by J. P. Pomare
‘They will still be in town. They’ll be waiting on their bellies like snakes. But for now, we can wait too.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’ll make your juice.’ He rises and soon that excruciating, churning sound of the juicer comes as he feeds vegetables into it. I’ve become acutely aware of the sounds we make, the treacherous noises that might give us away if someone were listening outside. I hear the teaspoon scraping around the glass. He returns and hands me the concoction, folding his arms, looking down into the backyard. I follow his gaze to a family of rabbits grazing on the lawn. They are fully grown and the colour of thunderclouds. Jim turns to face me, watching as I swallow the bitter liquid.
My hair prickles through the skin, beginning to grow out. It has taken eleven days to get to this length; it’ll take years to grow back to how it was. For the other hair on my body he still hasn’t given me a razor; a down of hair covers my legs. I want to write in my journal, write what I remember and what I feel, but I know it’s only for him to read later. I have tried to write, but every time I open the first page I lose the impetus.
Again I wonder about that letter. What did I write? He locks me away. He must have read it. Is it possible that he sent it? It could lead the police in Australia to us. Just like with the phone call, I acted without thinking and just like with the phone call I put myself in danger.
•
He’s been out once or twice over the past couple of days – without a word, I hear the front door close, the car backing out of the driveway – and when he returns he carries boxes of groceries to unpack. In one instance, I watched from my bedroom window as he carried a narrow steel case that looked like something a musician would use to carry an electric guitar. It went straight out into the shed.
He’s out now as I sit in my room, dressed in layers – tights and trackpants, a sweater – to keep warm. I eat the leftover fruit salad he brought me this morning and think about all the food we used to eat: smashed avocado, spicy shakshuka, eggs Benedict and corn fritters at our local café. I think about playing Scrabble with Thom’s family at the beach and my heart squeezes. The last private place I have is in my mind, the last place no one can take from me. This is where I keep those memories of the time before.
I go to the bottom of my wardrobe and pull out my escape bag. It was his idea; Think of it as an evacuation seat. If we must leave suddenly the bag is all I will need. On the bed, I unpack and repack it, folding the clothes, counting the money. But as I am putting the bag back I notice something: the carpet in the bottom of the wardrobe is peeling back. I reach in and tug it gently. Something hard and rectangular has fallen in behind it. I feel it in my hand, the thickness and weight. Drawing it out, I smell the sour must of an old book. I take it in my hands, bringing it into the light pouring in through the window. It must have slipped from my bag when we arrived. I had begun to read this book at the airport before we left. It’s old and dog-eared. Jim gave it to me. I flick through a few pages and pause to read one. Something snatches my attention. Towards the bottom of the page, in the middle of a word, the letter o has been underlined. Why would someone underline a single letter? I turn the page and find there are no underlined letters. I scan through, one, two, three, four pages. Then there it is. The letter n underlined. O-n. What could it mean? I continue the process, next finding a t and then another. I grab a pen from my bag and write the letters on my palm. Ontt. I flip forward and find the next letter: r. A pattern emerges, the underlined letters are on every fifth page. I go back to the start, five pages back from where I found the first o and sure enough there is a d. Flipping through I collect all the letters, scrawling them down on my hand. I’m seized by panic. My throat constricts. The front door slams closed. Jim’s home. I look down and read the words again.
Don’t trust him.
TWELVE
DON’T TRUST HIM. My mind is reeling. Something bad is going to happen if I stay here much longer, if I let him keep me locked away, feeding me pills and blocking the world outside. Who made these words? I can feel an attack digging its claws in beneath my collarbone. Breathe. You can think your way out of this if you stay in control. I steady my nerves, block out all the conflicting voices in my head telling me to run, to stay, to attack, to hurl myself out the window. Over them all I can’t escape the words I’d found. Don’t trust him.
I stay in my room all night, choosing not to eat the dinner he brings in, leaving it sitting on my dresser. Later that night I hear party sounds floating up from down the hill. The noise doesn’t stop until after I’ve fallen asleep. But it is the other night sounds that chill me. I hear things . . . breaking glass, the squeal of tyres, voices whispering. These sounds come every night and Jim says it’s the trees, the branches scratching at my window like witches’ fingers, but now I can’t take anything he has told me for granted.
When I wake in the morning I’m watchful. I take one sip of my morning juice, then tip the rest out the window after he has left the room. I hide the vitamins and the pill from the doctor inside my cheek and spit them out. The pills from the doctor are the worst of all; they make me drowsy and pliable. This happens every day. The same routine. He tries to talk to me, ask me questions. After three days he says, ‘You know, Kate, I want you to be free but we just can’t risk you going out there until we know it’s all clear. That doesn’t mean you have to stay in your room all day, why don’t you come out into the lounge?’
I just nod because if I try to speak I might scream.
•
After almost two weeks inside the house, he lets me out to help him clear the blocked gutter, the one that causes rainwater to rush down over my window. It’s my job to hold the ladder as he climbs.
‘Hold it steady,’ he says.
He trusts me. Does he not know what I’m capable of? This is my chance. I could push the ladder. A hard shove at the side and he would come tumbling down. A fall from that height could snap his neck. The image is so clear, it comes to mind so easily, but still I cringe at the thought. When I escape it will be with as little violence as possible.
