by John Larkin
She arrived home hysterical and ran into the shower to try and wash him off. Then when her mum asked her what was the matter, Cinderella told her what he’d done, but her mum’s back teeth were floating in vodka and she said that it was all the work of Satan, who’d obviously been tempting the minister through Cinderella. By that time her mum was onto her second bottle of the evening so Satan had been real busy that night.
The arsehole spread it around that she was a thief and not welcome back and if she turned up again he would be forced to press charges. And he comes out of it a hero because although she’s stolen from the church, he didn’t call the police because he has Jesus’ love and God’s forgiveness in his heart.
No one believed her version of events, of course, and she became a pariah at school because word filtered back that she stole the Poor Box from church to spend on drugs. When her mum sobered up she threw Cinderella out.
What an awful story.
She was a street kid. We all have them. And when she finished telling me hers I felt helpless. I was so angry but there was nothing that I could do with my anger and so it just weighed down on me.
She zipped us up in the one sleeping bag and we held each other all night. Protecting one another against the world.
In the morning she asked me to move in permanently so that she could take care of me. But I wanted to be on my own so that she could take care of herself. Her twentieth birthday wasn’t all that far off and so she had to be on guard.
After breakfast I found Cinderella in the bathroom, down on her hands and knees scrubbing the tiles. It might have been a squat but it was her home and she liked to keep it nice, and besides, there wasn’t going to be any fairy godmothers turning up for her. She, like the rest of us, had to look out for herself.
I left there later that morning knowing my enemy. The Loa-loa worm, and men who treat women like shit.
She takes most of the afternoon getting ready, although her natural beauty means that she doesn’t have to try too hard. She could venture out in baggy overalls, sandals, and one of those caps with the woollen flaps over the ears, and still turn heads. Still, this could be the most important day of her life, and she wants to make it count. An impression to remember. Okay, she made an impression the last time she saw him. A permanent impression on the bonnet of his car which he told her he would need to get beaten out. They laughed as they rearranged their clothes and stumbled back into the party a discreet interval apart. He promised that he would see her again. He promised he would break things off with his fiancée. He promised her the world. Soon.
She’d been on the sharp end of wolf-whistles and catcalls from building sites since she’d been in braces. And now, in the second-last year of her teens, her face could open hearts the way her body could open wallets. Not that she would ever need to venture down that path. But still.
Her father had barely spoken to her since part-way through year ten when he’d lit a bonfire and fuelled it with her school reports and tunic. Her childhood gone in a plume of smoke, the flames of her reports dancing in her eyes. She might have become a nurse one day, but you needed good grades for that, and they’d started slipping as soon as she’d begun to escape down to the mall with her friends following rollcall. When her father found out he was apoplectic and stormed down to the mall and practically dragged her home by her hair. When he checked with the school and they reported that she’d been absent more than present, he’d started gathering the kindling. But now they were on speaking terms again because he finally saw her for the asset she was. And if he played his hand wisely, she could fund his retirement.
Everyone said she could be a model if she wanted to. Men mostly. Men in doof doof cars who bent her over their bonnets and slathered sweet nothings in her ear. Men who, if she was going to be brutally honest, probably had no contacts in the modelling industry whatsoever, but whom she would let take her for a ride anyway. Take her away. Her father would kill her if he found out that she was soiled. It was her greatest asset, he said. Her only asset. And it couldn’t be stitched back together once it had been torn. You had to laugh at the old people who still clung to the old ways. The old values. The old country. What was the point in leaving if you brought everything with you?
But she had let her father play matchmaker, offering her body, her innocence, as the dowry for some rich, older guy. And he would pay through the teeth for something that she was giving away most Friday and Saturday nights. Men! They were so pathetic you just had to laugh. The way to a man’s heart was through his stomach? It was a bit lower than that.
‘Is he good-looking?’ she’d pleaded when her father told her about the proposed dinner date after lunch, though it was part of their joke. The banter going backwards and forwards as he doled out nuggets of information. The five others hadn’t worked out mainly because one was old, one was ugly, one was old and ugly, one was gay, and one already had a wife and kids back in the old country. Her father had coughed and told her this latest offering was a cut above all the others.
‘He’s a fine-looking gentleman.’
‘Gentleman? You mean he’s old?’
‘Older than you, certainly. Worldly, yes.’
‘At least tell me his name.’
Her father had just looked at her and smiled. It was funny, the only time they’d ever really got along was right now, when he was trying to negotiate the best price for her virginity.
‘Please, Papa,’ she’d begged, tickling him.
‘Okay,’ he’d finally relented. ‘His name is Sanchez.’
