by Lily Malone
‘You go for those sticks, you make bloody sure you kill me. Understand?’ His voice was the hiss of a snake.
Jaydah’s mum sobbed from the floor. Jaz rocked. Quiet now. Watching.
Lazily, leisurely, her father pulled the short end of the cigarette from his lip and flicked it to the hearth. His eyes bounced off the rattan sticks on the wall and back to Jaydah’s face and he put the heel of his shoe on the cigarette butt and twisted, grinding it once, twice, to nothing.
‘You sure you wanna go there? Are you fast enough?’ he taunted. ‘Ya ain’t beat me yet.’
Her muscles tensed.
‘Don’t you go to jail for him,’ her mum whispered, rocking with Jasmine.
‘Shut ya hole,’ her dad roared and Jaz screamed and bounced the back of her head into the brick wall behind her, again, again, again, till her mum got her arm there to buffer Jasmine’s precious head.
Jaydah caved. ‘It’s my fault for being late. I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Now that’s what we want to hear. Good girl.’ His palm closed around his belt, pulling slowly from the buckle along the length of leather, snapping it straight. ‘Isn’t she a good girl, Snazzy Jazzy?’
‘She’s a good girl,’ her sister said, nodding through her sobs.
Jaydah pulled her tee-shirt over her head to bare her back before she walked from the lounge room. She threw the shirt towards the coat rack but didn’t wait to see if it caught on a hook. She headed out through the front door that her dad hadn’t ever bothered to pull shut.
He’d already known how this would end.
She put her hands on the wooden rail that ran across the front of the verandah and bent her head, refusing to shiver in the October night, gazing out across the wet, black paddocks towards the piles of washed river rocks in their bays. There was just enough light to make the rocks glisten.
‘Don’t be late again,’ the viper’s voice said.
Jaydah concentrated on the rocks. Breathed deep and even.
The rocks always looked beautiful when it rained. Water brought out the vibrant pinks and subtle blue-greys in a way in which bright sunlight couldn’t. When they first moved here and her dad explored the quarry and dug out the first rocks, piling loose pink-white pyramids on the hill, she and Jaz used to blast the rocks with the hose just to make the stones glisten and shine—
There was a whistle and Jaydah braced. The first blow fell and its kiss stole the air from her lungs. Her vision of rain on the rocks twisted, shattered, gone.
‘This is that Honeychurch boy’s fault,’ he said, voice jerky with excitement and exertion. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
The belt hissed again and Jaydah gripped the timbers to stay on her feet. ‘Yes, Dad. I know.’
But she held Brix’s face in her mind. Brix was her rock, and he saved her as her father tried to break her apart.
CHAPTER
3
Jaydah had been awake for a while, thinking about Brix, thinking about getting out, when a tentative knock scraped her bedroom door.
‘Yeah,’ she answered, and the door opened a crack.
Her mum put her head and half her body through the crack and into the room. ‘Jaydah?’
‘Come in, Mum. I was awake.’ Of course she was awake. Her back was on fire.
Her mum edged into the room, leaving the door open. ‘I brought you tea.’
She sat up in bed, trying hard not to wince as her shoulders scraped the pillow. ‘Thank you.’
Her mum sat on the edge of Jaydah’s bed, small, soft and quiet, still holding the tea, which Jaydah now took from her. Her mum’s fingers flicked and folded without the teacup, and then she buried her hands in her lap.
From outside the room, they both heard a loud bang, then Jasmine’s happy shriek: ‘Snap!’
Her father’s voice: ‘You win again, Snazzy Jazzy. You’re the champion today!’
‘Is Jaz okay, Mum?’
‘She is good. The bruises, it is not too bad.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘It is gone down in the nighttime.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad.’
It was the only reason she stayed. Her sister loved that monster. Jaz didn’t wish the monster dead. But her mum? Herself? She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t.
She wouldn’t.
He was getting worse. A chill ran through her sore back, creeping from the base of her spine. She’d got home just in time. He’d already hit Jaz—and Jazzy was his favourite—her mother would have been next.
