Pretty Girls

by Pretty Girls (retail) (epub)

  Fuck, did it even exist?

  She wasn’t sure. She felt desperate. Semi-crazed. Ravaged by it all.

  Why couldn’t she remember?

  What about the final time she had seen Benny? The time be had turned up at their house and quietly slipped into his room. She replayed it now. Like it was on a DVD and she was watching it in her mind. Looking for clues. Looking for that reason.

  It had been mid-week, that much she had remembered. Because she’d had chemistry in the afternoon, and she hated chemistry. She didn’t understand any of it, and it made her feel dumb. Really dumb. Just a pretty girl and maybe not even that. She’d left school and headed straight home because she had nowhere to go. She had been fighting with Mirela. Ever since the formal ... and Benny ... she’d been fighting with everyone. It wasn’t angry fighting. It was a retreat from everything. It was remaining sullen. Quiet. Never sharing how she felt or what she thought. People didn’t like that. They took it as an assault. A threat. A reflection on them rather than of her. Maybe it was a reflection of them. Their incapacity to ever probe any deeper. Because they didn’t want to. They didn’t want her problems as their own.

  She’d gone home. The place was desolate. A mess. Her mum was asleep in her bedroom. She didn’t want to talk to her. She didn’t want to go through the motions of another fake conversation. Something that was peripheral and meaningless.

  She had settled in the kitchen for a moment. At the table. She’d propped her head up with her hands and had an intense feeling. Everything was total shit. Everything had fallen apart. She had an intense anxiety — like even though this might feel like rock bottom it actually wasn’t and it could get worse. Her chest hurt from it. That’s what life was – shit. Always shit, and it could always hurt, more. She thought she might cry. But she couldn’t. Not even at this moment. No matter how much she tried.

  That’s when she heard something. The scrape of a window. The walls were paper thin in that place, it was easy enough to hear movements in other rooms. It came from Benny’s room – that much she knew. She hadn’t heard anything from that location in weeks. It was the window in his room opening, she was sure of it. The sound was familiar. Like when he crawled in after a bender.

  Her heart soared in her chest. Was that him? Could it be?

  She flew down the corridor and threw the door of his room open. Her eyes startled upon him. It hit her like she had been smacked in the chest. There he was. Back. And that was everything. He was standing near the window. Dirty, skinny and looking scared. She ran at him and flung herself around him. Wrapping her arms tight around him. He was skeletal and wearing a jumper that stunk more than an overflowing toilet but she didn’t care. She buried her face deep into the jumper, and wished she could disappear into him. She felt the happiest she had ever felt. It was desperate and urgent and it hurt.

  She didn’t say anything. She just held him close. He didn’t reciprocate the hug. His arms hung loose at his sides – like he was inanimate – a thing that didn’t move, think or feel. But she didn’t care. She could have held him forever. But everything had to end. Finally, she pulled away from him.

  “You’re back,” she said. Stupid statement, but she had to fill the void with something. He couldn’t focus his eyes on her, but he nodded in a strange way, like he could barely control the motion of his head. He scratched his arm and paced slowly. Finally, he sat down on edge of the bed. It had remained unmade this whole time, since that fateful formal evening. Waiting for him to return. A tableau of sorts – evidence that he had existed, that he had been.

  “I can’t stay for long,” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own anymore. The familiar peaks and troughs, the edges that she had loved were gone, replaced by something else. Something hollow. It doesn’t matter – she thought. I’ll get him back.

  “Why not?” she said taking a seat next to him. She picked a piece of lint off his shoulder and dusted him off. Fixing him up. As though that small change was going to make a difference to his appearance. To the holes in that jumper, the smell, the torn and filthy tracksuit pants. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. He scratched the inside of his arm, blistered. She tried to ignore it – but the word wove into her mind, insistent, demanding to be heard. Ice. He was an ice addict.

