
12 minute read
a teenage guide to godhood
Isi Ogwu
Every city has a soul, it seeps out of cracks and weak places, reaches inside us where we can’t see. It makes something out of all us, roots us in place. A city has power, to be taken and moulded. That shapes and changes in turn.
The streets today are bloated with energy, the roads curved underneath us as we drive, empty as though carved out for us. If you pressed your ear against the ground, you could have heard it’s beating heart.
“Are we seeing everyone tonight?” Addy says from the passenger seat.
“I thought we were just getting food?” I let my answer trail off into a question. Addy doesn’t say anything, so I gesture vaguely towards the bag of food balanced on the centre console. She barely glances at it before turning back to me and shrugging with a practiced helplessness, and I have to work hard to keep my face neutral. I find it hard to give Addy a definitive ‘no’ most of the time. You can’t, really, because it tends to escalate any situation almost immediately. What begins as a simple question can become a shrieking argument at any moment. I try to relax my fingers over the faux leather wheel. They burn and itch and the tips, gripping too hard, trying to gather frayed edges back together. Right now, with Addy, it’s just easier to focus on trying to find our spot. I’m not usually the one that drive
Today had been long because we had had an argument. At the end of the summer, Addy wanted to leave. She wasn’t happy, she said. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going, or what her plans were. The end of our shared childhood was approaching. In my mind, the two of us would continue as we were, together, moving forward and the others following. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want that also.
“You’ve been happy here before,” I had said. Even as I begged I knew how weak I sounded. I was grasping for anything that I could do, to make her stay. I just wanted to be someone who could keep her here.
We were sitting at the table in her kitchen. I was supposed to be helping Addy braid her hair. Instead, I wedged my nail in the cracks in her wooden table over and over again. Her hands moved down the thick bundle of hair at an aggressive pace. Her fingers twined in and out of the strands hypnotically, occasionally pulling down and away to straighten out the rest. She looked at war with herself, the braid pulled taut from her face, and her chin jutted almost angrily in the opposite direction. Her fingers kept on, pulling the sections between and around each other, like two fat spiders with legs going in and out, coiling another thick black rope down the side of her head.
From between her teeth, she ground out, “Who said that I was satisfied?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but the sound of a key at the door stopped me.
It was her dad. Back already? A glance at my phone said it was almost 9. I hadn’t noticed it getting so late.
“Still here?” he chuckled when he saw me. I’d slept over the night before as well. When it came to Addy’s hair, wash day was more of a weekender. And it’s not like I’d had much of a choice.
“Yeah!” I tried to be polite anyway; I knew that he wasn’t the one that decided when I was welcome there. “Can hardly stay away,”
Addy hummed in agreement. “We’ll be out soon,” she crooned, turning away from me. Next, we would go down to the river. The others would be there as well. It was less of a routine, more of a compulsion.
The air between us still simmered. I didn’t argue back. I tried to be okay with the idea of Addy being gone. I tried to imagine how I would be away from her. The picture was fuzzy at the edges, and it made me feel sticky and stupid.
I stood up to refill our glasses of water. Addy’s dad whistled lowly, “Whew! You girls are getting tall!”
“It’s in the water,” Addy said, like always. “It’s even got calcium that’ll make your teeth stronger.”
“Right, right!” from her dad, “First newborn I’ve ever seen come out with teeth.” Addy smiles wide, putting her perfect set on display. Dubious story, but that was just Addy’s family. Proud to a fault, embellishers of truths and spouter of pithy inspirational-isms. I had heard this exact conversation on various occasions, Different participants, different tones. All the same. But she was right about the water, it all came down to the limestone. The entire city was built on it. Our drinking water filtered through it from natural aquifers that supplied the entire region. All of us grew up on it, raised on its hills. In that way, it was inside all of us too.
Maybe not so much Addy though, I couldn’t even imagine being anywhere else, or drinking any other water. How did she?
I don’t remember exactly when Addy arrived in town, only when we became friends.
We were at the Royal Show, I remember that. Too old for it now. Noise too loud, food too greasy, lines too long. But back then we loved it. Summer heat was just beginning to pool in the air with sweet-salty and peppery-grease. Under the roar of the gathered crowd, adrenaline dogged the promise of thrills. We bid our parents goodbye at the entrance. Had we come together? We must have. We did.
The showground was massive and dazzling. Addy and I marched through with our sweaty hands firmly clutched together. Parting only to count out money for games, rides and showbags. It was one of these times, long after the sun had set, hours after we were supposed to have met up with our parents that when I reached for her hand again it wasn’t there.
For one breathless moment, I lost her. Fear washed over me. It made my hands shake and choked the back of my throat.
I heard a keening wail, which I now know sounds eerily like a wounded rabbit. The lanterns lining the pounded down dirt pathway blurred into a horde of glittering fireflies as I ran towards it. When I caught a glimpse of her, precious Addy, pristine white Superstars coated with mud, I fell to my knees at her feet, terrified giggles stealing my breath.
I looked up into her indifferent face. Addy’s parents liked to reminisce a lot, that was how they bonded. I couldn’t recall the number of times they had wondered aloud ‘how did the two of you become friends?’ they’d say ‘it’s like you’ve always been this close!’ and an airy laugh or a deep, bubbling chuckle would push the conversation easily along. What they really meant was ‘when did she get you too?’. The right question was ‘when did you learn to be afraid?’. But people never really asked the right questions.
I caught at her hem again, trying to pull myself up. I saw her hand come up, but I felt more than I saw her next movement. A golden palm swinging towards me and an explosion of pain across my cheek. I slipped again, and I could hardly see. The pain and shock were like a blinding light.
