few minutes.
The ambos tell us they’re sick and tired of helping
drunk kids.
They ask us if she took any drugs.
I shake my head.
They tell me that it’s better to tell them now so they
can save her, rather than finding out later when she’s
past saving.
But I insist that I’m telling the truth
Bronwyn wouldn’t touch drugs — ever.
They ask if she poured her own drinks,
and I say, ‘No, we never do.’
I tell them about New Guy,
how he was insistent on taking her home,
how I wouldn’t let him.
Jim tells me to shut up.
They don’t need to hear my drunken shit.
But the ambos ask if he’s still around.
They want to talk to him, but he’s long gone.
I go to the hospital in the ambulance with them.
Bronwyn is sometimes awake,
sometimes not.
There’s people in emergency with what I’m sure are
stab wounds,
and I remember being in emergency years ago,
when Tim was sick.
And Tim telling me that the early hours of the morning is
when they move the dead bodies around.
So I’m watching for them too.
Doctor’s orders
Bronwyn wakes up, cries,
says she thinks something got put in her drink.
The doctor asks her if she’s just saying that because she’ll
get in trouble with her mum and dad for being drunk,
and she cries some more.
He says he’ll do a blood test,
even though we all know what it’s going to say,
that she’s just drunk,
and that’s all.
He brushes me aside
when I tell him that she probably only had ten drinks
over five hours
and jabs the needle into her arm,
telling me to get a coffee and sober myself up.
I hold her hair
as she spews
and tell her it’s going to be all right.
Hours later,
a woman doctor sticks her head around the curtain.
Her photo ID says her name — Aimee West.
Apparently Nasty Doctor has finished his shift.
She smiles as she says hello, but her eyes reflect
how tired she is.
I’m wondering how much she must like doctoring people
to start a shift at five am
when I realise she’s still talking.
The results of the blood test show
that Bronwyn’s drink was definitely spiked.
She tells us with sympathy in her eyes
that Bronwyn is lucky
she didn’t end up being raped and left in a gutter,
that she hopes we’ll stop taking drinks from
people we think we can trust.
That it could’ve ended up a lot worse.
Dangerous world
Dr Aimee tells us with anger in her eyes
about the young girl who was in last weekend.
How she went out to celebrate her eighteenth birthday,
first time in a club
and even though she only had two drinks,
one was spiked.
The security guards thought she was just drunk
and kicked her out.
The guy who spiked her drink
told the guards he was her boyfriend
even though they’d never spoken.
She told the guards that she didn’t know who he was
but the guy told them she was just being a drunken fool,
that she didn’t know what she was saying,
that they’d had a fight and it was the alcohol talking.
And the guards agreed.
Just another drunk girl falling over herself
babbling nonsense
about to pass out
reeking of vomit.
They were more than happy
for her ‘boyfriend’ to take her home.
She woke up
hours later,
Naked
Bruised
Sore.
The tests confirmed
she’d been raped by six guys.
The doctor shakes her head.
‘It’s a sad and dangerous world we live in, girls,
a sad and dangerous world.’
Her beeper goes off
and she gives us a tired smile as she leaves.
What kind of a world is this?
Bronwyn sleeps,
drip in her arm,
hair plastered stickily across her wan face.
The only colour in her face is the black as black
marks underneath each eye.
As Char paces,
angry,
fuming,
at Nasty Doctor,
and New Guy.
She can’t believe
there are people out there
dropping shit into drinks
for the fun of it.
And there are people out there
who are considered so smart
but are so condescending.
What kind of a world is this?
But Mum
After lunch that day,
when Bronwyn’s gone up to a ward
for a day or two,
I go home,
zombified.
Mum is about to go off her nut at me
for going to the party
when she sees the look on my face.
‘For heaven’s sake, Char. What is it now?’
I tell her about Bronwyn,
about the Nasty Doctor,
about the ambos.
She tells me, ‘I knew you shouldn’t have gone to that party.
