First I felt warmth. Then drifting.

After I was born I felt inklings of what security must be like in an occasional firm hand touching me, or a cosy voice wrapping round me like paper in the wind, but mostly the drifting, groundless feeling stayed.

I remember many things, even things that happened before I was conceived. My ancestors were plagued by groundlessness too.

After a voyage of one hundred days, Vernant Pink and his new wife Primula stepped ashore on a large island shaped like a winged sandal. They bought part of the left wingtip, then Vernant stripped off his waistcoat, Primula hitched up her skirts, and together they cleared a patch of bush and built a house. Primula named it Birdsong Cottage.

As months passed, the bush had to be hacked back again and again, and each time it regrew, it seemed tougher and more hostile than before. Equally menacing were the insects that inhabited it. Some were large and bold and had names that reminded Primula of the jungle—tigerbeetle, antlion, and elephant weevil. While these brazen creatures entered the house freely as if it were just one more hollow log, others had more secretive natures, like the robber flies who lurked in tree branches, and the ghost moths who knocked on the windows at night.

From time to time Primula and Vernant trekked through the bush to the beach and looked out over the sea. To Primula it seemed that the ground underneath them rocked. This land wasn't a sturdy isle like the one from which they'd come. It was flimsy, she thought, and if the sea buffeted it too much it might break up like a badly-made boat.

*

– 30 –

Over the next few years, surveyors and drafters carved patterns into the island like school children defacing a desk. As time passed, new settlers deepened the grooves of these patterns, and augmented them with doodle-like offshoots of their own.

Meanwhile, four generations of Pinks were born and grew old in Birdsong Cottage and the ground in front of it eroded until the house, still surrounded by bush, perched on the edge of a drop over a wide stream.

One day Turbo Pink had an idea. Why not attach a rope ladder to the front doorstep? This meant that he no longer had to take the long way into town. He could simply climb down the ladder to the public bushwalk beside the stream, and reach the outskirts of the city in half an hour.

Thirty years on, the city had spread and its edges were only fifteen minutes away. It was then that Tympany Pink inherited the cottage and soon, with birds whistling and cheering outside, and trees tapping encouragement on the window, she gave birth to a fair, wide-eyed daughter. The baby was soft in Tympany's arms, and gurgled like the stream below. Her tiny limbs seemed more to ripple than move, and her unfocused eyes rolled like pebbles in a current. Tympany named her Soss.

Nearly two decades later, during a shopping trip in the city, Tympany stepped onto a pedestrian crossing and was hit by a car. Rising into the air with her feet flailing above her head, the last things she saw were the chemist shop, the traffic lights, and a dog tied to the lamp post, all upside down.

Soss, orphaned at eighteen, inherited the house.

By then it was six minutes to the city from Birdsong Cottage, but Soss didn't leave the bush if she could help it.

Sometimes she lay in bed all day long. In summer she gazed out the window and through the trees at the clouds moving past, and she imagined that the motion she saw was the Earth moving through

– 31 –

space. In winter she shut her eyes and felt the house quiver in the wind. Best of all, she liked storms. When rain battered the roof and lightning pierced the earth for miles around, she felt excitement then a deep calm. Once the storm was over, she fell asleep to the crackle of nearby rocks still crumbling into the stream below.

Rain or shine, one of her favourite amusements was opening the front door, standing on the doorstep above the seven-metre drop, and looking down at the rushing stream. It would be so easy to fall, she thought. And when a city person—often a jogger or a dog-walker—passed along the path below, she held the door frame and leaned forwards. Sometimes the person looked up and waved or called a greeting. Soss smiled and her body tingled all over as she imagined somersaulting through the air towards them, her dress billowing around her and her blonde curls flying. The person's mouth would drop. They would run forward to try to catch her but she would miss their outstretched arms and land with a crack on the rocks in the stream, flat on her back and perfectly arranged, with her hair radiating from her head like sunlight.

As Soss imagined the person screaming, she felt excitement running like electrical impulses through her body. All it would take would be the unclenching of her fists.

At night she left her curtains open so she could watch the chunks of sky where the dense bush canopy opened out. When the weather was overcast, the clouds were luminescent from the nearby city lights, but she preferred it when it was clear and she could count the stars. She liked the way they sneaked across the firmament night by night, ducking between tree branches. She knew those stars like she'd known the freckles on her mother's face. Her mother's freckles hadn't moved of course, but they'd darkened and faded according to the seasons, and from time to time new ones had appeared. Soss missed watching this, so she tried to focus all thought on the stars. She didn't want to think about the strange feeling inside her that was like empty black space with no stars.

One windy autumn night, Soss had a dream. In the darkness she saw a distant point of light. It grew to become a glowing disc. It was coming

– 32 –

closer, and it had protrusions. Soon she saw that it was a rotating wheel of flesh, three metres high, and made entirely of male genitals. Multiple penises stuck out in all directions and hundreds of testicles hung off it like clumps of grapes. It towered in front of her, making the air hot and rancid. As it closed in around her, there was a roaring in her ears, and she felt as if she was going to choke.

