by E. M. Reapy
‘But I still owe you another three plus this week’s?’
‘Yeah, yeah. We’ll figure something out. Cleaning bucket and sprays are in the store room behind the common area. Now get out of my bloody sight.’
You walk to the store room with a spring in your step. The sensation of hope is back. The cleaning job was something. It would help.
You pick up the supplies and clean the toilets and fridges. You scoop out old food from the fridge and retch. You scoop out black goo and hairs from the tiles around the toilets and retch. When the day is done, you shower for twenty minutes. The water is scalding. You use the Asians’ shampoo.
★
The following days there’s still no work. No sign of work. Backpackers with money travel away, go to bigger places – Mildura, Swan Hill, Wagga Wagga – and try get farm jobs, or go west to Margaret River. They say they only pay by the hour over there in decent vineyards.
You can’t leave though. You’ve no money to get out.
A Welsh girl with luscious ginger hair is smoking at the benches. You go over to her and ask for a cigarette. You’ve never asked her before so you might get lucky. You do. She passes you a Longbeach Menthol.
‘What’s your story?’ you ask.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You working?’
She pauses, looks you in the eye. ‘Yeah, I’m working. I got a job in the potato factory. Admin.’
‘You landed an office job here? How?’
‘Well, sometimes you do what you have to do.’ She smiles.
You’re intrigued. You smoke in silence, quench the cigarette and go to check the ‘Free Food’ shelf in the kitchen to see if there’s anything you can muster. Someone has left Black & Gold stuffing beside a nearly empty tub of tomato ketchup. You take both and put them into your food bag. Dinner will be exotic tonight: ketchupped breadcrumb noodles.
What Ginger said is going about in your head. You try and shake it clear but it keeps creeping back. You return to the benches to find her but she’s gone so you check the jobs board to get her room number. Twelve. You go down the courtyard in your flip-flops, avoiding the broken glass. You knock. She comes to the door.
‘Yeah?’ She’s got a face mask on now. Grey mud all over except the skin around her eyes and her lips. She still looks pretty.
‘I – I just wondered what you meant earlier?’
She sighs. ‘Look, I can see you’re stuck. Half the people staying here are. I was too. I’m only going to say this to you so don’t go broadcasting it.’
You lean in closer, able to smell the dank carpet in the room, the chemicals from the face mask.
‘Antonio, being the nice guy he is, will accept alternative ways of paying rent. And sometimes that can get you into the factories too.’
You try to steady yourself. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Aw, come on. We’re both big girls. I bet you’ve slept with fellas and wished they had paid they treated you so bad? We all have.’
Your ex-boyfriend Malley flashes into your mind.
‘I – no. Antonio will – you mean – if I go to bed with him?’
‘Yeah. Don’t say I told you. He’s married you know. I gotta go. This fucking mask is burning me.’
She shoves you slightly and closes the door. You stand staring at the number twelve, the chipped red gloss around it.
★
You roll what she said over in your thoughts. You go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror. Poke underneath your cheekbones. Gone lean there too. Gaunt. You wash your face, blow your nose and breathe slowly.
You pace the floor. Wash your face again. Check your watch. You hop into your bottom bunk and try to sleep. Listen to some music. Get up. Go back into bed. Check your phone.
Go to A. Dial Antonio. Hang up.
‘What are you doing?’ you ask yourself. You try to weigh it up again. Antonio is a sleaze. His blackheads are almost popping out of his pores. His fingers are stubby and his fingernails are bitten to blood. He’s got a vicious mouth. But this is killing you. You can pretend you’re somewhere else with someone else. With Colin Farrell in the Hollywood Hills.
You dial again.
‘Hello,’ he drawls. He’s chewing on something.
You want to hang up. Terror makes your blood pump.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi – em – hi, Antonio. This is Fiona. From room three. I – I was wondering…’
How do you even ask this? What words do you use?
‘I was wondering if we could make some sort of deal with the rent I owe you?’
‘You’re the Irish chick?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The black-haired one. Long legs?’
