‘What? What’s wrong? Mum? Mum? Lorna, speak! What’s she saying?’
Lorna opened her eyes. They were horribly bloodshot. Her cheeks slapped pink. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ll have to stop. The crying and shouting is too –’
‘No, not yet. I need to hear from my sister. She’s the one I came for.’
Lorna was quiet a long time. That feeling like I was going to chuck built and built and then, just when I thought I was going to have to run for the toilet, she gave a big sigh and shook her head. ‘She’s not there.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means she hasn’t passed over.’
‘She has. She has. We buried her. I saw her body.’
Lorna nodded. ‘Not everyone who dies passes over right away. I can only reach those who’ve gone to the other side. Explains why your other ladies were in such a state. They’d be wishing her with them.’
‘Where is she then?’
‘She’s hanging around here, I’d wager.’ She smiled kindly. ‘Ah, that’s why you’re here. You’ve had contact?’
‘I don’t know. I think so, but I can’t communicate with her. She won’t tell me who did this to her, won’t tell me what she wants. She just . . .’ I broke apart. That’s the only way I can put it. I told her everything and she nodded and handed me tissues. She said it sounded like Bella was confused. That happens with traumatic death, apparently. Just like a living person might block out things that have happened, terrible things, the dead do that, too. Block out their deaths. But death isn’t like being fingered by your uncle in the back of the family station wagon, you know? You literally can’t get on with your life afterwards. So, Lorna said, Bella is all confused and disoriented and so she’s hanging out where she feels safest, where things are most familiar, she’s trying to make everything normal.
‘I’ll make her at home,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to her, tell her about my day, reassure her everything’s fine. Make her feel safe.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, love. You have to help her face up to the truth, help her accept that it can’t be like that anymore. Help her cross over.’
‘I don’t want to.’
Lorna shook her head and my guts churned again. ‘I know, love, but this is hurting her. You know that, right?’
‘She’s been crying. I hear her at night.’
‘Those ladies on the other side are crying for her, too. You can help make it better for them all, Chris. You can bring them peace.’
‘How?’
‘This is going to be tough, but you need to help her face up to what’s happened. You need to make sure she knows that she’s not of this world anymore.’
I didn’t cope with that very well, to be honest. I might have yelled a little bit. It was just, I didn’t think the woman understood what it was she was advising. Like, bad enough hearing that news about someone you love, but having to hear it about yourself . . .
Lorna asked me to leave, which, looking back, I understand, as I may have been making her feel unsafe. But at the time it felt like the worst kind of cruelty. I stepped back out onto the Sydney street and I felt like an ant. It didn’t seem possible to join the flow of foot traffic back to the station without being trod into the ground under someone’s heel. I didn’t know how I was ever going to get back home. Being alive seemed, at that moment, the most terrible and difficult thing.
I can tell her that, I realised. I can tell Bel, totally one hundred per cent honestly, that although she went through something awful to get there, she really was better off now. I could tell her that and I could – I felt myself swelling up with courage as I thought it – I could join her there. Me and Bella, Mum and Grandma, and no one left to suffer.
Monday, 4 May
When three days had passed without Chris answering or returning her calls, May grabbed her laptop, complete with PDF proof of the Women’s Weekly story, picked up a six-pack of Coopers from across the street and some hot chips from DeeDee’s Takeaway, and drove over.
She knocked on the door with her elbow. Waited. Put her laptop bag and the beer on the porch and knocked harder with her knuckles. ‘Chris?’ she called.
‘She’s not answering her phone either.’
May turned and saw the hippy-chick neighbour, Lisa, floating up the driveway. ‘You’ve been trying, too?’
‘Twice yesterday and again this morning.’ Lisa reached May’s side and glanced at the hot chips burning a hole in her arm. ‘If the smell of those hasn’t got her out here, there must really be something wrong.’
May knocked again, half shrugged at Lisa. ‘I don’t suppose you have keys?’
Lisa opened her hand to reveal a shiny new silver ring with two shiny new silver keys. ‘Nate gave them to me.’ Lisa grimaced. ‘I don’t think Chris knows. She wanted him to keep the spares, but he knew he wasn’t going to be around as much and wanted to make sure someone nearby had them just in case.’
‘Quite the benevolent patriarch, isn’t he?’
‘He cares about her. And he knows her. Shit. Should I ring him? See if he thinks we should go in?’
‘Come on, he’s not her dad, and even if he was she’s a grown woman and so are you. You’ve got the keys – you decide what to do with them.’
‘Normally I’d say give her her privacy, but . . . You know it’s a month yesterday since she was killed? It feels like –’
Heat flushed through her. ‘Lisa, you said Nate gave you the keys just in case. This is an “in case” situation, okay?’
‘Okay, yes, I think you’re right.’ Lisa nodded, pressed her lips together, stepped up to the door. She fumbled for a second, then May heard the click of a lock opening. Another second, another click. Then a push, a glimpse into the dark kitchen and a clunk as the door stopped.
