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THINGS GET into some routine, there’s school there’s home there’s the weekends, your dad isn’t drinking like he said he wouldn’t, he’s been home for ages they’re even sleeping in the same bed again he’s got a job as a taxi-driver he’s on the night-shift. You’re going with Hasan. You don’t think your mum likes him she said he’s no oil-painting and you said well neither’s dad. He lives in the Housing Commission flats in Richmond you usually stay there after going to the Crystal Ballroom or Kingston Rock in St Kilda you go there all the time now. You don’t really like doing it with him, he’s skinny all over pointy tongue and hard, he doesn’t touch you very much but sometimes it’s easier to say yes than argue no. The first time you slept with him properly his dad was in Turkey his mum gave you the double bed chocolate-brown velvet bedhead with night-lights in it and a radio, a big furry bedspread and a fake tapestry of lions and tigers on the wall, she even laid out a nightie for you, you didn’t wear it but you crumpled it up to make it look like you did and you woke to a soft touch on your forehead in the morning her gold tooth glinting smiling at you with a boiled egg and a cup of bitter coffee. One night you’re in bed you’ve been out everything is blurry your body moving thick the air is slow he wants to have sex you say no. He says come on, you hear yourself no, I don’t want to and then his voice saying sharp so what are you doing here? You lie there feeling like no one the sheets heavy on you, you move yourself under the covers and out of the bed. You start to dress yourself Hasan says where do you think you’re going? You say home, he says come here, you go no. The sheets swish he’s out of the bed in front of you fast grabbing your arm and twisting. Let go you tell him he tells you to keep your voice down so you whisper hard let me go. He doesn’t, then he does, then he says fuck you and gets back into bed. You’ve got your bag your boots are buckled you leave and switch the bedroom light on to annoy him as you shut the door, you hear him say something as you leave the flat, your shoes making their sound on the concrete down the stairwell, you rush through the carpark the shadows and the wind in all directions coming around all the corners of the big block buildings, you can’t go home your mum will get suspicious she thinks you’re staying at Debbie’s. You find the city in your eyes and you aim for that, you don’t know these roads you’re in a cave unknown and hollow, bats could attack you at any moment car lights flashing quick or passing slow are the eyes of snakes, you’re walking, the emptiness behind you opens, you’re walking quicker, the emptiness catching up trying to squeeze you and you find yourself fitting yourself into the dark so that nothing can see you.
You say to Rosie what’s up your arse Rosie-Posie? she goes shut up you little bitch, have you got any cigarettes? You say Park Drive and she says can I have one? you go dad’s home, she goes I don’t care. You throw your packet to her, she goes thanks, sorry I called you a bitch, you go why did you then? and she goes oh shut up! Rosie’s the tallest one in the family she’s got nice-shaped boobs you wish yours were like hers her legs are really muscly she’s a really good runner she always used to get first ribbons she’s got pimples she wears glasses she covers up her smile because of her teeth. She plucks her eyebrows she showed you how to do it properly she wears blue two-tone eyeshadow she lets you wear it too. She’s got this really nice Crystal Cylinder T-shirt that you wish was yours, dark-blue light-blue with white stripes in between and black as well all different thicknesses but it doesn’t look the same on you, on her it’s really tight she wears it with her denim Staggers baggies and her blue connie cardigan blue’s her favourite colour. It’s your favourite colour too but not because of her you just like it and anyway, you liked it first. She goes what are you doing? you go nothing so then she goes well get out, you say do you want to go for a drive? and she goes leave me alone all right! You go it’s my bedroom too I’m allowed to stay here if I want, she goes gee I hate you sometimes, you say I hate you too and she goes shut up and you go no, then she says I’m glad I’m moving out and you say me too. She rolls over on the bed and blows smoke into the wall so you pretend that she’s not there either, blowing smoke into your own wall listening to your own radio looking forward to having your own bedroom.