You cough. ‘No – no, I’ve got fairish hair. To my ears. I’m in room three. With the Asian girls.’
Long pause.
He chomps again and leaves you listening to him breathing through his nose. ‘Hmm. I’m not so keen. You done a good job cleaning. I might need you to do that again. But you tell your friend with the black hair to give me a call.’
He’s about to hang up and you hate yourself for it but you go, ‘Please. Antonio. Wait. I can’t just clean. I need work. I’ll do anything.’
He swallows and bangs his lips together. ‘I’ll call you back.’
The line dies.
You recall the whole conversation, adding in bits and pieces, what he might have meant, what you should have said. You feel the way you felt when you puked all over yourself on the bus home from the Transition Year Grad, the second time you’d ever been properly drunk. Blue Aftershocks and Bulmers. You feel the way you felt when you were with Malley at a music festival and you tried to pull him out to dance with you. He shoved you off and called you a pathetic bitch. His spit flew in your face as he shouted you down. You were afraid he’d hit you in front of everyone. Them blind-eyed, embarrassed for you. That feeling back again.
You’re a fucking fool. And you’re fucking ugly. Even that fat old Greek prick doesn’t want you.
You bury your face in your pillow and scream.
★
The phone wakes you two hours later. It’s Antonio.
‘Hey, Irish, you sure you’ll do anything? I don’t want no more whinging out of you and no turning back either.’
You drench your mouth with saliva and swallow it, wipe your tingling eyes. Your voice gives it away that you’ve been sleeping.
‘Yeah. I don’t know how much longer I can survive like this. I don’t know what to do.’
He starts chewing something again, the crunch coming over the receiver.
‘Good. I got a pal. He’s a farmer, okay. It’s out in the bush. You live there with him. He’ll pay you every week. Now, he’s a rough kind of bloke. Very outback. You gotta know this before you go. He did have a wife once so he can’t be too bad. You get accommodation, food and two hundred to six hundred bucks a week, depending.’
‘Depending?’
‘Depending on what you do. How far you go will be your own choice.’
Panic slashes through you.
‘I – I don’t know,’ you stutter. ‘I shouldn’t.’
‘Look, girl, how about I sweeten it by cancelling all your debts here? I’ll clear the five weeks you owe me.’
‘It’s only four.’
‘It’s five on Monday. Eight hundred and seventy-five bucks wiped clean.’
You stay silent and try to decide. If you could just save for two months, not doing anything, you’d be able to leave and start again. But you can’t go out there, he could be a sicko, and if you go you’ll be a... But if you stay, what happens? More of this? Going down, further down. Bigger and bigger debts with Antonio, with the other travellers? You can’t steal anymore. You don’t want to. You hate this. You hate it. Because if you just did it with the farmer a few times, you could get out quickly. Even pay your folks back.
Antonio interrupts your thoughts. ‘I’m getting bored now, you keen or not? Plenty of
other chicks would be grateful for this chance.’
You take a big breath. ‘When would I go?’
‘Get packed and I’ll collect you in thirty minutes.’
You need to go now or you’ll chicken out. ‘Okay Antonio,’ you whisper and hang up.
You gather your shit from the bed. You take your towel and toothbrush out of the bathroom. You tear the picture of your parents and gran off the wall beside your bunk and squash your shoes and make-up bag into your rucksack. You spray yourself with the Asians’ perfume. It smells like Euphoria but you can’t tell from the symbols on the label if it is.
You stare at yourself in the mirror for so long that your sight becomes spotted with black and you don’t look like yourself anymore. You drag the bag out the front of the hostel and wait for Antonio. You don’t say goodbye to anyone. You can’t handle the explaining and you don’t feel up to lying.
Antonio beeps in his ute. You walk over and he tells you to put the bag in the back. He drives out of the village, playing a Frank Sinatra CD, shouting at the cars in front for turning and not using indicators, for going too slow.
For a while you forget what you’re doing and admire the parched desert outback scenery. Bleak, thirsty, stunning.
