Then they show a snippet from a press conference. Lucy is standing between two serious-looking men wearing dark suits. Lucy looks pale and upset, and cries as she says she wants the people who were hurt to know how sorry she is, how awful she feels.
In one Clarissa Hobbs episode, one of Clarissa’s clients was moaning about how sorry he was for embezzling money and how terrible he felt and how he’d give back the money in a second if he hadn’t already spent it. Clarissa told him to cut the crap.
I wonder if Lucy Grubb’s lawyers are going to tell her to ‘cut the crap’.
I flick the TV to another channel. A horror movie is just starting. You can tell it’s going to be a horror movie from the music.
I don’t really like horror movies. I can’t decide whether to watch it or not. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because Bindi and Cinnamon pick this moment to do something stupid and interrupt my TV viewing. They come down the stairs wearing trampy-looking clothes and loads of makeup and try to head out the front door. Mrs Rowles is in front of them like a flash.
‘And just where do you two think you’re going, dressed like that?’ Mrs Rowles demands.
‘We’re going to a party,’ Bindi says rudely, trying to stare Mrs Rowles down.
‘You’re not going anywhere!’ Mrs Rowles barks. ‘You’re both under curfew and you know it. Now go upstairs, wash that crap off your face, and don’t come back downstairs until tomorrow morning.’
Bindi turns back, but just has to say ‘Bitch!’ over her shoulder. Cinnamon giggles and starts to follow Bindi. Mrs Rowles grabs Bindi’s wrist and expertly yanks her off balance. Bindi totters on her high heels and falls backwards against the wall. Mrs Rowles stares at Bindi. ‘You ever call me that again, miss, and I’ll telephone your mother and tell her to come get you,’ she says in a low voice. Then she lets Bindi go. Bindi, suddenly looking crumpled and cheap instead of flashy and seductive like she did half a minute ago, jerks away and stomps up the stairs. Cinnamon follows her without a word.
Mrs Rowles watches them go upstairs with her arms folded across her chest. Then she looks into the lounge room, gives me a half-smile and a wink, then goes back to the guestroom and picks up her knitting.
I look at the TV. The movie is one of those where they make it hard for you to tell what’s real and what’s an illusion. Since I’ve missed the first five minutes of it, I’ve got no chance of understanding it. I switch off the TV, say goodnight to Mrs Rowles, and head upstairs to my room with my icepack.
I bet Lucy Grubb has a TV that tapes everything automatically, so she never misses anything she wants to watch.
Chapter 19
I finally take The Story of a Piece of Coal out of the Refuge library. I’ve convinced myself that I’ll be cursed if I don’t read it. Also, I feel sorry for that tattered little book. Edward A Martin, FGS, went to all that trouble to write a book about coal, and now he’s dead (he must be; if he were alive he’d be about a hundred-and-fifty years old) and maybe this copy is the only one left in the whole world. To be honest, I don’t exactly read it. I just look at the drawings and run my eyes over the text before I go to bed. It helps me get to sleep.
At the end of my next lesson with Miss Dunn, I finally ask her.
‘What does FGS mean?’
Miss Dunn narrows her eyes and frowns a little. She had just asked me if I had any questions, but since the lesson was about Australia’s contribution to the Second World War, the question sounds totally irrelevant. ‘FGS? In what context? I mean, where did you read or hear that?’
I tell her about The Story of a Piece of Coal, written by Edward A Martin, FGS.
Miss Dunn thinks for a second. ‘FGS . . . Ah, Fellow of the Geological Society, I’d say. That means your Mr Martin was a scholar, and he’d been recognised for having made significant contributions to his field.’ Miss Dunn looks at me for a moment with that half-amused look she sometimes gets. ‘Probably a fascinating book for someone who lived in dreary turn-of-the-century London, but what made you pick it up?’
I tell her about the library at the Refuge, about the Saddle Club books and Too Rich, Too Famous and Bessie Bunton Joins the Circus and the historical romance with the pirate pashing the Cinnamon clone on the cover.
