Repeat After Me

Chapter 34

An hour later, I found myself at the old tram factory. It'd been mowed down. I didn't know what I'd expected to find; I couldn't think what stupid sentimental reason had brought me to this building's graveyard. I picked up a few rocks, as though the answer to all my questions lay in this rubble. But there was nothing here except an empty feeling that everything in life is ephemeral, nothing lasts long, not childhood, not a painting on a wall, not even a tram factory. If nothing lasts, what really matters?

I thought about Asten and that brick he threw through the window. What does it matter, if the window no longer exists? It's just as he said. So if I won't exist in 80 years time, what does anything I do matter? Can't I just do what I please? If I can't make my mark at home, then I can make it on the streets. Melbourne can see the worth in me.

I went to the UUS, but I had nothing to make my mark with, so I licked the walls with my eyes. I looked at new works that had appeared, recognising now familiar names: a playful giraffe by Percolator, a gloomy businessman pole dancing by Tobacco and an epic portrait of a lady smoking by Milo.

I got an excited feeling as I came close to my cageman work. But as I got closer, I discovered something strange had happened to it. Someone had pasted something over his belly. I walked closer, and I read the word that had been pasted over my creation: 'K-TASTROPHE'. It didn't make any sense. Perhaps it was just someone's tag name and they were going around doing these paste ups?

I walked back to Flinders Street station via the laneway near Desgraves St and visited the stencil I'd been painting the night I met Asten. That same person had pasted 'K-TASTROPHE' over my work. They were deliberately vandalising my work. I looked up the meaning on my phone, this entry in urban dictionary – 'crazy, stalker, homewrecker, no life, attacks from long distances.' What the hell? Was this a message to me? Crazy? Stalker? Homewrecker? It must've been Alicia. She's knows my work. She's attacking me.

I used my fingernails to try and peel the pasteup off, but it'd been triple wheat pasted. I scraped and scraped at it, until my fingernails tore and I was out of breath. 'K-TASTROPHE' it was just a word, but it'd wounded me. She was a crazy bitch. My hands felt shaky and I felt panicky. I sat in the gutter and wept for a love bound by an electric fence. I couldn't touch it, or I'd be shocked.

I walked down Swanston Street. It was still quieter than pre-COVID. The streets felt feral and my mind was feral; thoughts that had been withheld for years come out of a cage, had a prowl around and took a crap in the dark recesses of my mind.

I found myself walking through Chinatown. Chinese lanterns were hanging from wires high above the street. I ducked down Croft Alley. It was quiet here. I put my backpack down near a wall, took my ink-bottle and brush out and began to paint.

Lines crisscrossed in front of me and a girl emerged on the bricks, floating in space, her arms outstretched as though she's free from the shackles that bound her. I painted stars around her head and a tiny flamingo near her feet because life is random. I had this wall, my hands, a bottle of ink. It wouldn't last long, but I knew for as long as I had the ink, I was okay.

Down the bottom of the wall, sprouting from the pavement, I painted three seedlings. A tiny watering can sprinkled water on the seedlings, nurturing them and giving them life. I painted more and more seedlings along the pavement at different heights. Last year's English teacher had recommended a book called 'The Women's Room'. She said all girls needed to read this book. It wasn't my thing, I don't think I finished reading it, but there was one line that stayed in my mind, something like 'I want to be a blade of grass and crack concrete.' These little seedlings looked as though they were cracking concrete. One thought lead to another and soon I was painting blades of grass – they were strong blades, not grass to be trodden over, it was grass to respect. I wrote in my best imitation of an art deco theatre sign 'I want to be a blade of grass and crack concrete.'

For a speck of time I was happy. I had purpose and satisfaction; the act of creation wrapped me in her milky white arms, held me gently by the waist and soared with me through thin air. But then my ink ran out, I was scraping the bottom of the bottle. Each stroke was washed out and streaky. Gone. Now I felt like the empty vessel. There's nothing inside of me but pain and disappointment and the realization that all I had left to do was go home.

Near the corner of Collins Street, in an entranceway to the bank, I saw a girl begging for money with a cardboard sign about having had three miscarriages. The sign was torn and water damaged, sticky taped to an upside down bucket. Her eyes were half open and spacey. I saw an icecream container with a handful of silver coins. I stopped walking and stood in front of her. She was leaning back on a rolled-up sleeping bag. She was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. A canvas satchel sat in her lap. Her face was drawn, her cheekbones sculpting her flesh. Her brown hair was thin and greasy.

She was only a few years older than me. Maybe she came from a 'good' family also. Maybe she didn't fit in either, maybe she was an outsider, maybe she got pushed so hard she had to run. She was wearing thongs and her toenails were cracked and yellow.

I reached into my backpack and pulled a ten-dollar note out of my wallet. It wasn't much, but it was all I had. I bent down so I was at eye level with her.

'I've got something for you,' I said. Someone might've taken the note if I dropped it in the icecream container. I wanted to make sure she got the money properly.

Her eyes flickered open.

I grabbed her hand from her lap. She smelt like urine and cigarettes. Her fingernails were bitten until they'd bled. Her wrist was tiny and dirty. I opened up her hand.

'I have some money for you,' I said, putting the ten-dollar note in her fingers. 'I'd give you more, but it's all I have.'

Comprehension entered her eyes for a moment.

'Thank you,' she whispered. Her head tilted back, she closed her spacey eyes momentarily, and then tilted forward again. She looked at my backpack. 'Go home,' she said. 'Go home and make peace. Whatever happened, it's not worth it.'

She'd lost some of her teeth.

'Thank you,' I said. 'I kind of know.'

'Don't push people away,' she said. 'Because one day, you realise you don't have anyone except strangers staring at you.' She looked at the pavement. 'People stare, but they don't want to see me,' she said, exhausted, leaning back against her rolled-up sleeping bag. She curled her fist around the $10 note and closed her eyes, as sleep was the only way to pass the time.

I walked back towards St Kilda Road thinking about how we are all one conversation away from being homeless. Life has a trapdoor. A housewife could tell her husband she had an affair. Get out. A boss could tell his worker there's no more work because of COVID and he's stood down. He can't pay the rent. A doctor could tell a patient she has schizophrenia. An insurer could tell a man they're not going to pay his workcover claim. A teenager could have an argument with their parents ...