  “Don’t get started with this again, Evie. I can’t stand it,” he clung to his stomach hard, like he’d been physically stabbed. He doubled over – the reaction was visceral.

  She didn’t keep going. She couldn’t. She couldn’t keep pretending.

  He lay back on the bed. A quiet, secure presence. The world was a better place when Benny was close by. He was so much a part of her, that she couldn’t imagine him gone. Ever.

  “You still staying with Pete?” she asked instead.

  “Nah.” Single syllable and nothing more.

  She didn’t know how she felt about that. If she had known he was still with Pete that meant she knew where he was, which was better than not knowing at all. The thing was, there was no safe place for Benny. This place wasn’t safe, Pete’s wasn’t safe – safety just didn’t exist for him. He was not the type of person who could ever know security. But did any of them?

  “Where are you then?” she asked. Maybe it was a step too far. It was hard to tell with Benny. Hard to tell when he was in the mood to divulge information. He had a short fuse – just like Dad, and it was getting worse. The drugs were making him erratic, and now even his voice had changed. Was he still the Benny that she remembered? She wasn’t sure.

  “Here and there,” he said, his voice cracked. He was on the streets.

  “I can look after myself,” he added. He knew what she was thinking.

  She lay back next to him, and let that awful smell envelope her. Even that was better nothing. Behind it all she could sense him. The real him. Under all of those layers of shit he’d built up. All that arsenal. All those weapons that he’d aggregated around himself to keep the world from hurting him. He was still there. Just small. It was hard to know if he could ever be coaxed out again.

  But this was enough.

  They lay there for a long time. Until it was dark outside. She didn’t bother turning the lights on. That might startle him, expose him in some way.

  “Hey Evie, can I tell you something?” he finally said – his voice cutting through the silence. The thickness of that black night air.

  “Of course,” she responded.

  Then he didn’t say anything. It was like he was dangling a carrot, leading her in. Maybe he had no intention of telling her the truth. Strange because she could imagine it all anyway.

  “I’m in trouble,” he said finally. There it was. As expected as daylight and darkness. Inevitable. Benny was always in trouble. He was either stealing something, selling something, flipping someone off-, fighting ... it was a constant. But it didn’t bother her. Nothing about Benny bothered her. Besides if things had been different, he would have been different. He wouldn’t have had to do those things to be heard.

  “Yeah?” she said, careful inflection in her voice. Was it a question or statement? She wanted him to tell her more, and it was hard to know what would solicit a response.

  “Yeah – big trouble.”

  There it was again. His voice. In a moment of vulnerability, he’d found it.

  “How big is big?” she pressed.

  He didn’t respond for a second and she worried that she might have lost him. But then he was back.

  “Big. Like the type of shit you can’t get out of,” he said finally.

  A deal gone wrong. Maybe. How much money did he need? Who had he hurt? She wasn’t sure – he would never reveal those sorts of details. Not to her. Probably not to anyone.

  If he thought it was big, it was. He played down everything.

  “Maybe we should take off,” she said to him suddenly. She would take off with Benny. Their mum had never wanted to leave this place with the pair of them. But there was nothing holding either of them back. They could scoot. The
y could catch the train to Melbourne and go on from there to Adelaide, maybe even Perth. Somewhere where no one knew them. And they could start over. Yes, that was it. They could start over. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? It was most definitely the solution. But he didn’t respond, so she continued.

  “I’ve got a few hundred dollars in cash saved up. Let’s just catch the train down to Melbourne, and then we can go from there. Just you and me. The way it always should have been. Let’s get away from all of this,” she sat stark upright in bed now. How could he not see that this was the answer? He remained immobile lying still. Maybe, he needed more logistics.

  “Come on, Benny. We’re clever — we’ll find work down in Melbourne. A place to stay. Seriously, everything will fall into place, and we can get away from the shit.”

  Still nothing.

  “Benny,” she grabbed his leg and shook it to get his attention. Finally, he sat up.

