by Kathryn Hind
‘Hey,’ she said.
She dropped her head. Muddy sediment went up over the toes of her shoes, her shins were a collection of scrapes and dried blood, her knees two bulbous, dirty circles. She became aware again of the cloth and leaves, a soggy mess of blood between her legs. And the sponge fingers, her only offering. But feeling his eyes on her as they moved over each scrape, ache and bruise, the injuries pulsed as if speaking to her; she could take him on if she had to.
‘You okay?’ he said. She had no answer, just the start of that warm feeling, but as she looked at him it spiralled away from her, water down a sink. She focused on the packet of sponge fingers, straightened the thin plastic out; he took a step towards her.
‘Meels?’ That was Sid, coming out from around the back of the house, seeing her and breaking into a trot. He crunched down the path in green overalls with tears all down the legs, and no shirt, teasing Lucy, who jumped and snapped at his fingertips. ‘Surprise, surprise,’ he said, holding out his lean arms, bony chest bared to the sun. His smile was brighter than the bottlebrush beside him; it secured her feet to the ground, ending the desire to retreat. Zach slunk off into the shadows of the garden, where Amelia could no longer see him.
She stepped towards Sid, and she was smiling too, the sensation strange on her furry teeth, her tightened, burned cheeks.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey, you.’ She let him bundle her into his arms. ‘God, there’s not much left of you,’ he said, moving his hands up her back. He nuzzled into the crook of her neck and shoulder. ‘And shit, you’re ripe.’ He held her out at arm’s length and she put her hands on his wrists. She took in his eyes, the same dark tunnels as always, let them flicker over her own, decoding. ‘Has something happened? Don’t you have any stuff?’ He was looking past her then, as if trouble might be waiting at the front gate.
‘I had to leave it,’ she said.
‘Are you okay?’ He squeezed her shoulders.
‘Yeah,’ she said. She looked down, focused on the neat cut of each blade of grass that bordered the footpath. She pressed into him again.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ Sid said. ‘He’s been helping me out over the summer.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, her words muffled against him.
‘He just turned up out of the blue, you know? He said he went to see you, at your mum’s, that you had a good talk.’ He was doing his nervous rambling.
‘Right,’ she said. Zach had always been a committed and convincing liar; she once heard one of his and Sid’s uncles say that Zach would lie about what was on his sandwich if you gave him the chance.
Sid held her out from him again, patted down her arms, tugged on her fingertips, as if to make sure each piece of her was there. ‘Do you want me to send him away? Just say the word and I’ll do it, no worries.’ He squinted, his summer freckles twitching along the ridge of his nose.
‘Let me have a shower,’ she said. ‘I need to think about it.’
The concern in his eyes was palpable. He rubbed a hand up the back of his neck.
‘What’s this?’ she said, swiping at the little bun he’d grown, collected in an elastic high on his head.
‘Just a new little friend … I missed you. I grew it in your honour.’
He pulled her in again, and she held his middle, hard and narrow. Lucy barked, circling around them.
They walked down the path, her arm linked through his. Two lorikeets flitted out of their way, taking cover in a nearby fig tree. Sid’s shack was at the back of the garden, behind the huge house he maintained, where a wattle tree kept it in constant shade. He unlinked his arm, and Lucy trotted with him over to the hose.
Zach was in front of the shack, smoking a cigarette. He sat on a battered, yellowing surfboard that acted as the front porch. His eyes were closed, head resting against the tin wall. A can of beer sat on his thigh, nestled loosely in his fingers, and he took a swig. For a brief moment, he was just an average guy, his small pot belly sticking out, a blotchy red shaving rash down his throat.
He opened his eyes and acknowledged her with a small lift of the chin. ‘Pull up a pew.’ He scooted along to make space. The way he smiled, the wet inside of his top lip sneaking out, made him nineteen again. And his thick-knuckled hands: they were the same, too.
‘No thanks,’ she said.
