Pearl in a Cage

by Joy Dettman

  Perhaps it had started out as a game, one twin egging on the other. When they’d taken her arms and run her across the oval, when they’d pushed and pulled her through the hole in the cemetery fence, it had seemed like the sort of stupid childish thing they’d always done. Perhaps it had still been a game when they’d held her down on Cecelia Morrison’s fancy tombstone and told her they were sacrificing her for some decent weather.

  ‘Whoops, we forgot to bring the sacrificial dagger,’ one said.

  ‘Have you got something that would do the job? Because, by the Jesus, I have,’ the other one said.

  ‘I dare you.’

  ‘Don’t you dare me, you ugly bastard.’

  That’s when she’d known it wasn’t a game. That’s when she’d got scared. That’s when she’d known that climbing out the window didn’t matter; when she’d known it didn’t matter if everyone at the town hall came running across the oval, if Amber called her a common little trollop in front of the whole town. She’d screamed, until one of them had shoved his filthy hand into her mouth and she’d gagged.

  You can’t scream when you’re gagging. Tried to fight them — like a choking rabbit fighting off two rabid dogs.

  ‘They took turns, Granny. They swapped places and took turns on me.’

  VINDICATION

  Gertrude held her all night in her bed. She didn’t close her eyes and was out at the break of day, her stove lit, her pan of apricots placed over the central hotplate to start their long boil. Jenny was still sleeping, Gertrude bottling jam when Vern drove down at nine with a few bags of wheat she’d asked him to pick up for her chooks. She didn’t invite him in, didn’t want him inside and waking up that little girl who hadn’t slept until dawn.

  He expected tea. She had to tell him. Leaned against his car and talked, blamed herself for not knowing, blamed herself for not asking.

  ‘I should have seen it, Vern.’

  He wanted to drive her in to speak to Denham. He wanted to hang that pair of raping runty little bastards.

  ‘I’ll speak to her father first. I’ll get you to drive me in tonight. I can’t do it yet.’

  She spoke to Elsie at midday, spoke to Harry at five, and, like steam forced through a pinhole in a boiler, Jenny’s trouble leaking out into other ears released some of the pressure in Gertrude’s head.

  Jenny didn’t want her to tell Norman, but he had to be told.

  ‘He won’t blame you, darlin’. No one will blame you.’ Vern came down after the seven o’clock news broadcast. Jenny left in Elsie’s care, they drove into town. Norman wasn’t at the station and Gertrude wasn’t going to the house. She sent Vern in to bring him out.

  He came, with the smell of drink on his breath. They spoke to him on the street, the car between them and the house.

  ‘What’s going on, Norman?’ Amber called from the front door. Norman signalled her back, but she came to the gate. ‘What’s going on out here?’

  ‘Your daughter is in trouble,’ Vern said. ‘The Macdonald twins raped her.’

  ‘The twins went back to Melbourne on Christmas Day,’ Amber scoffed.

  ‘The night of the ball,’ he said.

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘What did I tell you, Norman?’ She sounded jubilant, and Gertrude who had vowed she wouldn’t speak to her, broke her vow.

  ‘Get inside Amber.’

  ‘I caught her in the lavatories with those boys, and I’ll bet you a pound to a penny it wasn’t rape —’

  ‘Get out of my sight or I won’t be responsible —’ Gertrude said. Norman stepping from foot to foot, wanting to be anywhere but on this street. Knees too weak to carry him away. Vern standing back smoking, wondering how far he should let this go.

  ‘She’s been seen riding around with your darkie. It’s probably his,’ Amber said.

  She was close, her face was in Gertrude’s face. She looked like her father, and Gertrude had been suffering from the internal shakes since they’d brought her into town that night to stitch up that bastard’s head. Her hands weren’t shaking. They were large and work-hardened. It was more reflex than violence, a backhand, saved forty years for Archie Foote. His daughter felt the sting of it in her jaw. She backed off but didn’t back down.

  ‘For all I know, she’s been on with half the town louts for years.’

