‘Mum!’
The fat-boy and his no-neck family turned their heads our way. Mum smiled and waved back at them. The no-neck mother paused mid-crumbed-prawn and leant over.
‘I just love your suit. Where’d you get it?’
‘DJ’s half-yearly clearance.’ Mum preened in her pistachio candy-stripe. ‘Half-price.’
‘No, really?’ the no-neck gushed. ‘Well, the colour really suits you.’
I stared out the window at the traffic bumping along Moggill Road, wishing that I was far, far away, in some more exotic part of the world.
‘What a lovely lady.’ Mum popped the anchovy into her mouth and chewed. ‘Now, where was I? Oh, that’s right. Men. You’ve got to be careful. They’ll get you pregnant or worse, infect you for life with some dreadful… ’
Mum was always going on about germs and diseases and other nasties, those microby blighters you can only see under a supersonic microscope, that breed on toilet seats and door handles and dirty money. But the germs she hated most were the ones that feasted on dead bodies. Every day she used to study the funeral notices in the paper so she could work out what time a hearse would be on the road and make sure we avoided it. Once, when I was about seven or eight, we were driving back from Shoppingtown, the boot packed with the week’s groceries, when a huge, black hearse slid past in the other direction. I could see the coffin inside, shiny walnut covered in white lilies. It gave me a chill just thinking about the cold dead body, laid out stiff as a pencil in its Sunday best. Mum went all silent and when we got home she chucked all the groceries straight into the wheelie bin. She dragged me down the side of the house to the backyard and ordered me to strip off my favourite frilly dress.
‘But it’s not dirty, Mummy,’ I said, hands on hips, stamping my foot.
‘It’s contaminated.’ Mum stepped towards me, arms outstretched. I backed up towards the fence.
‘What’s contaminated?’
‘It’s got germs.’
‘Where?’ I lifted up my skirt and inspected the soft, pink fabric at close range.
‘You can’t see them but they’re there.’
‘Did the germs come from the dead person?’
‘I’m losing my patience with you, Rosemary.’
‘Are dead person germs worse than normal dirt germs?’
‘Don’t upset me like this.’ She rubbed at her face. ‘It’s all your father’s fault.’ She lunged at me and yanked the dress off over my head. I screamed but she told me to be quiet in case the neighbours came snooping over the fence. She took off my undies and even my sparkly, red Dorothy shoes. She stripped off her clothes, too, and tossed them on top of mine so there was a little pile on the grass near the shallow end of the pool. Mum ran towards the house and I ran after her, giggling at the sight of her naked in the yard. Inside, she dragged me to the bathroom and ran a boiling shower.
‘But it’s too hot,’ I complained.
‘Stand still while I scrub you.’
‘You’re hurting me,’ I sobbed, more for the thought of my favourite dress lying on the lawn.
‘It’s the only way to get rid of them.’
After the shower, Mum dressed me in around-the-house clothes and sat me down in front of my Jetsons video while she went back outside in an old terry-towelling dressing gown and a pair of yellow rubber gloves. Curious, I wandered over to the sliding glass doors and looked out. Mum was circling the pile, splashing the contaminated clothes with methylated spirits from an old tin of Dad’s. Next, she pulled something from the pocket of her dressing gown and fumbled with it, head bowed, shoulders hunched. The clothes burst with a whomp into multi-coloured flames. Crying for my frilly dress, I tried to get out to rescue it, but Mum’d locked the door from the outside. As she stood staring into the pink and blue and orange tongues of fire eating away the clothes, I thought at least she’d forgotten about my Dorothy shoes and thanked Our Father Who Art in Heaven, but then, as if reading my mind, she swooped down and picked them up. I hammered at the glass but she’d already tossed them on the pyre, the red sparkles spangling bright as jewels for a split-second before melting into goo. I never hated Mum more than at that moment. And then, as if I’d summoned the fire to punish her, the hem of her dressing gown caught a light. She sprang back, screaming. From inside, I watched, bug-eyed, mesmerized by the spectacle. Hopping mad as a rabbit on the scorched grass, she flapped at the flames licking up the side of her gown. With a shriek, she leapt into the pool, surfacing a few seconds later, hair plastered all over her face. She dog-paddled to the edge and climbed out, sodden, shreds of charred terry-towelling hanging off her. There’s still a brown patch where the grass doesn’t grow and we joke about it now – the day Mum set herself on fire – even though, for a long time, it and other germ-related incidents were strictly taboo.
