by Nicole Trope
Police and paramedics were, last night, called to the Blackwater Tavern in Sunnybank, Queensland, where a brawl had erupted between two men. Paramedics found Micah Jones (19) on the footpath. He had suffered catastrophic injuries after allegedly receiving a single punch from Vernon Howell (44). Despite Mr Jones being on the footpath and not in a position to defend himself, witnesses say that Mr Howell continued to kick and punch the man until police arrived. A young woman, Leslie Saunders (19), was also injured in the incident. Mr Jones was taken to hospital but died en route.
Mr Howell is now helping police with their enquiries.
The Courier Mail
20 June 2003
Life Sentence for Unprovoked Attack
Vernon Howell (45) was today sentenced to life in prison for the unprovoked attack on Micah Jones in 2002. Mr Jones was only 19 at the time of the attack and died as a result of his injuries. His girlfriend, Leslie Saunders, who was also 19 at the time, is still suffering from the damage inflicted upon her. ‘I cannot sit for long periods of time because of the harm done to my spine as I was trying to pull him off Micah. It was a vicious and violent attack and my life will never be the same. Micah’s family are devastated and may never recover from the loss of their beautiful son.’
‘This was an unprovoked attack for no rhyme or reason and the defendant has shown no signs of remorse during his time in custody; therefore, the full force of the law must come to bear,’ Justice Ben Smith said upon sentencing Mr Howell to life in prison with a non-parole period of 20 years.
The article went on to talk about how Vernon had devastated yet another family but I couldn’t read anymore. He’s in prison. That’s all I needed to know. He could not have sent me the frog – so who did?
It would be impossible for my mother to hand-deliver a parcel to me.
I like to think that I have locked my painful memories away in a box. In my mind it’s a large wooden box, decorated with the images I have of myself as a child. For years, whenever a moment from my past came back to haunt me, I would imagine myself forcefully grabbing it and shoving it into the box. It isn’t that I pretended it didn’t happen or that I didn’t work through the trauma of it with Ian, I just allowed myself to lock it away so I didn’t have to dwell on it until it drove me crazy. But I have been kidding myself. The thread is always running beneath my daily life, proving that those memories have not been locked up tightly enough. The endless, relentless, truthful thread.
The emails and the message from the woman on my blog have unlocked the box without my permission. All of the hurtful memories have escaped and are now roaming around my mind, forcing me to experience them again. They are worse than the thread because they are dominated by the smell of vinegar, cigarettes and sweat; by the feel of rough hands, bruised skin and dirty sheets; by the taste of hunger; by the sounds of a broken heart.
The first time he hit me it was because I stepped in front of the television during a football game. I was getting my book from the chair where I’d left it. I didn’t even think about it. He had only been living with us for two weeks then. He’d already stopped pretending to be kind to me – that had only taken a matter of days – but he hadn’t done anything more than call me stupid for dropping a glass. But I believe I knew something was coming, something worse. I found it difficult to eat dinner when he was at the table. The shiny pink of his skin, the way he looked at me as he drank one beer after another, the way he smelled – it all made my stomach churn.
And then I stepped in front of the television for a moment and he stood up from the couch. He roared, ‘Out of the way, you silly cunt,’ and his big, meaty hand swiped across my face, knocking me over.
I stayed on the floor, shocked, my hand over my burning cheek, as an advert for a beer came on displaying the camaraderie of a group of friends at a pub. I have never been able to drink beer or tolerate the smell of it. After he smacked me, he stumbled off to the kitchen for another can, just as the advert needed him to do. I couldn’t believe what had happened. As soon as he was out of the room, I jumped up and ran to my mother’s bedroom, where the curtains were closed, despite it being a Saturday afternoon. The whole room smelled of sweat.
‘Mum,’ I cried, ‘he hit me, he hit me. Vernon hit me.’ I knew she would be outraged and shocked. I assumed that this would be the last straw for her, that this would galvanise her into getting up and getting on with her life without this nasty man.