For a moment she hadn’t been able to breathe. She’d had to sit down to gather herself. Hide her excitement. Stop herself from screaming. Tony Sanchez – dashing and dangerous but with a great business mind. He and his brother had been cutting a swathe through their community ever since they’d arrived from the old country, although she could never remember the name of the older one, the dull one. He was quieter, sterner, smaller in stature than her Tony, but with fists of iron. He was not someone you said no to.
Even though she’d had a few secret liaisons with Tony, and he’d told her that he loved her, she almost didn’t dare dream that he’d ever dump that lump of a fiancée and officially move on to her, just as he’d promised.
But Papa had made it happen. He’d finally come through. And so she hugged him like she hadn’t done since she’d been a little girl and he’d taught her how to ride her bike.
She’d nuzzled into his neck, smelling his cheap aftershave and roll-your-own cigarettes, his hope that this one might be it. ‘Thank you, Papa.’
‘Start getting yourself organised,’ he’d replied. ‘He’s not someone who likes to be kept waiting.’
That was her Tony. Always in a hurry. Always impatient. That was Serena’s problem. She couldn’t keep up with him. Couldn’t keep him happy. Couldn’t keep him. Now it was her turn.
When the doorbell rang a few hours later she practically sashayed into the lounge room. The only thing missing was the smoky saxophone backing track. It was the old cliché but today really was the first day of the rest of her life. She was wearing her backless cocktail dress that accentuated her hourglass figure. Tony would be putty in her hands and tonight she would be playing hard to get. No more free rides for Mr Sanchez.
As she glided into the room her mother looked up from her knitting and made the sign of the cross. Her father’s jaw would have hit the floor if he hadn’t been so busy beaming with pride.
‘Aren’t you going to show him in, Papa?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, backing away from his daughter. Her mother shook her head and made another sign of the cross. She would be saying the rosary later. Twice.
She heard them mumbling by the front door. Exchanging pleasantries about the new country’s weather in the old language.
Then they were walking along the hallway, past the small
statue of the Virgin Mary, and around the corner.
‘Bridgette,’ said her father, completely ignoring his wife. ‘May I have the honour of introducing . . .’ But she didn’t hear another word because her world was falling apart.
He took her to a restaurant from the old country where, in lieu of conversation, they’d danced. She like some wild creature born of the kasbah, he like he was made of wood. It was pleasant enough, she supposed, especially when all the other men watched her move, gyrating her hips like a professional belly dancer draped in a serpent. She loved that. She loved that all the other women hated her at that moment.
Afterwards he’d invited her back for coffee because his brother was away for the weekend with his fiancée, so he had the place to himself. Although she’d been feeling queasy, she still went up with her consolation prize. And, as she soon found out, he wasn’t someone you said no to. To make matters worse, neither brother seemed to be familiar with the concept of chemists. That was obviously the woman’s responsibility. So she was playing Russian roulette.
She arrived home a little later with her knickers stuffed in her handbag and her stomach churning. She spent the next hour doubled over the toilet. Her father stood at the door shaking his head, hoping that she hadn’t had too much. Women just couldn’t handle the drink. He hoped that Mr Sanchez had been a gentleman and hadn’t taken advantage of the situation, but checking his watch and seeing that it was after two in the morning, he had his doubts. If it came to that he had a shotgun in his shed that would ensure Mr Sanchez did the honourable thing.
She just lay there with her face pressing down on the cool porcelain, oblivious to her father’s presence. She’d been throwing up all week but had put it down to a virus. Now she knew she was in serious trouble and she didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t go to bed yet and disappear into dreams either because there was more to come up.
‘You shouldn’t drink,’ chastised her father with folded arms. ‘Women shouldn’t drink.
Luckily she had alcohol to mask the terrible truth. Because what her father didn’t know was that she’d been on lemonade all night.
Cinderella’s squat empties out over the holiday period as the students slink back to the suburbs. Back to their own rooms with their racing car beds and boy band posters to tell everyone over plump turkeys and plum puddings how tough they’re doing it. About life on the edge. Once the end of year exodus was over, it was generally just Cinderella and the rats. So I invite her to spend Christmas with me and my barrister mum at the Shangrila Pines Resort, courtesy of Serena and Creepo.
We don’t want to snap Serena’s credit card under the strain of too much room service, so we settle for takeaway blowouts from the mega-mall most nights. We swim in the heated pool and read on the balcony or in bed. I give her The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, hoping that she’ll take the hint and stay alive. She gives me Mansfield Park because she reckons I’m a born romantic. I’m not, of course, I just like Jane Austen. So we read until we can hardly keep our eyes open and then, following a banana-split and hot chocolate from room service, we read again until our heads drop into our books. Then we curl up together, with me wishing the moment would never end.
Until the night of Cinderella’s party I hadn’t shared a bed with another person since I was tiny. That night I must have drifted off first. But last night she disappeared before me, twitching and flinching as she slipped deeper and deeper in to the dream world. I didn’t know we did that – twitched, I mean. Maybe it’s our bodies trying to ward off death. Even the temporary death of the night. Or maybe it’s only junkies who twitch and Cinderella was fleeing the ravenous dragon that lurked in her veins.
