Nine Letters Long

by J. C. Burke

Seb darts out and around the corner again. Paris’s fingers still grip Evie’s arm.

  He waves at them to follow. ‘It’s safe,’ he beckons. ‘The car’s there but he’s not in it. Does he have a key, Paris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s bolt.’

  Over the road, down the adjoining street and into the park, they flee. Evie and Seb hold Paris’s hands. She’s frozen on them again. Her feet hardly touch the ground. It’s like they’re carrying a statue, petrified and lifeless. But Evie feels strong. Strong enough to carry her if she has to. Her legs bound out from the hip sockets, her breath in rhythm with each stride, the thoughts flying through her mind. She is running to her freedom and yet she senses she is also running into the darkest part yet.

  A taxi appears on the street that runs parallel with the park. Evie drops Paris’s hand and charges up to the footpath. It’s got to see her. It’s got to hear her. ‘Stop! Stop!’ She screeches and waves, rushing onto the road, almost leaping onto its bonnet.

  The driver slams on the brakes. ‘Hey,’ he yells. ‘Watch it, girly. You could’ve got yourself killed.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ Evie says as she climbs in, holding the door open for Seb and Paris. ‘Um. Garrison Road, please.’

  Seb helps Paris into the car. Her skin is white and waxy. Although Evie understands terror, she knows she doesn’t understand the sort of terror Paris Cuza is feeling inside. So she holds Paris’s hand and lets the silence speak.

  ‘Seb?’

  ‘I know,’ he says to Evie.

  They are standing out the front of her house. ‘It’s better I go. I don’t know what you’re going to find in that diary. But I’m betting it’s not good.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m scared. Scared for Paris. I don’t know what this’ll mean for her. I hope I’ve done the right thing, Seb.’

  ‘Of course you have.’ He nods towards Paris and says, ‘You better take her in. She looks like she’s only just keeping it together.’

  ‘Thanks, Seb.’

  They wrap their arms around each other and stay like that, not moving, not speaking. Evie closes her eyes, breathing in the sweat on his neck.

  ‘I could stay like this forever,’ she finally whispers.

  ‘Mmmm,’ he replies.

  The minute Evie opens the door her mother calls, ‘Evie? Evie, is that you?’ Her feet patter down the stairs. When she sees Paris, she stops.

  ‘Oh? Hello.’ Robin looks at her daughter.

  ‘Mum,’ Evie begins. ‘Mum, this is Paris. Paris Cuza, Nora’s daughter.’

  ‘Paris? Hello.’ Again she glances at Evie. ‘Does anyone know … you’re … here?’

  Paris shakes her head.

  ‘Evie …’ her mum begins.

  ‘Mum, um, can I talk to you?’ Then, turning to Paris, she says, ‘Come and sit down in the lounge room.’ Paris follows her. ‘It’s cool in there. I’ll get you something to drink. I just, well, I better talk to Mum.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she mumbles, ‘You know, my mother doesn’t really speak to me.’

  ‘Just, just stay here for a sec. Okay?’

  As Evie walks out of the lounge-room, she turns to say something to Paris like ‘It’ll be all right,’ but stops herself. The sight of Paris, her tiny frame sunken into the couch, her eyes darting around the room like a frightened animal, makes Evie want to cry. Next to this girl’s sorrow, her words are useless.

  In the kitchen, Robin is putting ice in two glasses. ‘Evie, what’s going on? What the hell is she doing here? Isn’t her mother looking for her? We need to call her, tell her she’s safe and that –’

  ‘She’s not safe,’ Evie cuts in. ‘That’s why she’s here.’

  ‘What? What do you –’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure,’ Evie tells her. ‘But I think, I think …’ She hesitates, wondering how to say this bit. ‘I think someone’s been doing … bad stuff to her. Like what they did to … Caz.’

  ‘Who? Who, Evie? What are you –’

  ‘That man, Ingy. He’s been doing those … things.’

  ‘Things? What things?’ Robin walks around the counter to where Evie is leaning. ‘Evie, are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?’

  Evie nods.

  ‘But how do you –’

  Evie lifts her shoulders. The words are too hard to say.