It wasn’t just the violence. It was the constant cloud of threat and fear that wore at her day after day. She never knew what sort of day he’d have, or when he’d strike next.
Brix was right. She was twenty-seven years old. If she didn’t get them out now, she’d never get them out. If she waited till she had more money saved, or for her father to let his guard down, or for Disability Services to finally realise her dad was rorting the government’s support system … if she waited for someone else to save her, she might wait too late.
Was there ever a perfect time to risk everything?
‘We have to get away from him, Mum,’ Jaydah whispered. ‘You have to come with me and we have to get out. All of us. He’s a monster.’
It wasn’t the first time she’d said this to her mum and her mum’s reaction was always the same.
‘If your father thinks you will leave he will take her. He will take Jaz away.’ Her mum wrung her hands, rocking forward and back so the mattress springs squeaked and the bed groaned.
‘I can ask Brix—’
‘Brix won’t want me. Brix won’t want Jasmine. We can’t go. It won’t work. He will take Jaz away. He always says this. He will make her go. He will make me go back to Manila. The police will come and they will take me away.’
‘Brix loves me. He’ll help me. His family would help me—the Honeychurches are good people.’
‘What are you saying, my Jaydah? You are not married to this man. How would I write to my family and say my daughter has gone away with a boy and she is not married!’
She didn’t have the fight for this argument today, but one day. One day soon. She’d get them out. She’d get them all out.
‘Rosalie! The bacon is burning.’ Her dad’s shout rattled into the room and Jaydah’s mum leapt to her feet, eyes darting towards the door.
‘Go, Mum. It’s okay. I’ll be up soon.’
Her mum ran her hand across Jaydah’s hair, sweeping it from her forehead. ‘He will want that you practise your kali with him this morning,’ she said.
‘I know. I will be up in a minute.’
‘Rosalie!’ Dad shouted, sharper this time, and her mum was gone.
Jaydah sipped her tea.
A bang from the kitchen, and Jazzy’s loud: ‘Snap!’
Snap was her sister’s favourite game. Jaz would play Snap for hours.
Her father roared his laughter. ‘You win again, Jasmine.’
She had to get her mum and her sister out of here. How would she get them out?
Jaydah’s eyes flitted around her room. She had no artwork, no posters. She’d never had posters, not even when she was a girl. There wasn’t even a window to give her the picture of a view. She had a wardrobe without many clothes. A desk with a study lamp and built-in drawers and a chair. The single bed. And her exercise mat on the floor.
There was nothing of her here. Never had she wanted to make this room feel like home. Home was a place to relax and feel safe, and Jaydah Tully never relaxed because in this house if she relaxed for a second, she might wake up dead.
She kicked at the covers and put her feet to the floor, staying for those seconds, taking another sip of tea. Gingerly she stretched her neck, then her shoulders. They stung, but she’d had worse. She’d be okay.
She pulled on black exercise pants, a tight tee-shirt because today she couldn’t bear the straps from a bra, then a long-sleeved black top. All black, like her.
‘Your mother is making Sunday breakfast
, show some respect,’ her father called.
Jaydah picked up her tea, finished it and left the room.
‘There she is, Jazzy,’ her dad said, and Jasmine’s face lit up like a dog’s might, if Jaydah had walked into the room carrying a leash instead of an empty china cup.
‘Will you play Snap after breakfast, Jaydah?’
‘Jaydah has to practise her sinawali so she doesn’t get fat like your mum,’ the monster said, as his eyes made a stab at where their mum dished up food by the stove. ‘Later I want you to clear out the Number 4 bay rocks into the trailer. I have a delivery to make today, and then the bay will be clear for more tomorrow. When the bay is clear, you and Jaydah can play Snap.’
Jaydah kept her eyes down.
‘Isn’t that right, Jaydah?’ he said.
‘Yes. Later I will have a game, Jazzy,’ Jaydah said. ‘After the rocks are done.’
‘Haven’t you got a good morning for your dad?’
‘Good morning.’ She didn’t look at him.
Her mum scooped bacon, eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes onto buttered toast and put that plate in front of her father. He didn’t thank her.
