Pretty Girls

by Pretty Girls (retail) (epub)

  Lilly didn’t have the money to pay for a cab ride to St Vincent in Kings Cross, so they took the bus from Elizabeth Street instead. 454. Straight down and a right turn onto Oxford. It had been jam-packed with people returning home from a day at work. Someone had given up their seat for them. A man with an ill-fitting suit and a terrible haircut. As he sidled passed them he kept a cautious distance like he was afraid they might touch him. Like he might contract whatever they were carrying.

  Of course, they didn’t have a real illness. Benny was beaten up to within an inch of his life that was for certain, but he wasn’t contagious. He didn’t have whooping cough or the measles or anything else that spread like wildfire.

  Their sickness wasn’t airborne.

  The people on the bus watched them with barely veiled contempt. They tried to keep their eyes to themselves, but once and then they would drift up at will. Like they couldn’t help but take a peek. Just as quickly as their eyes had settled on them they would quickly look away. It was like they were looking at the sun. The picture hurt them.

  The junkie kid with his face smashed in, and the pretty girl dressed in the slutty evening gown trying to prop him up.

  Maybe they were sick.

  Degenerates, that’s what they were. Of the worst kind. Housing commission kids who didn’t have a dollar between them. Kids that had grown up on the backstreets of Redfern, one of them snorting shit up his nose, and the other fucking the boys. Hoping that either pursuit would take them to a different place.

  They did have a disease. It was called poverty and violence.

  Maybe it could be caught.

  The triage nurse at St Vincents was a thirty something year old bloke who spoke in a camp tone. His eyes were dull as he took Benny’s details, like he had seen it all before, and a beaten up kid was the least of his worries.

  Now they waited to see the doctor.

  The room was small and odd in shape. There were about twelve chairs and they faced in on each other so you could see the rest of the patients. It was like some odd peep show into their lives and their sickness.

  There was a man sitting across from them wearing cycling lycra, his foot was propped up on a chair and bent at a perturbing angle. Then there was the girl in her tracksuit, white faced, clinging to her mother and a vomit bag. Then there was the weirdo scratching his skin in the corner and muttering under his breath.

  “Ben King?” a tall blonde lady wearing green scrubs exited. The doctor. She was beautiful, tall and solid. There was something about her appearance and her tangibility which put Evie instantly on edge.

  Ben held up a beaten hand.

  “Can you come through?” the doctor said. Her face was expressionless, but Evie knew her thoughts were just cleverly concealed, and what she really felt for the pair of them was scorn and disgust.

  Ben stumbled to his feet and limped his way through to the emergency area.

  “Here you can sit here,” the doctor gestured towards a bed and then pulled a blue curtain around them.

  She held a clip board in her hand and considered it briefly.

  Evie wondered what it might be like to be a woman like this. Accomplished, clever, beautiful ... making ends meet on her own. Where did she go home to? To who? She could only imagine she went home to a man that loved her, who wanted to be with her. Maybe he poured her a glass of wine when she got back from her shift and they talked about their day? She could imagine this woman laughing quietly with her handsome partner in their kitchen. Maybe they even cooked together. Some sort of recipe they had discovered in Vietnam or Thailand. A dish they had loved together on holiday and wanted to recreate ...

  Yeah, that seemed about right.

  She couldn’t expect any of that. Evie was unworthy. All she could ever hope for was a brutal shag and someone who paid the bills to keep a roof over her head.

  “What happened here?” the doctor asked. They’d already told the triage nurse, Evie was sure it must have been transcribed somewhere in those notes – why did she need them to recount the lies again?

  “I fell down the stairs,” Benny responded. His mouth was swollen and there was a strange lisp to his voice.

  She nodded her head and consulted the clip board again.

  She shook her head slightly, like she didn’t quite believe it. An involuntary action.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s take a look at you.”

  She put down the clip board, and applied some hand sanitiser from the cannister stuck to the wall. Evie noticed her nails were short but carefully manicured. She wasn’t wearing an engagement ring. Maybe she took it off for work. The doctor wasn’t the type of woman who would struggle to get a man to commit.

  “Can I touch your face?" she asked Benny.

  He nodded, and winced slightly when her hands touched his skin.

  Evie watched him carefully, she would have taken his hand but she was quite sure that hurt too. Instead she sent him mental messages. Telepathically. She’d heard about that sort of stuff, that you could convey messages to someone through your mind if they were deeply connected to you. Benny was deeply connected to her. It was like there was an umbilical cord that linked the pair of them together.

  He had taken the beating for her.

  He had risked his life for her.

  Always for her.

  “I think you might have a broken cheek bone. We can reset it but you’ll need to have some x-rays done first,” she said, writing something down on her pad.

  “Will that cost money?” Evie found her voice.

  The doctor glanced at her for a moment like she was an unpleasant odour. Like normal people wouldn’t ask questions like that.

  “No, it will go on Medicare,” she finally said.

  “Can you take your shirt off?” she asked Benny.

  He stared at her for a moment like he didn’t quite understand. Truthfully, he was still probably high, so maybe he didn’t understand.

  “I need to assess any other injuries,” she explained.

  Benny continued to stare dully.