But that late October evening at Valentine’s, Mum was focused on a whole new family of germs. Not dead ones, sex ones. ‘STDs. Herpes. Gonorrhoea. Chlamydia. Or those warts, big as grapes, that you have to get burnt off with a laser beam.’
‘Shut up, Mum. People are listening.’ She was so embarrassing to be with in public.
‘I don’t care,’ she said, sliding a smooth lozenge of icecream back onto her spoon.
‘I hate the way you do that,’ I said. ‘It’s so disgusting.’
‘What?’
‘Regurgitating your ice-cream like that.’
She closed her eyes and sucked the ice-cream back through her lips.
‘You know, I’m really sick of your germ thing,’ I shot.
Her eyes flashed open. ‘This isn’t about germs, Rosemary, this is about your future.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I’m serious.’ She reached across the table but I slipped my hands onto my lap.
‘You still treat me like a child. I’m nearly seventeen, Mum. Besides, you’re hardly an expert on sex.’
‘And you are?’ She smirked because she knew I was still a virgin. I’d never even had a boyfriend.
I lie in bed, Valentine’s spaghetti and wedges and soft-serve jumbling around in my belly like clothes in a washing machine. My door is open wide for signs that Mum has gone to bed. I catch the flush of the toilet, the snap of the light switch, the same heavy sigh she makes each night when her head, full of germy worries, hits the pillow. Tonight, I’m going to go clubbing like the cool girls at school. That’ll teach her. That’ll show her. I think about ringing Hollie, my best friend, and getting her to come with me. But just once, I want to do something on my own. Something bad. Something Mum wouldn’t like me doing.
For a few seconds, I let the darkness swim around me, filling out the corners of my room, settling in the tiny crevices along my body. Geckoes squeak and chirp from the bricks. Holding my breath, I flick on the bedside lamp, slip out of bed and dart across the room. Softly, I shut the door.
I watch my giant shadow self undressing against the wall; the arch of my back, the point of my left nipple like a huge cherry on a fantasy cupcake, my hair cascading down my back. I brush my fingers lightly across the stomach of the giant shadow me, then touch the real me. Ring-a-ring-a-rosie round and round my belly-button until I feel nice.
It’s ten-thirty on the digital. Fifteen minutes till the bus comes. From my top drawer, I pluck a clean pair of Bonds undies, pull them on with a snap. Drown myself in Safari. Wiggle into my new denim mini. On top I wear a low-cut black sparkly with lacy choker. In the mirror, I smear foundation, thick on my freckles and the scar above my right eyebrow. Then, for my eyes, smudgy kohl with Japanese tails out the sides, waterproof Maybelline on my lashes, top and bottom, no gluggies. Eight flaps over on the digital. Seven minutes till the bus. One last squiz in the cheval. I look good. Tarty-sexy with my legs all fake-tanned and skinny. On with the lippy getting the bow just right, bleed them together, tissue in between, mwah, mwah. I wink at me in the mirror and the big shadowy me on the wall. A green flash of bad-girl eye.
Up on the bed, I’m prising out the f
ly screens, ditching them on the carpet. I chuck my platform strappies out the window. They land, clunking in the pebbles so the mongrel next door starts up yapping.
Shut up. Shut up.
I crouch down in the shadows, listening hard for stirrings from Mum’s room, vibing her to stay asleep. The bus is rumbling in the distance, monstering along the wide, flat street. I’m sliding back the window as far as it will go and straddling, one leg over, tippy-toes touching the gravel. My second leg flies up like a ballet dancer’s and I crash down on the pebbles.
Hobble. Hobble.
Into my shoes.
Strap. Strap.
Stand up. Brush off the knees. Leap across the fish pond.
Mongrel growling, low growls set to explode.
Nice doggy. Nice doggy.
I hear the bus slowing down, wheezy squeezing on the brakes, nearing the stop. Night sounds crowd in, bug noises buzzing round my ears. I slap at a mosquito, blood on my arm. Possum hissing, eyes gleaming off the roof. Mongrel barking at bug racket and the crunch of my strappies down the gravelly path. I look back at the house all dark and humpy like a termites’ nest. The smell of rotting mango makes me want to spew. A rustle in the bushes.
Snake. Snake.
I run along the path, mongrel barking non-stop now.
