Thanks for Having Me Emma Darragh

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 PRAISE FOR

Thanks for Having Me

‘A moving tale about the joy and despair of motherhood, told in

fragments which come together in stark clarity. Vivid, poignant,
hopeful. You will laugh and cry with the people in these pages.’
—Nina Wan, author of The Albatross

‘Thanks for Having Me is a masterful debut about fear, love, self and
other, and how sweet and sordid an ordinary life is. Darragh has
sewn together the parts we don’t always see, and the patchwork is
wonky and beautiful.’
—Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Cherry Beach

‘Emma has captured something rare and true with this book. A truly
original novel about maternal ambivalence, the ferocity of maternal
love, and what binds us to our sisters. I was so moved.’
—Bridie Jabour, author of Trivial Grievances

‘With this smart, funny, heartbreaking book, Emma Darragh bursts

onto the scene as your new favourite Australian writer. Thanks for
Having Me is a story about mothers, how they make you, and how
they make you crazy. How does Darragh do it? How does she pack
so much into these stories, these characters? How does she make
them feel so lived-in, so completely whole and real? Only one thing
is certain: we are lucky to have her.’
—Hayley Scrivenor, author of Dirt Town
Emma Darragh lives and works in Wollongong, on Dharawal Country.
She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of
Wollongong, and her writing has appeared in numerous Australian
publications, including Cordite, Westerly, Meniscus, TEXT and The
Big Issue Fiction Edition. Emma works as a sessional academic in the
School of the Arts, English and Media at the University of
Wollongong. Her website is https://emmadarragh.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in 2024

Copyright © Emma Darragh 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in
writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a
maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to
be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes
provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a
remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have
any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the
publishers at the address below.

Joan, an imprint of
Allen & Unwin
Cammeraygal Country
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Allen & Unwin acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Country on which we
live and work. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Elders, past and present.

ISBN 978 1 76147 101 8

eISBN 978 1 76118 855 8
Typeset by Bookhouse, Sydney

Cover design: Alissa Dinallo

Cover image: Stocksy
For Cohen, Bell and Des
 Thanks for Having Me

Part One
Locard’s Exchange Principle
Chugger
Tsunami
Family Tree
Dear Jane
Pull
Ghosts
Spiral
What We Might Become
The New Place
All Grown Up
Trifle

Part Two
Gumtree
Push
Unfamiliar
Camp
The Chop
Mum
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Lucky
Playing Dead
Too Many Tabs
Girls. Girls. Girls.
Recognition
Jasmine
The Twinhood

Part Three
Foley
Making the Bed
The Loop
Back to Bed
Enough
Adult Decisions
Left
L’appel du vide
Morticia and Me
The Right Note

Acknowledgements
 Locard’s Exchange Principle

I’M GOING TO be a cold case investigator. I’m going to track down

people who’ve gone missing and reunite them with their families.
You already know that criminals leave DNA at crime scenes. In
saliva and blood. In semen. In skin cells, too. Mature red blood cells
don’t contain DNA but white blood cells do and so does plasma. The
Golden State Killer left his DNA everywhere in the 1970s, before
most people even knew what DNA was. It’s a good thing the cops
kept it anyway. He was caught in 2018 when investigators added his
DNA sequence to a public database. They found him through his
family tree when he was seventy-two years old.
People are doing buccal swabs and sending their DNA away to be
analysed and then it can be used to make a genetic family tree.
People find long-lost cousins and twins they never knew they had.
DNA determines what you look like. Your phenotype. Whether
you’ll get your mother’s dark hair or your father’s blond. Whether
your skin will burn in the sun.
And DNA determines if you’ll find it hard to know when you’ve had
enough to eat or not. Whether you like to get up early in the
morning or sleep late. And whether you’ll have anxiety or depression
or bipolar disorder. Whether you’ll get divorced and become an
alcoholic and embarrass yourself at parties.
You leave DNA everywhere you go. When you ride the bus you
leave DNA on the pole you hold, on the button you press, on the
umbrella you forget to take with you—epithelial cells everywhere.
That’s Locard’s Exchange Principle.
Every contact leaves a trace.
 Chugger