Miss Dunn has been chuckling at my description of all the stupid books we’ve got, but at the mention of the historical romance, her mouth falls open and she flushes with anger. ‘They’ve got bodice-rippers in the library of a children’s refuge?’ Miss Dunn rises from her desk and paces the room. ‘That IDIOT Lyyssa!’ she hisses under her breath, then clamps her hand over her mouth. ‘You didn’t hear that,’ she says. I nod. Miss Dunn takes a deep breath to calm herself, then picks up her handbag and keys. ‘Len, come with me. I’m going to show you a real library. You can leave your backpack here.’
When I leave Miss Dunn’s office that day, I have a card that lets me take books out of the University library. In my backpack are two books that have to be returned in a fortnight, or I’ll be in trouble. I’ll have to hide them carefully so no one at the Refuge steals them or pours Coke on them or smears poo in between the pages just for the sake of being vile.
On the bus home I look at my library card. I imagine the books at the Refuge library crying, humiliated now that their shabbiness has been exposed. ‘You’ll never read me now,’ sobs The Story of a Piece of Coal. ‘My pages will never be turned again,’ wails Memoirs of a Midget. ‘No one will ever love me!’
‘I still love you,’ I say in my head to the Refuge books. ‘I’ll read you someday.’
I hope they believe me.
Chapter 20
I come back to the Refuge the back way, through the yard that has an old-fashioned gazebo that no one uses. Except today it is being used, by Bindi and a large, angry woman with masses of frizzy dark hair and a face like a bulldog.
It’s Bindi’s mother.
Normally Bindi glares at me whenever I pass her. Today, she’s too busy glaring at her mother to even notice me walk past. Bindi’s mother is hammering away at her with angry questions. ‘So, what are you gonna do?’ the woman barks. Bindi says nothing. ‘Answer me!’ Bindi’s mother insists, her voice getting louder. ‘Are you coming home or not?’ Bindi is sitting with her arms tightly crossed and her mouth clamped shut. Only her bowed shoulders give her away – she’s afraid of her mother.
I keep on walking. I’ve just about made it to the back door when all hell breaks loose.
‘You little slut! You’ve always been a little slut!’ Bindi’s mother is screaming, then she and Bindi are fighting and clawing like two cats.
‘Bindi! Mrs Peters!’ Lyyssa cries and comes running from the kitchen, where she was hovering during this attempted mother/daughter reunion that was doomed before it even started. She doesn’t get to the gazebo in time to keep Bindi’s mum from landing a punch to Bindi’s mouth, or keep Bindi from tearing out a fistful of her mother’s black hair. I beat it back to my room, without even stopping in the kitchen for a glass of Milo. I want to keep out of the way until everything cools down.
I hear Mrs Peters roar off in whatever rust-bucket of a car brought her here. I hear Lyyssa try to be soothing and Bindi yelling, ‘Leave me alone, bitch!’ I hear Lyyssa sigh, or at least I imagine I do. I can tell by the noise of the door closing that she’s retreated to her office. She can’t change what just happened, but she can write a report about it and put it in Bindi’s file.
I wait for about fifteen minutes, then I figure it’s safe to go to the kitchen. On my way I pass the door to the bathroom, which is slightly ajar. And I stop dead in my tracks. Bindi is standing in front of the mirror, frantically plucking her eyebrows with tweezers. Except she’s gone too far, and plucked her eyebrows out of existence. Now she has two reddened, puffy arches above her eyes. Her lip is swelling up where her mother split it open.
‘You need some ice,’ I say without thinking. Bindi’s head snaps around, and in an instant she’s pulled me into the bathroom and pinned me agains
t the wall.
‘You know what this is, runt?’ Bindi puts her thumb on the inside of my forearm and presses, sending a flash of pain right to the bone. ‘That’s a pressure point,’ she hisses, pressing even harder. I whimper and my knees give way. ‘My boyfriend taught me how to kill people. I can kill you if I want.’ Bindi lets me slide to the floor and walks out. I put my head against the cool tile floor and cry.
