The Shadow Girl

by John Larkin

  ‘You’ve just got that look about you, like you’ve seen more than you should have.’

  Now it’s my turn to gaze out the window.

  She shakes my hand while she’s holding it. ‘Name’s Cindy by the way. But everyone calls me Cinderella.’

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘You could, but then I’d have to kill you.’

  ‘Sounds like it might be worth it.’

  She smiles. ‘Okay. But only because I’m responsible for you now. Your life’s mine.’

  She speaks slowly, dreamily. ‘When I was a little girl . . .’

  I can’t help thinking that despite the tatts and the attitude she still is a little girl.

  ‘. . . my favourite bedtime story was Cinderella. Or at least it was until Dad hit the road and Mum hit the bottle. It lost a bit of its lustre after that. But when I was in year one we had a school book parade and I wanted to go as Cinderella because she was the only character I knew. Mum couldn’t be arsed making me a real costume, she could barely be bothered getting out of bed most days. Just about managed to stagger into the bathroom to wash down some Prozac with half a bottle of vodka. I had this pink party dress that my grandma bought me. It was still in plastic because I didn’t get invited to many parties and even when I did, Mum always said that I couldn’t go because she couldn’t get me there. So on the morning of the book parade I’m getting myself ready, making my lunch, packing my bag and everything when Mum puts in a rare morning appearance. She tells me off for wearing my grandma’s party dress. When I tell her that it’s the book parade and that I’m going as Cinderella she changes her tune. She wants to help. She wants to play mum again. She does my hair and makes a nice job of it too. Then she looks at my black school shoes that are all scuffed and scratched because we didn’t have any shoe polish in the house. She tells me that I can’t wear them. That Cinderella didn’t wear black school shoes, she wore glass slippers. Said that I had to wear glass slippers or I wouldn’t score myself a handsome prince. She didn’t know that even back then, when I was seven, I would have preferred to score myself a handsome princess.’

  ‘So you are?’ I nod.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I are.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘She sat me down, took off my shoes and socks and bound my feet in Gladwrap. She said it looked fantastic and she was so convincing that I believed her. I was able to cram my feet into my sandshoes for the walk to school but during the parade I took them off and there were all these Blinky Bills, Snow Whites and cats in hats rolling around on the ground laughing at my feet. Because she’d wrapped them so tight my toes began tingling and by the end of the parade I couldn’t walk properly and so the school nurse had to cut off my glass slippers with a pair of scissors.’

  She’s staring out the window but I can see that her eyes are filling up.

  ‘I’ve been Cinderella ever since.’

  There is a lengthy pause while she collects herself. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Dominique.’

  ‘Ah. A no-name. The mystery deepens.’ She pauses again and then looks at me with glassy eyes. ‘That’s okay. Tell me, or don’t tell me, when you feel comfortable.’ Then she reaches into her backpack, takes out a small notepad and jots something down. She tears it off and hands me the scrap of paper. ‘That’s my mobile. If you’re ever in the shit, you call me and I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me. In some cultures if you save someone’s life you become responsible for them. I take that seriously.’

  We’re coming in to the major southern junction station. She picks up her backpack, reaches over and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Take care of yourself. And if you can’t, I will.’

  I watch her scurrying along the platform towards a city-bound train. There’s not much of her but people get out of her way when they see her coming. She’s like an emo Moses parting the Red Sea.

  IT WAS LUCKY SHE WAS THERE.

  Or unlucky I was.

  When did you see her again?

  The next day. When she left I was a bit scared those guys would come looking for us. But I figured, even if they caught the next train back, as long as I kept going forwards I would always be one station ahead of them.

  Where did you go?

  Straight to Alistair’s café to lay low for a while. When I told him what happened he got angry with me and said that I was stupid travelling on that line by myself. He said even he wouldn’t do it at certain times. Said that I wasn’t as streetwise as I thought. It was like getting told off by my big brother after I’d been bailed out by my big sister, which, I don’t know, made me feel all gooey inside. Pathetic, I know, but there it is. After that I bought myself a baseball bat.

  Did you find out why Cindy was homeless?

  Yeah, I did, though when we met technically she wasn’t. She lived in a squat near the university. Not the one that Alistair went to but the big one in town. She’d been on the way to visit her grandmother down south when I ran into her. Guess she changed her mind and went home after what happened.

  When Alistair had finished chewing my ear off and brought me some dinner, I borrowed his mobile and called her. I just wanted to hear her voice again. They were having a big end-of-semester party at her place the next night and she invited me.

  So you went?

  She picked me up from the station and walked me back. Said it wasn’t safe for a girl to walk those streets by herself, although she obviously had in order to come and get me. She and some friends were squatting in this run-down terrace house in that dodgy area just behind the uni.

  Yeah, I know it. It’s been gentrified a little since then but it’s still pretty dark and dingy.

