from the dark end of the street.

This piece was written in 2008. It is a character exercise, and the story is loosely based on a play that I co-wrote in 2007.


From the Dark End of the Street


Mary knew it had been too long. Her belly had grown out so far she couldn’t see her feet anymore. Not that she liked her feet. She hated the way her gnarled toes stuck at out odd angles. She used to sit on the roof of the car and pick at her toenails with a bit of broken mirror, wedging the corner in between the nail and her flesh, scraping the dirt away. She preferred being clean. All of the girls had different approaches. Some liked to be dirty, thought it made them blend in more. Mary was beginning to blend in now. If she stood still for long enough she thought maybe she could feel the moss creep up from the rocks and crawl in between her toes. Maybe. Everything grew fast here.

“Can you hear me in there, baby? I promise. Soon enough, baby. I promise.”

She leaned against the bonnet of the car, one hand supporting her weight, the other firmly on her swollen and distended belly. It stayed there a lot now, patting, or rubbing. She liked to feel the heat that radiated through the rough fabric of the smock under her hand. Judah had cut it for her, stitched it together with string and laces. It was made from scraps of brown and green, an old tablecloth, a birthing blanket. She sewed a bra in to the front and hid the stitches with more fabric. Her special baby dress. It was nearly worn through after all these years.

Standing where she was, in the centre of the junkyard, her view of the fields below was obscured by a great wall of impenetrable bushland, strong trees guarding over her. On either side, two great wings of junk hugged the perimeter. Ovens and washing machines, black with rust; bookshelves mouldy and damp, eaten alive by the termites that relocated after they destroyed part of the barn years earlier. The once great fruit trees that hung low over the top of her, the trees in which she had played, in which her boys had played, were reduced to skinny and brittle fruitless fingers, drooping down and tickling the heads of all who walked under them. The smell of rotting fruit hung over the car, apple and pear cores melting into the earth around her feet. Ants scurried across her toes, burying themselves in among the moist dead leaves. The ground was seething with life, buried under years of debris.

She moved her feet, feeling the sticky, damp earth between her toes. Something stabbed at her flesh, and she squatted down to see what it was. Buried under a rotting pear, in a small depression covered with fresh compost, was a small bone. Two bones, three. More. A hundred tiny bones caked with dirt. A hundred tiny bones in formation. Her heart leapt. She brushed away some earth. A wing. A bird’s wing. Then the body of the bird, hastily buried, feathers sticking to the rotting flesh, squirming maggots feasting on what was left. Her toe was bleeding now, the blood dark against her skin.

The last of the day’s warmth was slipping behind the trees and night began to settle. Mary’s eyes, sinking away into their sockets, felt heavy with sleep. But she would stay awake, at least until Judah came. It was different this time, but she always turned up. Eventually.

She stopped. A noise. Footsteps coming up the hill behind her. Alex. She knew that Jim had sent him, that the men would be looking for her, but she liked the air up here. She could breathe. She looked up at the nearly full moon and her heart rate quickened. At least, she thought it was her heart. She’d first felt the baby’s heartbeat at four months, a dull knocking inside her. At eleven months it was almost in sync with hers, out by just enough to reassure her it was still there. She pressed her fingers hard against her stomach. Her hands were so caked with dirt now she wasn’t sure what she was feeling.

She could hear Alex bashing his way through the trees, swearing and hitting at branches. She knew the quickest path up, had worn it in herself over the last 20 years. The bush had got thicker since then, especially on the hill. The trees were tighter together, bunched right up so you could hardly see in front of you. Great, towering pines that grew wild and fast, spreading over the land like a bushfire. Jim ordered them chopped down, starting with the ones that grew up through the foundations of the house. But within a few months another would take its place. Jim said he never knew trees to grow so fast. Twigs would start poking through the cracks in the floorboards, leaves and flowers bursting out from the gaps between the wall and the skirting board. The last straw was when a giant blackberry bush had burst forth from the toilet bowl while Jim was sitting on it. From then on his war against the property was the group’s main concern, every day spent battling against an enemy that regenerated overnight.

The land was fairly bare when Mary and Judah rolled in the first time. Judah said it would be a great spot to camp because they could see all the stars. And she was right; the stars were incredible. They pushed the car up to the top of the hill and sat on the roof, smoking herbs, eating fruit. It was a paradise, or something. Before. Before it became cluttered and the fence went up. Before the babies, and the others, and before the barn was built. The stars were close enough to touch. Why would they leave the one place where you could touch the sky? After a while they stopped looking up.

Mary heard Alex come into the clearing behind her, and he wrapped his arms around her belly, and whispered into the folds of her neck. He was always whispering into her, whispering something. She smiled.
“Waiting for Judah.” Her voice seemed to echo, bouncing back at her from the twisted wall of darkening trees. Their limbs danced in the wind, casting deep shadows across Alex’s naked torso. The night moved.

