Ora's Gold Read online

  SIF teams sprang out of nowhere and soon their jurisdiction extended far beyond water, wielding power by numbers, surveillance and arrests. Anyone they suspected of breaking a law—and there were new laws every week—was brought in for questioning. Their method is still the same: break people down and make them confess, even if they’re innocent. A ‘confession’ and an arrest mean points for the team. The more points, the higher the pay. The government loves the SIF. Mum despised them. Dad said he didn’t like them, but that they were necessary, even after the Health Minister gave them dominion over women’s health.

  The only thorn in the SIF’s side—and the government’s—is the free media, who, like the moon, shine light into the shadows. The internet is their playground and they flash publish reports sporadically; a constant game of cat and mouse where journos risk everything for a good story, all in the name of ‘letting the citizens know’. But they’re not heroes by any means. They can play just as dirty as the SIF.

  Ballistic doesn’t come close to describing Dione’s reaction when the new pregnancy and birth laws were introduced. It was seven years ago, after all the E. coli deaths. Thousands of people had died. It happened so quickly; the bacteria spawned super bacteria in the rivers and soil, which infected the crops and cattle. And then it jumped to the people. Mum blamed the farming methods, and the lack of rain followed by the freak floods. Antibiotics stopped working and a national crisis was declared.

  Babies were being born with severe defects. When the new health minister was appointed he passed a law forcing all pregnant women into state protection centres. The ‘Safety for the Future Programs’ were implemented overnight across Australia. To ensure the wellbeing of every unborn baby, women had to self-enrol as soon as they found out they were pregnant, and were not allowed to leave the centres until after their babies had been delivered surgically, by C-Section. They were confined to highly regulated environments—bacteria-free zones—which meant no outside visitors. The law still stands, even though E. coli is under control. If women don’t go into a Safety for the Future Program, they risk losing their babies to the state and their wombs to research. Non-compliance is a serious crime.

  *

  Dione has opened the front door and is watching me, my suitcase in her hand.

  ‘I’ve cleared out the junk room for you,’ she says gently, and I hear a glimmer of her old self.

  I smile for the first time and follow her in.

  The floorboards look shinier than I remember but creak a whole lot more, and the passageway is narrower and shorter than it used to be. My bedroom is second on the left, after her study. I wonder where she’s put all that junk. Dione’s bedroom is opposite, spartan except for her frame drum on the wall and the crocheted bedspread.

  Mum made that. I remember her sitting cross-legged on the sofa at home, concentrating for hours on the intricate work.

  I want to lie down on it. Smell it.

  ‘Ora.’ Dione’s gruff voice calls me back and I follow her into my room. A cream cast-iron bed is under the window, with bedding to match. It looks kind of dated, especially on the stripped floorboards, but the mattress feels soft as I sit down and look out at the tree Holly and I used to climb.

  I have no control now. The memories are hitting hard, but I don’t make a sound as the tears roll down my cheeks.

  ‘Take your time,’ Dione says, backing out. ‘Dinner’s ready when you are.’

  She closes the door and goes into the kitchen. The radio volume goes up. I curl into the soft mattress and feel it holding me as I give voice to the sobs in my throat.

  3

  Fresh Veggies

  Dione is folding washing when I go into the kitchen. There’s a huge pile of towels, and I wonder if she has some kind of compulsive bathing thing going on. Although it’d have to be dry bathing. She lifts the towels onto the chair by the back door, where night is pressing in at the window.

  ‘You must be hungry,’ she says, taking a bowl of salad out of the fridge.

  We avoid each other’s gaze. I know my eyes are puffy. I open the cutlery drawer—it’s still in the same place—and begin to set the table. My mouth is watering; her cooking is the best. Even through my sniffily nose, it smells delicious.

  ‘Where did you get all the veggies?’ I ask five minutes later, incredulous and in heaven with my mouth full of her veggie lasagne.

  ‘I still have a veggie garden.’ There’s a rebellious twinkle in her eye. ‘It’s just a little more surreptitious than it used to be.’