Fe. Fi. Fo. Fum.
Out the gate. Click. Clack.
On the driveway, smooth as sand, drenched in moony light, sunny bright.
Pelting for the bus.
Wait. Bloody well wait.
Lickety-split. My tiny cross-the-body bag winding round and round my neck.
Hurry. Hurry.
Engine up a pitch.
Ready steady.
Round the corner. Skirt riding up and up. Tug it down, down.
On the bus.
I flash my student pass at the driver.
‘Big night on the town?’ He winks at my cleavage and sucks on the gingery tip of his beard. His beer gut is rammed hard against the steering wheel.
‘Yeah,’ I say, glancing back to see who else is on board. There’s a pack of skegs and their skateboards littering the back seat, and a pair of poxy bevans pashing with salivary tongues. The bevan girl is dressed in tight white lycra with six gold hoops in each earlobe. The bevan boy is skinny and zit-infested with mullet hair.
‘Where you off to?’ the driver says.
‘Just out.’
‘Clubbing?’
‘Yeah.’ Like I do it all the time. I sit halfway down the bus, wedged in against the side. Out the window there’s nothing but blackness, huddled houses and a face which, for a split-second, I don’t recognize. The eyes are too big, the lips too red and pouty. A sexy, grown-up me. A thrill of badness shoots through my groin and I smile. We pull away from the kerb and gather speed. The bus hurtles through Merri-Merri estate, lurching around corners, flying along the straights. There’s no need to stop. Even though it’s Friday night, it’s sleepy in burban heartland. I get out my red nail polish and paint my toes, two times over, to make the time go quicker. At last, we hit Moggill Road and there’s something to see outside my window apart from my face floating in the darkness.
Up a gear and we’re rumbling along past the car dealerships bathed in fluoro light and past my old primary school, the buildings dull and tired and flaking paint. The Flying Fish flies by and the air-con shop, which tells me it’s a hottish kind of night at twenty-one degrees. Down the overpass to our first stop: Shoppingtown. We pull in up the top, near Macca’s and the BCC Multiplex. The pashing bevans disengage and get out. A stinking drunk gets on and sits in the seat behind me and I have to peg my nose against the putrid stench. He starts singing that ‘Henry the Eighth’ song which Dad used to sing when he was drunk. The dero taps me on my shoulder and mumbles something in my ear, but I ignore him as we circle the huge, brick monolith of Shoppingtown and head towards the city.
Next stop: the R.E. It’s packed with university students spewing out from the beer garden and onto the footpath. The drunk gets off and staggers into the public bar and I think how Dad is probably in there, drowning his sorrows, shoulders slumped, gazing into his beer glass. Some uni guys get on. They’re wearing checked shirts and plaited belts. They order the skegs off the back seat and, as they barge up the aisle, I recognize one of them from the BP servo – a gangly guy with sideburns and a weak chin. He points at me like a cowboy firing two pistols. I visualize the name badge he wears when pumping petrol into Mum’s Holden: Gavin.
‘Nice tits,’ Gavin says.
‘Piss off, Gavin,’ I say, just above a whisper.
But he’s heard me and he stops, resting one knee on the seat beside me. ‘Do I know you?’
I shake my head. His mates are hooting and jeering from the back. Gavin wedges in next to me. He slides his arm across the top of my seat. His breath is hot and stale against my neck. I turn my back on him and stare out the window.
Gavin taps me on the shoulder. ‘What’s yer name?’
I swivel around, my legs sticking to the vinyl seat. ‘Gertrude.’
‘Hey, Gavin and Gertrude. How ’bout that?’
‘Hilarious,’ I say, withering him. ‘Do you mind racking off? I’m meeting my boyfriend in town.’
‘Now, don’t get all nasty on me, Gertie. We were getting on real good.’ He squeezes my knee with bony fingers. ‘You’re just my type, you know. Knockers with attitude.’
I give him the silent treatment as the bus rockets along Milton Road past the Night Owl and the dilapidated tennis courts and the Fourex beer factory, choking yeasty fumes out into the night.
Gavin smiles. ‘You don’t really have a boyfriend, do you, Gertie?’ His hand climbs warm and clammy up my thigh. I knock it away but he puts it right back where it was.
His mates shout, ‘Go on, Garvo. Stick it to her, mate.’
‘How ’bout it, babe?’ He grins. His front tooth is chipped.
