by Sabina Green
I started to get an overwhelming sense that I should help Mark, whatever it takes. I was twenty-six, what had I achieved until now? What was I leaving behind?
I had Ruby, of course, and found great satisfaction in being her Mum. My work at the police station was also no small feat and I was proud of what I do. But I wanted more.
“Stop frowning or you’ll be stuck with that wrinkle between your eyes forever,” Emma advised me the next day, when we were sitting at the desk.
“Sure, sure,” I agreed mindlessly, not really listening to her. I only needed one look at the station to make my final decision, and of course, the line of our standard clients helped. Court-issued restraining orders due to assault, sexual abuse, burglary and theft, and more. It kept on coming, and I had to think about the types of punishment waiting for these people, one that didn’t at all match their crime. And what about the raped baby? Or the woman whose bones got broken but she was too scared to press charges against her partner? Where was their justice?
That’s when I knew that I would give Mark what he’d asked me for. Why the hell not? If he has any chance whatsoever to push for heavier punishment, I have to help him.
I knew that it wasn’t right. I wasn’t authorised to share with him anything from the police reports that didn’t make it to the publicly available records. I finally understood the phrase “the ends justify the means” and it seemed unbelievable that I was approaching it from the other end. It was me now who was breaking rules… I’d joined the ranks of the people I used to fight against.
In a week I managed to gather an astonishing amount of information. I’d known about all those terrible crimes people committed on others, animals and environment, but to see it all together like this took my breath away. I put together an overview of crimes committed against animals and the environment in Western Australia in just the last twelve months, and it was a folder so big, I could barely lift it. The weight of the fact that this is the situation in Australia, a country supposedly much safer than many others, nearly crushed me. What would these folders look like in other countries?
I stayed clear from names and personal details, but it didn’t matter. The photographic documentation was much more impactful, brutally revealing the cruelty of mankind.
Whenever I left work with a stack of documents or data saved on a USB port, I felt my chest tighten. I could lose my job and credibility over this! But no one even looked at me twice. Why would they suspect I was doing anything wrong when I’d been the perfect employee for six years?
Mark
I could never truly forget, but most times I managed to keep my memories at bay. Hide them in the deepest darkest corner of my mind and lock them there. But after that conversation with Connie, they came rushing back and didn’t let me sleep.
I ran away from home when I was twelve, and have been looking after myself ever since. I lived on the street, eating expired food from garbage bins. I kept myself to myself, always away from the eyes of the police, or the probing looks from law-abiding citizens who could turn me in for looking like a suspicious individual. It wasn’t so bad in summer when it was warm even at night, I could always find something to eat and a safe place to sleep. I didn’t like the winters so much, obviously due to the exact opposite reason. People were wasting an unbelievable amount of perfectly fine, edible food all year round, but the frequent rain and wind made finding a place to sleep a problem. I’d been soaking wet all night, my teeth chattering as I tried to nod off under some shelter, and during the day I would sneak into the library or a shopping centre where I could get away with an hour or two, sitting on a chair somewhere out of sight.
It may have seemed like a great hardship, but I didn’t mind. The cold, the hunger, the loneliness… All of that was better than going back home. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. I had no idea why these words kept coming back to me, or where I’d heard them. But I knew for sure that in my case they definitely weren’t true. I was determined to suffer through life until I could find a job without having to fear a fine or a trip to a police station. The fear of returning back to that house of terror always kept me ready to run at the sight of any problem. And I could run bloody fast, because running away meant surviving.
I’d lived this way for two years before I dared to even look anybody in the eye. When I eventually did, the eyes were kind, full of sorrow and worry. It was one of the worst winter days, when it was almost freezing. I’d only had a thin damp sweater on, so weak and cold I couldn’t even walk over to the nearby bus station in search of a roof. I curved into a ball on a porch of a small house with an overgrown front garden. It looked fairly abandoned. Plus the porch was protected against the wind, so it was an almost perfect shelter.
But I was wrong. Someone did live there and they came investigating when they heard the noise of my rattling bones. The lady must have been over seventy, her face full of wrinkles, she was bent down and leaning on a stick. She was wearing a warm-looking dressing gown I was intensely jealous of at that moment.
“You can’t sleep here,” she said and looked at me for a while.
I was surprised she wasn’t chasing me away with that stick. I couldn’t risk her calling the police, so I used the rest of my dwindling energy to get up and plod away. A gust of wind blew into me as soon as I stepped onto a pavement a few metres from the lady’s house. I turned around longingly one more time, to say goodbye to that windless place, at least with my eyes, and they widened in surprise.
That plump figure was still standing in the doorway and was gesticulating for me to come back. I couldn’t resist and stepped closer, although I still kept my distance in case I needed to run away.
“I didn’t mean for you to leave,” she called out to me apologetically. Why should she apologize to me? “I meant to say that you can’t sleep outside. Come in.”
