by Zane Lovitt
One day, Sully and me ran around the park long enough to work up a sweat, even though it was only September and the sun wasn’t quite strong enough to knock the chill out of the air. While I squeezed out through the hole in the fence, Sully ran ahead of me towards the flat and nearly collided with a woman coming down the hill pushing a pram.
Apart from a purple scarf, the woman was dressed head to toe in black. Her hair was black with purple streaks. The pram – the fancy kind that costs as much as a car – was also black and purple. She slowed as I neared in that way of mothers who expect you to ooh and ah over their kid. I only glanced at it. Four or five months maybe, wearing a hand-knitted beanie. And fuck me if the beanie wasn’t black and purple too.
The woman smiled. No-one had fucking smiled at me since the night I killed my husband.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello.’
I turned to make sure she could see my tattoos.
‘Nice to see some sun.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cute pup, What kind is it?’
‘American pit bull.’
‘Oh?’
She struggled to maintain her smile. But if looking like a murderous dyke wasn’t enough to put her off, Sully was. I was enjoying my smug moment so much that I nearly let Sully scamper off the edge of the gutter and into the traffic. I scooped him up with my foot, dumped him on the footpath and smacked him hard across the face. American pit bulls have such a high pain threshold, I had to be forceful so he’d get the message not to run out on the street. Sully yelped in surprise and I saw the woman’s smile take another hit as she added animal cruelty to the list of things she hated about me. She leaned into the pram and fussed over the kid’s beanie.
‘Well, me and Charlie better get going,’ she said. ‘See ya.’
She headed to the crèche at the bottom of the hill, trailing disapproval like a vapour in her wake.
When the letter came a week later, I knew who was behind it.
Council has received advice that you are in possession of a restricted breed dog, namely an American pit bull terrier, this being a breed whose importation into Australia is prohibited absolutely under the Commonwealth Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956. As of 2 November 2005, the Domestic (Feral and Nuisance) Animals Act 1994 makes it an offence to acquire a restricted breed dog…
Shit, an offence would be a breach of my parole.
Council records show you have not registered your dog. All residents are required by law to register their dog by age three months. Persons applying to register their dog must make a declaration as to whether their dog is a restricted breed. A sizeable court penalty applies for a false declaration. Council cannot accept the registration of restricted breed dogs.
Fuck. I couldn’t keep Sully without registering him, but if I tried to register him I’d get done for acquiring a restricted breed. So much for Sully’s silver lining. Why the fuck couldn’t that woman have left us alone? Why did she have to stop and talk to me? Couldn’t she read the big neon sign over my head saying Fuck off? And why did I tell her what kind of dog he was? She’d wrong-footed me with her smile and her chit-chat about the weather. Now losing Sully was the price I’d pay for being fucking polite.
I stood a moment in the galley kitchen of my flat, holding the council letter, burning with rage. It was a slow burn, not a conflagration. I was in control. Then, a eureka moment. It almost made me wish I could attend another session just to tell the group about it.
‘Check it out,’ I spoke aloud, as if they were there in the kitchenette with me. ‘Anger therapy’s worked. I’m controlling my impulses. I’m going to take my time, really plan my revenge to be sure to hurt this woman like she’s hurt me.’
Sully, the sweet little mite, thought I was talking to him and drummed the floor with his tail.
That night I took him back where I got him. I didn’t think I had enough heart left to break, but saying goodbye to Sully proved me wrong.
*
My first step was to find out where she lived. It’s not easy to observe someone undetected when you weigh nearly ninety kilos and have tattoos on your face. You can’t march into a childcare centre and ask to see the records for ‘Charlie’. Shit, I didn’t even know if Charlie was a boy or a girl. Could be either these days. I was at the local video store when the solution came to me. A DVD called Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang caught my eye. A Val Kilmer movie I hadn’t seen, though I saw a lot of his movies in the rat house. My favourite was The Saint, where he had all the gadgets and disguises. That’s when it struck me: I could disguise myself. I might not have Val Kilmer’s budget, but I had a Savers down the road and a Vinnies around the corner. Stuff was cheap at Savers and if I played my cards right, the old dears at the Vinnies might give me what I needed for free. My spirits lifted for the first time since losing Sully. I grabbed Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, found The Saint and took both DVDs to the counter.
The video store guy caught me smiling. Nearly scared the shit out of him.
I spun a story to the two old dears at the Vinnies about being a single mum in hiding from a violent bastard who forcibly tattooed my face.
‘I only want to buy my groceries—’ I deliberately used the old-fashioned word ‘—without having to look over my shoulder.’
Well, fuck me if the old biddies didn’t mobilise like a pair of retired army officers. One of them, Eunice, found me a couple of wigs: a grey curly one much like her own hair, and a long brown one with a thick fringe.
‘We get them from cancer patients,’ Eunice said. ‘Survivors,’ she added quickly, as if it mattered. ‘They don’t need the wigs once their hair grows back.’
