The Shadow Girl Read online

  I quickly stuff my fingers back in my ears, and even though they’re wedged in there quite deep, I hear it kick off again. It sounds like Mum’s giving as good as she’s getting. And when she screams, ‘You’ll never hit me again, you bastard!’ with no response from my father, I figure that she’s somehow got the better of him. Which is pretty amazing because he’s twice her size and used to be a semi-professional boxer back in the old country. Then this weird silence falls over the house.

  I put down The Old Man and the Sea and creep out of my bedroom towards the stairs. I step silently over the creaking sixth step and tiptoe the rest of the way down. I peer into the kitchen and see that the floor around my father is completely covered in tomato sauce as if he and Mum have had a huge food fight. My father is leaning on the breakfast bar, like he’s just trying to steady himself for a minute. There’s something sticking out of his neck and he’s covered in tomato sauce or red cordial. He’s holding his mobile to his mouth and although his jaw is going up and down, up and down, there’s no sound coming out, only more tomato sauce. I don’t know where Mum is but I figure she’s going to be pretty angry with my father for making a mess of her nice new granite floor. Then he drops and now he’s thrashing around wildly on the ground.

  I know that Mum is going to be really mad with him and the mess that he’s making and she’ll probably have a couple of black eyes in the morning for telling him off, so I race back upstairs and go back to my book.

  Santiago desperately wants to get his marlin back to shore while it’s still got some value but the sharks keep coming in and are tearing it to pieces. There’s just the carcass and torn flesh left and the sharks are ripping ripping ripping. And downstairs in the kitchen my father is thrashing thrashing thrashing.

  DO YOU NEED A BREAK?

  No. I’m okay.

  I think I need one. So where was your mum?

  I don’t know. Maybe she was there. Curled up in a corner or something. Or maybe she went out the back for a smoke. She’d only do that when he wasn’t around. He’d tell her off when he caught her, of course. Said it was a disgusting habit and she should be ashamed of herself for smoking in front of ‘the girl’. He sucked down about eighty a day.

  So then what happened?

  Well, I was up in my room reading or pretending to and then about half an hour later someone came and started banging on the back door. And then I heard breaking glass and even though I had my fingers wedged in my ears again, I heard my uncle yelling, ‘What have you done, Bridgette? What the fuck have you done?’ And my aunt was screeching like a cat until suddenly she stopped and I figured that my uncle had covered her mouth with his hand or something else. Then I heard these two muffled bangs and my aunt was screaming again and this time it was a loud smacking sound that made her stop, a bit like that apple hitting the pylon again, and then this smoky smell wafted up the stairs.

  Was this in your creative writing piece?

  Not that bit, no.

  Sorry. Please carry on.

  It went quiet so I thought maybe they’d gone. But then I heard the sixth step creaking. Someone was coming up the stairs. Coming up the stairs for me. And I thought there’d be a couple more muffled bangs and the air would be smoky again. I stared at the door as it slowly opened and a face peered around the corner and even though her cheek was quite red she looked like an angel.

  She ran over and hugged me and told me that everything was going to be all right. Then she opened my wardrobe and pulled out my little suitcase. She was stuffing in clothes, although she didn’t have a clue which ones fitted me and which ones I hated. She told me to pack my backpack and that she would get my toothbrush, because I was going to be living with them for a while. I asked why but she started sobbing again and it must have hurt to wipe her tears away because the red mark on her face reached up to her eye, so I thought maybe that’s why she was crying.

  Once she’d packed my toothbrush, comb and my pink hair dryer, she sat down on my bed and held my hand. She called me princess and stroked my hair. She told me that Mum had accidentally hurt my father and that Uncle Tony had taken them to the hospital and that everything was going to be okay. But because my mum had done a really bad thing, she would be in trouble with the police and would probably have to go to jail, so when they come out of the hospital they were going back to [deleted from transcript] for a while. As soon as things had settled down they would send for me and we would all be together again.

  I put my head in my aunt’s lap as she stroked my hair. I asked her to tell me about Europe, about the old country, but she didn’t really know much because, like me and Mum, she was born here. I tried to imagine what it would be like living over there. I’d only ever seen it in glossy posters in the travel agent’s window or on late-night movies that I shouldn’t have been allowed to watch anyway. Maybe we’d have a glistening white house overlooking the ocean and my father would work as a fisherman, just like Santiago, only there wouldn’t be any sharks to rip his marlin to pieces. And Mum would go to fashion school or become a hair or nail expert and have her own salon and everyone would be mega friendly and I’d sit in the sun and read and do my homework in two languages and we would be really happy and Mum wouldn’t walk into doors any more.

  [Pause]

  So did your father go to the hospital?

  I doubt it. I’m just telling you how I saw it and what I was told. When you’re young and adults tell you stuff, you don’t think they’re lying because they’re always going on about how you should tell the truth, so you kind of assume that’s what they do too. And by the time you realise that adults are liars too – probably even bigger ones than kids – then it’s usually too late.

  But what makes you think they didn’t go to the hospital?

