Call Me Evie

by J. P. Pomare

  I slipped the journal under my pillow and went to wait outside Dad’s room. Drawers opened; the floorboards sighed under his weight.

  ‘Dad, can I have it now?’

  He emerged and slapped the phone into my hand. ‘Just make sure I don’t see it at the dinner table.’

  I lay down on my bed and messaged Willow.

  Ready to start swimming again?

  If I must. I know you’re chomping at the bit to show off that summer tan. Maybe turn up in a bikini and watch Coach Mark’s head explode. The boys would enjoy the show.

  I could actually feel myself blushing. It has been a bit boring without swimming.

  Speak for yourself. Don’t tell me Thom Moreau is the most exciting thing about your life these days?

  The blush got worse. Who said anything about Thom?

  Sorry, did you move on while you were in Torquay? Some lifeguard you haven’t told me about maybe?

  With my dad nearby? Not likely.

  Too bad. You could do better than him. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but he’s kind of annoying.

  You’re just being a bitch.

  It was easier to be confident in the cyber-world. Digital Kate never felt flustered or shy.

  Look I think you need to get over him. I know something about him you don’t and it will change EVERYTHING.

  What is it?

  I didn’t hear back so after dinner I sent another message.

  Willow what is it? Tell me please.

  No I don’t want to disappoint you. Just don’t get obsessed.

  I could hear Dad coming up the hall, his footsteps irregular, which meant his knee was particularly bad. He reached up and scratched the small scar across the bridge of his nose. He had told me he was born with it, like a birthmark, and I believed him until a boy at primary school showed me the video on YouTube of when it was broken in a rugby match. Boys had a way of ruining the things my dad would have had me believe.

  A knock at my door. ‘It’s nine o’clock, Kate. Any homework?’

  ‘I’ve done it.’

  ‘Okay, five more minutes.’

  Seriously, what is it? Did he do something?

  It’s not what he has done, it’s something else. I shouldn’t say.

  Dad came back as I was typing my response. I held my phone out for him. I couldn’t help but think about Willow’s message as I lay there in bed. I tried to push it out of my head, dismiss it as Willow being her melodramatic self, but for some reason those words stuck.

  •

  In the stands beside the outdoor pool, Willow, Sally and I huddled in our towels to stay warm in the chilly air. My leg bounced in anticipation. Willow stood and adjusted her towel like it was a maxi dress. She sensed her own charm, something that was irresistible. It was easy for boys to overlook her flaws.

  I kept my towel wrapped tight around me. The faint pink continents that mapped my legs had faded but would never disappear. I smeared oil on the scars every day and in summer, when my skin darkened, you could barely see them at all. The towel was just long enough to conceal them when I sat. We all develop our own little movements and habits to keep the ugly parts hidden, the bony, ill-proportioned parts.

  Willow nudged me. I looked up to see Thom walking briskly into the changing room. He was wearing a hoodie and his school socks were pushed down to his ankles.

  ‘So I’ve been chatting with a boy from Brisbane,’ Willow said. ‘He’s going to come down and visit me. Guess how old he is?’

  Thom came out of the changing rooms, his brown hair down over his ears, eyes as dark as black coffee.

  ‘Sixteen?’ Sally asked. Was Thom heading in our direction? ‘Eighteen,’ Willow said. ‘He’s got a Ford.’

  Thom sat down between me and Sally. I could feel my pulse in my chest as the girls’ chatter fell silent. Warmth diffused where our bodies almost touched. I hunched forwards to cover my thighs.

  ‘Hey, girls,’ he said.

  ‘Hi.’ I smiled. My cheeks were aflame.

  ‘I see we’re all excited to be back at swimming,’ he said with a sarcastic fist pump. ‘How was everyone’s break?’

  ‘It was okay,’ I muttered.

  Before Sally could speak Willow changed the subject.

  ‘Thom, would you go out with an older girl?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How old would you go?’

  Thom sniffed, straightening his back. ‘Sixty-five,’ he said, deadpan, to a chorus of giggles. ‘The nanas love these dimples, my boyish charm.’ I noticed that Thom’s leg was almost touching Sally’s on the other side of him. When I looked up I met Willow’s eyes.