Although we’ve been having the buffet breakfast, this morning I let her sleep. Tomorrow she’ll be back in the squat by herself. Back to trying to think of a job that someone covered in tatts, with a year nine education, a serious drug habit and no ID might apply for. I have a few more days in the rail yards ahead of me before I start house-sitting for Miss Taylor. I would love to invite Cinderella to sit with me, try to help heal her scars, but a promise is a promise.
‘No friends,’ Miss Taylor had insisted as she handed me her spare key following our dinner a couple of weeks ago. ‘I mean it.’ It was risky enough just seeing me. If it became known that a street kid was living in her flat, she’d probably never teach again, and I couldn’t risk that no matter how much I loved Cinderella.
I ask the doorman for directions to the cemetery and he draws me a map on the back of one of the hotel’s glossy brochures. I know the way, of course. I’ve visited every time I’ve stayed at the Shangrila Pines, just to sit and talk. But he seemed so bored standing there in his uniform, I had to help him feel as though his existence wasn’t pointless.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he says when he’s convinced that I know which way I’m heading.
After about a kilometre, the semi-industrial area gives way to bushland. A reverential hush comes over the world as I turn off the road and enter the cemetery. There’s a whoosh of wind and rustle of leaves high in the treetops, as if the angels are swooping down to guide the recently departed heavenward.
It doesn’t take me long to find her plot. It’s only small; she must have been cremated. I place a single red rose on her grave and wipe the plaque with a moistened tissue. I think mine are the only flowers she ever gets. When I started visiting, her plaque was filthy – battered by wind, dirt and time. Whoever left her here is either content with their memories, or has passed on themselves.
I wish I had been closer to her, then my sadness might be genuine. But I content myself with the knowledge that she was born in the same year as my mum, even if she died several years earlier, before her life had really started.
On previous visits I would like to have left a passage from Mum’s favourite book, or rolled up her most treasured poem in a scroll and left it tied in a red ribbon on her grave. But she had neither. And leaving a copy of New Idea or a feature article from TV Week just wouldn’t be the same.
However, I’ve decided that if Barbara Langdon is happy to play surrogate mum – and she isn’t haunting me or anything, so she must be okay with it – then I can leave a favourite poem for her and my mum. And so this time, thanks to Cinderella’s poetry collection, I’ve come prepared.
I pull the crumpled paper out of my pocket and try to decipher my own writing.
I DREAMED that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand;
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above
Until I carved these words:
She was more beautiful than thy first love,
But now lies under boards.
I roll up Yeats’s poem and place it on their grave, weighing it down with a rock, splashing the rock with sadness.
‘I wish I knew you better,’ I say to both of them. Then I might have something to cry about other than sadness itself.
Then I think of Cinderella and have to sit down on the grass.
Last night while we were scoffing down our KFC I noticed the scabs on her forearms. She always wore long sleeves, even to bed, but she rolled them up for the Colonel so that she wouldn’t get grease on her peejays. When she was asleep I traced my finger gently along the marks on her arms. Faded tracks of desperate journeys. I had an inkling of what they meant. She was chasing the dragon. Heroin. I asked her once before, at the squat, if she did drugs but she got all defensive. Evasive. Said it didn’t matter what she took because she was going to be dead soon. I told her that I needed her to stay alive so that she coul
d look after me. Give me big sisterly advice. I reminded her that she’d saved my life and I was her responsibility. She just held my face and said that she would always watch over me. That didn’t help, even if she believed it, which I seriously doubt. The moon always watched over me too, with its smiley face and Cheshire Cat grin, but it would be pretty useless if Creepo came hobbling towards me attaching the silencer to his gun or pulling a knife from his pocket.
If she is doing heroin I wonder how she manages to pay for it. I’d rather not know. The thought of my beautiful fairy godmother doing things with strange men in alleyways makes me want to vomit.
I look around the forlorn and forgotten headstones of some of the older graves. It would destroy me to leave Cinderella here, to scatter her ashes to the wind. But of course, she wouldn’t be here. This is in the ivy belt. These are the graves of the rich. The loved. She’d be dumped in a paupers’ grave. Three corpses deep in a plywood coffin. Left to melt into eternity with a couple of winos.
A chill wind is howling through the gravestones now as I hunch my shoulders against the cold and make my way back down towards the road, the gravel crunching heavily beneath my feet like soldiers marching. The wind screaming through the overhead powerlines sounds more ghostlike than ghosts, so I hurry along towards the exit before the skeleton trees reach down and grab me. There’s no one about but me. Me and the lost souls who, like Barbara Langdon and my mum, I leave to wander forlorn among the empty eternities.