You’re going to make the State side you know it, you’re going to training on a blue train. You’re standing in the open doorway letting the wind come in bringing with it the soft drizzle in bursts. The train’s going over the bridge between Macaulay and Flemington and you look down, down to the wet black street the wet red houses and suddenly there’s a black wet tree. Blossoms all over it shining pink and wet swooping out of nowhere down below, the train’s going fast it’s only a flash a wet flash from nowhere, the train’s riding fast, bumpy, you’re in the open doors looking down going over the bridge a split-second pink flash and you go oh! and lean out to keep seeing it, it’s made a print in you like a photo all bright and black outlined in rainshine but it’s gone, gone.
You get to the field you get in trouble. One, you’re late ten extra laps. Two, you missed last training, if you miss another you can forget it another ten get going pump it! Push-ups hamstrings sprints, the coach is picking on you don’t ask don’t say anything keep pumping, your breathing hurts your face is red. You hate it when your face goes red it always goes red and really hot it stays like that for ages. You love training even though it gives you the shits it keeps you fit you’re burning off all that fat. Sometimes you’d like to sleep in especially if you’ve been out the night before, it takes ages getting there you have to catch a bus a train another train and then you walk and then you’re there. It always takes a long time Fawkner’s miles away especially on the weekends you have to wait for ages to get anywhere but you love lacrosse you love playing it feels really good when you win or even when you don’t out there on the field with no end. You’re going to go to Adelaide with the State team, you’re training for the State team and you know you’ll get picked. You could be a famous sports star. You’ll be really fit you’ll have a suntan your hair will go streaky blonde you’ll be taller with really good legs and you’ll never be fat you’ll have lots of money drive a Jaguar or maybe an MG you’ll have a motorbike too and a house by the beach and you’ll know how to surf and you can go to America for your holidays you’ll be a jetsetter. The field’s mud you might as well be wearing your moccies for all the good your footy boots are doing. The smooth wood of your stick in its familiar place in your hands, the net all neatly knotted criss-crossing leather, the ball sliding in wet and round and white and cradled then flying through the air in a curving perfect pass, your eyes on the ball always on the ball, your body ready and moving and swift, you can see the spaces between the other players before the spaces are even there, you know your way through everybody clear and quick and rushing making lines over the field, seeing where you want to go and getting there, running on those lines making patterns on the ground through the air.
Afterwards you sit around in the changeroom for a while with a can of Fanta and a cigarette. It’s different here in the changerooms to anywhere else you go, nobody else knows anything about you you could be anybody here, anybody you want. You don’t have that much in common with the others but you don’t care and you don’t talk about yourself because you don’t want to give yourself away, you just talk about lacrosse and the weather. You’re sitting on the bench in your tracksuit pants over your muddy legs, you feel the mud drying slowly cracking and tickly on your skin, you’re just one of the players training for the State side. Nobody can see who you really are, nobody can see what you’re really thinking, they can’t see the tree with its wet blossoms startling in your mind or where you were last night and what you did, they can’t see the bruises on your thighs from Hasan’s skinny hips, they can’t see your dad or the things you haven’t got, they can’t see how you think their lives are stupid. All they talk about is lacrosse and winning and who their boyfriends are and what the men’s team is doing, you’re not going to tell them what you’re thinking because even though you hate them on the inside you like them on the outside, you have to, and you don’t want them to hate you because if they hated you you wouldn’t be able to play in the team.
