A child dies while in the care of other children — who is to blame and how does that blame spill over the generations to come?

GRACE is a novel that poses unanswerable questions — how do we move through grief and guilt, and how do we escape the past? In doing so it also engages with the themes of story sovereignty and the power of voice.

First chapter excerpt below:

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Chapter 1.

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 ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.’

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This adage is frequently misattributed to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the order of Jesuits. Tricky folks, the Jesuits. Catholic in tastes. I learnt later, much later, that Aristotle coined the phrase. Quite a different fellow. I had indeed learned many things by the time I when I grew.

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But today I am young, and still learning.

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On this day we are far away from both Jesuits and polymaths in the hallway of our suburban middle-class house, Mother and me. Or was it Mother and I? I was never sure and spent a lot of time making sure that I didn’t ever have to say that particular phrase. I had thought I was sure but if I used the version I thought was correct I took the risk of being called a snob if Mother did not agree or stupid if she deemed it wrong. As Mother often said you can tell a lot about a person by the way they speak.

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But now I am five and sun was shining on this summer morning lighting the hallway golden. Mother’s hair reflected this light – golden too – beautiful, fine, swept up into a neat beehive on top of her head. Not a hair out of place. Once, just a child, I had reached out a hand in awe to touch its gleaming beauty and she had flinched. Flinched so hard that I never forgot it. Keep your sticky hands to yourself. With a little laugh. The little laugh was a little too late. At least she tried. I flinched, too, when people tried to touch me. It was something I had in common with Mother. I treasured that similarity. We had so little in common.

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Today was a day to Keep One’s Hands Away. Mother had been fussing about clothes and shoes and tut-tutting as she tweaked at the pleats of my skirt and pulled at my tie. My new straw hat sat in a stiff circle on the hall table. Today was School. It was important to make a Good Impression at School. This much I had gathered from listening – at doors, to telephone calls, in the back seat of the car – always listening.

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I was a Quiet Child. Not always a Good Child. I knew that because of the things I had been told, and the things that I had done. Once, I had picked at a loose edge of the wallpaper on the kitchen wall and to my horror had continued to peel off a thin strip. The Devil got into me and I peeled off a strip of wallpaper and now there was a thin white river of no wallpaper. A shocking gap in the gold and brown wallpaper with its orange and green pattern of jaunty oversized tea pots and teacups and salt and pepper grinders on the kitchen wall. Every time I glanced that way I felt a little cold shiver. What was I capable of? Not always a good child. Although a very good listener.

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But today was school and that was a Big Thing. Aunt Barbara was coming to see me off on my first day. Aunt Barbara was Mother’s sister, but Barbara’s hair was not beautiful, or gold coloured, or swept up into a beehive. Aunt Barbara was known as Baba – short for Baa Baa Black Sheep. How funny! Mother had named her such. What fun. Baba’s hair was wild and coarse and she was dumpy with a voice that Mother said simply bleated. Baba was kind to me but it was important that Mother understood that I understood all about What People Would Think. I always looked to Mother and winced visibly when Baba spoke. Sometimes I even tut-tutted.

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Father was always exasperated with Baba. Exasperating he would say, shaking his head. She needs to get her act together. Try a bit harder. She is simply hopeless. And why is she so fat? Hopeless. I wasn’t sure why Baba was so exasperating but I knew it was something to do with living in a unit with a garden the size of a pocket handkerchief and having a job rather than a husband and children.

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Anyway, today Baba was coming to see me off to school. I was glad she was there. She usually bought me a little pot of lollies, a little beehived shaped glass pot that contained tiny little lollies as bright as stained glass. Jelly Tots? Tiny Tots? Something Tots anyway. I liked lollies. I was a Greedy Child. Lousia is greedy Mother would say and she will get fat and spotty if she keeps eating lollies. And don’t get her a book either – she already has her face in a book most of the day. Get her something nice to wear.

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Human male fertility is rapidly declining due to environmental contaminants. Climate change hastens the ever-present danger of a worldwide zoonotic pandemic. Widening socioecomic disparity and the effects of resource fuelled wars threaten political stabilty.

Who takes responsibility — and who takes power?

