‘Whoop-de-shit.’ Sondra screwed her self-portrait into a fist and thrust it at Dorothy’s face. Dot stumbled back into the guillotine table, and the girl jammed the picture into the ridged bin in the corner of the room, the black-plastic bin that smelled waxily of crayons and vegetable dye.
‘Sondra, come on.’ Dorothy retrieved the paper and smoothed its creases. The girl had drawn a fly scribbled on its back, zigzag legs doing all the work of rendering its fuckedness, and a squashed red oval alongside. ‘What’s that?’ Dot asked.
‘A bean.’
‘A bean?’
Sondra shrugged.
‘Is it a foetus?’
‘No, it’s a bean.’
Dorothy handed her a brown-paper bag that she’d saved from the grocery store. ‘OK, so we’re doing paper-bag portraits.’
‘Oh man.’
You could feel the mood spread through the group. Some days it was like this, past hurts and grudges seeped up and the coming babies, their dreadful inevitability, were a muffled chorus of curses from inside. The fabric scraps and junk art materials were housed by the sink. Dorothy jiggled a box jammed between shelves, trying to winkle it free. Behind her, Jo cried out. Arms raised, Sondra turned in a slow circle, the winning boxer after a prize fight. The scissors were in one hand, sharp ends out. In the other, a dark length aloft: a hank of Jo’s hair.
Dorothy slapped the box down hard on the guillotine table. ‘Sondra,’ she said, ‘this hair fuckery was over. Damn it, you’re going to see Carmen now. Put the scissors down.’
Sondra drew her arm back as if to throw them at Dot. Everyone flinched. But she tossed the hair at Jo’s face. ‘Have it, whore.’ The scissors, dropped, clattered on the lino.
‘Go back to your rapey old boyfriend –’
Dorothy pulled Sondra’s strong, squidgy arm towards the door. The girl shook her off. ‘Don’t touch me.’
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Dorothy shouted, ‘Shut up,’ although no one was talking.
It was Louisa. ‘Aunty Dot?’
She never called during work hours. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I have news,’ Lou said, her voice alight, brimming. Dorothy held a hand up and waited till the girls were silent. ‘Tina’s awake. She’s woken up.’
‘Tina’s awake,’ said Dorothy, staring at Jo. The girl raised her head. The room stilled. All of them knew Tina. Some had been friends from high school, her life before.
‘You can come and see her.’ Even Lou sounded as though she didn’t quite believe it. ‘Bring the girls tomorrow.’
A tiny jewelled lizard ran up the window frame, fast as poison.
Just as dusk dropped into night and the frogs were at their most riotous, a strange car pulled into the drive. Momentarily she thought it was the police, or the King Cobras – that was the sort of vehicle they used, thickset – and felt a wash of guilt run down her body. She didn’t move from the window. If, say, Sondra’s boyfriend and his gang ever did come looking for the girl, if they decided her running away was unacceptable, she would lose all power when the doors slammed, be numb while the sunglasses peered through the mosquito mesh of the door, and open-palmed, acquiescent, when they pushed that door open and filled her house with their bandanas and black jackets. But it was Andrew getting out of the sedan, alone. She felt a queer, impotent ellipsis when the other doors remained closed and no children piled out of the car after him. This is a time for the rediscovery of you. A privilege. Many people I see don’t get this chance.
He leaned partway into her hug, gave her a shoulder pat, physical contact is important; you are telling him he is cherished, and stepped back to splash water on his face at the kitchen sink.
‘Is that new?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Was it very expensive?’
‘Not really.’
‘How much?’
‘Not that much.’
She spoke to his back. ‘Guess what. Tina’s come out of the coma.’
‘Huh?’ Not all your interests have to be the same. ‘Give me a hand.’
They lugged a heavy black speaker system into the house.
‘Are these new too?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘Dorothy, the old speakers are shit. Have you noticed? The sound’s tinny.’ He liked the retro stuff. It might be valuing the past. Not clinging on.
Andrew connected the thick, taillike cords from the back of each machine into the bedroom power point. She brought a dish of salami and cheese crackers, and opened a couple of beers and they drank them. ‘Where did you get that? The sound system?’