Extracting herself from his clammy embrace, Mary shuffled away. It was silent in the junkyard but for the whispers in the trees. The noises of night filtered in through the fence. The barn door opening and closing, the most familiar sound to them all. Alex was talking. Talking and rolling a cigarette. This is how she had found him on his first barn day, sprawled nearly naked in the loft, smoking his herbs. He was young, much younger than her. At first he tried to palm her off to Harry. But Mary dug her heels in and made him choose her.

As the sweet smell of burning herbs reached her nostrils, she felt a drop of water run down her temple. The night was damp and the dew was settling around her. She wondered how long she had been still. Alex was smoking and she turned to face him. He was jangling the keys in his pocket, nervous, twitching.

“How long has it been now?” He exhaled out his nose. She wasn’t really interested in small talk, but pretended to count in her head anyway. Like they didn’t both know the answer. Like she didn’t know why he was there.
“How are the others?” Her voice was thin.
Alex looked at the moon. It was an odd, almost-full shape. Nearly there.
“Jim’s got them ready.”
“I asked him to wait.”
“We did wait, we are waiting.”
She’d been expecting this, of course. The full moon was her deadline, the deadline for them all. She ran a hand over the rough fabric of her dress. She’d watched as the moon had grown fuller, marking the days on one of the trees with her little mirror. A line for a day. Six lines and a slash makes the full week. Jim kept extending, giving her more time, getting more and more agitated. Fewer hands on deck meant the trees were growing more wildly than ever. Next moon, next moon.

Alex came up behind her again, this time nuzzling his face into her neck. Kissed her shoulder and rubbed his teenage whiskers against her arm. Whispering something in her ear, he slipped a finger under her sleeve and felt her bra strap. He stopped.
“What’s this?”
He snapped it against her skin.
“I just wear it when I’m pregnant. It helps.”
“You shouldn’t. It’s not the rules.”
He kissed her neck again. Waited for her to move. Reaching into her front pocket, Alex pulled out Mary’s cracked piece of mirror, its sharp edges reflecting in the moonlight. She stood in silence as he rhythmically cut the bra away from the fabric, carving at Judah’s stitches til they snapped. He ripped the last few centimetres, tearing a small hole in the bust of her smock.
“Jim will prefer it this way.”

Thump thump. Thump thump.

Her toe throbbed. She looked down and saw little bugs crawling over the cut, drowning in the drops of blood that still leaked from it. She sensed movement in the trees. The other girls were there, hiding, hidden, lingering at the edges. The moon was drawing them out. Judah would be here soon, too, Mary was sure.

Alex threw his cigarette into a pile of wet leaves.
“I should go. They’ll be waiting. Will you be here?”
Mary snorted. “Where else?”
She stood, silent, listening to the fading sounds of him crashing his way through the bushland. At the bottom of the hill she heard the slam of the gate, the crunch of metal on metal as he locked them back in.

Mary looked at the big sign leaning against a tree. It used to hang over the entrance, down by the main road, welcoming you in. That’s why Judah took the turn – Brightside. It came down in the storm and Jim never got around to putting it back. There were enough people. Enough to keep things going. The sign stared back at her, a wide smile, laughing. The big sun that spilled out behind the letters was fading, the whole thing cracking and split. Judah had kicked it when Mary told her she was going to be a mum. Not that they used that word here. Not ‘mum’. The little ones just got mixed in, all fat legs and dirty feet. But you knew which ones were yours, of course. Of course you knew.

They had come in spring, stayed for the summer, planned to move when winter set in. Then, they were to leave when Spring broke. Then they stayed for one more summer. Then summer came, and Mary was pregnant. And so they stayed, for Harry. For Harry, and then for Fox. And Rowan. And Noah, Gus, James, Finn, Ben, Eddy, Luke, Ethan, Aidan, Marc and Jack. Mary’s boys. There was a hole in her dress, around near her hip. She’d torn it with Harry, snagged it on a rusted metal spring sticking out of the back seat of the car. She fingered the hole now; her hardened and jaundiced flesh exposed beneath it. The dress had a scar from each of her boys, a stain, a memory. They moved with her every day, rubbing off on her skin, working their way into the fibres of the fabric.
Mary’s eyes dropped. Harry had smiled at her on his first barn day. He had wanted her, wanted the lady who gave him presents once a year. He moved toward her and she turned away. You knew which ones were yours.

Mary ran her fingers over the dent on the bonnet, the dent Judah had forged in a rage. She remembered. Judah had her legs up on the dash, she was sweating, dilated, screaming down the hill, pushing. Waiting. Pushing, waiting. Their hearts pounding in their ears. Thump thump. Thump thump. Screams echoing down the hill. The thumps grew louder and played beat to Judah’s cries, rising up from under them. From the ground. Thump thump. The trees shook. Thump thump. She screamed Jim’s name one last time, and then just … silence. Nothing. They were alone, waiting for a sound. A cry. It was just them, and the thump thump of the earth under their feet. They stayed there in silence until it faded away. The sun rose on them the next morning, Judah sitting hunched on the roof of the car. They buried her child in the green grass under the bonnet. That was the night the silence began to creep in. Judah didn’t leave the car after that. She locked herself in, barely eating. So weak she wasn’t a threat to anyone. Jim almost forgot about her, in time. Almost. And then the junk came. Judah started hauling it in, finding bits in the bush, bits people had dumped. Washing machines, ovens, tyres, bassinets, rattles. As the junk piled up there would be less and less room to move. Then came the animals, the rats, and together they shared this new home, a warren of debris.

