‘Answer me, bitch!’
‘Y… yes.’
‘You two! I have a headache, take your shit outside.’
‘It’s all sorted now, Mum. Isn’t it, Danielle?’ Beth said, trailing her fingernail lightly across Danni’s cheek as she walked by her. Danni let out a pent-up breath once Beth was gone, trying to centre herself, knowing that she could never truly be centred in this house. She could never be safe. It was no wonder she sometimes just wished them all dead. She had no love for any of them, they all used her in some way, but Beth, the one who should have been an ally, was the worst of all. Danni just wanted Beth to die a horrible death or, at the very least, have a miserable life. Marry some loser and live in a caravan in a run-down part of town, her hopes and dreams sucked away from her soul like she was doing to Danni.
She went to her room and put the chair up against the door, which usually afforded her about three seconds of precious but ultimately useless time before it was shoved aside and Beth would barge into her room.
She put her hand under the slats of her bed, feeling for the knife. She pulled it out, looked at it, knowing that sooner or later, she’d need it.
Danni smiled sadly. She’d be ready.
7
Joe Brooks was one of those popular kids who pretty much ruled the school. He was good looking, well liked, athletic and confident. Joe could have anything and anyone he wanted. The girls were lining up around the block to date him, to drop their panties for him, and the boys wanted to be him. He was an all-round stand-up guy, who seemed to have it all figured out, have his shit together.
What everyone didn’t know was that Joe was just pretending and that actually he was just as insecure and unsure as the rest of them. He lived at home with his parents, was an only child and he never, ever had friends come to his house. He either went to theirs or they partied elsewhere. There was no way he was changing people’s perceptions of him by letting them see what went on in his home.
Joe’s bedroom was his inner sanctum. A place where he slept and daydreamed about getting out of this town. Joe had plans, but who knew if they’d ever see the light of day. Once he graduated from high school, he wanted to leave, go to the city where his life would finally start. He would never look back. There would be no more ties to this town, and he would be beholden to no one. But unfortunately for Joe, there would be someone who would always need him.
Joe came home, slamming the front door, and went straight to his room, leaving his door open in case she cried out for him. He had a maths test tomorrow and he really needed to study for it, as some parts of the syllabus may as well have been written in Latin, for all he understood of it. He wanted to hire a tutor to help him get his grades up but a tutor was a luxury they couldn’t afford. He was thinking about asking some smart chick who might agree to exchange a special kind of service with him. He was popular – a date with him, a friendship even, would make the girl popular as well. It was a win for everyone.
‘Joey,’ came the weak cry from down the hall.
Joe looked at his maths book. He had barely sat down and he was being called to duty already. He pushed his chair back and stood, heading for the door. They weren’t rich, they weren’t poor, they landed somewhere in the middle. They had a roof over their heads and food in the cupboard but were still on benefits.
The voice moaned again, and he hurried his pace. He pulled his shoulders back, licked his lips and mentally prepared himself for what was to come. Already he could smell the cocktail of different scents competing with each other, but for him, shit won every time. He walked into the room, pasting a smile on his face.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Joe said as he walked into the room.
‘Hi, my darling,’ she replied in a breathy voice.
‘How are you today?’ he asked, knowing the answer. It was always the same.
‘Not too bad, love. Could you please get me my medicine?’ She licked her cracked lips.
It shouldn’t have been his job. His father received a pension to look after his mother, but he usually spent the money on booze… or other things. Joe was sure that he had another woman on the side after he’d seen him hugging some random chick in the street when he was out driving around one afternoon. He hated him after that. His mum was bedridden and he was out having it off with some bitch. Joe had had many a screaming match with his drunk father as his dying mother was down the hall, lying in her own filth each day until Joe came home from school and cleaned her up. She was always so embarrassed and apologetic when he changed her sheets that she would cry. In those moments he wanted to kill his father. He was supposed to make sure that she had everything she needed, day and night. Quite often he would forget her daytime medicine and she would be in pain the whole day. Joe could see it on her face on those days. Instead it was left up to Joe to take care of her. Not that he minded, he loved his mum.
