The Serpent's Skin

to be heaven. I’d made little teeth marks on the side of my cup where I gnawed when I wasn’t eating my vegies but pretending I was getting ready to. I settled my teeth into those marks now. They were a bit of warmth in the shiver cold.
Tessa seemed taller today. Her hair already ribboned up. Just as shiny careful as when Mum did it. Had that brave girl look on her face. I wanted to smack it right off. Dad patted her hand when she put his toast on his plate.
Wished I’d got Dad’s toast for him.
Dad didn’t say anything about Mum. Hunched right over, eyes all high beam on his plate. Tim beside him, carbon copy.
‘You right to go to school?’ Philly asked me, with a chirp like a bird. Her pixie face above her pink cup. No teeth grooves. Tessa looked up sharp from the sink, like she’d forgotten something and it was a stab in the guts to her.
I pointed at my school uniform to show I was going whether I was right or not.
‘So all better?’ said Tessa, pretending she hadn’t missed a beat, smoothing her apron over the front of her just like Mum did.
‘Who wouldn’t be after spending a day in bed reading?’ said Tim, his spiky crew cut slicked over neat with water. He dropped his eyes straight back to his plate, though. He didn’t have it in him to go full pelt on me this morning. He had the toast to his mouth but could only get a nibble in. Still, he was getting through it. It was almost like he expected Mum to come racing through the door with the chook eggs in the collecting tin, rousing at him for leaving food on his plate.
‘What would you know?’ I said. ‘Never read a book in your life.’
‘You don’t either—just baby stories.’
‘Do so. Read Alice in Wonderland—the whole book yesterday.’
‘Not sick at all, then?’
‘Was so.’ I jumped to my feet, kicked backwards at my chair. It skidded across the floor and smashed into the cupboard. There was a ghost of a grin on Tim’s face. Dad slammed his fist against the table. ‘Pick that up,’ he roared without looking up.
I had my fists tight, tight, and the blood inside me was spurting like hot milk through the pipes in the dairy. But Tim stopped grinning. Looked away out the window, and just like that the red whooshed out—leaving me just as empty as a wrinkled old balloon skin.
Tessa kept checking out the window for the bus on the far hill. She smacked Mum’s hairbrush against the bench like Mum did. She should just try to use it on me and then she’d see. Philly jumped good and proper, though, every time, like when Mum was at it.
Tessa got Philly out the door and started her off down the track to where the bus stopped for us on the road. I sprinted out after them, but before I got too far I peeled away to the back verandah to check on the joey. Tessa shouted after me but I didn’t bother yelling back.
Tim was already there, hunched over the joey, dipping the tip of the rag into an old tin of milk and sooking it at her mouth. But she kept her black button eyes looking straight, like her head was too heavy to move. I bent to cosy the towel around her and push the clock more against her tummy. We were trying to fool her into living by pretending the ticking was her mum’s heartbeat.
‘You should talk to Dad about where Mum’s gone,’ Tim said.
‘No, you should.’
A crow flapped to rest on the nearest strainer post. Ducked its head to the side and gave the joey a good looking at.
I pushed the cardboard box with the joey in it snug to the wall. Pulled the scratch of the torn towel over it.
‘Anyway, won’t do no good, he says he doesn’t know,’ I said.
‘She’d never just up and leave. You gotta ask him again; reckon he knows something more than he’s saying.’
I thought about telling Tim it was all my fault, but I reckoned she’d call or maybe even come back today so then I wouldn’t have to.
‘You’re older,’ I said.
‘You’re his little shadow.’
‘You just want me to be the one who gets the backhander.’
He squatted forwards, pulled back the towel a bit and reached under to tease the milk rag around the joey’s mouth again. ‘I’m just saying,’ he said.
Tessa’s voice yelled for us to hurry up or we’d miss the bus. I got to my feet.
Tim stroked the joey’s nose with the back of his finger, not going anywhere.
‘Bus, Tim,’ I said.
Not a muscle.
‘If we miss the school bus, you’ll get what for from Dad. He won’t be driving you all the way to Chilton.’
Still nothing.
I grabbed him by the back of his jumper and hauled. He fell backwards, but jumped up straight away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He scooped up his bag and took off, leaving me for dead.
Just before lunch, Mother Gabriel’s cracked voice came over the loudspeaker calling: ‘Tim McBride, to the office.’
I screwed the lid on my ink bottle real quick and opened my desk to shove in my maths book and ruler. I sat there, fists opening and closing, just waiting for that bell. You never heard Tim’s name over the loudspeaker. Mick Watson, Shane Smith, the two Farrell brothers, sure. Tim liked setting everyone else up to get boiled hard in hot water, but he made sure to keep his own toes dry as dry. So him being called up like this must’ve had something to do with Mum.
Reckon Philly thought the same cause she was waiting for me as soon as I got out of the classroom door. Clicking her fingers over and over. ‘Why’d they call Tim and not Tessa? She’s the oldest.’
I grabbed her hand to stop that clicking. ‘Cause he’s the boy.’
We raced