At the corner of the shack, Sid sprayed water into a plastic tub with ‘Lucy’ spelled out in shells. Lucy snapped at the jet stream, leaping up as Sid angled the hose higher. The scene blurred at the edges. As Amelia stepped up to Sid’s door, a breeze stirred the eucalyptus leaves above, the sea air blowing in from off Port Phillip Bay. She closed her eyes as its coolness hit her cheeks, lifted loose strands of her hair, sprinkled goosebumps up her neck. Sid was calling out to her, but it was muffled by the creak of the door closing behind her, sealing her into the quiet, dark world of indoors.
Her vision was fuzzy while her eyes adjusted to the deep red glow of the lamps in the windowless room. The smell of Zach’s cigarette followed her inside and mixed with the scent of men’s deodorant, filling her lungs as she took a breath. The air was stagnant and close. She leaned against the wall. The flimsy tin thing was not enough of a barrier; he was only inches away, on the other side. It was impossible that he was there, skin and bone, and so was she.
When her vision cleared, she saw them: trails of her postcards, crisscrossing the walls of the shack, above the mattress shoved in the corner, stuck to the kitchen cupboards, the fridge, the bathroom door. Dozens of them to her left, to her right, everywhere she looked, travelling over the cushions and beanbags that furnished the room. She shuffled around and examined them. Some of the cards had her coded message face side up, others she plucked off and turned over to read. She found the first one she’d sent from the road:
I’ve left home, gone on a trip. Need space and air, I think. I’ll write.
She’d signed off with the three stars for missing, wishing, thinking. It was from a town two hours away from home, a picture of vast arable land, taken before the region was gripped by drought. She skipped along a few cards, recognising the sunset almost exactly as she used to see it from the white room by the coast.
You’ d like it here. People move slow (like you), and the waves are rough, real dumpers. I’m staying for a while.
But she hadn’t stayed, not for long enough. And another one, from when she had first arrived in the Northern Territory. It was stuck on a cupboard above the kitchen sink, and she stood on tiptoe to read it.
I’m heading into the desert. Hope you’re keeping that grass alive.
Some of the places she couldn’t remember being, others she could only recall the scrap of time spent writing the postcard by a road, in a park, or tucked up in a doorway. There was one she’d spilled gravy on, one she’d drenched, forgetting it was in her pocket as she ran into the ocean. Each one was a sliver of her progress, trapped and observed like insects on a pin board. Displayed in that way, the postcards seemed to make the last months count for something, though she had no idea what.
There was a bang against the wall, which reverberated around the metal shack; she scurried across the floor to the bathroom.
The bathroom was dark. She moved her hands over the walls in search of a light switch. Frustration rose fast and fierce in her chest as she traced cool tile after cool tile and found nothing. Finally, she caught hold of a string and tugged it. White light revealed the border of dolphins diving around the room. Black mould crept up the base of a light-blue shower curtain.
Zach had probably stood exactly where she was, naked.
With a few deep breaths, she summoned the bravery to unbutton her shorts. They fell, circling her ankles. The skin was a lighter shade at the tops of her thighs where it had been protected from sun and dirt. She stepped out of her undies and, after bundling them up with the rotten cloth and leaves, placed them in the corner of the room.
She examined her face in the toothpaste-flecked
mirror on the cabinet above the sink. The skin below her eyes was loose, hanging in light grey sacks. She leaned in closer and even the colour of her eyes – the dark green ring around the iris and the deep-water blue – was matt, as if switched off; her eyes gave nothing away, like an open book sitting in darkness.
Inside the cabinet was a crusty bottle of Betadine, two boxes of painkillers and a packet of cheap razors. She took one of the razors from the open pack and sat down on the edge of the bath. For a few moments she held it, then pressed it against the skin of her inner thigh. She snapped the three metal blades out of their plastic frame then lined them up in a neat row on top of her thigh, equally spaced out. The pleasing symmetry of them was deceptive; it was as if they would never dream of sliding through sad flesh.
Amelia picked up each blade and placed them in her hand, cupping them delicately as if they were a moth. The metal was cool in her palm. She sat, nursing the blades – blocking out the noise of the boys playing with Lucy outside, focusing instead on the distant bell of a tram – until she was able to let them go.