Chapter 21
The bruise on my arm is fading, but I can’t stop thinking about Bindi and her awful mother. And Bindi’s been watching me lately, watching me with narrowed eyes that seem to have turned an even more poisonous shade of green. It makes me more nervous than when she was being openly nasty to me.
I think she wants to kill me. She’s trying to figure out how she can do it without getting caught.
What I need is something I can use against Bindi. A really nasty secret. Something that I can tell everyone about if she doesn’t leave me alone. And as I’m tracing the fading outline of the yellowing bruise, I realise I know where to find what I need.
I keep myself awake until 2 am, when I’m sure that everyone will be asleep. I take my penlight from my desk, quietly leave my room and go to the kitchen, where I find a knife and a screwdriver. Then I make my way to the back wing where Lyyssa’s office is, where all of our secrets are kept.
The door, of course, is locked.
I hear Daddy’s voice in the back of my mind. ‘What a loser,’ the voice says. ‘Does he think this Mickey Mouse lock is going to keep anyone out? Picking this kind of lock is easier than opening a bottle of Carlton Cold.’
I use the knife and the screwdriver to work the door open. I step inside the room and close the door softly behind me, then wait for a few minutes to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Fortunately, there are no curtains on the windows and enough light comes in from the street. I look at the filing cabinet in the corner. In the top right-hand corner, a tiny silver key rests in the lock. Lyyssa hasn’t even thought to take the key with her. Careful not to bump into any furniture, I cross the room and pull open the middle drawer.
D, E, F. I finger through the alphabet. I catch a phrase here and there from someone’s file, from kids who used to live here. Obviously, they never throw anything out.
. . . drop in the frequency of urges to check. His score on the Maudesley Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) fell from 19 (pre–treatment) to 6 (post–treatment). At a six month follow–up session, Anthony reported that although he will still have a passing urge to check that the door is locked, he can easily resist it and most of the time he doesn’t even think of checking things twice anymore.
Whatever. So that kid liked to make sure the door was locked, so what? I hope Bindi’s file is more interesting.
I keep flipping through the files. G, H, I, J, K. Kunkle, Karen Louise.
Case Summary
Karen Louise Kunkle
I never thought to ask Karen’s last name. ‘Kunkle’ sounds exactly like Karen: fat, clumsy and stupid.
Ten-year-old female, eldest of three children, obese and suffering from diabetes insipidus, which causes frequent urination if left untreated. Removed from her home after visit by DOCS caseworkers who were alerted by school authorities.
Karen’s mother, Gertrude Kunkle, is obese and developmentally disabled. Karen and her siblings are the result of consensual incest between Gertrude Kunkle and her own father. Karen’s father/grandfather, Clarence ‘Clarrie’ Kunkle, is mentally normal, though illiterate and pathologically shy. Karen’s grandmother is deceased.
Karen demonstrated poor academic performance at school, where she was also the victim of bullying because of her poor hygiene and local gossip surrounding the family. Karen was nicknamed ‘the piss girl’ by fellow students because the odour of urine clung to her. Ostracism and victimisation of Karen increased after she was rumoured to be the cause of an epidemic of head lice that swept the school. Fellow students called Karen ‘Lousie’, in a cruel misspelling of her middle name. Karen’s teacher became alarmed after seeing red welts on Karen’s arms. Karen’s mother, Gertrude, admitted to investigating DOCS officers that she had whipped Karen with a belt because she blamed her for bringing lice into the family home.
On inspecting the child’s home, investigating officers found conditions of nearly uncontrolled filth and disorder in every room except the kitchen. Karen’s mother was deemed neglectful for giving Karen her diabetes medication only erratically – Gertrude admitted to caseworkers that when the medicine ran out and the family had no money to buy more, Karen was simply kept home from school or sent to school wearing loose clothing and an improvised nappy.
Caseworkers also determined that the child slept in the same bed with her mother and her father/grandfather. No evidence suggested that Karen had been sexually abused, but she was deemed at risk of such abuse and removed from the home, along with her two younger siblings, who were successfully placed in long-term foster care.
Karen has a passive attitude, demonstrates flat affect and is socially unskilled – not surprising in light of her dysfunctional family background. School results and aptitude tests administered since Karen was taken into care show that her intelligence is in the lower end of the normal range.
