by Karen Foxlee
“We just wanted to ask you something,” said Angela.
“About what?”
“About Beth.”
“I already told the police when it happened, I don't know anything. I never saw her after the party.”
She took the hand from her pregnant belly and wiped her eyes.
I couldn't believe she had tears in her eyes.
I couldn't believe her bottom lip quivered.
Real tears, two of them, ran down her cheeks.
“Do you know anything about this?” I said.
I took out The Book of Clues from the back of my shorts. I showed her the address.
“Normandy Street,” she said aloud.
I saw a shadow, something, pass over her face.
“I don't,” she said. “You kids have got to stop sticking your nose in where it doesn't fit.”
“So you're saying you don't know anything,” I said.
“Who is it, babe?” came a voice from inside.
“No one,” said Miranda.
“What are you two little shits doing here?” said Kevin when he came to the door.
He opened his mouth into his Cheshire cat grin.
“Nothing,” I said.
I closed up the book.
“Come back to bed,” said Kevin.
“Bye,” said Miranda.
“See you,” I said.
Angela and I walked down the caravan park main street. I felt a song trying to come through. I shook my head.
“She's such a liar,” I said.
That day Angela wrote in The Book of Clues:
miranda lying.
visit address.
the final thing.
But we didn't go to the address. When we walked home through the park I could tell she was secretly thinking it was too late. I wasn't going to sing in the Talent Quest.
If I am to be honest it is the darkest thing I know. It happened on a night when they sat along the gutter outside of the Oasis. A man came out and asked them what their poison was. He was still dressed in his dark blue work gear. He had grime on his hands but he had cleaned up his face.
“Lambrusco,” Beth said.
“Shit, you're not cheap.”
“I've got money,” she said. She was still in her work shirt and jeans.
“We'll buy it.”
He came back with two friends and a cardboard box full of bottles.
“We'll go to the lake,” he said. “Marty's driving.”
“I'm not going to the lake,” said Michelle Wright. “Not with people I don't know.”
“Don't be a reject,” said Miranda.
“I'm going,” said Beth.
“I'm going,” said Miranda.
“Only because you're sluts,” said Rochelle Peters.
“And you're the Virgin Mary,” said Miranda.
The man was John; his two mates, Peter and Martin. Marty, who drove the car, was quiet, but Peter, who sat in the back between Miranda and Beth, was loud. He laughed at his own jokes. He threw his head back. He was tall; his head nearly touched the roof of the car. He had long bangs that fell across one eye.
John rested his arm along the front seat and looked back at Miranda. Then he looked at Peter, and Beth saw the exchange with their eyes. Who belonged to who. She watched Miranda giving John the eye already, looking down at her fingers in her lap and then slyly through her long black eyelashes at him again.
They headed onto the highway and out of town. Peter opened up a bottle and handed it to Beth. She turned her head and looked at the mine lights receding into the distance.
“You're a quiet little thing, aren't you?” he said.
Beth took a swig out of the bottle and looked at him but didn't say anything. John passed a joint back.
“That should loosen you up a little bit,” said Peter, and he put his hand on her knee.
Miranda wound her window right down. She undid her seat belt and climbed up and sat with the top part of her body out of the window. She let out a scream into the night.
“Hey,” said Marty, “get back inside. Shit.”
“She's a crazy woman,” said Peter, and let out a stream of laughter.
“Just get her in,” said Marty.
Miranda sat back inside the car.
“Try it,” she said.
“Don't you dare,” said Marty as Beth undid her seat belt.
He was slowing down the car as she sat up on the window but the wind still whipped the hair backward across her face. She held on to the inside of the car with two hands but then let go of one and used it to push the hair back from her face. It was like flying. She felt like letting go altogether. Marty slowed right down and then stopped the car. He got out and slammed his door.
“Get back in the car, all right,” he shouted.
She got back in the car. He started the engine.
“Jeez, Marty,” said Peter, “what's up your fucking arse tonight?”
“Shut your face, dickhead,” said Marty, and he squealed his tires as he drove up the shoulder onto the highway.
At the lake it was pitch-black apart from the stars. It was difficult to see where the grass ended and the water began. Peter took Beth by the hand and led her down to one of the picnic tables. When they had finished the first bottle he opened the next.
In the darkness she could hear the water touching the shore. The lake breathed in and out against the grass and weed. The rhythm of it rocked her. She tilted her head back to look at the stars. There was no moon. Somewhere, distant, she heard Miranda laughing.
“You want a bit of this?” said Peter, and he took her hand and put it on his crotch and rubbed it up and down. She drank from the bottle for a while with her free hand.
“Are you a bit up yourself or something?” he asked.
On the ground he pulled her shirt up over her head. Her skin shone like alabaster. He made a groaning noise and then snorted as the breath caught in his throat. His long bangs hung over one side of his face. The one visible eye had a giant pupil. A single round dark hole. He tugged her jeans down over her hips. He knelt beside her face.
“Suck on it,” he said.
“I don't want to,” she said.
She heard the lake breathe in.
“Fucking suck on it, you little slut,” he said, and he picked up her head between his hands.
