Still, as she walked the corridors to his room that day, she felt like she was marching to her own death knell. She felt the familiar constriction in her throat. Like he had a hold of her, and he was pressing her tiny neck hard.
She turned the corner into his room.
There he was – her potential liberator and her current oppressor, propped up in bed on a ventilator, belly looking more swollen than last time. He was wide awake, but simply staring. It was just like her dad, he didn’t care about a whole lot, not about a movie or a book, or anything else. Maybe the footy, but it wasn’t footy season now.
Just staring into space, lost in that rudimentary mind.
His eyes snapped to her attention. Bright blue, like her own. They were wet around the sides, like they were starting to leak outside of their vessel, like the lids could no longer contain them and they were simply slipping straight out.
“Evelyn, you’re back,” he rasped at her. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.
The room enveloped them in silence, the smell of sick thick in the air.
“You didn’t bring the kid this time. Scared her off last time, did I?” he scoffed, as though it were a tiny joke.
“She’s at a friend's place,” she responded quietly, taking a seat near him on one of those unbearably hard chairs.
“Yeah I see. Not important enough, am I?” he sniffed.
She didn’t respond.
“So what are you doing these days in Sydney, Evie?” He used her nickname derisively. He’d always hated when people used it.
“I’m working,” she said.
“Got yourself a job then?”
“Just an office job.”
“Better than nothing. You were never clever, so you can’t expect much,” he said in an offhand manner.
“I did okay.”
“Please Evie, you were the pretty one, not the smart one. That’s not a bad thing. The blokes always prefer the pretty ones. You got yourself a bloke, Evelyn?” All in a single breath. Like there was nothing in those words that could offend her at all.
She shook her head. She tasted blood in her mouth. She realised she had been biting the inside of her lip so hard that she had pierced the flesh.
“Who you gunna find in Redfern, right? All a bunch of Abos,” he grimaced.
She said nothing. Her silence made her complicit to that racism, she thought to herself.
“You should move. That’s a shit place,” he continued.
“I’ll think about it.”
“You should.”
They fell mute. It had always been like that. Either arguing or silent. It was like a giant void fell between the two of them — filled with anger, bubbling away not far below the surface. Other than argue about the past, there was nothing to fill the void between them. Evie had no idea what to say to him. She had no idea who this man was. He existed only in her mind as some monster. It was as though the locus of his identity had shifted for her. It was no longer in this person but somewhere in a lived past – where the events were hotly disputed.
“Do they take you out to see the ocean?” she finally said. The words cracked across her lips, chit-chat of the worse kind. There was nothing worse than reducing what lay between them to small talk.
“No, of course not. Who wants to see the bloody ocean anyway? Who cares?”
He didn’t make it easy. He never did. She always thought that people became wise on their deathbeds. That suddenly they reassessed their lives and came to conclusions. They experienced an arcane view of their lives and everything that had occurred. Greg wasn’t like that. He was belligerent and rude, like he had always been. He was walking into death and staring into space.
Like none of this mattered at all. Maybe it didn’t.
“You been to their graves?” he suddenly asked, as though he had read her morbid thoughts.
She supposed she meant her mother's and . She couldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t think about it.
“No,” she said, the word caught in her throat but eventually spurted out.
“Well that’s a bit shit. You’ve been here, what? At least a month and you haven’t visited your family at the cemetery. Who’s going to visit me?” He seemed forlorn for a single moment, but it was probably the meds; she couldn’t imagine him being able to experience that sort of emotion.
“No-one,” she said reflexively.
He snapped his head in her direction, and stared her down with those rheumy eyes. There was the violence, so close to the surface. She imagined him like he had been back in the day — he would have jumped out of that bed and seized her by the hair. One time he had ripped out a chunk of it. It had been the night of her school formal.
“You’re a shit aren’t you? Well I won’t take offence. Because you professed to love your mum and Benny so much, but you haven’t been to their ...” she didn’t let him finish. The idea of Benny cold in the ground was too much for her. What would be left of him now after all this time? A couple of bones ... maybe less. Fuck, why Benny? She should have gone instead of him ... she was worth far less.
“I bet you went to see them all the time,” she said scornfully instead.
“Never. Not once. Better in the ground than alive those two.”
She felt the noose sensation tighten around her neck, and she tried to remain calm.
“You see Evelyn, you and I are more similar than you think. We’re the survivors, the tough ones. We had to be because we were surrounded by those cunts.”
The word cut her. Like he’d reached out and stabbed her.
She could tell he was watching her. Like he was waiting for her to flip the switch. Like he was goading her into violence, to prove that they were similar people.
She forced herself to take two gulps of air. She tried to quell the panic and rage which swirled within her.
Slowly she got up, shakily. She found her feet and she walked out of the room.
This time he didn’t call her back.