Also notable is that Karen has not processed the concept of having any internal locus of control: she views herself as helpless, entirely at the mercy of external circumstances, and having no power to change her eating habits, grooming or behaviour.
Karen does not understand that she and her siblings are the product of incest, and seems unaware that the incest taboo is one of the reasons for the ostracism she suffered in her home community. Karen regards the severe bullying she endured as a normal manifestation of the hostile world outside the home, not as a phenomenon caused by her and her family’s inability to conform to social mores.
Rorschach and other tests reveal an obsession with food and television, which Karen views as the only reliable sources of comfort and reassurance. The one unifying activity engaged in by this family was the preparation, cooking, and eating of meals, in which all family members took part. After meals, the family watched television. Food was usually nutritious, but also high-fat, high-calorie, and eaten in binge quantities.
Karen remains at the Inner West Youth Refuge pending a decision by the Family Court about whether she may be returned to her mother’s custody. As Gertrude Kunkle, since her relocation to a housing project in Goulburn, has drifted into alcoholism and promiscuity, this is seen as unlikely.
No wonder Karen’s such a drop-kick. Her whole family are fat overeaters, her mother’s a retarded slut, and her father is also her grandfather.
I yawn. But Karen isn’t the real reason I’m in Lyyssa’s office. I’m looking for Bindi’s file. I keep flicking through the alphabet. L, M, N, O, P.
Peters, Belinda, typed on a label. Bindi, written alongside it in Lyyssa’s sloppy cursive writing. I take the file into a corner and click on my penlight.
I stop reading after a few minutes because I’ll vomit if I go on. I feel sick and polluted and ashamed of myself. My hands are shaking as I replace the folder.
I look at the rest of the files and slowly flick through them. P, Q, R. My fingers stop at R. No, I can’t look at my own file. There isn’t time. I have to get out of here.
I lock the cabinet and survey the room to make sure I left everything the way I found it. I creep back to my room and lock the door behind me. Then I check the door again to make sure I locked it. I try to sleep, but I keep seeing horrible pictures of a four-year-old Bindi screaming. Pictures of Bindi’s drunken mother turning up the TV so she wouldn’t hear, pretending not to know what her own husband was doing to her own daughter. I try to force the pictures out of my mind by thinking of Daddy. I don’t know my father’s name, or where he is now. But I do know what Daddy would do to Bindi’s rock-spider father if he ever met him.
Just before I finally manage to fall into an uneasy sleep, I wonder what was in my
case file. Probably nothing interesting, just the medical stuff from the hospital. I bet my file is the slimmest one in the cabinet. After all, I haven’t told them anything.
Chapter 22
Incident Report – Inner West Youth Refuge
Officer – Lyyssa Morgan
At 8:00 am 8 June, Non-Resident Counsellor Sky Morningstar alerted me that the lock on the door of my office at the IWYR had been tampered with. On investigation, I discovered scrapes to the lock and to the surrounding woodwork, although the office was still locked. No other areas of the IWYR showed signs of forced entry, and none of the alarms covering the exits had sounded. Therefore, I believe that the person responsible for the break-in must be one of the juvenile residents at IWYR.
Nothing in my office was damaged, but the filing cabinet had been left unlocked. None of the files appeared missing, but two, those of Belinda Peters and Karen Kunkle, appeared to have been removed from the cabinet and replaced. No pages are missing from either file. There is a photocopier in my office, but an access code is required to operate it, so it is safe to assume that no sensitive information was copied.
It is verging on impossible that Karen Kunkle is the culprit, as she has neither the mechanical ability nor the initiative to accomplish such an act. In addition, Karen has shown no curiosity about the contents of her file.
Belinda Peters, by contrast, has extremely high intelligence and has in the past associated with criminals who may have taught her methods of breaking and entering. Recently, Belinda had an unpleasant visit with her biological mother that resulted in a physical altercation. Since that time, Belinda has exhibited anxiety and anger at the possibility of returning to her birth family.
Riggs Crossing Page 7
