Pretty Girls

by Pretty Girls (retail) (epub)

  “It is I guess. But it’s contained. It happens in the ring,” he said. She could tell he was passionate about it, his face lit up when he spoke about fighting, and there was an energy to him which was focused and direct. “It’s like all the pent up emotions that exist within you have an out – but in twelve rounds or less. It’s like a return to the original version of yourself, where the real heart is.”

  She didn’t quite understand, but maybe he could teach her too.

  “How did you get started?” she continued – she didn’t want him to stop talking about fighting. It was almost like something within him had been unlocked. Pandora’s box. His story. And she wanted to know more.

  “When I was a kid. I was good at it – I wasn’t good at much, but I was good at boxing.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” she said.

  He smiled ruefully and didn’t respond. She took a bite of her sandwich, camembert and chicken, a decadent combination for a Tuesday afternoon, but she relished the rich taste – it was almost as though she hadn’t tasted anything in a very long time.

  “What about you? What’s your story?” he asked, eyebrow raised, knowing it was a cheeky question given the afternoon's events.

  She chewed thoughtfully. She wanted to be honest with him, because he had been truthful with her. In her world everything was an eye for an eye. A fair exchange was required. But what to say ... she didn’t really know what her story was. It was so violently insignificant.

  Just say it Evie, she heard her inner voice say, just open your mouth and let the words come out. Maybe they would teach her more than they would him.

  “Well ... you know parts of it. I grew up in Redfern, in a housing commission just down the road. A terrace on Raglan. My dad was a brickie, and my mum ... well mum didn’t do much, and of course there was my brother. We were always super close, my brother and I that is, Benny, because there were only eleven months between us, so we were in the same year at school. We grew up together. In each others pockets ...” She trailed off.

  An image of Benny flashed before her eyes, one of the last times she’d seen him, at Pete’s house. She blocked the image. Keep going Evie. Keep going. “Things were bad at home, like I said. After I left school, mum got sick, and so I stayed home and looked after her. It was a few years, and then she passed.” Another image of her mum at the oncology unit in Randwick with a drip in her arm and a look of pure glee on her face. Like she knew the end was near, and she was pleased about it. Block and keep going Evie. “After that I decided to leave Sydney. Too much shit, too many bad memories. The streets were just laced with them . with ghosts. I went to Melbourne. I met Tilley’s father and got pregnant and then the rest is what you can expect. The years sort of passed me by. Nothing significant. Until I got the call, that dad was sick, in the hospice. To be honest, I’m not sure why I came back. I could have stayed in Melbourne and let things continue to be unresolved. I didn’t need to come back and face this place – the memories ... but I wanted to. Somehow I thought things would change, that I could get an explanation from him, an understanding of why things were how they were. Call me crazy – but maybe I thought it would set me free.”

  A sigh escaped her. Yes, that was it. She wanted him to set her free. Suddenly she realised she had been trapped her entire life. There had been her history of violence and then ... nothing. She had never been able to move forward. She had been trapped in the insignificance. Still trying to eek out an existence, quietly. So very quietly. As quiet as a mouse. Making herself seem small. Blend into the background. Attract as little attention to yourself as possible Evie, and you might just get by.

  He didn’t respond to her – but she could tell from the expression on his face that he understood. His dark eyes were kind, intense, knowing.

  His silence moved her forward, like by finding the words, she could understand this thing. She wanted to understand this thing – she had spent so long in its darkness.

  “It’s like my life never really started. I got stuck in the violence ... and then I just tried to disappear.”

  That was it! She felt like an exclamation point had appeared between the two of them. Finally, she understood it.

  “Then you’ve got to find your answers,” he said with a shake of the head like it was her only option. “We’ve only got this one life to live, you can’t just hang around in the shadows.”

  He was right. He was so, so right. But if only things were that simple. If only she could ask the questions and the answers would magically appear. Her father wasn’t that type of person. He was wrapped tighter than a Chinese Origami box. The answers, if they existed, were locked inside.

  “But how? I don’t know how.” She muttered.

  “Some things are simple, we just make them hard. Start by asking the questions,” his dark eyes were solid, focused, authentic. They gave her courage.

  “He won’t answer them ... and besides I hardly know the questions I should ask.”

  “Well they’re two separate problems aren’t they? First, start by writing a list. What do you want to know about? What are the questions you want to ask about? Write them down. That’s what I always tell the guys that come to practise with me. They’ve got a problem, write it down. Once it’s down on paper, things are clearer . and the second question about him not answering. If you don’t ask him, you’ll most certainly never know the answer,” he said matter-of-factly before taking a bite from his burger.

  She stared at him for a long moment. Who was this person? Surely she had imagined him into life.

  “A poet and a life coach,” she said with a laugh.

  He laughed in return, a belly-aching kind of a laugh. It was the first time she’d heard him give himself over to laughter, and there was something intoxicating about the sound. The flash of his white teeth and the way he leaned forward and looked you in the eye, like there was something deeply complicit about the joke.

  She had never been complicit in anything that was good.

  She liked him. She liked him a lot.

