by Kirsty Eagar
‘We’re not getting married, mate.’
I swallow. When I’m sure I’ll be able to keep my voice steady, I say, ‘Don’t make me feel like an idiot. Every time I talk to you I come off feeling like an idiot. I mean, you must think I’m insane. And I’m not – not normally. I’m just tired and I don’t know –’
‘Shh.’
His eyes are looking all the way into me. For a moment we stare at each other then he looks back at the ocean and I watch the two boys making turtlebacks. I don’t make any noise but the tears are streaming down my face. I can sense Ryan occasionally looking sideways to check on me. Something about the two boys reminds me of Danny. They look so innocent, so happy and free. Then my crying turns into sobs, which is really crossing a line, I have to say. It’s just so ridiculous. I’m in the middle of a crowd on Dee Why Point, watching the biggest surf Sydney’s seen for years with a guy I shouldn’t be anywhere near, having some sort of breakdown.
I bury my face in my hands. And then Ryan does such a nice thing. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in against him. I can feel his body heat through his cotton T-shirt, and directly in front of me are the worn, faded knees of his jeans. But most of all, I can smell him. And he smells sandy-warm, like a beach. No one can see my face in there protected by his chest. Which is good because I can’t stop crying. I mean, I’m really going for the world record in terms of an inappropriate public breakdown. But it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter. I’m sheltered.
When the storm finally breaks, I give a big juddering sigh. Ryan doesn’t shift his arm.
‘They’ve given up,’ he says.
I sniff, but don’t move. ‘Who?’
‘The guys trying to paddle out.’
‘That’d be the worst paddle out in the world.’
‘Quicker to jump off.’
‘Yeah, but imagine if you stuffed it up,’ I say. ‘You’d get hammered.’
It’s a silly conversation, the type of conversation you have when neither of you wants to acknowledge what’s really happening.
‘I’m okay now.’ My voice sounds thick and scratchy like I’ve got a cold.
I pull away and he drops his arm. But we remain sitting so close to each other that our sides are touching. He puts his arm back on his knee and I feel the hairs on his forearm brush my skin. I feel so exhausted I could sit there for years, washed out from crying.
‘I don’t have to work today, today’s my day off. And tomorrow. I lied,’ I say. He’s just seen me lose it so I’ve got nothing to hide behind any more.
He shakes his head, lips skewed in a funny smile. ‘Do you even have a job?’
I blink. ‘Yeah.’
‘So that bit was true?’
‘Sorry. I lie all the time. I don’t even know why. Do you work?’
‘More like self-employed. And, no, I don’t have to work today.’ He lifts his arms above his head and stretches.
I shift away, giving him space. I feel like I’m in the dark again, wondering what he’s really thinking, what he wants from me. Wondering why he’s bothering with me, actually. Maybe he’s bored now, or I’ve freaked him out with the crying thing. He’ll make an excuse and go.
‘Mate, I’m going up to Long Reef headland to take a look. Be good to see the Bombie working.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
He waits for a beat, then gives me that funny smile again. ‘You want to come?’
I blink, realising what he’s said. ‘Okay.’
‘We’ll take both cars, yeah? Be a pain in the arse to have to come back here.’
‘Okay.’
He gets to his feet and I do the same, suddenly skin-sick for the feel of him again. If he took my hand, I’d let him hold it.
He walks in front, leading me through the crowd, looking back from time to time to check I’m still following.
‘Hey, Rhino!’
Ryan turns in the direction of the voice. The guy grinning at him is short and squat, wearing a New South Wales State of Origin jersey, his sunglasses pushed back on his head.
‘Rhino, mate. How are ya?’
‘Mick,’ Ryan says, and they clasp hands in a solid shake.
I hover behind Ryan, hoping this will just be a quick hello, not wanting to be noticed with my puffy red eyes and swollen face.
‘When did you get out, mate?’ Mick asks.
And I’m listening hard to his voice, his stupid, slow Australian-male voice, checking for recognition. And I wonder if I’m going to keep doing that for the rest of my life, driving myself mad.
