Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  Life returned to ‘normal’ too, with the only exception that her father watched her even more than his ‘normal’ like a hawk.

  Jaydah breathed in, feeling her blood warm as she performed the familiar kali moves in the open space they used as a training arena near the rock bays at the front of the house.

  She switched from sinawali to redonda, spinning her wrists and concentrating on keeping her wrists supple, moving inside and out, staying light on her feet.

  Overhead, witik.

  Left hand. Dragon tail. Bring it back.

  Overhead, witik.

  Right hand.

  Faster.

  Her dad shadowed her moves, two metres away, and this was one time she could watch him with the same ferocity with which he always studied her.

  He looked for the slightest mistake.

  She looked for the slightest sign the monster was slowing down; that his movements weren’t as sure, nor his footwork as fast. Any sign that finally, age might be creeping up on him.

  He’d turn fifty-six soon. He was more than a decade older than her mum.

  ‘Enough,’ he said, and she stopped spinning her wrists through her warm-up and laid the sticks over her shoulders like she was about to beat them down on a drum.

  Kali made her feel strong.

  Kali made her feel invincible.

  The problem was kali did that for her father too.

  He jerked his chin at her, signalling, and Jaydah moved her feet, bouncing in the cool of the spring morning, feeling the earth solid beneath her, its strength flowing through her. The air smelled the smoke from the wood burned last night in their fire. It smelled like rain.

  ‘Sparring pads on,’ he said. ‘Jazzy?’

  Jasmine raced from where she’d been selecting river rocks from the trailer and sorting them by size into the bays at their left. Jaz loved watching their daily practice.

  ‘Is it my turn, Dad?’

  ‘You can’t do kali, Jazzy.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Not everything is fair in this life, Snazzy Jazzy. It’s not fair that Jaydah got all the oxygen when you were born.’ His eyes slid to hers, sly and sneaky. ‘That’s why you were born slow.’

  ‘No, it’s not fair I was born slow,’ Jaz said. ‘I didn’t ask to be born slow. I didn’t choose it, did I?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t choose it, Jazzy,’ the monster said. ‘It’s Jaydah’s fault.’

  God, I hate him.

  ‘You don’t ever touch the kali sticks, Jaz. Your job is to put the pads on,’ the monster said. ‘We can’t have us hurt each other when we’re sparring, can we? Can’t have Jaydah hit daddy?’

  ‘No. No hitting, Jaydah. Hitting is naughty,’ Jaz said, tongue poking out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on pulling the foam padding tight and doing up the clips. ‘Don’t hurt Daddy.’

  * * *

  ‘Snap!’ Jaz shrieked for the third time since lunch.

  ‘You’re too good for me, Jazzy,’ their dad said. ‘That’s enough of Snap for now. We better go down the back paddock and check the fences. Make sure no kangaroos have broken through.’

  Jaydah had been applying mascara in the bathroom and her hand twitched, clumping one section of eyelash thicker than the others. The monster didn’t give her many opportunities to get her mum alone. This might be one.

  She put the mascara wand down and picked up a lipstick, smacking her lips at her reflection when she was done. It was close to two o’clock and she had to be in at the club for her shift soon but she’d had no opportunity to talk to her mum since Brix told her what the celebrant said.

  ‘See if you can get that trailer filled with medium-grade, hey, Rose? There’s a bloke in Mount Barker wants a delivery tomorrow. Thought you’d have it finished by now. She’s lazy, Jazzy. Lazy, your mum. Not like you. You’re my good worker.’

  ‘Lazy, Mum,’ Jaz echoed.

  He was such a lazy bastard.

  It was her mum and Jaz who did everything!

  It hadn’t always been that way. She could still remember the days before everything started to go bad, when they’d lived in Sydney and her dad taught kali at the dojo and her mum had been enrolled in an English language class, and Jaz had been in a special school where she’d been happy.

  When they moved to WA they’d slipped through the cracks. Her father let them slip through the cracks because he wanted the social security payment her mum got for caring for Jaz, but he didn’t want anyone in Chalk Hill to know he had a daughter who wasn’t the full quid.