  When we got back it wasn’t like a rave party or anything. No one was dancing. There was some Indian music on a portable stereo and the place was lit with candles. Everyone was just sitting around smoking and drinking and talking. We sat down in a group and everyone said hi and then someone passed me a joint. I was actually going to take it just to be polite, but Cinderella said no, I was too young, which again made me feel special, like someone was looking out for me. I’d spent so long living outside of what was normal that it was kind of nice to have someone giving me boundaries, and so she took a drag and passed it on. I told her that it wasn’t doing her any good either, that she was almost too young herself. She just told me to relax. Said it didn’t matter what she did, because she would be dead soon. I was horrified that someone so strong could have just given up like that; thought maybe it was the dope talking. I felt my stomach lurch when she said that. It seemed so fatalistic and depressing. If Cindy couldn’t survive the streets, I had no chance. Then she said that she’d seen a fortune teller at the markets a couple of years ago, when she was living on the streets. When the fortune teller first saw her palm she gave her this weird look. Cinderella made her say what was up, and although the fortune teller was reluctant she eventually told her that she wouldn’t see twenty.

  How old was she when you met her?

  Nineteen, remember. I thought she looked much older, but that’s the streets for you.

  Seriously though. Why would anyone listen to some feral quack flogging nonsense about the future at a flea market?

  She said it was the look in the fortune teller’s eyes that frightened her. It was the look of Death. The Grim Reaper. The only thing missing was her scythe. Anyway, she’s got this thing hanging over her and before I even asked, she told me that she would be twenty in about six months. She called it her Sword of Damocles.

  We were just sitting there on this beanbag chatting and I’m lying in her lap and she’s stroking my hair, like a big sister. She told me about the Last Train to Kathmandu, and I told her that I’d seen it a couple of times. Then she told me that the Last Train to Kathmandu didn’
t have to be a ride on the homeless special, although she’d travelled on it herself a few times when she first became homeless. It was about escaping. Going somewhere safe on the planet. In your head. She then told me that her fantasy journey was on the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was apparently the longest train trip in the world. It went from Moscow to Vladivostok, but for her it wasn’t the destination but the journey. Almost ten thousand kilometres safely tucked away in your own private sleeper cabin where no one could get you, no one could bother you. That was her dream. I made her pinkie promise me that she would stay alive long enough to do it. Screw the fortune teller.

  Eventually the guy who offered me the joint kind of just flopped down opposite us and joined us, which I was a bit pissed about at first because I wanted her to myself, especially after she’d just pinkie promised that we would take the Trans-Siberian Railway together. But when Cinderella introduced him he was actually really interesting. He was studying to be a microbiologist but he was also a full-on Christian.

  Really? I thought most scientists . . .

  So did I. But he said the deeper he delved into the mysteries of life, the more he saw the thumbprint of God. Reckoned that despite all our understanding of the natural world, the one thing that we couldn’t get to the bottom of was life itself. Where it came from and why. Reckoned that without life to appreciate it, the universe, though breathtaking, was utterly pointless, so something, someone, must have created it. That plus the alternative was just too terrifying to contemplate. Of course it could have been the marijuana talking. He did seem to suck down a lot of it and so maybe he saw God through the haze.

  Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Cinderella told him about my ambition to become a doctor and wipe out the African eye-eating worm, which I’d told her about when we took a short cut through the uni on the walk back to her place. He told me that it was called the Loa-loa worm and that it didn’t actually eat eyes, though it could certainly cause blindness and encephalitis. When I asked him what that was he said it was a disease of the brain and that you certainly didn’t want it.

  Did Cindy go to uni?

  No. She was smart enough. Later, when we decided to crash, she took me into the bedroom that she shared with some other students and there were these huge stacks of books piled up behind her mattress, which was on the floor. She probably read more than me.

  So why didn’t she go to uni with everyone else?

  Everyone else was living in the squat because it was away from their parents and it was free. A bit of adventure. First sign of trouble they could go scuttling back home. She was home. She’d left in year nine or something. Hit the streets with no way back.

  Why?

  You sure you want to hear it?

  Yeah.

  It’s not very nice.

  As opposed to what you went through?

  It makes what I went through with Creepo look like a stroll in the park. Okay, maybe not a stroll in the park but it was worse.

  It’s not a competition.

  I know.

  Go on.

  Her mother eventually dried herself out. Probably knew that she was killing her liver, killing herself, and then Cinderella would be on her own, only with no ball to crash, no handsome prince(ss) to whisk her away. She got some help apparently, from a neighbour, who belonged to the local church.

  So she found God?

  Say what you like about religion, I know I have, but looking up at Jesus is a damn sight better than looking up at the spinning room from the bottom of an empty bottle. Eventually her mum met some guy there. A church elder. He was a widower and they hooked up. They even went and got married and he was doing okay. Had his own business and nice house and so Cinderella and mum moved out of their housing commission flat and in with him.

  I can see what’s coming. Visits in the night, just like you.

  And you’d be wrong. Stepdad was one of the good guys. He couldn’t do enough for either of them. It was her mum.

  What?

  No, not in that way. She was full on. It’s God wants this. God wants that. Jesus wants this. Jesus wants Cinderella for a sunbeam and all that seen-the-light crap. And when she fell off the wagon it’s wasn’t her fault but Satan’s. He was tempting her because she was weak and blah, blah, blah. A real born-again arsehole.

