Anatomy of a tote bag
Figure 1: my wallet. Peeling navy pleather, scratched and scuffed by years of being handled. Inside, my cards and coins are stashed, and a single stick of spearmint gum. I still carry around the black and white photo strip we took in the city, the summer before we started our final year of school. I don’t even have to look at the photos, folded neatly between my ID and myki, to feel that moment all over again. I can’t forget my initial discomfort, the awkwardness of being so close, with Ivy practically on my lap as we both gazed into the old camera. I can feel her sweat against my skin, her long hair sticking to my cheek as we contorted ourselves into another pose before the flash blinded us again.
Picture by Dreamer82
Figure 2: a red BIC lighter. I don’t smoke until I do. For a while I told myself I only kept a lighter in my bag so I had a reason to talk to girls in the smokers’ area at clubs or parties. In reality, it’s always been a crutch, a just-in-case. It has lived in many places. In the crumb-filled cup holder inside my mum’s Subaru. Inside the pocket of my powder blue school dress. I used to watch Wild child, starring Emma Roberts, religiously as a kid, so when I got to boarding school, I felt a lot like her. I lay in bed at night, feeling sorry for myself as I flicked the lighter on and off, admiring the flame as it danced. I imagined myself dropping it on the floor and setting the school alight like Emma’s character almost did.
Figure 3: Burt’s Bees pomegranate lip balm. Before I ever got the chance to kiss her, I imagined she’d taste like this. When we kissed for the first time, she tasted of dam water and MILO.
Figure 4: a carabiner that holds my set of keys. Usually it’s hanging off my hip as opposed to being inside my bag, but not every pair of pants has a belt loop. I would be lying if I said I wear it for convenience. It has always been a symbol, an extension of my body.
My old house key is still attached to it, despite the fact the new owners probably changed the locks as soon as we were gone. It was the first key I owned, the first key I kept in my backpack when I was deemed old enough to walk home from school in year five. I tell myself I’m not sentimental, but that can’t be true when I think of my old sunlit bedroom with its threadbare carpet and Blu-Tack-stained walls every time I turn a lock.
Figure 5: a Missy Higgins CD with a broken case. We found it together in an op shop that smelt like incense and English breakfast tea, two pairs of eyes glazing over a crooked bookshelf filled with CDs and cassettes that once belonged to small town strangers. All I could think about was how many people willingly got rid of their collections and how many lay in the dirt while their family members left boxes of their belongings outside a Vinnies or Salvos.
We were scouring the shelves for albums we liked or loved or were at least familiar with, or ones with cover art that intrigued our seventeen-year-old selves just slightly. If we wanted to listen to music during the week, physical media was our only option. Phones were only allowed on weekends and even then, internet connection on campus was bleak unless you were in a classroom. Ivy found it first, the scratched-up case with sticker residue on one side of Missy Higgins’ face.
That same night, back at school, I lay on the bottom bunk in our dorm as she inserted ‘The sound of white’ into my childhood CD player. Now I keep it close to me, ready for whichever car I end up driving as I anticipate listening to ‘Nightminds’, thinking of Ivy.
Figure 6: a battered copy of Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an emergency. Of course, the book I keep on me at all times changes depending on what I’m actually reading. I can’t seem to read much at all lately, not with her shadow following me. I see her everywhere. I see her face in the strangers I sit across from on the train. I see the backs of women in the beer garden at work as I’m carrying bowls of chips or parmas, their dark hair and warm skin glistening in the sun, and almost always think they are her. It doesn’t matter their age; I will find semblance of her in their features, until I hand them their meal or collect empty glasses from their table and realise she will never grow old enough to have the same lines on her face. On my break I sit out on the nature strip and flick to a tabbed or dog-eared page, usually ‘For Grace, after a party’. The first line is underlined in blue biro, then highlighted again in fluorescent yellow. The biro came later, after she tried to tell me what we were. But Frank was right, she did not always know what I was feeling, even when I swore no one knew me better than she did. She may have known my hands or the fact I could only fall asleep with one sock on and one off, but she did not know what I wanted.
Figure 7: a red biro. I don’t usually need it. It’s not often – or ever – that I find myself needing to write my number down on serviettes or receipts, or that I have something worth remembering that I can’t type into my phone.
In class once, Ivy told me that writing in coloured pen helped you remember things better, though I was hesitant to believe her from the beginning. She liked telling white lies more than she liked telling the truth, probably just to fuck with me, since she knew it usually worked. I spent a week writing with only the red and green ink from my four-colour ballpoint, to the point that each page of notes looked like Christmas word vomit.
I draw lines on my skin, create red circles around scattered moles or scars. I trace over the scar that runs from my wrist to my elbow and tattoo vine-like patterns that will dissolve after one or two showers. I think back to the scar’s origin, a deep cut into my flesh smudged with dirt. I was luckier than Ivy – I still have scars to show for it.
