The Dark Part of Me (2 page)

We walked fast along Brunswick, past Super Deluxe and the Press Club, not holding hands. A bit further on and we turned down Harcourt, past the hookers strutting back and forth outside the
24-hour Laundromat – some trannies, some straight, all in heels, sickly-skinned under the fluoro. Jed’s bedsit was a few doors down, along an alley on the ground floor. We went in and
he switched on the light. A naked bulb illuminated: one brown-vinyl armchair, a banged-up telly, various half-eaten containers of take-away food (blowflies hovering above) and, underneath the
window, a single blue-striped mattress. What the fuck was I thinking?

‘You at uni?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, snapping off the light, ‘I’m a poet.’

He took me by the hand and led me towards the bare mattress.

‘Let’s fuck,’ he said, a poet of few words, and started tugging off my clothes. He fumbled with the hooks on my bra but I flinched at the touch of his fingers.

‘What’s the problem?’ he said.

‘Don’t.’ The problem was he wasn’t Scott.

‘But you smell so good.’ He kept on like a rodent, snorting and sniffing around me, his arms pale, weedy sticks. ‘You said you wanted to screw.’ Next thing, he was naked,
skinny as a monkey, clambering all over me, sucking hard on my neck. It was dark but I could see his penis as he squirmed back and forth across a thin blade of streetlight. It was small and
mottled, crinkly-crumply uncircumcised, like an old man’s, not like Scott’s thick, rounded tip, buffed and shiny-smooth.

‘Stop! Just stop! Get off me!’

I ran away. I couldn’t do it. Scott was in my blood and I couldn’t get him out. I wasn’t like Trish. I lacked the ‘casual rooting’ gene.

A bellow came from inside the shop. ‘Trisha!’

‘Fuck. Slob’s here,’ Trish said.

‘Shit.’ I jumped up, stubbing out the joint and lobbing the scotch glass into the skip.

Slob (real name Bob) was Trish’s uncle. Hairy, foul-mouthed and always reeking of Kouros, he’d made a packet out of his poxy coffee shop franchises which’d sprouted like killer
weeds all over the western suburbs. ‘We Greeks,’ he’d say, puffing on a fat cigar, ‘are as good at making money as we are at making sex.’

‘Trisha!’ Slob roared, again. ‘Get your arse out here!’

‘Just stick your tits out,’ said Trish. ‘He loves your tits.’

We sauntered inside; Trish in front, me behind.

Red-faced and cursing, Slob was blustering around making milkshakes for a fresh pack of beardies queued at the counter. He went berko at Trish but except for a pervo squiz at my boobs, said
nothing to me.

Mum blamed Scott for me dropping out of uni. She reckoned that if I hadn’t met him, I’d still be studying law, not wasting my life at Temptations. He was a man, she
used to say, and deep down all men were rotten. I’d argue that they weren’t all drunk losers like Dad but she wouldn’t have it. When Scott went overseas, she said he’d
pulled a fast one. When he broke up with me over the phone, she said I told you so. She was right, but at the time I swore she was just bitter.

The night I first met Scott, I was sixteen. Mum had shouted me to Valentine’s all-you-can-eat food buffet for finishing my final school exams. We hardly ever went out for dinner –
Chinese take-away was our usual Friday night treat – but Mum had a two-for-one voucher which she wanted to use. We’d driven past Valentine’s a million times on the expressway
(there was this huge, pink, inflatable heart strung up outside to attract passing traffic) but never been in. It was hardly my idea of a fun night out but Mum thought she was onto a winner. We went
early to avoid the crowds but the joint was still packed. Compared with the rest of them in Bonds singlets and stubbie shorts, we were totally overdressed, especially Mum, who was decked out in one
of her eighties pastel suits plus heels. I hated the place and the way everyone gawped at us as we walked to our table. Worse though, as soon as we sat down with our first round from the buffet,
Mum went off on one of her rants.

‘You can be anything you want,’ she said, working a Wet-One into a lather, ‘so long as you don’t stuff it up.’ She waved the packet at me. ‘Go on. Give your
hands a little wipe.’

‘No.’ I was fed up with her treating me like a five-year-old.

‘Please. Do it for me.’ She shook a Wet-One in my face. ‘You’ll be using your fingers.’ She nodded at my plate of calamari rings.