I saw her jumping up off the bed and confronting him, throwing him out of the house and then hugging me to her chest. I thought she would be horrified at what he’d done but instead she sat up a little on the bed, her eyes glazed, and said, ‘I was sleeping, Alice.’
‘But, Mum, look he hurt me,’ I shouted, pointing to my fire-red cheek so she would understand.
‘Just stay out of his way, you’re always in the way,’ she muttered. Then she turned away from me and closed her eyes again. She turned away from me.
‘I wish Dad was here,’ I whispered, feeling my unstoppable tears return.
‘Just get out,’ she murmured, rolling over.
It’s a terrible thing to understand at six years old that you no longer matter to your mother; a terrible, incomprehensible thing.
He hit me a lot after that. He kept away from my face but I usually had a bruise somewhere on my body. I tried to stay away from him. I spent my nights in my bedroom, even eating dinner there. I didn’t ask my mother for help again.
But as I grew older, he sought me out. He made me return to the table for dinner and he asked me questions about school and what I was reading. He hit me less and I thought that he was trying to be a better person. But he was always watching me. He would walk in on me when I was in the bathroom so I started locking the door, but then he beat his fists on the wood, making holes and splinters, screaming, ‘No locked doors in my house, it’s dangerous.’ I started showering only when he was out and tried to go to the bathroom only when he was asleep.
I put down my weights, longing to escape the clutches of these memories. I am drenched in sweat because I spent forty minutes on the treadmill, running away from my thoughts, but here they are again.
The first time the ugly thing happened – that’s what I called it in my head as a child, the ugly thing – I was ten years old. My guard was down on that particular day because he came home from work with a whole bag filled with new clothes for me.
‘Here you go, love,’ he said, and a wide grin spread across his face, exposing yellowing teeth.
I took the bag from him and peeked inside. It was filled with clothes. ‘Oh,’ I said and I know I smiled back at him.
‘I noticed you were growing out of everything, so I thought… well, a young lady needs to look nice, doesn’t she?’ But I wasn’t a young lady. I was a child.
His voice was soft and smooth and I should have dropped the clothes and run but everything I owned was too small for me; even my underwear left red rings around my waist and legs where it dug into my skin. I had asked my mother and she’d promised, time and time again, to take me shopping when she wasn’t so tired. I was old enough by then to know that she was always going to be tired.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘try it all on.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, turning to leave the room.
‘No,’ he said, his voice growing an edge, ‘here. Here or I’ll take it all away.’
‘I don’t want—’
‘Take off your clothes or I’ll crack you hard.’
As I was changing, my hands trembling so ferociously I couldn’t do up zips or buttons, his octopus hands went everywhere.
‘Stop!’ I shouted and then he hit me across my head, knocking me over, making my ears ring and my lungs contract.
I was wearing a pair of shorts with sparkly purple butterflies embroidered on the front, and he ripped them down. I heard the fabric tear, and in that moment, I wanted to cry because the shorts were so pretty and I had loved them the moment I saw them.
I tried to fight him but he hit me tw
ice more and then… and then…
‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said afterwards, leaving me on the floor with blood on my legs. ‘And if you say one fucking thing to your mother, I’ll snap Lilly’s neck while you watch and then I’ll snap your mother’s neck and then I’ll snap yours, just like that.’ He clicked his fingers.
Lilly was sleeping and I was grateful for that, grateful she didn’t have to see what had happened to me. My mother was also having a nap or she hadn’t woken up yet. All I know is that she didn’t hear me shout, she didn’t hear me cry. She slept through the whole thing. The whole thing.
I head home from the gym and jump into the shower, where I scrub at my skin. I can’t get clean enough, can’t wash away his smell and his germs, and I hate whoever is sending me the emails for bringing it all up again.
Are the emails and the message on my blog connected? I haven’t said anything to Jack yet, and I know I should, but I have no idea how to explain it all, no idea what to say.
I think about my mother uttering those words, shouting at Anika, ‘I know what you did!’ What was she talking about?
I need to speak to her again.
I may get lucky if I go over now and find her in a more lucid state.