VIVIAN SEES THEM as soon as she steps onto the escalator. Charity
collectors. Chuggers. Bright yellow t-shirts, iPads in sturdy protective
cases, dangling lanyards.
It’s a little after four pm and it seems like every single person in
Wollongong is two-stepping their way through the lower food court
to avoid these big-teethed, tanned-skinned teenagers.
She just needs a few things from Coles before her doctor’s
appointment this afternoon. Trouble sleeping, weight gain, a bit of
spotting, definitely not pregnant.
She steps off the escalator, adjusting her stride to walk close
behind an old guy in high-vis to use him as a shield, to avoid
confrontation.
She’s making a shopping list in her head. Evie is coming over after
school tomorrow and will be disappointed if there isn’t popcorn for
popping, if there isn’t a pile of pancakes for breakfast the next
morning. It’s not that Evie’s spoilt. Evie would probably notice the
empty fridge and offer Vivian all her pocket money. It’s that Vivian
knows she keeps letting Evie down, in the smallest of ways, and
can’t seem to help it.
A few steps ahead a woman with a baby strapped to her chest
gets stopped by the female chugger.
Vivian sticks close to old mate in high-vis.
‘Excuse me, sir! Can I have a moment of your time?’ A guy. Some
kind of British accent. Of course.
‘Fuck off, mate,’ says High-vis, shooing the guy and accelerating.
 The chugger steps into Vivian’s path.
Mole on his right eyelid. Sleeves rolled up just enough to reveal a
ring of waves tattooed around his bicep.
She would love to tell him to fuck off, to shoo him and barge past
—but she can’t, because for a moment she feels sorry for this guy.
His shitty tattoo. He has bills to pay, just like her.
And besides: she’s flanked by the baby-wearing woman to her
right and a pair of pensioners on her left. She’s polite.
‘I’m sorry, I really don’t have—’
‘Don’t break my heart! Just one minute? Pretty please?’
To her right, the girl chugger talks on and on while the woman
with the baby rocks from side to side on the balls of her feet. The
baby looks about two months old: wide-eyed, rubbing its tiny fist
along its gums. Its legs in the yellow jumpsuit kick its mother’s
thighs.
‘Do you care about animals?’ the guy asks, pointing at her with his
stylus. His fingernails are short and clean.
Vivian reckons that baby will be screaming soon—needs a feed
and a sleep by the looks of things. The mother jigs a little more
aggressively but the girl just keeps hair-flicking, oblivious. Vivian
would like a feed and a sleep, too. Her dreams last night—all this
week, actually—have been vivid and violent, jolting her awake each
night with a shot of adrenaline, making it almost impossible to go
back to sleep.
‘Miss?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you care about animals?’ The guy smiles, all teeth.
The baby is fussing now. The mother pats its bottom through the
carrier. Vivian looks back to the guy, his mole, his patchy facial hair.
‘Bum fluff’ they used to call it at school.
The hungry baby is crying now. She can’t stand here a moment
longer.
‘Do I care about animals? No, not really,’ she says. Vivian tightens
her grip on her handbag and pushes past him. The tip of his stylus
snags on her cardigan sleeve, but then she’s free.
 She detaches a basket from the stack at the entrance to Coles.
Don’t break my heart! Please.
‘Sultans of Swing’ is playing on Coles Radio and she’s struck
homesick for some experience she doesn’t know whether she ever
really had: being small, three or four years old, walking beside her
mother in the supermarket at Dapto, her mother humming along to
‘Money for Nothing’.
Vivian weaves her way through the fruit and veg section, feeling
like she’s the props mistress for a stage show. She usually gets by
with very little, but Evie’s visit is special and her nostalgia is replaced
by a feeling of abundance. I have enough money, she tells herself,
willing it to be true. And suddenly it is true. She has enough money
for full-price strawberries. For shiny pink apples. For bananas—but
apparently Evie hates bananas now. When did that happen? Vivian
would mash banana after banana for Baby Evie. She couldn’t get
enough of them back then.
Vivian sings along with Mark Knopfler. When she went grocery
shopping with her mother they’d have to go to the bank first and
take cash out to pay with because EFTPOS wasn’t around back then.
When they were done, her mother would open the Tarago’s boot
and Vivian would help her load it up with plastic bags, excited to get
home and unpack them all to see what was inside. There was a
magical transition from things being groceries that belonged to the
store to the things that Vivian’s mother would cook for dinner, or the
soap they kept in the shower.
Hand soap. She’s been stretching it out for so long now that she
just pumps out water whenever she washes her hands. And she’s
been using a roll of toilet paper instead of a box of tissues. Tissues.
She passes the dairy case. Yes, she should get a tub of organic
vanilla yoghurt. She should buy a package of Cumberland sausages.
She’ll fry them and make mashed potatoes, or maybe cook them up
in the morning with scrambled eggs to go with the pancakes.
It seems like everything is on special and everyone is happy,
pulling packages from shelves, filling up their trolleys and baskets,
thinking about the meals they’ll make.
 She consults her list and weaves through the other shoppers. She
gets the hand soap and the tissues but they’re out of cocktail
umbrellas.
A song comes on that Vivian doesn’t recognise: something half-
electronic, half-Bollywood soundtrack. The feeling of abundance
evaporates. The overhead lights are bright white, not some nostalgic
sepia.
Her basket drags on her arm, digs into her elbow crease. It’ll be
tight getting this stuff home and refrigerated before her
appointment. Trouble sleeping, mood swings, erratic menstrual
cycle.
She lines up behind a young couple, both with dreadlocks, both
barefoot. She checks her phone—4.25. If she goes home now she
won’t make it back in time for her appointment. She’ll have to lug it
all with her and hope it stays cool. Sausages. Yoghurt. Milk. Caramel
& honeycomb ice cream.
The clean-cut kid on the checkout smiles and asks how she is and
she says she’s fine but her lungs suddenly feel too big for her
ribcage. She tries to focus on her breath while he scans and bags
her groceries.
He has a wide blue Band-Aid wrapped around his thumb like it’s a
birthday present.
Her card declines.
Blood rushes up her back and neck, into her face. The kid smiles
through his braces with sympathy.
‘Happens all the time,’ he says.
She fishes her phone from her handbag and logs into her banking
app. She doesn’t have enough for the abundance: sausages,
yoghurt, ice cream, hand soap.
‘Can you just take off a few things?’ she asks. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sure.’
‘The sausages. And the yoghurt.’
He rescans the items like a movie in rewind.
‘And the hand soap,’ she says.
She leaves with four plastic bags and $2.58 left in her account. It’s
heavy enough without the extras anyway. Her neck is sore. She tilts
her head from side to side to stretch it out. She’ll get paid tonight.
The chuggers are still there but she’s determined to barge past
them now. They shouldn’t stop her again.
But they do.
Bum Fluff calls out, ‘Hey, pretty lady!’
Vivian keeps walking.
Then she sees movement in her periphery. She’s dropped
something. Heat flooding her face, she stops. Turns.
But, of course, she hasn’t dropped anything.
He’s there, unfolding from his crouch, smiling up at her. That smile
—like nobody’s ever said no to him before. Those fingernails.
In one swift motion, Vivian launches a fist into his face. It
connects with his eye socket. Her grocery bags swing and bash into
his chest.
She strides away, hot and fast, without looking back. She rides the
escalator up and exits the mall. She’s like a charged battery. She
doesn’t stop walking until she gets to the traffic lights. Nobody is
looking at her. Nobody is chasing her.
It isn’t until she jabs the button at the lights that she feels any
pain in her hand—it looks sunburnt and swollen. She peers into her
bags and locates the carton of eggs, opens the lid. None is broken.
She carries everything in her left hand, the plastic bag handles
cutting into her palm.
When she gets home she searches for an ice pack but she doesn’t
even have a bag of peas so she has to settle for a stream of cold
water from the kitchen tap. But she can’t stand still.
She misses her appointment.
For the rest of the afternoon she does everything southpaw: loads
her groceries onto the kitchen bench and into the refrigerator,
scrambles eggs with a fork, butters her toast, eats standing at the
sink.
Eventually she turns the TV on. Her left thumb isn’t as dexterous
as her right but she flicks through the channels until she gets to the
local news.
Police have arrested a man accused of robbing a Unanderra
service station using a set of bike handlebars for a weapon.
 Police are appealing for information regarding the theft of seven
firearms from a gun safe in a Keiraville residence.
A professional fundraiser was assaulted this afternoon in
Wollongong Central. Daniel Fitch, a commerce student studying at
the University of Wollongong, was punched in the face just after
four-thirty pm. Police are urging witnesses to come forward. The
assailant is described as a Caucasian woman in her mid-thirties with
dark hair, wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans. The following
footage may disturb some viewers.
Vivian’s hand burns in her lap.
The screen fills with the CCTV footage. Grainy, captured from a
camera mounted up high. There he is, the boy, Bum Fluff, blond.
Seconds later, the woman Vivian knows must be her enters the
frame. She is dark and indistinct—her body a black blur, her face a
small white oval. But there is a sharpness to her gait. From this
angle she appears to bear down on the boy, his arms outstretched.
He crouches. She stops. She spins round like a wraith and her fist
connects with his head. The boy topples out of his crouch.
The footage stops there and is replaced with a freeze frame from
a different angle. Vivian leans forward, crawls on both hands
towards the TV screen. She feels the hot throbbing of her hand
throughout her whole body now.
There she is. But it isn’t really her—it can’t be. It’s not her face.
No, it’s a mask—a white mask, the kind of cheap white mask actors
wear. Her features are hard and her lips are a colourless line. Her
eyes look more like eyeholes than actual eyes.
She turns off the TV and puts her phone on charge. Vomits into
the toilet bowl: eggs, bread, orange juice that burns her throat on its
way up.
She won’t be caught. And she won’t lose her temper like that ever
again. Next week, she’ll make an appointment to see the doctor
about the weight and the spotting and the sleeping. Once the
swelling has gone down.
What charity had he been working for anyway? She can’t recall.
But she does remember one weekend when Evie, standing in her
socks in front of the kitchen cupboards, had held up a jar of Nutella.
 ‘This has palm oil in it,’ she’d said.
‘What does that mean?’ Vivian had asked.
‘Supporting palm oil means you’re supporting the destruction of
the orangutan’s habitat. We learned about it in HSIE.’
She’d gone through the cupboards, pulling out everything that had
palm oil in it.
Hand burning, Vivian checks her banking app and, seeing she’s
been paid, pays her rent, her phone bill, and then googles orangutan
charities.
 Tsunami

