All Because Of You

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Book excerpt

Mother’s Day

She’s lying in a single bed a metre from mine, all snug in flannelette pyjamas buttoned to the neck. Hers are pink. Mine are black. We’ve been sleeping side-by-side in these single beds for six weeks, imagining ourselves two girl scouts having an adventure holiday. This is no holiday. Somewhere in this city a freebooting cowboy holds a lasso above my daughters’ heads; the rope hovering, poised to drag them, arms flailing, from the protective ring of my domesticity.

‘Goodnight, Mum.’

Not a chink of moonlight breaches the beige curtains. We’ve squashed old sheets behind the curtain rail and taped layers of newspaper to the narrow window pane above our beds. Mum can’t sleep if there’s a light chink. And the woman in the unit next door keeps her outside light switched on all night. She’s scared her boyfriend will turn up wielding an axe. Mum can’t see what difference leaving the light on makes. A snarling Rottweiler—yes. But fear knows no common sense.

My own fear jitters inside me, an unwelcome fixture. I pull the covers to my chin, close my eyes and will myself to sleep. Wishing I were in my own bed at home. That I could undo time. That a wayward truck would run him down. And we wouldn’t have to be in this place.

            Our unit is one of six russet-brick buildings adjoining the women’s shelter. Short-term protected housing. No alcohol. No men. Mum thinks the no-alcohol rule is ludicrous. How, for heaven’s sake, would we get through to the end of each day without a tipple? I’m not arguing. She’s the one who makes her way to the bottle shop with an empty backpack. It’s a long walk, down the hill, across the lights, past a long parade of small shops, through a car park, and round the back of Coles. She returns, red in the face and puffing, a wine cask bulging squarely on her back. Riesling. It’s a compromise. I like Merlot and she likes Moselle. We have to pretend to the girls that we’re drinking apple juice. At eight-and-a-half they’re not fooled. They never ask for a sip.

            The light of early morning struggles through the curtains. Mum snores in soft grumbles, her head submerged in her brown bedspread. I’m awake without feeling rested. Menace bears its unrelenting weight down on the whole of me, even when I sleep.

I hear whispers outside our bedroom door and watch the handle turn. The door flings open. ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’ the girls call out in unison. Mum is awake in an instant. ‘Thank you, my darlings,’ she says, heaving herself up on her pillows. Mary and Sarah tread ceremoniously down the aisle between the beds, each holding a present and card in upturned palms. Mum smiles. Her hair, white and curly, is flattened around the back of her head, with a right-angled tuft poking out above each ear. It’s a little longer than she likes. She won’t get it cut until she thinks the look of it is unbearable.

Sarah places her present in Mum’s lap and clasps her hands behind her back. I take mine from Mary and grin at her. She watches me eagerly as I tear open the envelope and pull out a stiff white card embossed with pink roses. Inside, in Mary’s best lettering, is the phrase, ‘You’re the best Mum in the world’. Underneath is a smattering of love hearts and kisses in red Texta. Tenderness flutters faintly in my heart, its wings clipped by a sense that I failed them, in my choice of their father.

‘Open yours Nan,’ says Sarah. Her face, round and innocent, is flushed with enthusiasm. Mum levers the envelope with care and pulls out her card. It’s embossed with red roses. Inside, ‘You’re the best Nan in the world’ is surrounded by scores of kisses and pretty pink love hearts in a lavish display of affection. It isn’t favouritism. But I have to quash a feeling that it is.

Mum puts her card in her lap. I’m dismayed that I forgot to buy her a card. I always buy her a card. I ought to have done something to express how relieved I am that she chose to be here. I’d never have coped without her.

            ‘Open your presents,’ Sarah says impatiently.

            Mum peels open the wrapping and holds up a row of yellow candles in glass dishes, sealed in clear plastic. My present is an amethyst bracelet. I stretch it between my fingers and put it on.

            ‘Amethyst means good luck,’ Mum says.

            ‘Is that right?’ I smile at her then look down at the bracelet. A good luck charm? It isn’t luck we need. It’s justice. I turn to the girls. ‘Thanks for the presents,’ I say, giving my voice some warmth.

            After breakfast Mum says we ought to go to the beach. We need fresh air and exercise. The girls agree. They run to their room for their jackets and trainers. Mum stuffs the door key into a pocket of her purple tracksuit. I look straight at her.

