom door. Sure steps took her straight to the teacher. Extending her hand, she introduced herself: ‘Rainbow-Skye Lyons, Miss.’ Her voice was one of those husky types.

‘Good to meet you Rainbow-Syke Lyons. What do you like to be called?’

‘I like Rainy, but some people call me Rainbow.’ She spoke with a deliberate slowness so her facial expression could keep up. It had the result of adding an extra layer of coolness to her demeanour. ‘Parents had a little hippy fest when I was born,’ she said, ‘clearly they weren’t the ones having to go through life with weirdo nature descriptors for a name.’

‘Rainy it is then. Take the spare seat next to Melanie,’ the teacher said pointing at the space beside me.

Rainbow-Skye Lyons was by far the most interesting specimen of a human that had entered the school grounds in quite some time.

‘Melanie Pierce,’ I offered as she sat down, hating the sound of my name. It was so … so, ordinary.

At lunchtime, by default of having no-one else to hang out with, Rainy decided my company was good enough. I found out she moved here just the week before to live with her cousins. Parental divorce.

‘So you came with your Mum?’ I asked.

Rainy didn’t answer. Instead she reached into her pocket to pull out a picture of the dog she had to leave behind, and up came a cigarette.

‘Oops, meant to leave this at home. Do you smoke?’ she asked.

‘No, never tried one. They’re not really good for you,’ I said, wishing I hadn’t sounded so goody-too-shoes.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Any cool guys at school?’

Rainy had a motto for life FREE SPIRITS RULE. She emblazoned it on her pencil case, wrote it - in a fake-tattoo kind of way - up her arm during the winter months when she could hide it under her jumper, and it became her excuse for all of her idiosyncrasies: When she slapped paint haphazardly onto the canvas, argued with the teachers, or had a crush on one boy after another. She’d often say stuff like, ‘Mellie, one thing my parents taught me was that if you’re stuck in a circumstance - like we are at school and like I am in this town - you gotta approach it with passion. Only way to embrace life.’

I wasn’t convinced that what she called passion was in fact passion. I just saw a girl with frustrations. But I was grateful for Rainy’s friendship. She became my motivational mentor, and sometimes because we disagreed. She was the reason I contemplated: How do I want to passionately embrace life? Through this lens I fell in love. Not with a boy, but with life itself. Don’t get me wrong I had a few boys showing interest.

Art class with Rainy was different to Art class with Annie. With Annie we’d sit side by side tracing first, then meticulously applying the paint, careful not to go over the lines. When I painted with Annie the aspiration was to copy flawlessly. 

Rainy challenged me in a way I hadn’t expected. Standing in front of our easels she’d scream out the word vanilla, and in one swoop she’d lean over and flick her brush, spoiling my perfect representation of some idealised scene that I’d imagined, forcing me to turn it into an abstraction of its former self.

The first time she did it I was furious, like if she’d stolen my last breath mint when I desperately needed to mask the odour of lunch. But, it was through this process that I began to really feel Art. I felt its power to transform. Not just the Art piece itself, but me. I felt creativity coming through me, like a source and I was its channel. Art, all forms of it, became my passion, my obsession.

Rainy had become my Annie, only in that we were inseparable. We even started to call each other Bro: It’s a weird girl trend. After school, whenever we met up, it was always at my place. Whenever I’d suggest hers, she’d say ‘Nah, people have stuff on at mine today. Better we go to yours Bro.’

Mum and Rainy got on like hot milk and chocolate powder, and became sisters of the kitchen. Rainy didn’t care too much about school work, so while I hit the books, Mum and Rainy would spend hours mixing, mashing, moulding, and making. My stomach didn’t complain. 

One day, when Mum was out, Rainy and I were curled up on the couch watching a movie. She began to tickle me, and we fell into a form of ladies wrestling.

I don’t know how it happened. I seriously hadn’t planned it. I don’t think Rainy had either. It was like a pause in time. One of those moments when you look back and think: Was that even real.

There was a gaze, a melding of my blue eyes and those big brown weepers. A kind of searching, but not for anything understood in a language form. And, then there was a joining of lips. Featherlike at first, just a brush, and then sensual.

I can’t tell you how long it lasted, but I was really grateful that afterwards we both fell into a giggle. You don’t want that first kissing experience to be weird.  

‘Whoa. What happened there,’ Rainy asked, her lips parting into a luxurious smile.

 ‘I don’t know. But it wasn’t bad was it?’ I asked.