  ‘You’re transferring your own sins onto the innocent. You’ve got less conscience than your father — and that’s saying a mouthful.’

  ‘You grabbed his money fast enough when he was dead, you old trollop —’

  Vern had hoped for this confrontation thirty years ago. Too late now. He tossed his cigarette down.

  ‘She wasted a lot of it in buying you out of your madhouse, you snake-eyed bitch of a girl,’ he said. ‘And got poor value for money spent.’

  A big man, Vern, accustomed to lumping bags of wheat around. He tossed her over his shoulder as he might a bag of chaff and carried her in through the gate.

  ‘You take your filthy hands off me, you ugly old bastard!’

  ‘You’ve had plenty worse on you from all accounts,’ he said, dumping her in the passage and slamming the door on his way out.

  Denham was drawn out onto his verandah by the action. He stood staring, his wife staring as hard from behind a lifted curtain. Norman saw his neighbour and turned to follow his whore indoors.

  ‘We have to talk,’ Gertrude said. ‘That little girl is going to need you.’

  ‘In the morning,’ he said. ‘I will . . . I will discuss it . . . in the morning.’

  Gertrude looked for him before train time. She looked for him after train time. He didn’t come. He hadn’t come by noon, by evening, when Jenny walked Gertrude’s track looking for him. And the night came down and still he didn’t come.

  For two days Jenny waited for Norman, then she gave up.

  Vern drove down each day. On the evening of the third day, he brought news from town.

  ‘He’s telling everyone she’s in Melbourne, that she’s taking singing lessons. Margaret came home from the post office with the story at two, then just before dinner Jim came home with it, got straight from the horse’s mouth . . . or from your other granddaughter’s . . .’

  Jenny lay in the sag of that old lean-to’s bed, her eyes staring up at the corrugated-iron roof. It had nail holes in it, and when the sun was in exactly the right place those nail holes turned into flashing stars. Only dark up there tonight, only the little light from Granny’s table lamp peering around the green curtain, painting eerie patterns in the corrugations. No ceiling ever placed in Gertrude’s lean-to, no door, only that old curtain to offer the illusion of privacy. It didn’t block out sound. She could hear Vern’s voice clearly, hear his every word. Gertrude’s replies were not so clear.

  ‘Maybe it’s time you took a step back, Trude. For all legal intents and purposes, he’s her father.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘He looks like death warmed up. I saw him leaving the hotel around five and he was weaving.’

  ‘Have you told your family anything?’

  ‘They know nothing.’

  ‘I need a cigarette.’

  ‘They don’t suit you.’

  ‘I need something, Vern.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to look at this thing from another angle since tea, and maybe I can see where Norman is coming from. He could be doing the best thing for her — in the long term.’

  ‘She’s a schoolgirl. She was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl when that pair of bastards held her down and took what they wanted from her. They can’t be allowed to get away with it.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying. I hear you. Now look at it from her angle.’

  ‘I can’t see past watching them hang!’

  ‘And what good is that going to do her? What good can come out of dragging her name through the mud while you’re getting them hanged? I’m not saying that what he’s doing is the right thing, but sullying her name won’t do her one skerrick of good i
n the long term. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘They’ll do it again.’

  ‘And no doubt they’ve done it before, but forget them for a minute and think about her. Isn’t it better for folk to believe she’s down in the city with her parson uncle, having singing lessons, than to know she’s down here hiding a swollen belly? She can come home from her singing lessons in a few months’ time, her head held high, and no one any the wiser.’

  ‘What about the baby!’

  ‘The town doesn’t need another bloody Macdonald. It’s overrun by purple-eyed Macdonalds!’

  ‘Girls don’t come through something like this unscathed.’

  ‘I’m not saying they do, but she’s not the first it’s happened to and won’t be the last. There’s places in the city set up to handle this situation. They take the infants at birth and find homes for them.’

  ‘And two rapists get off scott-free?’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s days of sitting at her side in a courtroom, that’s what it is. Days of every newspaper in the state reporting it word for word. It’s that girl up against a pair of bastards who couldn’t lie straight in bed, and your own bitch of a daughter throwing more mud at her. Innocent or not, you toss enough mud around and some of it sticks. Where’s her future then, Trude?’

