Over this backbone, p.23
Over This Backbone, page 23
Can I stay on your floor? I ask him as we lie panting in the dewy grass beyond the bonfire.
Not gonna bunk with your boyfriend?
He wants some space to sleep properly for the festival.
The absurdity only hits me when I say it, but he doesn’t question me.
Sure.
We walk back up the hill together. It’s nine-thirty and most people have drifted off to the camping paddock.
I leave Tommy in the kitchen with a half-eaten bag of corn chips and head to Ben’s room for my clothes. Part of me hopes that when he sees me he’ll pull me down to the bed, that I’ll just sleep there for the night, that my uneasiness is for no reason. I knock.
There are two voices behind the door. My body is liquid.
Yeah?
It’s me. Sorry, I just thought I’d get my stuff.
Ben opens the door enough for his face to appear in the crack.
Can I come in and get it? I ask.
I’ll pass it to you.
I have things everywhere, Ben—can I just come in?
He opens the door reluctantly. The night is warm so the fire isn’t lit, but his fairy lights cast a glow over the bed where Nikita sits in her dress. There is a bag beside her feet.
Keets came in for a chat, he says.
Oh.
Have you had a good night? she asks in her high monotone. Her pale forehead gleams. I can see the blue veins beneath her skin.
I’ll just get my things, I say, then scurry around the room. I’m helpless. She’s not there to talk—I know him. I am sick and sad and dumb. Nothing ever changes—nobody does.
The bag goes over my shoulder, and as I pass through the door he takes my arm tightly. Those black eyes and the familiar disdain. He hates that I am reacting.
He hisses, Don’t make a big deal out of things, Peta. You know I’m her mentor.
It’s all good, I manage to choke out. Goodnight.
Tommy is waiting on the stump for me and he doesn’t ask questions though my silence is loud. We walk together.
There are two mattresses in his cabin, but we wordlessly toss ourselves onto the single on the floor, dusty and haphazardly strewn with blankets. I wriggle beneath one and press myself against Tommy, grateful for his body, but I barely sleep—his snoring rattles my bones and I ache with angry sadness each time I remember how dumb I’ve been.
The kitchen is an immediate hellscape. All morning, water leaves me faster than I can replace it. I sweat and sweat. The flywire across the windows traps more heat than I remembered and I can’t open it because those sticky blowies are in plague proportions, and I know that it’s hot outside where the people sit in the grass but this is something else—I can barely get a breath. I hate that I’ve signed on for the roast.
At ten o’clock, Tommy starts the spit outside the window near the sink. He passes me a beer.
Little early?
Nah. Hydrate or die, he says.
As I reach the bottom of the second tinny he beckons me out and we scurry to the Top Shed.
No way, I grin as he wiggles a joint in my face.
Buckle up.
When we return I am floating. The kitchen becomes my playground. I fling trays and move at a sickening pace. Tommy and I laugh like maniacs and the smell of roasting sizzling pork drifts through the flywire.
There is a brief reprieve when the vegetables have been rotated and the capsicums are done. I slip out to take a leak and on my way back, passing the pizza oven on the far side of the dining room, I hear Ben’s voice with Dani’s. I pause by the wash-up troughs.
… nothing going on, Dani.
There should be, she says, uncharacteristically emphatic. You couldn’t do better.
I’m not saying she’s not great.
Surely you’re proud?
I mean, yeah. Sure.
Ben! She’s killing it—look at how fast she’s been going. And so long on her own! I don’t reckon you could do it.
He snorts. She’s cheated a couple of times. There were sections where she got lifts, and then her mum came and walked, so she wasn’t entirely alone. But she’s had a good crack, I guess.
I walk away quickly. I don’t know what is truth from him—yesterday’s praise or today’s disregard. Tell myself it doesn’t matter and go back to shuffling trays.
By the afternoon I’m high and drunk and dehydrated and close to panic—haven’t eaten apart from the wedge of potato I tested. The vegetable oil has permeated deep into my skin.