See? I knew.’
‘But Mum —’
I say,
‘But Mum — what if I hadn’t been there?
Imagine what would have happened.’
She cuddles me, and says,
‘I’m just glad you’re okay, Char.
I’m just glad you’re okay.’
Forgiveness
I tell the shrink
that although Jim wants me to forgive him
for the cheating
I can’t.
Because if I forgave him
that would make what he did okay.
I would be saying that it was okay.
She asks me
if forgiveness can mean that
what happened wasn’t okay
but you’re moving on,
taking what you learnt,
but not staying in the past,
bitter.
That you don’t
even have to like people again once you forgive them.
You don’t
have to invite them for lunch or want to be around them.
But you don’t
carry hate around with you for what they did to you.
That forgiveness can be a release for you,
rather than exoneration for them.
I tell her
I’ll have to think about it.
I tell her
that she sure does have some weird theories.
I tell her
she must have gone crazy
after listening to people’s problems for so many years.
The school is glad
that I have a shrink
because that means I’m curable
and it’s not their problem.
But I think the counsellor
is slightly miffed
that I wouldn’t talk to her.
Like you’d want to talk to someone
who you knew didn’t want to hear you,
not really,
and who told you to go away
&
nbsp; when you couldn’t get the words out.
I find out
that Mum and Dad have been seeing the shrink as well.
They tell me,
‘When one person in this family is sick, or hurt, or sad,
we all are.
We all feel with you, Char.
And as parents
we need some reassurance that
we’ve done the best that we could do.
It’s not easy,
you know,
wondering if every single decision you make from the time
your child is born
is the right decision
or the wrong decision
and if it’s going to come back and bite you on the bum.’
Fishbowl
I run into a friend of mine, Kate,
from years ago.
She’s older than me
and turns out she’s now manager of a trendy clothes shop.
We talk about school.
How much I hate it.
She laughs,
sips her coffee,
and says how great it is once you get out of that fishbowl
and discover that all the things you thought
were important,
like who kissed who on the weekend
and which boys were getting suspended for refusing to
shave their chin fluff,
don’t matter at all,
and how great it is
to finally get your independence
and decide
what to wear,
whether or not you want to go to class at uni or tafe,
what time to get up.
She says that life gets so much nicer
once they chuck you out of the fishbowl
and into the ocean.
And it’s interesting
watching everyone,
seeing who swims and who just can’t hack it.
It’s interesting, she says,
because the people that you think would excel
don’t always.
They can’t handle being the little fish in the big pond
when they’re so used to having it the other way around.
But some of the little fish from the fishbowl
get into the ocean
and grow.
I wonder
if I’ll grow and prosper
when I get chucked in the ocean.
Or whether I’ll get eaten,
chewed up by some nasty fish
and spat out on the ocean floor.
All growed up
My birthday is coming up
and Mum asks me what I want to do.
I shrug my shoulders.
No idea.
I’ll be eighteen soon.
Able to
buy alcohol and drink it,
buy smokes and smoke them,
vote,
walk into sex shops (not that I want to).
It’s only a couple of weeks and then I’ll be able to do
all of that.
I’m secretly relieved
that I don’t have to deal with that just yet.
Julie/but you were perfect just the way you were
I find out
that Char has a tattoo
when she’s hanging out some washing.
I’m watching her through the window,
looking at her lithe limbs,
glossy hair
smooth skin.
Then I see it,
where her shirt’s ridden up,
a crude etching,
on her back.
My tea is going cold
but I can’t bring myself to drink it.
I sit,
thinking
about looking her over just after she was born.
The inspection,
Paul called it,
joking that we’d call for a refund if need be.
We counted her fingers, her toes.
Marvelled at the intricacies of thumbprints
and lines on palms
of a child just born.
Awed at the softness of her skin,
the fragility of this child completely entrusted to us.
She seemed so wonderful and beautiful and perfect and
complex all at the same time.