  ‘She had the world at her feet.’

  Jenny looked at the bare boards beneath her feet. She hadn’t thought about court cases and newspapers. She hadn’t thought about anything except what they’d left inside her. But singing lessons. Singing lessons in Melbourne. That had been her dream a while back, and singing with a band in pretty dresses and high-heeled shoes.

  She lifted the green curtain and walked to the kitchen door. They were standing beside Vern’s car. He was smoking, Gertrude was rubbing her brow.

  ‘Given half a chance, she’ll buy and sell this town before she’s done. And to tell you straight, the way I’m seeing it tonight, her father is trying to give her that half-chance.’

  ‘Where is the useless sod?’

  ‘Drunk,’ Vern said. Then he saw Jenny, or saw her shadow.

  ‘I’m having singing lessons in Melbourne, Granny. Let him cover it up,’ she said.

  Time is slow in passing once you can no longer deny that your belly is full of rapists’ leavings, when you can feel their leavings seething inside you, feeding on you like maggots feeding on the carcass of a dead rabbit.

  Jenny felt dead, spent her days lying on the bed like the dead. The New Year came in hot. The temperature on 12 January 1939 was the highest on record. The state was burning. Towns were burning, people dying, while Jenny lay on that sagging bed.

  Gertrude spoke to her of the baby, that dear little baby which had no more say in its beginning than she.

  ‘It’s not to blame, darlin’, like you’re not to blame.’

  ‘Stop!’

  ‘It’s a part of you. Your blood is feeding it.’

  ‘If I could stop my blood from getting to it, I would!’

  Caged now, caged by that swelling belly, denied the cool of the creek by that belly, denied Joey’s company and playing cards. She hid from Joey, hid from Harry. Didn’t want them to see her shame.

  Didn’t want to see herself. Couldn’t stand to think of her flesh mixing with their flesh. Couldn’t stand to think of Norman’s mixing with Amber’s, to think of herself swelling up Amber’s belly. Couldn’t stand to think of how she’d got out of Amber’s belly. Wanted to vomit. Wanted to vomit out what they’d put inside her. Stuck her fingers down her throat some nights, and thought of them and their filthy hands down her throat. Vomited her heart out, vomited until there was nothing left inside her — except their maggots.

  The nights were longer than the days. Her head went crazy at night with telling her things she didn’t want to know. Knew too much now. She knew why Amber had moved back into Norman’s bed. Couldn’t block those thoughts. Tried to write mind letters to Mary and ended up thinking of Dora telling her that babies got started by married people rubbing bellybuttons together. Thought about Sally Fulton telling her you got babies by kissing a boy with your mouth open.

  Now she knew. Knew everything. Knew they got out the same way they got in. Granny had told her. She’d run away from that. She’d hidden from that.

  Recognised every sound in Granny’s house, every board that creaked. The boards warned her when someone was coming to lift that green curtain.

  ‘You have to eat to live, darlin’. Come out and have some tea with me.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  If she couldn’t stop her blood from feeding it, maybe if she stopped feeding herself, it would starve to death.

  Birds ate to live. They pecked insects from the roof of the lean-to. She could hear their peck-pecking, hear the scraping dance of their feet as they ran for their next morsel. Hear their happy chirping before daylight, their different calls at sundown.

  She knew Elsie’s soft canvas-shoed tread. Knew the way she lifted that green curtain just enough to pop her head through, lower down than where Granny’s head popped through.

  ‘How are you feeling today, lovey?’

  How was she feeling today? Worse than yesterday. Worse than the day before yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.

  She hadn’t known that what they’d done to her could make a baby. When she’d come down here the morning after they’d done it, come while it was still dark, come shivering through that frosty pre-dawn with that borrowed sandal rubbing a huge blister, she hadn’t known. She’d seen dogs doing it, but hadn’t known that’s what made pups. Just felt dirty, filthy, like a dog, and hurting, hurting everywhere.