She went back inside and left the door open.
I threw all caution to the wind and followed her. I don’t even really know why I felt safe there and nowhere else. I was standing in the corridor, unsure but curious.
“I’m Barb. What’s your name?”
I didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you go home?”
Silence.
“Do you have a home?”
I shook my head and kept looking back at the door, my escape route, as if she was about to pounce and attack me.
“You can sleep here tonight. I’ll make the bed for you in the guest room,” she said simply, as if I was just a family member popping in for an unexpected visit. She disappeared in a little closet, and re-emerged a moment later with her hands full.
“I’m not about to do all of it myself,” she mumbled, but it didn’t sound reproachful at all. “Come help me.”
Together we put on a bed sheet, a pillow and a duvet cover in a room which was a bit stale, but certainly warmer than the outside, and my frozen body started to warm up. All the while she kept asking me questions. I didn’t answer, but she didn’t seem to mind. I suppose she just wanted to fill the space with words.
“Are you hungry?”
I nodded and my stomach growled to confirm it.
“Go take a shower and I’ll make you something. Towels are in the cupboard under the sink.”
Twenty minutes later we sat down at her table and I was stuffing a fried sandwich into my mouth, while Barb sipped her tea with milk, watching me carefully.
“Have you ever heard of Pay it forward?” she asked and then started explaining something about favours, but my eyes started to close on their own accord. The warmth and a full belly were working their magic.
She sent me to sleep as soon as my plate was empty, and I obediently went to the guest room, despite my resolutions to never get into that kind of situation again. Me and a stranger in a house.
I did it though, because… Barb looked so kind and safe. Because I ha
dn’t slept in a bed for two years. And because I didn’t have the strength to wander around like a stray cat anymore.
This is exactly why you should never feed stray cats, I thought. You do it once and they keep coming back, hoping you’ll fill their stomach again. They don’t leave you alone.
Barb took me under her wing and it seemed like she didn’t mind my presence at all. She allowed me to sleep in her house, she fed me, and I worked in her garden, repaired broken stairs and cleaned the house to get rid of mold. I quickly realised she didn’t have a family to visit her or help her out. She was growing weaker, and aid had presented itself to her just when she needed it.
I never spoke to her about my childhood, but she seemed to know what had been going on anyway. She didn’t try to push me for details, and I was grateful. I was reliving them in nightmares every night, I couldn’t bear to do it during the day as well. I stayed with her for three years and loved her more than I’d ever loved anyone else. It wasn’t just out of gratefulness for a roof over my head and a new chance. We were spending a lot of time together and I found a kindred spirit in her, she was my guide and anchor and I finally felt happy, despite remaining broken.
“Grandma,” I called her once without thinking, and she looked up in surprise. She even seemed pleased and didn’t object, so I kept calling her that. I liked it too; I pretended that she was my real grandma. What would it be like to grow up in a house filled with love, overflowing with it but never running out?
I knew it had to end one day. She never made me feel like a burden, but I didn’t want her to have to look after me for too long. I promised that as soon as I turned eighteen, I would find a job. Fate ended up being a bit quicker than that.
We’d only celebrated my seventeenth birthday when she was killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street. The groceries she carried in a bag flew up in the air and spilled onto the street. Grandma’s body fell, her arms and legs thrown in unnatural angles, and she remained unmoving. Traffic stopped for a moment and the few passers-by, including me, ran to Barb like wasps to a piece of candy. The driver put one foot out of his car and staggered, his eyes narrowing as if he was trying to focus on the scene in front of him. He realised what he’d done, looked scared out of his wits, got back into his car and drove off so fast his tires smoked.
Despite her distorted body, Barb’s face looked calm, as if she was just sleeping under the darkening sky. Grandma, I thought. I love you! I’ll never forget you.
Sirens sounded in the distance. I ran. Through one street and then another, it didn’t matter which way, just to get away from the accident and her house I couldn’t return to.
That was my worst life experience. The only person who’d ever given me safety and love had died, and everything in me died with her. I just about managed to survive the last necessary year before becoming an adult. I worked and found my own modest accommodation. I enrolled into a Bachelor of Social Work course because I wanted to achieve something, and Grandma would have been pleased. Meanwhile, I searched high and low for the one piece of information that kept me up at night.
Nobody noticed the licence plate of the car that killed Barb, but I did. I stored it safely into my memory and carried it there as long as it took me to find out who owned the car.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do. My thirst for revenge was strong, but at the same time I felt like Grandma wouldn’t agree with my thoughts. So I put all my plans to rest, and in the end it turned out that I would get my revenge either way. Not in the way that I would have liked. But I would get it.
