Title: Monopoly

Author: Frances Mountier

In: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Prose Literature

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Sport 41: 2013

Frances Mountier — Monopoly

page 159

Frances Mountier

Monopoly

The fish’n’chip shop just out of Gore used to have postcards for 50 cents on a stand beside the counter. Our dad had a blue ute. We’d squeeze in and pass the hot packet of chips between us. There were holes in the floor like stars, and we could see the road passing underneath. We kept our feet tucked up and Dad kept the heating on.

We lived in a little house, two bedrooms for Dad and Jo and us three kids. On Fridays we ate KFC and us kids would play Monopoly, though Jared was pretty hyper. We had the New Zealand edition. I was banker and I was a jerk about it. I’d charge 100% interest. Rachel thought I was real good. She said, ‘You’re better at Monopoly than anyone I know.’

One week in Spring I got the job of feeding the neighbour’s horse. Rach said she’d come with me. Jared wasn’t allowed to. We stamped into our gumboots, balancing against the wall in the back porch. We raced past the sleep-out (it was a shed, really—Dad’s boss had got it in for us two boys to sleep in but it was freezing so we only used it in the summer months), past the garden shed, past the old garage with the door hanging on by one hinge. The next paddock was the home paddock, just big enough for a pig and Rach and Jo’s pet sheep. At the bottom, I held the wires apart for Rach then she held them apart for me. She was wearing a blue jersey and as I stood up it was almost in my face. I was a head taller than her so I head-butted her, not hard or anything. We were out of sight of the house by then. I really thought Rach was something, even though she was my sister. We scampered through a windbreak. The neighbour’s paddock had knee-high grass and cowpats you couldn’t see. We walked slowly past some old sheds and climbed the wooden gate into the horse’s paddock.

The horse was a chestnut mare with speckles on her back. Rach walked up to her with her hand out and the horse nuzzled in. I went to the barn and gathered the brush and the oats. Rach fed the horse, page 160 then offered her handfuls of grass, while I brushed her down. I was pleased I was doing the actual work. I was getting paid five bucks for the whole holidays, but even that I didn’t want to share with Rach. I only let her check the water at the end. The horse followed her to the trough.

When we were walking back we heard the horn honking. We ran through the home paddock and climbed into the back of the ute. The others were there already. Dad had his morning coffee in a thermos between his knees. It was his rugby match day, only Jo had forgotten to remind us.

Dad drove to the primary school. The pitch was just an unmown paddock. There were proper H goal posts though, not the funny Y-shaped ones. Our mums all stood along the side-line and the people from up the road stood in a separate group down the other end. We kids played tag on the fort, us versus the other team’s kids. Jared zoomed all over the place. Some of the girls went off to play foursquare outside Room 2. Rach stayed with us.

After the match there was a BBQ and we lined up to get our free sausage. Just before we got to the front of the queue, Dad called us away with his wolf whistle. Ja and I didn’t want to go so we stood there with Ja bouncing on his feet. Rachel tried to convince us to go back with her. Dad came and got us and took us back to the ute.

Jo leant against the passenger door, arms crossed. We climbed into the back while she whispered angrily at Dad and him at her. Dad opened her door and said, ‘Get in.’ He went around to the driver’s side. Once he had his seatbelt on, Jo slammed the door and walked off. I could feel Rachel sitting up beside me on the narrow seat.

‘Where the fuck are you going?’ Dad slammed his hand down on the steering wheel, hitting the horn. ‘Shit.’

A few of the other people getting into their cars turned to look.

Jo turned around with her head up high, real stupid like, and came back and got in the ute.

‘What’d you do that for? I was going to walk home.’

‘You’re not walking home, it’s cold.’

‘I just want to walk home. It’s not hard. You’re always making things bigger than they are.’ Jo opened the dashboard and pulled out Dad’s cigarettes. Dad started driving.

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‘Don’t smoke in the car, Mum,’ Rach said. ‘It’s bad for you.’

‘Don’t tell her what to do,’ Dad said.

Rachel started to cry.

‘You don’t need to cry about it,’ Jo said. ‘Mal’s just being mean. Look, I won’t smoke it.’

‘Does that make you feel better?’ Dad said. ‘Having a good blubber?’

‘Leave her,’ Jo said. She leant around and patted Rach’s knee. And by then we were home.

Lucky for me, that night I got to go to a party. We talked shit and mucked around playing Sega and in the morning they dropped me home. I let myself in the front door and went straight into Rachel’s bedroom. She had a girly bed with a pink duvet. Our bunks were against the wall by the door. Rach and Ja were playing schools on the top bunk.