  ‘No, but seriously Thom, what do you find hot in a girl?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I heard a rumour about you. I want to know if it’s true.’

  ‘A rumour?’ he scoffed.

  ‘Just answer,’ Willow said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Brown eyes, brown hair. Tall, but not taller than me. A nice smile.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone who doesn’t take herself too seriously. Someone who can take a joke and likes the things I like.’

  ‘Someone like Kate then?’

  My cheeks were searing. He had described me – well, kind of.

  ‘Wow . . .’ He sucked air through his teeth as if embarrassed. ‘I don’t know. Nice way to put me on the spot.’

  ‘Don’t be a bitch, Willow,’ Sally said in a rare moment of courage.

  ‘Am I? Kate, do you think I’m being a bitch?’

  Before I could think of anything to say, Coach Mark strode past. ‘Come on,’ he said. We stood and made our way down to the blocks, shedding our towels like coats.

  We lined up and began laps with all the others. Three lanes of girls and boys. I found it calming, the rhythm of breathing, turning my head, stroking, kicking, rolling at the end.

  Willow came by in my lane, going the other way, her tall body stretched as she drew another stroke through the water. It was quiet in the pool. Not silent but without distinguishable sounds, only the muffled wash and thump of kicking. Thom passed, his head rising in a caul of water. His hair slicked back. You could see the power of his shoulders, his full chest as he pulled through the water with a quiet determination on his face and his nose dragging chains of silver bubbles.

  That night Willow texted me.

  So are you going to ask me what I know?

  Only if you’re actually going to tell me.

  I was on my bed and whenever my phone vibrated I snatched it and held it close to my face.

  Ask me what Sally and Thom have in common . . .

  I knew what was coming. I never should have asked.

  What?

  The door opened.

  They like each other. A lot.

  I stared at the screen.

  ‘Kate,’ Dad said, solemn. ‘What’s wrong?’ I looked up. His brows climbed up his forehead.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, stepping into the room. ‘It’s just gone nine.’ He was in his singlet and veins stood out on his shoulders. He had been doing his evening press-ups.

  ‘One more text.’

  I quickly punched out a message.

  How do you know?

  Dad stood with his hand out. ‘Come on.’

  The phone vibrated.

  Sally told me. They’ve been texting. She said they’re going out now.

  I swallowed, then turned the phone off. I placed it in Dad’s hand while heat started behind my eyes. I just wanted him to leave.

  ‘Brushed your teeth?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alright, well good night then.’ He leant down and kissed the top of my head before walking out of my room.

  •

  Willow wasn’t at swimming the next day and when I walked in I saw Thom and Sally sitting beside each other. I couldn’t stay there so I sat in the foyer and Coach Mark called Dad for me. A couple of the older boys arrived for s
wimming and saw me hunched over. Got your period, huh? They erupted into sniggers. I swallowed, tried to smile because if I spoke my voice would break and if I shook my head the tears would fall.

  Dad watched me in the rear-view mirror as he drove us home. I covered my eyes with my forearm so he couldn’t see me crying. The empty feeling inside lasted weeks, then things were back to normal but I cut down on swimming and I would have quit altogether if I could. Knowing Thom had chosen someone else made me want him so much more.

  Dad might have seen something tragically familiar in my sadness. It’s a painful thought now: at those times when I feared that I would never be with Thom, the foundations of all that was to come were laid.

  > after

  SIX

  THERE IS A stranger inside everyone, an animal that doesn’t think but responds only to its instincts and impulses. Some people will let the stranger take over once, possibly twice in their entire lives. It’s only afterwards, when your body has cooled down and your mind has returned, that you realise you had no control, that you realise something else had taken you over. I’ve seen it in Jim; I’ve seen it come and go.

  It’s been five days since he shaved my head but my skull is still apparent beneath the skin. It draws the eye to the concave shape of my cheek, the hinge of my jaw and the veins tracing into the stubble of my hair. Even my nose seems narrower and longer. I want to wear a woollen hat or perhaps one of his caps with some loose-fitting clothing, but when I try it all on I look boyish and ill, with a bald head and dark pouches under my eyes.