When Anna comes in, I ask her to keep an eye on things while I go to the river. I need to cool down before I implode.
I weave through the crowd as quickly as I can, not lucid enough to sustain conversation. The day is scorching, but there is a breeze. I take the shortcut through the paddock and as I reach the driveway near the river I groan.
Hey, calls Ben.
He is walking with Nikita towards the water and I fall into step with them reluctantly. She’s so pale and thin and I’m glad for this strong body because it looks as though she could snap.
As we walk I try to control the anger and hurt, but there are questions waiting behind my teeth—what happened last night? Did it happen when you were volunteering? Are you with her? Is she just one of many? Why did you make such an effort to win me back? How could you be so cruel?
Have you had a good day? I ask with the bitter taste of sick in my mouth.
Probably better than yours, by the looks, he says. That kitchen is so hot. You’ve been doing a good job in there—we really appreciate it.
We.
I nod in response as we pass through the gate to the river. No one is here, which is unusual on a festival day. The water is clear like glass. Ben and Nikita walk towards the edge to change, but I hang back beneath the shade of a swamp gum. As they undress they talk in voices too low for me to hear but when I see how he looks at her with taunting raised brows I’m overwhelmed by the need to be underwater.
The world tips and spins from the booze and weed. I lean one hand against the tree to rip off my boots and there’s a sharp pinch against my palm. I react automatically.
Fuck! I snatch my right hand with my left. The jumping jack is still coiled in its stinging position on the trunk and there is a welt where it has got me. I look at the ant in disbelief.
What? Ben turns, shirtless and shoeless. Our eyes meet. He says, Did you just get bitten?
What? No. Of course not. It’s fine.
I’m drunk and angry. I don’t want his help and I can’t think in clear thoughts.
Pull my boot back on. Try to remember where I left my EpiPen, because it’s not here with me—it must be in the bag in Tommy’s room, or still in my pack behind the office. Either way, it’s not in my pocket. It is at least a kilometre from me and I have to get to it quickly so I start walking back through the gate. I can hear Ben scrabbling for his clothes. He yells for me to stop, but he can’t tell me what to do—not anymore.
Peta! You need to sit down! It’ll make the reaction worse.
I’m fine, I call behind me and break into a trot.
For fuck’s sake, he yells. I’ll get your EpiPen for you, just stop moving.
I can’t stop. I hear him gaining on me as I run up the hill towards the Farm, which makes me breathless at the best of times, but now the beers slosh in my stomach and my lungs tighten. I cough once, then I can’t not cough, like I’ve broken a seal.
Just sit down, Peta. I’ll come back with it for you.
His legs are so long that he passes me, and then Nikita is by my side and tries to take my arm, to pull me back downhill.
Peta, I’m a med student, she says. Please listen to me—you need to stop moving or you’ll make it worse.
You’re a first-year, idiot, I manage to wheeze. I am cruel and too far gone.
I snatch my arm away and run again, but the coughing is endless. My lungs burn up in my throat and I wish I’d just accept the help, but there is a blockage in me. I don’t want either of them to see me vulnerable, to see my soft underbelly, because each time I’ve let him know me at my weakest, he’s hurt me.
I’d run away to be tough again, I’d walked to be tough again. I can’t let the thin pale girl see how she’s broken me, or let him know how he’d gone beneath my skin. I am desperate, but can’t articulate the thoughts. It all comes out as panic and petulance.
Ben is two hundred metres ahead now—I know I won’t win, but I keep going at full throttle anyway. I’m dizzy but I’m close.
He comes at me with the EpiPen as I reach the workshop. He’s out of breath too. I splutter and heave desperately on the air, try to get it into my lungs, but it won’t go. He holds the EpiPen, but I hate him so much in this moment that I can’t let him near. I push him away then I bend double. When he comes back for another try, I yank my thigh away.
Fuck, Peta!
Give it, I croak, and he passes it to me at last. I pull the cap and the needle sinks into my thigh and I melt onto the dirt with my back against a car tyre.
