The Serpent's Skin

her. Anything. Your mother’s a saint.’
I took a step and my hand was on his arm, full of question.
He looked up, nodded. ‘I’m all right, love.’ He sandpapered his whiskers with the crook of his hand. Straightened. ‘Listen, love, you have to be the big girl now with your mother gone. I’ll tell you all at the one time as much as I know when I come in.’ He collected up the oat bag. Gave it a shake. ‘Off and get the kettle on. Tell the others I’ll be in soon.’
Max gave me the stink eye as I passed. We weren’t on speaking terms, like there’d been some betrayal and I was in on it. I wasn’t letting him get away with that today, though. I stopped, planting my legs wide.
‘How’s it going, you old bull?’
The weight of his chest pulled him down as if nothing could go right in his world, while the mucus around his nose-ring shone in the afternoon grey. He finally rumbled out air in my direction and I took that for something and moved on. I was almost up to the chook shed when I heard Philly. I went towards the sound of her sniffles. She wasn’t in the shed. She was tucked into the bushes behind it.
‘What is it, little duck?’ I asked.
She had her arms over her head and her head tucked between.
‘I’m the one who should be crying.’ I tried a laugh. ‘Mother Gabriel lit into me, not you.’
She scratched her nose with the back of her wrist. Pushed back further into the bushes.
‘Get any further in there and you’ll fall down Alice’s hole,’ which she was reading now.
‘It’s the joey.’ Her voice all small and wrapped up tight.
The air whooshed right out of me and I stood there like I was stoned up. Then I found something to do and I got in there beside her. Sat in the hush with her, saying nothing. My head down between my arms like hers. Feeling everything close in around us.
‘Where is she now, then?’ I finally got out.
‘Tim put her in the ute for Dad to take down the gully.’
‘Should we do a funeral?’
The top of her head shook from side to side. I didn’t much feel like it either. One thing I did know, though. You couldn’t fool a joey. It knew when its mother was gone.
At afternoon tea the air was that heavy that it kept our eyes low on the table.
Dad jammed up his slice of white bread, slow and steady, and started. ‘Your mother called.’
Our heads jerked up like we were all connected. Philly jumped to a crouch on her seat. ‘Mum’s coming home!’ she yelled, relief big through her.
‘Few days yet,’ he said, waving her down. He dipped his knife into the cream. He was all about getting the cream evenly to the crust.
Why wasn’t he saying? No matter how much sorry I had for him, he shouldn’t be making us wait. The red started beating at the inside of me. Getting a hold. And still he said nothing, all business with the jam jar now. Finally I’d had enough. I leaned forwards, smashing a hammer smack hard against his no talking. ‘Where is she then?’
He looked up, long and level, holding his rolled-up jam-and-cream bread like a wall between us. ‘Aunty Peg’s.’
I shot back against the chair like he’d smacked me one, shaking my head. ‘But you never let er.’
‘She didn’t stop to ask.’
‘Why didn’t she ring to tell us yesterday?’ Philly asked in a small voice, hunched over, her knees tucked into her armpits.
‘She thought she’d left a note, see.’ Dad cleared his throat. ‘She was in a hell of a hurry when she left. Peg had a turn, and your mother couldn’t be missing the train to Melbourne otherwise it would have been another day before she made it to Peg’s place. As soon as your mother found the note in her handbag this morning, after you buggers had gone to school, she rang. Said she was sorry she worried us.’
He looked at me from under his eyebrows, like he was daring me to say something else. But he was right: if Aunty Peg needed Mum, Mum wouldn’t stop to ask Dad if she could go. Only that red was still knocking from one side of my gut to the other.
He pushed my plate towards me. ‘Eat up.’ Gave me a wink. ‘All good, then, after all.’
I looked at my bread with one slash of red across the middle. I waded my knife into the jam and got the strawberry all over.
‘I was home, but,’ I said, all quiet, as I cut my slice into tiny, tiny pieces. ‘Why didn’t she say goodbye?’
He jerked his eyes in my direction. He’d forgotten, see.
‘Maybe she tried.’ He shoved down the other half of his roll-up so he couldn’t speak for a bit.
‘She probably looked in on you,’ Tessa jumped in, like she was Mum. ‘Saw you were out like a light and didn’t want to wake you.’ But then she added, back to her normal self: ‘Knew you’d go wild if she told you.’
I grunted, saying maybe could be, maybe not.
‘Why’d ya tell us yesterday that she’d gone gone, then?’ I said, looking straight at Dad.
He scratched his head and dropped his hand on the table like it was a great sack of spuds. I studied the forever lines on his face but they didn’t make anything come clear. ‘Didn’t know any different till she called,’ he said. ‘No note, see?’ He pushed the cream bottle and the jam jar away.
‘Why didn’t you call the police, then?’
Philly gasped and Tim went into a coughing fit to cover his splutter.
Not a sound from Dad, though. He drummed the table beside his plate with his thick finger. Finally he cleared his throat. ‘We did blue the night before. Thought she might have just needed a bit of time.’
‘Must have been a real bad one,’ I