  ‘It’s a big call, Evie. Are you –’

  ‘There’s a diary, Mum. It’s all in there. Everything I felt will be in Caz’s words. I just know that.’ The fear and apprehension swell in Evie’s throat. They swallow her words and try to trap her voice. ‘But will you help me … look … at it? I … I can’t do … this bit without you, Mum. Please? I’m scared.’

  With her mother’s arm wrapped around her, they walk into the lounge room. Paris is reading the diary. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. When she looks up at them, her eyes seem void of life. Evie feels her mother’s hand grip the back of her T-shirt. ‘Oh, Evie,’ she murmurs.

  ‘I think …’ Paris holds the diary out to them. Her voice is so soft it’s hard to hear what she’s saying. ‘I … think you should … have a look. You can … both look. It’s … it’s all there. Just … just like she told me it would be.’

  Evie takes the diary and gives it to her mother who is frowning and shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Go on, Mum,’ she whispers. Robin’s fingers pick at the pages. It opens on the third of March. The writing is so tiny they have to lean down to read it.

  March 3rd. I couldn’t eat Mamma’s chicken tonight. It made me spew. It smells of him. His breath. His skin. I told her I’ve got a tummy bug. I’m so tired. I want to sleep forever.

  March 25th. Tired. Asthma again last night. Not even my puffers seem to help. At least it got me out of PE again. The bruises on my thighs are bad. Got to find the right concealer. I’m aching everywhere.

  June 7th. I want to tell Mum. I’m scared for Paris. I saw him looking at her tonight. She’s so innocent. She still sits on his lap and laughs at his jokes. Just like I used to. I’ve got to do something. Ingy said he’ll stay with her when Mum and I go to the ballet next week. I want to crawl into a dark hole and never come out. Every day I pray that Uncle Cosmin will come back.

  They flick over to the next week’s entries.

  June 15th. Mum’s gone spazzo. She told me I’m disgusting and I’m sick in the head. I’m sure I heard her mutter ‘curva’ under her breath. I just said that Ingy looks at me all the time. I know I need to say more. He tells me if I say anything to her he’ll bankrupt her and close the business. I hate him so much. I want him to die. I’m not a slut.

  June 18th. Not safe. Gotta start hiding this diary!

  June 29th. Where are my periods???????? He took us out for his birthday tonight. I wouldn’t sign his birthday card. Mum slapped me across the face. He said we are his family and that without him we’d have nothing. Then she started to cry and said I had no idea what it was like to escape one’s country and live in a filthy camp, hungry and dirty for years on end. I know all this! She tells me all the time but does she know I have five love-bites on my tummy and that I’m too scared to sleep.

  July 11th. Mum’s had parades the last three nights. I keep saying I want to help but then she starts nagging about study. I’m scared Paris can hear him as he grunts and groans. I’m going to write to Uncle Cosmin – he’ll know what to do and then I’ll tell Mum.

  July 16th. I tried to tell Mum again. She won’t listen. She said I was evil and that we wouldn’t have a life if it wasn’t for Ingy. I miss Dad, I miss Uncle Cosmin. When they were around everything was okay. My periods are nearly 4 weeks late. I’m going to stay at Dana’s again this weekend. I don’t seem to get asthma there.

  July 23rd. I’m more than a month overdue now. Two asthma attacks this week. Spent last night in hospital. Medicine making me spew. I’m so tired. Mum’s hardly speaking to me. I don’t care now.

 
; August 1st. Tonight I fooled him. Mum was still at work. He must’ve known ’cause he came over but I woke up when I heard the floorboards creak outside the bathroom. Three steps after the creak and he’s at my door. I know now to count them. I crept into the cupboard and hid behind my clothes. Stupid prick didn’t even think to look there. Two minutes later he left.

  August 5th. Dana asked me how I got the scratches on my thigh. I wanted to tell her but I’m too ashamed. All I could do was run to the toilet and throw up my guts. It wasn’t her fault. It’s just that now when I’m around her I feel so dirty. So dirty and ashamed. God, I hate myself. Why can’t I stop it.

  August 13th. I’m pregnant. What am I going to do? There’s no one I can tell. No one.

  Evie holds her hand over her jaw as it starts to shake uncontrollably.

  ‘Hey,’ Robin whispers to her, ‘you don’t have to keep reading, sweetheart.’

  It’s only now Evie sees she’s been clinging to her mother’s arm. ‘I want to.’

