Short Stories
Feet of Cardboard
Trudy’s mother tucked the last of the four envelopes into the purse. ‘Now mind you don’t lose them,’ she admonished, as she did every Saturday morning.
‘No, Mummy,’ Trudy said and pushed the purse down into her basket, snuggling it under her new Famous Five book.
Her mother bustled around, combing Wendy’s hair, washing Vicki’s face, and shouting to Stephen and Mandy to ‘come here at once’, seemingly all at the same time. When they were all lined up before her, she bid them wait while she loaded baby Keith and little Mandy into the pram. Then she looked at them and nodded. ‘You’ll do. Let’s go.’
Trudy led the way, holding Wendy’s hand. Vicki held onto Stephen’s hand and their mother, pushing the squeeky-wheeled pram, was last in line. Trudy swung to the left and led her family down off the ramp to the street and the bus stop. She held her basket tight, remembering the time some big boys had robbed her and Wendy. No-one would steal money from her ever again. She wasn’t named Victoria, but she’d be victorious. That was a word she’d learned from her mother, when she’d told Trudy about her naming. Granny said it should be Victoria, seeing as how she’d been born the very day that Japan surrendered. ‘Victoria for Victorious,’ she’d said. Trudy’s mother had been weak after her long labor, but not that weak, she’d said, so Trudy it was.
They soon arrived at the bus stop. Trudy was the only one going on the bus but there was no-one to look after the other children, so they all came to see her off. They’d be there to meet her when she came back, too. It was a special outing for them every Saturday but today was different, more special because of the bookie man.
The bookie man was their Dad’s friend. He came to their hut sometimes and set up a shop from the lounge room. Their hut was the middle of three in their row so was ‘ideally situated’ the bookie man said.
Mummy didn’t like it one bit. That’s what she’d said to their dad but he’d laughed and told her she was only a woman what would she know and it would be the making of them. He talked about a big win but their mother only gave a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh.
Trudy wasn’t quite sure what the shop sold. She and her sisters and brothers were banished to the tiny bit of dirt they called their yard when the bookie man came. They usually sat under the hut, watching the feet and legs of the men who came to the shop stepping up onto the step their Dad had built under the window. After mumbling something to the man behind the window, the men tucked little slips of paper into their pockets. Trudy couldn’t see that they actually bought anything. Another man stood at the end of the ramp. He was the cockatoo, their dad said, which they all thought was very strange. The only cockatoos they knew were birds. When Trudy asked her mother about him, she was told to please not ask so many questions.
The day of the big win was very hot. Trudy was reading to Wendy and Vicki when their father came home. He was laughing and joking and throwing paper money into the air. Their mother ran around picking it up, telling him not to be so careless. ‘Plenty more where that came from,’ he said. ‘I told you he’d come good. My share of his win. Think what we’d have if I set up my own shop.’ Their mother thinned her lips and shook her head but he just shrugged.
The big win money was going to be used to buy them all new shoes.
Trudy looked down at her feet. The shoes she was wearing were her only pair, and they pinched at both sides and cramped her toes. They were clean but had lots of marks on them, and a small split in the side of the right one. They’d been handed down to her by one of her cousins. Trudy couldn’t remember ever having had a pair of shoes straight from the shop.
Her mother took the cardboard shapes from the bag hanging on the pram handle. She counted them, mumbling under her breath, and handed the bundle to Trudy. ‘Now remember, the shoe store is right at the bus stop. Give the man the envelope to read. The money’s inside.’
‘Yes, Mummy,’ Trudy sighed. She didn’t have to be told. It was the same for the grocer, the green-grocer and the butcher. They all had envelopes, with lists on front and money inside. The bus terminated at the first shop, the grocers. The man there would fill her order. He would have his boy carry the bags to the green-grocer, who would do the same and deliver her and her growing number of bags to the butcher. The butcher was next door to the shoe shop, which was across the road from the grocers and behind the bus stop for her ride home.
This morning, the bus was late and the driver a little short-tempered. ‘Hurry on, hurry on,’ he said, sounding very important. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he added, as Trudy climbed onto the step.
'G’day, missus,’ he said to Trudy’s mother, who handed him some coins. ‘You will look after her, won’t you?’ she asked him.
Trudy’s mother waited until Trudy was seated behind the bus driver before she got off the bus. Trudy watched as the driver shut the door with his mechanical lever, then she lifted her hand to wave to her mother and her sisters and brothers. The hand she raised was full of cardboard feet.
Someone behind her laughed. She heard a whisper. ‘Disgraceful! She’s only a child..’
Trudy blocked the words out. She might be only eight but she was quite grown up. She’d been doing the family shopping for a long time now, ever since they’d come to live at Herne Bay. That was more than a year ago. She had been very disappointed to discover that there was no water nearby. ‘Why’s it called a Bay then?’ she’d asked. Her mother said she didn’t know and told her she asked too many questions. ‘Where’s the shops, is what I want to know,’ she’d added.
It turned out that the nearest shopping town was four miles away. It would cost too much to take everyone shopping, and there was no-one to look after them if their mother went on her own, so Trudy did the shopping. Her mother said she didn’t know what she’d do without her little helper.
They were coming up to the corner. Trudy leant forward and watched for the moment the driver pushed down on the lever. The hand came out. The palm was up, which meant ‘stop’, then it opened out, which Trudy knew was to signal the other cars on the road that the bus was turning right.
The turn negotiated safely, and the next not due for some minutes, Trudy fanned the cardboard feet out and held them up to the light.
Last night, after their bath, their mother had put sheets of old cardboard on the floor. ‘You’ll be there in person so we won’t need your feet, Trudy,’ she’d said. Wendy, Vicki and Stephen had all stood on the cardboard in turn while their mother drew around their feet with a thick black pencil.
Trudy had carefully cut them out - ‘on the outside of the black marks mind,’ her mother said, ‘to allow for growth’ - while her mother carefully drew around little Mandy’s feet. She was only just beginning to walk but Mummy said it was time she had some shoes. Keith was only a baby; he still wore booties that their mother knitted from old wool they all helped to unravel from old cardigans and jumpers.
When Trudy finished the cutting out, she wrote her sisters’ and brothers’ names on their cardboard feet. There were eight cardboard feet, making four pair.
The bus was negotiating the busy intersection now. Trudy watched the cars on the road, marvelling at how all the cars avoided each other. She decided that she would have a car when she grew up. She peered down at the drivers of the cars as they passed. She noticed that only one had a lady driver. She supposed it was because she didn’t have a husband. She would have a husband herself when she was a lady, but she wouldn’t let him drive her car.
Looking back at the feet in her hands, she separated each pair from the pack. Wendy’s feet were an odd shape, because her second toe was a lot longer than her first toe. Vicki’s feet were a tiny bit larger than Wendy’s, even though she was a year younger. Stephen’ s feet were wide, and Mandy’s very tiny.
They were almost at the shops. Trudy collected up the cardboard feet and lifted her basket from the floor and put it on her knees. She kept the feet in her hands. Her basket was small and she didn’t want to bend the cardboard.
She waited, as she always did, for everyone else to get off the bus. She ignored the stares, and didn’t listen to the whispers of the women as they walked by her. The food shopping wouldn’t take long, then it would be time for the shoes. They had to be lace-ups, her mother had said ‘I know I can trust you to be sensible, Trudy,’ her mother had said.
When the passengers were all gone, Trudy climbed down the steps, holding the cardboard feet before her like a shield. Her mother, and her sisters and brothers, were relying on her; she wouldn’t let them down.