The Dark Part of Me (15 page)

Danny hovers in the dimmest corner, flames reflected tiny in his shiny, black eyes. He takes off his shorts and T-shirt, folds them neatly on the floor. ‘I’m keeping my undies
on,’ he says, but we tell him that he has to take them off because real aborigines didn’t have undies. Still he refuses, so we grab him and tug them off. Hollie paints his arms and legs
with dots and snakey lines, and I rub dirt into his thick, black hair.

We sit around the candle. Speaking in our tribe’s native language, Hollie explains to Danny how the game works. But he can’t understand the words so Hollie whispers to him in English
while I make music on my imaginary didgeridoo. Hollie says that as chief tribesman of the Mount Coot-tha tribe, Danny-Dilly must go out into the bush and hunt down a big red kangaroo to eat at the
corroboree that night. While he is out hunting, Hollie-Wallie and Rosie-Maroo, his two most beautiful aborigine wives, collect witchetty grubs and weave useful baskets out of twigs and long
grass.

Danny nods but looks a bit confused.

‘And don’t forget you’re not allowed to speak English,’ says Hollie, wagging her finger at him.

‘And if any white fellas come then we must hide together at the back of the cave with our spears pointing out in case they are baddies with guns,’ I add.

‘Let’s start,’ says Hollie. She pushes Danny-Dilly outside. We kneel in the dirt and dig for yams.

As the sun is sinking, Danny-Dilly comes home with the biggest red kangaroo the tribe has ever seen. The roasted yams are delicious. The men dance and sing songs around the fire and there is
lots of gossiping between the women. Everyone agrees that it is the best corroboree ever. When Danny-Dilly is tired, he goes into his humpy with his two most beautiful wives, Hollie-Wallie and
Rosie-Maroo. We lie down on either side of him, our arms draped over his middle. We take turns to kiss our brave hunter-husband and tell him, in our made-up aborigine, how much we love him.

As soon as I walked in, I could smell smoke coming from the backyard. Dread seized me as I raced through the house and outside. It had been years since Mum’d burnt
anything but she was in the middle of the backyard tossing one of her eighties jackets onto a fire. A sleeve of her peppermint pinstripe protruded like a dead person’s arm, its silver
cuff-buttons melting in the inferno. I yelled at her from the patio but she was transfixed, her face radiant with the heat of multi-coloured flames. I crossed the lawn and grabbed her by the
arm.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What does it look like?’ She spoke like a ventriloquist, her lips pressed into a thin line. The skin around her eyes was puffy like she’d been crying. She didn’t even
ask me where I’d been all night. ‘We were having such a nice time.’ Her voice trembled. ‘We saw Phantom and then we went for a bite to eat at the Lyrebird Restaurant. I
asked him all about his first wife, Noreen, who died of breast cancer, and when he’d finished telling me all about that, I asked him about his work.’ She picked up the smouldering
sleeve and tossed it into the middle of the fire. We watched it writhe and twist, dissolving into nothing. ‘There.’ She brushed her hands together.

‘C’mon,’ I said, dragging her inside.

We sat on the couch drinking tea. ‘So, what happened?’

She wrung her hands and shook her head. ‘He’s a germ scientist. What are they called?’

‘A microbiologist?’

She nodded. ‘He was telling me how he’s trying to find a germ that kills cancer. He was holding my hand and I snatched it away. All I could think about was millions of germs crawling
all over him. I rushed out of the restaurant. Everyone was staring.’

I could just imagine it; Randy running after Mum across the piazza while she screamed at him to keep his distance.

‘Did you tell him?’

‘Yes. I told him I had an irrational fear of germs and diseases and that, no matter how much I liked his company, I could never see him again.’ She looked at me with big, sad eyes.
‘You know, Rosemary, in every other way, he’s perfect.’ Two dates and Mum was in love. I thought she was pathetic, hooking up with some desperate loser from a dating agency just
because her shrink had said so. I looked outside at the fire. Wisps of smoke spiralled in the air. A stray silver button glinted in the midday sun. I turned back to Mum. She had her face buried in
her hands, whimpering.

‘There’ll be others,’ I said, wanting to make her feel better. ‘Didn’t you say the dating agency came up with four compatibility partners?’

‘No one as nice as Andy,’ she sulked.

‘Well… maybe you can work things out somehow.’

