An assemblage of things

She was kind and thoughtful and found me, that first day, sitting alone and crying waterfall tears into my sister’s handkerchief. I was six and felt lonely and sad. My father had ‘passed on’ and was gone to be loved by another child that was not me. I hadn’t understood the language of my elders and had thought papa had moved away to a better place without me. I must have been bad. It must have been my fault.

“He’s better off where he is now”, just confirmed my worst fears.

“Ginny May you best leave that child alone. Don’t be filling her head with your nonsense”, Grandma’s tone was telling.

I ran out of the house and sat in the yard. The pain was sitting in my belly and controlling the rolling hic cups and snotty sobs which ebbed and flowed and lulled only long enough for me to feel her concern rest on my tiny toes.

Saffa’s bark was filled with a richness that encapsulated Grandpa’s bellowing laughter and his sweet caramel-sucking breath. She had always oozed compassion and I could rely upon her knowing sense of need. Her nose rubbed along my big toe and sniffed for a moment as she made her way up to my scuffed and reddened kneecaps. I wiped at my messy face as she leant forward to lick away the sadness that I held between my fingers. Her tongue tickled and her tiny nips at my fingers brought the laughter. She had found my tickle trigger and knew how to manoeuvre her way through my childhood grief and push me through its doorway. I thrust my arms around her neck and buried my head into her overabundance of fur. She was copper in colour and a little copper in taste. Her body engulfed mine twice over, but she never used it in any other way than to make me feel safe. Another swipe of her gargantuan tear-licker and my laughter persisted to dance away on the breeze.

I chased after Saffa as she careened across the yard, my handkerchief braced in her thieving chops, and watched as she wiggled her ginger bum through the side of the old barn door. Papa had been absolute in his edict to stay ‘outta the barn’ but he was not here, so I saw this as carte blanche to ignore all past edicts. There were very many of them. With mischief powering my uncovered feet I found Saffa lying with her belly exposed and demanding the touch of my tickle givers. Soft golden eyes, projecting unconditional love, tried to distract me from the soggy handkerchief I was certain must now be half chewed. Her smile was so broad and inviting that I forgot to scold her and instead threw my developing bones onto her full pelt. If she could have spoken in that moment I could have imagined her scolding me instead.

She let me rest my head upon her neck and wrap myself around her patience. We just lay there on the dusty floor and looked up through the gaping hole in the rotting roof counting clouds and laughing as they morphed from dinosaur to frog to papa to milk bottles. I cannot recall how long we lingered, or how inventive we became, but I do remember the reason why Papa had banned us from the barn. The rain was cold and full of splinters as it bounced like giant boulders from rafter to rafter and plank to plank. Papa might have gone to be better in another place (and that I’d get over it with time?) but he always wanted to keep us safe. The next time Saffa and I went into the barn we stayed out of the middle part and built our special fort in the far corner surrounded by old and stinky hay. It was perfect. The frog centurions kept watch in the sky above us, we managed to avoid the bats and birds that flew around in the shadows and our squeaky neighbours were choosing not to introduce themselves and play. They would have been welcomed. They all would have been welcomed.

In the minutes and moments that followed these there was a litany of small but plentiful adventures. Saffa found the rope swing a little tricky at first but persevered, wrapping her furry arms around me and helping to rock us until the momentum took over. She was brilliant at picking the right sticks for our raft building and even managed to stay focused enough not to bury them all. She also remembered to bring me fruit to keep us fuelled up during our long days of crusading. I was amazed that she could swipe them from the kitchen table without Mama seeing, that she didn’t crush them under the weight of her pointy front teeth and with the gentle way she would help me tear off the orange peel and keep each piece clear of the detritus of our encampment.

Saffa did everything possible to distract me over that long summer and mama never once complained of the ‘state of me’ when I returned home utterly spent and needing a bath. She would fill the metal basin with warm-enough water and then I would recount the dam building and dragon chasing. She would nod, with that far away gaze she had found time to perfect and move through the motions of freeing me from the nature that had stowed away enroute. Papa would have scolded me over the smallest muddy footprint but since ‘moving on’ Mama had lost the inclination. I splashed and kicked just hard enough to create a gown of bubbles to cover my modesty whilst chattering away ten to the dozen. My rapid speech and ability to entertain myself, with little to no input, was actually quite enough for the situation and mama rubbed my back with sufficient pressure to validate her presence. She might as well have moved on with papa and left me and Saffa here on our own (weren’t we anyways?).

By late Autumn, just before the last wave of multicoloured leaves fell from their branches, the barn had a makeover. Papa had left some money for us, so Mama had it razed to the ground. It seemed utterly impossible to me to lift something to the floor but as soon as I saw the flames, I better understood her meaning. It went up in a whoosh of black smoke with snaking ribbons of red that looked like the awakening of a fearsome monster. Saffa looked at me with, what I can only imagine must have been, concern and worry. I cupped her nose in my right hand and felt her lean her weight into me. This was the best bonfire I had ever been to, and it was happening in our back yard! The roof began to crack with deafening bubbling and popping, sending greater splinters and slivers of wood in all directions. Saffa pulled on the sleeve of my jumper, hoisting me backwards and far enough away from the danger zone. She was so smart. Once it had collapsed in on itself enough to be considered roof-less I was able to shuffle my way a little closer and look in through the door, now unlocked, open wide and calling to me. There was a reason Papa had banned me from the barn. It spoke with an alluring lilt that rocked me on the balls of my feet, now housed in winter gumboots, and tried to seek out my tickle trigger. There were caramel layers wrapping themselves around the flashes of red and orange and yellow and each layer pulled me closer. The barn was trixie and it was madder than the heat of hell which, incidentally, dripped from its remaining planks.

Forcing a handkerchief across my mouth and nose Mama appeared out of nowhere. She wrapped her arms around my chest and ran with me until we reached the kitchen door. Her face shared some of the look that Saffa had previously shown but hers was covered with a delicate flouring of love I had not seen for a long time; delicate and fragile and I was fearful of the smallest fracture. She tossed me into the sink as though I weighed not an ounce and began furiously dousing me with the coldest water on record. It was in fact I who was more likely to shatter in this moment as the realisation of my burns became all too apparently real. She wept as the steam misted her spectacles and whispered words of reassurance to me. Over and over again she apologised and promised to never leave me on my own again, that this was her penance and that Papa would have been disappointed. I placed my hand in hers and told her that we’d be okay and that Saffa could look after her now too. The stream of water kept coming, and her voice got softer and softer, as I passed in and out of consciousness. It had been such a wonderful bonfire but I had no idea how we found ourselves here.

In later years I would advocate for every six-year-old child to have their Saffa, to have their own friend, less-imagined but no less precious. Mama kept to her word and helped me better understand her temporary absence and Papa’s permanent one. It took us both some time for her to help me fully understand that his leaving was not through choice but through illness and death. Our final acceptance came in a co-authored homage to both Papa and Saffa entitled: the labyrinth of childhood grief and the dogs who lead us through it.