Mary jumped, the sound of the car door opening bringing her back to the junkyard. Two grubby, child-like feet emerged from the back seat. Carly, her hair matted against her head, was swaddled in fabric, her mid-section wrapped up like a baby. Dried blood stained the inside of her legs, and flies crawled over her knees.
She smiled up at Mary. “I didn’t see you.” Her eyes flicked up at the moon. She began to unwrap her bandages, and with each layer of fabric that she removed, the stains grew redder and the flies swarmed harder.
“I can’t stop them.” Exposing herself finally, Mary saw. Bugs crawled in and around Carly’s vagina, feeding on the rich and steady stream of blood. She’d been bleeding for six months now, no amount of gauze able to staunch the flow.
“Is it tonight?”
It wasn’t really a question. Her eyes flicked to the moon again. Mary didn’t offer a reply.
“I thought I’d get rid of the bandages. I want to bleed all over the bastards.”
“Alex said they were coming. Later. Tonight.”
“Fern will be here. And Heather.”

Their numbers had grown. First it was just Mary. Ten months pregnant had caused a bit of a stir. No one knew what to do. Trent had all the birthing equipment in the house, but Mary refused to let him touch her. Not after Rory. At twelve months they locked her in the barn. Tried to sweat it out. Then she was moved out, sent up here to be with Judah. Things were ok then. It was only once Fern came to join them that things started to change. While Jim rallied teams to save the house from the trees, the grass in the junkyard turned brown, death rippling out from beneath the car. The fruit stopped growing, and around them the trees grew thicker, locking in their little patch of land.

Some of the other girls would sneak up to the junkyard at night to be with them, using Mary’s secret path to avoid the blackberry bushes. They would sit and talk and think of names for Mary’s baby, the baby that refused to come. A girl, Mary was sure, her very own baby girl. Clara, or Eve. She was seventeen months along and Jim gave her a deadline. But it wasn’t just her anymore. And that’s when the gate went up.

Behind her, the trees began to stir. Fern emerged first, her hair short and choppy, dress caked in dirt. She went bush after Jim kicked her out, and on the nights Mary used to wait up for Judah to return, she would catch sight of Fern’s marauding figure pacing among the trees. Heather hobbled out next, dragging her left leg behind her. Fiona, Penny, Anna, Sara. Their eyes all on the moon. Clouds were forming, but the moon took centre stage, washing them all in grey.

Fern was chattering away, taking her position on the boot of the car, the others listening intently. She was drawing on a scabby little cigarette, her horse teeth brown and sticking in her red gums like pegs, and talking loudly to the girls. Mary’s eyes flicked down and she noticed movement between Fern’s legs, under her smock. “You shoulda seen the look on Jim’s face when he tried to stick it in. This giant fuckin’ tongue flicks outta me and hisses at him. He flipped. Din even stick around long enough to see the teeth.”

Penny was braiding the fine grass that was growing in place of Heather’s hair, the leaves forming curls around her ears. She picked at the bark scabs growing up both her legs and her toes wiggled out toward the earth, roots seeking a place to plant themselves. Anna’s feathers ruffled in the breeze and she pushed her head under her shoulder to shield herself.

Mary eyed the horizon, looking for Judah’s telltale frame, her long limbs and wild hair. She’d never stayed away this long. She thought of the bird, of the fresh earth that had been piled on top of it, burying it. She’d promised to leave one day, after Mary had her little girl. After.

The moon cast deep shadows across the faces of the assembled women. Their chatter softened as the sounds of a gathering crowd filtered up the hill. The chill of Jim’s shouting voice cut through the night air and Mary’s heart was in her throat.

She pressed her ear against the bonnet of the car and closed her eyes. The wind picked up, carrying whispers and the soft patter of footsteps around her. The night sighed, the damp sitting heavily on their shoulders, pushing them down. She breathed. Thump thump. She climbed up, leaning on the girls for support, the smashed-out headlight cavity cupping her foot and boosting her up. The car groaned under her weight, and she shifted until it was comfortable, quiet. Standing on the tips of her toes, she could see all the way down to the bottom of the hill. The land dipped away beneath her, rolling and tumbling its way toward the horizon. The geography had changed in her time here. Hills had swollen and melted away, a giant breathing mass expanding and contracting with the seasons. She pressed her hand firmly against her belly. Goosebumps ran the full length of her arm, the cold slowly seeping in. There was just one heartbeat, now.

There was a wind, too, one of those winds that come with evening, a wind with a breath of warmth from the day just gone and a chilly edge warning of worse to come.