DUST TO DUST
The first patch appeared when Cara was ten.
Ma rubbed at it with a washcloth, stiff and abrasive, it had been strung up with a wooden peg. The material carried the scar, an inflexible notch in the roughened fabric. Ma puffed. A strand of grey hair lifted from her damp forehead. She frowned.
“How do you manage it? Honestly. I don’t know what to do with you. It looks like earth but it won’t come off.”
Cara shrugged. Stared out the window. Ignored the threads scoring the skin on her knee. Ma threw the cloth in the sink. Glared. Shook her head.
“It’ll have to do. I don’t have time for this,” she said.
For you, Cara heard. Since Da left them, Cara knew she was a heavy weight for Ma to carry. Alone. She told her often enough. Da up-and-died. That’s what Ma said. It was Cara’s fault. That’s what Ma didn’t say.
She hopped from the kitchen counter, pulling her skirt down to try and cover the brown stain on her leg. Ma thought she’d been hanging around with the others. Loafing. Rolling down the grass slopes around the cricket pitch and stomping through the mud at the edge of
