New Animal by Ella Baxter (classic novels txt) 📗

of my mother. To carry her body on my back all the way down to the estuary, where I could send her away with the current. Sprint skin-naked through this ravine, screaming.

If I had the ability, I would turn into a huge, malevolent demigod. A demonic goddess who would stand ten tree-lengths high, so tall that my head would reach the underside of the clouds. I would kneel in the sea as I clawed my fingers along the coastline, combing out all of the mothers from every family and sliding them in handfuls into the sea behind me, because if I can’t have a mother, no one can. That’s the law of my land.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Judy says.

‘Glad to be here,’ I say.

Judy stands on a boulder below me. ‘Woman to woman,’ she says, ‘I’m going to tell you something I wish I had known when my mother died.’ She looks up at me, shielding her eyes against the sun. ‘You need to brace yourself for the next week or so.’

‘I am,’ I say.

She turns and continues her descent. ‘And I’ll tell you why in a sec.’

I follow her unsteadily until we reach the bottom of the ravine, where we stand resting our hands on top of our heads to open up our chests so that we can breathe more easily.

‘Is this the spot?’ she asks.

We’re to the left of the viewing platform and out a few metres from the edge. I nod. He would have landed roughly here.

Judy lies down on the dried eucalyptus leaves and twigs, and taps the ground next to her. I join her, resting on a flat knot of spinifex, and we both study the sky.

I can sense that Judy has a growing amount of mysticism in her. She loves crystals and her big orange cat is named Hypatia after the first woman killed for being a witch. I’m sure lying here has something to do with witch alignment. I lie in a version of the position that Floyd’s son would have landed in, and feel nothing but the usual itchiness that comes with being too close to the ground. It would be great if lying in the spot where someone died connected you to them. It’s likely that he would have heard birdsong—either at the top or the bottom of the ravine, perhaps even both. Which would I prefer? Which would any of us choose for him? If I push myself to think about that a little more, I am devastated by his death—not more than my mother’s, but inside me they rest side by side.

I turn my head towards Judy. ‘Tell me why I need to brace myself.’

‘It will be a shit show. People are going to expect so much from you, and it’s all going to feel like a lot of effort. I can look after Vincent, and Simon has Hugh and Carmen for support, but I’m worried about you.’

‘I don’t think I want to do it,’ I say.

‘Which part?’ she asks.

‘I don’t want to see her in a coffin.’

Judy nods. ‘I had an open casket for my mother’s funeral and people kept leaning in and touching her, but she hated to be touched. Hated it. One of my uncles stroked her face and I almost took him down. I swear, Amelia, they were treating her body like it was for them. Like she was this touchstone of comfort—but she would have hated it. If she were alive, she would have wiped her sleeve across her face to get rid of their kisses.’

I feel immediately in awe of Judy for going through that experience. Her strength is unfathomable.

‘What if I don’t go?’ I say.

‘That is an option, I guess,’ says Judy.

If I want to be left alone, I could go to Jack’s house in Tasmania. He has always been a hands-off parent. He doesn’t require much of anything, and would be pleased to have me nearby. I could go and stay with him, and hide until it’s all over. Then I wouldn’t have to witness any of it. Yes. This is a solid idea. I will go to Tasmania and stay with Jack, and sit in the deckchair where my mother sat when she was pregnant with me, and stare at the water that laps at the embankment of his yard, and I will feel her in the landscape like a bass note through the earth. I will remember her in my own way—not in a casket, not with a fistful of lilies, and not being pawed at by distant relatives. I was made in the foundry under her lungs; she’s an engine, not a husk and that is how I will remember her.

‘I’ll go to Tasmania instead,’ I announce.

‘Good one.’

We stand up and dust ourselves off and clamber back up the side of the ravine, and by the time we are at the top we are sweating profusely, but the trauma doesn’t feel like it has moved one inch. Before I get into the car, I pick the fly up off the dashboard by its legs and leave it on the wooden railing of the lookout as an offering to the mountain and to Floyd’s son. I turn to walk back to the car, but remember my mother’s earrings still held to my sides by my bra strap. I hold the underwire out from my body and they fall onto the platform. I pick the earrings up and then throw them as far as I can into the ravine. I am comforted by something of hers being on the mountain, along with everything else that is good.

‘What the hell was that?’ Judy asks as I get into the car.

‘Her earrings.’

‘You might want them in the future, you know. I get that you’re in the ritualistic stage of the grieving process—we all are—but later you might wish you’d kept some things of your mum’s that seem completely and uniquely her.’

‘The mountain will keep them for me.’

She looks at me. ‘You know