Jump for Jordan by Donna Abela

Author:Donna Abela
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Currency Press

AZZA: Remember when you got engaged? Sit with us, Mara. Look how happy you look.

MARA: Look how long it lasted.

LOREN: Oh my God.

SOPHIE: That’s me.

LOREN: Your prettier twin.

SOPHIE: Identical hair.

LOREN: Frizz factory.

SOPHIE: Mum? Is that Layla? Dad’s sister?

MARA snatches the photo out of their hands.

YOUNG SAHIR: Mara, Layla’s dead. Shot in the camp. I’ve been going to the camp. I’m sorry. I’m walking north. I’m sorry…

Past: YOUNG SAHIR exits.

AZZA: Do they know about Layla?

SOPHIE: Can I make some copies?

MARA: No.

MARA exits.

22.

Past: University. SOPHIE and STUDENT SAM are studying an artefact, a bull box, by drawing it.

SOPHIE: Dad said my curls were a gift from his sister, Layla. I’m her spitting image, apparently. She died before I was born. In Palestine. Or Jordan. I don’t know. What about your family?

STUDENT SAM: Irish-Scottish Aussie.

SOPHIE: Migrants.

STUDENT SAM: Way back. Potato famine refugees, Calvinist crackpots, we don’t know.

SOPHIE: Don’t you want to know?

STUDENT SAM: I want to finish this assignment.

SOPHIE: Me too.

They resume drawing, until…

Who do you look like?

STUDENT SAM: My dad.

SOPHIE: What does he do?

STUDENT SAM: Drives a truck.

SOPHIE: Where?

STUDENT SAM: Everywhere… We have this thing. Every summer holiday, he takes me on the road with him. Until I turned vegan, we’d live on lamingtons and battered savs. Yeah, gross, but incredible. The pick of the season in the back of the rig. Mangoes, avocados, cherries. I love it. The independence of it. Coming home with Tibooburra dust on your dash.

SOPHIE: Desert dust.

STUDENT SAM: In your clothes, up your nose…

SOPHIE: Hey, our dads both crossed deserts.

STUDENT SAM: Yeah.

SOPHIE: Imagine if they’d met. They might’ve found something in common.

STUDENT SAM: Maybe. Because a roadhouse, I always thought, if you magnified it by a million, it’d kind of be like what Petra was. A pit stop where travellers on different roads can rest up and trade stories over steak sandwiches.

SOPHIE: Kebabs.

STUDENT SAM: Kebabs.

STUDENT SAM smiles, and resumes drawing, until…

SOPHIE: I’m bored!

STUDENT SAM: Why do you think we’re drawing?

SOPHIE: Because our lecturer’s a douchebag?

STUDENT SAM holds the bull box under SOPHIE’s nose.

STUDENT SAM: This bull box is made of what?

STUDENT SAM waits until SOPHIE really looks at the artefact.

SOPHIE: Clay?

STUDENT SAM: Describe the surface.

SOPHIE: Polished, but not super-polished?

STUDENT SAM: All over?

SOPHIE: Yes?

STUDENT SAM: It’s polished on the outside, burnished, probably with a tool, right?

SOPHIE: Right.

STUDENT SAM: But inside, those of us who are drawing it can see slight ridges, a rougher texture, marks possibly left by someone’s thumbs.

SOPHIE looks.

SOPHIE: You’re right. You’re the shit.

STUDENT SAM resumes drawing until…

Bulls are connected to Baal, right?

SAM: .

SOPHIE: Courtney saw Baal. At Pella when she went on that dig. She said she saw him as large as life sitting on the end of her bed carrying a very exotic flowerpot.

SAM: .

SOPHIE: [mimicking Courtney] On a dig, I have all these dreams, vivid dreams, they’re practically visitations!

STUDENT SAM gives up, and shuts her up with a kiss.

23.

Present: House. SOPHIE is showing AZZA some drawings.

AZZA: You drew these?

sophie: This is a pottery theatre ticket. Well, my dodgy drawing of one. Pottery, you know, (mime) clay… hands… make.

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