  ‘You what?’

  She nods towards the back door and I get up to take a look. I can’t see anything except a sorry-looking lawn, but Dione picks up a torch to spotlight areas in the garden beds: spinach and eggplants, potatoes, a tomato vine growing over the garden bench, salad and herbs. It’s all there, hidden amongst scraggy bushes. There’s no way you’d see it via satellite. Even the SIF drones would miss it.

  As I sit back down, the danger of Dione’s veggie patch hits me.

  ‘Dione, you’re mad!’

  ‘Your stomach’s not objecting.’ She smiles at me stuffing my face.

  ‘I have to hide the evidence,’ I smile back, glad to be connecting but still feeling a niggling disquiet. ‘If the SIF find out, they’ll lock you up for months.’ She is out of her mind.

  ‘They never come up here, Ora, they’re too busy in the city.’ She’s following the rim of her water glass with her finger. ‘And anyway, half of them wouldn’t even know what a real vegetable looks like.’

  ‘But where do you get the water from? It’s so dry up here.’

  She smiles.

  ‘Don’t tell me your water tanks are hooked up?’

  She gives a small shrug. ‘Only the underground ones. The SIF don’t know about them.’

  ‘Dione!’ I don’t know whether to laugh or scream at her.

  ‘I detest that muck they call food. Full of chemicals, no nutritional value whatsoever. I swear it’s turned everyone into zombies. No-one thinks for themselves anymore.’

  ‘But what if you get caught?’ A bit of lasagne flies out of my mouth and drops between us. I stuff it back in my mouth. I can’t stop eating—this food is making me remember.

  ‘Fear of getting caught is not going to dictate what I put in my garden or in my body. I’ve been self-sufficient for years, Ora. I’m not going to stop now.’

  I know I should back off but she’s being so reckless. ‘You can’t have thought this through! If you wind up in one of those SIF centres, food will be the last thing on your mind.’

  She shrugs. ‘I still go and collect my water rations like everybody else. The chooks are legal, I just don’t feed them that rubbish they call grain. I reckon my hens show more spirit and intelligence than your average SIF officer. Stop looking so worried Ora! They never come up here, and if they did, they wouldn’t find anything. This house is one big secret. I used to think Frank was on another planet, but now I think he knew exactly what was coming.’ She smiles at the memory of the crazy guy who lived here before her—he’d been paranoid about a mystery enemy invading Australia and built his whole house around the delusion. ‘It’s like this house was made for me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I only water at night and I hide the hoses every time I use them. I’ve covered every scenario and it’s not going to happen. People stopped thinking for themselves when they had to start queuing for water. How crazy is it that the government claims to own every drop of it? There’s no way I’m paying for something that falls from the sky! And vegetables that weren’t even grown in proper soil? It’s ridiculous.’

  I carry on eating in silence.

  ‘If you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it.’ She seems annoyed now.

  I’m about to tell her again how stupid she’s being but there’s a sharp knock at the back door. Dione looks at me and then at the door. I sit frozen, my gaze moving over the dishes. How many veggies are in evidence? Dione opens the door just a crack. Two peopl
e, a man and a woman, say something in hushed tones then withdraw into the darkness. Dione closes the door and starts to clear the table.

  ‘There’s just enough water for washing up, if you’re careful,’ she says, nodding at the black container. ‘Wiping dishes with chemicals isn’t my style.’

  And with that, she picks up the towels and her torch and is gone. I watch from the kitchen window and see her following the couple up the track that snakes behind her house. The woman stops and bends over, bracing her hands on her knees. Dione catches up with them and gives the man the towels and the torch. She squats down so her face is close to the woman’s. He’s shining the torch on them. When they stand up my blood goes cold.

  It can’t be!

  Two pregnant women in one day? I watch until they’re out of sight and realise they’re going up to the cottage, the torch dotting their progress.