You see your phone signal is gone, this far into the countryside. Antonio takes a right and a left, drives for miles of farmland. He points at a farmhouse in the distance. ‘Your new quarters, chick.’
Panic is mutilating you. You can’t back out. You want to back out. You have to back out.
Oh fuck.
What are you doing? You can’t do this.
He pulls up outside the house. Four tractors, a Hummer, two utes and a scrap Golf are parked in the driveway.
‘How many people live here?’ you ask. Dread makes your voice squeaky.
‘I don’t know. Nothing to do with me. Take your bag. I’ll cancel your debts. Hooroo, mate.’
Antonio leans over and opens your door. You mechanically get out and pick up your rucksack, the white flight-sticker still hanging off the straps – Dublin to Sydney.
You haul it onto your back. It’s nearly bigger than you.
Antonio honks. His tyres screech with the U-turn. You can see heads in the front room turn to look out the window, through a haze of smoke. One of the figures gets up and walks out of the room.
He switches on an outside light even though you can see. Antonio’s ute is dusting out of sight. The front door whines open and the man watches you walk. He’s slim and wears a grey checked shirt. He grinds his jaw.
‘How ya goin’?’ he says. His thumb rests on the waistband of his shorts.
You pull your rucksack higher onto your back and inch towards him.
You’re with Colin Farrell in the Hollywood Hills. You chant. Over and over.
Colin Farrell.
Hollywood Hills.
★
You have this disconnect. It’s like you’re there, you can see yourself, but you’re not inside. The man stands, watching you. He says nothing else until you pass by him and put your rucksack down in the hallway. The floor is grubby. You spot a cockroach and gasp.
‘Yer Sheila’s here,’ he shouts into the front room.
There’s shuffling and creaking of a chair that has released a weight.
An old man walks towards you. He smells of liquorice and lager. He turns you around. His hand is cold, thin and has liver spots. He turns you back. You’re disconnected. You’re calm. You’re watching the scene. He cups one of your breasts. He raises it.
‘Not much milk, eh?’ he says and the man who opened the door howls with laughter. His back teeth are rotting.
The old man leans in closer and sniffs your shoulder. The tip of his nose is wet.
‘She’ll do alright,’ he says. ‘At least he sent a white this time and not a damn reffo.’
He walks back to the sitting room. The smell of smoke in the house is fresh.
The man who opened the door says, ‘You’ll call him Mr Fletcher. I’m Rusty. Me bro is Jett. We’ll be telling you what to do. Now go make us some dinnies, good girl.’
You nod and go towards where his finger points. He doesn’t follow you. You wonder will this be easier than you thought. You wonder why it feels like your voice is stuck in your chest. Under your ribcage.
The kitchen is large. Around the sink, pots are piled up. Food has dried into the bottom and sides of them. The plates are crusty. A fly paper towel is peppered black. Cans of alcohol pyramid in the corner.
A biscuit tin holds a stash of pills and medicines, syrups and painkillers. The old man must be in really bad shape. Maybe he won’t be able to— Or do you have to be a whore to all of the men? Do they all get a go? It makes you wince to think about.
That old lady from your hometown, with a hairy mouth and sagged flesh. She hung out in the chippers, not the corners. The midfielder from your year who paid her for sex in the shopping centre car park and bragged to everyone after about how gross it was. You remember laughing at his story, not because you thought it was funny but because everyone else was.
But you need cash. You need cash. Stay disconnected. Stay numb. Get some money. You’re here for the money. Stay numb.
In the fridge, there’s a stench of old milk. The shelves are littered with onions, mushrooms, red capsicums, garlic cloves and avocados. There’s a plate with thick bloody chops. You decide you’ll make them a good feed before you do anything else. In the freezer, you find oven chips. You look out the window and see a forest in the distance. The men leave you alone as you prepare the meal, not one of them comes to see what’s going on.
The crickets begin their leg grinding and the night drops quickly through the sky. You’re hungry but you barely pick at the food, even as it’s cooking. If this place becomes a prison, you will starve yourself to death and you get some comfort from this idea. A sense of control over your body.