While Eunice rifled through the racks, the other one, Carmela, put together an ensemble she called the Nonna look: black cardigan, shapeless black dress, black headscarf to go over the grey wig. She teamed this with some low-heeled, lace-up shoes and even found me an unopened packet of support stockings. Eunice reappeared with a blue tent dress, lambskin vest, beige boots and sunglasses with lenses the size of beer coasters.
I wasn’t crazy about trying it all on but the old dears were keen and I wanted to keep them sweet. The Nonna look was brilliant. My own mother wouldn’t have recognised me. If she did, she would’ve crossed the street, but that’s beside the point.
‘Un momento,’ Carmela murmured at my reflection in the change-room mirror. She ducked off and returned with a black handbag. ‘I think le vedove will try to speak italiano with you.’
‘Vedovay?’
‘The widows.’
She adjusted the lacy headscarf to hide the tattooed tears. ‘Perfect.’
Eunice’s hippy shit looked better than I’d imagined. It was years since I’d felt hair on my shoulders or worn a dress. I looked like one of those jovial plump women with an appetite for life, the type I normally did what I could to avoid. In the interest of authenticity, I let Eunice drape a string of beads over my head. But when she reached up to remove the sunglasses, I flinched.
‘May I?’
A voice you’d use with a wounded animal.
I couldn’t see what she was doing, felt something cool and damp press against my right cheekbone. She stepped back.
‘Much better.’
I looked in the mirror. She had covered over my tears.
‘Concealer.’ She pressed a small cylinder into my hand. ‘Hides a multitude of sins.’
I was too shocked to speak.
*
I used the Hippy Chick disguise to tail her. When she passed by my apartment window again, pushing her fancy pram, I gave her a twenty-second headstart, crossed the road and followed her up the hill.
Her house turned out to be a fifteen-minute walk in the direction of Sydney Road. If Brunswick was a body, Sydney Road was the spinal cord that held it all together and made it move. There’s nothing suspicious about
a hippy on Sydney Road, so I followed Pram Woman until she turned into the entrance of a sand-coloured weatherboard house opposite a small park.
At last, a lucky break. I slowed my pace and paused to rub an imaginary blister on my heel, used the park fence for balance. A row of spindly shrubs blocked my view of Pram Woman’s house, but the front door was clearly visible through the gate in her picket fence. A tortoiseshell cat sprang out of the way as she pushed up onto the verandah. The number on her mailbox was 124.
Early next morning I walked down the same street in my Nonna disguise. A dark-green sedan I hadn’t noticed the previous evening was parked out front. I headed for the park and chose the bench with the best view of the house. Someone had covered one arm of the park bench with a knitted sleeve. I’d seen fence railings, bicycle stands and signposts in the area clothed in random bits of knitting like this. Was it a joke? A message? Not knowing made me uneasy. I shuffled to the other end of the bench and took out a string of rosary beads I’d found in the Vinnies handbag. I’d long ago stopped believing in God, but I figured people would leave me alone if they thought I was praying.
Just before seven, a passing car projected a missile that hit the verandah of number 124 with the thud of paper on wood. The front door opened and the woman dashed out, snatched the newspaper, dashed back in again. Hair standing on end and wearing a too-tight black tracksuit, she made me think of a trapdoor spider.
Twenty minutes later a man in a suit appeared. Lean and polished, I could practically smell his aftershave from across the road. The green sedan beeped as he made for the driver’s side, mobile phone against his ear before he’d even fastened his seatbelt. It was quiet for almost an hour after that. I sipped at a bottle of water and ignored the growling of my stomach.
A curly-haired woman with dark circles under her eyes entered the park behind a careening toddler. She sat on a swing and watched as the boy scooped up handfuls of tanbark and flung them into the breeze. I watched the boy, too, accidentally made eye contact with the woman. She gave me a tired smile. I had my hand on the beads in case she came over but was saved by the arrival of a second mother-and-child duo. They all seemed to know each other. I returned to my surveillance.
Around eight-thirty my target re-emerged in her trademark black and purple and turned her pram in the direction of the childcare centre. This time the baby wore pink – a girl then. As soon as they were out of sight, I crossed the road at a pace appropriate to an overweight and elderly woman and paused out front of the house as if to catch my breath. I hadn’t heard the telltale beep of a burglar alarm and there was no sticker in the front window, no blue light on the roof. The left side gate was covered in vines, the right was a recycled wooden door left ajar.
No alarm, no dog, ample cover and a gate left open. This was what the burg’ merchants in the slammer would call a ‘dream job’.
I took a tissue from my handbag, wiped my nose and leaned over the front fence to use the bin. The recycling bin was closest. Amid the empty wine bottles, newspapers, tins and plastic I found what I was looking for. An envelope addressed to Belinda Hyatt.
I spent a week of mornings in the park, getting a handle on the daily routine. Hubby worked fulltime; Belinda did three days from home, the days little Charlie went off to childcare. When she had the baby with her, Belinda usually went out. Once I followed her to a café on Sydney Road. It was jammed with prams. A sticker on the window said, ‘Breastfeeding welcome here’.
Sydney Road swarmed with old women in black. I’d barely noticed them before, but now that I was one of them I saw them everywhere. And I realised how much we had in common. Their public grief set them apart. My tattooed tears served the same purpose.
