Part 1 (1/2)

Thyla.

by Kate Gordon.

For my mum, who is my real-life Connolly. For my dad, who wrote the first story about a tiger called Tessa.

For Dad's Leigh, for painting the picture that inspired the story. For Tasmania, for its rich history.

And for my Leigh, for everything.

My name is Tessa.

It was the one thing I knew for certain, the one word that stood lonely in my head when the lights were turned on.

The lights were so bright they were like darkness. My eyes watered. It felt as though they were bleeding.

I opened my mouth, and what I wanted to be a scream came out as a whimper. It sounded foreign and I felt myself thinking, I don't whimper. I don't whimper.

And so that was the second thing I knew.

Beyond that, there was nothingness.

Hot tears tumbled down my face and I wanted to push them back in.

I don't cry, either.

I was warm. Too warm. I could feel something bearing down on me at once soft and horribly heavy and another word joined Tessa Tessa in my mind, as if the words were small creatures meeting together. in my mind, as if the words were small creatures meeting together.

Blankets.

And then, I don't like blankets. I don't like blankets.

And so now I knew four things.

But the rest was deafening emptiness.

I didn't know where I was.

I didn't know how I got there.

I didn't know who who I was, beyond my name, and that I didn't like blankets. I was, beyond my name, and that I didn't like blankets.

I didn't know who the other people in the room were. They hadn't spoken yet, but I knew they were there. I could smell them. I could hear their shallow breathing. I could feel their fear.

Somehow this comforted me.

They are scared too, I thought. I fought through the pain, and I opened my eyes wide again and sat up.

'Who am I?' I asked.

And the woman screamed.

We laugh about it now, Connolly.

How you were afraid of me at first, when now we are closer than many real mothers and daughters. You ask if I can blame you.

I can't.

When you showed me a mirror that first day, I screamed too. You think that's funny now, also.

I did look a fright.

My hair now cropped short like a boy's was long and clumped into pudgy, misshapen sausages.

My face was so thick with dirt you could not tell the colour of my skin.

My eyes were red and bloodshot, and my lips were cracked and torn. My body was one big bruise.

I was a monster.

I don't blame Vinnie for instructing you gruffly, 'Wash her. Make her look human.'

Vinnie is your overseer. He has a deep, growling voice and a face that forever looks vexed. His cologne is always too strong it smells of spice and whiskey. His hair is greying about the temples, but aside from this he looks younger than you would expect in someone of such rank. He is thickset and strong-jawed and he has eyes of the most intriguing colour a sort of amber, with golden flecks. And, though I know it must sound odd, I felt I knew those eyes. But my brain was befuddled. If Vinnie knew me, he would tell me.

My memories of those first days with you and Vinnie are blurred and smudged. They seem to me like paintings with the paint still wet. I feel I can push my fingers into them and mix the colours up, or wipe them away completely.

You helped me to make things more solid, Connolly.

'These things take time, Tessa,' you said, when I asked you why Vinnie's search for my parents, for my history, for anything anything about me was uncovering nothing. 'Vinnie is a really great policeman. He'll find something. Until then, well, you've got me!' about me was uncovering nothing. 'Vinnie is a really great policeman. He'll find something. Until then, well, you've got me!'

I appreciated I still still appreciate how you strove to make me feel safe. You were a police officer, not a governess. You did not know me, really. You didn't appreciate how you strove to make me feel safe. You were a police officer, not a governess. You did not know me, really. You didn't have have to visit me in hospital, spend time with me; comfort me. to visit me in hospital, spend time with me; comfort me.

You asked me, on perhaps the third or fourth day, if I had any sense of who I was as a person; whether I was a kind person. I think you were trying to make me feel better, weren't you? You were trying to make me say that I felt I was good and virtuous.

But the thing is, Connolly, that's not how I felt at all. I felt I had tried tried to be good. I felt like I had tried to right wrongs. But I felt like I had failed. What wrongs they were, and how I failed, I couldn't remember. to be good. I felt like I had tried to right wrongs. But I felt like I had failed. What wrongs they were, and how I failed, I couldn't remember.

'I feel as if I need a purpose,' I said. 'A purpose outside of myself. Something to take my mind off ...'

Off what?

I couldn't remember. remember.

This is what I do do remember: remember: The hunger. No matter how much you fed me, it wasn't enough. I could have eaten ten more plates at every meal.

'Gawd, Tess. Where do you put it all?' you said, laughing, as I gobbled up the meal of pancakes and syrup you brought me from a place you called 'Maccas'. You'd had to smuggle it past the nursing staff, who seemed to believe very highly in the benefits of fruit, jelly and pasty white bread that didn't taste like bread at all. 'I'd turn into a complete larda.r.s.e if I ate like you do.'