  It was just for a while, he said. Jaz could go to school once they settled in.

  He said Jaz made him lose face.

  Jaydah had been too young then, and she hadn’t known what that meant. How did he lose his face? Could a face fall off?

  She knew what it meant now.

  In the bathroom mirror her lip curled.

  He bought the farm to run beef cattle and because the land was cheap, and then he found the quarry and discovered the river rocks, and he put Jaz and Rosalie to work while Jaydah went to school, and it gave him cheap labour. Hell, it gave him free labour.

  Her dad sold river rocks by the bulk load to landscapers, and by trailer or smaller bags to home gardeners. Some of the rocks were big enough that it took two people to lift them. Others were pebble-sized and could be dug with a shovel. Most were the medium-grade, roughly the size of an egg.

  They could make so much more of the business if her father would just invest some money in machinery to help them, but no, why spend money when he had his daughter and his wife to do all the physical work?

  At the front of their house were four bays, side by side, where her mum and Jaz would sort and unload river rocks brought down from the quarry to the house by their father almost every day. Jaydah used to sort and grade rocks too, after school and on weekends when other girls in her class played netball; she’d do kali in the mornings and shift rocks all afternoon while her father shouted at them that they were slow and lazy, and he’d send her mother away if she didn’t hurry up.

  There was the jangle of keys in her father’s palm, and the clump clomp of two pairs of boots as the front door opened and closed.

  Jaydah grabbed up a jacket from her room. Throwing it across her shoulder, she found her mum washing up the lunch dishes in the kitchen.

  The front door opened. ‘Grab me a six-pack of bourbon and cokes from the club wouldya, Jaydah?’ The door slammed again.

  He didn’t offer her any money. He never offered to pay. He just assumed she’d put them on her account and he was right. The time she said no, he threw one of Jaz’s farm containers in the dam. He had all of them with him—the bastard—but one container into the water and Jaz’s tears was all it took.

  The kitchen smelled of white rice and lemon dishwashing liquid, soap bubbles and sadness. Jaydah breathed it in, straining to hear any sounds from outside.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Mum?’

  Her mum turned her shoulders, but her hands kept scrubbing cutlery, stacking it in the drying rack. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know where my birth certificate is?’ She’d whispered. Jaydah shifted her weight to the other foot and spoke louder. ‘Do you know where my birth certificate is?’

  ‘Your dad.’ Her mum flapped soapy hands. ‘He keeps it with his things.’

  ‘I know Dad keeps it, but do you know where?’

  Her mum raised her head and although Jaydah couldn’t see the angle from the window out to the yard, she knew she was trying to see where the monster had gone.

  Such was how they lived.

  He was the centre of their universe.

  ‘You will be late for work,’ her mum said, resuming her assault on the saucepan that had warmed baked beans earlier for Jaz.

  Car doors slammed distantly and Jaydah let out a breath.

  ‘It’s for my superannuation at work, Mum. I want to shift funds. I need 100 points of identification. My birth certificate is wo
rth a lot of points and I don’t have a passport.’

  Her mum glanced out the window again. ‘Does your dad know about the superannuation account?’

  Jaydah’s lips twisted, she couldn’t help it. ‘It’s not his business.’

  The saucepan clanged against the sink, a grating, dull sound in the quiet kitchen.

  ‘Everything is his business, my Jaydah. You know that,’ her mum said, recovering her grip on the handle and putting the pan in the rack. ‘You will be late for work.’

  Jaydah stepped in towards the sink, leaned low, and pressed a kiss into her mum’s cheek—skin a few shades browner than her own—pillowed and warm. ‘Please could you look for me? While he’s out.’

  Her mum’s hands stilled.

  Jaydah glanced out the window. The ute was reversing from the double-bay shed, back as far as the rock bays. The taillights glowed white, then turned red as her dad braked in the yard.

  The lights stayed on, red and blaring, not leaving.

