Keep Her Sweet, page 3
Eventually her prayers turned into songs, and that’s when I made the fateful suggestion that we go out and get some exercise.
Asha was pretty good at netball. Before she dropped out of uni she was still playing once a week. As usual, she set the rules of our game, the most important one being that if you can’t catch the pass, you must collect it yourself. I can now confirm that her chest passes are not chest passes but belly passes. And they are like cannon balls. I deflected the first two and – as per the rules, which at the time seemed fair enough – I collected the ball and returned it with as much accuracy and power as I could muster (not much). I got better at catching and throwing after a while, which seemed to rile her. Her throws became so hard and angry that they were almost hitting my tummy every time. Imagine, aiming for my you know what like this? I was able to catch still, which enraged her so much that she made a surprise move and aimed for my chest with as much power as she could. It caught me off guard and sent me to the ground. Doubled in agony I made my second fateful decision of the day. I stood up, collected the runaway ball, returned to my position opposite her in the courtyard and threw a lob so high that it went over her head, over the wooden fence and into the carpark.
I stood my ground. She had failed to catch it. She must now retrieve it.
We stared at each other for ages, the bad and the ugly. I raised my eyebrow. She raised hers. I might have smiled a tad. She pursed her lips so tightly they turned green.
‘You know I can’t get it,’ she said.
If she left the courtyard her tag would beep, and she’d get arrested and hopefully jailed.
‘A rule’s a rule,’ I said.
There was silence until someone in the carpark tossed the ball back over and it bounced between the two of us. We remained poised as if at a duel, watching each other as the ball’s energy diminished. Eventually it rolled to a standstill at Asha’s feet.
Next thing I know I’m on the ground and Asha’s on top of me, actually sitting on my stomach, right on it, her legs pinning my arms, her eyes wild, the ball coming at me.
This was not a netball injury.
It is not a ‘throw’ if the ball is still in your hands.
*
She’s said sorry a few times since then, but she isn’t, she just wants more wine, which I have so far refused to get for her. We’re in the middle of task no.1 – moving rooms – and she just asked me again: ‘Hey when you go to the shops how bout you get us ingredients for carbonara – I’ll cook for us tonight, yeah, oh, and some wine?’
I said, ‘No, Asha, wine’s not good for you. It makes you angry.’ This made her angry. She looks like she might jump on top of me again and actually punch me in the head with her bare fists – which is totally not allowed in this house, it’s a rule – no ball this time, because I have outed her, you see. I have disgraced her, and she is Poor Asha, stuck in this house with a shackle on her ankle, without wine and without the love of Richard, who I prefer to call The Dick.
She told me she was in love the day of the piercing (how sad that my twenty-first will always be ‘the day of the piercing’ to me). Someone she met at that charismatic megachurch called ‘Dance Said He’. She didn’t tell me he was married. I didn’t press for info, tbh, because I didn’t want to hear about the church. I only found out after the court sent her here with an ankle bracelet.
We got drunk on her first night here and she told me all about her offence. I thought it was a really cool story at the time. Asha stood up for herself. Asha did not take any shit. Asha got revenge. The man she met at the church, The Dick, was married. Not only that, he was the pastor. Their love was incredible and they were soul mates. He had promised to leave his wife on the day it happened – it had been planned and agreed for weeks apparently – but he didn’t turn up to their rendezvous in a Melbourne hotel. Upset and a little inebriated, Asha made her way to their church in Geelong, only to discover The Dick having drinks with his wife and several church elders. Asha stormed in and confronted him. He ignored her, he was weak, scared. She begged him. His wife told her to leave and said she was going to call the police. Asha told the wife she was wrinkly and grey and fat and ugly and bad in bed. The elders asked Asha to calm down. The Dick asked Asha to leave. Asha grabbed something from a nearby bench, walked right up to Richard and hit him with it. She then turned and left the building with her head held high.
After Asha relayed the story, I congratulated her – The Dick deserved it. Just how godly is a guy who cheats on his wife with a vulnerable twenty-four-year-old? We had a good night that night. I always felt really close to her when we were both hating someone else, when we had a shared enemy.