I shudder at the thought
that my little girl
lay face down on a table
and let a stranger stab needles into her skin over
and over into that perfect, silken, beautiful skin.
That is now marred
with black ink.
I don’t tell Char
I saw her tattoo
even though I want to go nuts.
Because I know
the only reason I want to yell at her
is to find out what else she hasn’t told me.
Imagine
I sit in the rocking chair in my parents’ room
when they’ve gone out
and,
for a second,
I picture a nursery perfectly laid out for the child
I could’ve had.
It hurts,
the pain like the short sharp stab of a needle.
I open my eyes
and think about Mum and Dad going ballistic.
And Jim hating me for a child he didn’t want.
Even though it’s
Sweet,
Bittersweet,
to imagine,
the reality
would’ve been much different.
I stand up,
and walk out of the room.
Happy birthday to you
I turn eighteen on a Thursday.
Mum, Dad and Tim
come blaring into my room,
too early in the morning for my liking,
and wake me up,
singing loudly and off-key
and loving every second of it.
I rub my eyes,
smudging yesterday’s eyeliner all over my face.
Oh well,
at least it matches the bed hair.
Tim gives me a necklace,
not a half-bad one either.
Mum must’ve picked it out.
Mum and Dad grin at each other,
handing me a tiny present,
perfectly wrapped,
Mum’s doing, of course.
They kiss me on the head,
Dad first,
then Mum.
Dad’s getting the video camera ready.
Must be a good present.
I rip it open
in my usual slapdash style.
A single key falls out.
Guess it’s some symbolism that I just don’t get.
Maybe it’s for the back door or something.
Mum tells me to get out of bed
and close my eyes.
She leads me down the hallway,
while Tim sings, ‘I know something you don’t know,’
over and over.
I can tell someone is opening the front door,
and I don’t want to go out there in my pj’s
but I get a shove from behind.
‘Open your eyes, birthday girl,’ says Dad.
In the driveway,
there’s a car.
A little white car.
With the ribbon like they use at weddings on it.
I must be dreaming.
A car.
My parents bought me a car!
A car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dad assures me that even though it’s old,
it’s in really good condition,
and it’s even got a CD player.
I have to tell everyone I know
and even everyone I don’t.
How good is this???
I drive it to school,
Mum clinging on for dear life in the passenger seat.
If she was a Catholic,
she’d be asking for the last rites by now.
By the time I pull up to school
Mum has already called the driving instructor to
schedule more lessons.
The ribbon’s still on the car.
I get out.
Bronwyn screams,
jumps up and down,
attracts the attention of everyone in the entire school.
But I don’t care.
I’m eighteen now.
And I’ve got a car.
Bubbles on my tongue
Jim makes me go to the bottle-o that night
and buy a bottle of champagne,
winking,
and saying,
‘Just because you can.’
He’s been telling me all day
that I had to wait until the night to get my present.
We go back to his house
and his mum grins at me,
hugs me,
and kisses me on the cheek.
His little sister is sticking a sign on the fridge that says,
Fish are friends not food,
but by the smell of the dinner cooking,
she didn’t get the message across in time.
His mum hands Jim the ‘good glasses’ and an ice bucket
and we go into his room.
There are candles everywhere,
but I don’t know whether Jim is truly being nice
or whether there’s an ulterior motive.
He pours the champagne,
says happy birthday,
and we clink glasses and drink,
both pretending we like the taste to show how
sophisticated we are.
I can feel the bubbles popping on my tongue.
Jim pulls out a little blue box,
I know it’s jewellery.
When he opens the box,
I come face to face
with a diamond ring.
Jim says
not to panic
it’s not an engagement ring
but I did turn eighteen today
and we have been through some shit,
worthy of a diamond.
He says,
did I know
that a diamond is the hardest natural substance
known to man?
He says I’m like a diamond
because
no matter what,
I don’t crack,
I don’t fall apart,
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 10