I was fully immersed in my sombre memories and didn’t notice that the room around me got empty. Everyone from the Association had already turned off their computers, put their folders away and left the office, while I was resting my head on a mountain of papers. It wasn’t unusual for me to be the last one to leave, so my presence after working hours didn’t seem strange enough for someone to shake my shoulder and ask what the hell I was still doing there. Not even Andrew.
I heard a knock at the door. I had no idea who it could be. Anyone from the office would just walk in, and customers never came here because everything was dealt with through emails and phone calls.
I opened the door and my jaw nearly hit the ground. “Connie?”
Her expression turned stubborn, she silently handed me a bulky folder and I took it without thinking.
“What is this?”
“Have a look,” she told me and glanced away when I did.
I figured she didn’t want to see the photos again, she must have got her fair share when she was printing them off. I only managed the first three pages, my stomach wasn’t strong enough for more.
“Christ,” I breathed, my voice was shaking. I couldn’t keep turning the pages, I didn’t want to find out what came after the documentation of an abused dog, hung by his neck and disfigured with a knife. I wished the dog’s tormentor would burn in hell.
I clenched my teeth and blinked, but the picture burnt itself into the back of my eyelids, it wouldn’t go away. Connie stepped closer to me and I breathed in her perfume. She closed the folder and left her palm on it for a moment.
“Do what you can,” she told me urgently and squeezed my hand to give her words more emphasis.
She did what I’d asked her, I finally realised. I hadn’t expected her to… Not because she wouldn’t have wanted to or wouldn’t have the heart, but because she had been so anxious to do things by the book. I knew that from the months of watching her and her family, but also from our conversation last week.
“Why are you doing this, Connie?” I asked her cautiously.
She didn’t say anything and I thought that maybe she didn’t even hear me speak. She took a deep breath. Her face twisted into a grimace of pain. Her chin shook and tears sprang from her eyes.
“I’m dying,” she finally spoke and the thick folder almost fell from my hands. She continued in a shaking voice: “I have cancer and I’m dying. I thought I’d have more time to work for the police and bringing Ruby up into a great woman. But I wanted more opportunities to make my mark. So when you gave one to me, I had to do what I could.”
Then she started crying. I didn’t even manage to offer her a place to sit, and she was speaking again, the words falling out of her. She talked about the breast cancer she’d battled years ago, chemotherapy, and the fear she’d shared with her Dad. Then about the next visit to the hospital, when she’d found out that the cancer was back, this time in her lungs and liver, and that it was discovered too late.
“I haven’t told anyone yet,” she sobbed. “I don’t know what’s come over me, why I’m dumping all of this on you. I really didn’t mean to come here to ruin your evening… But for some reason it really hit me just now and I needed to get it out.”
“Definitely better than keeping it all in,” I assured her.
“I haven’t even told Dad yet,” she wept and blew her nose loudly. “What kind of a daughter am I? I’ve known for three weeks and I couldn’t bear to tell him.”
I hated myself for it, but I felt incredibly relieved because of a very specific reason. I knew that I’d be able to tell her everything. That because of–or more precisely, thanks to–the cancer, she won’t be opposing what’s to come. Not only that, she would help.
Connie
I calmed down and immediately regretted my teary outburst. Mark assured me that it was alright, that in fact I was entitled to a break down, and as far as he’s concerned I could come to him any time I need. I had to admit that it was easier to talk about my cancer with a near stranger. This way, I managed to lessen the weight on my shoulders, and Mark was affected only as far as having to listen to me babble on this one evening, then he would go home and forget the whole thing, because his life wasn’t over.
He stepped out to make another cup of tea so I peeked through the swollen slits I had instead of eye
s to see the lounge. It was a shared office with lots of desks with two big notice boards on the sides that were covered with various papers, graphs, lists of phone numbers and this year’s planned events. The walls were decorated with posters so interesting, I had to get up and take a closer look.
The first one showed two pictures of the same place. The top one was labelled “If Bees Go Extinct” and showed a dead, dry landscape without a single green plant or an animal. In the bottom one, labelled “If People Go Extinct”, there was a river, lush nature overflowing with all kinds of plants and providing shelters for various animals. Small and large, predators, ruminants, aquatic and terrestrial.
Some other posters I recognized. I’d seen them either in activist groups on the internet or on the Association website.
A quote under a picture of a starving polar bear, reading: “The Earth is large enough for all to share, but mankind’s heart is not large enough to care.” – A.D. Williams
Another one showed forest mining. “I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something by nature we call it progress.” – Ed Begley Jr.
All the posters were variations on the same theme, essentially showing how much humanity was hurting the planet and how harmonious the world would be if we weren’t here. I walked around the whole room and looked at all of them, until I came back to the first one about bees.
“There is only one thing endangering nature, the cycle of life and animals,” Mark said from the door to the kitchenette, and I turned around. “Human interference.” He must have been watching me for some time.
“I got that.”
He was looking at me in such a strange way. Like he was waiting for something.