  Well, at the time everything was sort of jumbled up. Aunt Serena told me that Uncle Creepo had taken them to hospital. After we finished packing she carried my suitcase and school backpack down the stairs. When we got to the bottom, Uncle Creepo was sitting in the doorway, just kind of slumped there. He asked my aunt what she’d told me and she went through it again. She had her jacket covering my face so I couldn’t see into the kitchen, kind of like a mother swan tucking its kids beneath its wing, but I noticed that she changed her story from him having taken them to hospital to that he was going to take them to hospital. She had to say that because he was still there. My uncle said it was good, what she’d said, as if I wasn’t even there, so I kind of figured it out. Well, I did later.

  Uncle Creepo told my aunt that she had to take me home and that he would be there a while cleaning up and that he had some friends, ‘the boys’, who were coming over to help, and even though I was buried beneath Aunt Serena’s wing, I sort of laughed at this, at the image of Uncle Creepo cleaning up with, like, a bottle of Pine O Cleen and a mop, because he didn’t seem like the sort of husband to pitch in with the housework. More like one of those Neanderthals who sits there on the lounge watching TV with his feet on the coffee table while wifey vacuums around him.

  You know what? I’ve been saying their names. You can’t use this bit.

  It’s okay, I’ll change them when I have the transcript typed up.

  What to?

  I’ll just make up some names.

  Can I do it?

  It’s your story.

  [Pause]

  Who’s the biggest ever psycho in movies? Kind of like a wannabe gangster?

  [Pause]

  Probably Al Pacino’s character in Scarface. In my opinion.

  What was his name? In the movie, I mean.

  I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up.

  Use that then. Unless it’s something silly, like Bubbles or something?

  You don’t get many psychotic Cuban drug lords called Bubbles. I think it was just an ordinary name. Anthony or something. Tony. I’ll look it up. What abou
t the others?

  Make Mum Bridgette. I had a really great teacher in year four called Bridgette so I love that name. I think if I ever have a daughter I’ll call her Bridgette or Serena. Make my aunt Serena.

  And your father?

  I don’t want him to have a name. He doesn’t deserve one. I don’t want you to even have me calling him ‘Dad’. Just make him ‘my father’.

  You’re not making this easy.

  I bet it was harder to live it than write about it.

  Sorry.

  [Pause]

  What about the country? I can’t just make up a country. It’ll sound silly.

  That’s okay. I’ll just have it deleted from the transcripts.

  Thank you.

  So you went to live with Serena and Tony. Did they have kids of their own?

  No. I don’t think he wanted any. I think Aunt Serena would have liked them, but he was the boss of everything.

  So what was it like? Living with them?

  It was okay for the first few years but then it started.

  What do you mean?

  Well, in year eight, Uncle Creepo accidentally walked into the bathroom while I was having a shower. I mean, it really seemed like an accident because he apologised and left – there weren’t any locks on the doors in the house, probably so that my aunt couldn’t get away from him. But then he did it again the next day and the next day after that, and even though I quickly covered myself with my hands, the third time it happened he just stood there staring at me. His disgusting, pervy eyes roamed up and down my body. And he was grinning. The fourth time it happened I yelled at him to get out, but he said that it was his house and he could go anywhere he liked, including my bedroom, which almost made me vomit. The sixth time he did it I was wearing my swimming costume and I just smiled at him, a ‘tricked you’ smile, and he said that if I ever wore my swimming costume in the shower again, he would come in and rip it off me. Which wiped the smile off my face pretty quickly.

  By that time I’d started my period, but the rest of my body hadn’t really caught up yet. Compared to Aunt Serena’s watermelons I had a couple of fried eggs stuck to my chest, so I couldn’t see what the attraction was.

  In the end I stopped having showers and eventually the kids at school refused to sit next to me because I smelled like a wino. When my teacher sent a note home about my ‘personal hygiene choices’ – that was how she wrote it – I plucked up the courage and told my aunt. She got really angry and called me a liar and a home wrecker and a slut and accused me of trying to steal Uncle Tony away from her. She said it was a teenage fantasy and that I was making it all up. Anyway, she must have said something to him because the next day I noticed that she was wearing more makeup than usual and I thought, here we go again, and so Serena came up with a solution. She acted like it was all just a coincidence and said I should shower in the morning because my uncle left for work really early and he would be out of the house and so he couldn’t accidentally walk in on me. It was so obvious that I could have kicked myself. It was just that at home we always had showers at night, after school and stuff because, well, how dirty can you get in your sleep? The first time I did it I waited until I heard Creepo’s car backing out of the drive, then I raced into the bathroom. I was having a really nice hot, soapy shower and the door opened on me again. Only then I realised that it wasn’t him but her. It was Serena and she said, ‘Oh sorry,’ but as she was washing her hands I noticed that she was staring at me just like he did, only she was being a bit more subtle about it. She was checking me out. Not in a leso sort of way, more like checking out the competition. Like she really thought I’d want to steal Creepo away from her. And when I came home from school that day there was a brand new exercise bike in the lounge room as well as some Pilates DVDs and I knew that I had to get out of that place. Away from their psycho little world. Only I couldn’t. Things had settled down since Mum had hurt my father and they’d gone back to live in [deleted from transcript], but they still hadn’t sent for me. Aunt Serena and Uncle Creepo had sold our house, but they’d either sent the money over to my parents or kept it themselves.

