I fill each word with all the gunk inside me, until my pain and anger bleeds into each note.
‘The moon will always know his crimes,
But the stars abandoned me.
And you were nowhere to be found
Against the maple tree.
Why do we have to grow on up?
Why do we grow at all?
Oh, I wish that we could all have
Just stayed so very small.’
The song comes to an end before I’m ready. The last stanza physically burns in my chest, but I push through it.
‘I wish we could have stayed so safe and small . . .’
In the heaving silence that follows the last note, comes what I most feared. What I’ve been pushing down all week. Bitter, hot tears. First one, then another and another sliding down my cheeks.
I unhook Robbie’s guitar, and thrust it at him before rushing into the hall. Lock myself in the bathroom, press my back against the hollow sliding door, the only sanctuary in this house, and let my chest heave with wracking sobs.
I’m not crying about Joey. And what he did. Or losing my virginity. Or the cold possibility of pregnancy. It’s about fear, the kind whose fangs are so deep inside me I don’t know how to prise them out. It’s about craving the easy confidence I see in Robbie, but knowing I’m doomed to a life of unrealised potential and frustrated dreams like Mum. You need more than raw talent, more than polished mastery to make it through.
Mum’s told me for years that to succeed in life and in music you need resilience. Bravado.
You had it, I want to say to Mum. I know you still have it. Teach me. Please teach me.
I gulp deep breaths of air, pat my face with water from the basin until it’s no longer swollen, only red. There are low voices in the living room, but I dare not go out. I can’t face them.
A short time later, I hear the throb of an engine and tyres on the bitumen.
There’s a knock on the door to the bathroom. I stare at myself in horror.
‘Yeah?’ I call out.
‘Ruby?’ Mum slides the door open. ‘I asked Robbie to leave.’
‘Okay.’ I fold my arms across my chest. I feel violated by my own song. My voice said too much.
‘Rube, what’s been going on?’ she asks gently.
‘Nothing.’
‘That wasn’t nothing. And what you asked me the other night, about feeling threatened, that wasn’t nothing either . . . what’s going on with my precious girl?’
I can’t look Mum in the eyes because the shame is burning up inside me. How could I have let this happen, any of it? She won’t understand. There were many men on many nights for her, but she sounded so in charge of it all.
‘Did it hurt?’ she says, kindly.
I nod. Dumb tears fall, one after another at my feet.
Mum’s breathing grows raspy. ‘He didn’t ask?’
I look up at her and I can see rage in her eyes.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ I say. Why am I making excuses for him? It was exactly like that. ‘I didn’t say no.’
‘Did you want to say no?’
I nod. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t you be sorry.’
‘It happened so fast. I wasn’t planning it.’
‘Who?’ Mum’s voice is a murderous kind of calm I’ve never heard before. ‘Who was it?’
She’s scaring me. I’m afraid to go through it all again, and I’m afraid she’ll make me. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, it matters. Tomorrow we’ll go to the police. Not in Willaware – we’ll go to Port Macquarie. They’ll have a child protection unit. Specialists trained to –’
‘No, no, Mum. Please don’t. I didn’t want to tell you because I can’t go over and over it. And they won’t believe me. I have no proof. Please.’
Mum inhales and holds her breath. ‘Ruby, I won’t make you do anything. But I need to know exactly what happened and with who.’
I study her for confirmation that it’s true. That she won’t try to make me do something that feels impossible.
‘Ruby, it’s your body. These are your choices.’
I rub my eyes. ‘It was Joey Milano.’
‘Joey?’ She baulks. ‘That lanky kid you had a crush on?’
The humiliation floods me. I nod.
‘Tell me you’re not pregnant.’
There’s no way she needs to worry about anything else. I shake my head. It’s not really an answer, but she seems to accept it.
‘That little prick –’
‘Mum . . . they’re all talking about me. I feel like I can’t escape it.’
Mum has a predatory look in her eye. She reaches her arms out to me. I lean down and she holds me tight. Her spirit is fearsome and I know, in that moment, regardless of how I deal with this, Mum has my back.