‘But today?’

            ‘He’ll have won if we cage ourselves in.’

            I hesitate. She’s right. ‘Should I get changed?’

            ‘Why bother?’

            I look down the front of the turquoise tracksuit Mum gave me when we arrived here. She thought the contents of my suitcase—tailored pants, fitted shirts, smart jacket—impractical in the circumstances. Save all that for your day in court, she’d said. I never wear tracksuits. But it isn’t vanity. Turquoise? In open territory? We’d be less conspicuous in pavement grey.

It’s a half-hour walk to the beach. Mum holds Sarah’s hand. I hold Mary’s. We walk briskly down the hill to the traffic lights, four abreast. There’s little cover. The sapling trees that flank the parade of shops do nothing to lessen my sense of exposure.

Mary and I fall behind Mum and Sarah where the pavement narrows near Coles. Here the streetscape is a stark mix of tarmac and concrete. And now my vigilance is intense. I scrutinise every car, parked or moving, certain he’ll be plotting to abscond with them before tomorrow’s court case. It could be his last chance. As we pass Coles’ high concrete wall, we’re as vulnerable as ducks in a shooting gallery. I feign calm for the sake of the girls. I feign something like joie de vivre. Mum feigns self-assurance. We both know we’re fooling no one.

We round a corner and Mum overtakes Sarah to avoid a ladder. Mum insists that it’s bad luck to walk under ladders. I let go of Mary’s hand and usher her in front of me. I’m not superstitious like Mum. But I walk round the ladder too.

The road down to the esplanade is lined with shade trees, the pavement coursing through a nature strip of mown grass. It’s ideal for a stroll. But Mum marches on. Sarah takes long strides to keep apace and I have to tug Mary’s arm whenever she lags behind. Is this athletic pace for the benefit of Mum’s heart or is fear spurring her on? I look down the side streets, through hedges, into front gardens, porches and veranda. Then I look straight ahead, watching Mum’s round buttocks wobble inside her track pants, horrified at the thought that my own might be doing the same.

            The girls sit on a low concrete wall above the beach and remove their trainers. I scan the esplanade. A young man in a tee shirt and shorts jogs away from us. He seems harmless. A middle-aged woman is walking towards us with her Labrador on a leash. Surely she’s no threat. Across the esplanade the milk bar is empty. Two boys walk up a side street licking ice-creams. They’re children, just children.

The beach is deserted. A seagull glides low above the yellow stretch of sand. The sea, tinged tannin-brown, laps gently at the shore. Sarah and Mary run to the water’s edge. I fall in step alongside Mum. She maintains a steady pace even on the sand, only stopping when Sarah runs towards us with a shell.

‘Look, Nan, look!’ Sarah cries.

‘That’s a pretty one,’ says Mum. ‘We’ll keep it.’ She puts it in one of her pockets. We walk to the heads and back. By the time we reach the esplanade our pockets are bulging, our strides marked by rhythmic percussive clinks.

Mum brushes sand off the girls’ feet. I look back along the beach, and up and down the esplanade, watchful as ever. He’s tried to snatch them before. And it may not even be him I need to look out for. He could have an accomplice. Could be anyone. It’s surreal. I’m living inside a horror movie, only there’s no getting up and flicking on the kettle when the credits roll.

The milk bar is still empty. ‘Ice-cream?’ I say, wanting the day to feel something like normal.

‘Paddlepops,’ Mary says.

‘I want a Magnum,’ says Sarah.

‘I wants don’t get,’ Mum says. ‘Paddlepop or nothing.’

‘I’ll have nothing,’ I say, suddenly feeling nauseous.

Mum licks her chocolate Paddlepop from stick to tip. Her pace, now we’re heading uphill, is slower. Mary slurps her Paddlepop until there’s nothing left but a slickly moulded lump around the stick.

‘Want some, Mum?’ she says, holding out her hand.

‘No thanks,’ I say, smiling at her chocolate-coated chin.

‘Don’t!’ says Mum abruptly, turning with a tissue in her hand.

Mary freezes with her sleeve poised before her face. I’ll never understand how Mum pre-empts these things.

I can’t say I’m relieved when we return to the unit. A refuge is meant to be a safe place, but it feels more like a prison, the menace locked out, the fear locked in.

