Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  ‘I’ve never said, never said.’ Mum’s voice was high and thin. ‘Why couldn’t you have just left it alone?’

  ‘You left us,’ Hessel said quietly, placing the teaspoon next to the pot. ‘This is not good family.’

  Mum’s eyes were wide. I was transfixed. She was trembling, I could see it now. She was so afraid, that’s what it was. Cold, hard fear. ‘I’m reporting you,’ she said, a tremor in her voice. ‘I’m telling what really happened. What you really did.’

  Hessel’s face darkened. Mum turned away from him and walked steadily towards the door. ‘Come on, Anna. You have to come away now.’ I started out from behind the table. Mum leaned down, her fingers curling around a handful of my clothes on the floor. ‘They wouldn’t believe Leonie,’ she was saying. ‘But they’ll believe me –’

  And then Hessel’s hands were around her throat.

  17 January 1996

  That day

  The summer days were long here. The wide flat land gave the sun plenty of sky to work with, and just when you were already more withered than you thought possible, you withered some more. So when Becky told her that her dad had seen Danny and Leonie out on the pontoon, Cathy leapt too quickly to her feet and she felt dizzy. And then the stinking mud squelched between her toes, all warm and sickly, as she dove into the cloudy water, leaving Becky on the claypan behind her.

  She began a stroke. She was such a weak swimmer. She felt herself flailing, looking ridiculous, so she dove further under the water and hit the freezing layer that began half a metre beneath the surface, and she suddenly felt the fakeness of everything here – the beach, her posing, playing at being something she wasn’t, somewhere that this place wasn’t, some way that her home life wasn’t. She rose again and began a breaststroke that still left her gasping for breath by the time she reached the pontoon.

  Yeah, she probably shouldn’t smoke.

  She put her elbows on the pontoon and rested her chin on her folded wrists and left her body dangling in the water while she caught her breath.

  ‘Hello, sis,’ said Danny, smirking. ‘What brings you out here?’ He pretended to nudge her elbows off the pontoon.

  ‘Danny, don’t.’ He laughed, his arm still slung around Leonie, pleased as punch, showing off.

  ‘And you’ve ruined your new bathers,’ he said, and nudged some more.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Danny, stop. Dad saw you.’

  Danny stopped. He straightened. ‘What? When?’

  ‘Just now. He was on the road.’

  Danny looked stricken for a moment. He tightened his arm around Leonie. Leonie looked uncertain. She looked a bit scared.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Cathy. ‘It’ll be alright. I’ll make sure of it, okay?’

  Leonie fixed her eyes on Cathy and nodded.

  Cathy went on quickly. ‘Dad’s bark is way worse than his bite, okay? Like I said. It will be alright.’

  As the afternoon wore on, in the way that the afternoons did here – long and seemingly unmoving – she said it again and again, silently, inside, like a mantra, a soft underpinning of her thoughts, a way to keep them afloat: it will be alright, it will be alright. She repeated it as she watched Leonie and Danny part ways and walk away separately, in opposite directions, along the road. She watched Leonie stand still a bit longer than Danny had, to watch him for a while as he walked away.

  And she said it out loud when Becky dropped her home, looking worried, and told her, ‘You should come home with me instead.’

  Cathy had said no. She had said, ‘No, it will all be alright.’ And she had walked quickly away up the drive.

  It would all be alright because Cathy was going to make it all alright. She was home before Danny, and she was going to say something to Hessel, something about Danny and Leonie, about what he might or might not have seen, something that would make Hessel see things differently, something that would make the truth okay – she didn’t know what exactly. Or perhaps she would tell him something that would hide the truth. Maybe she would lie.

  She didn’t know what it was yet, but there had to be a way. There had to be a way to head this off.

  But when she entered the kitchen it was obvious that the house was empty. She sat down at the table and waited for Hessel. The ticking clock counted the day away. The light was fading. And then she heard the ute out on the main road. She got up from the table and went outside.

  Hessel was driving up the road, not yet approaching the driveway. She waited for the right thing to say to come into her mind, but it was still a blank. It would come to her when she spoke to him, she reasoned. She just had to start talking.