‘How was the party?’ Rach jumped off the bed.

‘Good. We watched movies till two a.m.’

‘Shall we play Monopoly?’ She was already pulling open the bottom drawer of the dresser.

‘Oh boy, oh boy,’ Ja said, climbing off the bed.

In that game I got hotels on all but one of the properties on the expensive side of the board. Ja kept going to prison and Rach got $1000 in debt to me. They tried to gang up on me, then they tried crying and then they said I was mean. But I said, ‘That’s the rules. You just go around the board and play by the rules.’

We heard the phone ring. Jared pulled his last notes out from under the pillow he was sitting on and threw them on the board. I knew they were there anyway.

‘I quit,’ he said. He went and lay on his bed. Jo came into the room.

‘That was Aunty Susan. Your granny’s died, Sam and Jared. Susan said she’d take all you kids up for the funeral.’

I looked down at the notes on the board. Our granny always had biscuit selections in a large blue tin. She gave Jared and me matching clothes every Christmas, usually checked shirts.

‘What about you and Dad?’ I said.

‘We’ll try to make it up on Tuesday after milking.’

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‘Who will feed the animals for Mrs C?’ I said.

‘I will,’ Jo said.

Later, when Ja and I were in the bathroom washing our hands before tea, I heard Jo say to Rach, ‘You keep your brothers out of trouble for me, won’t you.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Rach said.

Dad didn’t say much at tea that night, just, ‘Why’s Rachel going?’

‘She’s the only gran she’s ever going to get,’ Jo said.

We stayed in Sumner. Jared and I had lived there before for a while, when our granny was alive. And Dad and I had lived there when I was small. Rach had never heard of Sumner. She said the houses were bigger in Christchurch, and there were better swearwords. We watched a lot of TV. Or tried to. Karl, our oldest cousin, kept sitting in front of us, blocking off the screen, so I watched our aunt a lot. She was in the TV room with us, and her kid would stand on the ground and suck at his mum’s boobs. I thought he’d start shaking his bum from side to side like a lamb. If you watched for long enough, you’d see her boob before she put it away. I couldn’t tell my cousins about this ’cause that was Karl’s mum. And I couldn’t tell Rach ’cause, well.

The funeral was a glum thing in a glum old church, then we went back to our granny’s house in Sumner. Our granny was a short lady who chain-smoked and used to give us biscuits every night and told me I was bright. She and Dad didn’t get on very well. He didn’t even make it up for the funeral. There was a bit of bickering about this afterwards, back at Sumner, everyone still in their best clothes, us kids with food stains on ours now. It was dusk and we wanted to be out of there.

‘Don’t be late back,’ Aunty Susan said as we gathered shoes and sweatshirts. ‘We’re leaving first thing tomorrow.’

We ran along the beach.

‘Hurry up, slow pokes,’ Karl said to Ja and our other little cousin, Jess. Rach ran at the back with them.

‘That’s Cave Rock,’ Karl said, pointing ahead. It was this massive protruding rock, with a path up to the top and caves underneath.

‘I bet you’re too scared to go in,’ Karl said.

‘Am not,’ I said.

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Rachel started to argue with me but Ja stepped forward and stood next to me.

‘Am not too,’ he said.

So of course Rachel came as well.

The cave was dark, the only light reflected off a patch of water in the sand. Rach held Ja’s hand, and Jess’s. But we did it all right. We couldn’t even see up to tell what the rock was like, whether it was crumbly or bubbly or hard. Our cousin Elise shrieked but it was just ’cause she’d stepped in water. We got to the end all good and up onto the rocks, out of the cave and with the ocean crashing pretty close by our feet. We could look back at the shore, and over at the poo ponds and a few tall lights of the city and a strip of lights of Southshore. The rock was lumpy under our feet. Ja and Rach and that stood to my left.

Karl said, ‘Bet you’re scared to go through there,’ and he pointed to an arch to our right. The very furthest point of Cave Rock. There was water rushing through it but there was also a bit of a shelf of rock.

‘Sure I can,’ I said, wiping my arm across my forehead.

‘Don’t, Sam,’ Rach said quietly.