  The water in Granny’s tank had felt warm. It was so strange. She’d half-filled a bucket so she could wash them off her and that water had felt . . . felt almost warm. Got herself clean before Granny got up. Got her hair combed. She should have told her. Didn’t. Just told her she’d had a fight with Amber, told her about dyeing that old dress, and about Amber ripping it half off her outside the hall, and about her father taking Amber’s side and locking her in. Told her enough, but not the worst part. Too ashamed of the worst part.

  Harry had picked up her clothes from Maisy’s on the Saturday morning. He’d said that Maisy was hopping mad — not about him wanting her to pack up Jenny’s clothes, but about the twins. They’d drained the petrol out of her car and gone back to Melbourne.

  And thank God, Jenny had thought. Thank God that no one need ever know anything about it. She had her clothes. She had Granny. She had Joey and Elsie. It was over, and Granny had said she could live with her, and Joey said she could ride his bike to school.

  She hadn’t worried when something went missing that month, just celebrated because it had gone missing. Hadn’t known why it had gone missing.

  Now she knew. Now she knew everything.

  Time is slow in passing when there’s nothing to see but timber walls, nothing to do but think, nothing to think about other than a belly that keeps blowing up even when you starve it.

  In February, Elsie came in her canvas sneakers with the green wraparound dress she’d worn when she was carrying Teddy. It was too short but nothing else fitted. Jenny had to wear it. It had a belt that tied at the back and she looked like a green spider, all belly and skinny limbs. Felt like a spider, paralysed by a hornet’s venom, fresh food for the hornet’s maggot when it hatched, just lying there, just waiting to be eaten alive.

  Recognised Vern’s heavy footsteps on bare boards. He knocked before he lifted that curtain and he spoke about a place he’d found, full of good Christian people who would look after her and find a good home for her infant.

  Her infant. They kept on saying it. Your infant. Your dear little baby. They kept on at her, on, and on, and on, and on. As if she cared about it. She hated it. Hated them. Hated Amber.

  Dear Mary . . . my dear Mary, it has been so long since . . .
>
  Dear Mary, I have not written in recent weeks because . . . because . . .

  The ink of her mind wouldn’t stick to her mental page. It was disappearing ink, or maybe her brain was disappearing. Everything was gone, every dream she’d had was gone from her head, like it had been sucked out by Maisy’s electric cleaner, like someone had put the hose to her ear and sucked everything good out.

  She’d always had Mary Jolly when she’d been lonely. Whenever she’d felt sad, she’d been able to write in her head to Mary.

  Up until Christmas, she’d written to her on paper, and called into the post office after school to read Cara Jeanette’s mail. She’d written about the ball, or about Cinderella’s ball, and about what really happened to those glass slippers. Hadn’t been into the post office since a week before Christmas . . .

  My dear Mary, thank you for the beautiful . . . for the delightful Christmas card . . .

  She roamed in the early morning while the maggots in her belly were asleep, before the birds began their chirping. She borrowed Gertrude’s writing tablet on a February morning.

  My dear Mary,

  I am so sorry I haven’t written for so long, but since my mother was arrested for murder and my father’s fatal heart attack, I have been forced to seek employment, under an assumed name. I am now delighted to tell you that I have found work as a governess on a large property many miles from town . . .

  She wrote three pages, was still writing when Gertrude came out to light the stove. She offered an envelope, so Jenny addressed it. Harry posted it the following day.

  THE SPIDER AND THE HORNET

  Mr Foster’s side fence was a bare five feet from Norman’s house. For years he had spent more time than he should hiding behind that fence, listening. He’d seen and heard more than he should, which of course had encouraged him to return, again and again. A single man, now approaching fifty, he was aware that he had no right to spy on his neighbour, that he’d had no right to befriend his neighbour’s daughter, nor to encourage her in a deception. He was nobody’s hero, had not been built to perform heroic acts, but he believed, rightfully or wrongfully, that he had saved her infant life, and daily since her mother’s return, he’d kept an eye and an ear to that fence.