by Liza Perrat
I kept my eyes shut, wanting it to go on forever.
***
‘Blow out the candles, Tanya.’ Mum was nudging me. ‘Everyone’s waiting.’
‘Make a wish ... gotta make a wish,’ they were all chanting.
I opened my eyes and tried not to spit on the cake as I blew out the candles.
‘Don’t tell us what the wish is,’ Marco said. ‘Or it won’t come true.’
So I said nothing, though from the way he, Angela and their parents glanced at me, I think they guessed it was something to do with making Uncle Blackie go away.
‘Bonzer cake,’ Nanna Purvis said as I cut slices and served it out.
Everyone nodded and murmured, ‘Mmn, mmn,’ dabbing chocolate and cream from their mouths.
‘Well, knock me out with a cricket bat,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Look who’s here, it’s Rita.’
All gazes turned to the hairdresser with bright orange, spiky hair, as she came towards Nanna Purvis, smiling.
Neither Mum nor I had ever met Rita in all the years she’d been doing Nanna Purvis’s hair.
‘What’re you doing here, Rita?’ Nanna Purvis’s bird eyes blinked at a woman in a long pink and yellow-flowered skirt, plaits hanging halfway down her back, who’d joined Rita.
‘This is Vivian,’ Rita said, laying her hand on the hippy woman’s arm. ‘My partner.’
‘Partner?’ Nanna Purvis said, shooting Vivian a dark glare. ‘Hairdressing partner? Never seen you in the salon. Not once in the forty years Rita’s been doing me hair.’
‘Vivian and I’ve been together almost as long as I’ve been doing your hair,’ Rita said. ‘I’m sure I did mention it, Pearl. Maybe you weren’t listening?’
Like a hooked fish, Nanna Purvis’s mouth stayed open, one of the rare moments I’d caught my grandmother speechless.
I was pretty certain what Rita meant by “partner”, but it took longer for Nanna Purvis to tweak. As the bitter realisation slowly came, my grandmother’s curls trembled, the crease between her upper lip and her nostrils quivered. Nobody said anything, as if we were all waiting for something to happen, though nobody knew what.
‘We’re celebrating our retirement tonight,’ Rita said. ‘I’ve sold the salon and Vivian and I’ve bought ourselves a Kombi van. We’re going travelling around Australia for a year. But I think I told you that too, Pearl?’ Rita clapped her hands together. ‘We can’t wait, can we, Vivian?’
Vivian smiled.
Nanna Purvis sat there like a mute person.
‘Sounds like great fun,’ Mum said.
‘You are having lovely trip,’ Mrs Moretti said.
‘Happy retirement,’ Mr Moretti said, and we all raised our glasses to Rita and Vivian’s retirement.
‘Thanks, enjoy your tea ... food’s divine, isn’t it?’ Rita said, she and Vivian smiling as the two women turned away, bumping shoulders as they walked through The Greasy Fork’s door.
Nanna Purvis stared after them, her mouth still wide open but no sound coming out.
‘Never mind,’ Mum said to her with a wry smile. ‘There’s always Percy’s Pin and Perm’.
‘I wouldn’t go to that poofter if he was the last hairdresser this side of Goonoo Goonoo,’ my grandmother said, far too loudly. Other diners turned, stared at her. ‘I’d sooner shave it all off.’
‘I can’t imagine you as one of those skinheads, Nanna Purvis,’ I said. Mum and Mr and Mrs Moretti chuckled and drank more wine and Angela, Marco and I exploded into giggles.
‘Anyway, Percy’s a Catholic,’ Nanna Purvis said, with a bang of her spoon on the tablecloth.
‘Maybe Rita’s a Catholic too?’ my mother said, with a laugh. ‘Hardly practising though. The church does give those poor lezzos a nasty time.’
For the rest of the birthday tea, my grandmother remained silent. I kept leaning over and patting her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Nanna Purvis, you just have to get with the times. Ya gotta stare the goanna in the guts.’
45
It was a week after my birthday dinner, Friday afternoon, and I was dreading another whole weekend with Uncle Blackie. Angela was busy with some family gathering so I’d have to stay at Gumtree Cottage on my own.