  August 26th. Haven’t been at school for 6 days. The puffers are making me spew all the time. Smelling anything that reminds me of the filthy pig makes me spew too. Mum keeps asking me what’s wrong. That’s the only time she speaks to me. As if she’d want to know anyway. I hid in the cupboard again. It’s been almost three weeks since he’s touched me.

  ‘It’s in writing.’ Evie and Robin look up. ‘It’s on September 14th,’ Paris says. ‘Two weeks before she died.’

  Evie’s fingers tighten around her mother’s arm as she turns to September 14th. Robin glances at the entry. Two seconds max, it takes. Her voice is clipped as she says, ‘That’s all you need, Paris. You have the bastard now.’

  Evie forces herself to look at the page. To read the six tiny words scrawled in Caz’s writing.

  How can I have Ingy’s baby?’

  It’s all there – every word.

  ‘Paris?’ Robin walks over to where she sits and crouches at her feet. ‘Is it, is it happening to …’

  Paris nods. A tear slides from the corner of her eye. Quickly she wipes it away and nods again.

  ‘Okay.’ Robin speaks slowly. ‘I think this is what we should do.’ Evie comes over, joining her mother next to Paris. She needs to be near her. She needs her to cushion the darkness she feels around her. To cradle Evie in her arms and tell her the world isn’t always this bad. ‘I’ll ring Victoria,’ Robin continues. ‘She’ll be able to contact your mum. What this man has done, Paris, is very, very wrong. He can be put in jail for this.’

  ‘Mum wanted us to be comfortable,’ Paris whispers while her tiny body begins to shake like a rag doll. No control. No expression. Just a sack of limbs twitching on the couch. ‘She didn’t want us to be hungry, not like she was.’ Evie watches, feeling the most enormous pain soar through her innards. ‘If we told her, Ingy would take it all away. That’s what he said. He said he’d ruin everything.’

  The realisation is difficult. Caz’s fear of Ingy was greater then her fear of dying. So she hid from him in that cupboard. Unable to breathe. Unable to call for help.

  ‘He can’t hurt you any more, Paris,’ Robin is telling her. ‘He can’t threaten you or intimidate you. You’re safe now. You can say what he did without fear. It’s okay now. It’s over. All over.’

  Commotion bursts through the living room in the form of Nora Cuza. She is shaking her arms over her head, the gold bracelets jingling in time with each word.

  ‘Paris! What do you think you’re doing? Get up! We’re going home. I’m getting you …’ Her nostrils flare and her eyes flash with fury. ‘Away from that … that …’

  ‘Nora!’ Victoria is behind her. ‘Nora,’ she says a little more calmly. ‘You have to speak to Paris, you must listen –’

  ‘Up, girl! Now!’ Nora screams over Victoria’s voice. ‘Now!’ Paris starts to get off the couch. ‘Ingy!’ she bashes the buttons on her mobile. ‘Ingy, get off the phone!’

  ‘No Ingy!’ The words burst from Evie’s mouth.

  Nora spins on her spiked heels. ‘You! You are the cause of this. You –’

  ‘How dare you speak to my daughter like that!’ Robin’s hands shake as she takes hold of Evie’s shoulders. ‘You have no idea what she’s been through trying to help your daughter. This has been brought into my home and you will sit here and listen to what Victoria has to say if you’re a half-decent mother. Which I have my doubts about!’

  Nora lunges at Robin and Evie. Hysterically, her hands wave and grab as her long red claws try to rip a piece out of them. ‘Fire-ai al draculi! Fire-ai al draculi!’ she shrieks.

  Victoria rushes to hold her back. ‘Nora! Nora!’ she calls, unable to be heard over the screams. ‘Stop that. Stop it!’

  But Nora is strong. Robin and Evie squeal as the crazy arms and legs kick and hit, backing them up against the couch where Paris is sitting.

  ‘Fire-ai al draculi! Fire-ai al draculi!’ she still curses, the spit now foaming out of her mouth. ‘Fire-ai al–’

  It happens so fast. Paris leaping off the couch, her bony leg flying out in front of her, kicking the back of her mother’s knees. Stunned, they watch Nora topple to the ground, lying on the floor in a heap of defeat.