  When the laughter died down, she followed it up with another fit of bravery.

  “Well maybe you can help me write this list then?” she said.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “The old napkin and pen always works a treat.”

  He winked at her, and for a second her heart lifted. It was almost like the sky was clearing. She had been living in the shadows for so long. Trapped under a grey sky, where the clouds were knitted so closely together, she’d forgotten what it felt like to feel the sun. To shield her eyes from its glare, to feel its burn on the nape of her neck. This man, who was a letter, not even a name, had reached up and parted them for her.

  For a single second she felt that sunshine again, and glimpsed that blue sky, and it was glorious.

  22

  Words written on ink, on a napkin.

  (2017, Redfern)

  Later that evening when Tilley was fast asleep, Evie took a shower. There bathroom was a two-by-two metre pokey room, which encased a toilet, sink, washing machine and bath tub with a shower fixed above it. There was a sticky white plastic curtain which circled around the bathtub to create a sense of privacy. Evie had tried to wash that curtain on several occasions to make it less tacky, but it refused to yield its stickiness even to the most rigorous of washes. She was resigned to it.

  The bathroom wasn’t the place where Evie relaxed, ever. Not even close. It was a place where she raced in to brush your teeth or use the toilet, or quickly shower before work and then raced out again at break neck speeds. It was hardly the type of place where you could relax. It was more prison cell than day spa.

  But that evening Evie was fixated on sparing a moment for herself. She ran herself a bath and found a bath bomb which someone had given her years ago, and she had left unused, wrapped up in a bottom drawer for just such an occasion. She wondered if there were expiry dates on such things, and decided it was unlikely.

  She threw caution to the wi
nd and tossed it in, silently hoping it wouldn’t give her a urinary tract infection. It fizzed and hissed and came to life, making the bath water cherry pink, and scattering it with tiny gold stars. She poured herself another glass of red, and then relaxed into the steamy abyss of that evening.

  She felt strangely at home in that odd, tiny terrace that evening. Redfern and all its violence was locked outside. Where it belonged. In her home there was a peace and tranquillity. Tilley slept quietly in her bed, no doubt chuffed by her performance in today’s Christmas event, and Evie lay in a bath feeling ... solid, real, in her body, in this life. Something she hadn’t experienced in an extraordinarily long time. Perhaps she never had.

  In her handbag lay an equally extraordinary thing. A list that G and her had crafted over lunch of questions to ask her father. This made her feel strong, stoic, empowered. She knew what she wanted to ask him ... she had put pen to paper, the first step in articulating those questions, that had the power to set her free. Of course, she had workshopped a good ten questions with G – but nothing about Benny. She had told G a whole lot, more than she had told any person at one time, but she drew the line at Benny – she always drew the line with Benny.

  Later, at home and alone she had added questions about Benny. Writing them, black ink on a page, had carved another hole in her heart. The extreme pain had made her wince, it had brought tears to her eyes. But she had steamrolled the emotion -G was right, she needed the answers to move forward. Otherwise she would be stuck in this limbo forever. She refused to be in purgatory for this one life as G would put it.

  Yes, she had those epic questions in her cheap handbag, and they made it worth a million bucks. They put that bag and her, back on the map.

  Lying in that pink warmth, she let her mind glide over other thoughts. Fantasies about G. She tried not to let them linger there too long, but she couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be kissed by him. To have those warm, thick lips on her own, perhaps on the nape of her neck, or breathing a word into her ear. She imagined those elegant hands, tracing lines on her body. Reaching down across her bare flesh and discerning forms and shapes.

  Again it was another foreign thought. She hadn’t thought of a man like this in a long while. In a loving way, in a sexual way. All of that had died a long time ago – and been replaced by something hard. Like the centre of an avocado, there was a large unrelenting seed within her. She appeared soft on the exterior (a deduction from her prettiness), someone that had an appetite for sex and for love, but she’d had neither. They were simply a means to an end. A payment in kind. They had never filled her up. Just ripped her apart. They had scooped out that seed time and time again and discarded it.

  But things were different with G. He had said that she was kind and fierce, but perhaps he had used the words that would describe himself. She sensed that he was an organ of fire, but he had a compassionate nature which warmed her, like an internal combustion. Maybe she could imagine something more with him.

  Now she stood up and drew the bath curtain, exposing her physique in the mirror above the sink. She hadn’t seen herself naked in years. Not reflected at least. Of course, she had a sense of how it all came together – she did live within her own skin. She caught glimpses of her tight stomach when she was getting changed, and firm breasts, sometimes she even glanced around to make sure her derriere wasn’t gravitating downwards. They were small and swift examinations. Perfunctory really. Never indulgent.

  Now she examined herself in the mirror above the sink. She was still in good form. Like she had thought, she was still trim and taut. Her physique had maintained over time, and like her mother had said, she could have been a model if she’d been just a few centimetres taller. But her body had changed too. She’d had a child, and nursed Tilley for almost two years, and of course she had gotten older. So her breasts sagged a little bit more than she remembered, and there was a tiny spider web of white lines on her stomach, where her stomach had stretched to hold that beautiful child. There was a spattering of cellulite on her thighs which had never existed before too.