MUM MAKES EGGS for us every day. Fried eggs she calls ‘sunny side up’
and scrambled eggs and, one morning, a cheesy omelette with
green leaves in it.
Sometimes Dad works and sometimes he doesn’t but Mum works
at a shop in town. She puts on a black skirt and a black shirt and
golden earrings and she leaves in the morning and comes back at
dinnertime. For lunch, Dad always makes him and me peanut butter
sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and we take our plates into the
lounge room and watch ABC Kids together.
One day, when Mum is at work, Dad watches TV all day. Not
Octonauts, Olivia, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Timmy Time or Mister
Maker. He watches THE NEWS.
‘Dad, this is boring.’
‘Evie, it’s not boring. This is important. Look.’
I sit beside him on the lounge.
‘There was a tsunami—a big wave—in Japan this morning. Look, it
climbed over the sea wall and hit land. People only had eight to ten
minutes.’
Cars are swimming on the street. Water is bubbling around the
wheels and making the cars bob up and down. Cars crash into each
other. There is a man with a mask on his nose and mouth, sitting on
top of his car like it’s a surfboard, like cartoon Caillou on his little red
boat out at sea. He needs to get off. There is another person still
inside their floating car, winding down their window. People are
climbing up buildings. Japan is drowning.
 ‘What if they can’t swim, Dad?’
‘Dad, could that happen to our beach? Dad?’
Whoosh—like if you took all your toys into the bath: farm animals
and Hot Wheels and dollhouse furniture. And little dolls. Whoosh.
The water comes like when Mum forgot she was filling up the sink
to wash the dishes because she was in the lounge room arguing
with Dad. A giant cloud of bubbles on the sink, water rushing across
the kitchen floor.
I like the beach but I can’t swim yet.
‘Dad, I’m hungry.’
‘Dad? I’m hungry.’
He gets up and makes me my peanut butter sandwich. He washes
four strawberries under the tap and puts them on my plate.
Mum comes home from work and makes dinner. Some nights it’s
fishcakes with mashed potatoes and broccoli. Sometimes it’s
minestrone with buttery, seedy toast. Or bangers and mash and
green peas. Or meat pie and green peas and mashed potatoes. Or
spaghetti and salad. Always, there are onions.
When I go to kindergarten, she cuts carrots into sticks and makes
sandwiches with ham and cheese and sweet yellow pickles for my
lunchbox.
I wonder if Dad is eating peanut butter sandwiches without me.
She makes me Vegemite and cheese rice cakes that are a bit soft
and chewy by lunchtime. And ants on logs out of celery and peanut
butter and sultanas—until halfway through term one when the
teacher gives me a note saying no peanut butter allowed. In term
two she bakes things late at night. She makes Milo slice and Anzac
brownies.
Dad meets me at the school gate with his hands in his pockets
and his eyes on the ground. We don’t talk on the walk home but he
makes me hold his hand when we cross the road.
Mum’s still at work and the house is quiet. In the kitchen, I can
smell peanut butter and Dad asks, ‘How was school?’ And I ask,
‘How was home?’ He laughs and goes to the fridge to find some fruit
for afternoon tea. He looks and looks in there. He moves things
around and keeps looking. It feels like he’s been watching tsunamis
again.
Mum makes blueberry muffins when Dad and I have already gone
to bed. They are there in the morning, eleven of them in a plastic
container on top of the microwave. The twelfth one is already in my
lunchbox.
 Family Tree