Jazzy got pretty much the same but without the mushrooms or tomatoes. She didn’t thank her mother either.
Jaydah got scrambled eggs.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
Her mum sat and picked through a small bowl of white rice with a fork.
While Jaz ate, Jaydah checked her sister. Her mum was right. The swelling on her eye had gone down, although the bruise was small, nasty as their father, purple and vicious.
Hate made it hard to swallow the eggs in her throat. Jaydah chewed and chewed and the toast was like cardboard.
Finally she swallowed.
‘Put the cards away when we are eating at the table, Jasmine, and chew with your mouth shut so I don’t have to see those ugly teeth,’ the monster said, and Jaz picked up the Snap pack—the cards dog-eared and worn—and put them on a side table near the base of a figurine of a young girl carrying flowers. Then she returned to her breakfast.
They ate.
‘I wish I had a horse,’ Jaz said, foot kicking under the table in time with some tune in her head. ‘If I couldn’t have a horse, I’d like a lamb. I’d call the horse Tara. If I had a lamb I wouldn’t call it Tara. I’d call it Lamby.’
‘After our practice, your mum and I will go into Mount Barker to do shopping,’ the monster said.
‘Okay,’ Jaydah answered.
‘We’ll drop you in at the club to get your car.’
‘Thank you.’ He could have made her run, carrying the car battery.
‘Can I come?’ Jazzy asked their dad.
‘Not today, Snazzy Jazzy. You stay here to look after Ginger Puss. After breakfast take his cat food box and shake it so he hears you and comes in. Otherwise he hunts the birds. We don’t want him to kill the little birds, do we?’
‘No,’ Jaz said. ‘I like the birds. They are my pet birds.’ Jaydah kept her eyes on her plate and the eggs.
‘Jaydah will come home with her car, and you and Jaydah can sort out the rocks from the Number 4 bay because you’re my good workers, aren’t you, Jazzy?’
‘I’m the best worker.’
‘You are. You’re my best worker. You’re not lazy like your mum. You don’t want to get fat and lazy like your mum.’
‘She could have a heart attack.’
‘That’s right. That’s why you have to work. So you don’t have a heart attack and die. You’re putting a bit of weight on around your middle I think, Snazzy Jazzy. Looks that way to me.’
Usually, Jaydah would snap something like: she’s not fat. But not this morning. This morning she hurt too much.
‘I don’t want to die of a heart attack!’ Jaz wailed.
‘You won’t die if you don’t get lazy, Snazzy Jazzy!’ His laugh made Jaydah’s gut clench tight as a fist. ‘Jaydah will be here to take care of you while lazy mum and I are doing the shopping. Won’t you, Jaydah?’
‘Yes, Dad.’ She swallowed another mouthful of eggs that went down like crushed glass.
‘Good.’ He took a drink from his mug of coffee and made a face, slamming the cup so the liquid inside it sloshed and splashed the table. ‘This coffee is cold. Can’t you get anything right, Rosalie?’
Jaydah’s mum put her fork down and got up to get a cloth to clean the mess, and to take the cup from the table and make the monster another.
Jaydah swallowed her last mouthful of eggs and toast.
Jasmine talked about Tara and Lamby and the little birds, ate her eggs and bacon on toast, and kicked her foot in time to the same tune she’d been singing in her head at their kitchen table for twenty-seven years.
* * *
Brix pushed against the front door of his brother’s Chalk ‘n’ Cheese Café and immediately put his hand on the chime inside so it didn’t tinkle. He wasn’t in the mood for tinkle.
Abe was lighting the fire, kneeling on the tiled hearth where he fed kindling into the woodbox. He looked up as Brix came in, rubbing his hands. Compared to the temperatures at Margaret River on the west coast, Chalk Hill was freezing.
‘We’re closed,’ Abe greeted him.
‘Not anymore you’re not. I need coffee.’
‘Don’t we all, mate. You wanna help yourself or just wait a sec and I’ll sort you something?’
‘I’ll wait.’ The coffee machine in the café was way beyond his level of barista.