Lisa looked back at May. ‘The chain’s on.’
‘Shit.’ May nudged Lisa out of the way and stuck her nose through the gap. ‘Chris!’ she yelled. ‘Chris, if you’re in there you need to tell us right now or we’re going to have to call the police to come break your nice new door down. Chris! You hear me?’
May waited, her body pressed hard against the edge of the door.
‘Can you hear anything?’
‘No.’ May stepped back. ‘I’m going to try all the windows. You call the police, tell them we might need an ambulance.’
‘Oh, God.’ Lisa looked like she was about to pass out, but she was dialling.
May ran across the front to the kitchen window. The security blinds were down tight. Same with the bedroom windows, the living room at the back, bathroom, spare room. The place was sealed up like a tomb. She returned to the front, heard Lisa say the police were on their way, and restarted yelling Chris’s name.
Minutes passed. May was aware of neighbours congregating in the driveway, Lisa trying to get them to go back into their homes, but doing it in such a way that made it clear something hugely exciting was happening and so the crowd grew. May’s voice was wearing out but she kept yelling, kept dialling Chris’s phone and hearing it ring out only metres away. By the time the cop car swung into the driveway, forcing the neighbours onto the grass, she was just repeating the one word over and over: Chris Chris Chris Chris.
‘Alright, I need you to move aside, please.’ She recognised the voice behind her as Matt’s; at the same time, she was sure she heard something from inside. She pushed the side of her face harder into the gap.
‘May, you need to step aside.’
‘Shhh.’ She waved a silencing hand. There it was! A small voice: ‘Coming.’
‘Chris? Shit, you hear me?’
‘You’re yelling loud enough.’
May could see her now, or at least a dark blob that spoke with her voice, creeping her way along the kitchen wall.
May spun on her heels. ‘It’s fine. You can go. She’s coming.’
&nb
sp; Matt crinkled his brow. ‘No offence, May, but I need to see that for myself before I can leave.’
May turned back to the dark kitchen. The slow-moving blob was almost at the door. The unmistakable smell of shit sent May reeling back, then realisation pushed her to lean in again. ‘Chris, before you open the door, just give a shout-out to Constable Drey to let him know you’re okay.’
The blob stopped moving. ‘Cops are out there?’
‘Just the one and he’s going to leave as soon as he knows you’re alright. So give him a nice big shout-out, hey?’
There was a pause and then Chris’s crackly voice shattered the silence of the porch. ‘’Course I’m alright. Can’t a woman have a bit of damn privacy in this bloody town?’
‘Okay?’ May said to Matt, quietly, because Chris was close now.
He looked unsure, kept trying to get up to the door.
‘Please. She’s okay, you heard her. But she’ll be mortified if she comes out and sees the audience. I really need you to get all these spectators off the lawn. Can you do that for me? Except Lisa. Ask her to come back up.’
He nodded, gave his goofy little smile, then turned to the neighbours on the lawn and started shouting at them to clear off. He sounded in no way threatening to May, but people here still had enough respect for the police that they quickly dispersed. Either that or they’d realised there really was nothing to see.
Lisa returned to the porch and May took her hand and pulled her into position so that if there were any busybodies still watching, they’d see nothing but Lisa’s and May’s backs.
The smell was strong and close. The door closed, the chain glided along its track and then Chris was standing there, small and stinking.
‘Oh, honey,’ Lisa said, and she and May stepped inside, closing the door behind them.
Chris had taken enough sleeping pills to end herself, but fortunately she also took even more than her usual quantities of booze along with them and her body took care of what her mind was too befuddled and her heart too bruised to do and expelled every last bit of poison while she was unconscious.
Lisa helped her clean herself while May changed the bedsheets. They got her to drink some water and eat half a piece of Vegemite toast and then settled her into bed.
‘Okay, hon, you just stay right there. I’m going to dash across the road and grab all my dull work nonsense and bring it on over so I can work away right here beside you.’
‘Lisa, I’m fine. Bugger off and do your work.’
‘Just as easy to do it here as over there.’
May felt like she was eight years old again, standing stupidly in the hallway while her aunties and grandparents fussed over her mum. ‘Go on and look after your little brothers,’ her Grandma Bess told her and so she tried but Jason kept kicking her and Max kept crying and no one would tell her where her dad was or why her mum was howling like the wolf in the Hundred Nights of Horror DVD she’d watched that time at her friend Sasha’s house even though it was rated M.
‘I can stay,’ she said, cringing at the weak trill of her voice. Stop it. You shouted loud enough to wake the dead. You screamed her alive. ‘Seriously, I’ve got nowhere else to be. I can hang here as long as necessary.’
May expected Chris to say it wasn’t necessary, but she just nodded very slightly, pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and closed her eyes.
Bella took the news of her death better than I expected. There was no blood or bruised walls, no tilting floor. It didn’t even get cold. Instead there was just this long, long silence and only when I called her name did I hear a soft little cry and then I smelt her antiseptic hands up close to my face. I waited for her touch but it never came. Eventually I realised the smell was gone and the room was still and silent and I was alone.