IT’S A SUNDAY near the end of term and Susan’s making a family tree
for a school assignment. So we’re in Mum’s room, looking for her old
photo albums, the ones from before we were born. The blinds are
down and it’s dim and stuffy. She’s out in the kitchen, on the phone
to someone, and she said she doesn’t care if we root around in here.
Just don’t take her chocolate.
Unlike the rest of our house, her room is kind of a pigsty. There
are coffee cups on the tallboy and the bedside table, and plastic
shopping bags with rubbish in them are lined up near the ensuite.
We’re only ever in here if she sends us to find something for her—
cigarettes or a package of Twirls or Fruit & Nut she has in the
bottom bedside drawer. Other than that, the door is never open. Dad
doesn’t even sleep in here anymore. He lives in the spare room at
the other end of the house.
The albums could be anywhere. Susan’s here for the photos but
I’m here to snoop around. Mum’ll be ages on the phone and if she
comes in, well, I’m here helping Susan.
The mirrored door of her built-in wardrobe is off the track a bit. I
grip it down the bottom and heave it back on. It doesn’t slide open
easily, though. There’s hair and crap stuck to the wheel and it makes
a gritty sound. Our mother usually keeps the Christmas presents in
here. Susan’s twelve and still believes in Santa, apparently, but last
year in November I saw the Baby Loves to Talk doll she unwrapped
on Christmas morning.
 No presents today, though. Just clothes hanging from a rod and
underneath them, where the presents should be, is a sagging plastic
shoe rack. None of the shoes are in pairs, they’re all just mingling
together: a ballet flat on top of a running shoe, clogs on top of
sandals. Next to the rack is a pair of cowboy boots. Cool.
‘I think they’re in here,’ Susan says.
I turn away from the wardrobe and close the door. Susan’s under
the bed, her skinny white legs poking out.
‘I think they’re in this box but I can’t get it.’
There’s all kinds of stuff under the bed. A lot of crumpled tissues
and chocolate wrappers. A green suitcase. An old sunhat I’ve never
seen before.
The box Susan wants is wide and dusty and one of its cardboard
flaps is caught on the slats of the bed. I untuck the flap and we haul
it out of there, bringing a heap of dust bunnies with it.
Inside the box are a couple of photo albums and a faded plastic
Marlboro bag. Inside the bag are letters and birthday cards and
autograph books and lots of loose photos. They aren’t shiny and
smooth and glossy like the photos I get back from the photo shop.
These ones are kind of matte and textured. The colours aren’t as
bright.
Susan pulls a big album onto her lap. The pages are black and the
photos have been stuck down under big sheets of plastic, not in
clear individual envelopes like a normal album. She’s looking for a
picture of Mum’s grandfather because she reckons he did some
interesting things that will be good for her assignment.
I’m looking for pictures of her old boyfriends and old cars and cool
old outfits. Susan moves on to the next album but I keep thumbing
through the loose photos: young women in blue nurse uniforms
smile and stand with their arms around each other’s waists, little
watches glinting on their chests; random kids I’ve never seen before
play with a brown dog; another set of random kids play with the
brown dog; my grandparents with fewer wrinkles on their faces,
standing awkwardly in a brown and beige room.
‘Who’s this?’ I ask Susan, holding out a picture of a tall, tanned
woman in a bikini. Her body is tight. You can see her ribs and her
hip bones. She wears a string bikini and laughs at the camera. She
reminds me of Kate Moss.
‘I dunno,’ Susan says, glancing up before going back to another
album.
I take the photo out to the kitchen and hold it up to Mum, who is
still on the phone, listening and smoking.
She smiles and blows smoke into the air. She shifts, stands up a
bit straighter.
‘Who’s this?’ I ask her.
She puts her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s me.’
In the photo, Mum is MARY ANNE 1976, and Mary Anne is nothing
like my mother. She’s twenty years old, a young nurse on her day
off, with her clothes off, at the beach.
I take it to my room and slip it between the pages of my
Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary.

