Chapter 3
My real name is Minnow, like the fish. Minnows are small and silvery, typically used as live bait.
If we were quick enough, Heath and I scooped them out of the shallows with our bare hands.
We’d cup them gently, marveling at their silver bodies, squirming in the sunlight.
One morning, Dad snatched a minnow out of Heath’s palm, plunged a hook through its bottom and upper lip, sewing its mouth shut, and cast its bloodied body back into the water. He couldn’t understand why we cried.
I’ve been driving for almost three hours. Here on the East Coast of Victoria, the land is flat and thirsty and the color of straw.
There’s no sign saying Welcome to Kangaroo Bay because the truth is, you’re not welcome.
This is a grizzled-old-man town, run by our filthy fathers, and they hate you so much it gives them ulcers.
They want to stomp through their streets, animal-like and mean, smelling of rage and beer.
They want to gather in pissed-off groups at the pub, complaining about the farken tourists, and overcharge you for tickets to their snapper charters, smiling like they’re doing you a favor.
Our fathers are hot blood, heavy stomachs, heavier fists. Our mums, exhausted and desperate. Dads remain, mums flee, but I never thought mine would. My mum was soft hands, vanilla fabric softener, and I love my girl and You’re so clever, Heath!
We used to collect wildflowers for her on lazy Sunday afternoons, then rush home to present them, wilted and crushed in our fists. You’d think we’d given her the whole world.
I pass a group of teenage boys in knee-length wet suits, surfboards tucked under their arms. Sporty tourist cars are parked carelessly on nature strips, and there’s a long, snaking line in front, desperate to get to the five beaches ahead.
I tap my finger on the wheel thinking about this morning’s news report: Beasts from the Deep: Another Shark Spotted in Kangaroo Bay.
Beaches only close for an hour after a shark sighting, and it hasn’t seemed to put the tourists off. But then, nobody thinks it’ll be them.
Until it is.
I slow the car as we cruise through the main street. You can spot the tourists, because they’re the ones smelling like sunscreen. The rest of us just burn.
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: the farken 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: 10:13 a.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 home victorious. 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!
One day, she handed me a glass of juice, looking at me like she didn’t remember who I was. My mother had turned into a ghost. A ghost doing the dishes. A ghost cutting our sandwiches. A ghost sitting alone for hours and hours in the dark, staring at nothing.
And then one day when I was about ten years old, the ghost vanished and never came back.
I glance at the kitchen bench, blinking in surprise at how clean it is. Always there was a fresh snapper or whiting there, eyes bright, mouth bloodied. Or a dozen maroon-red arrow squid, chopped into slimy rings.
One morning before school, I slung my bag over my shoulder and paused at the front door. On the kitchen counter was a plastic tub, the air above it, gory. And inside it, a bloodied row of kangaroo hearts.
I tiptoe past the sagging couch, my eyes fixed on the closed door down the narrow hallway. Dad’s room. I wait for him to come storming out, my jaw clamping so tight my teeth hurt.
My bedroom is opposite the laundry. The stench of Dad’s unwashed fishing clothes used to drift into my room like they were being carried by a slow-moving tide. When Mum lived here, my bedroom sheets smelled of vanilla and cherry blossom. After, they reeked of blood and brine.
I sit straight-backed on my childhood bed, and Jessie hovers at my door looking embarrassed, like she’s not sure what to do with herself. Same. I pat the bed, and she hops up.
Slowly, I open the third drawer of my bedside table. It’s still there. The bundle of newspaper clippings. I pull them out, rest them on my knee, and read.
Local man missing
February 8, 2000
Police are appealing for public assistance to locate a man missing from Kangaroo Bay, Victoria.
Peter Greenwood, aged 52, is the owner of the fishing charter Deep Sea. He was last seen fishing at beach 3, Kangaroo Bay, at 11 p.m. He is of Caucasian appearance, about 175 cm tall, with a stocky build and black hair.
Family and police hold concerns for his welfare.
Anyone who sees him or has information about his whereabouts is urged to contact local police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Missing Kangaroo Bay man Peter Greenwood had allegedly been threatened before vanishing
February 15, 2000
A 52-year-old fishing charter operator who vanished earlier this month was allegedly threatened a week before disappearing. A man acquainted with Peter Greenwood allegedly attacked him at his Kangaroo Bay home.
The man is considered a suspect in his disappearance.
The man obviously wasn’t much help. My father has been missing for over twenty years.
I was there the day Dad was threatened, playing in the front yard when the man rushed past, jaw set, eyes burning.
He grabbed the screen door handle, rattled it, swearing.
Dad appeared, voice pained and pleading.
He reminded me of a frightened animal. I watched the man reach out with heavy hands, shove my father backward through the screen door.
Watched Dad’s head hit the floorboard with a cartoonish thud.
The man stormed off, screaming threats, and Dad lay motionless as if playing dead.
A week later, he went night fishing. I did not see him leave the house. Did not see him return.
I stroke Jessie’s head, remembering. I’m about ten years old, sitting opposite a policeman, his eyes soft with sympathy. We’re gonna do everything we can to find your dad, okay? That’s a promise.
I curl my body around Jessie’s, remembering the kindness in the policeman’s voice and the free bottles of Coke he gave me as I sat there, shaking.
But mostly…
I close my eyes.
Mostly I remember praying to God that my father would never return.