Mum wouldn’t be home from her typing and shorthand course till later, and, walking up the front verandah steps, I heard Nanna Purvis’s screechy voice coming from next door’s driveway. Arguing about something with Old Lenny again, no doubt.
I was so busy sniggering to myself about Nanna Purvis and Old Lenny’s constant bickering that I was shocked when Uncle Blackie grabbed me as soon as I walked inside.
Face beetroot-red, his eyes glittered with an icy anger I’d never seen before.
He must’ve known Mum wasn’t here, planned his attack while Nanna Purvis was next door, since my grandmother never left me alone with Uncle Blackie for a second now.
‘Let me go!’ I kicked and squirmed beneath his hold, shivered with fright, couldn’t free myself. ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll yell out to Nanna Purvis.’
‘Oh you would, would you, Tanya? We’ll see about that.’
One hand pinned me to the wall. With the other, he bound a smelly handkerchief around my mouth. He released his grip for a few seconds, knotting the gag at the back of my head, and I tried to make a run for it. Two steps only, and both hands were clamped on my shoulders, pushing me back to the wall.
My scream caught in my throat, the gag muffling it. I breathed fast, through my nose. My belly tightened, bladder pressing.
His hand was on my breast, kneading, squeezing. I shrank from him, from the pain of his pressing fingers. I turned away, couldn’t bear to look into those vicious-snake eyes.
I looked beyond Uncle Blackie into my bedroom, at the Venetian blinds. In the splices of sunlight darting between the blind slats, the dust was moving, floating where it wanted to go. Quickly though, each particle became trapped on the window sill, in corners, on furniture.
His breaths quickened, short and urgent. Gaze shafting mine like black drills. Body rigid, powerful.
‘Ellie left me ... chucked me aside ... dirty rubbish.’ He spoke in an ugly, cracked hiss. No trace of the floaty warmth. ‘And gave away our son ... did you know that, Tanya? Just gave him away as if he was worth nothing. Turned her heart to Dobson. Can you imagine what that’s like, the one you love switching her worship to another man?’ His voice grew louder, his words rushes of steam. ‘It’s this roar that comes from deep inside you.’ His hand fell from my breast to my belly, circling my navel. Dropping to my underpants, fiddling with the elastic. ‘It burns your eyes and blasts your brain apart.’ His voice was low again, soft, pleading. ‘You won’t leave me, will you, Tanya? You’re mine ... almost a woman now.’
Rough fingers inside me, poking, pushing.
I wriggled, tried to kick out at his shins, swiped at his probing hand. With as much force as I could muster, I sank my teeth into one of his fingers staking me to the wall.
In the short, shocked silence that followed, my heart beat even faster. Every muscle trembled. He could smell my fear, the desperation engulfing me. Now he would lift the handkerchief over my nose. And he would suffocate me.
‘You bit me, you little bitch,’ he said, quite calmly. Still holding me to the wall, he squinted at his finger, reddened and puffing up, a blood blister appearing beside the nail. The dark eyes turned sad, like a puppy’s, his shoulders slumping. ‘How could you bite me? You know we love each other ... this is it, Tanya. Real love.’
I tried to speak again, to scream, but could barely breathe through my nose, as if my nostrils had closed up and no air could get in or out.
The panic rose from my knotted gut, up to my chest, tight, pressing.
Can’t breathe ... can’t breathe ... going to die ...
Terrified he’d kill me if I didn’t let him do what he wanted, I closed my eyes, blocked out his face, his smell, the hot and musty fan of his breaths. Let his fingers wander where they wanted; let him press the
hardness in his trousers against me. I closed my ears too, on his stupid talk of love, and my teacher was telling us about the ancient Greeks.
The human flesh-eating Minotaur had the body of a man and the head of a bull and grew into a ferocious monster. After getting advice from the Delphi Oracle, King Minos of Crete had a gigantic labyrinth constructed to hold the Minotaur at his palace in Knossos.
Every nine years, seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls were sent as sacrifices to the Minotaur, so King Minos would stop attacking Athens.
I was trapped beneath the Minotaur, bull horns threatening to poke out my eyes, ferocious face twisted, muscles twitching as it tried to rip apart its human sacrifice.
The handkerchief slipped from my mouth. I opened my eyes.
‘Stop!’ I tried to breathe normally, but each one was a sharp gasp. ‘Please let me go, Uncle Blackie ... I want to come to Perth with you. I promise ... we’ll go right now.’