‘What did you do with that photo, Vivian?’ Mum asks at dinner.
‘I put it back where I found it,’ I say. I take a forkful of my
fishcake.
The next day at lunch Gabby, Jess and I go to the library and pull
last month’s Dolly and Girlfriend off the magazine rack. Kate Moss is
in both magazines, of course. She’s in all our magazines and our
mothers’ magazines and the magazines at the hairdresser’s and the
doctor’s surgery. Calvin Klein and Obsession. In leather on a
motorcycle. Black and white and big eyes.
‘Is she really that hot?’ Gabby asks.
‘She’s a supermodel,’ Jess says. Her fingernails are the shortest,
most bitten fingernails I’ve ever seen. I can’t look at them.
Gabby holds Kate up to us. ‘I mean, is she just hot, like sexy, or is
she pretty, too?’
‘She’s everything,’ I say.
‘She’s not that pretty, really,’ Gabby decides.
‘Look how cool she is,’ says Jess.
 ‘And …’ I say, holding up a copy of Girlfriend, ‘Could you be
Pamela Anderson’s next beach buddy?’ I read from the cover and roll
my eyes. Honestly, how old do they think we are? ‘If you can’t be
hot, be cool.’
Pam is impossible, a glorious living Barbie doll. Huge, eye-catching
breasts mounted on her chest. The same raunchy eyebrows as my
mother.
‘Hey,’ I say. I reach into my backpack and pull out the photo to
show Gabby and Jess.
‘Wow, look at her tits!’ Gabby says, a bit too loudly for the library.
A couple of senior girls walk past us, squinting their eyes. ‘Those are
a C for sure,’ Gabby whispers.
‘You’ll probably get tits like that,’ says Jess.
I hope so. We’re in Year 8 now and I’m sick of this A-cup business.
Gabby already wears a C. And the three of us have decided not to
call them boobs anymore. It’s so childish and ridiculous. It’s breasts
from now on. Or tits—even though it’s a bit pornographic.
‘I’m not the biggest fan of those eyebrows,’ Jess says.
They’re skimpy pencil lines, unnatural, surprised-looking. Just like
Pam’s.
Gabby uses her teeth to tear off a piece of pink Roll-Up she’s
snuck in. ‘Your mum is still hot,’ she says, chewing.
‘You reckon?’
‘Yeah. I mean for a woman in her mid-to-late thirties.’ She
swallows and uses her fingers to stretch out the last of her Roll-Up.
‘Of course, at her age she’s put on a few pounds. Not as many as
my mum though.’
‘What about your mum, Jess?’ I ask.
Jess looks up from my photo and hands it back to me. She shrugs
and pushes her fringe out of her eyes.
I tuck the photo away and feel reassured that this is what I have
to look forward to: real breasts and a waist and a flat stomach, and
long, smooth thighs. No more puppy fat or sad little lumps. Yeah,
Kate is it for me. Kate is actually attainable.
I get home from school and walk in through the back door, quietly,
because Mum is sleeping on the lounge in the family room. Susan’s
already home: a plate with half a chocolate chip biscuit left on it sits
on the kitchen bench beside a half-drunk glass of milk. Weirdo. My
stomach grumbles at the sight of that biscuit but today’s the
beginning of my diet. I tell myself to be strong. Resolute.
I walk through and find Susan in the lounge room and her family
tree is on a piece of cardboard that’s almost as big as the coffee
table. Three of the four corners of the cardboard are held down with
a heavy book: dictionary; Shakespeare; Susan’s old pink Sunday
school Bible. She leans over the fourth, unanchored corner, her
tongue poking out of her mouth, as she draws intricate veins on the
leaves with her lead pencil. The outline of the tree is already there.
Susan is a way better drawer than me. It’s majestic. There are
even little ovals where she’s going to stick the photos.
‘You know everyone else is just going to use the thing Mrs
Brocklehurst gave out,’ I say. The worksheet I’d done for the same
assignment, for the same teacher, two years ago when I was in Year
6.
‘So what?’ Susan replies.
She clearly wants to be alone to do this but now I’m in the mood
to annoy her, so I lie on the lounge and open up one of the photo
albums. There are a ton of pictures of people I don’t recognise. I
find a black and white one of my nan—I can tell it’s her because her
hair is the exact same style as it is now and I recognise the kitchen
table. She’s holding a cake covered with candles. There’s one of Pop
in a hospital room, holding a baby. There are a few empty spaces in
here, too. Then I find one of a little girl holding her baby doll. She
must have just received it for her birthday because she’s wearing a
pink paper crown—like the kind you get in Christmas crackers but
taller. She’s looking at the camera and smiling.
‘Is this Mum?’ I hold the album out to Susan.
‘Yeah.’
 ‘Where are the photos from when she was our age?’
‘They’re packed away somewhere. You know. Aunty Julie’s in a lot
of them.’
I close the book and go to the cupboard underneath the display
cabinets that have the random salt-and-pepper shakers in them.
That’s where we keep our family albums. I find what I’m looking for
and hold it up to show Susan.
‘Hey, check this out.’
There’s me, looking into the camera, holding my own camera—an
old one I used to carry everywhere, pretending to take photos. Side
by side we’re like twins, me and my mother.
I hear a teaspoon in a coffee cup and know that Mum is up off the
lounge, awake. I take my backpack upstairs and try to find my
Claudia Schiffer Perfectly Fit workout video.