  But then Cathy saw the ute slow down, long before the driveway turnoff.

  And then she saw why.

  Danny was walking along the road in front of the ute, headed for home the same way, but on foot. Cathy saw Danny falter in his step as the ute slowed next to him, slowed right down and tracked him close, keeping pace, and then suddenly sped up again and passed him. Danny stopped walking and watched Hessel pull the ute into the driveway and stop there.

  And both Danny and Cathy watched as Hessel got out of the car, and stood leaning against the bonnet. Waiting.

  32

  Hessel’s fist was tight around Mum’s throat. I stepped back and screamed, and with a great thrust of his old body Hessel scooped Mum hard against the wall. He brought his other arm up, pushing his forearm forward against his own hand, applying pressure to Mum’s throat, the strength of his rage rippling in every aged muscle. Bette gasped behind me and I screamed again as Mum’s eyes bulged, and she made an awful gurgling sound.

  ‘You are a traitorous little bitch,’ Hessel said to her.

  Mum’s eyes were wide, wild. I saw pure terror in them, a whole history of terror from which, I understood in an instant, I had always been protected.

  Bette, silent, hid her head beneath her clutching arms. Hessel’s hands grasped like claws on Mum’s face and her throat and a sickness rushed into me – I had never known violence like this, I had never known it.

  I lunged across the room and grabbed Hessel’s arms. I dragged and dragged at him, but I’d been wrong about his strength. With one arm he knocked me down and pain seared through my head and stars bloomed around my vision. But I was up and on him again. This time he pushed me back against the opposite wall, knocking the breath out of me. Blood filled my eye from a cut on my head. I lay winded. Hessel pushed Mum back against the wall again and grabbed her by the hair and dragged her head backwards away from him and he banged her head once, lightly, against the wall. The force contained in his fingers, the exercise of his control in the impact, in how hard he chose to knock her skull against the plaster, was terrifying to see. And then his other hand was around her throat again.

  I saw it all and was powerless. It was a shattering feeling. I felt like I wanted to leave my body, to disappear, to pause myself until it was over – to take myself elsewhere. It was all I could think of, my fear was so deep and so great.

  I hadn’t even known violence like this existed. And now, in front of me, my eyes saw it, but the rest of me had no idea what to do with it.

  And then, out of the shadows, a man appeared at the door.

  He was large and strong and he strode across the room and grabbed Hessel’s shoulders and pulled him back and threw him easily onto the floor.

  Mum slid down the wall gasping, holding her neck, breath rasping in and out. And immediately I came back to myself.

  I stood, felt power coursing through me and, without looking at what was happening to Hessel in the other corner of the room, I grabbed my gasping mother and dragged her across the floor and into the bedroom. Bette was screaming now but I didn’t hesitate. I dragged Mum into the room and shouldered the door as shut as it would go, slamming my body into it until it hurt. Sounds came from the other side of the door – Bette had set up a thin continuous wail and there came a dull thud, thud, thud of boot against body. I reached up and tipped the whol
e monolithic cupboard of junk over with an apocalyptic crash, dropping it between the bed and the door, jamming the door almost shut and I dragged Mum, coughing and wheezing, up onto the bed, pushing her into the corner. She crouched there, shaking uncontrollably, and I climbed up after her and curled my body right around her.

  This had been inside her, inside my mother, all along. I knew it – her eyes had been so full of terror but also so full of history. I knew it now. I saw it. I saw her. The history and the horror. How, inside her, it echoed and echoed and echoed.

  I kept Mum’s head down while the thudding sound continued on the other side of the door: it seemed endless, a monotonous, purposeful sound, as steady as a heartbeat. It seemed to go on so long that even Bette’s wail dulled down to a whimper while we all listened – thud, thud, thud.

  Until, finally, after what seemed an age, it grew quieter and quieter, replaced by the heavy breathing of someone who had exerted themselves as much as they could, and when even that subsided, not even Bette’s quiet whimpering could be heard from the other room.

  I didn’t move. Mum was balled up next to me, still shaking.