Straining at the air, sucking at it, heaving, wheezing. But finally breathing.
My vision is spotted with stars and black hollows where the sight should be. I hear Ben say that he thinks the steroids are in my pack, along with two more EpiPens and the antihistamines. I hate that he knows. I hate that Nikita will be the one to retrieve it. I want to do it on my own.
I have to check the vegetables, I say.
No way, he scoffs.
They’ll be burnt.
I’m taking you to hospital.
You’re not! Fuck you! You’re not the hero—you don’t get to be the hero anymore. Get Dani or Maya or Tommy or anyone else. I’m yelling hoarsely, surprised by the spittle that flies from my mouth, surprised by my complete lack of control.
He kneels by me in the dirt and wipes a thumb across my cheek. There are tears that I hadn’t noticed. I barely manage to pull my head away. There’s nothing left in me.
I’m taking you to hospital, he says. Don’t fight me, Peta. I don’t want you to die.
I’m too exhausted to argue again and, like a ragdoll, let myself be manoeuvred into his car.
Nikita comes with us. Of course she does—she’s a med student. I’m too weak to have a choice. Another two EpiPens land themselves in my leg on the hour drive to the hospital—I let him do it. As I go through the entrance my throat tightens again and the nurses hit me with more adrenaline from a vial. I’m shaking furiously but the antihistamine makes me slow and the beers make me sick and the dope makes me dizzy and the steroids make my heart gallop. The nurses put me in a hospital bed and hook me to a monitor and a drip. The dirt and grease on me rubs onto the white sheets. It’s all so familiar.
Ben and Nikita hover out of focus, and I’m too exhausted to talk. Shifting in and out of sleep, I dream that the vegetables have burned to charcoal. At some point I open my eyes and the room is empty; at another I open them and see her in the chair beside him, leaning against his shoulder. It’s almost too unreal to believe—too blatantly hurtful to comprehend.
Yuck.
I shut my eyes to block it out.
The next time I’m awake the monitor is beeping noisily and Ben’s face is all fear back near the wall. I’m sitting upright, sweating. The doctor is standing beside me with her hand on my arm and she is saying my name.
Peta, Peta? Can you hear me?
Yep—yes. Sorry, I say. What’s wrong?
She breathes out. You just had a spike in your heart rate and your blood pressure dropped. Are you feeling okay?
Oh, weird. Then I remember. Ah—I was having a bad dream. It happens a lot.
She looks at me quizzically. Fiddles with the blood pressure monitor and takes some notes.
You feel okay now?
No shitter than I normally do.
She grimaces, pats my hand. We’re going to keep you for another couple of hours as a precaution. Hit this buzzer if you need. Your obs are okay now, but we’ll be cautious because of how far away from help you’ll be tonight, she says.
Righteo. Thanks.
She leaves the room. I want to be cradled and rocked, to sob into somebody’s shirtfront while they smooth down my hair.
Ben, sitting on a stool with wheels, scoots towards me. Nikita isn’t around. I’m glad.
What’s this dream about? He rests against the bed.
Nothing, really. Something that happened in the desert. It just won’t leave me alone.
Can you tell me?
It’s nothing.
It can’t be nothing if it makes you react like that.
You won’t care, Ben, I say with a heavy tongue.
I care more than you’ll ever know. Please tell me. Telling can be cathartic. It might make the dream go away.
I turn my head. The fluorescent lights make him look older than he is, showing up the creases beside his eyes. My hand is a filthy brown against the sheet beside his elbow.
I haven’t told anybody about it. Nobody knows. I’ve never had secrets because I could never keep them, but somehow I’ve kept this.
When I go to swallow, my throat is bone-dry. I haven’t told because the telling will make it matter, and if I’m strong then nothing should matter. And strong has been the goal all along because that’s what everybody knows me to be.
Partly, and sickeningly, I wonder if knowing this story will turn Ben towards me, if the care will come back. Some desperate and animal element of me that I cannot exorcise, despite the anger and hate and hurt, still wants him to love me like I have loved him.
