Chapter 38
RIND EATER
Ronnie wanted to apologize, but didn’t know how.
Rainbow rode beside her in the passenger seat.
Ronnie didn’t know how to say I wiped shit off your bum for years.
My shirt is how you wipe your hands. I’m your crust eater, your rind eater, your cereal milk drinker.
She was also the perpetrator of a violent crime.
It would have been selfish to ask for forgiveness now.
“This is the second happiest day of my life, after the day you were born.” It sounded trite, but it was true.
She felt free for the first time in over a decade.
She had been minimizing the hearing in her mind, afraid to admit how life-changing getting her parental rights back would be.
She was a mother again on paper. Until today, she and Rainbow hadn’t legally been related.
She could have been arrested for kidnapping her own daughter. Surreal.
This must be how Reg felt when he adopted her when she was eighteen. She understood now why he was so overprotective.
“Can I have a dog?” Rainbow asked.
“I don’t see why not.”
“Can I have a pony?”
“If you muck out its stall.”
“Can I have a pool?”
“No. You can swim in the creek or over at Grandad’s.”
“Maude said violence is a disease. That some people are born with it.”
Ronnie’s hands tightened on the wheel. “That’s a depressing thought.”
“Do I have it?”
She shook her head. “No, baby. You don’t have it.”
“Uncle Mattie hits people.”
“He’s a rugger.”
“Women aren’t supposed to be like that.”
“No one is supposed to be like that.”
“Boys are allowed to hit people.”
“Not legally, but you’re right that there’s a double standard.”
Gum trees and jacarandas flew by the passenger-side window.
“Were you scared?”
She hesitated. “When?”
“In juvie?”
“No. You were my whole world.”
“I don’t want to be your whole world.”
“I’m your mum.”
Rainbow glared.
“You’re done talking about this,” Ronnie guessed.
If Rainbow ever ended up in that place Ronnie didn’t know what she would do. She could handle it happening to her, but she couldn’t handle it happening to Rainbow.
On the Gillies Range Road she let her hair down, working knuckles through tangles and knots.
“Nev coming to the party?” Rainbow asked.
“She’s bringing Gunni.” Their third bandmate often rode with Nev.
On Pademelon Road, the trees dripped with fruit bats. A hundred flying foxes as big as Chihuahuas hung upside down from the branches, flapping translucent wings backlit by the sun, touching each other with fingerlike claws.
Cars and pickup trucks covered the Madonnas’ front lawn and lined the driveway down to the road. She found an open strip of grass to park on in front of the purple Queenslander.
Nev answered the phone. “Congratulations, Dain’y.”
“Thanks, babe. I’m here. Are you by the pool?”
“Yeah, why?
Ronnie loosened her tie. “Did you bring your bathing togs?”
“Should I have?”
“Don’t put your phone back in your pocket. Set it down on a table.”
Ronnie hung up. She took off her suit jacket and leather shoes, leaving them in the truck.
“What are you doing?” Rainbow asked, suspicious.
She took Rainbow’s hand. Someone at the party was blasting Mary J. Blige’s “Family Affair.”
They walked hand in hand up the front steps. “You’re plotting something,” Rainbow said. “You’ve got that look.”
Ronnie laughed. “Want in?”
Rainbow’s face lit up.
Nonna dropped chopped onions into a beef stew simmering on the stove.
Ronnie bent to give her a hug. The smell of the stew almost but not quite masked the faint background smell of animal poop and baby formula.
In the family room, five orphaned baby wallabies peered out at them from inside wallaby pouches made of old blankets sewn into bags and hung from the ceilings of their cages.
Out back on the veranda, she saw Nev lounging next to Gunni in a white plastic lawn chair, sipping a gin and tonic in the shade while Mattie and the cousins played touch rugby on the lawn.
Relatives who had come from the courthouse still wore suits and fancy dresses, while neighbors with rugby shirts and mullets had been pregaming.
Her middle-aged bandmates had come dressed for a classier party, in tasseled loafers. When they saw her they stood.
Nev looked handsome in a pale button-up shirt, Akubra tilted rakishly, looking like a time traveler from the 1920s. “Oi. Proud of you. You’ve worked hard for this.”
Ronnie patted down her friend’s pockets, confirming that they were empty. Nev raised her hands in the air, smiling indulgently.
When Ronnie and Rainbow picked her up, Nev made a delicious little sound in surprise, then passed her hat to Gunni so it wouldn’t get wet.
Giggling, they carried her to the pool, where they hugged her between them and counted down, “3, 2, 1…” before jumping into the deep end with a splash.
Dripping wet, she and Nev made sandwiches at the kitchen bench beside Nonna, who continued concocting her stew according to the secret family recipe.
Nev didn’t have tan lines because she often skinny-dipped in Lake Tinaroo and was a believer in topless tanning.
“Totally acceptable in parts of France, I’ll have you know.
Nudity only became sexualized and demonized in the past fifty years.
Before that it was completely normal for families and friends to swim naked. ”
Ronnie spread Vegemite and thin slices of cheddar on whole wheat bread. Nev cut the onions and tomatoes into rounds, laid them on top. Ronnie snagged a can of pickles and a bag of chips.
Wet cotton didn’t keep secrets. Nev was remarkably well-preserved for forty-six, like a cucumber pickled in brine.
Flat chest, flat abs, so far she had escaped gravity’s more noticeable effects.
No visible scars, neat little feet. In some ways, her compact body looked more youthful than Ronnie’s because she had never been pregnant.
They ate sitting on the glider, watching Rainbow swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other.
Ronnie sipped lemonade through a straw. “If we dated, people would say I was taking advantage of you.”
Nev snorted.
Ronnie glanced at her, then back at Rainbow, supervising with half her attention. Several people around the pool were lifeguards. Blaise blasted ABBA in the kitchen.
Ronnie took another bite of sandwich. “Anyone in their right mind would be attracted to you. You have a dynamite personality and you’d be my number one pick in a bar fight.”
Nev chuckled. “I’m flattered and slightly concerned.”
Nonna beckoned Ronnie into the kitchen. “Offer her something to drink.”
Ronnie stuck her head out the open door. “Booze?”
Nev tossed ice on the lawn, then handed her the empty glass.
When she handed the glass back full, her friend looked guilty. “I have to tell you something. Promise you won’t be angry.”
Ronnie grinned. “What’d you do? Buy another tractor? More cute animals at auction that we don’t need?”
“No, but good guess. Maude dug up dirt on me.”
“No…!” Ronnie smacked her forehead. “You didn’t give her money, did you? Please tell me you didn’t. What did she dig up on you?”
“DUIs from years ago.”
“That all? How much did you give her? You got played.”
“I didn’t give her anything.”
“Now she thinks she owns you.”
“She doesn’t. She can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. She can’t control you, either. Any leverage she had over you evaporated in that courtroom.”
Ronnie was still trying to process that. It hadn’t sunk in yet. “Don’t ever let anyone blackmail you. I’m the last person who will judge you. We’re a team. I’ve got your back.”
Nev sipped the rum and coke. “Same.”