Cassandra

1 - Cassandra - 1973

~ 1 ~

Cassandra - 1973The shape shouldn’t be there. It has never been there before.

From under the house, Cassie’s family might as well be a million miles away, their voices and footsteps muffled by floorboards and cobwebs. No one else is small enough to fit under the house. This is her place.

The shape hasn’t moved.

When she was little, she liked to jump from the top of the fence to the clothes line and hang heavy like a wet blanket. Poppy had said she was fearless—but the jumping did not seem a fearful thing. The shape seems something to fear.

She knows everything under the house. The way the dirt piles in lumps under the kitchen. The rain can make the dirt look different, but it hasn’t rained for ages. There are twenty wooden stumps. Poppy helped her count them. The stumps wear funny tin hats and hold up the house. Three old milk pails lie under her mum and dad’s room. There are spiders in those. There is a pile of four-by-twos under the back veranda and a dead rat over by the bathroom. The rat has been there a long time. It is like papier-mâché. The shape is new. It looks like a coiled up hose, but softer maybe.

She turns her back on it. The shape feels like pins pricking her shoulders. She scoops up a handful of fine dead dust. How long since it saw the sunshine? A thousand years? How old is their house? Poppy will know. She funnels her hand and watches the dust stream over her bare toes so they look like they’ve grown fur.

She flattens her hand into a bulldozer, her mouth grumbling and spluttering bulldozer sounds, and makes another road. Overhead, her mother’s heels clatter down the hall. She’s so loud. Cassie turns, but the shape is still. Her mother doesn’t know she’s under the house. Her mother thinks she’s playing with her new doll. She curves the new road in a wide circle, passing it over mounds, taking it nowhere in particular. Stupid doll, with its long skinny legs, can’t even stand up. It has clothes and you can take them off and put them back on again. It is hard, they are so tiny. Aunty Ida helps, though her hands aren’t what they used to be. That’s what she says. The clothes come off and on, but the doll doesn’t do anything. Perhaps the baby in Mummy’s tummy will do something. When it comes.

She lines up each of her dad’s old matchbox cars. She chooses the red one with no roof. In her mind it has a man and a lady. The lady has a baby in her belly. She drives it around her roads. Each of the eight cars travels around and over, each making its own car noises, each filled with people moving on to the place they are meant to be. It is important they end up in the right place, parked under a tree of gum leaves or rosemary stalks, or in the bare dirt far from any home.

The doll and her fifth birthday had come together with pink wrapping paper and pink icing. Under the house smells like an old cupboard; the wrapping paper smelled of shopping trips and newness. Five is special. Five means it is spring soon, and then summer and then school. She’s seen the other kids at school. They play together all the time. If she had a friend the cars wouldn’t have to wait so long for their turn. At school she’ll learn to count without Poppy’s help. Maybe she could count to a thousand even.

‘Where’s Cassie? Caasee.’ Her mum shouts from above her, from the lounge room probably. Aunt Ida says something back to her, but Cassie can’t hear what it is. Aunty Ida doesn’t know where she is, unless she guesses. Her dad is going to a big cattle sale in town and they are all supposed to go shopping.

Her mother’s shoes clank back down the hall like a one-horse race.

Cassie sits back on her haunches and turns towards the shape. Now or never. She chooses the red car with the man and the lady and drives it towards the shape. It is half buried, close to one of the grey stumps. She knows, really she knew all along, what it must be. A crackle of excitement pops in her belly. Like Coco-Pops when the milk first goes on.

The shape does not move. It could be dead. Hibernating. One of Poppy’s words. She says it quietly, testing it out on her tongue. Hibernating. Even in the dark it seems to shine. The light sneaks in from the world outside and sparkles on its skin. Snakes are more scared of you than you are of them. That is what Poppy said. Aunt Ida had nodded when he said that. She drops the red car. The passengers don’t matter. If she touches its tail, it won’t notice. Her hand creeps towards the tail. Don’t scare it Cassie, don’t scare it. Poppy’s voice says the thought in her head.

Her fingertips slither over the cool skin. It is smooth like her mum’s best silk dress. Is it lonely in the dark all winter?

‘Cassie!’

She falls on her backside and scrambles backwards. Poppy crouches at the edge of the house, peering in at her.

‘Cassie, get out from under there, your mother’s looking for you. Is that your new dress?’

Cassie has no time to look back. She stoops and makes her way to where Poppy waits. Outside the sun makes her squint.

‘Look at you. You look like you’ve been dragged through the bush backwards.’ Poppy isn’t smiling. When he smiles his face creases up. When he isn’t smiling the creases flatten out like white pencil lines on red paper. He tries to wipe the dirt off her skirt.

Her mother stomps down the stairs, her eyes like rat poison. ‘I never, never want to see you playing under the house again. You hear me. Never!’ She locks her hand around Cassie’s arm, squeezing it. ‘There could be anything under there. My god, spiders, snakes, anything. Don’t you know how dangerous it is?’ She lets go and pushes Cassie toward the stairs. ‘Look at your dress. You’ll have to change. Your father is waiting. We’re running late.’

Cassie walks down the hall. About here, she thinks, it is sleeping right under me. Her fingers still tingle with leftover smoothness.