Authors: Rebecca Berto
She shakes her head, diverts her eyes. I gulp, feeling the shift in
mood. This feels edgy. Like we’re both trying to balance glasses on a tray while walking on a treadmill or something.
I speak up first. “Yeah?”
“This whole conversation has been about me. I feel bad, when I’ve just sat here and ignored you.”
“Don’t be silly. That doesn’t make sense. We’re talking. This is a two-way conversation.”
“See? There? You get really passionate about something and totally focus on someone else—me. I love that you want to hear about me all night, but I dunno, it’s a lot to chalk up.”
“Oh,
you’re mean,” I say, not realising I’m again deflecting.
I know exactly what’s coming.
“Fine.” I pick up
Breaking Bad
. “We’ll watch this. It better be good or I’ll wring your neck. Since we don’t have to talk about you anymore anyway.”
She holds my gaze for a moment or two longer. I feel the power, how I manipulate people without intentionally doing so. In the end, I must look icier than I meant. I didn’t mean to look or act like a bitch at all. I just want a break.
I’m thinking of Nate but also
Him
since he’s the reason I can’t stand the idea of relationships. And that man doesn’t deserve to be mentioned after how he ruined my childhood, and life.
So conversation: over.
“All righty. We’ll watch it.”
Scout
grabs the DVD in my hand, both of us holding it until my heart drops, and I feel numb yet heavy at the same time and I want to sleep and sleep.
I sit back against her bed, watching her prepare. Open the case. Finger the hole in the DVD and push it in the slot. Work her way to the right buttons on the remote. When her body rests up against the spot beside me, her presence jolts me
.
There’s a flash.
It’s
him,
pinning me with his weight.
Pressure within me builds.
It’s
him
from within my head telling me I’m pretty enough to act like a grown woman, but only for him.
…
building …
I get what
that
feeling
is about now.
Protection: there’s a fine line between that and suffocation, and sometimes you can’t see that difference.
It frightens me that I’ll lose my loved ones, one by one. I’ve protected things by doing it this way for nine years, but I’m losing Nate, lost respect from most of my friends, and I don’t know my mother—not really. What do I have to lose if I blurt out the word vomit now? Surely it’s gotta be my last save, my last chance to keep Scout’s and my relationship since I’m creating a silent barrier between us.
“It was one of Mu
m’s boyfriends.” She turns and I bite my lip, and stare at a stain on her collar as I continue, “I always knew who did it, I lied. He was Mum’s favourite, of all her exes, the most-loved-by-others ex-boyfriend who made me watch
Killing Me Softly
with him when I was ten that first time.”
That’s all I can say. I feel my blood boiling.
I need to punch something. The temptation is too much with Scout’s mattress right behind me, so from behind I punch the underside of her bed, which is wood and makes the pain so much more pleasurable.
But when Scout offers
me her shoulder, her arms to hold all my pain, I just nuzzle into her neck and sob. I take it.
“You know, the toughest peo
ple are only defined by recognising their fears and admitting them. You can’t fight invisible, but you can fight what’s out in the open in front of you. I know silence feels like the right thing for you to do, but we’re here for each other and I don’t know how much longer you can hold this superhuman force of acting so collected when you’re not. Kalli, it’s okay to let go. Because you won’t go anywhere but right here.”
I allow
my hands to drop, to stop. Stop the fighting.
Being held by Scout just highlights how trapped I am with no known way out
. I’m so close and yet so distant from help.
I ge
t into this box. I box myself in, I know. I never remember hiding away. It just happens.
Feeling so hopeless in Scout’s arms, I wish I’d just held it in again as I always do to make today about sharing her secret
. But so much rides on me keeping myself together for Seth, Tristan and my mum’s sake, and today I just had to let it out. It’s tiring keeping it together on my own. Every family needs their glue and I’m it.
If letting go and acting weak is the only way to become stronger, why do I feel so nothing at all?
• • •
The next
day on my way home from work, I drop by Aunty Nicole’s.
I
’ve asked about the fight between my mum and her. I’ve always been too young, it’s never the right time. I don’t know if it is because Aunty Nicole can read what happened between Scout and I on my face, but this time she agrees and tells me. I’ll take the pity vote. Yeah, I’m at that kinda stage.
“Hey, beautiful,” she says. She waves me in. “Tea?”
“Sure.”
Aunty Nicole
side-steps past me to get to the kitchen although there is plenty of space in the entry.
That sets the mood and I don’t know how much more awkward I can take. “Aunty Nicole?” She spins around from the
kitchen bench, the top of the sugar container still in her hand. “Is everything okay?”
She contemplates answering for a second and goes for a barely noticeable sigh. But I see it. It was there. “Sorry, I forgot. How many sugars? Do you take black or white?”
“White. One sugar, thanks.”
I decide to close my mouth and wait for her. Sh
e walks from cupboard to fridge to drawer to cup with grace, owning that space and seemingly forgetting I’m here. She places a coaster under my tea. That’s when I notice she hasn’t made one for herself, so I settle for cupping mine and blowing the steam away, her quiet in the chair opposite me.
“
Your mum stumbled in at seven in the morning in the dress and heels she’d left in the night before. We were days away from winter. Dad had enough of her.
“
He loved sitting on the grass out back, telling you stories from his working days. He enjoyed letting you put makeup on him because it made you happy and you had no grandma to do it with. He even put up with you screaming for your mummy, although it broke his heart.