  “C'mon Benny — we didn’t come all the way here for nothing,” Evie added.

  Benny stared at her for a moment. His pupils were square, but there was something else in his expression which scared her more than the drugs.

  He yanked the black t-shirt off his shoulders, exposing his skinny torso. He was skin and bones, and there was a strange dint in his chest. A concave of sorts, surrounded by bruising.

  There were tracks on his arms too. Lots of them. She realised she hadn’t seen him without his shirt for a long time. He didn’t even take it off at the beach and he always wore long sleeves.

  How had she missed that?

  Had she missed it – or was it something else that she simply ignored?

  “It looks like there’s a break in your sternum,” the doctor said with another shake of her head. “I’m going to have to get you x-rayed ASAP.”

  More scrawling on the pad.

  “I’ll get one of the nurses here to intubate you as well. We might need to administer some drugs.”

  A smile folded across Benny’s lips.

  “You’ve got tracks on all your arms. Are you using heroin?” the doctor asked. Evie breathed in sharply, surprised by the directness of the question. She supposed the doctor wasn’t the type of woman who simply remained silent.

  Benny shook his head in a comical way, looping his head around in a strange arc. He always tried to be amusing when he lied.

  “What are you on now?” the doctor asked. Another shake of the head. Three in total.

  “Just some weed,” Benny responded.

  “Hmmm ... I don’t think it’s weed. I’ll get some bloods pulled then. Listen, do you have any other injuries?” she continued.

  Benny closed his eyes for a moment, and leaned back in the bed like he was about to fall asleep.

  “My knees blown. He kicked me in the knee as well.”

  Evie’s stomach plummeted, it was like he h
ad hit her in the stomach. They both understood this arrangement. They were here to get Benny fixed, and they were here to lie.

  “He fell down the stairs ...” Evie.

  “Was he wearing steel-capped shoes?” The doctor.

  Both said at the same time.

  Benny laughed.

  “Yes, to both things.”

  Fuck Benny – shut up. Otherwise things were about to get a whole lot worse for them, fast.

  “Okay, let me get one of the nurses.” The doctor.

  Benny was virtually hysterical.

  “You come with me,” the doctor grabbed Evie by the arm, and pulled her out into the emergency area, yanking the blue curtain around her brother. Those perfect nails dug into her skin.

  “Get your hands off me,” Evie yelled at her. Fucking trailer park trash. Worse. Redfern trash. Always. And proud.

  “You listen here,” the doctor hissed at her, pointing one of those fingers into her face. “Your brother is really unwell. He’s taken a beating that could have killed him. That could still kill him. On top of that he’s a drug addict. You want him to die?” The doctor had brown eyes, kind ones. Eyes that penetrated straight to the centre of your soul and tugged something out.

  Evie shook her head.

  “Then tell me what really happened.”

  She supplicated her. Pleading, that was the expression.

  Her mother had said they were clever. But she knew the drill. Like she said, Redfern through and through. You never talk, because nothing good ever comes of it.

  “He fell down the stairs.”

  18

  She just wanted to get to that party

  (1997, Redfern)

  They took x-rays, and Benny had to go directly into surgery. The beautiful doctor said something about a blood clot on his lungs. More about having to reset the bones and something unintelligible about having to aspirate the fluid. The doctor said he would be in surgery for a few hours, that maybe she should go home and tell her parents. That they should come back in the morning.

  There was no way she was going home to tell her parents. Her mother was asleep in bed by now, whacked out on prescription meds and her father would be out drinking. She knew the hospital would try to call them to convey the seriousness of Benny’s situation – but the phone would just ring and ring and ring and nobody would ever answer. Not even close. Social services would pop past in a weeks’ time maybe, and her parents would say that he was clumsy and had fallen down the stairs. Evie would corroborate the lie.

  She felt sick to the stomach with it all.

  And she felt alone.

  At 11pm – formal well and truly missed, she decided to leave. The after party was still kicking on and she was going to join them. Not because she wanted to have fun. Not because she felt bad that she had missed her formal. Just because she wanted to get obliterated and forget who she was and who Benny was. There would be free booze there. That’s what she needed.

  The after party was in Marrickville — too far for her to walk from here.

  She had fifty cents in her black velvet formal pouch, so she called Craig instead — he was one of those kids who had a mobile. His parents had a bit of dough.

  The pay phone smelled like cigarettes and balls. She hoped he’d answer. It rung a couple of times.

  “Hello?” Craig. The single word sounded drunk. That’s where she wanted to be.

  “It’s Evie.”

  “Where are you? I waited for you at the school gates like you said,” he sounded angry. Not worried. Just angry.

  “Yeah ... something happened.” Closed — she didn’t want to talk to him about it. Not him. Not at all.

  “What the fuck happened?” Slurred.

  “Just some shit .... Listen, can you pick me up. I’m out the front of St Vincents in Kings Cross.”

  He had a beaten up old laser — his old man had passed it onto him. In her mind that made him a rich kid.

  “Fuck ... you’re always up to crazy shit. You’re fucking trouble Evie,” he said.

