Fish and KIds

Fish and kids.

A knife slid through flesh, pulling and tugging with a slight squeal. Mala laughs remembering how she showed summer visitors, throwing out a line, lazing over pier fences, how to gut fish. They might waste hours, throwing more than a dozen under-sized tiddlers back. If insufficient bait they’d try bits of green weed. Wouldn’t work. When a legal creature extricated themselves from the deep finally, waves of celebration spread among spectators and fishers. Only to describe such accidental engagements with timid hooks, fish committed suicide. Poor aquatic victim drawn out, emerged from white foam below jetty where boys tumbled and squealed like water rats. Then eyes turned toward Mala, chins crinkled with anticipated disgust, while a soon to be dismembered flipping fish, hung on a wet line. Offered up like a sacrament.

She particularly enjoyed showing off in front of bigger boys. Made a clean slice down the belly and cut tendons holding in guts. Swept her thin filleting knife, up fish’s belly with one gesture. Pull out gizzards with her cubby hand, blood dripping between her stumpy fingers. As if her missing digits resulted from a fresh, just this minute amputation. If there was roe in the belly, she’d eat it raw. Those loose-limbed boys would clench their fists against greasy, part torn jeans, their faces contorted into what she liked to call cat’s bottoms.

Finally, she’d gouge out the fish eyes and hand them to tallest, meanest looking boy, insisting he eat these blood-soaked balls. Citing ancient myths about their effect on maleness.

‘Make you think faster, react quicker to a woman’s demands. See better, so you can find out who is looking back at you!’ At which stage Mala might think her words akin to big bad wolf’s all the better to see you with. So protective of their fragile egos these boys did as she said. Girls shrieked in terror, but still watched, fascinated. Making sure to avoid boys who’d eaten fish eyes because their breath stank all day. Squeals of disgust audible right around town long after skinny, long eyelash, slashed designer jean wearers scattered away from the pier.

After eye-ball eating ceremonies, kids would be so revolted, she’d usually end up with most fish caught. Her rituals also served to keep boys at bay for remainder of holiday season. Plus, girls stayed in awe of her knife skills. Suited Mala fine.

Fish blood marked graying timbers long after summer crowds departed. Squid ink stains too, when they could be caught – most likely by hunting old-timers. Telling Mala, ‘you have to trick them into taking bait.’ As if she cared.

Curled up scales collected in various niches even though a cleaning table stood up the sand, not far from the car park. Occasionally nests of discarded line would tie themselves around a weed strewn pylon. As if such wastage might be forced into use for future attempts.

Young Mala reckoned good to get in a gutting session at very beginning of summer holiday seasons. To establish her as the one to who fish came from their final rituals. Aquatic undertaker, noted down and underlined as her role. She gutted quicker and with less wastage than any tourist, and most locals.

Wind fall fillets, tourists crinkled up their noses at, said, ‘don’t have room in the Esky.’ Or for whatever reason, ‘didn’t want to take fish home.’ Came in handy when her father’s kin wandered down the coast. Big smiles, teeth flashing grins, full of expectation they’d be able to fill various buckets which just happened to be on the back of their trucks. Or extracted from a chest freezer, never filled to load limit line. Whirring resident out on the back porch, with creeping body rust, blamed on salt air.

‘Keeps to herself that one,’ she recalled her father saying to one of the many cousins. Funny how family always seemed to show up after a Mullet run, or when Bream were thick in the estuary. Flipping over each other like grey leaves floating on currents.

Sure, Mala made herself scarce, especially with Uncle Neil. She always made sure to be carrying a tray, taking out rubbish, as stinky as possible. Or bringing in mum’s shopping, anything really, to get a little personal space. Didn’t trust his smirk. Wouldn’t listen to ‘big family hug…’ excuse. Father said, ‘she left a piece of herself inside mum, probably cough it up one day.’

‘No point teaching that one guitar, nickname strum… because she will never be able to strum.’

Uncle Neil chuckled, ‘imagine her trying to finger cords, and fingering other things…’

Mala hated how they talked about her while she could hear, as if underdeveloped fingers marked her as deaf.

Buried fish heads in the sand hills. Couldn’t stand sea gulls picking over eyeless remnants. She despised a feathered audience drooling over fish eye juices. Pushing aside sand, stuttering a few words of tribute suited her fine too. Ensured people didn’t have stare at her fingers. Worse still, point and talk about her stumpy digits. Didn’t they know she wasn’t blind, and heard taunts even if from behind long fingered hands.