In Social Studies with Mr Phillips who wears a beard and army pants and hand-made vests knitted out of lots of bits of leftover wool, you learn about Nagasaki and Hiroshima that were destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped by the Americans. You see this video of it, the smoke rising all beautiful you see all the buildings flatten suddenly and the dead city from the air, the shadow of a person burnt into concrete people with their skin melted and a baby born years later totally deformed and you think how awful that would be if it happened here everybody just made into ashes or dying really slowly from radiation and you couldn’t drink the water or eat the vegetables and fish would have two heads and flowers would be mutant. Mr Phillips says they’ve got the power to blow up the world many times over and suddenly nothing makes any sense. If you could just die like that well then what’s the point of anything? what’s the point of being here in this classroom fluorescent lights and lino? what’s the point of being anywhere, if somebody could start a war and the world could end then nothing that you do is ever going to matter? After class in the corridor everybody everywhere you kick the lockers just to see what’ll happen. You hear the sound, the little boom and crashing sound and you do it again knowing that it doesn’t matter, your hand bashing the metal doesn’t matter. Sharon does it too then Lisa starts doing it, the sound all around you of muscle on metal and you walk outside, hearing the sounds still going that everyone’s picked up on gradually stopping and people calling out coming through the double glass doors into the sunshine for lunchtime.
You make a poster, Mr Phillips said if you think the bomb is a bad thing how would you depict it in a visual way? You draw the beautiful mushroom cloud but it’s not a cloud cloud, it’s a cloud made up of little tiny skulls, there’s another cloud behind it exactly the same but in reverse like a negative, there’s tears coming from the eyesockets of the skulls in the clouds that turn into feathers and then become little aeroplanes dropping more bombs that turn into words then there’s a big white border, that’s the hole that would happen if the world wasn’t here and then another border, a black one with white jumping lines all over, that’s what would happen if they only blew up the cities, all broken with bits missing. The words that are formed by the bombs dropped by the aeroplanes that were the feathers are no. Nonononononono all along the bottom on top of the white border because that’s the only thing that you can think of and it makes a nice pattern, the right pattern. You show it to Mr Phillips the next week he says that’s very good, he really likes it and he pins it up but you know he didn’t really mean it he pins everybody else’s up too no matter what they look like and you don’t get a chance to explain the white border or the black border and you think to yourself that you’re never going to do homework again.
Sometimes learning new things makes you feel bottomless, there’s so much to know so much to understand and you want to know it all, want to fill up that empty bit, the bit you didn’t even know was empty until the words came along in the right shape.
It’s scary when you feel bottomless, you keep going on for ages and ages you could be anybody inside yourself and you think all kinds of things until you don’t know who you are any more, even though you really do know who you are but when you’re in that empty place all kinds of things happen and all kinds of yous show themselves. There’s the cartoon-you just in outline waiting to be coloured in and shaded, there’s a skinny-you a fat-you a rich-you a baby-you, a you that’s very old. There’s the you of you that doesn’t talk, a you that only screams, a you that’s dead in some doorway somewhere in the city, a you with babies with a normal family in a normal house, the you that your dad would love who knows how to make him better, there’s a you that paints, a you that doesn’t have a body, a you that’s full of spiders, a you with her face on the cover of Cleo, a you that is invisible. There’s a champion lacrosse player a famous scientist there’s somebody who can be drunk all the time there’s somebody who can eat whatever she wants and never get fat, there’s a boy-you, a girl-you, a you that’s both a boy and a girl and one that isn’t either.
You come home from school one day and your dad’s in the loungeroom in his blue-checked dressing-gown chopping up the couch with the axe. He says that your mum said that she didn’t like it so he’s getting rid of it for her. You wonder where he’s going to sleep now as you carry out the bits of broken wood that stink of his own piss and you wish he wasn’t here so you could watch telly whenever you like and you wouldn’t have to act like you’re not there any more. He lost his job as a taxi-driver for drunk-driving and he and your mum have stopped talking again so you’re supposed to take messages to them from each other, you don’t know whose side you’re on, you don’t want to be on anyone’s side and your mum gets new armchairs, you wish he was dead and you tell yourself not to think like that but you do anyway then he stays away for days and comes back saying sorry and he promises never to do it again but he does anyway and you get into trouble even when you didn’t do anything and he stinks the toilet up and sprays Glen-20 which only makes it worse and if you have to go in there after him you don’t because you don’t want to touch the same toilet seat as him and he hides the Truth down the side of the chair and you look at it when he goes out then he goes into hospital again he’s got cirrhosis and you never bring your friends home and everything stays inside you.