I glance at his crotch and wiggle my pinky at him like I’d seen the cool girls do to ugly guys who try to hit on them at the bus-stop. And, just like that I say, super-smooth and arsy, ‘Sorry, but I like my wieners a bit bigger, thanks.’ Crash and burn sound-effects come from the back.
Gavin stands, sneering down at me. ‘Slut,’ he spits, before swaying back up the aisle to his mates who are doubled over, cacking themselves.
Next stop, everyone else gets off. We’re in Paddington. To my right, there’s the Suncorp Stadium lit up like a giant jewellery box. The skegs cruise down the hill to the skate-ramp. The uni wankers unload. Gavin comes around the side of the bus and gives me the finger through the window, before they head into the Paddo Tavern. It’s twenty past eleven and I sit on the bus, peering out. The pizza place is closing up, a girl stacking chairs on top of tables. A street lamp flickers on the blink, illuminating a halo of bugs in strobes. Out the other side of the bus, a guy urinates against a Besser-brick wall. His piss trickles, filling out cracks in the pavement, amber then cochineal-pink in flashes from the Café Neon sign strung overhead.
‘Last stop, girly,’ the driver sings out to me. ‘Unless you want to go back home.’
‘No,’ I say to myself as much to him. ‘No way.’ I rocket off the seat and run down the aisle.
‘You meeting friends?’ he says to me but I’m already out the door, the soft, warm air wrapping around me, the pink light licking at my toes, as I dash across the pavement, jumping over the piss-stream. Hectic red arrows pulsing like arteries lead me up a dark set of carpeted stairs into Café Neon and a square-headed bouncer whose collar is too tight. With no fake ID my chances are slim. But I bluff it with my walk, shoulders back, hips swinging. Square-head lets me in. No questions asked. No cover before midnight.
Inside, it’s not what I expected. A dingy L-shaped room with a low ceiling and shabby carpet. The walls are painted matt-black. There’s a bar but I can’t see a dancefloor. There’s no music. I scan the joint in case there’s someone I know. The odds are remote. The cool girls go raving in the Valley. Caf
é Neon doesn’t look like their scene. A few guys in their late twenties are smoking and drinking bottled beer in battered couches along the back wall but apart from that it’s pretty dead for a Friday night. At the bar, three shiny-faced men in suits are drinking pots and eyeing off the bar-girl. She is standing on a stool, reaching for a whisky bottle from the top shelf. Her denim mini grazes the bottom of her butt-cheeks. Her legs are short but slim and deeply tanned. She’s not quite got the neck of the bottle. Her fingers flutter in the air, grasping for it. One of the suits shouts out, ‘Nearly there!’ They all want to see her knickers. She’s straining on her tiptoes. A flash of vermilion crotch sends them off in fits of back-slapping titters. She’s got the Johnnie Walker Blue, firm around the neck, and clambers off the stool.
I buy a drink, kahlua and milk, and sit by the windows looking down at the yobs staggering up and down Given Terrace. I picture Hollie, tucked up in her white cotton night-dress, dreaming her fantasy dreams in her canopied bed. She would die if she knew I was here. I make my mind up not to tell her, for this to be my secret, when static buzzes over the speakers. A mechanical squawk, then Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove Is in the Heart’ kicks in. I get the urge to dance. Around the corner, past the bar and up a few steps, there is a dancefloor, small and forlorn and kind of out of the way, coloured squares flashing orange and pink and green across the vacant faces of the suits. I head towards it. The suits follow me with their beady eyes, checking me out, but I pretend not to notice as I strut out into the middle, swinging my hips, shaking out my hair, tracking the bass beat low in my stomach.
I close my eyes and I’m a little girl dancing with Dad to Blondie the nights Mum used to work. We’d stay up late, Dad sucking longnecks from the bottle, music squawking from his old tapedeck. He’d grab me under the arms and spin me round and round until I crashed out dizzy. Once, he spun me too hard and I slammed into the wall, my bum making a hole the size of a soccer ball in the fibro. I’d been about to cry but then Dad burst out laughing, a great roaring laughter that had us both in stitches. We pushed the bookcase across the hole to cover it up. It was our little secret until the next day Mum asked me why the bookcase had been shifted. She thought he’d punched a hole in the wall like he did sometimes when he came home maggot. She wouldn’t listen when I said it was my fault for dancing.
The Dark Part of Me Page 2