On the back step, Mum and I empty our pockets of shells and shake out the sand. ‘Time for lunch,’ she says. I follow her into the kitchen, lean against the bench and stare at the mountain on the horizon. In the sky above the peak a fluffy white poodle rises on its haunches, pawing triumphantly, as if it’s just cleared the mountain in a single bound. I won’t show Mum. She’d think it a good omen, a cloud-symbol of my success in court tomorrow. I switch on the kettle.

Mum slices cheese and one tomato, finely, arranging the slivers on slices of half-toasted bread. ‘Call the girls,’ she says.

‘Where are they?’

‘Outside.’

I give way to a sudden rippling panic in my guts.

            The garden is a narrow strip of grass edged with a high brick wall. Rounding the corner, I see Mary whip at something with a stick, chanting, ‘Leave-us-alone!’

            I freeze.

‘Your turn,’ she says.

Sarah moves forward to beat and chant with her stick over and again. I step closer. Pressed into the mortar between the bricks is a skipping rope in the profile of a face. No need to ask whose face.

            The afternoon ticks by with the help of six rounds of Sevens and Babe. I gaze blankly at the screen. My mind won’t let me engage with a feel-good movie. It interrupts the cinematic flow more often than the commercial breaks. I can’t stare for long at the lush greens of happiness when my own feet perch on the crumbling edge of an abyss.

            The others seem absorbed. Mary and Sarah sit side-by-side on the dark-grey lounge. Mum looks comfortable in the armchair. I picture the three of them at home, in our weatherboard cottage in the country. The unit is anything but homey. The living area is furnished sparsely with a square cane coffee table and a television on a stand. Beige loop-pile carpet and the floral printed blinds reinforce a two-star-motel atmosphere. Carpets and blinds are infused with the anguish of every woman who has passed through this place.

The mountain is silhouetted in a dimming sky. I close the blinds. Sarah arranges Mum’s yellow candles in the centre of the dining table. Mary is attentive, her long red hair covering her face like a half-drawn curtain. To honour the day Mum’s made a lamb stew. She’s in the kitchen, serving. She’ll have apportioned, exactly, what each of us will eat—no onion for Sarah, no carrot for Mary, and two potatoes each. Mum’s frugality is having a renaissance. We’re saving an extraordinary portion of our Centrelink payments to pay the expert witnesses.

             We eat in silence. Mum doesn’t like people talking with their mouths full. She sits erect, carefully trimming her lamb of surplus fat. Mary stuffs a large chunk of meat into her mouth. Mum flashes her a look of disapproval before her expression softens.

Sarah finishes first and takes her plate to the kitchen. ‘Nan. Can we play Monopoly?’ Without waiting for a reply Sarah reaches for the Monopoly game on loan from the shelter.

We play it every day, usually to whittle away the long afternoons after I’ve collected the girls from school. The principal, who keeps a baseball bat in her office in case a deranged father turns up, will only guarantee the girls’ safety until lunchtime.

            Mary arranges the board. It’s her turn to be the bank. Sarah likes the battleship, Mary the Scottie dog, I’m the old boot and Mum’s the top hat, always.

I’m first to finish. I relinquish all my property, bankrupt, and free to slurp the glass of Riesling I’ve stashed in the pantry behind the peanut butter. Mum’s stuck in jail again. Mary’s feeling bolstered, having managed, with the help of a double six, to pass through Sarah’s olive-green and dark-blue empire. She has hotels on all the properties from Regent Street to Mayfair.

Two more rounds and Mum surrenders all her property to Sarah after landing on Park Lane. She’s left with a ten-dollar bill. Mary yawns. ‘Sarah’s won,’ I say. ‘Teeth then bed.’

‘And a chapter,’ says Mary.

I close a crack in the girls’ bedroom curtains. He’s out there somewhere in the darkness. No pane of glass or curtain could shut him out of this unit if he wanted to break in. Worse still, nothing can shut him out of my mind. I’m exhausted. Too worn down to feel the rage I know is in me. Normality shouldn’t have to be an act. This constant threat that he’ll take my girls has already taken my happiness, drained me so effectively of any sense of wellbeing. I wonder if I’ll ever get it back. And tomorrow there he’ll be, in court, with his lies, his cunning, his righteousness. And I’ll be pretending too, all demure, measured, in complete control of myself, when really, I’ll be screaming inside.