  Cracks run down and across the mirror like the wings of a butterfly. He said I had pitched the clippers at it. Why? I guess I couldn’t look at myself any longer. The clippers felt so reassuring in my hand, the weight of them, I must have drawn back my hand and thrown them with all my strength.

  Classical music sings through the house from the lounge. A knock sounds at the door and I hear Jim opening it.

  I go through to the kitchen and peer around the corner, up the driveway. Jim is standing in his jeans and a woollen sweater, one hand on his hip, the other holding a steaming cup of tea.

  ‘So you must be the cousin?’ a stout man with a walrus moustache is asking. He offers his hand to Jim. ‘Terry Wallace,’ he says. He has a crooked smile and a broad flat nose like a sheep’s.

  Jim shakes the proffered hand. ‘Good to meet you, Terry.’ He too has shaved his head – in an act of solidarity, I suppose. Or perhaps he did it so people were less likely to recognise him too. But now he looks dangerous. He could be a cage fighter. His hair is so dark pressing through beneath his skin that it gives his scalp a bluish tinge.

  ‘We’ve just been here for the weekend but your cousin Drew called me to say you’d be staying,’ the man says. ‘Didn’t mean to give you a fright or anything.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s fine. It’s nice to see a friendly face.’

  ‘It can be a bit like that hereabouts,’ Terry says, grim now. ‘But you won’t find a much better spot to fish.’

  ‘You’re a fisherman?’

  ‘Does the pope shit in the woods?’ He lets out a hack of a laugh. ‘Yeah, I love my fishing, and my hunting too.’ He stands on his toes to look back over to his side of the fence. ‘I’ll pack that up, dear. Come say hi to our new neighbour.’

  ‘I’d love to do a bit of hunting while I’m here,’ Jim says.

  A short lady with long greying hair wanders around the fence. She shakes Jim’s hand, then looks over his shoulder towards me. ‘Is that your son?’

  Jim turns and his eyes widen behind his glasses. ‘Oh, er, that’s my niece.’

  ‘Oh my, how rude of me. Sorry, dear, I couldn’t see you properly in the shadow.’

  I look at Jim and he gives a small nod. I step forwards.

  ‘I’m Angela,’ the woman says.

  ‘Evie.’ The new name doesn’t roll off my tongue easily yet.

  ‘It’s good to see the house occupied again,’ Terry says. ‘The last bloke your cousin rented it out to –’ he leans in conspiratorially ‘– was a bit on the loopy side, if you catch my drift.’ He hacks another laugh. Jim just gives a weary smile.

  ‘Are you on school holidays?’ Angela asks me.

  ‘I’m finished,’ I say. ‘This was my last year.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, blinking rapidly. ‘How old are you, Evie?’

  I’m thin and bald; I can hardly blame her for thinking I’m thirteen or fourteen. ‘Seventeen.’

  Before Angela can respond Jim asks Terry a question about fishing and their attention is diverted from me.

  Finally Terry says, ‘Well, we’d best be off.’ He turns to leave, then pauses and glances back. ‘Keep an eye on the place for us, would you?’ He gropes his pockets for his mobile phone. ‘I’ll leave my number. We don’t get here much and we’ve had a couple of break-ins in the past.’

  I go back inside and soon I hear their ute start up and pull out onto the road. I begin to write.

  I told him I miss Melbourne. He said it was too early to return. He said they would ‘maul’ me, and I believe him. I don’t know why but somehow I know it’s true. I think about what I did to your family. Do you ever wonder what would have happened if my secret didn’t get out?

  Something else I have been thinking about is lying in the sun while your family was out, talking about what we would do if we ran away together and left everyone behind.

  There is Scrabble here. We watched a movie last night about a train, three brothers, travelling through India. You would have loved it.

  Later I hand Jim the letter.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Could you please send it?’

  ‘What exactly do you think the letters are going to achieve?’

