Skeletal (13 page)

With so much pain in my body already I didn’t think it would compete, but when he thrust his way in there was a knife to my insides, and then raw irritation like a wet finger being rubbed on a scraped knee.

And then he got to his feet. I thought for a minute that he would go and I would be left all alone again in a worse state.

Instead he pulled his trousers further down and stepped out of them. ‘Here,’ he said and gave them to me. His boxers were almost knee length and either deep blue or black. They looked like shorts.

I stood up and stepped into his trousers. The legs were short by a few inches but I could get the waistband closed. He handed me his jacket, and started to walk away.

He was at the edge of the park when he turned back. ‘I’ll get that back from you Monday,’ he said. And then he jogged along the footpath in overlapping ovals of street-lamp light until I couldn’t see him any longer.

***

I walked to the safety of people. The lights of Northlands Mall with its surrounding pubs, clubs and restaurants provided me with a feeling of safety. There was a double bench not far from the main entrance, the seats back to back, which was in the shadows enough to feel hidden, but exposed enough to feel safe. I sat on the side that faced the small garden rather than the street.

In Paul’s jacket pocket was a small plastic envelope of service station napkins. I tore the packet open, pulled one out, and used it to wipe some of the blood from the side of my head. It was soaked through in seconds and I pulled another one free.

If I could clean my face then it didn’t matter about the rest of my injuries. People couldn’t see them. I could get inside, into the safety of a mall bathroom and take proper stock of myself. But not if my face was dripping with blood.

I licked the tough tissue and rubbed it over my entire face this time. There was more blood, unexpected, from my eye. The eyebrow had split. An image popped into my head of Michelle drawing back her dainty foot and smashing it into my unconscious face and I felt a wave of pure hatred.

I’d only been trying to help.

I touched the side of my head. Even a light prodding caused enough pain that it made me want to vomit. I tried to arrange my hair so that it would cover some of my injuries, but it was tangled and matt with blood and dirt. I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. That would hurt too much.

A man sat behind me on the bench, and I flinched away to the very corner of mine.
What the hell?
Did he not notice me here in the shadows, or was that the reason why he’d chosen this seat?

‘It’s Daina, isn’t it?’ he said, and I turned to examine him with caution.

He hadn’t turned in my direction. He’d spoken while staring out at the road. He was grey. Everything about him. His sports jacket, his trousers, his tie, his complexion. Grey. ‘You’ve been hurt. You need to get help.’

I gaped at him for a moment, then turned and faced back into the garden. Two could play at this game. ‘I’m okay, I just need to get cleaned up.’

‘You’re not okay.’

I stared at the scrappy lavender and stubby tussocks that made up the garden. It was based in bark, just like the park playground. My mind shied away from the comparison. ‘I can look after myself. I just need to get cleaned up.’

My fear had dissipated. I didn’t know why. I was stranded alone in a strange place after being attacked talking to a strange man who could be there to do me more harm and seemed to know far more about me than I knew about him which put me at a disadvantage. But I felt safe.

‘We both know that you need to do more than get cleaned up.’ He paused, and then spoke again, his voice deeper and rougher as though the words were hard to get out. ‘You need to contact a rape clinic. You need to get real help.’

I thought of protesting again, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to meet any more people tonight. I definitely didn’t want anyone to poke or prod me in areas that had already had far more contact than I’d ever wanted. But I did need help. ‘Can you take me?’

‘No Daina. I’m sorry, but I can’t be seen in public with you. And you can’t tell anyone about me. You can go to a phone booth from here. There’s one just down the street, you passed it while you were walking here. They have a phone book and you’ll be able to call the clinic from there. They’ll pick you up or tell you what to do.’

I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned forward even though it hurt my head. The need to become smaller was greater than the pain.

‘Why are you helping me? What do you want?’

There was a long silence. He shifted his weight on the bench and for a moment I thought he was going to go, to leave, to walk away. But he didn’t. ‘I need you to do something for us.’

I curled my legs up onto the bench so that I was almost in a ball. It felt safer. I wanted to ask who “us” was, but I didn’t want to know the answer. So instead I asked, ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘You need to get some information from Vila’s dad. I’ll give you details later when you’re in a better state.’

I tried to put this into some sort of context but my brain wasn’t functioning to its full standard, or it didn’t make sense at all.

‘Oh,’ he said, and turned to look at me for the first time. ‘Don’t eat anything they give you, okay? They’ve been lacing your food with salvia, that’s why you’ve been hallucinating. They’re friends of Michelle, not yours.’

The pain from that betrayal hit me harder than anything I’d experience so far. I hadn’t even had time to wonder why my friends hadn’t stayed behind to help me. Hadn’t wondered why they left me naked in a public park where anything could happen. Where anything did happen.
They’re friends of Michelle.
So I had no one.

‘You need to keep up the pretence for the time being. Otherwise we won’t have an in with Vila. I know it’ll be hard, but I think you’re strong enough to do it.’

Strong. No, I wasn’t strong. I was weak and tired and battered. ‘Why are you talking to me? Why did you choose me? Why me?’ The last a plaintive cry. I didn’t want any more. I was filled up to overflowing.

‘Oh Daina,’ he stood up from the bench and turned back to the street. ‘You know why.’

He walked away.

***

Daina 1994

The picnic spot was empty. Her mother had told her it would be nice and sunny and a good place for their lunch and a bit of a play and she was right. There was dense forest surrounding them; the lush bush that grew when showered well with heavy West Coast rain, but today it was warm and sunny.

There was a lake which swished against a pebble beach. The stones were warm, but they hurt Daina’s feet. Still, she suffered the pain just like the Little Mermaid to get to what she wanted.