The kindest thing one human being can do for another is to embrace them at their weakest, scoop them into their arms and hold them. Which is exactly what Mum does.
‘We’ll get through this, sweet girl,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘Let people talk. What they think of you isn’t your responsibility. Just don’t let them make you feel ashamed. Your worth is your own and you don’t negotiate that with anyone.’
I have to tell her the rest. I’ve gone this far.
‘I made a fool of myself at the party, Mum. I can’t hide from that. I sang to him – in front of the whole party. I got up and sang –’
Mum stiffens in her chair.
‘And one of the guys filmed it and posted it to YouTube. Me, singing.’
‘You sang?’ She doesn’t sound angry now. She sounds kind of proud.
‘Yes, it’s made everything worse –’
‘Rube,’ she says. ‘What you did out there, just now . . .’ she points to the living room. ‘Robbie’s in a bit of shock. He expected you might be good. He just didn’t expect you to be brilliant. Your voice could never make anything worse.’
‘But I cried out there. You never do that.’
‘Not in front of you,’ she says. ‘But inside, I ache. It’s what happens when the music means something. It’s what happens to the best musicians,’ she whispers fiercely. ‘When the music burrows to a depth beyond words, you can’t run from it.’
But we’re in Nan’s bathroom. In her tiny house in the depths of the forest. Where Mum was born. The place she ran away from to begin with. The place she ran back to afterwards. Running is exactly what Mum does.
I don’t say it out loud, but Mum can see it in my face.
She eyes me warily. ‘You think running’s what I do.’
‘You did what you had to,’ I say. ‘But now we could run to something. Something amazing . . . If you said yes to the Entertainment Centre we could get away from Cooper’s Creek for a bit. Please say yes, Mum. Please think about it.’
But a light has flickered shut inside her. She rests one hand on my cheek. Dries my tears with a swipe of her thumb.
‘You don’t understand what it’s like to go public, Rube. People dissect your secrets and open your wounds. It’s not what we need. Absolutely not what you need after this. You need a safe place. Somewhere you can heal.’
Mum squeezes me tight one last time. ‘Now, let me do something I haven’t done for a long time.’
After tucking me into bed, Mum begins to play, and I smile as if at an old friend. It’s Beethoven. Beethoven is rocking me off to sleep again.
Some people use food as medicine, some use herbs, some use pharmaceutical drugs. Mum uses music. The purest remedy for a wounded soul.
I lay low at school. It seems to help. Head down during class, blocking out the boys. Lunch breaks in the art room with Alex. I’m barely more than a shadow, and few people pay attention to shadows. Even home is starting to feel like a sanctuary again now that Mum knows what happened.
I’m used to being completely honest with Mum, just like she is with me. It’s a relief to have it out. But a few days later when I round the corner, the orange c
ar is out the front again. And Robbie is sitting on our lounge. They’re both drinking wine. I try to palm them off and head to my room, but Mum asks me to join them on the deck.
I avoid Robbie’s eyes and hit the kettle on my way to dump my bag in my room. When I take a seat outside, I cup my tea in both hands and make small talk. I tell Mum about Alex’s portrait of Grandad, and we all pretend my outburst didn’t happen. But after a while, a silence falls over the table, and I am acutely aware of the hot breeze feathering my hair, the squawk of an indignant bird in the forest. Acutely aware that I don’t know how to break silences.
‘That song of yours was pretty impressive, Ruby,’ Robbie says quietly. ‘Have you written a lot of songs?’
I cup my mug tighter. ‘A few.’
Only around a hundred.
‘Ever thought of recording some of them? I could maybe hook you up –’
A thrill of possibility bubbles up inside me. I look at Mum.
‘Leave it, Robbie. She’s not ready,’ she says.
‘She sounds ready. And it’s not just the voice. She’s got the look.’ He leans forward. ‘With that hair, she’d be a stand out.’
Uh-oh. He just went there.