  ‘You go to work. I will have a look for the certificate,’ her mum said. ‘Now go. Hurry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jaydah whispered, hurrying.

  She closed the door behind her and sprang down the steps. It was sunny but not warm and the wind licked through her shirt like a tongue tasting bone.

  As she climbed into her car, the ute’s brake lights released and her dad’s vehicle crawled towards the laneway that led to the quarry.

  * * *

  ‘Did you find your birth certificate yet?’ Brix asked, and automatically Jaydah checked for listening ears before she answered. The club was quiet, winding down for the night. The coast was clear. Vince and Nino Scarponi were playing darts, concentrating on the game.

  She’d already called last drinks.

  ‘No. But I asked my mum to take a look for it. She said she would.’

  ‘Did you tell her why you want it?’

  ‘I told her I wanted to change super funds.’

  ‘You don’t need it for that.’

  ‘I know, but Mum and Dad won’t.’

  She switched the phone to her other ear and tilted her head, lifting her shoulder to keep the phone in place as she counted money into her hand and balanced the till.

  ‘If you want to get married at Christmas, we have to have our Notice of Intent to Marry to the celebrant at least a month before Christmas Day. If you can’t get hold of your original birth certificate, then you need time to arrange an extract through Births, Deaths and Marriages.’

  ‘I know. I’m working on it. Dad was out of the house today. Mum thought she’d get a chance then.’

  ‘The celebrant needs to talk to you too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, normally she’d see us together for an interview in person before the wedding, but she can’t do that this time because you can’t come here and you don’t want anyone to know about it so it’s not like she can come over there. So she has to talk to you over the phone.’

  ‘What does she need to talk to me for?’

  ‘She has to be sure you’re not under any pressure to say “yes” to marrying me. She has to know for sure that you’re happy about it.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘The celebrant says she’ll fly to Chalk Hill for the ceremony,’ he said.

  ‘Fly?’

  A chuckle ran through the phone line and it warmed her heart. She stretched her spine as she held the phone, feeling the tiny cracks of release.

  ‘Yup. Her hubby has a small plane. She married a bride and groom in the plane once.’

  ‘Did they sky-dive out of it as they said “I do”?’

  ‘I don’t know. You wanna try that?’

  ‘No thank you. You and me at the airstrip shed is all I need.’

  He hesitated, and his pause was lead-lined. ‘If your dad … caught your mum looking for your birth certificate, would he … would that cause trouble?’

  She closed the till. ‘Maybe.’ There was no point lying. ‘But the trouble wouldn’t be for mum, not if I’m there.’

  He hissed across miles of phone line and she rushed to assure him. ‘I can handle it for six more weeks. I can handle it, Brix. You have to trust me.’

  ‘Jesus, JT.’

  She pictured him, smudging his hand through his hair. He’d hate to feel powerless. She hated feeling powerless, but now she had her plan. This plan. And the plan would work.

  Brix would sort out the celebrant and the wedding. She’d call Lynne Farrell, the local coordinator at Disability Services—the one who’d had the sharpest eyes and the most probing questions last time she’d come to the farm to assess Jaz—and find out how she could best protect her sister. She’d been researching Family Violence Restraining Orders (VROs) too, gingerly working the screens on the computer at the club in that half-hour window before the bar got busy.

  Albany had a Magistrate’s Court and she could put her application in there.

  When she had all this together, when she’d pulled all the strings, the plan would fall into place. But not yet. Not quite yet. If she called Lynne Farrell’s unit and Lynne wasn’t there, but someone else returned the call to her father’s number by mistake? Jaydah shivered. She had to wait as long as she could before she called Lynne. The more people who knew a secret, the less safe that secret was.

  ‘I would have married you years ago, JT, if it got you out of there. If it helped,’ Brix said, his words rumbling across the phone, warming her ear and her heart. ‘Why didn’t you ask me? I wish you’d told me. I could have helped.’

  ‘I had a plan.’

  ‘What was the plan?’

  ‘To get enough money together to rent a place where Dad wouldn’t find us and we could all start again.’