I want to bury my face in his shirtfront while he smooths down my hair.
I’m tired of fighting and my mind spins like a spooked horse in a round-yard. I want his pity, attention, love. I want it.
I stare at the ceiling, body like concrete, mind clogged with drugs.
Um, well, we went to the pub in Hawker, I begin.
September 2016
It had been a pink evening and we were all in shorts. I wore my Crocs and we walked together through the dusty streets—Annisa between Ollie and myself, holding our hands, swinging our arms merrily.
There were more cars at the Hawker Hotel than normal. It was a sandstone colour with eaves that ran the length of the corner block. A couple of tables on the footpath, doors shut tight against the flies.
We chose a spot up the back near the pool table where Nicholas, the pilots and the cameleer were drinking. There were others, too. Young blokes and old locals. It was crowded and sweaty.
We took over the pool table, Nicholas and me. Three young men in their thirties had just finished up. They all had dirty-blond hair of differing lengths and sunburnt faces—one tall, one round, one small.
I warned Nicholas that I was terrible and he proceeded to flog me. I bought the next round of beers and he fed another coin into the table. Ollie and Annisa drank with the pilots. We were all packed tight and the pub was a roar of exultation and rough guffaw.
When I took a shot from a cramped corner I accidentally jabbed the cue into the side of the small blond man, right beneath his ribs. Half of his beer slopped onto the table.
Fuck, I am so sorry. I spun around and felt the colour rush to my face.
Nah, nah, you’re alright girlie, he said laughing. He had very white teeth and wore a black shirt.
Girlie.
Mate, I’ll buy you another beer once you’ve polished that off, I said.
Well, I’m not gonna say no to that. He lifted his glass and tipped it down his throat.
I took my shot. Nicholas ended the game in three moves. I moseyed to the bar to buy the man a pint.
Here ya go, I said, returning to the table, and took a slug of my own drink.
What’s a young girl like yourself doin’ out here?
I told him and the other two listened.
Fuck. You’re living here? Jesus, in this shit hole?
It’s not as bad as it looks, I said. I have a good bunch of people to work with.
He grunted.
They were friendly enough—said they were passing through, heading for Parachilna Gorge, whatever rough roads they could find. They were from Queensland.
Ollie and Annisa came up beside me.
We’re going, Ollie announced.
I’ll see you at home. I smiled.
His gaze flickered across the men, then he said, You don’t want to come now?
I held up my half-full glass. Nah, I’ll be right behind you.
They left. Nicholas was in deep conversation with one of the pilots. From his animation, I figured he’d landed himself a free flight.
The three men had gone through another two rounds by the time I’d finished my pint. Their conversation was rough and thick with inside jokes. I couldn’t follow it, was feeling dehydrated and exhausted, wary of work the next day.
I said, I’m going to head off. Enjoy the rest of your trip.
They glanced at one another and there was something communicated in the look that I didn’t catch.
Yeah, nah, I reckon we’ll head off too, said the tall one. They all stood up.
I elbowed Nicholas and he patted me on the shoulder and said, Night, mate.
Outside it was dark. The three men leaned against the pub wall. They all had glass stubbies in their hands. One was smoking.
I said, Have a good night, boys.
Come have a beer with us, said the tall one. He was rat-shit and slurring.
That’d be fun, but I have to work tomorrow, so I’m going to go, I said.
Aw, don’t be fucking boring.
It hit like a smack over the head. Still, I tried to laugh. It was a harsh thing to say to a stranger, but we were in the country, which is a place where you don’t make a big deal of things. I glanced around and the street was empty.
Thanks, but I’m fucking tired, I laughed.
I started to walk back through the centre of town, the way we’d walked to get here. After a beat, the men all fell into step behind me. When I glanced over my shoulder, the round one said, We’re going this way too.
Right. Where are you camped? I asked.
Ahhh, ya know … this way, he replied. He grinned at the others and my mouth went dry.