UMWELT is a connection of short stories that detail the end of the world as we know it — via the end of relationships, the end of lives, and the end of the Anthropocene.

Excerpt below:

Heddy was tired. Tired of her body, tired of the pain, tired of people.

Heddy was just plain tired. She dragged her old creaky, stiff body that had seen so much and done so much and shuffled it into that nice soft spot she had been scoping for weeks now. Peaceful. Cool. Dark. She knew what was coming. The talk on The Hill had told her. And anyway, she just knew. She was so looking forward to it. Already she was starting to lose feeling in her hands, her feet. A soft comforting kind of numbing. Not a panicky feeling at all. And that pain in her stiff old right hip? Gone. Not even a memory - just gone. And her right shoulder, and the back of her neck - that bit that had always been tight and cranky and bitey? All better now. That pain had caused her all her life to walk with her head tipped slightly to the left – or to straighten up was to ask for a sharp bolt straight through the jaw and cheekbone — hard and fast to her eye socket.

The pain in her hip was partly from having so many children and partly from being born so twisted. The one that had delivered her, had held her tiny purply-blue wet body up high, had screwed her face up in consternation. ‘This one is a bit poorly’ that long ago midwife had said, clicking her tongue in sympathy, or irritation, ‘best not to get too attached to it’ and Heddy’s mother had been too tired, too worn out, too defeated to make a fuss or argue. She had let the women take the baby away and the next day Heddy’s mother had got up and slunk away, never to be seen again. That was the way of a lot of folks around these parts anyway. Heddy’s hip hadn’t given her too much gyp until later in life and then it was as if the accumulated weight of so many poor decisions had caught up with her. With it. The hip. ‘The body keeps the score’ Heddy had heard Marcus say. Her shoulder had always been trouble, dislocating so many times she had lost count.

But now she was comfortable, couldn’t even much remember the pain. She started to get the fuzzy feeling in her face too and she leaned into it - warm, soft, quiet. Heddy let her mind just relax and think of times long past. Times from the past came to her like a walking map of her life. Start off here see being born all twisted. Next here - the place that she grew. Then further on - all the decisions that came about just by sheer chance. Heddy marvelled. And laughed. She could only imagine what could have happened had she taken different paths. What was the true path, she wondered? Who was the real Heddy? What would have happened if everything had gone right? Who even know what ‘gone right’ looked like? Too late now to worry about such things. Heddy knew that most of the time she had lived a good life and done her best. Most of the time she had acted for the right reasons. Most of the time the bad things that had happened just happened. No rhyme or reason really. Chance, she thought. Chance seemed to be the biggest genesis of most things in life, including who you were born to, and when and where. And birth was probably the biggest agent of all, after all. The ‘ovarian lottery’ she remembered Marcus saying.

Heddy sank back further into the cushions. She breathed deeply and slowly, like Marcus had taught her, when the pain was bad. Breath in deeply for the count of four -two-three-four expand your lungs as much as you can then hold your breath for the count of six - till it hurts - two-three-four-five-six then slowly SLOWLY now let it all out for the count of eight - two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Heddy relaxed. It really did work. She wasn’t thinking at all of pain anymore. Or of the sad things in life. She wasn’t even thinking of Geir or of tiny Hebe. She was looking upwards. Looking forward. Believing that what came next was going to be good. This was a new thing for Heddy. She wasn’t really one of those glass half-full types. Life hadn’t really led her that way, to be fair. She was a trier though, and she was going to give this next thing a bloody good shot too. She lay back and took another deep breath. The cloth under her was soft and old and faded. Comfortable. It had once been some sort of fine linen - now threadbare and age-spotted with many tiny moth holes. But it was cool, and soft and really very well suited to its task. Heddy took one last long, slow breath and grateful, laid right down.

Then — bang. A door slammed. The sound of running footsteps. Calling voices. Excited. More voices. Shouting, ‘she is here! We have found her! Hurry! Oh thank goodness we have got here in time - we can bring her back - quick, quick everybody!’

And Heddy, eyes still closed, began to quietly cry. Salt tears rolling out down her cheeks. She had got so terribly close.

Two Truths Can be Told is a collection of poems that detail some of the intergenerational legacies — those both deliberate and also unintended — of family violence and dysfunction.