‘I’ve got it,’ I say. He is standing on the second-last rung, leaning up against the house. He lifts both hands off the ladder and takes the pruning shears he had tucked into his belt.
‘Look out,’ he calls as he closes the shears on the first branch. It falls to the ground with a soft thump. Slowly he works his way along, clipping the branches hanging over the roof, tossing thatches of damp leaves from the gutter.
‘Do you think that’s clear enough now?’ he asks, coming back down.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
We have chicken salad for lunch and I’m so famished I eat it all this time. In the afternoon, he locks me in my room again. A man comes to drop off another load of firewood, this one much bigger than the first. I hear the thunder of it all pouring onto the driveway.
When the man has gone, Jim lets me out to help cart and stack the wood beneath the steps in the cool midday sun. Between trips I eye the road. It’s so close that I could make a dash for it but there is no point running without a plan; I need to be tactical.
I pick up a piece of wood and a spider crawls across my hand. The wood slips from my grip, falling onto my foot. I drop to the grass and clutch where the wood had landed as hot tears come.
‘Oh, darling,’ he says, coming around the corner with another load. He dumps the wood and, crouching beside me, pulls my shoe off.
‘Fuck, it hurts so bad.’
‘Shhh,’ he says, peeling off my sock. He leans forwards and presses his lips to the spot where the skin has bruised, then he rubs my foot between his hands. ‘What happened?’
‘There was a spider.’
‘Really? How big?’
‘Giant.’ I show him with my thumb and forefinger.
A smile plays on his lips. ‘They don’t have spiders that big here, Kate.’
‘I know what I saw. It was on my hand.’
‘Was there really a spider, Kate?’
I
ball my hands into fists. ‘I fucking hate this place,’ I say. The pain and adrenaline have turned to a cold, sharp anger.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘It’s okay. We’re safe.’
I pull my foot from his hands. ‘We’re not safe. You said that they’re here. They’ve found me. You promised they wouldn’t.’
‘If they had found us – I mean, if they knew for certain – they’d already have us, wouldn’t they?’
They. That’s what he calls them. But he never says who. Is it possible that no one is after us at all? Or perhaps he is only telling me half the truth. I think about what I know: someone was hurt, I was there, I drove a car, we fled together and now I can’t leave.
‘Kate, please don’t overthink it. Let me do the thinking.’
‘I just don’t want to be sad. I hate this feeling.’
‘The pills should be helping, what’s making you sad?’
He doesn’t know that those pills end up out my window or under my bed or spat into the toilet. ‘I don’t know. You keep me locked up. You don’t trust me.’
He huffs out his breath and rises, resumes stacking firewood. ‘I trust you, but I don’t trust your judgement. You can understand why I am worried about what you might do, right?’
‘I’m not going to do anything crazy but if we are staying here, I want to be able to be normal.’ I need enough freedom to begin planning my escape. I need some time alone, away from this house.
In spite of the chill, a single pearl of sweat runs down his temple. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Maybe I can go out by myself sometimes.’
‘You’re free to do whatever you want, Kate. If that’s what you truly want, there’s nothing stopping you.’
‘Well there’s a lock on my door.’
A little chuckle. ‘If you think you’re locked away now, wait until they get their hands on you. Then you will see what locked away really means.’
‘I’ll be careful, I won’t talk to anyone. I’ll stay out of sight.’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are.’ A fly lands on his face. He pauses, swings at it with his palm. ‘Why do you need to go out? Why can’t you just wait?’
‘I want to go for walks again, I’m not asking too much. And you said they might not know where we are.’
He jams another wedge of wood in under the steps. ‘You think that some of the people here in this town don’t know? You don’t think they’re trying to sell us out as we speak? And even if they don’t know for sure, they’re definitely suspicious. If they don’t know the whole truth, the ugly truth about who you are, they will in time.’ He straightens up. ‘The longer we keep you hidden, the better.’ He turns away and climbs the steps into the house. ‘You’d better get some ice on that foot.’
•
The bruise still pulses with pain when I pull on my shoe. I kept it elevated all afternoon yesterday, a bag of ice pressed to the sore spot, but it still swelled. From my window, I watch Jim cross the lawn to the shed, his laptop under his arm and his head down. He unlocks the shed with a key and pulls the door closed behind him.
The lawn is a few metres down below; too far to jump. But then I notice something: the ladder is still by my window. I could reach it, if I tried. I could climb down it.
As I push the window open wider, I watch the door of the shed. Even if he found me I could say I was busting and couldn’t get to the bathroom. The prepared excuse does little to abate the fear. I climb up onto the windowsill and slowly lower myself down, reaching with my bare toes. I feel the top rung of the ladder. Lowering myself further, I feel the next one. The ladder moves a little beneath me but I hold tight to the window’s edge. Slowly, carefully, I climb down the rungs. When I reach the grass, without thinking I’m off up the side of the house to the road with my heart slamming.