But now that she’s broken my nose I’m not so into the story. The item she grabbed from a bench, willy nilly, was a coffee tamper, which is metal and heavy as fuck, could have killed The Dick. She was lucky to get off with a charge of serious assault and not attempted murder. The judge did not think it a cool story either, especially as she stalked and harassed The Dick and his wife between the offence and the sentencing, calling and texting and turning up at the house and the church. Asha was a hair’s breadth away from a lengthy custodial sentence, and only avoided it because she had no priors and because Mum and Dad agreed to play prison guards here.
The tamper story gives me the same feeling as the school-disco story. I was eight and my frenemy, Rachel, said I looked stupid in my dress. I told my big sister, and she responded by riding her bike into Rachel on the way home the following afternoon. Rachel was quite badly hurt. She wore bandages on her knees for at least a week after and never looked me in the eye again. I was always proud of Asha for sticking up for me, especially with Dad away and Mum ‘not feeling herself’, but it did also make me a bit nauseous, a bit sad, a bit something. Same with the coffee tamper, now I’m thinking about it. That’s two facial body parts she’s injured recently.
I do mostly blame that church though. It’s taken over the music industry and the government, and now it’s taken Asha. They got her when she was weak – rejected, chucked, feeling a failure, working some shitty receptionist job in Sunshine, locked down with god-bothering strangers. Before she knew it she was speaking tongues. I can’t wait to hear this btw. She says she hates sharing a room with me cos the tongues don’t come. Sometimes at night I hear her chanting weird shit about someone called Nellie. ‘Come to the light, Nellie,’ she says. Last night she was kneeling by the bed and swaying: ‘Rise, rise, we want to see your beautiful eyes.’ When she noticed I was awake and watching her, she stopped, embarrassed but not embarrassed enough, and got into bed. Mum and Dad, atheists like me, are calling it a phase. Another one: she’s been having them since she was eleven, they’re like the eastern suburbs.
Right now Asha’s trying to hold it in, but she’s not managing. She’s folding her clothes very carefully – all seventeen items, five of which are actually mine, including and particularly the short, white, fluffy jumper she’s shoving in her laundry basket right this—; my god she really has done it. I bought it on my birthday. With my money. I didn’t even say she could borrow it. How can she stand there in the middle of what is now MY room, shoving my favourite jumper in her disgusting un-wipeable rattan laundry bag? She’s almost finished packing, I’ll be on my own again any moment.
It’s going to get scarier without Mum and Dad here (can you believe they’re about to bugger off, straight after our first family therapy session?). We’re going to be on our own for three whole nights. Dunno why I think it’ll be scarier without them here. They are useless these days, don’t help at all, let her get away with murder. I must learn to hold it in. I will not say anything about the white fluffy jumper. Or my ‘netball injury’. Or and especially about Richard.
It’s like Asha knows what I’m writing – Richard Richard. Richard is a fuckwit, Richard is a conman. This pencil is fabulously scratchy. I’m going to use it from now on.
Asha is seething. She’s probably written the word ‘Richard’ ten million times and knows the sound of it. I’m gonna check. Richard Richard Richard. Yep, she knows how Richard sounds. Richard. Richard. Ha. Richard Richard. She looks like she wants to kill me, but biological sisters don’t do that, hardly any, unless they’re practically men, royals for example. As far as I can tell, the sibling murder race goes something like this: brothers kill their sisters, and brothers kill their brothers, and sisters kill their brothers but they don’t kill their sisters. I can only find two sororicide stories online – one involving care-giving, one involving Instagram. Maybe it’s just we haven’t heard about those ordinary sister killers, they’re not documented, or they don’t get inheritances and have nothing to scramble over, or they are too busy with their shared enemy (men) to hate on each other. Maybe they just don’t happen. Right now, the last option is comforting.
Asha’s taking the last of her stuff now – including and unbelievably my favourite mascara. Hold it in, Cammy, hold it in. I dunno, it’s like a fizzing that gets fizzier as she gets closer to me, almost to the point of electrocution. Like last night – she prodded her forefinger into my arm really hard and said, ‘Oi, can you message Richard for me?’ (He has blocked her.) I believe I came very close to spontaneous combustion.
She’s just taken my phone charger and I’m at five per cent. Richard. Richard. Richard does tongues and not just with Jesus. Richard is rich and drives fancy cars. Richard is calling the police. Richard is taking out a restraining order. Richard despises you. Richard is married.