Abe struck a match to the firelighter, opened the grate and the flue and closed the glass door as the flames licked and caught. He swept woodchips into a small dustpan, opened the glass door again and tipped those into the fire before he stood, slapping his hands against his jeans.
Brix blew into his hands, trying to warm them, and took the opportunity to look around. It was the first time he’d been in the café—his Nanna Irma’s old house—since Jake and Abe had renovated it over the winter.
‘Place looks good,’ he said.
‘It scrubbed up okay.’
Abe moved to the counter and squirted hand sanitizer into his palm from a pump bottle near the coffee machine. ‘White and one?’
‘Thanks.’
Brix made to pull up a bar stool from a bench in the corner of the café, to drag it nearer the service counter, but Abe stopped him. ‘Stay there, mate. I’ll have one too. You hungry?’
Was he hungry? ‘Nah. I had those couple of scones you left in the fridge at home. Just coffee would be great.’
Abe got busy behind the coffee machine and the noise of grinding and steam rang loud in the space.
‘So did you have a good night last night?’ Brix said.
‘Yeah. Really good. Taylor’s great.’
Brix smiled his first smile of the day. ‘Good for you. Glad someone did.’
The way Abe explained it, Taylor was staying the weekend at Ella’s place. Ella was his older brother, Jake’s, lady. Brix hadn’t met Ella yet. He still wasn’t quite clear of the connection between Taylor and Ella and Abe. Was Taylor a city friend of Ella’s or more a friend of Abe’s?
It didn’t really matter. They—Taylor and Abe—looked good together last night at the club.
‘I turned around looking for you and saw Taylor kicking everyone’s arse on the pool table but then I got talking to JT up at the bar, and next time I looked you guys were gone,’ Brix said.
‘Yeah, well. I had to get out, you know? You know how sometimes it’s just time to go?’
‘Yeah, mate. I know.’
Obviously it had been a while since he’d been home. Both his brothers were hooking up. Hell, Jake was just about married, according to Abe, and then there was this whole thing with Charlotte, Jake’s long-lost daughter.
Jake, Ella and Sam—Ella’s son—had gone to Perth to meet Charlotte who’d just turned up out of the blue with her mum, Cassidy, and that was why Jake had asked Brix to help on the farm for a few days.
Abe brought the coffees across to
the corner and pulled up a bar stool so he could sit.
‘So did everything end up okay with Jaydah last night?’ Abe began.
‘Whole thing does my head in,’ Brix said, finding that he really didn’t want to talk about it.
Abe raised his eyebrows. ‘She was about to take on two blokes by herself with a pool cue when I got there last night, and she said you two had a fight. Again. Seeing as how you only hit town Friday night and yesterday was Saturday, that’s gotta be a record, even for the pair of you.’
‘Yeah,’ Brix muttered, sipping at his coffee. He and Jaydah couldn’t share the same space without him saying or doing the wrong thing, unless they were naked. When they got naked, they were perfect.
‘So what did you fight about?’
‘Ah, the same bloody thing. Two things. First I asked if I could come out to her place sometime while I’m over, meet her mum. All these years and JT never introduced me to her mum? No wonder her folks don’t like me. Bet they think I’ve got tickets on myself, that I think I’m too good for them or something.’
Abe winked. ‘Doesn’t help that you’re a winemaker and Keith Tully drinks bourbon. He’s always on about your fine wines.’
Brix lapsed into silence, contemplating his coffee.
‘So what was the second thing?’ Abe asked.
‘Eh?’
‘You said there were two things you fought about.’
‘First was I asked if I could come out to her place. She said no. So second was, I asked if she wanted to come out to the farm last night seeing as how you weren’t there and Jake wasn’t there. I said she could stay with me out there for the night. I’m sick of the pair of us climbing about half-naked in a bloody car like we’re teenagers. I’ll get my nuts caught on a gear stick or something. The ranger will tap on my window one day and I wouldn’t put it past him not to take a picture of my bare arse for his Facebook page. Make me an example of what you’re not supposed to do.’
Abe chuckled. ‘She still living at home? Why doesn’t she move out?’
