The Faeries at Anakie Park
(download free
pdf file)
a novella
from How to Conceive of a Girl
Beth
Spencer
published
by
Vintage/Random House, Australia, 1996
1
FAMILY SNAPS
The girl least likely
I am thirteen,
it's 1972 (the year Helen Reddy won a Grammy for `I Am Woman' and Gough
Whitlam got elected). I am sitting in my science class when Linda Tebbutt
appears and announces she has had a dream.
`Last night,' Linda
Tebbutt says, `I saw all you girls from 2C and 2B, walking down the
main street of Lilydale, pregnant.'
Our science teacher
raps on his desk to get our attention.
`I saw you, Deanne,'
Linda says, pointing to the school spunk, `and Andrea, you were enormous!'
Everyone stares at Andrea, the school tomboy.
Gradually we turn
and hover around Linda Tebbutt. She stands in the middle, a squat prophetess.
She points her stubby finger at us one by one, her white hair pulled
up into a fountain at the top of her head with a lacker-band.
(In the distance:
rap rap rap, Mr Ward's pencil on the desk.)
`And Guidita, and
Marilyn and Franca and Jenny and Carol,' says Linda majestically, waving
her hand like a wand, `all waddling along past Riteway, and Pat in a
frilly pink dress with huge boobs, and Ronnie and Alison...' And then
she stops and looks at me. `But I didn't see you, Peta.'
She gazes at me
thoughtfully.
Behind her Alison
(flat as a pancake) smiles with smug pity.
`I saw everybody
else,' Linda Tebbutt says, puzzled, `but I didn't see you.'
*
She dreamt that
the Neverland had come too near, and a strange boy (or was it a girl?)
had broken through...
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