‘Not long ago,’ Ryan says.
‘How fucking good’s that?’ Mick says, then flicks a look at me. ‘Oops, sorry.’
Because you’re not supposed to swear in front of girls, at least not when you meet them for the first time. Men like to do that – pretend they’re better than they are.
Ryan clears his throat, turning to me. ‘Carly, this is Mick. Mick, Carly.’
Mick nods. ‘How’re you goin’, Carly? What are you doing hanging around with this loser?’
I don’t answer, but it doesn’t matter because he’s straight back to Ryan anyway. Men like men like Ryan. To Mick, I’m just window dressing.
I’m starting to burn. Because I hate Mick. I just hate him automatically. He’s everything about men that I hate.
‘So what are ya gonna do with yourself now, mate?’ Mick asks.
‘Get a job.’ Ryan’s impatient to get going, but Mick doesn’t seem to notice, planting himself in the conversation by widening his legs as though he’s getting in position for a good piss.
Mick laughs. ‘You? Working? Thought you were the captain of Centrelink’s surf team, mate.’
Why do they put ‘mate’ on the end of every sentence? Is it to let the other one know the transmission’s finished, like ‘over’ on a two-way radio? Why am I still standing here, listening to their shit? They are all the same. All the same.
‘Good to be out of the big house, mate?’ Mick asks.
‘What?’
‘Jail – good to be out?’
Ryan doesn’t hide his irritation. ‘It was jail, Mick. What do you reckon?’
I turn and start pushing my way through the crowd, getting away from them.
23
toxic shock
The moon’s half full – half empty. I’m out on my deck. There’s a light breeze shifting around and I can hear the occasional car on Powderworks Road, but mostly I’m aware of the surf, exploding in the distance. Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I think it’s drawing closer, but of course it can’t. It can only stay in the background like a threat.
Hey, Rhino! Why do they call Ryan, Rhino? An obvious extension of his name? Or innuendo – rhinos have horns. I’m always surprised when men’s nicknames turn out to be innocent. I expect them to have an underbelly; I always expect men to drag things down to sex.
I wonder if Ryan noticed me leaving? Did he think I’d wait for him back at the cars?
I roll over onto my stomach, feeling a pressing pain. I sit up again and unbutton my jeans, wriggling them down so I can inspect myself. There are matching pear-shaped bruises on the front of my hips, vivid purple against my skin. The bruising is from me knocking against Hard Cut, not quite fitting with a new board. There are bruises on my shins too, where I was hit by the rail, and a cut across my right triceps where I landed on a fin. I get injuries in runs and look like I’ve been bashed, but it’s just the surf breaking me in. Your body adapts to some of it. The skin on the top corner of my right knee is thick and calloused, and when I don’t wax my legs for a while a dense patch of hair grows there. It’s from continually rubbing against my grip pad when I’m duck diving.
When I was eighteen three men broke me in, and they left marks on my body, too.
The morning after it happened I came to, lying on the floor of a bedroom in a high-rise holiday unit. I sat up too quickly and began to retch, but I knew from the wet, sour-smelling carpet that there was nothing left in m
y stomach.
To begin with I was just focused on moving slowly, trying not to set off another round of electric shocks in my head. But gradually I noticed signs of trespass: my underpants were on the floor beside me, my skirt was still on but stretched out of shape, my top and bra were pushed up over my breasts. And then I remembered everything. It kept coming and coming in horrible flashes that wouldn’t stop.
There were three of them; I heard three separate voices. No, lock it. Lock the fuckin’ door.
The third one was the gentlest and the worst. When he turned me over, I think it was so he could see me. As he did, my eyelids snapped shut, like a doll I remember playing with as a kid: Lie baby down and – look! – baby goes to sleep. That was the hell of it: hoping he wouldn’t find out I was really there after all. I was drunk, seasick from alcohol, upside down in my own body, but not drunk enough.