She’s popping in and out to wind me up, taking things that I need. The earphones, for example. They’re noise-cancelling, they’re MINE. Holy testicles, there must be a guitar next door – what was Mum thinking bringing that into the house? I can hardly breathe. She’s tuning it, she’s going to play it.
‘Can I have my earphones back, please?’ I yell, but she’s probably got them on and doesn’t answer and wait … here it comes … she’s singing.
‘Jesus, Oh Jesus, I am wild for you Jesus.’
The songs are all about Jesus these days, and I just can’t bear it, it can’t be real, it can’t be that a relative of mine goes on like that, let alone that she seems to get all horny over it.
‘Mmm, mmm, mmm Jesus.’
She says it like it’s spelt Gee-suss. It’s almost as if she’s American.
She doesn’t know how to tune a guitar and only knows four chords. This really is agony. It sounds like she is sucking Gee-suss’s cock, deep-throating his lurve, give it to me Gee-suss, give it to me. Her voice is powdery and pitch perfect with no real feeling or emotion, and I am definitely on the verge of exploding. It is becoming clear, Dear D, that I need to do some deep breathing.
She’s been next door a while now, but it’s not over, she will be back. She didn’t realise the ‘retro’ (= doesn’t work) pottery wheel sits on a metal base that is screwed to the centre of the floor next door, so funny. She bagged the room with the window immediately, and of course I didn’t rock the boat. They’ve been trying to unscrew the gigantic masonry screws for ages, but they’ve only come out a bit. Now she’s smashing at the screws with a hammer or something, and Dad is wondering what tool he might need to borrow from Mr Valencia from Mount Clear, or if he needs a handyman. Asha’s yelling, ‘MUM,’ but Mum’s upcycling in the mezzanine. Dad’s saying he really should go see if she needs his help with the mid-century ‘piece’ otherwise this mini-break to Hall’s Gap will need to be a bank-break. Now Asha’s making him take all his old Glasgow Herald newspapers out of the room, and he’s huffing and puffing and piling them right outside my door, which is a total fire hazard, but I will not say anything.
Asha will come in any second, I bet, and suggest, all nicey nicey, that we swap rooms, making out that it will be a good thing for me to take the one with the pottery wheel. My plan is to complain but eventually agree, as if I am unaware that the wheel leaves no room for a bed. I don’t need a bed in there. I can take the old gym mat Mum and I rescued from behind St Pat’s and covered with faux sheepskin. It’s really comfy. And I’ve always fancied a shot at that pottery wheel. I might whip up a jug or two for the open house on Saturday. Could be fun.
‘STOP THAT WRITING!’
Seriously, that’s what Asha just screamed. She’s praying as close as she can get to me on the other side of the paper-thin dividing wall. She’s hoping to get into the zone so she can speak tongues at long last, after all the stage fright she got from sharing with me. Must be like peeing. I am dying to hear her speak tongues. I am going to record it on my phone, such a load of bullshit.
‘Shut up with that scribbling!’
She just yelled at me again, and I did well, I did not respond. She’s in court again in a week. Her lawyer says they’ll remove her ankle tag and put her on probation or community service, or give her a fine or something, and she’ll be free to go back to Sunshine with all her Gee-suss-shagging non-mates. One week. Actually, six days and some hours.
‘I’m trying to pray for fuck’s sake!’
Seriously? I hate her. I hate her I hate her I hate her, she is the horriblest person I know. RICHARD!
What I should do is move across to the other bed, even if it is still officially her bed, put as much space between us as possible. Right, that’s what I’ll do.
She’s singing very loudly now, she’s ecstatic, wouldn’t be surprised if she has to stop the song for a moment soon. So gross. I can’t listen. I need to get out of this house.
I guess I’m lucky I can.