As I drive, I remember what it was like when he started coming into my room at night. The first time he touched me gently, so gently that, as I woke from sleep, I thought it was my father. I opened my eyes, a smile already on my face, relieved that the last four years had simply been a bad dream. But then I realised who I was looking at. ‘Don’t say a word,’ he said and his hands crawled over me.
‘Lilly will see,’ I whispered, trying to keep my voice calm, even though I wanted to scream and scream.
‘Put her in the cupboard then,’ he said. I was so grateful I could hide her somewhere. I didn’t want her to see. I dragged her out of bed, taking her pink blanket and her frog, and I made a little nest for her. She barely opened her eyes and she slept until he was done. Throughout it I stared at the dark ceiling, removed myself from the body that was being hurt, drifted away to the beach where the sun was shining and my father and I were playing in the sand. The salt smell of the sea surrounded me, and the hands that were clutching the sheet beneath me felt the soft heat of beach sand.
Parking outside the Green Gate, I take a deep breath. I need to be calm before I speak to her. It’s colder today than it has been for a while and I pull my coat tightly around me as I walk up the path to the front door. The young gardener is watering some pot plants at the front, and he smiles at me.
‘Cold today,’ he says.
‘It is,’ I agree, almost pleased that I can carry on such an innocuous conversation while my thoughts are in such turmoil.
‘It’s so nice to see you again,’ says Anika once I’m inside, ‘but I’m afraid she’s not having a very good day.’
My heart sinks. ‘That’s okay,’ I mumble, ‘I’ll just sit with her.’
‘You smell nice,’ my mother says when I lean down to kiss her.
‘Hi, Mum, how are you feeling today?’
‘I’m fine, love. Vernon popped over to say hello. He said to give you his best.’
I nod, because what else is there to do?
‘Oh, there he is now,’ she says, waving frantically at the window. I look outside to see the young gardener dragging a lawnmower across the grass.
‘That’s not…’ I begin but then I give up.
‘Vernon knows what you did, you know,’ she says mildly.
I open and close my mouth once or twice, gaping like a fish out of water, struggling to get enough air into my lungs. ‘What…?’ is all I can manage.
‘To Lilly,’ she says, turning to look at me. ‘He knows what you did to Lilly.’ And then she returns her gaze to the window.
I almost fall down onto her bed. I drop my head into my hands. I can’t think straight. How is this possible? Is my mother really the person sending me emails? Is she also the woman on my blog? Is she even suffering from Alzheimer’s?
‘Who are you?’ she asks.
I look up at my mother, who is staring at me, staring at a stranger.
‘I’m your daughter Alice, remember?’ I reply quietly.
‘I have a daughter? Who would have thought. My mother said I would be a dreadful mother. She said I wasn’t cut out to take care of a child.’
I nod my head. The grandmother I never met was right. My mother should never have had one child, let alone two. I thought that when she got pregnant with Lilly everything would change. A second child, a second chance of being a mum. He took her vodka away and I thought that would help her get up and out of bed but I thought wrong. She just slept her way through her pregnancy and then left it to me to take care of Lilly after she was born, sleeping through motherhood. I didn’t mind. When they brought my sister home from the hospital, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Her perfect tiny hands curled around one of my fingers and I was in love. I didn’t even mind that we moved houses and I had to move schools. I had Lilly and she was everything.
‘Take her for me, I’m just exhausted,’ she would say the moment I got home from school.
Sometimes I would find my little sister screaming in her cot, red-faced and smelly. But taking care of her was the best thing that had happened to me since my father died. I loved her with a fierceness I had never thought possible, with a fierceness I never thought I would experience again until I had my own boys. Whatever I did and why I did it, I know that I loved Lilly. I loved her more than her mother did and more than her father did and that’s why I can’t forgive myself. You shouldn’t hurt someone you love that much. It is simply unforgivable.
If my mother is sending these emails, I don’t blame her for her anger. I wonder how long she has known, how long she has wanted to let me know that she’s aware of what I did and what happened because of it. I wonder how deeply furious she is at me. I imagine her thinking of going to the police and then dismissing the idea. How would she have explained everything? How would she have explained my battered body and the filth we lived in? How would she have explained how she had simply checked out of motherhood?