‘Mum, do you need changing?’ he asked in a gentle voice as he popped pills out of their silver foil blister packs and placed them in a small plastic cup where they rattled around forlornly when he moved. She turned her head, but he could still see the tear roll down her cheek. How dare his father reduce his mother to tears? What a fucking hero.
Joe pulled back the stinking bedclothes, chucking them on a pile on the floor for washing and went to get a large bowl of warm water to wash her with. He dropped the soap into the bowl then pulled a face washer from the stack that he himself had washed and folded. He could hear the TV on in the lounge, his drunk father ignoring his wife and son in favour of some inane soap opera. Her face was streaked with tears. This was the hardest part for them both. She was so weak, but his father wouldn’t let her go into palliative care because his payments from the government would stop and he’d have to find a job.
Gently lifting his mother’s nightgown, he undid the sticky tabs on her incontinence pants. From the weight and the urine on the sheets, it was clear that she hadn’t been changed all day. He washed her down, then put cream gently on her angry red rash. He changed the sheets and his mother. He bent down and gave her a kiss on her dry and papery cheek. She grabbed his wrist to stop him from leaving.
‘I know this is hard on you,’ she choked out, ‘I know this isn’t what a teenage boy should be doing, and I want you to know I appreciate everything you do for me. But I want you to be a normal teenager, too, try to have a life. Promise me, promise me, Joe, that you’ll get out of here as soon as you can. As soon as you graduate, you leave and you never come back.’ Talking took it out of her and she fell asleep as soon as she delivered her speech, without hearing his reply.
Joe walked back to his room. Would this be his life forever? No, even his sick mother wanted him out of this place, to get out and be free. Well, he bloody well would.
Freedom.
Joe had seen her before. He found out that she was the younger sister of Beth, who was a hanger on to his group of friends, overtly obvious in her play for his affections, but she wasn’t his type. Too brash and too jealous of every other girl around him. Didn’t stop him from throwing her a fuck every now and then. Beth was crazier than a shit house rat, meaner than a snake sometimes, to other people, never to him though. To him, she was sarcastic but in a good way, but he’d never commit to dating her. She had no ambition. She was happy to stay in this town, get married and have babies. Not going to happen, he wouldn’t be tied down to a girl like that.
The sister’s name was Danni. That’s all that Beth would give him. From what he could tell, she was quiet and bookish. A girl with no friends. She sat by herself every day, blending into nothing, but her saw her clearly. When he sat down opposite her and said hello, she actually looked around to see who he was talking to and when she realised it was her, her eyes widened and her mouth popped open, but no words came out. It was cute and reminded him of every teenage romance movie that he’d watched in secret.
‘How are you doing, Danni?’ he asked, watching as she squirmed with embarrassment. People stared.
‘Fine,�
� was all she could manage to eventually squeeze out.
He could feel Beth’s jealous stare aimed at his back, but he didn’t care. She could get fucked.
He came and found her every day for two weeks before he thought she was ready for him to ask her out, and every day Beth would ask him what he was doing wasting his time with her sister. He would always answer, ‘Because I like her.’ It never satisfied Beth and seemed to make her angrier at her sister, never him.
‘Look, there’s a party on Saturday night, would you like to go with me?’ he finally asked Danni. He waited, wanting her to answer yes right away, but he gave her time to process.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ He knew that Danni didn’t know about him and Beth since she never saw them interact as a couple. Friends, but never a couple.
It was clear that she was wary about going with him, maybe she thought he was going to make fun of her, like she was the punchline of some joke she didn’t know about. But he was dead serious.
‘Say yes, Danni. We’ll have fun. New people, new experiences.’ He flashed her a smile.
It took her a while to respond. She looked into his eyes as if to read his intent, then she whispered, ‘Yes.’
