She walked to school along streets named for English poets, but the one thing everyone in Melbourne knew about her suburb was its nameless canal. It was held to be behind headaches, sore throats, and babies who wouldn’t settle, and was considered little better than an open drain. The reek of it sprawled in summer. Halfway along, the towpath relaxed into an open, grassy patch where, all year round, fights took place after school.
She’d been called Anny since arriving in Australia two years earlier. Her best friend was Lou. Lou lived minutes from school, but the morning bell often found her racing, and she would burst into classrooms with hair that looked as if it contained twigs. Mr. Cullen (history) didn’t mind, nor did Mrs. Dobek (maths), but on Wednesdays (English), Anny waited tensely at her desk beside Lou’s empty place. The third time Lou was late, Miss Kelso sent her to the deputy principal. Heaps of boys had crushes on Miss Kelso, who had cleavage and ringlets. The girls noticed that she had lipstick on her teeth.
Miss Kelso left no bruises that showed, but calculated the bestowing and withholding of smiles. She was the year-ten coordinator, and Anny had a form that required her signature. She rehearsed saying, Sorry, miss, I know you’re very busy. At the end of English she went up to Miss Kelso and blurted, Sorry, miss, I know you’re very boring.
Lou’s brother had dropped out of school to go traveling in Asia, but his friend Sandor lived at her place. Her mother, Maeve, had got together with Sandor the previous year, when she was the school receptionist. When Sandor’s parents found out, his mother paused on her way into the principal’s office to call Maeve a filthy Jew. Maeve was confused—who was this beehived woman shouting at? Later that day, Anny was at Lou’s place when Sandor explained that “Jew” was merely the worst insult his mother knew. The girls were eating ice cream, drinking Irish coffee, and listening to Nilsson Schmilsson, celebrating with Maeve and Sandor because he’d moved in. The school was powerless to prevent it, and so were the cops—he was almost seventeen.
On winter evenings, Anny added to a list in her notebook. Monday: green-flowered corduroy midi skirt, navy polo jumper, maroon boots, long camel-colored coat. Tuesday: brown corduroy midi skirt, beige polo jumper, boots, coat. Wednesday: denim midi skirt, black polo jumper, boots, blue velvet blazer… The notebook also contained poems on the theme of lasting love, poems like “When You Are Old” and “John Anderson my jo, John.” In autumn, a season that now seemed as remote as a different century, she’d copied out those poems and learned them by heart.
The list recorded the clothes worn by Rahel, whose family had immigrated from Israel in February, at the start of the school year. Around that time, Anny had started lying to her parents. Every Saturday, having said that she was going to Lou’s place to have dinner and study, she would put on her best top, blue with long, puffed sleeves, and meet Dave at the tram stop. They’d go to