She ripped off a strip of toilet paper, folded it into a wad and placed the razors on there. Hovering over the toilet, she pulled out her tampon and added it to the pile. There was a bin stuffed with tissues and earwaxed cotton buds; she buried the package deep within this other mess.
She slid the shower curtain across with a scrape and stepped into the grimy bath, turned the taps. The water was freezing cold and it left her breathless as it pelted onto her back and ran down her clammy skin. She stuck her face in it and scrubbed, dead skin rolling up in little parcels beneath her fingertips. Heat kicked in. The jets pounded the top of her head, and she leaned back, letting water seep into her scalp. A twig was trapped in one of her knots and she wrenched at it, losing a clump of hair in the process. The twig and hair swirled around the drain, a strange, lost ship.
A bar of white soap sat in a dish, but it might have been all over him, in every secret crease and fold, sliding over the places he’d pressed her hands, the parts of himself he’d put inside her. She would not use the soap. She would not look at it again. It shouldn’t have been there, so near, so slippery and unpredictable, so tainted.
She shuddered, and there was a wave inside her, sucking her in, pulling her under, tossing her over. A gasp ripped up from her throat, too loud, and she swallowed it. She held the tiled walls for balance then lowered to a crouch, jets of water still finding her. Her chest was heaving, more gasps escaping, the sound of them foreign to her, and she tried desperately to silence them but the only way was to hold her breath.
She wrapped her arms around herself, pinkened skin touching pinkened skin. The water from her eyes was hot and full and she could feel it moving down her cheeks, slow and salty compared to the shower stream. She stopped fighting; it was quieter that way. As she sat on the floor of the bath, knees to her chest, the sediment dislodged from her body, mingling with blood and tears. She stayed sitting there, hunched in a ball. She was there when the water went cold, and stayed longer still, shivering, the shower curtain sticking to her back.
Sid knocked on the door. ‘You right in there?’
She hadn’t heard anyone come inside.
‘Yep.’ She clambered to her feet and held her face up to the cold water.
‘Kettle’s on,’ he said, knocking again in farewell.
She stepped out of the shower and pulled a beige towel off the hanger; when she pushed her face into it, it smelled of Sid, the way his bedroom had always smelled, his school uniform, his favourite shirt. She sat on the edge of the bath, staring at the tiles on the floor, the places where grout had come loose and mould lived there instead. She didn’t dry herself, just sat with water from her hair travelling down her back. With each breath her shoulders grazed against the towel, and she filled her lungs slowly, again and again.
She started to count, willing herself to get up when she got to ten. When she couldn’t manage it, she counted again, dragging each number out. On the third attempt, she stood, finally, setting her head spinning. In the mirror her eyes were red; bright webs of veins lit up, giving away the workings within.
She rescued the stolen tampons from her shorts and inserted a fresh one. With the towel wrapped around her like a dress, she collected her dirty clothes in a fist then opened the door a crack, releasing a little cloud of steam.
‘Sid?’ she said. ‘Can I borrow something to wear?’
Dressed in a big orange T-shirt and basketball shorts, Amelia stepped out of the bathroom. Her dirty clothes were bundled away in a plastic bag in the bin.
The boys were waiting for her at the coffee table. She crossed her arms over her chest in an attempt to conceal her braless breasts.
‘Cup of tea’s here,’ Zach said, and she couldn’t look at him, only vaguely at the space he occupied. He was in a beanbag on the floor, knees high in front of him.
‘Right, thanks,’ she said.
Three steaming mugs of tea sat on the table. A row of the sponge fingers was laid out, a matchstick stuck in each of them.
‘Shall we light ’em up?’ Sid said, sprawled on his back across cushions, head resting on his arm.
‘Let’s do it,’ Zach said.
‘What a party. Few days late, but worth the wait,’ Sid said. Lucy lay along the length of him, accepting a belly rub.
Amelia knelt at a distance, in the dark at the edge of lamplight, as far from the table as she thought she could get away with. Her toes were flexed behind her, ready to get up in an instant, if required.
Zach lit the matches. As they burned down, Sid initiated the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’, orchestrating the song by moving his index fingers from side to side. Amelia stared into the fast-dying flames as her flat voice melded with Zach’s. A hot flush came over her and she dragged the cool, wet ends of her hair over her forehead, her cheeks, the back of her neck.