He pushed my top up and then my bra, so that the scratchy lace brushed over my nipples and they hardened. Then he was still and the room was silent. The others had left by then.
I felt tentative hands cup my breasts, as if weighing my sexuality. Would you look at that? He spoke out loud and there was wonder in his voice. Then the weight of him on top of me, heavy on my chest, claustrophobic. When he did it, he did it slowly, as though it was something I wanted.
The next morning the yellow slime from them had dried like spit into scabby peeling patches on my thighs. I fixed my clothes up in front of the mirror, rubbing at my smudged make-up, my racoon eyes. Then I left, tiptoeing through the aftermath of the party, the beer cans and bodies littering the lounge room floor. I walked through the streets of Surfers Paradise not knowing where I was, trying to find a clue that would lead me back to the block of units where I was staying with my friends from school. Every few minutes I’d stop and dry retch into the gutter, ignoring the frowns from early morning walkers, people who looked like my parents, knowing the word that was in their heads.
My parents. Me going on schoolies week was the biggest campaign of defiance I had ever mounted against my father – the fury on his face when I wouldn’t be controlled and told him I was going anyway. And look how it had ended. He’d won. I was exactly what he thought of me. All this time and he was right.
I was disgusting.
The shame I felt. The shame I feel. But I could not have borne the shame he’d make me carry. I could not have borne my mother’s disappointment.
I never told them.
Forever later, I found the unit block where we were staying and I went inside.
‘Ooooh, somebody’s had a big night.’
A round of giggles followed. Vanessa, Deanne and Bec were sprawled on the kitchen floor, surrounded by chip packets and empty bottles of Spumante, drunk, racooneyed like me. There were two other girls staying with us, but they’d stayed in the night before and were probably still asleep in bed.
‘Where have you been?’
Vanessa asked the question, but all three wanted the answer. There was a jealous edge to the way they watched me. For the past four nights the six of us had searched, getting smashed every night, going from club to club, pushing our way through the thousands of sweaty bodies in the Mall. We were sure that there was something really good going on somewhere and that everybody else had the inside information, it was only us who were out of the loop.
They were worried that I’d found it. Worried I’d had a better time than them.
I was worried that they’d smell it on me. Afraid they’d see the stain of it on my face. Because I couldn’t trust them with it, I realised. If I told them, I’d hear the thrill of it in their voices. The drama. The bigness of it all. They would pick me apart like birds feeding.
That was the start of it, the need to be alone.
‘We looked everywhere for you,’ Bec said, a hint of resentment in her voice.
And I’d been paranoid that they’d meant to give me the slip. We’d been at a club and I’d gone to the toilet and when I came back they were gone. But maybe I forgot to say where I was going; I was pretty drunk, so I might have just wandered off. Maybe they had been looking for me. I’d ended up in the Mall, looking for them. Maybe they’d done the same.
None of it mattered now.
I walked off and one of them said, ‘God, what’s up her arse?’
Once I was inside the bathroom, I locked the door. I turned on the shower and stripped off and then I put a finger up my vagina, trying to find the tampon I’d inserted the night before, a million years earlier.
Getting that tampon out was my sole focus. Mum hadn’t told me about tampons – we never talked about that stuff at all – I relied on Dolly Doctor for the information, which came with the necessary warnings about toxic shock syndrome. For some reason I’d always taken those warnings to heart and right then they loomed large in my mind, blocking out everything else.
I prodded myself for that tampon in a mindless frenzy. It had been up there for well over eight hours and it was too far up inside me to be safe. What if I couldn’t get it out again? I’d get toxic shock and die. I think that was the only thing my mind could hold onto right then. Toxic shock.
Some people size you up by what school you went to, or what you’re doing at uni, or the car you drive, or if you’re working a shitty job, or if you’ve got a good personality, or a sense of humour. That’s not how I see people. I see people as either what they’ve done or what’s been done to them. Read the newspaper. It’s full of people defined by actions. If a high court judge drink drives, he becomes a Drink Driving High Court Judge. If a woman is injured by a Drink Driving High Court Judge, then she becomes the Victim of a Drink Driving High Court Judge.