I almost stick to my diet the next day. I have half an apple for
breakfast. Half a bread roll at recess. At lunch, I sniff Gabby’s empty
KitKat package and drink all the water in my drink bottle. But it’s no
good, I’m so hungry I can’t chuck my ham sandwich in the bin. I
basically eat the whole thing in five bites.
It’s a three kay walk from school. Sometimes I catch the bus and
sometimes I walk with my neighbour, Matty. Today I’m walking
because I want to burn off the sandwich. But I have to walk alone
because Matty has footy practice. We have some interesting
conversations, Matty and me. My backpack is sticking to my back by
the time I get home and that sandwich must be gone because I’m
starving, delirious, and when I walk through the back door I almost
trip over Susan’s backpack.
For once, Mum is awake. She’s leaning over the kitchen bench,
across from Susan who sits on a high stool. They’re colouring the
leaves on the family tree. Mum’s sharpening the tips of every blue
pencil and letting the shavings fall onto the cardboard. She starts
rubbing them gently with her fingertips.
 It’s like when Susan and I were young and the three of us would
sit colouring together, sharing the pencils, complimenting each
other’s work.
‘Can I help?’ I ask, letting my backpack slide to the floor.
‘No,’ Susan says.
I pick my bag back up again, sling it over one shoulder.
‘Fine,’ I say and go to the cupboard. I can’t help it, I have to eat
something. I should make afternoon tea for myself right there, and
then whoops! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. Spill orange juice all over
Susan’s perfect tree.
‘How was school?’ Mum asks without looking up.
I turn around and see the side of her face—she’s got her tongue
poking out, just like Susan. She’s wearing shorts that are a little too
short today and I can see the veins on the backs of her knees. And
cellulite on her pasty white thighs.
‘It was okay,’ I say. ‘What’s there to eat?’
‘There’s fruit in the bowl.’
I knew she’d say that. A couple of freckly bananas and a
disgusting red delicious apple.
‘Those are the wrong kind of apples.’
‘Well, have a banana.’
I haven’t starved myself all day to eat a bad banana. ‘The bananas
are past it,’ I say.
‘Past what?’ Mum asks.
‘They’re too ripe.’
‘Oh, Vivian. Have a biscuit or something. It’s nearly tea, anyway.’
‘What is it?’
‘Pasta bake.’
I open the freezer and pull out the last blue Zooper Dooper.
‘Hey, that’s mine!’ Susan says.
‘No, it’s not. Your name’s not on it.’
‘Vivian, we agreed, remember?’
‘No, I don’t remember.’
I grab the scissors from the drawer and take the ice block to the
sink to cut off its top. I chuck the plastic in the bin and start sucking,
loudly.
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K. F. Koehler, Verlag, Leipzig Geogr. Anst. v. Wagner & Debes, Leipzig