It was so humiliating the way she brought out her hand-wipes supply in public but I’d learnt, over the years, that it was a hell of a lot easier to go along with it than resist. I snatched
one off her, gave my mitts a half-hearted pat. Mum kept yabbering, as a fat teenage boy walked past with a wobbling tower of soft-serve, showered in hundreds and thousands and drenched in
strawberry syrup.

‘Rosemary, are you listening to me?’

‘What?’

I willed fat-boy to stack it, for the tower of soft-serve to go all down the front of his big fat-boy belly, but he plonked the dessert down safe on the table.

‘There’s only one thing that will stand in your way.’ Mum was fishing around for an anchovy on her plate. ‘Do you know what that is, Rosemary?’

‘Mum, not now, OK? I’ve heard this all before.’

‘No, you listen to me. I know what I’m talking about.’ She pointed her fork at me, the hairy slug quivering on the end. ‘Men, Rosemary, once you get to university
they’ll be everywhere. Hanging around you like a bad smell. Wanting to… ’ She bent over our plates and whispered, ‘get in your undies’, her frosted apricot lips
spitting out the words.

‘Mum!’

The fat-boy and his no-neck family turned their heads our way. Mum smiled and waved back at them. The no-neck mother paused mid-crumbed-prawn and leant over.

‘I just love your suit. Where’d you get it?’

‘DJ’s half-yearly clearance.’ Mum preened in her pistachio candy-stripe. ‘Half-price.’

‘No, really?’ the no-neck gushed. ‘Well, the colour really suits you.’

I stared out the window at the traffic bumping along Moggill Road, wishing that I was far, far away, in some more exotic part of the world.

‘What a lovely lady.’ Mum popped the anchovy into her mouth and chewed. ‘Now, where was I? Oh, that’s right. Men. You’ve got to be careful. They’ll get you
pregnant or worse, infect you for life with some dreadful… ’

Mum was always going on about germs and diseases and other nasties, those microby blighters you can only see under a supersonic microscope, that breed on toilet seats and door handles and dirty
money. But the germs she hated most were the ones that feasted on dead bodies. Every day she used to study the funeral notices in the paper so she could work out what time a hearse would be on the
road and make sure we avoided it. Once, when I was about seven or eight, we were driving back from Shoppingtown, the boot packed with the week’s groceries, when a huge, black hearse slid past
in the other direction. I could see the coffin inside, shiny walnut covered in white lilies. It gave me a chill just thinking about the cold dead body, laid out stiff as a pencil in its Sunday
best. Mum went all silent and when we got home she chucked all the groceries straight into the wheelie bin. She dragged me down the side of the house to the backyard and ordered me to strip off my
favourite frilly dress.

‘But it’s not dirty, Mummy,’ I said, hands on hips, stamping my foot.

‘It’s contaminated.’ Mum stepped towards me, arms outstretched. I backed up towards the fence.

‘What’s contaminated?’

‘It’s got germs.’

‘Where?’ I lifted up my skirt and inspected the soft, pink fabric at close range.

‘You can’t see them but they’re there.’

‘Did the germs come from the dead person?’

‘I’m losing my patience with you, Rosemary.’

‘Are dead person germs worse than normal dirt germs?’

‘Don’t upset me like this.’ She rubbed at her face. ‘It’s all your father’s fault.’ She lunged at me and yanked the dress off over my head. I screamed
but she told me to be quiet in case the neighbours came snooping over the fence. She took off my undies and even my sparkly, red Dorothy shoes. She stripped off her clothes, too, and tossed them on
top of mine so there was a little pile on the grass near the shallow end of the pool. Mum ran towards the house and I ran after her, giggling at the sight of her naked in the yard. Inside, she
dragged me to the bathroom and ran a boiling shower.

‘But it’s too hot,’ I complained.

‘Stand still while I scrub you.’

‘You’re hurting me,’ I sobbed, more for the thought of my favourite dress lying on the lawn.

‘It’s the only way to get rid of them.’