‘How?’ She looked up at me, pleading. ‘I can’t even bear to touch him. He grows cancer germs in little dishes.’

‘At least he’s not an undertaker,’ I said, but Mum sat glumly staring into her teacup. The doorbell rang. My legs went numb. Scott’d got my note and come straight
over.

‘Tell him I’ve gone shopping,’ said Mum, dashing down the hall to her bedroom. Fuck knows why she thinks it’s Randy, I thought, as I raced to the front door, delicious
waves of expectation surging through me. I wondered where we could go. If Mrs Greenwood had popped out, we could tear back to his bedroom for a quickie. Or we could drive up to Mount Coot-tha and
find some secluded grassy patch for an alfresco root. Just thinking about it got me wet.

Through the glass panels either side of the front door, I caught a glimpse of red petals. He’d bought me flowers! I flung open the door. The sun streamed in. A short, balding man with a
round, shiny face stood on the doormat. It was Randy Andy for sure. Shielding my eyes from the glare, I gave him the once-over. He was wearing beige knee-length shorts with dazzlingly white
knee-high socks and Jesus sandals, just like Mr Magoo. In a pair of hairy hands, he clasped a huge bunch of roses.

‘Hello. You must be Rosemary.’ He stuck out a gorilla mitt. ‘I’m Andy.’

‘Yeah, I figured that,’ I said, ignoring his hand which hung limply on the end of an apishly muscular arm. By contrast, the rest of his body was incredibly weedy like he only pumped
iron on his biceps and triceps. He cleared his throat.

‘Janice has told me all about you.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Oh.’ His face fell. ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

‘No idea.’

‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

‘Shoppingtown.’

‘Oh.’ His head dropped to the flowers.

‘I’ll tell her you came.’ I retreated over the threshold.

‘Yes. Yes. Please do.’ He was rubbing his bald spot in a circular motion, as if stimulating his brain cells. ‘And give her these,’ he said, thrusting the roses at me. I
took them and began to close the door, thinking, what a total loser! ‘And tell her… tell her… ’ Randy stuttered.

‘Tell her what?’

He shifted from side to side. ‘Tell her that I’ve scrubbed myself with hospital-strength anti-bacterial liquid, chemical name chlorhexidine gluconate, and sterilized my clothes in
boiling water.’

He stepped back and I slammed the door. I turned around and collided with Mum who’d been eavesdropping from the alcove. Her eyes sparkled as she snatched the roses off me, reading aloud
from the gift tag:
To my darling Janice, Not all germs are bad. There are good ones, too. Lots of love, Andy x.

Mum floated into the kitchen, returning with a vase of water which she set down in the middle of the coffee table. She unwrapped and arranged the bouquet, burying her face in the roses and
inhaling deeply. A little sigh escaped from her lips. Her face was flushed, as if the colour of the petals had rubbed off on her cheeks, and she looked girlishly pretty.

‘Mum?’

She looked up at me blankly then, snapping out of her daze, leapt up, ran to the door, banged it open and bolted outside.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted from the doorway as she shot across the lawn, the tails of her dressing gown streaming out behind her. Randy’s crappy Beetle was puttering down
the road as she raced along the footpath, flapping her arms about to get his attention. A sudden gust of wind whipped off her dressing gown but she didn’t seem to care. Poor old Mr Leyland,
innocently stepping out for his Sunday paper, got the fright of his life as she thundered past, her loose thighs wobbling in the morning sunshine. But Mum, unsheathed, kept on heedless in her
flesh-coloured support bra and tummy-firming undies. As the Beetle swung out of our street, she tore into the middle of the road, jumping and screaming. Randy spotted her in the rear-vision. He
braked and tooted the horn. He was half out of the car when Mum pounced on him, ramming him back against the side of the Beetle and pashing him. Randy looked a bit stunned but it didn’t take
him long to respond with sickening gusto. I turned and slunk back inside the house to call Scott. I’d waited long enough.

On the eighth ring an out-of-breath Mrs Greenwood answered the phone. When I asked for Scott she said that he hadn’t come home yet. ‘I’ll get him to call you when he comes in,
OK, love?’

I hung up and slumped back on my bed in a foul mood. It was just past noon. I checked my mobile and there were seven missed calls from Hollie. It was probably something to do with Danny and his
odd behaviour but I didn’t feel like calling her. Mum and Randy came laughing and giggling into the courtyard, right outside my window. I closed the venetians, but I could still hear every
sappo word they said.