Didn’t really notice another skinny boy for a few days. Until she thought how his legs resembled poles used to push up washing lines. Replaced occasionally by an equally pole shaped man, her mother insisted enjoy a cup of tea before poking his horse into activity, to make further deliveries. Mala chuckled, then raised her eyes to take in a long-sleeved shirt which used to be pale blue, but now colored closer to bilge water. One hand in his pocket. Blonde hair which reminded Mala of driftwood piled up on beaches, sticking out in clumps, and the boy’s sunburned brows. His eyes did not lift to meet her gaze.

Saw him again on Sunday, slightly apart from a man who had a similar hair style, except hair twigs and branches extended along his jaw line forming a scraggy beard. The boy held his hymnal awkwardly with his right hand, flicking pages across with his thumb rather than remove his left hand from deep in the pocket of his grey, once were school shorts.

After making sure no one else could see. Fueled by mouth drying curiosity she pointed a thin filleting knife at him. ‘Had enough of your ball fiddling, hands where I can see them’

His Adam’s apple jiggled, and he moistened a scabby bottom lip, but still made no effort to look Mala in the eyes, or move his left arm.

‘You’ve seen how sharp this is. I’ll put a hole in your wrist.’

But the boy still didn’t move, except to raise his eyes to meet hers. That moment, as she looked into their blue-grey depths, she knew. Mala threw down her knife which clinked against salt washed timbers, and placed her clubby hand so close to his leg she sweated in response to his body heat. His hidden hand hovered above hers. Skin mottled like weed banks, or submerged rocks. Each finger bent worse than Gran’s arthritic limbs almost as if the boy’s efforts to keep digits hidden in his pocket permanently forced extremities into a different, alien shape. Ridges formed across the back of his hand, as if string once used to secure pieces together remained tied loosely. Part of his thumb and pointer finger missing. – she put her clubby hand over his and smiled

‘My name is Ben.’

They stayed clear of beaches, towels laid out under Norfolk pine, star-shaped overhanging shadows. Cloudless sky. Swimmers splashed about in inner tubes. Calm tight satin or drum leather of ocean’s surface looked solid. Capable of being broken by toes or fingers. Mala never lost the thought that you never knew what was below, lurking. Similar to Uncle Neil, no matter how calm and fluid his exterior. She didn’t trust him as far as she might drag a bag of fish guts.

Together Mala and Ben Skirted around the inlet, before it got too hot, before clouds of mosquitoes claimed occupation rights. Used to be fun to play there, before a chorus of comments about lifeforms in mud.

‘Swamp monsters sucked off your fingers. Doesn’t matter how much you look, won’t get them back.’  

On 7-mile expanse of shore occasional marine objects loomed ahead long before they reached anything. Two small feet making tracks as if solo inhabitants of earth. Getting close granted such items great import. A squat red-faced man with calves like rocks leant over in shallows, probing sand for beach worm bait. – using a sucker.  

Remembering her dad saying, ‘always used to trawl for worms, using a plunger thing. Be good now to pull your reversed fingers out.’

Depressions were left behind in surf, she liked to call frilly edges. Where a few local fishermen scoured in shore drifts looking for worms. Dragged a lure made of stockings and old bait back and forth, encouraging hidden creatures to surface. Once Mala saw a gull doing similar foot action. Just a lone bird bobbing about in wet sand. Still hated them, despite no company, but she had to concede this creature was also a quest for sustenance.

As another bird flew in to explore, the one gull arched its back and squawked as if yelling abuse.

Driftwood formed eerie shapes. Ben and Mala clambered over and around dead braches that resembled dinosaur skeletons. A two-toned lighthouse rose from a craggy limestone outcrop clear of low coastal scrub; striped, black on top, like a hat. Dr Seuss, Cat in a Hat style. There is an energy that washes over the land, brought in by the ocean. Sky is constantly changing canvas of color, ocean breathes blue and green pigments dreamed of by painters, air like a rare whale sighting, mellowed by sea with random birds floating above on thermals.

They spent hours building a lattice like cave, further up surf beach towards the national park, where tourists wouldn’t walk. Sick beach scenery repetition, constructing a tepee like shelter, ‘focuses energy,’ Ben stated. Mala remembered one time a group of musicians also fabricated similar towers, filming a video to accompany a new release, as if architectural power rested on their shoulders alone.

A blue undulating jelly fish the size of a dustbin lid. Cobalt strings of bluebottles. Delicate lacework traceries deposited by transparent sand shifting crabs. An inflated by eyeless puffer fish. A screeching alpha seagull and his one-legged colleague. Great, she thought, so avian creatures screech at missing limbs too. Over the years voices in her head, made sure to make a bad thing out of her incompleteness.

Mala contemplated how family sucked her down. Loyal as she now was Ben knew he couldn’t depend on her. She could turn on him, if Mala decided she’d been wronged in some way, especially in relation to her hand. Make one of those comments, not that Ben ever would, that was the line that should never be crossed.