Her mother had told her not to go in the water. She was never allowed to go in water if she was alone. Even the tub was out of bounds unless her mum ran it for her and then listened out from the next room. There’d been a brother once. The water had killed him. Daina didn’t remember him but she had pictures of him holding her when she was a little baby so sometimes she imagined him and had him act out scenes in her head and pretended they were memories.

Daina sidled up to the edge of the water. She almost overbalanced as she also turned her head to check that her mum wasn’t about to swoop down on her with loudness and guilt, but she must still be in the car. She’d been drinking; not the raspberry cordial that was Daina’s favourite treat but which her mum didn’t let her have too often because it was “loaded with sugar” but a clear drink which made her smell, and made her sleepy.

The water was clear right near the edge, but further out the wind picked up little wavelets so that it was a shiny blue-grey instead. But here, here at the water’s edge, she could see the smooth pebbles right through the water. They looked bigger and smoother than the ones she stood on. Softer than the ones she stood on.

She stuck a bare toe into the water, just the tip. That wasn’t really going in the water now, was it? It wasn’t really disobeying.

The water was cold. The opposite of the sun which was hot and dry. The water was cold and wet.

Daina held her arms out to each side to keep her balance. She almost never fell over these days, she wasn’t a baby, but sometimes gravity pulled on her in unexpected ways and she would fall and feel stupid and clumsy. If she did that in the water her mum would think she’d disobeyed her and she hadn’t. She really hadn’t.

She put her whole foot in to see if the stones in the water were smoother to stand on than the stones on the beach. At first, they were. The cold of the water ran around her foot and calmed the sole so it felt bigger and lighter. But after a minute she could feel the round unforgiving hardness of the pebbles start to dent their way into the sole of her foot again.

Maybe if she put both feet in? After all, she was leaning on her foot in the water; that could make it seem like it was still sore. If she put her other foot down next to it maybe it would be better.

Daina pulled her dry foot level and dipped it down slowly, slowly into the water. The cold on her foot was as delicious as the heat on her head. She put her hands on her head to feel where the warmth of the sun had turned it hot, hot.

Delicious.

The thump was loud. Loud. Daina pulled back from the water, guilt flooding her little frame, and overbalanced. She fell, her bottom hitting hard on the stones of the beach.

She scrambled to her knees. Her whole body was adrenalin. She’d done something wrong, something forbidden, and she was about to pay the price.

But her mother wasn’t in sight.

Daina stood upright. Her bottom was in the shock stage of pain. She knew it was coming, but it hadn’t quite organised its troops to deliver the full attack yet.

The thump would swim through her dreams, her nightmares, for a decade to come. It would echo in the back of her mind every time that something went wrong, and every time she would feel the flush of guilt, of being caught out.

But that was all in the future. For now, there was just the silent gap where a large noise had been.

Daina climbed up the short bank that led down to the lake and ran back to the car. She could tell her mum was still asleep from a distance, her snores were a reassuring low rumble, but she still checked on her. Just in case. Her mum was lying on her back on the front seat, her mouth open. Her tongue was whitening, so she must have been that way for a while. Daina didn’t want to wake her, wasn’t even sure that she could. Sometimes her mum was reassuringly alive, the sounds she produced confirmed it, but she wouldn’t respond even when Daina pushed and pulled her. And even if she did she would be cross.

She turned and looked out across the expanse of the picnic area. It had seemed small and lovely when they first arrived, but now that she was alert and cautious it seemed larger; there were more places for trouble to hide.

There was no memory of the direction of the sound, so Daina headed off towards the edge of the forest on her right, the inevitable draw of the right-handed. There was nothing there but the wooden bench and table – one unit – that they’d eaten at earlier.

As she walked the perimeter and found nothing Daina relaxed. It was nothing. She crossed the lakeside, walking on the grass of the bank this time rather than the stones of the beach, and everything was as it had been earlier. No monsters hiding anywhere.

The smell went from hot midday sun, baking grass and warming water, to a stench that was even worse than the time Daina had stood in dog-poop and trodden it into the carpet in the front room.

Her stomach recoiled, and her mouth filled with saliva that she swallowed once, twice, the internal liquid quelling the worst of her gag reflex. Daina started to breathe through her mouth, and turned to look at the car. But her mum wouldn’t appreciate being woken, wouldn’t understand that something bad had happened while she was out cold.

For a moment Daina was torn; she almost ran back to the car anyway, the comforts of a cross mother a welcome known factor instead of the creeping dread in her stomach. But she was a big girl now. She was in kindergarten and next year she’d be starting real school. She didn’t have to hold her mum’s hand at the supermarket any more – although sometimes she still liked to – so she’d go and look at the source of this horrible smell by herself.

And if it was fun and interesting she’d tell her mum about it later when she woke up naturally, and she might earn a soft caress of her mum’s hand on her head, or maybe even a kiss.

A hug and a kiss!

Daina pinched her nostrils shut with her forefinger and thumb and walked into the first line of the forest. She wouldn’t go in too far – you could get lost and never, ever find your way out again – but that was the direction of the smell.

As soon as she pushed her way between the second bush and tree she could see where something had come down. Something had fallen from the sky. There was a gap in the trees where some branches used to block out the sun, and the ferns were crumbled and crushed.

Daina jumped over some low bushes and nearly slid over. Even at this far edge the forest retained enough moisture to have a film of moss over the leafy debris that littered the ground. For a second she pulled her hand away from her face to help balance. Her nostrils held shut for a moment, glued together with a thin film of drying mucus, then they pulled opened and the stench assaulted her once more.