  ‘Mamma,’ Paris cries, kneeling on the carpet next to her. ‘Mamma.’ The tears are spilling down her face. ‘Evie is not the devil. Ingy, he’s not your inger. Ingy is the devil. Please, Mamma, please. I know you just wanted us to have a good life but Ingy is not your angel, Mamma.’

  Robin and Victoria help Nora up onto the couch. Her eyes flick around the room as though she’s not sure how she got there or even where she is. All you can hear is her breath, puffing and wheezing.

  ‘Nora,’ Victoria says in the gentlest of voices. ‘Nora, there’s something Paris has to show you. It’s Caz’s diary. You need to see it.’

  From under the cushion of the couch, Paris brings it out. Nora looks at the little green diary in her daughter’s hands and her face begins to crack. Soon, a moan, deep with pain, rises from the very depths of her soul. ‘My baby, my baby,’ she wails. ‘The diary … where, Paris? Where?’ And she sinks into the couch.

  Evie curls up against her mother and puts her head in her lap and watches them. Watches Paris and her mother leaf through the pages of Caz’s last months. There are screams and tears and sounds of agony that no words can describe. Evie knows she will never forget that sound. She picks up her mother’s hands and places them over her ears. She’s heard enough. She doesn’t need to hear it any more. Evie’s job is finished.

  The next few days Evie spends at home. She’s not quite ready to go back to school. Her mind craves silence and her body craves sleep.

  The night after, as Evie lies curled up on the couch with her dad, he asks how it feels, right now. Right at this very moment.

  ‘Like I’ve run a marathon,’ she answers. ‘Not that I ever have, but I think this is what it’d feel like. But it’s like my mind has run one as well. My head aches just like my body does.’ Then Evie sighs. ‘Am I weird, Dad?’

  ‘You’re my daughter!’ he scoffs. ‘How could you be weird?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘You’re special, Evie. I know to you it doesn’t always feel like that, but you are. If it wasn’t for you, imagine what Paris’d still be going through. There was no avenue for her until Caz found you. She said that herself – once we’d all calmed down, that is. You freed her. That’s something I want you to keep reminding yourself.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I wonder if Nora knew what was going on?’

  ‘I don’t think so, darling,’ her dad sighs. ‘It seems she was so wrapped up in her business and making money that she didn’t see much at all.’

  ‘Maybe she chose not to see.’

  ‘Who knows how people work, Evie. Obviously what drove Nora was her past – being hungry, poor, displaced, all that stuff. It can make people do strange things in the eyes of people like us
who haven’t been through such things,’ Nick says. ‘I’m not excusing her. Not for a second. I guess as a parent, I need to try and understand it too.’

  ‘Yeah, but not even knowing Caz was pregnant when she died.’ It’s not a question. It’s something Evie just can’t believe – that a mother would choose not to know how her daughter spent her last minutes. ‘I mean, not wanting to even look at the coroner’s report and stuff. I’d want to know all that.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Nick says. ‘We all deal with grief differently. For Nora, it was not wanting anything to do with coroner’s reports and autopsies. She just handed it all over to Ingy. That was the way she coped. I don’t think that meant she had suspicions and didn’t want to know. I think it was just her … grief, at losing her precious daughter.’

  ‘It was very convenient for him.’

  ‘Well, it’s over now, honey. Regardless of what we think about Nora, she took it straight to the cops,’ he says. ‘He’s already been charged and will most likely go to jail for quite a while. He won’t be doing it any more.’

  Evie yawns, stretching her long legs over the arms of the lounge. ‘I know it’s not even eight-thirty but I think I’ll go to bed.’

  ‘Am I banished to the couch again?’ he asks.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Evie frowns. ‘I just really need to sleep with Mum at the moment. I know I haven’t done it for at least ten years. But I just, well, I don’t know why.’

  ‘You’re catching up on some lost time. That’s all.’ Nick smiles. ‘And I know your mother’s loving it.’

  ‘You can have your bed back tomorrow,’ Evie tells him. ‘Goodnight. And thanks, Dad.’

  ‘Thanks?’

  ‘Well, you’re pretty cool most of the time.’ She kisses his forehead. ‘Just promise never to embarrass me in front of Seb again.’

  If Evie’s not sleeping, she’s staring at the TV or wandering the house. If her parents aren’t home, she lets the answering machine screen all calls. The energy it would take to speak to Nora or Paris is something she just doesn’t have.