He let her sit up and she spat the semen out onto the grass. She thought she was going to vomit but she didn't. Peter stood up and tilted his head back and laughed. He took a mouthful of the wine and spat it at her and laughed again.
“Hey, Marty,” he called out.
There was no reply.
“Marty,” he yelled.
“What?” came Marty's voice from a way off.
“You want seconds?”
When she tried to get up he punched her in the stomach so she fell back on the ground.
Afterward they drove back to town. John sat in the back between them this time. Miranda rested her head against his shoulder, her long brown hair draped across his arm. She wouldn't look at Beth. There was the smell of sex and vomit in the car. Peter turned the radio on and beat the time out from a song on his thigh. Every now and again Marty wiped his sleeve under his nose and shook his head in disbelief.
Dawn rose, gold-lighted, turning the cliff faces pink and the bush grass incandescent white. The lake disappeared between the two walls of rock like a closing eye.
They dropped Beth at the highway end of Memorial Drive. Miranda had her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Beth looked at Peter in the front seat but he didn't turn to face her. He stared straight ahead down the highway.
There were road trains stopped, five or six of them, parked one behind the other. She walked between two. The cattle stamped and moved. The smell of them turned her stomach. She walked along Memorial Drive past the butter-colored slice of park and then vomited into the gutter. She could hear the car accelerating along the highway. She sat for a while at the corner of Dardanelles Court with her head between
her knees.
Her stomach ached. She wished she had swum in the lake. She wished they'd left her there. She would have taken off her clothes then and swum out and watched the sun rise, floating on her back. She would have been cleansed.
Everything ended where Nanna said it began.
AFTER MUM AND DAD WRESTLED AND CRIED IN THE HALLWAY THEY DIDN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER MUCH. Just hello and goodbye. What's for dinner? Sorry I'm late.
Dad didn't tell us he was leaving until he left. It was nearly a year since Beth had died. He got up one morning and decided to leave. First he sat on the side of the bed for a long time thinking about it. He had his head in his hands.
“What are you doing, Jim?” asked Mum because he was supposed to be getting ready for work.
“Nothing,” he said, and let go of his head and let it fall backward and then he stared at the ceiling that way for a long time.
I climbed onto the bed beside him. I lay on my stomach with my chin in my hands and watched him.
When he finished looking at the ceiling he looked at me. He smiled and shook his head.
“Oh shit,” he said.
He got up and stood beside the wall and rested his head against it.
“Oh shit,” he said louder. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Mum came to the bedroom door. She had her hair in rollers because Aunty Cheryl said she had to start taking pride in her appearance again. She had her yellow Japanese happy coat on. She had put on her lipstick but not her eyes.
Dad stopped leaning against the wall and went down on his knees beside the bed. I didn't know what he was doing. He went down so quickly. His knees hit the floor hard. He reached under the bed and pulled out a suitcase. My mother's red lips opened into a circle.
Dad dragged the suitcase out and lifted it up and slapped it onto the bed. A cloud of dust rose up into the air. He made a noise deep in his throat. It sounded like a frog croaking.
“Get up, get up,” Mum said to me.
I crawled backward off the bed. Dad went to the cupboard. He started throwing clothes from the cupboard across the room into the suitcase. A shirt with arms outstretched. A pair of trousers with legs flying. A handful of belts, buckles rattling.
Mum said, “Don't you dare.”
Dad said, “Don't what?”
He stopped throwing the clothes and looked at her with arms hanging down at his sides.
“I can't,” he said.
“Can't what?”
“I can't,” he said. “Anymore.”
Mum lay facedown on the bed and screamed. Dad dragged the suitcase down the hall. It was hard cardboard with plastic edges. It scraped along the wall. It left a scrape mark, a long gentle arc.
He picked up the phone. He phoned a taxi.
“Day,” he said. “Four Dardanelles Court, yes, one, thank you.”
Danielle came out of her bedroom.
“What?” she said.
Mum had stopped screaming. Dad looked at Danielle and me. It was very quiet. His hand went down to the suitcase handle.
“Where are you going?” asked Danielle.
“I can't,” said Dad. “I just can't.”
He shook his head from side to side. There were tears dripping off his nose. I went to go toward him but he put his hand out.
Stop.
The taxi horn beeped.
“I just can't,” he said.
Mrs. Irwin noticed Beth under Frieda Schmidt's spreading poinciana tree. We had heard her yelling across the road and into Miss Schmidt's front yard because she thought that Beth was dead. We heard her from the kitchen, where we sat at the table watching Mum slowly and precisely butter the bread for our school lunches.
“What the hell is going on?” said Mum, going to the front door with the butter knife still in her hand.
“Jean,” shouted Mrs. Irwin from Miss Schmidt's front yard.
When Mum crossed the road Miss Schmidt unlocked her front door and stepped gingerly onto the front porch. She was fully dressed with her stockings and blouse and lace-up shoes. Only her hair hadn't finished being done. She looked afraid of being in her own yard.