The kitchen grows more humid from the cooking. You realise you’re sweating and wipe your neck and behind your ears with a cloth. The chops spit as you fry them and you watch them shrivel as they cook. You’re transfixed.
Where the fuck are you, Fiona? Is this even the real world?
More sweat flows from you and before you reach the sink, life blanks, the room goes black and you’re gone.
★
You come to on the couch. The old man Fletcher, Rusty and Jett stare down as you groan. The back of your head feels like it has a cartoon-style bump swelling out of it.
‘It’s alright,’ Fletcher says and hands you a cup of water.
Rusty is eating a crispy, black chop. You stare at Jett and think he looks like Rusty but in a shrunken-down fatter way.
You want to ask if all the food was burned but you’re afraid of getting slapped around. The blood is hopping under your skin.
‘It’s alright,’ Fletcher says.
You sit up slowly and your eyes are filled with floating spots. Fletcher shouts at Jett to get you more water.
‘She can get it herself,’ Jett says like a teenager but if you guessed, he’s at least forty.
Fletcher flicks the tip of Jett’s left ear and Jett puts his hand up to cover it.
‘What you fucking do that for?’
‘Get her some fucking water, I said.’
It sounds like they are saying fah-king and it makes you jumpy each time they swear.
Jett seizes the cup from you with such force, you think he’ll crush it with his big shovel hands.
Rusty sneers at him as he goes. You don’t know where to look now.
‘It’s alright, girl,’ Fletcher says again.
Jett comes back with a cup of water and thrusts it at you. It spills on your lap. Fletcher boxes him across the head.
‘You flaming mongrel.’
‘What, Pa? Why you being so nice to this one? What’s special about her?’ Jett asks and rubs his head.
‘Get her a blanket, she’ll sleep here for tonight.’
Rusty looks confused.
/>
Jett says, ‘Rusty, you get it.’
‘He asked you,’ Rusty says.
You don’t move a muscle. You don’t even blink. You want the blanket. You want to sleep here. You don’t know what’s down there.
‘She’ll cook and clean. That’s it for now. She went unconscious. I want her good and ready. Let her get a hold of this place. We don’t want it to be like the last time.’ Fletcher pauses. ‘So that’s it for now. Cook and clean. Understand, boys?’
Your eyes are watering from not blinking.
‘I fucking said, understand, boys?’
Rusty says, ‘Sure, Pa,’ and nods his head.
Jett gives you a cold look. He mumbles, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ and flashes unmatching teeth at you.
★
During the night, you’re in their sitting room. It’s hot but you leave all your clothes on, even your shoes. You turn on the TV and let the images come through without sound. When you sleep, it’s in snatches, falling off that cliff of consciousness, waking suddenly and checking where you are. Still the same.
Your dreams are worse. Night terrors. Kneeling on a bridge. Sharks in yellow water underneath. Malley watching from the shore.
Cigarette smoke curls up your nose.
‘Alive yet, Princess?’ Jett asks.
You sit up quickly, fully, and wrap the blankets over and underneath you.
‘Now, I don’t know why we’ve got this little confusion. You’re the girl, sent to be our girl, and yet you’re not. Now why is that, d’ya reckon?’
You tense in your upper thighs, in your crotch. Is this it? Is this going to happen? How will it feel?
‘I don’t know why me old man thinks you need sparing for a day or two because in my opinion, breaking the animals in straight off is always the best way to use them.’
He strokes your cheek with the back of his finger. It’s cold but surprisingly soft. ‘Now, I don’t think you came here without knowing what you were coming here for, did ya, Princess?’
You pull away but he’s moving closer. You’ve got nowhere else to go. He leans in closer. His breath is on you. Dog’s breath. He’s showing those teeth again. You loosen your arms. Now you regret wrapping the blanket on you. Your legs are trapped. He pushes his mouth onto yours. His weight is coming down on you. But he can’t rape you over these covers. You can feel his hard-on against your leg. His kiss is rough and his tongue is probing through your mouth. He’s moaning. He stops. He starts again.