I learned to impersonate their rolling gait, a pace that allowed me to cruise past Belinda’s house even when she was working. Through the shrubbery I watched her in the front room at her computer, the tortoiseshell cat lolling on her desk like an oversized paperweight.
I undertook evening surveillance in my hippy guise. You didn’t see so many Nonnas out after dark, but as Hippy Chick I could always pretend to be going out or heading home, depending on the hour. Most evenings were quiet at Belinda’s, the green sedan always home before seven. Lights shone from windows at the rear where the kitchen was located, moving later to the lounge room at the front. The place was dark by eleven.
I turned up one evening to find Belinda’s husband in the front yard watering the garden. The baby was suspended against his chest in one of those carriers, arms and legs flapping like a pull-string puppet. The man was chatting to the baby but paused as I walked past to give me a straight-toothed smile that made my eyes water. I kept walking until I found myself outside a pub on Sydney Road.
The barman’s pierced eyebrow made him look permanently surprised but he didn’t blink when Hippy Chick ordered a pot. The smell was room deodoriser that reminded me of prison, so I headed out to the beer garden. It was like walking in on a summer camp. A pack of hairy men played ping-pong, exchanging banter with the young women at a nearby table who were drinking beer and knitting.
A guy at a table on his own was smoking rollies and reading a book. I thought next time I should bring a book too, then laughed at myself for imagining there would be a next time. One of the hairy guys approached me. I almost told him to fuck off when I realised he was only after the ping-pong ball that had rolled under my table.
‘Thanks.’ He smiled. I smiled back. He went back to his ping-pong game. I wiped the sweat from my upper lip. A couple walked in, tattooed sleeves interlinked. On their heels was a Staffie, blue like Sully. I looked at the empty space at my feet. If it wasn’t for Belinda, Sully would’ve been there too, making me smile with his goofy grin and thumping tail.
I drained my beer and left.
The following night it was after twelve when I ventured onto Belinda’s property. It was dark apart from a dull glow in the second window on the right side – a night-light in the baby’s room. I inspected the window: old wood, new lock, key dangling in it. Jemmying it open with a crowbar would be easy but noisy. I made my way to the back of the house.
The yard was organised into garden beds, a fig tree on one side, lemon on the other. A small deck held a trestle table and chairs. Security door, more key-locked windows… Belinda and her hubby weren’t as slack about security as I thought.
A flash of light caught my eye. I took a closer look at what was on the table. Leadlight. A work in progress. Perhaps a feature window or a panel for the door. Leadlight was an activity we were offered in the rat house as an alternative to boredom, until the screws twigged that Traci ‘The Fox’ Ferrigno was using the classes to conduct her own lessons in the art of glass cutting for B&E purposes.
I scanned the yard again, registered the shed in the corner. It was wide open. On a low shelf were Belinda’s leadlight tools: pliers, rulers, brushes and glass cutters.
A square of light came on.
It beamed into the yard from the house. Someone was stirring. I crouched in the shadows by the shed, then hurried back the way I’d come.
Sounds from the baby’s room. I squatted beneath the window and listened. Floorboards creaked rhythmically, a muted female voice accompanying the gentle drumming. I thought Belinda might be pacing the room, though I hadn’t heard the baby cry. Then recognition hit me like a punch in the guts.
Belinda was in a rocking chair with Charlie at her breast. I just knew it. I slumped to the ground, my back pressed against the weatherboards, my tears like acid.
*
The right night presented itself a week later. New moon, north wind, wheelie bins out front. I wore black jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt and sneakers; carried a Swiss Army knife in one pocket, WD40 in the other.
Not a night for disguises.
I reached number 124 at four a.m., the quiet time between the baby’s one o’clock feed and the man’s six-thirty jog. I let myself a
round the back and took the glass cutters from the shed. The rusty wire screen on the window tore like tissue paper and the wind masked the sound as I carved a hole in the glass large enough to insert my hand and disengage the widow lock. A squirt of WD40 enabled me to ease the window open with barely a sound. I’d learned well from Traci The Fox.
My heart speeded up as I prepared to teach Belinda Hyatt how it felt to lose what she loved. I scooped up the warm body at the end of the cot, held closed her mouth and nose, hauled her back out through the window with me and slashed her throat with my knife.
The body jerked in spasms for a few moments then flopped in my arms, silent and still. I stood fixed to the spot, blood seeping into my clothes, the weight growing heavier in my arms. I expected to feel excited at this point, even elated. Instead, I was appalled, even as I felt compelled to see my ghastly plan through.
I retraced my steps to the front of the house and arranged the body on the door step where it would be seen when Belinda emerged to collect the newspaper. My hands were sticky with blood and even in the dim light I could see black liquid pooling on the doormat.
I stepped back, taking in the bloody tableau, trying to imagine Belinda’s reaction. The horror in her face. The likelihood she would scream. But still I felt no satisfaction. Only disgust.
But I was a hardened criminal, for fuck’s sake. I had the teardrop tattoos to prove it.