  How could he love this body which was now imperfect? It hadn’t been loved even when it was. Not at all. In fact at the height of her youth and perfection it had been abused, by boys that took too much and gave nothing in return.

  How now could she hope that this was enough?

  She stepped out of the pink bath and momentarily felt like she might cry. She’d always been a pretty girl – otherwise insignificant, her looks had been the only thing that she had at her disposal. Now they too were beginning to abandon her.

  Who would she be, if not the pretty girl?

  She took a few sharp intakes of breath to steady herself. She reminded herself that she had a daughter, and daughters were clever. She had a role to play to build her self-esteem, to reinforce the reality that she was more than her pretty looks.

  That she was everything.

  How could she do that if she tore herself down?

  She reminded herself of a second thing. She had that list in her bag – those questions. Words, written on ink on a napkin. They solidified her. They removed the transient quality that she had been plagued with.

  This weekend she would ask those questions.

  She would set herself free.

  23

  Asking questions

  (2017, Redfern)

  She had expected to feel calmer that day. She hadn’t seen him in a fortnight, and she had that list in the back pocket of her jeans. The list had taken on a supernatural power for her – giving her an extraordinary sense of power. But as she got closer to him she felt that power steadily disappearing. It had been like water dammed up in a sink, once the plug was pulled, the water had nowhere else to go other than straight down the hole. He was that hole. A magnetic pull of sorts that drained her of all her strength.

  She had decided to go it alone. Without Tilley and without G. He had offered to accompany her, and she had politely declined, hoping that the emotion that blossomed within her didn’t show on her face. So many conflicting emotions. Joy, that he might offer to do that for her. Warmth. So much warmth. Embarrassment too. On so many levels. She couldn’t expose him to her father. She couldn’t bare him to that world. As much as she had let him in, there was a limit. Too much. She cringed at the thought of what her father would say about him. She knew what her father would say. Equally she was mortified that her own prejudices had been so prevalent only a few months ago.

  He had looked at her, quietly perplexed. Still trying to figure her out.

  Parked in that goddamn beautiful parking lot overlooking the ocean she felt like turning back. She clung to the steering wheel, willing herself to turn the key in the ignition and drive back home. Who had she been kidding. Asking those questions wasn’t an option.

  Christ, seeing him wasn’t an option.

  Her eyes fixed on that blue ocean. Placid, tranquil but immense. Infinitely sad.

  She breathed out heavily and steeled herself. She had always been afraid of diving into bodies of water. Even if she knew they were deep and it was safe – there was something about plunging into that abyss which turned her stomach. It made her heart seize up, and her skin prickle with goose-bumps. It didn’t get easier – eventually you just had to commit fully. The shock of hitting the ice-cold water was never as terrifying as it was imagined in your mind.

  This was just like that, diving in. She just had to fully commit.

  Her mind made up, she rushed out of the car and marched up to the hospice at breakneck speeds – any sort of hesitation might derail her.

  Inside, it was still the same, but she didn’t let any of the sensory elements strike her. Instead she powered past the nurse at the front desk and headed towards his room, resolute.

  The door was open and there was no preamble. She startled upon him, propped up, respirator attached, staring at the television screen above his bed. His eyes snapped down to hers like a rubber band. Lucid. Alert. Mean.


  “Evelyn,” the word came out as a strange farting sound, like there was no oxygen left in his chest, only the prefabricated type that they were pumping into him.

  She nodded her head.

  There was an empty chair near him and she quickly took a seat. Handbag resting in her lap. She remembered the list was in her back pocket, she quickly stood, removed it and clutched it in her hands. It was still written on the napkin from the bar. She clutched it like a life raft.

  “You’re back again,” he wheezed at her. “Come to abuse me some more?” he said with an ironic look. His skin had turned a particularly fetid shade of yellow.

  She bit back an acrimonious response. Stay on track Evie, stay on track.

  She swallowed hard. Her mouth felt dry, like she would never be able to manage the words.

  Take the plunge, just like diving Evie, she steeled herself.

  “I- I- I came to ask you a few questions,” the start was always the hardest.

  “Have you now? The old mans on his death bed and you have a few questions. This’ll be good.” More rasping, but vehement. How did he manage to always maintain that attitude? Was there anything more to him?

  “Yeah – I came back to Sydney to see you, because I thought you would be honest. Now. At the end. I want answers.” It sounded rehearsed, and it’s because it was – she had repeated it over and over in the mirror in the pokey bathroom for days now. Sometimes you had to be practised. There were no other options.

  “Fuck, what’s this now? You can’t be serious Evelyn.”

  She plucked out the list, straightening it out in-between trembling hands. Her eyes struggled to focus. She locked her eyes on question number one, willing herself to move forward. Briefly she saw G’s face, what would he say?

  “You can do this. You’ve got this one,” his eyes would be warm, and she would be convinced.

  “I want to know why you were the way you were with us, violent, I mean.” There it was, number one was out of her lips and she hadn’t stumbled at all. Straight out. Sharp as an arrow.