Anika comes into the room. ‘Isn’t it nice to see Alice again so soon, Margaret?’ she says.
‘Who’s Alice?’ my mother asks, and before Anika can answer her, I stand up and shake my head.
Alice’s mother is not here. Alice’s mother was never here.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say, even as tears are running down my cheeks. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Twenty
Molly
* * *
After three days of lying in bed Molly feels she might be going mad. ‘I think I need to get up today,’ she tells Peter as she watches him dress for work. She likes watching her husband get dressed, going from rumpled and casual to professional. She enjoys the way his muscles work as he pulls on a deep blue shirt.
‘Molly, if Dr Bernstein told you to lie in bed for the next six months, you would, wouldn’t you?’ he asks as his hands expertly knot a paisley tie. He smooths his hair down and Molly resists the urge to leap off the bed and grab him. She sits up instead, pushing her pillow behind her. She can remember Lexie saying that in her second trimester she couldn’t keep her hands off Owen. ‘It’s all the hormones,’ said her sister at the time, ‘Owen has no idea what’s going on.’
‘But he’s enjoying it, I bet,’ Molly had teased.
She smiles – she is so close to her second trimester – and then she feels her stomach twist. It would be unimaginably terrible to lose everything now. She shakes her head at her thoughts. She is alternately delirious with happiness and awash with terror.
‘Of course, you know I would. I would do anything it took,’ she replies.
‘Right,’ he says triumphantly, ‘then a couple more days won’t make a difference. Maybe call Dr Bernstein and let him tell you if you can get up or not. Otherwise the scan is on Thursday and we’ll know more then.’
> ‘Easy for you,’ mutters Molly.
Peter comes over to sit down on the bed next to her. ‘I know this isn’t easy but you can do this. In a few days, we’ll be able to celebrate together. I’ll book La Trattoria for dinner and we can start arguing about names.’
‘Arguing about names,’ Molly says with a laugh, ‘how incredible would that be?’
‘In the meantime,’ says Peter, standing up, ‘I really think you should return your mother’s calls or at least return Lexie’s.’
‘How many are we up to now?’ asks Molly.
‘Your mother has called eleven times: five times before I told her to give you some space and six times after that. Your father has called at least three times and Lexie has called at least double that. They’re going crazy, Molly, and I know, despite everything, that you miss them. You need to call them and talk about what’s happening with you and the pregnancy, and you need to be able to ask all the questions you want to ask.’
‘I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet,’ says Molly. She cups her hand protectively over her stomach. ‘I don’t know if we’re ready for that.’
Peter leans down to kiss her on the forehead. ‘I’m sure he’s ready. He needs his grandmother in his life.’
‘He?’ Molly smiles.
‘Yes,’ says Peter, ‘he until we find out he’s a she. Either of which will be the most spoilt baby on the planet.’
‘Amen to that.’
She lies down in the bed again, turning on her side and staring out of the bedroom window at the blue sky. She is warm but she knows that outside the air has a tinge of ice in it. Her baby will be born in the summer when the days are long and the heat wraps itself around everything. ‘Breakfast, baby?’ she asks as she hears Peter call goodbye and shut the front door behind him. My baby, she thinks and joy suffuses her heart. My baby.
She has been telling herself that the reason she talks to the baby is because right now she’s not talking to anyone else. She has asked Peter to wait until the twelve-week scan before he tells his family. She doesn’t want to have to go through what they went through all the other times she was pregnant. Emma was so excited the first time that she turned up the day after they’d told her with a bagful of baby clothes and toys. ‘I couldn’t help myself,’ she said, her eyes sparkling. ‘I’m going to be the best second cousin and I’m going to tell her that I’m the reason she was born.’ Telling Emma about the miscarriage was excruciating. Her eyes filled and tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have bought anything, I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. Molly found herself comforting Emma; in fact, she found herself comforting everyone around her, spouting the platitudes she had read and heard over and over again, all the while trying to conceal her own devastating heartbreak.