‘She’s worth more than her looks.’ Mum’s voice is crisp.
‘Course she is,’ he says, ‘but be real, Celeste. Talent can get you so far . . . then you have to have a hook. Something that makes you different from all the others. Ruby’s got spunk. She’s absolutely gorgeous. She’s a stand out. You had that look –’
‘I had talent,’ Mum snaps. ‘Which is all any woman should need.’
He goes to say something, then stops.
‘What would you have her do, Robbie? Go to Sonic Sound, line up with millions of other hopefuls, and pray to God she’s the one they pick up?’
I flinch. That’s exactly what I’ve always dreamt of. Being discovered.
‘I know the right people,’ Robbie says.
‘To what end? So she can be turned into some cardboard cut-out for someone else’s lyrics? Video clips with her flouncing around, selling her body in the hope that it’ll sell her music? You know how it works. How they get pimped out and tossed aside. It’s not art,’ she spits out. ‘It’s prostitution.’ She turns to me. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t allow it, Rube.’
‘You know I’d do the right thing by her,’ Robbie says. ‘And a voice like hers. Nurtured by you . . . You can’t lock her away forever like some Rapunzel in the forest.’
Mum scoffs. ‘Don’t talk to me about fairytales, Robbie Vetter.’
He looks away then, a flash of something like pain across his face, but he sets his jaw.
They’re debating my future as if I have no say in it, no dreams, no will of my own. Like I’m something to dissect and share between them.
‘Mum, I think I want to do this.’ I sound so certain that I almost convince myself.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she says. Then changes the topic.
Discussion over.
When it hits eleven o’clock, I drag myself from the music, from Mum and Robbie, to my bedroom.
I lie in my bed, the fan on full speed, listening to the melody from the duet in my living room. The first time it haunted me, but tonight it’s familiar and it soothes my soul. How much can change so quickly. For the worst, but sometimes for the best. There is courage in that.
I pull my phone out of my bag. I haven’t checked it since I got home. I’m relieved to see no new messages. No new horrors.
When I wake, my lamp’s still on, and I roll over to flick it off. Through the hot soupy darkness, come muffled voices. Robbie’s and Mum’s. I pull my phone off my bedside table, squint at it. Past two a.m. Why is Robbie still here?
The music has stopped. And the voices become clearer as my mind sharpens. A rise and fall, sharp and soft. An argument. My skin prickles. Really I know nothing about Robbie – who he is or what he’s capable of. Mum may be fearsome in spirit, but she’s small and defenceless in body.
‘. . . get this straight,’ Robbie says. ‘. . . been pissed with me . . . these years?’
Mum doesn’t respond.
‘. . . something I didn’t even know about?’
More silence. Should I go out there?
I creep out of bed and to the door. I try to catch hold of words, but my heart is pounding so hard in my ears, I can’t hear properly.
‘I should be the one that’s . . . never gave me a choice. How am I supposed to feel about that?’
‘You made your choice. It was the road.’ Mum’s voice sounds firm, but I can hear the wobble in it. ‘You made that choice very clear.’
‘So you were free to make yours?’ he says.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Without checking in . . .’
‘Yes.’ Mum’s voice is so definite, there’s not a flicker of room to move within it.
‘Fuck.’
More silence.
‘Celeste, you’re even harder than you used to be. Fuck you for not giving me a choice.’
‘You think I chose all this?’
‘I’m done here,’ Robbie says calmly. ‘Done. Tell Ruby . . . forget it, tell her nothing.’
Goosebumps now. The full length of my arms. I’ve never heard anyone speak to Mum this way.
I don’t hear anything more apart from the thudding of my heart until the screen door bangs against the house and he revs the engine out front.
His tyres slip as he tears away from the house.
I wait for Mum’s response. Nothing comes. Then the smash of a glass, a curse.
Should I go to her? Ask what that was about?
I desperately want to know. What was her connection to Robbie? They were in the same band, but were they more than that? Did she ever sleep with him? And when?