  ‘You could have come to mine. You could have called my mum or dad, or Jake. They love you, JT. They would have been there for you. Anyone in Chalk Hill would have helped you and your mum if they knew what was going on.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  But would they have helped Jasmine too? When the package of needy Tullys grew from Jaydah; to Jaydah and Rosalie; to Jaydah and Rosalie and Jasmine, who was twenty-seven years old but needed near-constant care every day so she didn’t put her finger in a power socket or drown in a dam?

  She couldn’t risk anyone splitting them up. They were a package deal, Jaydah, Rosalie and Jaz. Like the musketeers.

  ‘My mum wouldn’t leave. My dad sends money to her parents in Manila. He would cut them off.’

  ‘I could help you with that. We can work all that out. JT, I don’t want to wait till Christmas. You need to get out of there now.’

  ‘I’ll be okay. It’s under control. He’s watching me like a hawk now, but that will stop. He’ll relax.’ A bit. He never relaxed much. He was like her that way. ‘I know this will work, Brix, and I know you hate feeling you can’t do anything. You are doing something just by supporting me. I just need you to trust me and let me do this my way.’

  There was a pause and she heard him blow out a breath, and the tension on the phone line eased.

  ‘Do you care what I wear for the wedding?’ he said.

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Nup. I just want the girl in the dress, or the tutu or the tracksuit.’

  ‘I don’t own a tutu, and even I won’t get married in a tracksuit.’

  ‘Well, I do own a tux. Black. I bought it for the Royal Perth Wine Show.’

  She could see it. Tawny-headed Brix in a suit with a tie the colour of his eyes, that deep vivid blue that could make the coldest of ocean colours feel warm, and those eyes would be focused only on her, hot and bright with love.

  A new longing gripped her, pulling its way through her stomach, hand over fist, as if her insides were rope, and how crazy given Jaydah hadn’t cared about clothes all her life, that the longing was for a wedding dress, something simple and sleek, and so shivery it would make her feel like a princess.

  That would be proof there was a first time for everything, even for her.
r />   * * *

  When Jaydah walked up the steps of the farmhouse that night, the wrongness hit her like a bomb blast. Usually at this hour the noise of the television would bleed into the silence, tuned to the ABC or SBS because her father couldn’t stand the commercial station ads. The flicker of light from the screen would blink in the gap beneath the door.

  Tonight as she opened the front door, Ginger Puss shot past her feet and into the night, because the cold black night was the friendlier place.

  Jaydah moved towards the kitchen.

  ‘Snap,’ shouted Jaz, and there was the bang of her hand on the kitchen table.

  That, at least, was normal.

  Jaydah turned through the doorway into the kitchen. Her father smiled at her, and that was not normal at all.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ The question lodged like a stone in her throat.

  ‘Shower,’ her dad said, as Jaz dealt out the cards for a new game.

  In the Tully house the women showered in the morning. Her dad said it was to make sure there was enough hot water at nighttime for him.

  Jaydah took another step into the kitchen. ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘She’s not dead,’ her dad said, spinning a card across the table.

  ‘Don’t do it like that,’ Jaz complained, pushing the card back centrally between them and placing her own card on top.

  The evening’s dishes were piled in the sink, food scraps stuck to the plates, not scraped down. Jaydah put her carry basket on a clear place on the countertop and moved to the sink, pulling on her mother’s rubber gloves, running the water until it turned hot. The kitchen curtains weren’t drawn and she could see Jaz and her dad reflected in the window.

  Adding dishwashing liquid, she frothed the water into soapy bubbles and picked up a plate.

  ‘Snap!’ Her father’s hand crashed.

  Jaz shrieked.

  The plate slipped from Jaydah’s hand and slid into the sink. She spun on the spot, water drops sloshing from the gloves as she tried to yank them off.

  Jaz sat at the table cradling her hand, rocking in her chair, howling.

  ‘Shut up, Spazzy Jazzy,’ the monster shouted from the head of the table.

  Jaz shoved her thumb in her mouth.