  Cinderella didn’t do church. She reckoned there was something sick about that brainwashing, monotone chanting. You know, ‘Lift up your hearts.’ ‘We lift them up to the Lord.’ ‘Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.’ ‘It is right to give him thanks and praise.’ She couldn’t stand it. No thought. No feeling. Just drone-like behaviour. But her mum insisted. Said that if Cinderella wanted to go on living under her roof, you gotta love that, then she had to go to church. Cinderella put her foot down. She was fourteen by then and old enough to make up her own mind about God and church and would rather live on the streets than be forced into doing something that she was dead against.

  What did her mum say?

  She didn’t say anything. She just went up to Cinderella’s room and packed her bag. Told her to get out. That she’d ruined her life by turning up in the first place.

  And that was it?

  No. Her stepdad stepped in. Refused to let Cinderella leave. It’s a big, dangerous world out there and all that. Eventually, with her stepdad’s involvement, they came to a compromise. She didn’t have to go to church but she would go to Friday evening youth group. That way she could hang out with kids her own age without having to go through that automaton chanting. First night there, though, she learned that she would have been better off going to church. The kids were okay. A lot of them went to the same high school. And although she had a reputation for being a bit of a loner, the other kids were friendly towards her. The youth minister, though, was a fruitcake. His name was Justin Pembroke and he had a ponytail, a wife, and a mandate from God, or so he reckoned – one of those whack-jobs who really believe that God speaks to them. Cinderella said that looking at him gave her the creeps. There was just something about him.

  Eventually he gathered them all together. Routine was that they had to listen to his bullshit for a while before they could get onto games and hanging out with each other which is what they were there for. When he started in on his sermon, a couple of the other kids looked over at Cinderella and rolled their eyes, kind of like ‘Here we go’. You know what he started with?

  No.

  He held out his arms, like it actually means something, or, I don’t know, he was channelling the heavens. Then he said, ‘I love God.’

  That seems fair enough. I mean, he was a minister.

  You didn’t let me finish.

  Sorry.

  He said, ‘I love God.’ And a couple of the more right- eous youths gave him the obligatory ‘Amen’. Then he said, ‘I love God more than anything in this world.’ Again there were a few amens, though not as many this time. And then the clincher. He said, ‘I love God more than I love my wife.’

  I didn’t know there was a ranking system.

  Exactly. But do you know what really pissed off Cinderella more than anything? She was there. His wife. Standing just off to the side and everyone knew who she was. Even Cinderella knew her because that’s how he introduced himself to her earlier in the evening – this is me and this is my wife, welcome to my flock. He was quite welcoming and friendly, apparently. But then when he said that, Cinderella could see that it hurt his wife. She had to put up with his crap because she was as devout as him and he’s the man. But Cinderella didn’t have to put up with it. She was into girl power, we all know that, and so she was going to do what wifey couldn’t. She was going to hit back.

  What happened?

  She put up her hand and he kind of snapped at her because he wasn’t used to having his weekly rant interrupted.

  What did she
say?

  Well, she waited until she had everyone’s attention and then yelled out, ‘So what you’re saying is that you love a being who may not exist more than someone who puts out for you?’

  How did he respond?

  Nothing at first because everyone was sniggering, trying not to laugh. She completely nuked him and he had no comeback. But he had to respond because it was his flock and so he told her that there was no place for her there and that she should go and clean out the storeroom and think about her attitude. And she did. She was still buzzing about having nailed him so she probably wasn’t thinking straight.

  Did she actually clean out the storeroom?

  No. She said there was an old beanbag in there so she just kicked back and relaxed. Better than listening to Reverend Pembroke’s mad tirade. But a bit later, when he sent the rest of them off on some quest or other, he slipped into the storeroom with her and, like me on the train with those guys, she realised that she was in serious trouble. He told her that she had a big mouth on her. So she responded by informing him that he was a pig. How was his wife supposed to feel about his public declaration? He told her that the only opinion that his wife would have was the one he gave her – she was the weaker vessel and man ruled the world and all that misogynistic bullshit that all the religious texts condone. And then, while he was undoing his belt, he told Cinderella that she needed to be punished. That God demanded she felt his wrath.

  Oh no . . .

  There was no one else there. He’d sent them all outside on some sort of hunt around the suburb, so that he could deal with her alone.

  Why didn’t she scream?

  She did but he covered her mouth. Back then she wasn’t the leopard that I met on the train. There literally was nothing of her. She was more like a punk kitten. So he turned her around and threw her up against this cupboard and . . . well, you don’t need a graphic description.

  God. I thought her reaction to that boy on the train was a bit excessive; now I see why. Did she tell anyone?

  After he’d finished he literally threw her out of the church. The others were making their way back by then and he said that he’d caught her stealing and so he was chucking her out. It was bullshit of course but it was his word against hers and he was a youth minister and she was just some mixed-up teenage girl. Cinderella said that the worst part was that as he was dragging her past his wife, they locked eyes, and the wife gave her a look, like she sympathised with her but there was nothing she could do. Cinderella told me that the look haunted her because she knew that he was doing it to her too.