Miss Schmidt put a foot on the front lawn as though she had stepped into another country. She looked at Beth lying beneath the tree and at Mum with the butter knife. She looked at Mrs. Irwin holding her hands over her mouth like a cartoon of someone scared.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Beth was sleeping where she had fallen. Her bare feet were brown with dirt. Her hands were held together beneath her head. The first of the red flowers had fallen while she slept and adorned her hair. Her name tag was still in place on her white work shirt. It read:
Sandy's Sports Store
Elizabeth—Trainee
“Get up,” said Mum.
She said it quietly, so quiet that it would never have woken Beth up. Danielle and I stood behind her.
Mum stood above Beth with the butter knife.
“Get up,” shouted Mum.
All along the street screen doors and sliding windows were being opened. Mrs. O'Malley came out onto the footpath pretending to check the mail. Marshall Murray, who was watching from his patio, shook his head and closed his eyes.
“Get back inside,” Mum said to Danielle and me, who had knelt beside Beth. “Go.”
Beth didn't know we were there. The sun shone through the leaves onto her luminous face. A little rash of freckles ran across her nose just beneath where her long eyelashes rested. Her lips were slightly parted.
When she woke up she got a fright to see Mum standing over her with the butter knife. She sat up slowly and held her head, remembering.
Mum started yelling at her straightaway.
“You say sorry to this lady,” Mum shouted.
Beth stood up and stumbled toward Miss Schmidt and took one of her hands. Miss Schmidt didn't have time to snatch it away.
“I'm really sorry,” said Beth. “I'm really, really sorry.”
“It's fine,” said Miss Schmidt. “It's fine.”
It was because the whole of the street witnessed it that it was the final disgrace. Dad used that word.
“You're a disgrace,” he said once she was inside and he had been woken up for the event. Mum and Dad thought the neighbors had no idea what was going wrong in our house.
Beth looked hurt by his words. Then she recovered herself and shrugged at him.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
For some reason that made Dad laugh. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
“You're bloody unbelievable,” he said.
When Dad said Beth was a disgrace it was his first and last harsh word to her. She was sitting on the sofa with her grown-back hair rippling over her shoulders and the black mascara smudged around her blue eyes. All the shouting had been left to our mother. She never used any Life Cycle Library words. She never said Passion Pop. She never said sexual intercourse. She spoke in vague terms.
It wasn't good enough. It had to stop. Things were going to change.
“All I'm hearing are bad reports about you,” she shouted as though Beth had been on the news. “You know, I haven't even told your father about the police that night.”
Beth was barely listening until Dad spoke.
Her foot had been tapping the floor. Her eyes had been drifting to the television as though she was bored by it all. But his words raised a reaction. For a second her eyes shone with tears. She chewed on a fingernail. It looked like she was going to say something but she didn't. Dad's words rung in her ears. She only came home once after that.
She showered and got ready for work. The sun blazed at the bathroom window. The water made her body ache. She combed her wet hair and braided it. She packed what she could fit in her little canvas bag.
She rode to work. The hills had lost their fantastical color. The mine was a black stain. The sunlight was solid, thick; she had to push her way through the day.
“You're late,” said Sandy, coming out of his office, finger
ing his silky handlebar mustache.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
“Who's had a late night then, hey?” he said when he had had a good look at her from foot to head. Her unironed shorts and shirt. The dark rings beneath her eyes. He broke out into giggles like a boy.
“Hey?” he said. “Here I am thinking you're a good girl.”
She stood in front of him with her eyes on the floor.
“I think you better do bottom shelves today then, hey,” said Sandy. “You'd be no good on a ladder. You'd fall off. I'd have to pay compensation. That'd be all I need.”
He laughed like a maniac.
“What about doing the lures today?” he said. “That's a good job for a bad girl.”
He led her down the dusty aisle to the fishing lure cabinet. He took out keys from his back pocket.
“What'll we need?” he said. “Some window cleaner, right. Some soapy water, hey. Rub-a-dub-dub, hey?”
He nudged her with his elbow.
“Fuck off,” she said quietly.
“What did you say?”
“I said fuck off.”
“Hey, hey,” he said, putting the keys on the cupboard and smoothing down his mustache with both hands. “That's not the way to talk to your boss.”
“Why'd you say rub-a-dub-dub?” she said.
“I didn't mean anything by it. Just a bit of fun, that's all. You've got up on the wrong side of the bed, haven't you, hey, no more late nights for you?”
She took her badge off her shirt. She placed it next to the keys.
“You won't get to go on the registers acting like this,” he said.
“I don't want a go on the bloody registers.”
She heard Moira's chair scrape backward, her surprisingly soft footfall into the cricket bat aisle.
“I quit,” said Beth.
“You're fired more like it,” said Sandy.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
The morning Dad left I didn't go to school. I rode out of Dardanelles Court and met Angela at the end of Memorial Drive. I told her I was going climbing in the hills. I begged her to come with me. She begged me not to beg her. I said I know how to do your mum's handwriting.
“Jenny, don't,” she said.
We hid our bikes at the bottom of the hill behind the roller-skating rink where we knew there were caves. We climbed with the shale and powder rock slipping beneath our feet and with the spinifex cutting our legs.