Henry’s Daughter by Joy Dettman Read Free Book Online Page B

moneybut to Mavis finding out something about her father which put her off wanting to marry Henry. Some nights Lori hears Henry saying, ‘For the boys. It would be better for the boys.’ He never says, ‘Better for the girl.’ He’s probably forgotten he’s got a girl. He used to know. Mavis used to know too. She used to buy pretty dresses and dolls and girls’ things.
    Lori yawns, rubs the sore spots onher chest, scratches her head and hopes she hasn’t got nits. Henry hates nits. They are definitely not God’s creatures. Lori had long hair until she was five and Mavis would curl it, but the first year she was at school she got nits, so Henry gave her a boy’s haircut. She can still remember her curls, remember Mavis fussing with her, dressing her like a girl, almost remember Mavis when she used towear a tickly maroon cardigan with a pattern on the bottom. Almost. Almost remember Henry’s twins living in this house too, or remember the blur of one of them nearly dying one day and Mavis having to give it mouth-to-mouth.
    There’s lots of stuff she can remember from when she was little, like the day Mavis and Henry took her and Mick and Jamesy to Melbourne so they could bring the twins home.It was about four or five years ago, but to Lori, that memory is as clear as if it were yesterday, like it was something so precious, it just got embedded in her brain so even a lobotomy could never get it out.
    She can remember the long bus ride, and busy Spencer Street Station, and the tram that wasn’t quite a train. And she can remember the colour of the ocean, and the house where Mavis usedto live when she was a girl. It was big, made of red brick, sort of cool, and quiet and posh behind its tall fence. She can remember the garden too, and the trees, and the magic green moss on the footpath and the stillness that swallowed her up as the heavy gate closed. Everyone stopped talking then because that gate had locked them into another world.
    Lori must have been around six, the twinsabout five, and Mick seven; he was in the old pusher – due to his bad leg and not being able to walk far. He hated it too. And Mavis, she wasn’t so gigantic big then, and she’d been happy, laughing and mucking around, excited to be in Melbourne again and finally getting those twins back home where they belonged.
    Aunty Eva refused to give them back. She said they were not at home, and she wouldn’teven open the security door and let everyone in to wait. Mavis said she was going for the police, and then Aunty Alice, who isn’t really an aunty, went driving off with the twins in the back seat of a posh white car.
    Except for the photographs Henry used to bring home from Melbourne, that was the only time Lori saw those twins as real living boys. Alice had to get out of the car to open the gatesand Mavis started running so Lori had run after her. Mavis couldn’t get the car door open but Lori saw those twins. They were identical, straight, dark auburn hair, big wide blue eyes and twin navy and white shirts. She had felt a sad pulling feeling in her stomach that day as the car had driven off, like there was a bit of elastic tied around her insides, sort of joining her to those brotherslike it went right through that door, and as the car had driven further up the road, that elastic got pulled so tight, it hurt. But that elastic must have got broken, because down at the tourist centre today, she had been close enough for those twins to almost fall over her and she hadn’t even felt a tug.
    She rolls onto her side, hears a mosquito, hopes it flies off to suck on one of the littleones. They’re asleep. They won’t feel the sting. Then it lands, right near her ear. She slaps it, squishes it, and her head starts thinking again of elastic. That’s probably what is wrong with Henry, like his life-force elastic got cut from his real people when he was only one year old so the