Over the next nine months Soss's stomach rose like bread.

She wondered what it would feel like to give birth. Once on television she'd seen a snake eating an egg. It dislocated its jaw so it could swallow the meal whole. Soss thought birth might be like that but in reverse; her hipbones would detach from her pelvis and disgorge the baby.

She went into labour late one summer night. A tightness clamped across her abdomen, and pain thrilled through her. She yelled. She was astounded by the power of her voice and yelled again. Soon she was lost in her own noise.

Though the baby looked a bit like Soss and a bit like Tympany, it seemed to Soss more like a wet, dirty stranger that she'd welcomed in from a storm. It had a thick crop of black hair on its head and dark, steady eyes. It didn't cry; it just stared at everything, unblinking. It wasn't a baby at all, Soss thought. It was a small, funny-shaped adult. She held it in a towel against her breast and it felt solid and strong. ‘My Pearl,’ she whispered.

So it was that I was born.

I remember I hated being a baby. My inept body was like a cage, a cage bobbing on the sea, because Soss seemed so watery. She gave me nothing to cling to, and no floor to stand on. She was just an unknown depth that maybe I could drown in.

Sometimes she cooed in my ear, ‘My pearl, my precious Pearl.’ Other times she hissed. ‘Do you know what a pearl really is? A little piece of grit, irritating as hell, that you just can't get rid of…’

I spent long periods of time staring with alarm at my pale wrinkly feet. They reminded me of the big, raw, white grubs that sat in rotten logs outside. Often the frightening floating feeling overcame me, and

– 33 –

the walls of the room I was in would suddenly seem unbearably strange and far away.

It wasn't until soon after I'd learned to walk that I had my first real experience of groundedness.

We were in a secondhand shop in the city. While Soss rummaged through a box of old jerseys, I toddled to a shelf of footwear. Most of the shoes were scuffed and worn, but one pair, black and shining, caught my eye. I pulled them from the shelf and took them to Soss. ‘On! On!’ I cried.

She sat me on a chair, and pulled off the rubbery slippers I wore. She took the left shoe and inexpertly wiggled it this way and that until she managed to get both my heel and my toes into it at the same time. She repeated the process with the right shoe and then I stood. The shoes were hard and squashed my toes together, but they felt marvellous, like bony crusts for my larval feet. I crossed the shop floor, delighting in the clack the soles made as they hit lino. I sped up until I was running. Soss laughed.

I ran all over the shop. Until now I'd lain on our bed bathed in Soss's soft skin and hair, been swept along outside in the pushchair, and toddled haltingly in the flimsiest footwear, feeling the ground under my feet change with every step. It was as if until this day nothing had been solid. But now I had my very own ground: two hard definite soles that were like a home country for each of my feet.

‘Take your shoes off before you get into bed,’ said Soss.

‘No.’ I pulled the sheets close around me, and shut my eyes, wriggling my feet to feel the shoe leather rubbing against them.

Soss sighed and slid in beside me. I wrapped my arms around her neck and put my nose on her cool skin. She seemed as fluid as ever, but it no longer frightened me. I felt as if I were the parent and she the child. That night I dreamed I was going everywhere in my shoes; traversing deserts, climbing mountains, and skimming lakes.

Miss Martingale, a thin, pinch-faced woman with bright white shoes, gave five sharp claps of her hands. ‘Everyone, this is Pearl!’

– 34 –

She showed me to a table with three other children sitting around it. They looked at me, I looked at them, and then I sat down and peered under the table at their shoes. I saw black sneakers, flat brown sandals, and blue thongs. I felt confident. I myself had on a new pair of red shoes with bouncing rubber soles.

Miss Martingale put a piece of paper on the table in front of me and pushed an ice-cream container of crayons in my direction. ‘We're drawing our gardens. Would you like to draw yours?’

‘We don't have a garden,’ I said. ‘We live on a cliff.’

Miss Martingale simpered. ‘Why don't you make up a garden then, Pearl?’

I sat for a while, listening to the sound of crayons scribbling. The blue thongs girl next to me was drawing big, droopy flowers with lots of petals. When she saw me looking she covered her work with her arm and snarled, ‘Don't copy.’

I stood and walked around the class. Everyone was drawing fences and trees, flowers and grass. I wondered what it would be like to be able to walk out of your front door in a straight line.

I sat in my seat again, took a red crayon, and started to draw my shoes.

In a short time I became exceptionally good at reading. Most evenings, I sat in bed beside Soss and read to her from shoe catalogues: ‘On-Air. All-day comfort, soft padded insoles. Beige, white, and grey. $39.95.’ I always held the catalogue up to show Soss the picture, the way Miss Martingale did, and pointed. ‘See? That's the insole there, and you can see how soft it looks, can't you?’ Then I continued reading. ‘French Toes. Black full-grain leather court shoe. Usually $100.00. NOW ONLY $79.95.’