  Now my brain won’t work. It refuses to believe what my eyes have seen. Before I even register what I’m doing, I’m following, trying to tread noiselessly on the gravel. It’s dark out here with just a sliver of moon but I know the track well—Holly and I used to play here all the time.

  A million questions are making my synapses fire. What the hell is going on? How many times has Dione used those towels? How much time would she get for this? Forget illegal veggies, how about a life sentence! And what about me? Would I get done too? Please let this be a one-off. Surely the woman is just an old and stupid friend. Babies are not meant to be born in the middle of nowhere.

  As I near the cottage, the outside light helps me see more clearly. Buzzy Bee’s Bed and Breakfast still looks as cute as ever, like a child’s drawing in this soft light. There are windows either side of the pale blue front door and two windows above them, on the second floor, the bricks all covered in ivy.

  I feel like a criminal as I peep inside. There are no lights on, just a dim, flickering candle. Dione and the couple are nowhere to be seen. The furniture looks a bit faded and the armchair’s in an odd position, but it’s all just as it used to be—saggy floral sofas and a hotchpotch of furniture.

  Where the hell are they? My heart is thudding in my chest and my breath is shallow … I can’t go in. They must be upstairs. I wait like this for hours, listening, my senses highly tuned, but the house is dead, and the candle is getting smaller.

  Eventually I give up. Tiredness overwhelms me and my feet are too heavy as I stumble down the hill, my body jarring with each footfall. I can only think of sleep.

  I head to the bathroom, past the remains of dinner. I remember Mum’s bed cover and go into Dione’s room. It doesn’t smell of Mum anymore, but every fibre of this wool has been through her fingers, and now it’s wrapped around me.

  I drag my iron feet to my room, still wrapped in the blanket, and sleep.

  *

  In the night I wake and think about calling Dad. He might have forgotten that there’s a beating heart in his chest when it comes to me, but he’ll know what to do. I grab my mobile and search for his number. Then I stop. What if he dobs Dione in? The doctor in him would be outraged.

  For the hundredth time I wonder what she thinks she’s doing. She’s been on her own way too long.

  I get under the covers, still wrapped in Mum’s blanket, and try Lucy’s number. She doesn’t pick up. I let the mobile slip to the floor and wish for sleep to return.

  *

  In the morning, the kitchen is spotless. And quiet. I help myself to home-made bread and honey and once again, my tastebuds delight in bliss. I’m on my third slice and wondering if Dione has her own beehive and where she gets her wheat when she walks in the back door.

  ‘Morning,’ she says, walking past me into what used to be the laundry room. I don’t bother replying.

  ‘I thought I’d show you around later,’ she shouts over the sound of sloshing water. What is she doing in there? ‘So you know where to catch the bus into town and where the best beaches are, and how to find the MBD Centre. I have to donate today anyway.’ I still don’t answer. She carries on regardless. ‘The bus stop’s miles away but the buses run regularly.’ She appears, carrying a basket containing sopping wet towels. I look at them pointedly and can feel her eyes boring into me.

  Then she moves to the back door and pauses, asks me if I’m okay, like there’s something wrong with me.

  I’m so stunned that I can’t speak. Finally I manage, ‘What the hell—’

  The door swings shut. I spring to my feet. How dare she? The back of my chair thwacks the floorboards and stops me short. What’s the use? She’ll just deny it and I don’t want to know anyway. I don’t want anything to do with her rebellion. The thought of the SIF makes my knees buckle.

  I pick up the chair and decide to mind my own business. I need to keep my distance. My chest contracts. Who was I kidding? Lucy and her family have been my only family for years now. Dione didn’t bother after the funeral, so why should she now? It was such a dumb move coming here.

  I force myself to think about Lucy and her mum, trying to remember how it sometimes pained me to see them together. But I only feel the pain of missing them. They did want me to go with them, even though I convinced myself otherwise.

  I look out the window and concentrate on the deep blue of the sky—not a cloud in sight. Could I catch it in acrylic? With French ultramarine and Indian red maybe? I sigh and begin to think seriously about leaving Australia.

