Tumarkin - Axiomatic

For five years everything Frances wrote was about her sister. Once she had been good at deadpan humour. Whered that go, and the sarcasm? She was seventeen, Katie had been sixteen. Their mother used to deck them in matching clothes: denim dresses most often. People mistook them for twins.

In a Year 12 English assignment Frances wrote

when I walked into herroom that morning I could sense something was terribly wrong. She was positioned awkwardly, defying gravity.

A year later at uni

kneeling forward on her knees, incredibly still. I thoughtshe had fallen asleep, obliquely

Part way through an end-of-semester piece the following year

hair was falling overher face, shielding the truth. Her body was covered inprominent blue veins, gripping themselves over her youthful body.

After five years something shifted. Questionswhyd she call and ask me to wake her? why would she want me to find her? and the big one: did she mean it?were no longer at Francess throat. Frances could imagine them turning into statements.

she wanted me to find her

she meant it

Five more years and Frances doesnt need to talk about it that much, maybe to some people, maybe once in a while. She knows what movies to avoid and with her sisters they dont need to go over it. Maybe her father was wanting some family talk when he said Cheers to Katie on the tenth anniversary and they all raised a glass? Its possible. Shell ask him.

I meet Frances as the shifting is beginning. Katies death doesnt sit anymore on her chest at all times, making her work for every breath, its knees pressed into her ribs. I was so lost when you met me, shell tell me later, so confused, and young, bound up all the way with her.

We meet and I ask Frances about casseroles. Everyone knows about casseroles. A person dies and peopleclose, dear people and virtual strangers, some signed up to a special rosterconverge on the dead persons house bearing casseroles. And the way the casseroles appear and just as suddenly disappear, weeks later, brings to mind, it is true, flocks of birds swooping down then taking off. Swish. For those weeks, sometimesthough not frequentlymonths, the family inside that house, whoever is there inside the house, is entombed in an intense concentration of throbbing, desperate human attention. Then it stops. Which is worse is hard to know although people I speak to before speaking to Francespeople who once found themselves on the receiving end of casserolesseem to prefer the post-casserole. On a tram along Elizabeth Street we talk about the weeks after Katies death.

What period? (shes thrown by my accent; the tram is noisy)

Casserole period.

Oh, loved it. Wish it continued, went on much longer. I wish we had the casserole period now.

All those people in the house and no room left for flowers felt to Frances like the opposite of being scorchingly alone. And then, she says, the flowers died. And the people left. And there was nothing to fill the emptiness with.

Francess Year 12 creative writing assignment, handed in twenty days after Katies suicide

I will never forget the taste of her mouth. Ican still taste her last breath.

Five hundred and fifty or so girls from prep to Year 12 is a small school. Ann taught there twenty-one years. She taught all four sisters. (There were four sisters once. Four is special, three is ordinary, Frances says.) In a two-hour conversation Anncomposed, a teacher-teacher, tough, a mother of however many boys, retired nowgets visibly upset only once. Why cant she claw back her tears when talk goes to that years creative writing assignments: the piece Frances wrote, and two pieces from other girls, one of them living in a psych unit, both in Francess class? I suppose because I was privy to the truth. This is the stuff they dont tell their parents. Or friends, shrinks. Its stuff they only tell themselves.

One of the things about coming to this world from the Eastern European elsewhere (not that it matters much which elsewhere the elsewhere is) is that words do not often feel powerful in the world of Australia weve come to. Which is fine really. We have made our peace with this, accepted it, with gratitude almost, because we judged the well-known (to us) alternativea world in which poets and their families were persecuted and killed for their words mattering too muchto be an evil much greater. But perhaps I was wrong about this new world. Looking in all the wrong places perhaps. I wasnt looking at girls and boys writing about what is innermost to them and what they have decided language cannot deal with and submitting their heartbeats as assignments, burying them among the mountains of straight, dashed-off bits of second-guessing fluff, this transaction bypassing the school economy of words-for-grades because what is being exchanged illicitly, covertly, are secrets and confidences and questions, and soul pain. And teachers carrying words by their students inside their chestsI was not looking at them. And no one else knows. Of course nobody knows. You say to the Year 11 kids, says Ann, if you have a special, special thing to write about save it till Year 12. Then when you write about a truth, it comes through. And they do save it, most of them.

Ann is short so learned to wear bright clothes back when she was a teacher at a boys school. (They wont see you, theyll just knock you over.) She learned to never teach sitting down. She learned that with certain kids you want to give them your mobile number no matter what the classroom protocols say; that you must take a students word for it, even if youll at times live to regret it; thatand this bits the tricky/obviousyou cannot be afraid of the kids.