If you’ve been raped, you become a Rape Victim. When people talk to you, they’ll have a picture of you in their mind – you lying on the ground, men moving over you. But they won’t be empathetic; they won’t put themselves on the ground. They taste power, that little hint of vinegar that puts a twist in their lips and saliva in their mouths.
Look at the media. They concentrate on what was done to the Rape Victims. First by the rapists and then by the courts. They’re feeding something there. People are greedy for the details, fascinated sick by them. I think it should be illegal to tell. I think that the person who was raped should own the copyright on what happened to them. They never give details on what happens to the rapists, later, when they go to jail. Nobody cares.
And the Victim does not get angry. The Victim is devastated, traumatised, shocked, distraught, but not angry. That’s left to the victim’s father or brothers. Anger is for men.
Except I can sit here and think like this all night and you know what it does? It starts a bushfire in me. My chest tightens and my jaw clamps and my hands shake and I can feel it burning me up and there’s just no relief from it. I want to drive and even then I don’t think I could crash hard enough.
I’m glad I never told anybody. Nobody’s ever going to smell the vinegar on me. Because that’d be just like letting it happen again. Once they know they’ve got hold of your shame, they can shake it out and hold it up for all the world to see. And you become less than it. You become something disgusting. Tainted. Stained. Soiled.
When I got back from the Gold Coast, I stopped talking. I worked a lot of extra hours at the restaurant where I’d had a part-time job since grade ten. I surfed. I had two months to get through before I left for Surry Hills and uni. My family thought I was being difficult and selfish when I should have been sorry, or at least repentant, for defying Dad. My friends thought I was standoffish because I was leaving and I’d already forgotten about them. But I just wanted to be alone.
24
the lagoon
My mobile rings while I’m lying on the deck. I don’t move. It rings out, then after a short silence starts up again. I answer knowing it’s him before I check the screen.
‘Hello?’
‘Carly?’ Ryan sounds uncertain. ‘I’ve, uh, got your board. Thought I might as well pick it up while I g
ot mine. Went by Hard Cut on the way back today.’
I can hear music and people talking in the background, but muted, like he’s in a room with the door closed.
‘Carly?’
‘Thank you. I’ll take the other one back tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, or you can give it to me. I’ll drop it off next time I’m going past that way.’
‘I go past there on the way to work. But you know him – the shaper guy – so it’s up to you really.’
‘Right. It’s up to me.’ His voice is sour; he sounds like Shane.
He lets the silence run long this time, trying to draw me out.
‘Okay, Carly, I might as well cut to the chase because listening to you saying nothing is costing me money. I’ll take your board back to Hard Cut tomorrow and you can pick it up when you drop the spare off. That way you don’t have to see me. How’s that sound? Happy?’
‘God.’ I whisper the word, rubbing my head.
‘So I’ll see you later.’
But he doesn’t hang up, he waits again. ‘Carly?’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what? You’re giving me bad dreams, Carly. I want to see you – and I dunno why that is, because every time I do we’re either crashing into each other or you get the shits or you’re upset or you just piss off without a word –’ He stops abruptly and I hear him draw breath.
When he speaks again his voice is calm. ‘Look, I noticed you the first time I saw you down there. I dunno why. I rated the fact you had a go, went for anything, even if you got hammered. And I thought, yeah, wouldn’t mind knowing her better. But it wasn’t a big deal. Just like having a drink together sometime, or like watching the surf today, taking it easy. But I’ve got to tell you, mate …’ He gives a flat laugh. ‘It’s just all too fucking hard.’
I feel gutted. I’m pressing the phone hard against my ear.
‘Carly? Are you there, Carly?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got anything for me? Anything at all?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want you to be sorry. I told you that today. I don’t care if you cry or what you do. All I want from you is a clear indication as to whether I should just bugger off.’