You are helping btw, DD. Maybe The Queen’s not as idiotic as she seems. More later, I’m off to the shops to get a quiet pen.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Therapist
‘Seventy-one today, seventy-one today,’ Joy said, blowing out the candle on the cupcake she’d bought herself. ‘I’ve got the key to the door. Not for much longer.’ She levered herself from the dining-room table Bertie surprised her with on her thirty-third birthday – instead of the mystery weekend away (to Rottnest Island) that she had regularly requested. She was saying farewell to the table this evening, along with many other non-essentials, not that there was much left. Most of her wedding crockery had been collected, and she had finally let go of her anger that Mrs Innes did not require soup bowls or teacups or saucers which had totally devalued the set. Since selling the house, she had done all her sobbing and reminiscing. She had filled an old-fashioned tartan photo album with memories of her happy family home: of Christmases spent opening presents in the living room and eating ham on the patio; of Jeanie celebrating her birthdays in the dining room, she and her little friends smiling like crazy; of she and Bertie playing Scrabble in the kitchen, reading papers on Sunday morning, having friends over for dinner parties. Saying goodbye to the house felt like saying goodbye to Bertie all over again. She loved Bertie, was even in love with Bertie, for forty-five years, all the way up till his death two years ago.
She met him during her ‘big trip’ with Rosie. Post uni, the sisters had set off on an adventure together. One evening, they became a little tipsy and started chatting to a group of dentists in a Melbourne bar. Joy never went home. She waved Rosie off and became Dental Nurse Joy for many years: dressed in white, her teeth perfect and polished, holding all the right tools, knowing all the right codes.
‘3MOD,’ Bertie would say, and she would hand him the correct implement and take note on his dental pad.
‘ULBT,’ he would say, and she would pretend to take note, knowing this secret code meant: ‘You look beautiful today.’
She was the best nurse he’d ever had, the most competent, the most efficient, the most energetic, always able to handle difficult jobs. After she had Jeanie, this did not change. He called her The Fixer right up till his death.
She hated that she still harboured some anger towards Bertie. It wasn’t that his personality changed with illness – it took two weeks from cough to rattle, and he was in another building the whole time – or that she discovered dark things after his demise, like that Bertie had another family in Adelaide, or that he owed one of the McCartney boys a favour. Bertie hadn’t done anything dramatic. He was just completely clueless. Bored with retirement, he put everything they had into a new mobile business and lost the lot. It was his stupidity that had knocked her for six.
Joy tossed the cupcake, checked her lipstick, sprayed her hair in place, then shut the door on her beautiful, Victorian weatherboard home in Lake Wendouree. The house and garden had been her pride and joy for forty-four years, but she was not sad to let it go. It had never quite managed to feel like home, and she always intended to leave it eventually. Not in this mood, though. She thought selling would be exciting and happy, the beginning of something, not the end. She walked down the drive, past the BMW, past the SOLD sign on the dry lawn, past the rose garden and the shrubbery and the rockery, and past Bertie’s mobile dental van, which was parked on the street with a For Sale sign on its windscreen. Salisbury’s Mobile Dentist was written on the back of the van. Joy reminded herself yet again that there was no point getting mad with a dead man and that she needed to buy paint at Bunnings. Both sides of the van were covered with a huge, smiling, white-toothed mouth – which seemed to be more off-putting to potential buyers than the enormous dental chair galvanised to the frame inside.
She would miss the leafy walk to town but reminded herself that the drive from Sebastopol would probably be quite nice too, and that it would be a relief to have a brand-spanking-new unit with windows that opened all the way, as well as some new neighbours to talk to. Dear me, she was little glum this morning, and she didn’t have any explosive families scheduled to buck her up. Today was all about packing for the move tomorrow. A walk round the lake would do her good beforehand, some air, some breathing, and perhaps a quickie at St Pat’s. It was her main respite these days, walking the streets of this old gold-mining town, the same song playing over and over in her ears – ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, the Red Molly version, a country soundtrack that made her feet twang because she was going to return to the mother country, her country, and to her own sister, her dear, dear sister Rosie, who was not mean or selfish like the First-Born with the ankle tag, but was all the way over there, still dying to greet her with hugs and conversations and ideas and gorgeous infectious giggles. They were holidaying together again soon, she and Rosie. And the plan was they’d go house-hunting for Joy, something quaint and not too far from Rosie’s place, maybe even in the same village. Joy needed Jeanie settled first, but it was a lovely dream they had together and it wasn’t impossible. Rosie was always sending her pictures of properties that made Joy’s heart sing. Pretty cottages with roses and ponds and impossibly perfect lawns. They were in harmony, she and Rosie, always had been, like the song she was listening to. It shouldn’t have startled her, therefore, when her phone rang.