Looking at your sister you wonder if she knows what you’re thinking, she keeps looking at you and you know you’re both thinking the same thing. She says I’ll go Josie, stay there and you say but he called me and she says I’ll go. Your mum’s not home from work yet. Rosie opens the door that separates the kitchen from the loungeroom and says hi dad, he says Josie? she says no it’s Rose, he says Rosie love. Rosie’s visiting today she comes over once a week with a cake or something and all her washing. He says can you make me a sandwich? she says cheese? he says you’re a good girl Rosie love and then he says something else but Rosie’s already shut the door. Can I have one too? you ask her she says am I your slave? you go yeah, she says okay but you have to help me, Cleopatra. Cutting the cheese with the knife you pretend it’s a snake that’s going to bite her poison her kill her but she just says don’t, it becomes only a knife again silver and shiny and cheese bits. Then it grows in your hands. Slithering, big, trying to get your neck it really is a snake now glittering eyes you’re not pretending. Rosie’s laughing as you grapple with it on your knees on the lino twisting trying to get away, it’s going to get you it’s a black asp Rosie! you call, Rosie! and she takes the knife from your hands. Idiot she says. You’re a good girl Rosie love you say in your dad’s voice looking at the blade as it slides easy through the cheddar block in Rosie’s hands strong her knuckles hard. But you don’t get off the floor. Come on, butter the toast says Rose, I don’t want one now you say, you lie on the lino cool and grey and speckly. Then you’re in the kitchen chair vinyl orange. Then you’re standing looking out the window breath frosting the picture of the backyard through it. Cherry plum tree stark. Grass long getting longer. Then you’re looking at Rosie again you’re in each other’s eyes again you know what you’re both thinking again he calls you from the loungeroom again. I’ll take it you say. She gives you the plate with the toasted cheese sandwich on it cut into triangles and you open the door that separates the loungeroom from the kitchen, the kitchen where you and Rosie are, the loungeroom where the TV is, blaring, and the heater hot, venetians closed him and his smell. Rosie he says, it’s Josie you tell him. He looks at you from the couch. He takes the sandwich. Thanks Josie love, you’re a good girl. For a tiny little moment you stand there, hating hating but something soft as well, and then you go away.
You look at all the numbers on the page that you’ve been writing and you don’t know what they mean. You know what they’re supposed to mean, you wrote them, you can see all the numbers but they’ve stopped being numbers, the numbers that are equations made up of letters, the letters that aren’t letters any more they’re just little black marks on paper that stick out in strange shapes, lines and circles and dots and crosses and they leap out at you trying to get you to understand them so you close your eyes and open them again but the same thing happens and they start to move over the page, little skinny spiders crawling everywhere a wriggling mass of legs and bodies all over each other trying to get out of the place you put them in between the lines of your Maths book. You close your book you open it the spiders are still trying to crawl out you quickly close it. You shut your eyes and lean back on your chair with your feet catching on the edge of the table to balance yourself and you do a big yawn. Something flicks into your back. You bring your chair down with a bang and snap your head around. Abbott and Pepi are laughing from the table behind you. You pick up your pencil case and fling it at them hard, it’s open, the pens and pencils go everywhere but at least you got Pepi, in the face, good, and you yell at them piss off ya pricks, Pepi throws things back at you and the Year 10 Maths teacher Mr Apad roars Miss Cregan! What do you think you’re doing? You go it’s them, sir and he says pick up your pens, pack up your things and get up to the office and you go no! you’re yelling, don’t yell, he roars do as I say! and the whole class goes quiet, suddenly, still, and you just sit there for a moment. Your chair moves backwards scraping falling over onto the wooden floor as though it’s not you doing it, on your knees it’s as though it’s not you picking up your things, saying to Abbott and Pepi you’re ratshit ya fucken arseholes, your voice isn’t your voice you don’t know who’s saying these things, you don’t know who it is slamming the classroom door telling the teacher to get fucked.