  “You’re clever Evie – not me,” he finally said.

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s the perfect plan.”

  “You’re being stupid, Evie. You’re thinking I can get away from this. I can’t get away from this. I belong here. I am this place,” he said, leaning back on his skinny arms.

  “No you’re not,” she laughed. “You’re so much more than this.”

  “You’re so dumb ... you’re so much more than this,” he repeated, mocking her tone. “Spare me the fucking pep talk. I know exactly who I am, and where I belong. With the rest of the cunts here in Redfern.” She couldn’t see him but she knew what his expression would be like. His face would be all screwed up, like whatever she had said had turned his stomach.

  He got up. She tried to grab his arm, afraid that he might go to leave, but he shook her off.

  “Leave it Evie. Please spare me the bullshit. I can’t fucking think straight already,” he said.

  He was standing near the window now. The indigo light from outside flooded the room. He was a teeny tiny hunched silhouette. Bent over, lost, and in deep shit. But still she loved him.

  A siren from outside tore up the silence. His eyes darted up towards the window. Afraid. Always afraid he was, the rest was just clever bravado.

  “Do you ever think it would just be easier if you ended it all, Evie?” those words cutting through the stillness of the evening. They hit her in the chest, like she had been winded. Did he?

  “No. Not at all,” she said finally, absolute.

  More silence. The words were strung up around them now like fairy lights. Not allowing her to think of anything else.

  “Do you?” she asked finally.

  Nothing. Silence. She knew Benny was gone. That moment of intimacy that had lay between them was long gone. Closed. He was hard Benny now. Ready for war. But she needed to get through to him. She didn’t want him living with those words sitting between them. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not now not ever.

  “Benny,” she grabbed him by the arm. “What are you talking about? Don’t say shit like that to me. I won’t be able to live without you. Don’t go and do anything stupid. You can’t. I won’t let you.”

  She shook his arm as though the movement might break his torpor. He tugged his arm away.

  “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said. Face to face with him now, inches away from his eyes. She could feel his ragged breath on her skin.

  “Promise me,” she shook him again.

  Finally, his eyes rested on hers. Dull. But there making a connection.

  “I promise,” he said. His voice was broken. But there it was. She knew her brother, he would never break a promise to her. Never. That was enough. That meant he would keep safe, at least from himself. And he was his worst adversary. His greatest foe.

  A sigh escaped her, a wheezing puff of breath. That was enough. Benny would be okay.

  In the background the front door opened. Greg was home. Benny couldn’t be here when Greg got back, they both knew as much. She might lie and say things were different. But it was a fiction. If Greg found him, he’d beat the stuffing out of him, and Benny would let him. Because he wanted to be hurt. Because he thought he deserved it. Because he didn’t think he was anything more.

  She wouldn’t let that happen.

  She embraced him again. Hard. One, two, three, four, five five counts were enough. She could feel him pressed against her skin, and her memory would preserve him there. Always.

  She pushed him towards the window, and he hobbled out.

  She closed it behind him. One last time.

  One last hug. One final word from him. One last promise.

  One.

  35

  Another death

  (2017, Redfern)

  She’d collected Tilley late that day from school. She’d struggled to keep her composure. It was virtually impossible. She kept testing her mind, trying to find those final pieces that might put things back together again – which one was it exactly? She didn’t know.

  Finally, she decided to drop Tilley off at Chris’s house so she could be alone. Maybe if she could write a list she would find that imperfect memory. Black and white ink on paper. That’s what G had told her to do to crystalise things. A chronological order of events. Maybe then she could discover that piece.

  It had only been 24 hours but she felt like G was a far way away. As she tugged Tilley down Phillip Street she imagined G’s face in her mind. Smiling that tight-lipped grin that made his eyes look like crescent moons. His beautiful hands that were lined with hundreds of memories. She needed to keep him near her. Pressed tight to her chest. The impression of his body against her own.