  And then there was a disembodied voice – Basil’s. It just appeared in the air. At first a simple question: ‘Dad?’ And then, a shuffle, his physical presence in the next room, a cry. ‘Oh no, Dad. Dad!’

  And then there was another voice, Leonie’s.

  ‘Danny? Danny. It’s me, sweetheart, it’s Leonie.’ And I heard the man’s voice. A cough and then a worried fragile note. Nearly a whisper.

  ‘He was hurting them.’

  ‘I know, honey, it’s alright.’

  Danny.

  A man. Not a memory, not a ghost at a window.

  Danny. Mum’s brother, all grown up. Danny, Basil’s dad. Danny was alive and Danny was Basil’s dad.

  17 January 1996

  That day

  As Leonie had stood a moment longer on the roadside to enjoy watching Danny walk away from her, she’d had no presentiment, no prickling dread; she just remembered a pure and luxurious joy, the feel of silt and sun on her skin and the pleasure of watching him move his body as he walked: the body of her friend, her lovely lover.

  But she heard nothing from him all the next day. It was weird. He usually arrived on her doorstep at some point during the day, with some new guitar lick to show her, or a new song she just had to listen to. Or he’d prank call her – two and a half rings, the phone cutting off halfway through the third ring, their signal to meet at the gully. But there was nothing. So she’d pranked him instead and headed down to the gully herself.

  She’d waited there with the sun bouncing off the water, that water that had seen terrible history, the history not written in books, and still she felt no dread. And when after an hour Danny hadn’t shown up she went home again. Because it was weird, yes, but she wasn’t alarmed yet. Something must have come up, that was all. There would be time for it to become clear. He’d have something to tell her, probably. Some great story. Something funny, or sweet; something Danny-idiosyncratic.

  She thought about calling his house, or even heading over there.

  But then she remembered, she couldn’t.

  Hessel had seen them. Hessel would kill her.

  So she went home and tried not to sit by the phone that wasn’t ringing. She watched Blue Heelers with her family, her father giggling about all the blue-eyes and the way they all lived in the unluckiest town in the world, crime per capita, and her mum muttering about him in a few words of language before telling him in English to shut the hell up, she was trying to watch. Leonie’s mother was really into Blue Heelers – she hung on every word, gasped at the dramatic reveals, cried when characters died or had their hearts broken, and her dad liked to watch it because he got to joke about all the blue-eyes, an especially great joke because he had blue eyes himself and people were always a bit sus on his Aboriginality – it was a running joke between them all.

  Danny’s eyes weren’t blue. They were the most complicated shade of green. The green of the water in the gully. The green of the new leaves on young eucalypts. Why hadn’t he called? she thought.

  And then, late at night, after the credits had rolled, the telephone rang. She leapt on it, phone to her ear, putting on a nonchalant voice.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Leonie?’ It was Cathy.

  ‘Oh.’ She tried to cover her disappointment. ‘Hey, Cathy.’

  But Cathy was in tears. She could barely draw breath. Ragged air filled the earpiece.

  ‘Whoa, Cathy. You right?’

  ‘No,’ Cathy managed to get out. ‘It’s Danny.’ Her intake of breath down the phone line was harsh. ‘He’s in hospital, Leonie,’ Cathy was saying. And then she sobbed as she tried to get it out, as she said, in broken fragments, ‘We don’t know if he’s going to be okay.’

  Leonie felt numbness wash through her. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s his head, his poor head . . .’ and Cathy’s words disappeared into a tumble of tears.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In Melbourne. We’re in Melbourne. Mum and Dad have gone down to the cafeteria – that’s why I can call you now.’

  ‘Now? How long has he been in there?’

  ‘Since last night – since we got home.’

  ‘From the reservoir?’

  Cathy was silent for a while – silent or crying, Leonie couldn’t tell. And then Cathy said, ‘He had an accident.’

  ‘Bullshit he did, Cathy.’

  Cathy didn’t respond. Leonie said, ‘I’ll come. I have to come. Dad will drive me.’ Her parents were standing next to her by now, her own thin breaths alerting them to tragedy.

  Danny had been there since last night. He’d been there, and she’d had no idea. She’d gone to bed. Slept. Eaten breakfast. Waited for him. It seemed inconceivable.