‘Sure I can,’ I said again. This was our shit cousin who laughed at Rach when she said, ‘You have armpits under your hairs,’ even though it was an honest mistake. Our cousin who tried to make us leave Ja behind at the funeral place. Our cousin who teased us ’cause Dad wasn’t there, as if we could do anything about it. Rach tried to hold my hand then—that was no small thing, those girl hands that I’d watched on the jungle gym, on the fence at the back of our place, on the edge of the Monopoly board—but I shook her off and started around the rocks. My eyes were used to the dark. Out there in the moonlight I could easily see the rock to the right to hold on to. My balance was fine. I played on the fort and up trees lots at the farm; on the bars in the milking shed when I could get away with it. So I was feeling good enough about it, but also had to be focused. I had these plans for if a big wave came up, I’d scramble up the rock-face. I came to a crevice where the water was lapping right below me and I had to stop. But I saw a ledge in the rock on my right, so I clambered along it, with my feet careful on the rock, my hands feeling along despite the sweat on them. Thinking, I’ll show you. Well, I got to the arch and of course it was fucking deep looking, and the water was pulsing page 164 through there and a big wave could have come at any point and I couldn’t even see what was beyond except cliff and the big ocean, smashing up. A wave splashed and soaked my pants and that’s when I thought, this is stupid. This is really stupid and my eight-year-old brother and ten-year-old sister are back there and it’s all stupid. Fuck Karl.

I could look ahead as I was going back, towards where I’d left the others. Only none of them were there. I looked harder in case my eyes just weren’t seeing them in the night, but nothing. I tried to walk as quick as I could. I didn’t think about waves anymore, just leapt over rock pools. When I got to that bit I’d climbed around before I took it in a running jump, landing heavy and sort of tumbling forward, onto my hands. But I stood up again and didn’t notice the blood. I was running now, my feet landing on sharp things or squeezing into holes but I kept running, back to where I’d left them. I watched the water all this time, trying to plan what I’d do. I had this stupid notion I’d swim and get them back and somehow not get smashed up against the rock, I don’t know. Ja could hardly even swim, he wasn’t confident at that sort of thing. So when I got there and I couldn’t see anything in the water, I found myself deciding they’d gone back into the cave—gone back to our granny’s even. Got sick of waiting for me and started walking home.

The cave was darker on my own and as I walked into it, I knew Rach wouldn’t just leave like that. The tide must have been coming in because already there was more water at my feet. And it was this terrible thing. I’ve never felt so shit as that night. Where the fuck were my brother and sister? Then I heard a snigger. Heard that fuck-off cousin Karl. So I walked towards the sound and basically into him in the dark.

‘Where are they?’ I said.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Where are Rach and Ja?’

‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘They went back or something.’

But I didn’t believe him.

‘Did they go into the water?’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘Don’t fucking maybe—’ I said. But I knew he was lying. Knew page 165 they weren’t in the water out there but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be in the water here.

I started running, through that cave—it was dark as—and he was running along behind me. I stopped and he ran into me, and I grabbed his T-shirt with both hands even though he was lots taller than me, and I said, ‘Where are they? What have you done with my brother and sister?’

‘She’s not your sister,’ he said.

I spat at him, right into his face and turned before he could punch me, and kept running. I heard it then, heard crying and around the next corner I found our next oldest cousin, Mark, with Rach pressed up against the wall, one hand around her neck and one over her mouth and all of this I could just make out as I ran towards them. He was pressed up against her, his whole body and Ja—Ja was right in there kicking at his legs and pulling at his top. Mark put his foot back and heaved Ja so he fell into the sand. I kept running, right at Mark and into him and we both fell down into the sand, me on top of him, and I started pummelling him. He got out, got on top of me and pinned me there, lifting my head up and banging it down only it was just into sand. Then he punched me, in the eye. Ja and Rach were on him, biting him and scratching him. And I squirmed out and we all ran, through the rest of the cave, the three of us running side by side, out of the cave into the light. Onto the beach, dry sand and up to our girl cousins, who were standing in a group.

‘Gosh,’ Elise said. ‘Are you okay?’

Rach nodded, and the three of us stood panting. Karl and Mark came up to us too, and walked past us.

‘Let’s get home,’ Karl said. And we nodded and started walking back. He didn’t even have to say, ‘Don’t say anything to the adults,’ because that’s what it was like. That’s how everything was like, then. We were outside, out in the light again, and that’s what it was like.

We were okay walking back, I knew that, and we’d probably be okay that night. Tomorrow we just had to sit somewhere good in the van and we’d just get pinched or Chinese burned, and when we got to the picnic ground for lunch, we’d have to wait till Karl was somewhere else before we went off anywhere. And mostly stay near our Aunty. And we’d be okay. Or, that’s what I thought. I waited till page 166 Karl and Mark and that had got ahead of us a little way, then I said, ‘You okay?’

