Chapter 7: Pornography

After school Nancy rang me and told me to come over to her house. When I arrived I noticed she looked very worried. She stood at the front door with me, about to leave.

"I'm going to the police to report Ella missing. My boyfriend's a policeman." Nancy started biting her bottom lip. "Where could Ella be?"

"I'm sure they'll find her. Don't worry."

"You're such a good boy, Keith. What would I do without you?"

I smiled, proud of myself. "You said you wanted me to help Lily with her homework?"

"Lily's having problems at school. I'll pay you extra if you help her with her spelling."

"Is she upstairs in her room?"

Nancy nodded. "I might be back before dinner but if I'm not, you can eat the fried rice I left in the freezer."

I couldn't find Lily when I went upstairs to her bedroom. On her bed was her schoolbag. Her window was opened, letting in orange afternoon sunlight. Lily's room seemed much cleaner than usual. Her clothes were not all over the place like they were when I last came here.

I eventually found Lily in Ella's bedroom. Still in her school uniform, she was kneeling down on the floor near a bucket of grey paint. Under the bucket of paint were newspapers laid down in case the paint spilled over. Lily's right hand held a paintbrush. The metal frame of Ella's bed used to be completely black. Now half of it was painted grey.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"I'm painting," she said. "It's for Ella."

"Does Ella want her bed frame grey? Did you ask her?"

"No, if I ask her, she might say no."

"What if she doesn't like it?"

Lily shrugged her shoulders. "My mum said I can do it. I make everything grey. Don't tell anyone."

"Why don't you want me to tell anyone?"

"I don't want them to stop me."

"I don't think Ella likes grey. Nothing else in her room's grey."

"This paint isn't really grey," said Lily.

"Then what colour is it?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's light grey," I said.

"No it isn't."

"Stop painting now—you can do it later. Your mum told me to help you with your spelling."

"Okay then," she said, putting the paintbrush back into the bucket. She got up and ran out the door.

When I arrived back in Lily's room I found her on the computer, browsing the Internet. She had to kneel down on the carpet to use the computer. On the bed was her bag, which I unzipped and browsed through. Her bag had a strange strawberry smell, probably the remnants of lunch. There were about four workbooks, a lunchbox, and a student diary in the bag. I grabbed all four workbooks and pulled them out.

"Lily, your mum told me you needed help with spelling. Which book do you have your spelling words in?"

"I don't have any." She stared forward. Her eyeballs twitched to the sides. "I left everything at school."

If Lily left all her spelling words at school, I couldn't think of any way I could test her. But Nancy was paying me extra for the lessons, so I needed to do something.

"Let me use the computer, Lily. I'll find some words on the Internet for you to learn."

Lily stopped typing. She paused for a few seconds, probably wondering whether she should let me use her computer. I had a feeling she didn't want me using her computer.

"Okay," she said very quietly. She stood up and sat on her bed while I sat down on the carpet near the computer

Using a search engine I found a website that contained Grade 3 spelling words. Since Nancy doesn't actually get to see me teaching her daughter, she may start to wonder whether I actually did my job properly. So that I have some physical evidence of my work, I printed out the Grade 3 spelling words using Lily's printer. I cleared Lily's desk, took a spare chair from Ella's room, and sat next to Lily on her desk. Her desk didn't have any drawers; it just had four legs at the corners, so two people could easily fit on the same desk.

I put on the desk a handful of paper and a pencil, both from Lily's schoolbag. Lily sat on the right side of the desk while I sat on the left side. I noticed that the bottom-right-hand corner of the desk was blunt, not pointy. Lily must have seen me staring at the blunt corner of the desk because she immediately gave an explanation.

"I used sandpaper and made it less sharp." She got off her seat and picked up sandpaper she had earlier left on the floor. When she sat back down again she started sanding away at the corner. "If it's too sharp, it might hurt someone."

"I'm going to call out a word from this list," I said, pointing to the computer printout, "and you tell me how the word is spelled."

She nodded and stopped sanding the corner.

"Spell for me the word 'raccoon.'"

"R-A-C-O-O-N."

I was surprised because I actually expected her to get this word correct. "Uh... you should have used double cs instead of just one."

"Oh... okay." The little girl bit her lips, opened her eyes up wider, and tilted her head down slightly. It was a good attempt but a bad start. I started to wonder. If I kept giving her hard words, she may not like me anymore because being around me will make her think that she was dumb. On the other hand, I didn't want to give her really easy words because then she might go tell her mum that the lessons are easy and then her mother may think I'm useless because I am not challenging her. If she thinks I'm useless then she may cancel the lessons and I'd lose money.

"What do you think happened to Ella?" asked Lily.

I had a feeling Lily was trying to divert my attention away from spelling.

"Ella was with Mark," I said. "Mark must have taken her somewhere."

"Will I see her again?"

"Your mum's at the police now. They're working hard to find her." I paused. "Do you want to get back to the next word on the spelling list?"

She nodded. "Okay."

"Tell me how to spell 'rattlesnake.'"

"Aren't these American words?"

"The spelling of these words is the same here."

"No, but I don't think there are many raccoons or rattlesnakes in Australia."

"Okay, don't worry about that word then." I skipped a few words on the spelling list in order to find easy words. "Spell for me the word 'cat.'"

She got that word right, as well as the next six words I gave her. After a while, though, it was irritating because Lily wasn't listening to me again. She stared forward and, with her hands, she stroked on her shoulder-length hair.

"My mum won't let me get a hair cut," she said. "It's too long but she said no." With her hands behind her head she held up her hair to see whether she could make a ponytail.

"You don't need a haircut."

"I can get a haircut myself at the mall if I had more money. But my mum doesn't give me any money." Lily turned her head and faced me. "Daddy used to always give me money."

"Would you, uh, like to borrow some money from me?" I took out my wallet and hesitantly took out a twenty dollar note.

"Really? For me?" She grabbed the money and scrunched it up into her pockets.

"You want to learn more spelling words?" I asked.

"No, I think I'm hungry now."

On the kitchen table that night I ate leftover fried rice while Lily ate sushi. I had already chopped up the chicken sushi into small bits so Lily could eat with her hands. She told me that when her dad was alive he always took her to Japanese restaurants but now that her father was dead her mum only ever took her to McDonald's.