He smiled, and she smiled back. ‘Okay, I’ll pick you up on Saturday night.’
He was walking back to class when someone pulled him roughly into an open classroom. He turned to face his attacker. It was Beth, squinting at him in anger, a sneer on her normally pretty face, her long hair sweeping over her shoulder. She had started wearing it like her sister recently.
‘Why her?’ she spat. ‘Why not me?’ She seemed genuinely hurt and upset. He felt bad for her, but he had to tell her the truth. He owed her that much.
‘It was never going to be you, Beth.’ He touched her arm as he said it gently, but she jerked away. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to lead you on.’ He knew he should have told her months ago that he wasn’t serious about her, that there was no chance of them going beyond hooking up occasionally.
She looked like she was going to punch him and he steeled himself for it, tensing the muscles in his face. He deserved it. He had been sleeping with her on and off for six months and now he was dating her younger sister. He knew he’d hurt her, but he didn’t know how deeply. He wasn’t backing down. Beth could hit him or spread nasty rumours about him, but he didn’t care. Danni was unlike any girl he’d ever been with, ever met. She had really opened up to him these past two weeks. He was slowly dismantling her walls, brick by brick. He saw a shy girl with glimpses of empathy, stubbornness, humour and, like him, a desire to get out of this town as soon as she could. Now she had ambition.
As he drove to pick Danni up from her house, he realised that he was nervous, something he hadn’t felt for a long time. Girls came and they went, but none of them were like Danni. There was just something about her. When she came up the drive, he noticed how cute she looked in her tight jeans. They hugged her in all the right places. He felt himself growing hard just thinking about touching her, kissing her. He readjusted his trousers, easing his discomfort.
She opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. The interior light illuminated her face and he could see that she’d gone to the effort of putting on makeup. He looked at her incredibly glossy lips, her hair wild, free, and slightly curled. He put his hand up and tucked a long piece of it behind her ear, gently caressing the side of her face. She leaned into his hand then reached up to cover his with her own.
They had a great night at the party. Joe stayed by Danni’s side all night, smiling reassuringly at her when it was obvious that she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For people to realise that she didn’t belong there, with him, with any of them. But it never happened, they accepted her because she was there with Joe. He tried his hardest to make her feel comfortable, easing her into dating him, into his life. He knew that she hadn’t been invited, let alone gone to a party before so this was all new for her.
When Joe drove Danni home, pulling up to the kerb of her house with a jerk and a slam of his brakes, she giggled. It was a beautiful sound, something he couldn’t get enough of. She told him that she had never had so much fun in her entire lonely existence. Before Joe, Danni had had no friends, no one to confide in, no one in the world who cared about her. She was on her own. Now she wasn’t.
Soon after they arrived home, Danni picked her small handbag up from the floor of the passenger seat and Joe stilled her with a touch of his fingers on her wrist.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, gently drawing lazy circles on the inside of her wrist with his fingertip.
Her warm skin became hotter as her heart beat faster, her blood rushing through her body with such force that she could hear it pounding in her ears, feel it in her chest. Danni looked down at his hand on her, then raised her head to look at him. The window was down, the night air warm, crickets chirping their song outside in the night. It was perfect.
‘Joe,’ she whispered, waiting. She knew what he wanted, she wanted it too.
He leaned in slowly, stopping when his body had closed half the distance between them, their bodies separated by mere inches. Danni held her breath.
‘Just breathe, Danni,’ he whispered as his lips met hers.
It was the softest touch, his lips barely brushing against hers, but she felt as though he had just claimed her as his own. Joe wrapped his hand through her long, dark chocolate-coloured hair, the strands tugging gently at her head as he moved his hand through them.
‘You’re so beautiful, Danni.’