  Her father was already reaching for his car keys.

  ‘I’ll look for you downstairs,’ Cathy was saying. ‘Don’t let Dad see you.’

  And Leonie dropped the phone receiver and ran to the car.

  *

  Danny had his eyes shut. A tube was up his nose. There were monitors attached to his chest and a clamp on his finger. A nurse sat silently in front of a monitor in a sectioned-off corner of the room.

  ‘He might open his eyes if you talk,’ said Cathy.

  Cathy had secretly brought Leonie upstairs while Hessel and Bette had gone to lie down in the family rest area rooms. She leaned down to kiss her brother quickly on his forehead, and stepped out of the room to leave Leonie alone.

  The lights were low. Leonie took his hand. He was cold. She tucked his hand under her shirt and warmed it against the skin of her belly.

  ‘Danny,’ she said. She almost didn’t want him to open his eyes – he was familiar this way, she’d seen him with his eyes closed before, but she didn’t know what to expect if he opened them. But he did, the eyelids moving up slowly, like heavy blinds on an ineffective drawstring.

  But he didn’t look at her, he looked straight ahead.

  ‘Danny,’ she said again and kissed him on the cheek, and a tear left her eye and landed on his skin there and she wiped it off with her thumb. She kissed him on the mouth, and he looked at her. And then he closed his eyes again.

  She could see the numbers on the nurse’s screen, heartbeat, oxygen, blood pressure, the numbers that kept a log of his physical processes. But Leonie wanted access to his mind. Was he in there?

  Cathy was sitting outside the door. Leonie stood above her, looking down.

  ‘What happened?’ she demanded.

  ‘He fell.’ Cathy sounded dull, stupid. ‘He went backwards. Off the cairn. Hit his head.’

  Leonie sat next to her. ‘No, Cathy.’

  Cathy stood up as soon as Leonie sat down. She stood stiff and wooden. ‘He hit the back of his head. And then some rocks came down on him.’ And she made as if to walk away into the room, but Leonie caught her hand.

  ‘Cathy,’ Leonie said, and Ca
thy stopped. And then Leonie spoke to her gently. ‘That’s bullshit, isn’t it, Cathy? It’s bullshit. They told you to say that, didn’t they? It was Hessel.’

  And Cathy began to shake. Her whole body quivering, a shudder running right through her.

  And then, arresting them both, Hessel’s voice came from the end of the corridor. ‘Cathy?’ And Cathy jumped and Leonie dropped her hand. Hessel walked towards them. He looked terrible. His eyes were red raw and his skin was grey. He was a devastated man. But the anger there was palpable.

  ‘What is she doing here? Did you call her?’

  Leonie stood and levelled a stare at Hessel while Cathy failed to answer.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ said Leonie. ‘I’m visiting Danny.’

  ‘Get out!’ Hessel shouted at her, drawing nurses from their station.

  ‘No,’ said Leonie with steely calm, and the nurses paused. ‘No, Hessel. I will stay a bit longer, and then I’ll go and see my parents. And then I will come back. And I will keep coming, do you hear me?’ She fronted up to Hessel, her finger held perfectly still in the air before him. ‘I will keep coming, and keep coming, and keep coming, and you will never see the end of me.’

  And Cathy watched Leonie in a daze as Leonie walked back into the room and sat down on the chair beside Danny and wove her fingers through his in a weave of light and shade.

  33

  Time went strange. In that little room, as Mum and I lay huddled together in that odd bunker I had made in her old bedroom, I understood reality only by what I could hear:

  Leonie sending Basil out to the car to call for help.

  The man, Danny, weeping. His husky voice, rattly with tears, as he answered Leonie’s questions about Bette, about me, about Mum.

  The sound of Leonie counting, her breaths coming short, the sounds of her body working – performing CPR, I realised, pressing Hessel’s chest and then stopping to breathe into him – a repetitive body-on-body sound, trying to undo the damage the man’s own thud-thud-thudding had done, trying to restore life as she was trained to do; a heartbeat sound to kill, a heartbeat sound to revive.