*
Nothing’s anywhere everything’s all over the place you’re going out tonight all your clothes are stupid, you end up borrowing some of Tina’s she wears your diamante earrings. You’ve both got the same boots on, black suede with three buckles up the side, you got yours first you hate it when Tina copies but sometimes it’s all right, you feel better than sisters and she just lives across the road. Linda doesn’t come out with you any more she’s been going back with Sylvio so long it’s like they’re married. It takes ages getting ready but finally you look right. You’re wearing the black boots with black stockings your short pleated bright tartan skirt and your tight fluffy red jumper, your earrings are gold and big your make-up is gold and red. Your hair is cut short up the back with a plaited tail hanging down, the top is curly and it’s dyed dark red, Tina’s is cut nearly the same but it’s dyed black so it looks really different. You go across to her place and ring a taxi, after three-quarters of an hour it arrives. You both wanted to go somewhere different tonight instead of the Hideaway as usual so you’re going to the Tok-H in Toorak, Tina’s older sister Rita who’s a lawyer’s secretary said it was really good, the taxi ends up being really expensive but Tina says it’ll be worth it.
The brass bar is shining in the gaps between the people, you can hear everybody talking without catching a word lots and lots of voices all together the ceiling is burgundy so are the walls. Your table is round and high your chair is burgundy with fake brass bits your drink has got an umbrella in it it cost heaps it’s called a Harvey Fudpucker. Tina tries to get up it’s getting very crowded now there’s all these guys standing around in groups in suits. Tina’s chair bumps into the back of someone’s legs he turns looking down at her and shifts a bit, she looks up stands up laughing and says hey, watch the merchandise, he just turns around again his back looking like everybody else’s back. Tina straightens up she wiggles her little finger under his jacket up his bum but not touching and says frajoles, you crack up she goes to the toilet. When she comes back you say what took you so long? she says it’s crowded in there I even had to queue up to wash my hands and she goes to sit down. Turn around you say and she says why? you say show me and she half turns and says what? looking over her shoulder at herself. You grab the skirt of her dress and pull it out of the top of her stockings where it got tucked in showing half her arse and you laugh and say Tina and she goes shit and you laugh more and she plonks herself on the chair without looking behind her to see if anybody saw and you don’t tell her you just say don’t worry but you’re still laughing and she says yeah it wasn’t you was it. You both keep drinking your cocktails you try to make her cheer up but it doesn’t work so you go to the bar and get two more drinks this time you get Black Russians. There’s a guy at the bar waiting to be served you know he’s looking at you he moves closer his aftershave gets into your nose and makes you blink. He says I like your friend’s dress, trying to be funny. You don’t say anything. Then he says hey smile, it might never happen so you show him your teeth and turn your back to him as you take your drinks from the bar.
At the Hideaway crowds of people blue jeans and runners, music thumping get a drink first thing pushing your way through, smoke hovering swirling slowly above. You look down at the tea-towel thing on the bar see the patterns in the fabric see the way the bits that are wet look different from the bits that are dry, Tina’s right behind you talking to George and Nooch who are here of course as usual. You get Black Russians again they’re half the price here you look through the familiar archways to the pool tables and wonder if there’ll be any fights tonight. Tina says let’s dance and you get the boys to mind your drinks. The dance floor flashes squares of blue red bright yellow light you’re in the corner you’re dancing Tina’s really good you start doing the new steps she taught you waiting for the taxi tonight, you don’t care how you look you just move, feel your hips go and your shoulders shimmy, you and Tina do impersonations of other people on the dance floor, you know the boys are watching and you’re laughing, laughing, Tina’s laughing too, mouth open wide. Back to the bar drink more drinks your nose gets itchy you say my nose is itchy, you let George rub it for you he goes to kiss you, you go get lost, he goes I know you want it, you say yeah, but not from you, you just say it you don’t even care what he thinks and his eyes shine and he smiles a little smile. Off the dance floor on the dance floor, people everywhere your make-up’s getting shiny you say to Tina is my mascara smudged? she says I can’t tell, what about mine? In the toilets, dark, the mirror is dark, smooth your eyeliner cat’s eyes blow a kiss leave it on the mirror you can’t tell what you look like the floor tilting under you Tina, am I pretty? she goes yes, am I? and you go yeah, I reckon, all the boys are looking at you. Inside yourself you say Tina, I feel hard and then you say it out loud. Tina goes what? you go nothing. Back at the bar again standing next to George you see his profile his lips moving and his eyelashes, his arm next to yours, Tequila Sunrise in your glass sticky sweet red and orange light through the yellow the straw keeps missing your mouth, George’s arm around you now you don’t pull away, tongue in your mouth teeth bump together rock into him through your skirt his jeans and the music pounding loud, his voice saying let’s go outside, you saying what for? he goes come on, so you do, slide through the doors the dark, swaying in some car just let him, get what you can and you do.