Westlicher Teil
Östlicher Teil
 Zu Lettow-Vorbeck, Ostafrika
Marsch des Hauptteils der Schutztruppe
vom April 1916 bis November 1918 (Waffenstillstand)
Nördlicher Teil
Südlicher Teil
 Tirpitz
Erinnerungen
Ein stattlicher Band von 526 Seiten mit Bild des
Verfassers
Preis geh. M. 20.—, in vornehmem Einband,
Titelzeichnung von Prof. Tiemann, M. 25.—
Die Lektüre dieses Buches wird für jeden folgerichtig denkenden
Deutschen ein erschütterndes Ereignis bedeuten. Der gefürchtetste
Gegner unserer Feinde spricht zu uns. Der Einzige, der mit genialem Blick
den Weg zum Siege erkannte, enthüllt, wie man ihn kaltstellte. Tiefster
Schmerz um alles Große, das uns verloren ging, spricht aus diesen
Blättern, aber auch ein fester, stolzer Wille zum ehrenvollen Weiterleben.
„Vom Deutschtum zu retten, was noch zu retten ist, bleibt des
Schweißes der Edlen wert. Unsere Hoffnung aber sei das kommende
Geschlecht. Ein Sklavenvolk sind wir noch nie gewesen. Seit
zweitausend Jahren hat unser Volk nach jähem Sturz immer wieder
sich emporgehoben.“
Mögen diese Worte, in denen die „Erinnerungen“ ausklingen, im ganzen
deutschen Volke Widerhall finden.
 Stein
Generalquartiermeister und Kriegsminister a. D.

