Green brooches in a labyrinth

We needed to get changed for dinner. Alex and Mim were waiting there when we arrived. But I took longer this time. I answered differently when asked where I had been. Astro was with me. Mim had had her dress made. She had many more dresses. She said she was a princess of sorts and she said I must be feeling great to walk beside her. She had been putting on my dresses and looking better in them. Brown, taller and lean. Each month. I wanted a tutu. I didn’t want to be compared, I didn’t want to compare myself. She kept swooping in like I had lined it all up, and came in and took it. She changed the story and my story and she took all my friends and contacts.

But she was nice as I arrived. They could overhear us talking.

The closer it came to the time, the more likely it was you would disappear. I stepped into the drain and it was your mind.

I was with two women, they knew my Gran. Going around maze that was Astro’s mind, I kept finding his black and white drawings. The women were looking for somewhere to change, but it kept getting darker and more filled with people. We were trying to move faster, but every time we took a step, we stepped down onto more steps or rocks and I would be thankful I didn’t just jump. Though I wondered if I had of just jumped if it would have been flat. The maze was forming as we moved, the ground creating itself to meet us. Was I creating the steps by not leaping with faith onto a flat landing? Or was that just because it was dark and it was all that we could do to see in front of us and the rest was already there, so it just seemed it was being created as we went.  More and more people were arriving and the types of people were changing. They were angry, frustrated many of them.

And then we saw her, in agony. And the blood. On the ground. But some coming from her chest and then in a line down. The old ladies left to go and get help, even though they had already called the ambulance. They didn’t speak to her. Her name was Sophie. She didn’t want to tell me her surname. She had a phone. She didn’t want me to call her husband or anyone yet. Her husband’s name was Peter Green. She had been three months pregnant. She lived in Bairnsdale. She whispered this. Even though she could talk.

The ambulance came. I still had her phone. I needed to get it to her. Everyone was on their way to her room. They wanted to examine her quickly so they could get out of there and collect their Easter chocolate and exam marks. They wanted to quickly get the story about how the hospital was negligent. It wasn’t. Had to get her phone to her and warn her before they got there. A man with a ginger beard was leading me in different directions, up different stairwells. No short-cuts, but it was designed to confuse the chasers.

Made it to the top. Tried to call Peter Green.

The dressmaker only just noticed. The grass green shimmer on the fabric, did not match the flat forest green. I didn’t know anything about sewing. Not really. But I couldn’t help but step in. Like the lady looking for the native animal brooches – I knew I’d seen them somewhere before and it would have been remiss of me not to mention it. It was an hour before our conversation finished.  The dressmaker was worried what the princess Mim would say. I showed her how the bright grass green popped more when bordered by the forest green. It could definitely work.

I showed him how to play volleyball. He was only small. I wanted to get him a softer ball. The other girl in the class recounted her dream – a similar story. And in both, the balls became axes or other weapons. And the children knew how to use them. They were scared. And needed to defend themselves. They had seen too much. I don’t like volleyball.

There's a Rosella under my Umbrella..under my Umbrella..ah, ah, ah...

This is a story about the time I slept with a bird and my Mum put my sister in her handbag for a week.

The two wooden rosellas on a perch, dangling off some fishing wire, were a gift from some cousins. We named them after those cousins and hooked them up over the kitchen sink, overlooking the backyard. Their job was to ‘spy’ on whatever mischief my sister and I might be up to and report back to Mum. 

Later, maybe a couple of decades later, I was up way too early one morning. Wandering towards the beach I noticed a small technicolour little flapper on the tram line. It wasn’t moving and a tram was clicking towards it. I shooed it, whistled at it, but it still wouldn’t move! There was nothing else to be done but pick it up. It pecked at me incessantly as its feet gripped my finger. 

Into the 7/11 I went and asked for a box. I took it down to the foreshore and put it in a tree, but it just stared at me blankly. If I left it there it was only a matter of time before a cat made breakfast of it. Maybe that’s why my step-father shoots the feral cats. 

And neither was the wildlife rescue service, apparently. So we walked. The bird stopped biting me. I took it for coffee. I took it to the park. We had a chirp and a chat. It sat on my shoulder. I tried to let it go on an oval and teach it to fly. But it just hopped after me. This wasn’t going well. I was closer to Dalton’s house than my own by now. I’ll just go there with the bird, I thought. 

Dalton (named like the china, but nothing as fine as china) wasn’t there. His housemate let me in and went to work and I thought I’d just chill with my multi-coloured friend until Dalton came back, or until I came up with a better plan. I was very sleepy, and I couldn’t just put the bird out in the backyard to be shredded to pieces by feline fangs. So I hopped into Dalton’s bed for a snooze and the Rosella hopped in with me.

Unsurprisingly, he was not so impressed when he came home to find a bird in his bed. Which I thought was a bit harsh. But I was okay, I had bigger Rosella things to worry about. And it was probably a good indicator of future lack of compatibility. He said I could sleep in the bed but the bird had to go.* 

Last week, my Mum came to visit. I let her loose in my eclectically spaghetti sprawled little suburb for a couple of hours and she came back from the op-shop with some ornamental birds – two blue budgerigars and a rosella. We named the rosella after my sister, who lives in New Zealand. She came in my Mum’s handbag with us for the week and we positioned her in places for photos wherever we went, pretending my sister was with us. On the beach, in the car, out for coffee, at the dinner table.

I have a cousin who once called to say her fish tank was full of tears and had spilt into the back of her car and it was flooding. A wasp was also talking to her. We sent her a photo of the rosella. She loved it. The people who don't understand normal, often understand the most absurd. Which rhymes with bird.

Even when it feels like the heavy night won’t lift and will make your legs collapse from beneath you, you can put a rosella in your handbag. Sometimes there’s nothing more to do than hop into bed with a bird**, and laugh at yourself so hard you fall off your perch.***

*The rosella eventually went to the vet

** By bird, I do not mean a female. But if there are two consenting adults, then that is okay too.

***Not in the metaphorical dying sense.

A Dreaming about Rosella is one of tragedy which triumphs with love as the ultimate victor.  A couple run away together; although she is promised to a wirrinin (magic man) who wreaks his revenge and kills her man.  She is so in grief the jealous wirrinin goes to strike her.  The Great Spirit intervenes and she is instantly transformed into the first Rosella.  She then flies off to the Land of the Dead to reach her lover before he crosses into it.  In a race against time, she reaches him.  Today, Rosellas still mate for life. Rosellas embody eternal love.