Getting Hitched Fiction -Colour Negative

By Myra King

My sister Jo pushed open the door and flopped onto my bed. I swivelled around from my computer and sighed; it was the third time that evening she’d disturbed me and frankly I was getting pissed off. This paper would not write itself. It was all right for her, she was finishing university but I was just getting back into the flow. I’d been out of the system for ten years now, the same as our age difference.

I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.

‘Hey Kayla.’ She sat up from the bounce. ‘Is venous blood more redder than the other sort?’

She always did this, ask nebulous questions. Her grammar left a lot to be desired too.

I sighed again, knowing that she wouldn’t leave until I gave some plausible answer.

‘Straight from the heart… it’s more oxygenated… I think.’ I struggled to turn the grey matter from my assignment about mid-century women writers to something more of the biological kind. ‘So yeah, it is a brighter red’.

Much to my dismay she stayed where she was. I knew then I was in for the long haul and it didn’t involve anything to do with her science homework.

It had been ten years too, since our mother had died, ten years and more stretching over a past taut with menial work at factories and stalls while still trying to nurse and nurture. No chance of going back to uni then.

Jo had only been twelve years old. Far too young to face the raw reality of such a loss. But old enough to remember what Mum was like, her compassion and her bravery. That had to be a good thing. I only wished I could be as courageous.

I put my computer on sleep mode, wishing I could join it and sat down as Jo hurriedly slid over to accommodate me. I looked at her flushed face and realised this could only be one thing.

‘Ok, Jo, who is it this time? Not the dreadlock guy?”

‘Who?’

I looked heavenward.

Jo smiled, ‘No, sis, not that one.’

She thrust what I’d assumed to be her science book at me. It turned out to be her year book with the page turned to the class of ’03.

She stabbed a finger at the photo. ‘That’s him, Alex, he’s the new exchange student.’

I withdrew my breath. The colour of his skin stood out like a negative.

‘Oh Jo, really, you can’t be serious, you know what Dad feels about all that.’

‘What, that Alex is from another country?’

I was sure she was being obtuse on purpose, stalling for time.

I suppose you could call our father strict and I guess it may seem old-fashioned that in this day and age I would worry about his opinion. But then he was supporting us. And I could see his point. They were different from us after all. And interracial marriages didn’t always work out.

Jo appeared to read my mind.

‘I just want to go out with the guy. It doesn’t mean we’ll be getting hitched or anything.’

I slumped back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, faint traces of fluorescence from tiny moons and stars held my gaze. I remembered the day Mum helped me put them up.

‘It will just be like being outside at night, Kayla. Look, here is the Milky Way, our solar system. And this one could be Alpha Centauri.’

I couldn’t find them now.

As the time came closer to when Mum would be ‘leaving’ as she called it, we’d both lie on my bed looking at the stars but not saying anything. Just being together was enough.

Leaving. It conjures up a return or at least some sort of correspondence when you arrive. But there could be no missives from where she was going.

When I go into her room I can still smell the last days. Oh, the doctors did what they could which was less than what they would have if we’d had money.

I think Dad blamed himself for that, too, for being downsized almost at the same time as his wife had been diagnosed with cancer.

‘Kayla,’ the last syllable drawn out, ‘you’re not listening. Look, all I want you to do is cover for me. Alex will be going back next term. We just want a bit of fun. He’s such great company.’

“I don’t know, Jo, you’re supposed to be concentrating on your assignments.’

It was a weak attempt to dissuade her. She always got high distinctions.

She took my continuing silence as capitulation and left just as quickly as she had entered, her voice disembodied but still discernable in her wake. ‘Kayla, I need the computer in ten minutes, ok?’ Once again she didn’t wait for an answer.

Two weeks later I had a repeat performance. With all the preparation for the end of year exams I had forgotten all about her and Alex.

This time I didn’t bother giving her the look; instead I turned off the computer and trawled the chair over to where she lay sprawled on the bed.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out what this was about.

‘Kayla, this is it. The real thing, I am really, truly and madly in love.’ Sometimes it was hard to believe she was twenty-two years old, the same age as I was when Mum died.

I patted her knee but said nothing. Experience told me not to interrupt.

‘We honestly have everything in common, he loves Robbie Williams and James Blunt and...’

‘So did the last guy, whats’is name,’ I snapped. ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to get too serious, Jo. You know Dad will never accept him even on a temporary basis.’

‘Christ, Kayla. Why d’you always have to worry about Dad. You haven’t had a life because of him, having to nurse Mum for all those years and then run the house and everything.’

I put up my hand. ‘That’s enough. It’s because of Dad I’ve been able to quit working at Mckinnons and go back to uni. And he’s given you all the breaks too.’

‘That’s it, isn’t it, Kayla? You blame me. You’d be happy if I ended up just like you. Thirty-two with no one. You’ve always been…’ Jo clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Kayla, I didn’t mean it’. She jumped off the bed and hugged me.

I straightened my arms, pushing away her embrace.

‘What do you want me to do, Jo?’

‘Just meet him. Judge him for himself.’

‘I don’t know’.

‘Honestly, sometimes I think you are as biased as Dad.’

And so here I am at senior campus where the kids are younger than I. I see him striding towards me and recognise him from the photo. Alex, all six foot two of him.

I still don’t know. I don’t know what I will say to Dad to smooth the waters for Jo. I don’t even know if Alex and Jo will ever amount to anything more than her first premise. Just for fun, she had said before the tide had turned to serious. I certainly don’t know how I will tell Dad that I have invited Alex to dinner on Saturday night.

We shake and I look down, see my black hand entwined with his white one. The contrast is there but there is no real difference.

***

© Myra King 2008
 
Myra King is an internationally-published Australian writer and a member of the Deakin Literary Society and Ballarat Creative Writers. Her achievements include being shortlisted for the EJ Brady Short Story Award and being a winner in the Global Short Story Competition.

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