  Silence. He was right, she was trouble. She was bottom-feeder scum with a junkie brother, a violent dad and a stupid cunt of a mother. She knew it. Just like he did. Now it just depended on how much he wanted it.

  “Do you want to see me?” she asked. The question was loaded. They both knew he only wanted to see her for one reason. Cutting the crap of the formal, the dress, and her pretty face.

  He just wanted a fuck. And she just wanted to get to that after party.

  “Yeah,” he responded. She closed her eyes briefly. There was a strange salvation in that disgusting moment. She couldn’t stay here. Not a moment longer.

  “I’m out the front of Emergency at St Vincents.”

  “Fuck Evie,” he sighed.

  “You want it?” she challenged.

  He paused. She knew him too well. Of course he did.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then come and pick me up.”

  “Be there in ten.”

  The phone went dead.

  She didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.

  She needed to get away from this place.

  19

  They didn't deserve any better

  (1997, Redfern)

  He had pulled over on a side street in Darlinghurst. It was quiet. A place where rich people lived, and homos. Maybe the doctor lived here too. Maybe her handsome, educated partner was waiting for her to get home at this very moment while she was resetting her brother’s bones. What would he be? An engineer? Maybe an architect? She wasn’t sure, but it would definitely be something fancy. Something you needed a university degree to do.

  Craig had demanded a blow job. She was in no position to say no, and frankly she didn’t care. It seemed a small price to pay to get her out of there. Sucking some arseholes tiny dick was fair enough, watching her minuscule brother being beaten up like a rag-doll wasn’t.

  He smelled. Like piss and sweat – for a moment she thought she might vomit. But she didn’t. She hated the sounds he made.

  The grunting and sudden gasping. She wished she could tell him to shut up. That he was a disgusting pig, and it didn’t matter how much money his parents made or who his friends were.

  But she didn’t care enough.

  When he told her to get in the back so he could fuck her she hesitated for a moment.

  What would the good doctor do in such circumstances? She would probably kick him in the balls, and get out of the car. She’d go home and tell her parents, who would offer her tea, and wrap her in a warm hug. They’d press charges. They’d tell her that she’d been brave and had done the right thing. The good doctor had grown up to have healthy relationships with men that were based on love and respect. The good doctor also grew up to respect herself.

  Not Evie. Those options didn’t exist for her.

  Someone had to be fucked in the back of a laser on their formal night in exchange for a lift to the after party. Someone had to be that girl.

  She was that girl.

  The pretty one.

  So she did it without saying a word.

  She didn’t say a word when he ripped her dress, or when he shoved his dick straight into her, no preamble. Nothing. She didn’t say a word when he heaved against her, over and over again, so much so that it hurt, or when he came inside her. Unwelcome. So very unwelcome.

  When she sat back in the front seat with him and she felt something trickle down the inside of her leg she still didn’t say a word. She wasn’t sure if it was the remnants of his waste, or her own blood.

  She didn’t care.

  He put a hand on her knee like he owned her as they drove to Marrickville. And maybe he did. She was a cheap buy. A car trip back to a high school after party.

  So very cheap.

  She wanted it to hurt, like Benny wanted it to hurt. They didn’t deserve any better.

  20

  Normalcy

  (2017, Redfern)

  Evie had taken the afternoon off work to go t
o Tilley’s school’s Christmas party. It was the eleventh of December and not really Christmas at all, but she didn’t mind it. Tilley had been learning the Christmas song that had been selected by her teacher for weeks now. Spraying it down the corridor at the top of her lungs whenever she got an opportunity.

  “Rudolf the red nosed reindeer ...” She would yell loudly. As though a raised voice constituted singing.

  She didn’t have an acting part in the Christmas song and dance, she was part of the choir.

  This morning Tilley had insisted on wearing a pink tutu. The note about the Christmas party said that kids needed to strictly wear red, white and green, but Tilley had refused despite the pleading and cajoling from Evie’s end.

  Now she stood up on the make-shift stage proudly, a pink splotch of colour, amidst a homogenous series of Christmas colours.

  “Mummy!” she called from the stage and waved a hand at her. Evie waved in return and then put a finger to her lips to stop any other extravagant outbursts. Tilley seemed unperturbed by the gesture. Instead, she pulled at the sides of the tutu and curtsied.

  Next to her stood Chris. A beaming grin on his face, and a Santa hat jauntily sitting on top of his unruly mop of hair.

  Evie watched as Tilley grabbed him by the arm, and whispered something furtively in his ear. He laughed loudly in response, and the teacher, Miss Rachael, a short brunette who looked all of nineteen years of age, shushed them.

  Tilley was different to how Evie had been as a kid. She was pretty, no doubt. But she had an energy to her – a rambunctiousness that simply couldn’t be flattened. She didn’t mind wearing a pink tutu amongst a sea of other colours. In fact, she liked being different. She welcomed it, even.

  Evie had longed to fit in with the other kids – but because of her background she had always been singled out as different. Her and Benny, the poor kids. Things were different for Tilley – she might not have everything, but she had enough. Enough to never be called out as the weird kid. She wasn’t sure if that’s what gave her that benign confidence, or if simply was part of her nature.

  She waved again, and Evie winked in return.