Dad got dementia when he was forty years old. The doctors said it was too young to get dementia but he got it. He was the caretaker of a private school in Kew. At the end of my school day I would walk the ten blocks to where he was and wait on the steps. I liked to pretend I was poor like the little matchstick girl when the older kids in uniforms walked past. I’d open my eyes wide and rub my hands together. Once I did it so well that one of the teachers put her arm round me and took me to the staffroom where she gave me biscuits out of a packet. Then she found my dad and delivered me to him. Dad was furious and when we got home, he walloped me on the head.
After that I waited for him at the play equipment and looked energetic whenever anyone passed. From the swing I could see dad turn out the lights at the end of his shift. I liked to hang upside-down so that my hair brushed the tanbark and watch each window gasp into the dark. Sometimes dad came to the window if it was left open and wave at me. Then he’d close the window and turn off the light. All three storeys of the building would go dark like dominoes and I’d hang there, the blood rushing to my head and my feet going tingly until I’d feel his hands on the chain and he’d push me for a bit. On the way home he put his thick fingers in my hair, picking out the bits of bark. Now he turns off the lights on his ward. The nurses let him do it before bed. They say it relaxes him. Makes him more manageable. They turn the ones they need back on after he’s rounded the corner. Once he’s in bed they pull up the cot-sides and latch them in so he can’t get out and do it all over again.
Full version of this story available from Best Australian Stories 2008, published by Black Inc.