I thought I’d been in pain before but I knew nothing. The despair of her leaving, of knowing that I wouldn’t feel her hand or hear her voice ever again, was just . . . It was complete. It made it very easy for me to take the pills. I didn’t hesitate for a moment.
I know you’ll say it was just luck or biology or whatever that stopped me from dying, but I know it was her. It was her last act of interference before she passed over to be with Mum and Grandma. I don’t understand why she would condemn me to this suffering, but she has and I will try hard to respect her wishes, to hang around.
You tell me it will get better, but I don’t see how that is possible. Something I learnt from my mum’s death is that grief is unending. I was unprepared for that, fell into a deep hole seven or eight months after she went, wondering why I didn’t feel better already, wondering why I still felt so sad. I mentioned it to Old Grey one night at work, not having big D&Ms or anything, just he said, ‘You’ve not been yerself lately,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m still sooking about Mum. You’d think I’d be over it by now.’ And he goes, ‘I never got over me mum’s death and that was thirty years ago.’ He kept counting the till and I kept wiping the glasses and he said, ‘Yer just always a bit sadder than before. Seems bad at first, but you get older, you look around, we’re all a bit sadder. It’s alright. You get used to it.’
It really helped me, you know, to think, I don’t have to get over this. I’ll just always be a bit sadder than before. Bella liked it, too, when I told her. She said she’d seen it with the old folks at work; they’d all lost more loved ones than you could count on two hands and they all got sad when they talked about them, even ones they’d lost decades ago. Grief is unending, but it’s not life-ending. You keep on going. That’s the thing.
But this is different. How I feel now, it’s not grief. Or it is. I mean, what else do you call it? But it’s so deep and thick and black that when I think about it as unending I think, nah, nah, can’t do it. Not unending. Unsurvivable.
I’m not trying to be dramatic. For real, how do you survive it? How do you go on every day every day every day living your life, everything the same, except now you’re doing it from the middle of this swamp of black blood? How do you drink your morning tea, chat with a friend, pour some beers, have a laugh, have a root, whatever, all of it while pushing and kicking and trying not to drown in blackness? Every breath is hard, because you don’t know if it’ll let more of that black shit into you or if something worse’ll come spewing out. And everybody around you is clear of it, you know? The ones who know, they talk softly as though they understand that you’re already nearly mad from it, and they touch you gently on the elbow, the shoulder, the cheek as though they can actually see the fresh wounds being ripped into you every minute. And the ones who don’t know, they smash against your sides, make so much noise, laugh at everything and complain about nothing and you want to show them all your gashes, all the black shit oozing out, but you know that’ll make it worse because you know that really they do know, not about you in particular, but about the hell that happens on earth, the torture and rape and killing of sisters, they do know that, like you knew it back when you barely paused in your laughing talking complaining to say hmmm, how awful about some other sister.
And the worst thing, the unsurvivable thing, is understanding that there exist people who know in their flesh the truth of all this. They know it because they created it, created hell with their bare hands and then just kept on living, kept on as though they never stopped a world. When you understand that, understand that there are men who butchered a girl and then went home to sleep and have slept and woken, slept and woken all the days and nights since, and that they’ll continue on with those pictures in their heads, the memory pressed into their skin, the secret knowledge of the look on her face, the sound in her throat in her last moment . . . All this inside them and they don’t rip out their own hearts! There are men who can do that, remember doing that, know what it is to do that and still go on.
And there are men who don’t cause quite so much damage and so are all too happy to publicise the worst so they can look mild in comparison
, and men who do no violence and so don’t see how it is their problem that others do, and there are men who want us to know about the bad and the worse and the negligent so that we go to them for protection and there are men – my heart wants to say it’s most of them, but my heart is a battered, blood-soaked madwoman – who are pure and good of heart and intent and who want only to be our friends and brothers and lovers but we have no way of telling those from the others until it’s too late and that, perhaps, is the most unbearable thing of all.
But she chose for me to bear it and so I will try. I will try.
June
The story ran in Women’s Weekly and, as May predicted, the newspapers ran excerpts or reports of the article, many of them reprinting May’s photo of Chris on the floor at Bella’s apartment, and the TV networks clamoured to get an on-camera exclusive with Chris. But Chris was unavailable to them and to the police who wanted to capitalise on the renewed public interest and hold another press conference with Chris front and centre. Chris was unavailable to anyone except May and, to the extent that she would exchange greetings and eat the food she brought, Lisa.
‘I seem to have accidentally become her guardian,’ May told Max when he rang to congratulate her on the story. ‘I might as well move in with her, save the cost of the hotel room.’
‘That sounds like the worst idea yet in a string of terrible ideas. Look, May, the story is really fantastic. Even I shed a little tear, I admit, but it’s only a story, you –’
‘It’s not though! Aren’t you listening? This woman is falling apart. Has fallen apart. She won’t leave the house. I can’t just abandon her now that I’ve got my bloody magazine exclusive.’