  Stuff Dione and our connection.

  ‘Right, then.’ Speak of the devil. ‘I’ll just have a coffee then we’ll get going.’

  I go and sit in the car.

  ‘This is my last year and I cannot wait!’ she says twenty minutes later, placing her black pot carefully in the cup holder of the ute. ‘Have you got your papers so you can register?’

  I nod curtly and turn my head to look out of the window. She gets the message.

  I flash back to Mum and how mad she was when the MBD Scheme became compulsory. She and Dad had the biggest row. For him it was a no-brainer—more women and more blood were required, and the scheme was saving lives.

  Stem cells were urgently needed to cure all the E. coli survivors who had developed H. coli—a secondary disease that ate away at the tissue of the heart. Some scientist had discovered that menstrual blood contained cells similar to stem cells, won a major award and the newest harvesting program was born: the Menstrual Blood Donation Scheme.

  It started off as a voluntary scheme, but not enough women were donating so when the government expanded the SIF’s powers to ‘Sovereignty over Women’s Health’—or as Mum took to saying through gritted teeth, ‘control over Blood, Birth and Babies’—the SIF made MBD compulsory. The great stem cell cure suddenly turned into the SIF’s great tracking device. MBD was the perfect way to have every woman in the country monitored and hooked into a system that would immediately signal new pregnancies and ensure direct pathways into the Safety for the Future Program.

  Mum refused to go at first. But after she missed two visits, she was summoned for a pregnancy test and given a severe warning. Then she tried conscientiously objecting through a lawyer and an online petition but the SIF hauled her in and kept her overnight. I don’t know what they did to her ’cos Dad made us go to our rooms when she got home. But she cried for a long time and never missed a donation again.

  It is a pain having to deliver blood every month, but the menstrual cups are easy to use once you get the hang of them and there are MBD centres in every town. You don’t have to start until you’re sixteen and you finish at forty-five. As Dad said, it’s helping save lives. Plus, there’s one huge bonus although I know Mum despised this part the most—she said it was payment for the blood—but for me, there’s nothing like a real shower with two whole minutes of hot water, shampoo that froths and lathering soap.

  We pull up in front of the centre.

  ‘I’ll be in in a sec,’ I say to Dione. No point in spending any more time with her than I have to. Besides, I don’t want the SIF to see me wit
h her.

  The centre is very similar to the one near Lucy’s house. When the scheme was introduced, swimming pools that’d been empty for years were filled in and quickly transformed into donation centres—a perfect use for the dormant spaces. Now a sedate queue of women lines the walls, each one holding a black pot, all hanging out for their monthly cleanse.

  Dione is almost at the front. I ignore her as I walk past to the desk. The SIF officer in charge is a cardboard cut-out of the one at the other centre. The slate grey contact lenses they all wear are the worst, hiding any hint of what kind of a person she might be. She’s definitely not going to smile.

  ‘Name?’ she commands, looking at her screen.

  ‘Ora James.’ I hand my papers to her and she taps quickly on the key board, updating my details.

  ‘Pot,’ she finally looks at me through her cold contacts. Why do these people always make me feel like I’ve done something wrong?

  I dig around in my bag which is suddenly way too big. I know it’s in here somewhere. She sighs loudly with impatience. ‘Here it is,’ I feel flustered. She snatches the pot, sticks the updated label on it and whacks it back on the counter.

  ‘Is your menstrual cup still in good condition?’ She’s tapping on her keyboard again.

  I nod and walk away, not bothering to say thank you. No point.

  ‘Hey!’ She barks after me, stopping me in my tracks. ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say meekly, turning back towards her. She’s standing up now, leaning menacingly over the counter.

  ‘Yes, you heard me or yes, your menstrual cup’s still in good condition? And look at me when I’m talking to you!’

  ‘Both,’ I say quietly, forcing myself to look at her. Everyone’s staring.

  ‘Well next time, answer!’ She goes back to her screen, dismissing me.

  What a bitch! I’m glad Dione is in the shower room.