The Minotaur relaxed its grip.
‘Really?’ Uncle Blackie’s gaze was wary.
‘Yes, really ... truly. It’s what I want.’
‘Finally you’ve seen sense, Tanya,’ he said, and pressed his lips to mine. A crinkled and mouldy lemon.
When he paused for a breath I said, ‘Let me go, and I’ll just get my bag.’ I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘Then we’ll leave before Mum gets home, and before Nanna Purvis comes back from Old Lenny’s.’
‘No need to pack anything,’ he said, pointing to a bag sitting beside the front door, which I hadn’t noticed before. ‘I’ve got everything we need, and if not, we’ll just buy things along the way.’
He spoke like before: soft and sea-ripply, but I couldn’t deny the harsh, panicky edge to it. I knew he didn’t trust me not to make a run for it, and I didn’t dare argue with him.
***
One hand holding my arm, he slapped on the Akubra hat, hooked the Driza-Bone coat over his free arm and picked up the bag.
He hustled me outside, across the front verandah. No sign of Nanna Purvis next door. She and Old Lenny must’ve gone around the back to watch telly.
Down the steps he hurried me, out into Figtree Avenue, where the Anderson boys were playing cricket outside number ten.
‘You won’t shout, or scream, will you?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘Course I won’t. I told you, I really want to come to Perth.’
The Kingswood was parked beneath one of the huge Moreton Bay figs. Uncle Blackie must have known there was less chance I’d notice it out on the street, as I came in from school. For I’d definitely have seen it parked in its usual place in our driveway –– where Dad had once parked the Holden. In that moment, it was as if my father had never existed.
‘Quick. In you get, Tanya.’
Pushing me into the front seat, pressing down the lock. Slamming the door and rushing around to the driver’s side. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
How could I have let him corner me ... stupid, stupid.
Hands trembling on the steering wheel, Uncle Blackie fired up the Kingswood.
I smiled and waved to Terry and Wayne Anderson. Uncle Blackie zoomed off.
‘You’ll see, we’ll have such a great time together,’ he said, a hand patting my thigh. I forced myself not to swat it away. ‘The best time ever. I love you more than you could know, Tanya. And now I’m going to prove that to you.’
I nodded, keeping my gaze on the road ahead.
We reached the end of Figtree Avenue. Uncle Blackie had to slow down to turn into busy Gallipoli Street, where husbands would be outside mowing lawns or enjoying a beer in the shade, mothers watching children play hopscotch, jumping rope, or twirling hula hoops.
He slowed the Kingswood at the intersection, stopped to let a car pass. Another car behind it. I flung open the door, tumbled out of the car.
My heart beating so fast I thought it would explode, I stumbled to my feet and ran and ran, as far from him as possible. Didn’t look back; just kept running.
‘Bitch,’ Uncle Blackie shouted after me. ‘Little prick-teasing bitch. Knew I couldn’t trust you. You’re just like that Carter bitch ... you’re all the same.’
I expected him to come after me, but people in Gallipoli Street were staring at me, at the Kingswood. I chanced a look over my shoulder. He’d turned the car the other way, heading down the street, in the direction of the beach road. I didn’t care where he was going, as long as Uncle Blackie never returned to Gumtree Cottage.
But he did.
46
‘... and he gagged me ... I couldn’t breathe,’ I said. ‘And he said I was a little prick-teasing bitch.’
Half an hour after my desperate escape from the Kingswood, I was sitting at the kitchen table with Nanna Purvis, who’d set a cup of tea in front of me, and stirred in two sugars and half a Valium. I sipped the hot milky drink and, hands still shaking, I stroked Steely, curled in my lap.
My mother, who’d arrived home fifteen minutes ago, stood leaning against the kitchen bench, arms folded.
Nanna Purvis and I had told her everything –– all about Uncle Blackie’s naked photos; the way he’d snaked his way into Gumtree Cottage and slid beneath her skin just to get to me. And his attack that very afternoon.
But through the entire account, Mum hadn’t said a word. Her breaths came quick and shallow, her knuckles whitening as her fingers clung more tightly to the bench top.
Nanna Purvis poured a cup of tea for herself and one for my mother. ‘Say something, Eleanor, and come and sit down ... drink your tea.’