‘I hate you,’ Rachel said. Tears down her face. Blood at the back of her head from where the cave wall must have been.

I didn’t even nod. I could feel my Achilles, the cuts on my hands, bruising on my chest. I kept walking along, eventually with Ja on my back. We went up onto the road, following the others up stone steps, me balancing Ja even though I couldn’t really see out of one eye. I saw a water fountain, and I put him down. Said, ‘Rach.’ She came over. ‘We have to get the blood out of your hair.’ I got the water cupped in my hand and took it up to her hair, tipped it on so it ran down, did that heaps of times till the blood was mostly gone. Even though our cousins were ahead of us and we’d have to find our way home. They wouldn’t get us again, but they would if we got home and Rach had blood on her head. It was okay that I had a black eye—the adults would just think it was boys mucking around.

So I got it all out of her hair, and she stood there with her shoulders slumped, tears still down her face. And I tried to wipe them off, with each of my thumbs, like someone who I once thought of as Mama used to do for me. My two thumbs across Rach’s cheekbones. But she just pushed me away and took Ja’s hand and started walking again.

The ride home was just like I thought it’d be. Except instead of us three all sitting in the front row together, Rach climbed into the back with Elise and Sophie. Aunty Susan got Karl to sit up the front and had the baby in between them. It was just me and Ja in the middle seat, and he was carsick, so he stank.

We got home before tea time. The ute wasn’t in the drive; no one answered when we knocked on the door. Aunty Susan stood behind us, holding some of our bags.

‘Dad must be on the farm,’ I said, since Rachel, who usually did that kind of talking, wasn’t saying anything.

‘Shit,’ Aunty Susan said. ‘That’s two k the wrong way. Where’s your mother, Rachel?’

Rach shrugged.

Aunty Susan sent me round the back to get in through the laundry. She wanted Ja to get changed. I climbed the tree and shimmied so I was straddled page 167 across the laundry window. There was plenty of room on the ledge by Dad’s fishing tackle box, so I could put my hand there flat easy. The plastic washing basket wasn’t on the floor. I walked down the hall to the front door. Rach and Ja were waiting there.

We went into our bedroom. Rach’s bed was gone. I pulled open each of the drawers—Ja’s and my stuff was there but not Rach’s. Rach, who still wasn’t talking to me, ran into the hall and Ja and I followed. Dad and Jo’s bedroom was a mess, the duvet gone, the cupboard open, Jo’s lipsticks and hairbrush gone from on top of the dresser.

There was a honk of a horn and we all jumped. We went back to the front door and pulled our bags into the hallway. Rach got a new T-shirt for Ja and helped him peel his off and put it on. Then we went out again.

We drove to the farm, past Dad’s boss’s place, up the raceway, to the milking shed. The ute was in the barn next to the boss’s 4WD, so Aunty Susan dropped us off by the shed and headed off. The shed was the exact same one as in our backyard, except it had ‘Bernie and Mal’s Dog Shed’ spray-painted on it in bright orange. During school weeks in winter we’d spent hours and hours in there, drawing and playing Checkers. Dad didn’t like us helping with the milking when his boss was there, and we weren’t allowed to play in the barn.

Rach sat at the table. I sat on the other chair. Ja looked at us both then sat on Rach’s knee. We didn’t draw and we didn’t play Checkers. Eventually Dad opened the door, his hands clean-ish but his overalls shitty and his face stubbly.

‘Hi kids,’ he said.

‘What happened to Rach’s stuff?’ I said.

‘Jo’s going across the ditch,’ Dad said. ‘Can’t keep waiting around here for an old bastard like me forever, can she?’

‘Where’s Mum?’ Rach said.

‘She’s coming to get you tonight,’ Dad said.

So we loaded into the ute, all four of us in the front seat ’cause Dad let us. And we kept our feet tucked up. We drove to the fish’n’chip shop and we got a hotdog and a pineapple ring each as well as chips. We drove home to eat them.

No one hugged goodbye when Rach left. There was just a honk page 168 outside which was Jo in a brown car. I stood in the doorway of the living room and watched Rach walk out with her bag on her back. Ja was smarter probably; he stood at the window watching. I went and stood next to him but Jo had already reversed out; I couldn’t see Rach in the front seat as they drove away.

Then Dad put his hands on our shoulders, and we went back and finished our fish’n’chips.