Smooth in the taxi riding in the back seat looking out at the night-time going past quickly, air-freshener smell stuck in your nostrils. You get there you get out the front door’s not locked the outside light is on. It’s about two o’clock or probably later it’s busy in the kitchen your mum’s there your sister Theresa is up making pancakes her best friend is over they’re having a slumber party in the loungeroom it’s great when your dad’s in the hospital. You’re really pissed. Your mum starts telling you off you tell her to get fucked you don’t mean to you never swear at your mum it just comes out of your mouth everything is swaying you hold on to the bench. Theresa goes into the loungeroom with her best friend taking the pancakes with her. Your mum really starts going for it then who do you think you are madam don’t you dare talk to me like that where have you been and what kind of hour do you think this is? and again before you know it you’ve opened your mouth and out it comes you tell her to shut up she’s a stupid moll. All these other things come out too like how much you hate her, it’s all her fault anyway, you keep going and going it’s like there’s somebody else inside you making you act like this you don’t want to be here saying these things flinging your arms about but you are, you just are, everything’s coming out yelling slurring nearly falling over. Then, you stop. Your mum is looking at you like she’s never looked at you before she says to you in a voice you’ve never heard you are so horrible how did you get to be like this? speaking to you like she doesn’t even know you, speaking to you like she thinks you’re disgusting and you say well, you should know, you brought me up and then she slaps you. You slap her back. She bursts into tears. So do you, but you don’t care you just go up to your bedroom you don’t even turn the light on you just stand there in the dark leaning against the door you shut your eyes it’s even darker you’re just a speck, a speck of darkness in the dark that nobody else can see.
*
When you wake up the sun’s coming in through the blinds the walls are really close the ceiling’s low, you’re just lying there staring at the wallpaper and you secretly peel a bit of it off, liking the sound of it and the way it looks, rough edges and curly. Maureen comes in to say something to you and you cover yourself up with the blanket rubbing it over your ears so that you can’t hear her. She goes out of the room and you give yourself an orgasm trying not to move so that the bed won’t creak but then when you get to the best bit you don’t care if the bed creaks or even if it thumps against the wall, you wouldn’t even care if anybody walked in even though you know you’d never be able to look them in the face again. There’s noises from the kitchen dishes and cupboards and voices and the phone rings and everything’s happening away from you. You smell your hand it stinks you are disgusting you fart that’s worse it puffs into your face. You think about the money you got from George last night, how easy it was. Him all huffing and puffing thinking he’s getting you off because you’re huffing and puffing and oohing and aahing except you’re only pretending and he thinks your hands are on his arse but it’s really only one hand working twice as hard, the other one’s in his pocket in his wallet scrunching out the notes, you got $40, if you go to Sydney maybe you could be a prostitute.
You leave the house you don’t want to stay inside, outside the sky’s bright the door bangs cracks behind you. You feel like something’s missing a bit of you isn’t there, not a broken bit or anything but something is slipping inside, you try to hold it grab it keep it you can’t find it you’re not really sure what it is, if there really was something or if it’s just your mind tricking you.