Sometimes Soss watched my lips as I spoke, now and then reaching out her index finger to trace a line down my cheek or twirl a strand of my hair. It made me feel tender and strong. Other times her gaze slid off my face and past me to the wall, or to the window, or to nowhere in particular.

Ten years went by, and while I did increasing amounts of cooking and cleaning, Soss took to spending more and more time in bed. It

– 35 –

seemed to me that her face was changing; her features were rippling round the edges, and swirling into each other.

One night after dinner she said lightly, ‘You've never needed me, have you?’

I felt she wanted me to say something, but I wasn't sure what.

A month later, it happened.

It was early in the morning—raining, and still dark. I woke with a start. Soss was no longer in the bed with me. This was nothing unusual in itself; I often woke up in the night to find myself alone, and at these times Soss would be walking round the house in the darkness, looking out the windows. But on this morning something was different. I could feel a cold draught and smell wet, outdoor air. I got up, filled with dread.

Soss stood at the open front door facing into the rain. Then she released her grip on the door frame and moved forward. First her feet disappeared, then her legs, her bottom, her back, her neck, and finally the crown of her head. I heard a distant crack and thud, and I ran to the door. Through the darkness I could just make out her figure, face-down in the stream.

Sometime later I found myself sitting dizzily on the hall carpet staring at the empty doorway. My hands tingled all over, almost as if I'd pushed her out myself. The sky was growing light, and the rain was heavier and louder. I stood and walked shakily to the door again. The stream water had risen. It was washing over Soss, darkening her hair and tugging at her body. It tugged so hard that it set her free, and she went sailing down the stream, her pale blue nightgown bubbling round her, and her hair swirling with slow-motion grace. Then, ever so gently, she was sucked under a large rock.

The rain continued to pound the roof as I sat at the kitchen table wondering what to do.

I left school and found work in a shoe store—part of a national chain. I loved the smell of fresh leather, rubber and polish there. I adored placing the shoes proudly out on their pedestals every morning like royalty and introducing them to customers throughout the day. I felt delight when the shoes and the customer were right for each other,

– 36 –

and I could send the pair off to a good home, safely nestled in tissue paper and a cardboard box.

I didn't miss Soss, but I thought about her a lot. When I had to pass the big rock in the stream, I sped up, and when I looked at it out the window I shivered. Sometimes I fancied that I could feel her presence accumulating under it like gas.

Then the dreams started: dreams of Soss in which I only ever saw her from behind. In some of them she jumped off the doorstep over and over again in different acrobatic ways. In others I was sitting behind her on a bus, and she began to turn. When this happened I thought with relief that I would finally see her face, but her head seemed trapped in the act of turning, and though it turned and turned, it never faced me.

In all these dreams I knew there was something I needed to tell her. Exactly what it was I wasn't sure. Sometimes I felt the words beginning to form. I could discern their shape and texture, but I could never hold on to them for long enough to identify and say them.

I often woke terrified: I couldn't move my limbs, and the walls of the room seemed to be rushing away from me. Though I tried with all my might, it was always several minutes before I could regain kinetic awareness of the shoes on my feet.

During the day when my mind was clearer, I wondered if what I needed to do in the dreams was apologise—because however often I told myself that it wasn't my fault that she'd gone, I didn't really believe it. I felt that if I could have summoned up just a little bit of need for her at the moment she'd jumped, perhaps I could have sent it out like a rescue rope, and hauled her back in. And I thought that if I could say sorry to her in a dream, then the dreams might stop.

Of course once I was asleep, the word would never come.

One night, after waking from such a dream, I could stand it no longer. I lay very still, concentrating on the feel of my shoes on my feet. Then I got out of bed, went into the hall, and opened the front door. I braced myself against the chilly air that blew into my face, and began descending the ladder. The trees around me roared and swayed like demented giants. I reached the bottom and stumbled down the path towards the black hulk of Soss's rock. For the first time since

– 37 –

she'd gone, I stopped there, not dreading her bursting out from under it, but longing for her to. The wind seemed to roar inside my head as well as around me. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘I'm sorry!’

I waited. Why had I thought that would relieve me? It was like taking a spoonful of water out of the ocean.

After a time, I was bored of the chain store, and went for an interview at a better establishment—Pompey and Pshaw.

‘And what should a good pair of shoes be, do you think?’ asked Mr Pompey.

‘I believe shoes should be fine cars for the feet,’ I said. ‘Some need to be luxury sedans, others four-wheel drives, but all shoes should be vehicles that take you anywhere you want to go.’

He closed his eyes and smiled.

Mr Pompey was good to me. He taught me about the special fitting requirements of people with bunions and hammertoes. He helped me learn to materialise at a customer's side at exactly the right moment. He showed me how to fasten a buckle in one swift nimble-fingered move. And though he never treated his other shop staff with anything but kindness, I could tell I was his favourite. I was pleased, but not surprised, when one evening he was holding a private showing for a wealthy client and he asked of I could fill in for the manager, who was ill.

‘We'll be presenting our shoes to Leeta Lapeeta tonight,’ he said, and waited for my reaction.

I think I looked suitably impressed. I knew the story well—who didn't?