‘Thank you for scrubbing down,’ Mum gushed. ‘You smell so lovely and clean.’

‘Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Janice. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to help you get over your… little problem.’

‘It’s alright,’ said Mum. ‘You can call it my germ phobia.’

‘For hours I lay there, testing different methods and possible solutions.’ I imagined Randy rubbing his bald spot and licking his lips. ‘And then, about four in the morning, it
came to me.’ His voice was rich and creamy like in a chocolate ad. ‘Knowledge banishes fear.’

‘Knowledge?’

‘I’m going to teach you all I know about microbiotic life. Then you’ll realize that your germ phobia is illogical. It doesn’t make scientific sense. It is, as we say in
the lab, insupportable. Worse than that, it is superstitious indulgence of the worst kind, a fear of the unenlightened mind.’

‘But, Andy, it’s not that simple,’ Mum sighed, impatience in her voice.

‘What do you mean it’s not that simple? The best solution is always the simplest,’ persisted Randy.

There was a long silence in which I pictured Mum shaking her head and wringing her hands.

‘Janice, don’t get upset. Everything’ll be alright. I’ll help you through this.’

‘Look, Andy, I appreciate you trying but it’s not that easy. You can’t just fix me like a broken washing machine. I’ve been like this for nearly twenty years.’
She’d been like this ever since I was born. Randy was kidding himself if he thought he could change her. ‘I’m good on my own, you know, and the truth is, Andy,’ she lowered
her voice as if to tell a secret, ‘I’ve never been very good at relationships. Look, you’d better go. I’m sure the agency will find you a nice normal woman who’ll make
you very happy.’

A chair scraped back across the pavers. This was Randy’s opportunity to walk. Not that I blamed him. Even without her phobia Mum was a handful.

‘Put me down! Put me down!’ Mum was squealing. I took a quick squiz through the venetians. Randy had scooped her up in his gorilla arms and was carrying her through the sliding
doors. She was kicking and screaming but pointing the way to the bedroom. I doubted if she’d ever been ravished (Dad was hardly the ravishing kind) but she seemed to like it alright.

Mum’d told me how she met Dad at Cloudland, a kind of blue-light disco on the top of Bowen Hill. It was the sixties, Brisbane was still pretty tame, and Dad, with his sneaky hip flask of
gin and sketchy knowledge of eastern religions, was enough to wow her. After four or five dates and a few furtive pashes at the flicks, Dad proposed. In the wedding photos, Mum was petite and
slender with a shy smile. Dad had a blade one crew-cut and a maggot glint in his eye. It wasn’t until the honeymoon on Tangalooma Island that Mum realized he had a drink problem. That’s
when he started hitting her, but she stayed with him, covering her bruises with foundation and saving enough money to leave him. It was only when she got pregnant that she decided to stay. I was
born, eight weeks premature, skinny as a rat, too sick to feed. Dad lived at the pub. Mum got post-natal depression. That’s when the germs took hold. She was so worried I was going to die
that she became obsessed with keeping the blighters away from me.

It was a stinking hot afternoon when they emerged from the bedroom. I was reading in a shady spot under the pawpaw tree at the bottom of the backyard and they didn’t see
me tucked up in a deck chair amongst the foliage and the shadows. It was obvious they’d been rooting. Mum was all giggly. Randy walked with a post-fuck swagger. I couldn’t believe it.
After all Mum’d warned me about the evils of men and sexual intercourse, I’d thought it would take her months, if not years, before she’d let anyone stick their thingo in her.
What about warts, gonorrhoea and the syphilis comeback? She’d only known him for two days. What a slut! Randy had a fluffy, pink towel tucked around his waist, his narrow chest carpeted in
thick, salt and pepper hair. Mum was in an old faded pair of togs with built-in cups. Randy couldn’t keep his mitts off her. He kept patting her on the bum. She’d shriek and hop away
from him, but then sidle back for more. He tried to pick her up and chuck her in the shallow end but she jumped in instead, squealing as she hit the water. It was years since Mum’d been in
the pool although she still insisted on double-dosing the chlorine levels. The water stung like crazy. Five minutes swimming left your eyes sore and bloodshot for the rest of the day.