I sit up. Would she even want to talk to me about it?
The squeak of wheels on the lino moves down the hall, past my room and into hers.
I stand there a moment, debating. Mum is a private person. She won’t want me prying. So I slink back to bed and press my ear to our common wall.
If I hear her crying, I’ll go in. I did hear her cry once after Nan died, at night in her room when she thought I was asleep. It was only a quiet, muffled noise, but it’s one I’ll never forget.
Because Mum doesn’t cry.
Tonight, there is no soft crying, no ragged breathing. Just the light groan of springs as she lifts herself into bed. I wait a while before wriggling back under my covers, mind churning. At some point, though, I must fall asleep because the next thing I know, I’m on my back with a blade of sunlight piercing my eyes through my thin curtains.
I shower, get dressed, brush my hair and make breakfast, but I don’t feel hungry. My breakfast curdles in my stomach as I sweep up the broken glass lying in shards on the floor. Who exactly was Robbie to Mum? If they have a history, why has she never told me? The hands of the clock continue to turn, and Mum doesn’t emerge from the cave of her room.
For a brief moment, I consider barging in, waking Mum from her sleep-in and throwing all my questions at her. But I have enough of my own secrets. There’s no space in my mind for hers. Instead, I knock timidly on her door. When there’s no answer, I open it a crack and peer into her dim room.
Mum barely makes a hump beneath the sheets, but I can hear her breathing, long and regular. Last night has exhausted her. I ease her door shut, grab my bag and lock the front door behind me.
I’m out of fuel money, so I walk to the bus. The day is heating up. The smell of drying eucalyptus rises out of the forest and I pass a brown snake curled up on the edge of the tar road, warming its belly. It doesn’t slither away as I pass, but a bearded dragon further along scuttles into the crunchy underbrush. The reptiles are the only ones enjoying the heat. I haven’t seen a single bird. It’s already too hot for them. In sympathy, a trickle of sweat runs down my ribs.
The bus pulls in off the main road. Its doors hiss open and a cool burst of aircon dr
ifts out. The driver greets me with a tired nod at my bus pass. There’s only one other person on board, an eighth grader who pays me no attention. I find a seat in the middle, making sure I sit on the outside edge, putting my bag on the window seat. I’m learning to live in guarded ways – a girl of the real world. Maybe it’s not a bad thing.
The bus fills slowly, but I don’t move my bag. As we near the last stop, I see Lukas is there, standing alone.
Coldness creeps through me. It spreads to my hands, my legs, turning my entire body to ice.
I sit on my hands to hide the trembling.
Lukas flashes his pass to the driver. This time, I refuse to close my eyes. If I was brave enough to catch the bus, I’m brave enough to look at him.
Our eyes lock as he walks up the aisle towards me.
He edges into the seat behind me and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle like they’re gauging his distance.
I don’t turn around.
‘So, who’s your Irish guy?’ he says.
I know better than to tell him Erik’s not my Irish guy so I ignore the question.
‘Does he know you did Joey?’ he says.
‘That’s actually nobody’s business,’ I say quietly.
Then his fingers are in my hair. ‘I love your hair. The colour.’
My heart is pounding a warning at me. I want to tell him to get his hands off me, but I’m afraid of his edges. How quickly he turns.
The bus rolls to a stop at school, and I reach for my bag.
Lukas’s hand moves for my shoulder, holding me a moment, stopping me from leaving. I wonder if he can feel my body trembling. I hope the shaking isn’t in my voice.
I feel it rise inside me then, something hot and furious, bubbling like lava.
Shaking him off, I stand up to face him. ‘Lukas, never touch me again,’ I say.
No compromise. No social politeness. No nice girl.
I’m loud enough that the bus driver turns and stares at Lukas.
Though she be but little, Shakespeare wrote, she is fierce. And she can be.
In a quieter voice I say, ‘I may have been stupid enough to want Joey, but I never wanted you. You disgust me. You all do.’
Then I exit the bus as fast as I can.
Ruby Tuesday Page 13
