They dress in primary colors, sunset pinks and pineapple yellows, like flocks of pretty birds. They sit primly at the scratched wood tables outside the Roo Bay pub, grimacing at the watery globs of bird shit.
The pub dog, an ancient kelpie, sniffs at their ankles, and a woman in lemon shorts crouches to pat it. The dog loses interest, ambles to a magpie carcass, rolls in it, bloodied feathers sticking wetly to its coat.
I drive past the general store where Mum worked, the tackle shop, and that one building that seems to change business every year. It’s empty now, windows smashed in, graffiti smeared on the boarded door,U Wanna C My Teeth?
I must be breathing too hard, because in the rearview mirror Jess gives me a questioning look.
“I grew up here,” I tell her quietly. “Fast.”
We all did. This town isn’t kind to its kids. We grow here, ungoverned inside the town’s dirty fist until we fit neatly into our fathers’ shadows. Then the legacy of violence begins again. We’ll spend Friday nights at the Roo Bay pub, red-faced and aggressive, complaining of hand cramps and you: thefarken tourists.And our children will clench their teeth when we stomp home, smelling of beer and blood.
Traffic crawls to a stop. At the end of this road, up a hill so steep, you have to press the accelerator nearly all the way down, is surf beach number 1. Golden sand, crashing waves, and rated one of the most dangerous beaches in Victoria. That clear cool water sure looks inviting, but it can suck you under in a riptide like someone’s grabbing you by the hair and pulling you down. It happens quick.
That’s Kangaroo Bay. You’ll drown in our beaches and our dads will snicker when we pluck your corpse from the sea. Even the woods will slurp greedily at your bone marrow.
There’s a meanness here. A darkness in this town.
This is cruelty’s breeding ground.
The tourists don’t see that. They see sun-bleached piers and shining water. They don’t see the shadows below.
Surf beach 1 is the most popular, the only patrolled beach out of the five. It’s where from November to March my brother volunteers to pull half-drowned tourists from the sea. When he was a teen, he won the state award for Surf Lifesaver of the Year. Mum and I cheered from the front row. Dad didn’t come.Let the fuckers drown,he said.
The trophy was as tall as my torso: A surfer riding a golden wave that crested over his right shoulder. For years it was displayed proudly on the windowsill.
But not long after Mum left, I saw it, shining weakly under Heath’s bed. The golden surfboard broken in two. I never said a word about it. I knew why Heath discarded his trophy and left it to rot in the dark.
Because there was one person my brother could not save.
I glance at the car clock: 10:13a.m.He’ll be there right now, sitting atop the sentry chair, scanning the water. I turn instead, driving silently away to the back roads of town.
I’ve only been here a few times since I left for good at eighteen. The closer I get to my childhood home, the more I keep checking the overhead mirror to make sure I’m still thirty-four and not that barefoot and frightened child.
I tighten my grip on the wheel. You’re supposed to go homevictorious.Look at me now. I’m not who I was. Not who you wanted me to be.
But the familiar dirt roads scoff,Bullshit, Minnow. You’re the same scared kid.
If there’s one place you can’t hide from yourself, it’s on the streets of your hometown. And there’s one place in Kangaroo Bay that knows me right down to my bones. Knows I’m a coward. Knows that when it’s time to speak up, I won’t.
The woods on Soldiers’ Road.
I grip the wheel so hard, I feel it in my biceps. I haven’t been to the woods for years, but I’m back there every night in dreams.
And nightmares.
I park on our front lawn, kill the engine, and stare at my childhood home. The unhappy house sits miserably on a tiny, flat block, patchy with sand. The rusted roof tiles are the color of lung tar, and the painted weatherboards are the ugliest shade of blue I’ve ever seen.
But the garden beds are lovely.
I unhook Jessie’s harness and let her out, crouching in front of a bunch of daffodils tucked snugly into fresh black soil. Mum’s favorite. I wait there as Jess explores the yard, smelling the roos, the wombats, the sea, maybe even the faint tinge of blood on the ground.
I retrieve the spare key behind the water tank and unlock the front door, trembling. Yeah, I’m still that scared kid. I thought I’d healed from it all. Turns out I was just distracted.
I step inside into semi-darkness. The heavy paisley curtains are drawn, and the house smells of fish and hot oil. But the sink is clean, the navy carpet newish. For a long time, I stand there at the door, flooded with emotions and memories as past and present me collide. I’d forgotten that you could hear the waves everywhere in this house. You eventually stop hearing them. Same with the sand. Hard little crumbs of it, everywhere. Deep in the cracks of the kitchen tiles, in the sheets, on the bathroom mat.
Funny what you forget.
Mum vacuumed twice a day until she stopped altogether. It was around the time she stopped speaking. I didn’t notice, not at first. She was always quietly frantic, preemptive:Be very, very quiet while Daddy naps. Shhhh! Here’s your orange juice, darlings. Don’t spill, don’t spill!