14
Evie, we should go home
(1996, Redfern)
They were sitting on a bench outside the Vietnamese doctor’s surgery on Elizabeth Street – Evie and Craig. He was Adam’s friend. Recently he’d been hanging around her a lot, more than Adam. She wasn’t sure if she was a thing with Adam anymore. There had been a few more episodes with him behind the tennis courts, but he’d been cool with her for at least a fortnight. He didn’t talk to her much at school anymore, and she could tell he had his eye on another girl. Laura. He was always looking at her in maths class and had started being saccharine sweet with her instead of Evie.
Then Craig had started hanging around ... all the time. He was waiting for her outside of classes, offering to walk her home and all the rest. At first she had found his presence annoying. The withdrawal of Adam’s interest meant that she no longer had her crown position in the schoolyard. She could sense the kids start to change the way they were treating her – reverting back to the way they had treated the old Evie. A pretty girl, yeah, but one with a junkie brother, and crazy parents. Low grade. In the politics of school she had dropped dangerously back to her former position.
Craig wasn’t Adam but he still hung out with the cool guys. He still afforded her some status. Besides, it was kind of nice to talk to someone who was together. Her mum was in-between episodes, and Benny had been acting weirder than usual. She’d noticed marks on his arm the other day. She hadn’t asked any questions.
Mirela would never understand what was going on. Craig was a good distraction.
He knocked her leg with a knee as an old Asian couple headed into the surgery.
“What do you think they’re going in for?”
“Dunno, same as everyone I guess. A cold, the flu.” She didn’t add to fill their depression meds.
“Nah I don’t reckon. The nips are different.”
She didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure how they were different, but she wasn’t the type to contradict.
“You g
ot super pretty legs,” he said to her, putting his hand on her knee. It was clammy and hot and it made her feel kind of sick.
His face was close to hers and he was wearing a dorky grin.
“Thanks,” she responded absently. Everything with Adam was fresh, and a wave of nausea spread over her. She felt the taste of dirt in her mouth, and the sharp stabbing pain of his fingers within her.
"Evie."
She looked up quickly, glad for the distraction. It was Benny. He was on the other side of the road and he jay walked across leisurely. A car beeped as it narrowly missed him. Like he didn’t care.
He was wearing an oversized jumper and shorts – he was barefoot. He looked like shit, dark marks under his eyes – and she wondered if she had seen him at school today, or yesterday?
“Benny, where you been?” she said with a laugh.
Yes, the distraction was good. She got up off the bench, moving away from those sloppy, sweaty hands.
“Around.” He looked sharply at Craig, and swayed a little. Evie wondered if he was high or drunk. He didn’t smell like booze.
“You know Craig, right?” she said.
“Yeah ... yeah,” the word trailed off. He was cooked, but there was something more to it. Anger.
“Hey Evie, we should go home,” he suddenly said to her grabbing her by the shoulder. The words caught her by surprise. He must be having a stroke. He never wanted to go home.
“Now?”
“Yeah now. Let’s go,” he grabbed her by the arm and started to turn her in the direction of their house. His hand was hard and she yelped.
“What are you doing?” she cried wriggling away from him.
“We have to go,” his pupils were square, but somehow he was clear on this one.
“Why?”
“Because.” He stared at her intently like he was trying to communicate something to her by osmosis.
“She doesn’t want to go mate,” Craig suddenly weighed in.
Always boys talking for her.
“She’s my sister and she’s coming with me,” Benny leaned in aggressively. Benny was a wimp, sixty kilos spread across a six foot frame. He was all angles and bones. His co-ordination skills were non-existent ... but when he was high he was someone else.
“Fuck off, bro. She can do whatever she wants,” Craig said getting to his feet. He brought his face up nice and tight to Benny’s, his eyes wide, his fists clenched.
“She’s coming with me,” Benny backed away suddenly and grabbed Evie by the arm.
She stood motionless between them. The fight taken out of her, consumed by the pair of them.
“Listen, you retarded junkie. I said, she can do what she wants,” Craig yelled loudly. The words made her stomach turn.
“Don’t call him that,” she suddenly said, a primitive reaction. She didn’t want to hear anything about Benny.
“He is. The only reason he doesn’t get the shit beaten out of him at school is because he’s got a pretty sister. He’s a fuckin’ faggot,” Craig’s face was red. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her to stay, because his litany was having the opposite effect.
“I’m going now,” she said coldly.
As she marched down Elizabeth Street away from Craig she tried to steady Benny, he was all over the road and kept tripping.
“I need to sit down for a bit,” he said, taking a lopsided seat on the outside wall of a terrace. He pushed his sleeve up and scratched his arm. Even in the darkness, she could see the tracks on his arms.
“Is my nose bleeding?” he said suddenly, searching her face for an answer desperately.
“No.”
“Feels like it,” he sniffed a few times.
A few moments passed and she paced slightly. Traffic lit up the street in a kaleidoscope.
“Benny, what was that about?” she said finally.
He stared at her for a moment. “He’s a creep.”
“He’s okay. Why are you saying that?”
“He just wants to get in your pants.”
“They all do,” she said dismissively.