After the shower, Mum dressed me in around-the-house clothes and sat me down in front of my
Jetsons
video while she went back outside in an old terry-towelling dressing gown and a pair
of yellow rubber gloves. Curious, I wandered over to the sliding glass doors and looked out. Mum was circling the pile, splashing the contaminated clothes with methylated spirits from an old tin of
Dad’s. Next, she pulled something from the pocket of her dressing gown and fumbled with it, head bowed, shoulders hunched. The clothes burst with a whomp into multi-coloured flames. Crying
for my frilly dress, I tried to get out to rescue it, but Mum’d locked the door from the outside. As she stood staring into the pink and blue and orange tongues of fire eating away the
clothes, I thought at least she’d forgotten about my Dorothy shoes and thanked Our Father Who Art in Heaven, but then, as if reading my mind, she swooped down and picked them up. I hammered
at the glass but she’d already tossed them on the pyre, the red sparkles spangling bright as jewels for a split-second before melting into goo. I never hated Mum more than at that moment. And
then, as if I’d summoned the fire to punish her, the hem of her dressing gown caught a light. She sprang back, screaming. From inside, I watched, bug-eyed, mesmerized by the spectacle.
Hopping mad as a rabbit on the scorched grass, she flapped at the flames licking up the side of her gown. With a shriek, she leapt into the pool, surfacing a few seconds later, hair plastered all
over her face. She dog-paddled to the edge and climbed out, sodden, shreds of charred terry-towelling hanging off her. There’s still a brown patch where the grass doesn’t grow and we
joke about it now – the day Mum set herself on fire – even though, for a long time, it and other germ-related incidents were strictly taboo.

But that late October evening at Valentine’s, Mum was focused on a whole new family of germs. Not dead ones, sex ones. ‘STDs. Herpes. Gonorrhoea. Chlamydia. Or those warts, big as
grapes, that you have to get burnt off with a laser beam.’

‘Shut up, Mum. People are listening.’ She was so embarrassing to be with in public.

‘I don’t care,’ she said, sliding a smooth lozenge of icecream back onto her spoon.

‘I hate the way you do that,’ I said. ‘It’s so disgusting.’

‘What?’

‘Regurgitating your ice-cream like that.’

She closed her eyes and sucked the ice-cream back through her lips.

‘You know, I’m really sick of your germ thing,’ I shot.

Her eyes flashed open. ‘This isn’t about germs, Rosemary, this is about your future.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I’m serious.’ She reached across the table but I slipped my hands onto my lap.

‘You still treat me like a child. I’m nearly seventeen, Mum. Besides, you’re hardly an expert on sex.’

‘And you are?’ She smirked because she knew I was still a virgin. I’d never even had a boyfriend.

I lie in bed, Valentine’s spaghetti and wedges and soft-serve jumbling around in my belly like clothes in a washing machine. My door is open wide for signs that Mum has
gone to bed. I catch the flush of the toilet, the snap of the light switch, the same heavy sigh she makes each night when her head, full of germy worries, hits the pillow. Tonight, I’m going
to go clubbing like the cool girls at school. That’ll teach her. That’ll show her. I think about ringing Hollie, my best friend, and getting her to come with me. But just once, I want
to do something on my own. Something bad. Something Mum wouldn’t like me doing.

For a few seconds, I let the darkness swim around me, filling out the corners of my room, settling in the tiny crevices along my body. Geckoes squeak and chirp from the bricks. Holding my
breath, I flick on the bedside lamp, slip out of bed and dart across the room. Softly, I shut the door.

I watch my giant shadow self undressing against the wall; the arch of my back, the point of my left nipple like a huge cherry on a fantasy cupcake, my hair cascading down my back. I brush my
fingers lightly across the stomach of the giant shadow me, then touch the real me. Ring-a-ring-a-rosie round and round my belly-button until I feel nice.

It’s ten-thirty on the digital. Fifteen minutes till the bus comes. From my top drawer, I pluck a clean pair of Bonds undies, pull them on with a snap. Drown myself in Safari. Wiggle into
my new denim mini. On top I wear a low-cut black sparkly with lacy choker. In the mirror, I smear foundation, thick on my freckles and the scar above my right eyebrow. Then, for my eyes, smudgy
kohl with Japanese tails out the sides, waterproof Maybelline on my lashes, top and bottom, no gluggies. Eight flaps over on the digital. Seven minutes till the bus. One last squiz in the cheval. I
look good. Tarty-sexy with my legs all fake-tanned and skinny. On with the lippy getting the bow just right, bleed them together, tissue in between, mwah, mwah. I wink at me in the mirror and the
big shadowy me on the wall. A green flash of bad-girl eye.