She surprised herself by kissing him again, taking hold of his shoulders and drawing him towards her. She put her arms around him as he slid one hand under her top, stroking her back with practiced ease. Her lips parted under his, their tongues lightly dancing with each other. Danni could barely stand the feelings that were coursing through her body, invading her mind, making her feel weak yet strong at the same time. Finally, they pulled away from each other, his hand leaving her skin reluctantly.
‘I have to go,’ Danni said, when all she wanted to do was stay in the car with him, kissing for hours, forever. With him, she wasn’t a nobody. He saw her, really saw her. They would move to the city together, start the life she’d always dreamed of.
‘Okay,’ he whispered, huskily, his voice breaking just the tiniest amount. She smiled in response. He desired her, needed her, he wanted to keep kissing her as much as she did, she could feel it. But Danni knew that if she didn’t leave the car now, then she was never going to leave. She wanted to stay wrapped tightly in this cocoon of happiness. There was no pain, no fear, no doubt, no loneliness when she was with Joe. He was her escape and she desperately needed to escape.
She raised her hand in farewell as he pulled away from her and drove down the road, growing ever further from her. Danni stayed, standing in her driveway thinking about him; he was both her present and future. She turned to look back at her darkened house, taking one last look at Joe’s brake lights before heading inside. She had shared two beers with Joe at the party. She never drank, so it felt unfamiliar to her, her head feeling the tiniest bit foggy. She had a little buzz going on from the beer and the incredible kiss, what a first kiss!
Danni opened the door quietly so as not to wake Beth sleeping inside, then locked it and put her bag and keys on the small side table just inside the front entranceway, aware of the keys clinking against each other, loud in the largely silent house, the only other sound coming from the faintly ticking old clock in the lounge room, covered in a thick layer of dust that never failed to disgust her whenever she saw it. It counted down every second that she was apart from Joe. Despite Danni’s earlier misgivings about his interest in her being a prank, she was falling for him, hard and fast. She couldn’t help but smile in the semi-darkness, the streetlight’s pale beam reaching inside the entranceway, lighting a little halo around her.
Danni put her fingers to her lips, trailing them across the slightl
y bruised skin, where Joe’s lips had burnt hers, branding her with his touch.
‘You bitch!’ The voice reached Danni’s ears just as the hand slapped her across the face so hard her head snapped back, and she felt a click in her neck, pain following the sound.
At first she didn’t know what was happening; it was gloomy in the entranceway. But Danni pieced it together and put her hands up to protect her face from the barrage of slaps coming from her sister. Danni’s skin was stinging, as Beth was landing every slap. Danni cried out then she felt something shift within her, a power, a hunger as she cocked back her arm and let her fist fly at Beth’s face, hitting her dead centre, her nose breaking audibly in the half-lit room. It sounded as loud as a clap of thunder in the quiet space.
‘Oh! You fucking bitch!’ screamed Beth in agony, holding her nose, which was now gushing with blood, black in the semi-darkness.
Danni didn’t even feel one bit sorry. It was as if she had become a different person, one capable of retaliation and violence. Her mother stumbled down the hallway, rolling along the wall, snapping on lights as she went. The lounge light was flipped on and the true extent of their dust up was revealed. Danni, covered in raised red welts, and Beth, leaking blood everywhere.
‘Elizabeth,’ their mother whispered, looking at her bloodied and swelling nose, ‘you poor thing.’ She whirled on Danni. ‘What did you do, you little fuck? Why did you hurt Beth like that?’ she demanded.
‘She attacked me first. I was… defending myself.’ Danni’s skin was on fire, and not in a good way. Beth had got a number of decent slaps in while Danni had been protecting herself.
Beth pushed out of her mother’s grip and leapt at her again but Danni launched herself at her sister, throwing her to the ground where Beth grunted in pain as she landed on the thin carpet, a layer of concrete underneath.
‘Danielle!’ yelled her mother. She almost never referred to her by name. Sometimes Danni would have been surprised to know that they even remembered her name, so infrequently they used it.
The Silent Daughter Page 4