“Yeah but he’s worse. I heard him talking about how he was going to fuck you because you were easy, and Adam was sick of you,” the words tumbled out of his mouth so close together they seemed one. He continued to scratch.
“Where? When?” her heart pounded and her cheeks flushed.
“A few days ago – on the lunch line.”
“Adam’s sick of me?” her heart pounded so heart she could hear it, like the ocean, in her head.
“Yeah.”
“What else did you hear?” the desperation crept out of her. Everyone knew. Everyone knew about the awful shit that went down behind the tennis courts. Everyone thought she was a slut.
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Tell me Benny, please.” Supplicating a junkie was the lowest of lows.
Benny eyed her off like he was assessing whether it was the right time to drop this information.
“He said you were a boring fuck and had small tits, and he should have waited for Laura to be ready.”
She felt the bile spill into her mouth. Laura, high-achiever, thin, pretty, perfect. Normal parents, normal family. She was a virgin. It was too pristine to give away. Too holy.
She was worth so much more than Evie was.
Evie wrapped her arms around herself like she was suddenly cold. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She found it hard to cry about things. Unless she felt physical pain. The rest, those blows didn’t sting as much. But they did get inside you. They did rip you up. But in a different way.
“You okay, sis?” Benny suddenly said hovering in front of her, his square pupils centimetres away from her own. He was a good kid, with a soft heart.
“Yeah,” she said, even though she was broken. “Can we just not go home right now?”
He nodded.
15
Him, again
(2017, Redfern)
The next time Tilley wanted to go to Chris’s house Evie said she would go along. She’d never done that before. Gone along to a friend of Tilley’s place to supervise. The strangeness of it hadn’t escaped Tilley. She had demanded to know why – Evie had thought quickly on her feet, like she always did, and told Tilley that she liked Rosie, Chris’s mum, and she needed to make friends too. This argument hadn’t seemed so peculiar to Tilley.
It was hard for Evie to admit why she was acting like this. Sometimes it was easier to ignore the underlying motives behind our actions. She had never thought of herself as a racist. She still didn’t think she was. But somehow this place had seeped under her skin, the years of snide Aboriginal comments, the underlying hostility, the seemingly harmless jokes yeah, she’d internalised them all, and now she simply didn’t trust them. She didn’t think they were her kind of people. Was that a racist thought? She wasn’t sure.
Ironically, she’d never experienced any wrongdoing from an Aboriginal person, it was the people that were just like her that had cut her the most. The people closest to her ...
She sat in Rosie’s kitchen while the children played outside and she wondered if this was at all apparent to her? Did Rosie think she was here because she didn’t trust Tilley with her child, or with her family?
She hoped not.
She took a sip from the instant coffee Rosie had prepared for her. It was heavenly sweetened, and came with a dollop of fullcream milk which made it almost bearable.
“Lovely coffee,” she remarked.
“It’s only instant. I would have made something sweet for us to eat too, but I didn’t know you were coming,” there was no passive aggressive malice in her words, but still Evie felt uncomfortable, like she needed to explain her actions.
“I just ... don’t really know anyone here in Sydney. I was used to the families in Melbourne – the ones that had kids in Tilley’s year ...” She trailed off, another excuse. It was half hearted at best.
“I understand – that’s completely fine. It’s
a different world these days, you never know where your kid could be or what they’re doing,” she said in a relaxed tone.
“Yeah.”
“But you said you had family here?” Rosie joined her at the table. She was large and round, with pencil thin legs. She was wearing a black, tired dress.
“My dad, but he’s in a hospice. He doesn’t have long to go.”
“And the rest? You’re from Sydney originally right?” She didn’t intend the question to be difficult, but it was.
“They’re all gone.”
“Tough ... you get along with your dad?” She sipped at her coffee like they were having a by-the-by conversation, not something that should have been rehearsed with a councillor.
A pause passed between them. Evie looked up at the clock as it ticked away quietly in the background. It knew it’s place in the world – every second, minute and hour, it ticked away, rotating endlessly. Doing the same thing every day. It always had a purpose and a function, and people were thankful for it. The only time it ever stopped doing was when the battery was flat -and then people just replaced it, speedily. And then, there it was back doing its thing. If only things were the same for her.
“That a hard question?” Rosie said, interpreting her silence accurately.
Evie smiled, “Yeah, we didn’t really get along.”
“I didn’t get along with my old man either. Crazy old bastard, it was hard when he left us though. I always wondered why we hadn’t been closer. If it was me or him, you know?”
Evie nodded. “And what did you decide?” she asked.
Rosie smiled, resigned. “Of course, I know it was him – but deep down it’s hard not to think it was me. We’re funny things aren’t we?”
The intimacy of the conversation was suddenly broken by G. He was wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt. It was the first time she had seen his arms, which were lined with tattoos. They faded into his dark skin, like they were natural creases in his arms that had always been there. She felt her skin grow warm, and her heart start beat rapidly. She liked him. He had a curious physical effect on her which she couldn’t control.
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