  Wait a minute. How did you know that they sold the house?

  Because I used to walk past it every day on the way home from school. It was a longer way but I used to do it, sort of hoping that I’d see Mum round the back hanging out the washing or something. But one day there was a For Sale sign out the front and a few weeks after that there was a Sold sticker plastered across it. But then things started to get really dangerous with Uncle Creepo and I knew that I had to do something.

  [Pause]

  In what way?

  Hmm?

  How did things get dangerous?

  It was late. About eleven o’clock. I was reading in bed but I was tired and my head kept dropping into my book. So I turned off my bedside light and snuggled down into my doona. I thought they were still up. Watching a movie or something, because I could see that strip of faded light at the bottom of my door. Anyway, a bit later – it could have been ten minutes, it could have been an hour – I must have been in that place where you’re technically asleep but still partially awake because, and I don’t know how, I felt a presence in the room. I had it at my house later, with the ghosts and everything, but this felt solid.

  I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black. Even the faded strip of light at the bottom of the door was gone. But there was something there. Someone. And then I felt the pressure at the bottom of my bed and my heart was pounding against my rib cage. I was so terrified I couldn’t even speak, but he must have heard me breathing heavily because he said ‘Ssshhh’. And I was even more terrified because I knew that it wasn’t a ghost, or my aunt, it was him. It was Creepo. He told me to shush again and then he said that he was sorry. That he shouldn’t have kept coming into the bathroom while I was having a shower but he couldn’t stop himself because I was so beautiful and he couldn’t help it and that it was all my fault for tempting him and I was deliberately having a shower in the afternoon so that he would come in and check me out and all the usual bullshit that paedos go on about so that they can blame the victim. And like the idiot that I was I told him that it was okay. That I understood. That I was sorry.

  [Pause]

  I can’t even begin to imagine how terrified you were.

  I was practically pissing myself by that point, but I had to think. I mean really think because that was all I had going for me: my brains. I’d read enough books, so some of them must have seeped in. Some of the smarts, I mean.

  I didn’t scream. At first I couldn’t, and then I thought if I screamed, he could just cover my mouth with his hand, or worse, my pillow. And then he’d do stuff to me and kill me, or the other way round, and then he’d kill Aunt Serena too and bury us in the backyard or out in the forest where he’d stashed all our money.

  Suddenly he stands up. He asks me not to tell Aunt Serena about his visit. That it will just be our little secret. Then he bends down and kisses me goodnight; on my cheek, with his sandpaper face and his cheap bourbon breath. He tells me again that I’m beautiful, that I’m going to make some lucky man a spectacular wife one day and then with a whispered ‘goodnight, princess’ he slithers out of my room. I knew that he would be back the next night and the one after, pushing things a little further each time, and I knew that I had to do something.

  [Pause]

  So what did you do?

  I wrote that story.

  ‘GET IN, YOU LITTLE BITCH!’

  ‘Tony!’

  ‘How could she do that after all we’ve done for her? I open my home to her and this is how she repays me.’

  ‘She’s confused.’

  I climb into the back seat and try to stay quiet. At least he won’t come to my bedroom tonight. He hates me right now, which is how I want it.

  ‘She�
�ll have to go!’ he spits and the blood freezes in my veins. ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘But she’s happy there.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about her happiness. She’s not staying there. That Kelliher is a wily old dog. I don’t want him sniffing around our affairs.’

  I relax a bit when I realise that he’s talking about me leaving the school. Not shooting me and dumping me in a shallow grave out in the forest.

  ‘Where will she . . .?’

  ‘Take her up there tomorrow with a letter. Tell them that she’s going to a professional psychiatrist, or whatever they are. Say that she’s caused enough trouble and that she will be going to the local public school for the rest of the year.’ He pauses and glares at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘If they’ll have her.’

  After dinner I tell them I’m not feeling well and I’m going to bed. They don’t say goodnight. Too pissed at me. They’re in the lounge room murmuring. Discussing what’s to be done. I try to listen in around the corner, but I can’t make anything out.

  I go up to my room, lie on top of my bed and try to figure out what to do. The cold wakes me a few hours later. I can see my breath through the dim glow of streetlight stealing in through my curtains. I get up to turn off my bedroom light. I hear their bed creaking and she’s gasping his name. He’ll leave me alone tonight. Maybe this is Aunt Serena’s way of protecting me. Or maybe she’s protecting herself.

  I crawl into bed and pull the covers up to my eyes. Their bed eventually stops creaking and the strip of light beneath my door is illuminated. There’s someone in the bathroom. I hope it’s her. But then I hear the double flush and I know that it’s not. It’s him. He always double-flushes.