  ‘I don’t know. They . . . they make me feel better. They make me feel less alone.’

  He gives a short nod and goes to his desk, shoves the letter into an envelope and seals it. Maul. I imagine hands on me, my arms, my legs, and I begin to shake.

  •

  In the midday stillness we walk down the hill. I wear sunglasses and a hat. The trees at the roadside hang a damp rug of shade over the grass and the frost breaks beneath our feet. The winding road has homes on one side and paddocks on the other, until houses sprout in paddocks and eventually paddocks become lawns, all overgrown and some with rusted cars, or goats and horses chained up, picking at the grass.

  I hear a grating sound. Turning, I see an old man, white hair and long grey beard. He is bent, in a faded flannel shirt cinched into blue jeans. He doesn’t stop sweeping his driveway as his myopic eyes find me. I turn away and we continue down the hill.

  We come around beside the beach and the square car park with a gravel of broken bottles. I look out into the water and see with each receding wave a head of black rock lurches from the sea, lined with mussels like a thousand razor teeth.

  As we continue along, we pass knots of people sprawled out on the wedge of grass near the beach or leaning against cars watching us. I feel their eyes crawling over my body. Look all you want, so long as it’s my strangeness you’re looking at. It’s something I’ll get used to. I thought I would never miss what I had, all my old soft edges and childish long hair. I thought I knew what it was like to be self-conscious. I knew nothing.

  A breathy voice utters the words, ‘Stick up the ass,’ and then there’s laughter but I don’t look. I should have worn trackpants; I should have dressed like a sick boy.

  Did you know a human skull can withstand up to 2100 pounds per square inch of pressure? A heavyweight boxer might exert a force of 700 psi. A claw hammer, on the other hand, could exert enough pressure to dash open a human skull. The same could be said for a fall from a great height, even onto a relatively soft surface like wet sand. The front of a car going 100 kmh would also do it.

  Finally we reach the shop, which sits beside the last roundabout before you leave town. Nearby, the forecourt of the abandoned petrol station is spiralled with black tyre marks.
/>   The shop is a cube of wood and brick, plastered with graffiti. It’s a dark place with barred windows and a steel grate to roll closed every night. It’s the kind of place that has one of everything. I survey the tiny tags marked with exorbitant prices. I’m still not used to the exchange rate. The shopkeeper leans forwards in her seat with a vacant grin. Just look at the magazines, don’t look up, I think as Jim moves about briskly, filling his basket with canned tomatoes, beans, bread. She’s staring. I feel it and can’t help but look over again. The woman raises her eyebrows and smiles. I pick up a copy of Us and flick through the pages, imagining just for a second that I see myself in them. Jim seizes it from my hand and puts it back into the rack.

  ‘I was just looking.’

  ‘No,’ he says with finality. His eyes shift to the shopkeeper, then back to me. Quietly he says, ‘Just leave it.’ He approaches the counter with his basket.

  ‘Kia ora,’ the shopkeeper says.

  ‘Hi,’ he responds, pulling his wallet from his back pocket.

  Burnt skin climbs out of the collar of her hoodie, marbled and with a stretched quality. A scarred girl, I see, just like me.

  ‘Where are youse from?’

  ‘Australia.’

  ‘Aussies, eh? I can tell from the accent. I got cousins in Brissie, got a mate in Melbourne too.’ She punches prices into the cash register and bags the groceries.

  ‘We’re from Melbourne,’ I say as Jim digs into his wallet. He hands over a note then says, ‘Oh, I’ve a letter to post.’ He pulls out the envelope from his jacket. ‘To Australia.’ Did he get the address right? When he places it on the counter I read the name and the address.

  ‘Shit, I forgot the stamps.’

  ‘It’s okay, we sell them.’

  She draws a sheet of paper from beneath the register, her eyes scanning down and taps a number into the till. Jim holds a handful of coins, fingering through them for the right amount.

  The woman smiles, puts her palms on the counter and props her big torso over it to look out through the door. She would be about twenty. ‘Well, it’s nice to meet you guys. Where are you heading after Maketu?’