‘You know you can’t change your mind once she starts, darling?’ Mum says.
It’s early in the morning and I’m grumpy and my eyeballs are dry and what I need to do is something extreme.
‘You are aware that hair grows back, aren’t you, Mother?’
‘There’s no need to be snide!’ she says in an overly wounded tone but then Dad swaps out her carrot juice for a steaming cup of coffee and it miraculously shuts her up.
Without further ado, Liv gathers my hair into a ponytail, the whole honey-blonde enviable lot that everyone is always complimenting me on including uninvited strangers, and shears it off with Mum’s sewing scissors.
‘Ta-da!’ She holds it up and blonde wisps drift over the parquetry floor.
Mum yelps as if her arm has been cut off and Dad moves in to cuddle her. They’ve been unusually lovey-dovey the last few days and it has been the cause of much retching between Liv and I.
I have zero regrets when I look at the blonde clump in Liv’s hand. I am colourless, expressionless, drained of spark or fire or anything normal.
‘Your beautiful hair,’ Mum whimpers from the kitchen.
‘Enough of that patriarchal crap!’ I say loudly. ‘You make me sound like Jo in Little Women.’
‘YOUR ONE BEAUTY!’ Liv says melodramatically as she starts buzzing. The clippers bite at my nape and they are oh so hungry. Mum’s sneakers pad out of the room.
I fix my eyes on the back window, focussing on our wattle tree, which is starting to bloom, and the grey sky that might bring a storm big enough to cancel the memorial service and strand our car on flooded streets so it’s a pity but we won’t make it after all.
Buzz buzz buzz. The blade is firm against my skin. I imagine harvesters driving over fields of wheat leaving clean stubble in their wake.
‘Do you want to practise your speech?’ Liv asks over the drone.
I don’t dare shake my head. ‘No. I got it.’
I try to forget the fact that my sometimes-unreliable sister is wielding a blade centimetres and in some cases millimetres away from so many things I need, like ears, eyes, scalp. She mows behind my ears, temples, right over the top, around my crown.
I close my eyes and the ticklish drift of hair eddies around me, but there are black things behind my eyelids, toothed monsters and dark deeds.
The clippering goes on and on and then Liv stops, all is quiet, her hands come away from my dome and she walks around me.
‘I think I’m done.’ She goes to find a mirror.
‘Yes,’ I say when she holds it up in front of me.
I have one centimetre of dark blonde fuzz covering my round head. My ears protrude slightly. My face leaps out, and every blue vein and dark shadow on it. I look tired and washed out and younger than before.
I look stripped bare. Finally my outsides match my insides.
DAY 69
I shuffle into the bluestone building with everyone from my form room. It’s the first time I’ve visited the church in the city where Balmoral holds its most pious events. They shipped us in on buses, like we’re on an excursion.
The church is forbiddingly gothic, circles and arches and ironwork everywhere, and it’s not difficult to imagine medieval murders and monks and intrigue in its walls.
It’s strange to remember Yin here, when this wasn’t what she believed in, if her refusal to pray during school assembly was any indication.
Yesterday the newspapers printed a photo of Mrs Mitchell at the State Park with Albert and Nelson. Yin’s mum’s face is contorted with grief, her hair flies in the wind. You can’t see the kids’ faces because their heads are bowed over incense and offerings. There’s no sign of Natalia; you wouldn’t know she’d been there at all.
The photo is crisp, moving, beautiful, the perfect capture of a fleeting moment. You could even call it art. But is it right to take a photo of a mother in her private grief? Did Mrs Mitchell want to be seen in that state? Why is it so easy to override what girls and women want, what they might decide if they were given any control?
Inside the church everything is shadowy and stale and hushed. Dark. Not glorious at all.
A huge photo of Yin dominates the lobby.
It’s a better photo than the ones they used in the newspapers and on the TV. She’s standing outside among trees, maybe on school camp, laughing and looking off camera. The sun hits her face; she looks relaxed and happy.
I never knew her properly. Not like that.
There are piles of tributes at the foot of the photo. Flowers, cards, more photos, soft toys.
Milla stands next to the photo and easel, holding a massive basket of lilies. Claire stands nearby with an identical load.
I take my flower and lay it down among the many, and have one quiet moment with Yin, concentrating on her memory.
I hope you understand my photo was for you, I think. You and other girls like you, and all of us for having to live in this shitty world where people don’t value our lives.
DAY 69
The thing about churches is that they’re designed to give you religious vibes, with those high ceilings and stained-glass windows and hard benches. If the light hits the windows just right and sends shards of light beaming into the church then you can’t blame people for thinking about stairways to heaven and all the other stuff.
But churches do none of this for me, ever, and definitely not today.
I am full of terror and it is very hard to hide that amount of scared with my usual tricks.
There are hundreds of Balmoral girls crammed into the pews, and any other spare spaces they can find to stand, and the air is cold against my hands and bare neck. The cross hanging up