“Stop,” she commanded. I went still. My hair clinging in dank clumps to my face, my shoulders, my back. I would have lain there in the mud if she wanted me to.
“Okay.” I choked out.
And she sighed, offered her hand to me and said, “Let’s go.”
It was like a knot pulled tight in my head. She called, and could hardly say no. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t want to. I got up, fought with sucking mud I had fallen into, took the hand she dangled in front of me, and walked away with her. Back to the hazy lantern lights of the show.
I’m not sure I remember right, but I think after that we went to see the petting zoo. A llama spit in my hair. When she laughed, I was grateful just to hear it. I didn’t let go of her hand again.
The other girls were already there when we arrived. The streetlights washed the carpark’s rain-slick bitumen in piss yellow. The intersection next to us was usually busy, but girls skipped and whorled through with music blasting from someone’s speaker. Perth had its way of changing faces. Tonight, she was empty, and hungry for us breathing in time with their fast-beating hearts.
Admittedly, this was a different kind of freedom than we were ever afforded. And we knew we weren’t supposed to be gathered like we were. The remembrance of our parents and the more vulnerable girls trapped inside, away from our little kingdom might have made these moments bitter. But the solitude was far too sweet.
I knew as soon as Addy stepped out of the car that she wasn’t on her usual bullshit. The other girls too, were different. As we walked over to meet them, dozens of shining eyes, like pilot lights turned to us as one.
As the night wore on Addy began to make me increasingly nervous. It was the way that the girls flocked to her. Like sailor to siren. They were only there for her consumption. By Addy’s side, I was a shepherd to the flock, holding them there only long enough for her to swallow.
The knowledge that they’d lose her soon only made them more desperate. That could be what made Ann walk directly up to her, like it was safe.
“Addy!” she screeched. In between giggles, she kept glancing back towards her little group of friends. So young. I’d bet this is the latest they’d ever stayed out. “After you leave, can I please have your parking spot? You know, the one near the dog park?” Did this slip of a thing even have her license yet? I couldn’t imagine her head even reaching up over the dashboard.
Addy’s smile curled across her face like perfumed smoke. “I don’t see why not,” she began, “but you have to do something for me first,” I saw her game.
“Addy.” I cut in. It was a stupid bargain to make. Like most things in this city, Addy didn’t own that parking spot – but she and everyone else acted like she did. It wasn’t even like we would be jostling for the good spots in front of the dog park for a long time still. “Don’t make her do anything dumb,”
Her neck swivels toward me; her silence is a threat. I can sense the violence building in her already. “Is there a problem?”
Sometimes I think back on conversations I’ve had with Addy and replay them in my mind. But in key moments, where I felt the most frustration or sadness, I imagine myself bending at the waist and screaming as loud as I could. Veins would protrude at the sides of my face, and my eyes would screw up so tight that tears could hardly eek through. I’d ball my hands into fists at my sides, and my whole body would vibrate with the force of my roar. While I do this, Addy would look on shocked. And when it was over I’d stand up. Uncurl my body like I was being pushed flat by a rolling pin. Wipe the sweat that pooled at my temples. Then, the conversation would continue as it happened in reality.
I already knew this would be one of those conversations. At present, my mouth feels garbled. I want to talk to her and say something. But I’m not sure what. I give a minute shake of my head No but don’t break eye contact. I’m on my knees reaching out to her again. The depth of my longing disgusts me.
I love her and I don’t want her to be this dangerous thing. “Anything,” Ann breathes.
Addy smiles, showing off a perfect set of bright, even teeth and nods. Then she hands Ann a pocketknife and draws close to whisper in her ear. When Ann tilts her head to listen, her neck is exposed. The sight sets off an unexpected burning in the back of your eyes. So exposed, so vulnerable.
“Really?” Ann asks. She doesn’t glance back at her friends again. Fevered heat pools in her reddened cheeks. When Addy steps away, she keeps her arm around her shoulders. I saw the next events unspool in front of us like thread. See? They never ask the right questions.
The things girls do to each other, Addy would quip. Then she would laugh to herself and then to the crowd like she’d just made an uncanny observation. As though she didn’t orchestrate them. Regardless of how it looked, Addy never did anything out of cruelty. Every little test had a lesson, some reason behind it. I knew she didn’t want Ann to get hurt, she didn’t care what happened to her really. She just wanted me to see, to show me that she was in control.
The streetlights reflected off the slick roads. It felt like the ground was trembling beneath me, like out near Jandakot when the planes would fly low to the ground. The shrieking reached a fever pitch, I felt myself being taken by it too, swept away in the spectacle. I could hear sirens in my head, inside and all around. When all this is finished, how do we go back to who we were?
This was the type of semi-arcane ritual that Addy had always loved. She was always reading books like that – where women grew snakes from their heads, and boys flew into the sun. She always yearned for some godlike mystery in her life. I could imagine how she saw us now, twisting and whirling under that white-hot moon – a revel for her alone, that girl so desperate for her approval. Ready to hurt herself for it. I Imagined this was how Addy always saw herself, some kind of demigoddess crowned above us all, with even her lesser divinities more extraordinary than ours.
We are made by this city. We drink from that cup of power that fed us, from its tap water tributaries, silvered conduits between and through us, and Addy at the centre of it all. Ann brings the knife to her finger, a shake in her hand that I might have imagined. And still smiling, she pushed it to the flesh above the first knuckle, like a paring knife to the skin of an apple.
All the girls made a sound together, ecstatic, that rose and fell as one.
These are the things girls do to each other, the types of lessons that we teach. What we can make each other do, so long as we are willing to put out our necks.
This is not an Icarian legend. There are no burning wings here. Just a group of girls and the lingering taste of chalk.