There’s a white sedan further along our road, so I go the other way, setting off down the hill. As I approach the bus shelter I try to resist the temptation to look in, but when I feel eyes on me I can’t help but turn. A small child of five or six with a straight bob of black hair sits on the bench. I stop.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Hi,’ the girl says.
Jim might find me gone. I’ve got to keep moving, but I’m drawn to the girl. I step forwards and she leans so her face moves from the darkness into the light. I notice the shining trail of mucus beneath her nose. She’s not crying, but it’s clear from the tear tracks down her cheeks that she has been.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ the girl says.
‘What’s your name?’
She scratches at her hair. ‘Awhina.’
‘Awhina? That’s a nice name.’
I say it how she said it. Ah-fee-nuh.
She shrugs. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Kate,’ I say. The word is out before I can stop it. I feel anger at myself at first, replaced quickly with a light buzz in my chest. It feels good to say my old name.
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to talk to me,’ the girl says.
‘What do you mean?’
She stands up and steps out of the bus shelter into the muted sunlight. I see then how skinny she is, how her sleeves don’t quite reach her wrists, how her bare knees poke out from beneath her shorts. A car crawls past but I don’t turn to look at it. When I do glance over my shoulder a few seconds later, I see it has parked further up the hill. A man dressed in black is climbing out.
‘Awhina, can you tell me what you mean?’
She looks at my bare feet, then back up to my face before stepping past me.
‘He told me.’
‘Who?’ I say with growing alarm. I step closer to the child. ‘They told you what?’
‘Not to talk to strangers.’
‘Oh, well you know my name now so I’m not really a stranger.’
I push my hood back so she can see my face. ‘What happened, Awhina? Why were you crying?’
She is staring at the ground. ‘I made him angry at me.’
I swallow hard. ‘Who?’
‘My dad. He got angry at me.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He hurt me. That’s why I can’t go to school today.’
I wince. ‘Does he often hurt you?’
She scuffs the ground with her shoe. Then, as if it takes all the courage in the world, she looks up at me and gives the smallest of nods.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Down the hill.’
‘Where?’
‘I’m going home,’ the girl says, suddenly shy. She begins walking briskly away down the hill. I could go after her to see if I can help, but it’s easier just to hope that she will be okay. I savour her name in my mouth. Ah-fee-nuh. The car is still parked up on the shoulder of the road, the white sedan with a rental sticker in the corner of the back windscreen.
The black-clad man stands near the mouth our driveway, a cigarette hanging from his lip. I can’t be sure, but it looks like the man who was near our place a few days ago. I pull my hood back up.
He walks towards me, holding something up to his eye, something small and square. The camera lens finds me. I look down the road and realise I am too exposed. I turn and start back towards the house, beginning to run. Clicks machine-gun behind me. I quicken my pace and turn into our driveway. My heart is thundering.
The shed door is still closed. I fly up the ladder, tip over the window ledge and tumble down hard onto the floor of my room.
‘Jim,’ I call towards the shed.
There’s no response.
I close the blinds, then curl myself into a ball on my bed and rock. Where is he?
‘Fuck,’ I say. Then I say it again, louder, and again, louder still.
The back door slides open. For a second I’m chilled to the core. I think, They’ve come for me and now they’re inside.
‘Kate,’ the voice calls. It’s Jim.
I rush to my door as the lock slides and
the door opens. I fall into his arms, racked by sobs. I realise he is holding me, that I want him to hold me. Don’t trust him. But what choice do I have? ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘What happened?’
‘Where were you?’
‘I was just in the shed,’ he says. ‘Did something happen?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Nothing happened, I –’ the sobs shudder through my words ‘– I was scared that you’d gone. I don’t know what I thought. I heard someone outside.’ My chest flutters. The pain and fear wash over me like the angry sea. He holds me tight, containing me. My throat constricts. It’s a full attack coming on.
‘Hey,’ he says, more softly than I’ve heard him speak. ‘It’s going to be okay, I’ve got you. Breathe with me.’ He places his hand on my back.
We sit like that for some time. My chest rises and falls as I breathe in and out.
When everything is calm and still, he prises my arms from around his neck and stands.
‘Kate, can you make me a promise?’
‘What is it?’
‘Promise me that if you ever feel like you are going to do something rash, you’ll just pause and take a few breaths.’
Fatigued from the unspent adrenaline leaving my bloodstream, I utter the words, an empty promise: ‘I will, yes.’
‘I heard you calling when I was in the shed and came straight away. That’s all you need to do. Just call out to me.’
He leaves my room and I hear him walking up the hallway. Then comes the knock of his tools being dragged out from beneath the sink. I go to my bed and sit there waiting to see what he will do. In the doorframe he aims the electric drill at the roof and tests the battery.
‘Trust me and I will trust you. If I tell you to go to your room, you go there and stay there until I say you can come out, understand?’
I nod.
‘Say yes.’
‘Yes. I understand.’
I stand and watch him drill. When he’s done, I follow him as he carries the deadbolt down to the kitchen and slaps it on the bench. ‘Alright,’ he says. ‘I’m going to put this away for now. Please don’t make me regret it.’ He opens the fridge and takes out the ingredients for my juice. The juicer grinds to life. He begins feeding the vegetables through, then the fruit.