Erlebnisse und Betrachtungen

aus der Zeit des Weltkrieges
Preis geh. M. 10.—, in vornehmem Einband,
Titelzeichnung von Prof. Tiemann, M. 14.50
Aus einer Zuschrift an den Verlag: Es wird Ihnen als Verleger eine Freude
sein, zu hören, daß ich seit Jahren kein Buch mit solchem Genuß und
solcher Ergriffenheit gelesen habe, als dieses. Zunächst rein äußerlich,
dieser großartige Stil, diese kurzen Sätze, wie gehacktes Eisen. Das ist
die echte deutsche Soldatensprache. Dann aber inhaltlich dieser Spiegel,
der dem deutschen Volke vorgehalten wird.
D i e s e s B u c h m u ß d i e B i b e l d e s d e u t s c h e n Vo l k e s w e r d e n .
Die Kapitel „Reichstag“, „Regierung“, „Heer“ sind das Beste, was ich über
diese Dinge je gelesen habe.

K . F. K o e h l e r Ve r l a g L e i p z i g
 Generaloberst Freiherr von
Hausen
Erinnerungen an den
Marnefeldzug
Mit Bildnis des Verfassers, verschiedenen
Karten und Gefechtsskizzen und einer
einleitenden vortrefflichen historischen Studie
von
Friedrich M. Kircheisen
Preis geheftet etwa M. 10.—, gebunden etwa M. 14.50
Generaloberst von Hausen war zu Beginn des Krieges Führer der 3.
Armee, die dem Gegner an der Marne solche kraftvolle Schläge versetzte,
daß Joffre und Foch jeden Augenblick glaubten, das französische
Zentrum würde durchbrochen werden.
Hausen hat die Operationen seiner Armee musterhaft geleitet, trotzdem er
an Typhus erkrankt war. Seine Erkrankung war tatsächlich der Grund, daß
er vom Kaiser seines Kommandos enthoben wurde, während die Legende
sich bildete, daß Hausen an der nichtgewonnenen Schlacht schuld sei.
Hausens Erinnerungen bedeuten eine
Ehrenrettung der 3. Armee und ihres Führers.
Sie basieren auf den Unterlagen des Großen Generalstabes, die ihm zur
Verfügung standen, und sind untermischt mit höchst lebenswarmen
persönlichen Eindrücken, so daß nicht etwa ein militärtechnisches oder
polemisches Buch entstanden ist, sondern ä u ß e r s t s p a n n e n d e ,
fließend geschriebene Feldaufzeichnungen.
 Die beiden weißen Völker!
(The two white nations!)
Deutsch-englische Erinnerungen eines
deutschen Seeoffiziers
von

Georg von Hase

Korvettenkapitän a. D.
Preis geheftet etwa M. 10.—, gebunden etwa M. 14.50
Zwei historische Zusammentreffen mit Teilen der englischen Kriegsflotte
bilden den Inhalt dieses Buches, das seine Titel einem Trinkspruch eines
englischen Admirals verdankt. Die Begegnungen fanden zu ganz
verschiedenen Zeiten und unter ganz veränderten Umständen statt: 1914
zur Kieler Woche und 1916, als die deutsche Flotte vor dem Skagerrak
ihren gefährlichsten Gegner stellte und schlug. / Korvettenkapitän von
Hase nahm an der Seeschlacht vor dem Skagerrak als Erster
Artillerieoffizier unseres größten, stärksten und schönsten
Großkampfschiffes, des Schlachtkreuzers „Derfflinger“ teil. Er ist in das
heißeste Kampfgewühl hineingeraten, hat sämtliche Phasen der Schlacht
miterlebt und dabei zu der Vernichtung der beiden englischen
Schlachtkreuzer „Queen Mary“ und „Invincible“ entscheidend beigetragen.
Es gibt zur Zeit noch keine Darstellung der Schlacht vor dem Skagerrak,
in der ein Mitkämpfer in führender Stellung die Schlacht sowohl vom
militärischen Standpunkt wie vom Standpunkt des persönlichen
Miterlebens, frei von den Fesseln der Zensur, beschrieben und beurteilt
hätte. Das vorliegende Buch berichtet als erstes vom tatsächlichen
Geschehen und wird zu einem Heldensang deutschen Mutes und
deutscher Kraft.
K . F. K o e h l e r Ve r l a g L e i p z i g
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEINE
ERINNERUNGEN AUS OSTAFRIKA ***

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