  She must have imagined him into life. Further down the road, two houses down from Chris’s house, she saw him, part of a group of people that had come together in that front yard. There was an ambulance out the front and a few police offers milling about. As though he sensed her near, he looked up in and their eyes met. He seemed immensely sad. There was no tight-lipped smiled on his lips.

  Evie had a strange sense that she shouldn’t approach – that she should turn on her heels and run back to her house. There was something awfully familiar about this scene that she didn’t care to revisit. But her feet kept moving forward, like she was compelled by an external force. She knew Tilley was still standing near her, but she had lost focus of everything else. A strange tunnel vision had come over her – she had zeroed in on that place, on that story and she desperately needed to know what had transpired.

  She walked forward without thinking. G laid a hand on her shoulder and pulled her towards him softly, pressing his chin to head. A quiet embrace. She looked up at him quizzical. Urgent. She needed to know.

  “Maybe it’s best that Tilley goes to Chris’s house,” he said to her, his face serious, the words articulated fully. Like each syllable deserved the gravity of being said. “He’s already at home,” he added, in the same tone.

  She nodded her head, but couldn’t put the thought into action. She continued staring at him. Finally, he looked down at Tilley and said, “Do you want to go to Chris’s and play?” Evie didn’t know exactly what had transpired, because she couldn’t break the focus of her eyes. She couldn’t think of Tilley now. Not at all.

  She felt the tiny release of her hand from her own. The loss of pressure, and a tiny thing dart out of the corner of her eye.

  G watched Tilley, making sure she had made it to Chris’s house. When he was sure she was inside, he took Evie’s arms between his, and looked into her blue eyes intensely. There was a terrible sadness about him which permeated her skin, flesh, her very bones.

  “What happened?” she asked finally. Her voice was foreign, not her own.

  He licked his lips and swallowed heavily. “It’s a local kid. Young. Sixteen.” Each word slow, pronounced fully.

  “And?” she prompted.

  He didn’t want to say the words, she knew that much. She knew the feeling — how ironic that she had experienced the same emotion earlier today. Her present
reality and her past were dovetailing. Too close. Way too close.

  “He killed himself. Choked himself with a belt. A suicide.”

  Nothing between it. Not even a hair’s breath. Everything about it was exactly the same. She felt the belt tighten around her own neck. The leather of the belt coarse again her skin. The sudden impact of the jump when he’d kicked the chair out. The snap of the neck, or worse still, no snap at all. The terrible asphyxiation. The gasping for breath. Final breaths. What would have gone through his mind in those final moments? Would he have desperately kicked and flayed his arms around, wishing that he hadn’t embarked on this enterprise? Wishing that someone would walk in? That the beam would break? That the belt would loosen? Or did he relax into it? Did he embrace the coming of that next world, the replacement of this current dull and disgusting reality? How did it go for Benny? What did he think, feel, believe in those final moments as darkness eclipsed him? Why did he go without her? She would have wanted to have been near him -she had shared everything with him, but not the end. The end was his own. She couldn’t let him have it. He didn’t deserve it. Not at all.

  “It’s so sad terrible problem in the community,” G was saying, his dark eyes heavy. A terrible melancholy had set in about him. She knew she should be comforting him, but she couldn’t. She remained stock still. Unable to move. To exist within this current moment.

  She caught sight of something in the background. They were bringing the body out on a gurney. A stretched out lump of sorts, which barely resembled a human form. A white sheet pulled snuggly over the form and tied down with belts. Completely concealed, so this tiny group of mourners couldn’t see him. Couldn’t catch site of his blackened face, the red marks around his neck, even a limp arm. She wanted to race across and rip that sheet away so people could really see what he looked like. There was nothing glamorous about suicide, about the death that so many lovingly embraced. There was nothing easy about it. Not for the people that were left behind. There was a hellish darkness, questions, memories that never made sense and couldn’t be pieced together, and pain. Lots of pain. Truckloads of pain.