“
But when Mary stumbled through that door looking like half a person, dress stained and ripped, one shoe missing, hair like a bird’s nest, eyes big and bloodshot, gaze unfocused and laughing at nothing at all, he cracked.
“
Dad walked out without a word.
“
I stood there feeling words like ‘stupid’, ‘air head’ and ‘loser’ slamming inside my thoughts as she felt along the wall to get to the couch in the living room until I burst, too.
“
I asked her, ‘Again?’ and she flopped against the back cushion before lolling her head to the side and staring right through me. She said it was only two nights.
“‘
Have you slept?’
“‘
Yeah, I sleep all the time, Nic.’
“I was a million thoughts, each racing
the other to fill the gaps in the story, each one worse than the rest. It wasn’t one really late night. It was many, all the time. What else had gone on?
“
She never looked at me. Not once. She was so delusional, pointing out unicorns racing through the walls, that I had to pick her up and take her to where she was looking to stop it. Turns out she hadn’t slept for two days and hadn’t spent a minute of that time sober.
“
I had pointed to her spare room at Dad’s house and told her to please, Christ, just sleep. But she said there were ants under her skin keeping her awake.
“
I’m ashamed I said what I did after, but my blood felt like it was boiling and it stung just standing there, letting the anger burn me up. I said, ‘You’re just like Mum. You’ll end up just like Mum. Is that the goal?’
“
She made the effort to at least try to sit straight. Then she steadied her arms on either side of the couch. ‘Stay the fuck away, Nic. You and your fake husband. I’m not low enough to compare you to our dead mum, but the fact is I live my life, my way. Dad can’t understand it, you can’t either. You’re a bunch of cardboard cut-outs. I’m not afraid to do everything fun I’ve wanted to do with my life. But I guess you wouldn’t understand fun. You haven’t taken a day off work, a holiday, a night out, nothing for yourself. I’m not afraid to try live.’
“
‘That’s a bunch of crap.’
“
‘Well,’ Mary had slurred. She took a moment to get her mouth working again. ‘Take my bunch of crap or leave it.’
“
‘I can’t watch you do this to yourself.’
“
‘Okay,’ Mary said.
“
And that was the end. You were playing with my youngest in the other room. My baby was blue from crying and you were panicked when we got there. Mary took you and left and I had no choice but to calm mine so he could breathe.
“I’ve never forgiven myself,” Aunty Nicole says, “because she was right about some stuff. I was that pathetic person who did everything right in life
, like everyone expected and urged me to do. I hated weekends and weeknights because I had no friends who wanted to see me anymore, and your uncle would be either watching TV or on the computer or having a beer. Sadly, the week after, when I knew Mary was serious, I decided to take leave without pay for several weeks and do everything that didn’t have to be done, but I’d been wanting to do for years. It was bittersweet not experiencing it with my sister.”
Aunty Nicole pauses for the briefest moment
and I realise my tea is the same temperature as my skin now. That fact engrosses me, and I stare at the top of the cup where the steam has died away. All this time I’ve been lost in my family’s past.
“Mary was so close with our mu
m and I was forever jealous of that bond. After she died, Mary was hollow. Neither Dad or I could understand her because she wouldn’t let us. It’s just …”
Aunty Nicole leaves that hanging there.
… just too long ago.
…
just too painful to deal.
…
just too, too much.
She doesn’t say any of that. She finishes, “It’s just such a damn waste.”
I find myself replying, “I know” even though I barely register saying those words. I’m in my own bubble, being tossed and turned by the event that ripped my family apart.
Nicole chucks my tea down the sink after that, much to my insistence
that I’ll just drink it cold, or she can warm it up.
“I’ll make a new one. It’s not worth
the trouble trying to save.”
As I leave, I’m flooded with so m
any thoughts about Nicole and Mum and me, because I can see myself following in my grandma and mum’s footsteps, and I’ll be damned if I’m headed that way, knowing I’m worth saving.
• • •
Four days. It’s four days since I saw or spoke to Nate. It’s four minutes to midnight, too. So there’s no use texting him now since it’ll be about ten at night across Australia. Chances are he’ll have to be up early for a shoot or whatever it is he’s doing, and his phone is already on silent for the night.
I open my messages anyway and tap at the screen every minute so
it won’t go black. It ends up oily and smudgy from my fingers and I have to wipe it down.
Breathe.
I take a deep breath and repeat to myself to say something. After what I’ve done, I can’t expect him to text first.
Kalli:
I’m so stupid. I did it coz I was afraid. Sorry means little now but I’ll show u how much I mean it if u will see me again.
I send that and then agonis
e over if I used a wrong word, or if I should have just bloody said a proper “sorry”. I watch the screen darken, and tap it so I can watch his incoming message, but it never comes. At 12.20 I shake my head and sit up. Grabbing my phone, I text again:
Kalli:
I freaked, but understand now it’s coz I wanna go further with u. I’ve never had a bf before so I thought I was doin what was normal or right. I fkd up so bad, coz in the end I kept imagining Donovan was u the whole time & I know that sounds more fkd but I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else touching me but u. I successfully made myself feel gross & embarrassed. Feels like fkn crap.
I regret knowing u r the best thing that’s happened to me & I hurt u in the worst way.
I notice the time as I
send that text: 12.35. I agonised over those stupid words for a quarter of an hour, and not only do they sound try-hard, but I’m certain he’s sleeping by now and so I could have thought about the words till morning. I change into my flannelettes and tuck my sheets just under my chin. Phone in hand, I grip it close to my body so even if I fall asleep, I’ll hear the beep or feel the buzz.