‘No way. Different to boys though.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said,

‘You’ve never kissed a boy. Get outta here.’

‘No. That was my first.’

‘Wow. Well, you’re very welcome Miss Mellie,’ Rainy offered, jumping up to curtsy, in a southern belle sort of way, prompting another shared-giggle. 

Nothing more was ever said about that. Rainy went back to kissing boys, and I suddenly knew why I hadn’t wanted to. Was it a good choice? Rainy had taught me that sometimes you just had to delve in, so I decided it was no different to trying strawberry ice-cream, you gotta taste it to see if you like it. Maybe one day I’ll try the other flavour, who knows.

Not long after, Rainy didn’t come to school for the whole week. She didn’t answer phone calls or texts.

‘Mum. I really want to go and check on Rainy,’ I said.

‘Sure love. I’ll drive you.’

We clambered into the trusty Toyota Camry, affectionately called Cameron as a token gesture to restore the gender imbalance in the house, and for the first time for what seemed like years we went over the bridge. I didn’t exactly know where Rainy lived, but I knew it was somewhere near the tennis courts, and she’d spoken about a huge fig tree out front.

Mum was talking about the influence of where you lived to how you developed, and reiterating for the umpteenth time how lucky we were to be living on the other side, when I finally spotted the fig. Mum waited in the car. I was about to knock on the door when it opened. Eww. My head reeled backwards, and I redirected my hand to cover my nose. That is some stench. The shirtless owner of the odour pushed passed. I’m not sure he even noticed me.

‘Rainy in there,’ I called out to him.

‘Out back,’ was the short sharp reply. 

As I stepped inside my eyes widened. Cockroaches scuttled away from the open pizza boxes that half covered stains on the beige carpet, remnants of the contents progressing towards bacteria. Posters of Heavy-Metal bands dangled, the blue-tac no longer secured them to the walls. One bean-bag whose middle seemed waif-like, and a lounge, no doubt thankful for its brown colouring else it might be embarrassed like you would if you spilt sauce on your clothes. 

By this stage the smell had reached my nostrils, my stomach started to flip, and I suddenly felt the need for air. I couldn’t get to the back door fast enough. 

Staring out at the overgrown backyard I wondered if Rainy was even there, and then I saw a blanket move on an old couch that was propped up against the paint-deprived concrete fence. I was unsure whether to approach when the blanket moved again, and a piece of long, straggly auburn hair fell to the ground.

I rushed over and gently nudged Rainy on her shoulder. ‘Hey Bro. Wake-up.’

She rolled her head and opened her eyes slightly. ‘Whoa, hey, what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve been worried about you.’

‘Just had the flu, no big deal.’ She sat up and looked straight into my eyes. ‘So you finally got to see my current abode. Crap hey.’

It wasn’t my place to judge, though my mind silently agreed. ‘I came through the house.’ I said, apologetically. 

‘I live in the garage,’ she said. ‘Just me. When my parents split neither of them wanted a school kid around. My cousin wanted the rent, so here I am.’

‘How have you been looking after yourself?’

‘Dad pays the school fees, and sends me guilt money. It’s enough to live off.’

On the drive home I told Mum about the house. ‘It really was awful.’

‘You know love, family’s not just blood. Why don’t you ask her to move in with us? Just until she finishes school.’

‘Oh-My-God Mum. I can’t believe you’d be that generous.’

‘Well, we’ve been lucky enough to be looked after. It will give our life meaning if we can help someone else,’ she said.

I rang Rainy immediately. This time she picked-up.

‘Heck. NO,’ she said. ‘School bros don’t live together Mellie, but thank your Mum for the offer.’

‘Think about it,’ I said. ‘You’d have the room downstairs, and we could help each other get through our HSC. Besides Mum’s taking more hours at work, so you can help manipulate the kitchen to produce food. Just one rule, No Smoking.’

‘Well absolutely no then,’ she said laughing.

One Saturday a month later, a day when the rain was belting down, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see one of those cool Rainy facial expressions, slightly tilted head, wry smile, and dripping auburn-hair. A suitcase in one hand, and a school bag over the shoulder.

‘I see you brought your life,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you changed your mind.’

‘The garage roof was leaking,’ she said, ‘and I got to thinking, sharing grandparents is the same as sharing a bus-seat with someone. It’s a misplaced loyalty to think you have to sit next to them for the whole ride.’

And so a new chapter began.