Sid blew on each match as they faltered, plucking the blackened corpses out of the inadequate birthday-cake replacements. Amelia wrapped her hands around her tea, the mug hot in her palms. Zach grabbed a sponge finger and took a big bite, jaw clicking as he chewed. There was a staleness in the way it broke; crumbs scattered on the table.
‘Nothing a bit of tea won’t fix,’ Zach said, taking a sip. ‘Brews like a champion, this guy.’
There was silence, and they all sipped from their mugs.
‘So, you’ve been adventuring, huh?’ Zach said, tilting his head at the wall; a postcard over his shoulder featured the Big Pineapple.
A chain of mug rings were stained into the table, and Amelia traced the loops with her eyes, round and round and back again. ‘Guess you could say that.’
‘Got any stories for us?’
‘Not really,’ she said.
Zach leaned forward into her field of vision and caught her eye. She looked away and concentrated instead on postcards on the wall behind him: Emerald, Jericho, Winton. Julia Creek, Cloncurry, Mount Isa.
‘You must have something to tell,’ Zach said, quieter now.
Over in the kitchen: Borroloola, Daly Waters, Katherine. To her left, inside the front door: Kununurra, Purnululu, Fitzroy Crossing. As she moved her head to the right she caught the end of a look, a nod from Sid to Zach towards the door. On the wardrobe: Carnarvon, Shark Bay and, when she narrowed her eyes, Kalbarri.
Zach slurped from his tea, then put it down hard on the table. ‘Well, I’ll get outta your hair for a bit,’ he said. ‘Will I see you later?’
Sid looked to Amelia. She shrugged. ‘Guess so.’
‘Do you want to go down to the water or something?’ Sid said, still looking at her.
‘Sure.’ She pressed her fingers together, the pads wrinkled after her long shower.
‘We’ll probably be at the usual spot,’ Sid said, looking from Zach to Amelia then back again.
Zach lingered, stooping under the low roof. Amelia picked up near where she’d left off: Geraldton, Green Head, Cervantes.
‘I’l
l catch you in a bit, then,’ he said.
He spent a couple of minutes lifting things, patting his back pockets, then lifting more things. When he was out the door, Amelia stood; her knees clicked as she did so, and her body was stiff as she walked over to Sid’s bed. The familiar tea spills and brown ripples of bodily fluids were all there across the mattress on the floor. She pushed aside a set of socks and his bird book, and folded herself down. The pillows were hard and flat, but lying there on her back, she could have been floating. She closed her eyes, but then Sid groaned and bounced with sudden agility from his knees to his feet. Lucy’s tail wagged in adoration.
‘Meels,’ he said, stretching as he walked over to her, his collarbones jutting out. ‘What’s the deal?’ She shifted over so he could sit on the edge of the mattress; he picked at foam through a tear in the fabric. ‘I thought things were okay between you two.’
She put her arm out, wrapped her fingers in the seam of his shirt. ‘I don’t think anything about him is okay,’ she said. The furrows between his eyebrows moved in and out of focus. ‘Can we talk later? I need to sleep, just for a bit.’ Her eyes were already closing.
‘All right, but you’ve got me worried,’ he said, patting her leg. ‘Real worried.’ He puffed out a breath and she knew he was frustrated. He pulled the musty sheet across her, said nothing more.
She woke to spots of pain flaring up her leg. Sid perched over her, pressing in the bruises on her shins.
‘Wakey-wakey,’ he said. ‘Remember we’re pretending it’s my birthday? I don’t wanna spend the whole time watching you sleep.’
She stretched, her spine convulsing for a second as it unfolded. ‘Sorry Siddy,’ she said, croaky and softened from sleep. He was fresh from the shower, smelled of soap; her heart kicked in as she scanned the room.
‘He’s still out,’ Sid said. He was on his knees on the mattress and she curled around his legs, her eyes heavy. Another pain in her leg; he pressed harder this time. ‘Oi,’ he said. ‘You gonna tell me what’s going on?’