But Mum remained silent and I feared the worst: the truth about Uncle Blackie had pushed her back down to that miserable seabed.
‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ I said. ‘Didn’t want you to get sick again. But I ... I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.’
‘It can’t be true.’ Mum fidgeted with her cowlick. ‘It just can’t be ... not Blackie. You’re over-reacting, Tanya, still grieving Shelley, and your father leaving us. Jealous of our love for each other. All Blackie wants is to be a good stepfather to you. Besides, where are these supposed naked photos of you?’
‘I ... I burnt them. But they were here, in a box of his stuff in the storage shed. Not only me, lots of girls. It’s true, you have to believe me, Mum.’
‘All of it’s true,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Bit of a shame Tanya burnt the evidence, but good riddance to the bad egg, I say. And if you’ve got any sense, Eleanor, you’ll just be thankful he didn’t truly harm your own daughter.’
‘But he did,’ I said, swallowing the last of my tea. ‘He did harm one of her daughters.’
‘What do you mean?’ My mother turned her wide-eyed frown to me. ‘You –– apparently –– escaped from this so-called fiend.’
‘He suffocated Shelley. I ... I’m sure of it.’
‘No, no, no!’ My mother clenched and unclenched her hands. ‘It’s all lies. You’ve both hated him from the moment he started coming here, and now these ... these vicious accusations. How could you try and turn me against him, the man who loves me? The man who’s been waiting for me all these years, unlike my own husband who left not only his grieving wife but his daughter too?’
My mother stared from my grandmother to me. She shook her head, as if waiting for Nanna Purvis and me to say we were sorry, that it all was just callous lies.
‘Ask the Morettis if you don’t believe me,’ I said, gesturing at the phone. ‘Go on, call them. I’ve told them all about Uncle Blackie.’
‘No, no! Why would you tell them such things, Tanya?’
‘And why isn’t Blackie here then, Eleanor?’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Why’re his clothes, his Driza-Bone, his Akubra gone? The Kingswood? Tell me that.’
‘Oh god, why?’ My mother’s face crumpled and she sank to the floor. Thinking this was some shocked acknowledgement of our accusations, Nanna Purvis and I dashed to her side, helped her into a chair and forced her to drink the sugary tea.
‘Well, Ta
nya doesn’t have any proof he suffocated Shelley,’ Nanna Purvis said, ‘so we can’t expect the cops to do anything, especially as they already questioned him. But who else could’ve done such a thing? It’s gotta be him.’
‘We should tell the police,’ I said, ‘even if there’s no proof. They might be able to find some evidence against Uncle Blackie if we tell them we’re sure it was him.’
‘Too right we should call the fuzz,’ Nanna Purvis said, hobbling over to the phone. ‘Alert them a crazed child-attacker’s on the loose.’ She picked up the receiver, started dialling.
‘Nobody will call the police,’ my mother said. ‘Put that phone down.’
For once Nanna Purvis obeyed Mum, and placed the receiver back onto its cradle.
‘And both of you will shut your mouths now,’ my mother went on. ‘How dare you utter such vile things about Blackie?’ Tears filled her eyes, thin body trembling, her hands balled into fists. She leapt from the chair, knocking over her teacup. ‘Just shut up, both of you! Shut up ... shut up ... shut up!’
She banged a fist onto the table which made Nanna Purvis and me jump. Steely sprang from my lap, skittered away. Billie-Jean started yelping and Bitta barked from the doorway as my mother stamped off to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
Nanna Purvis and I remained sitting at the table, staring at each other, not knowing what to say or do. Milky tea leaked across the table and dripped onto the lino. Drip, drip, drip.
Soon afterwards, my mother still locked away in her bedroom, Uncle Blackie lurched through the front door. He stank of stale sweat and whisky breath, the dark eyes watery, red-rimmed. He stood there swaying, and glowering at me.
***
The dogs barked and dashed about Uncle Blackie. He kicked out at Billie-Jean, who yelped.
‘You kick my dog,’ Nanna Purvis said, ‘and I’ll kick you.’ Her hand hovered over the phone. ‘Tanya and I’ve told Eleanor all about you and I’m calling the police. Calling them right now if you don’t leave this house and never come back. Ever!’