Content warning: Distressing content.
In the crumbling, red brick, black-mould flats near the station, preparations are underway for another piss-up.
Mum and Dad are still sulking and snarling after last night’s argument, but are showing small signs of resolve as the afternoon’s promise of a drink and whatever else edges closer.
It’s the first day of spring and warmer than it should be.
In years to come, hot spring days like this will hit me sharp in the face like a warning, but today I fall easily into Mum and Dad’s slipstream and get to work, packing my textas from the coffee table and pouring crisps into plastic bowls.
At some point in the afternoon the adults pile into the lounge room, faces and fingertips hardened from too many late-night gigs in Sydney’s pubs, bellies bloated from the grog catching up with them.
Guitars and longnecks in hand, they rough my hair, ask the same questions:
“How are you, love?” (Good)
“How’s school?” (OK)
“Got yourself a boyfriend yet?” (Yuck, no)
Soon they’re rolling joints and tuning guitars and pissing themselves laughing. It’s always my favourite part. I sit on the worn carpet while they tell stories, shoving chips into my gob and watching Mum’s face closely so I can laugh when she does like we’re in on the jokes together.
At some point in the afternoon the adults pile into the lounge room, faces and fingertips hardened from too many late-night gigs in Sydney’s pubs
The adults start taking turns going in and out of Mum and Dad’s bedroom and a billion tiny electrons charge the air in the flat.
Mum comes back from the bedroom, eyes wide and quick. She gets a can of Fanta from the fridge and hands it to me.
“Why don’t you ride your bike and go and see if Whatshername down the road is home, love?” she yells over the music.
The party has barely started and I’m already a bloody hassle.
I get my bike from near the front door and choof off down the street. Me and the girl down the road sit cross-legged out on the nature strip, slurping Fanta and pulling the bindi grass out in clumps. We thumb our way through old magazines until we start slapping mozzies and her mum calls her in for tea.
I go the long way back to the flats and then ride up and down the street a few times, pretending I don’t live in the flats and am just riding past. I do this sometimes: blink hard and try to see the flats like any passer-by would. Maybe the height of the flats makes them look grand. A red brick castle of sorts. I decide the stained mattress out the front probably gives it away and plonk my bike down to the ground floor.
I hear and then smell that the party’s ramped up. The reverberation from the guitar amp is making every poor bastard’s windows rattle. The common area stinks like weed and reeking sour piss.
Someone will call the cops soon for sure.
I hold my breath as I wheel my bike into the flat and close the front door behind me. Entering the lounge room, the adults’ faces freeze as plates and rolled up notes are hurried behind backs too slowly.
I see Dad and one of the men at the table, faces colourless, heads nodding, ligaments slack. Their leaning bodies defy physics in slow motion.
The needle is cradled in Dad’s hand.
Mum bristles.
“I told you to go down the road!”
“They were having tea, Mum,” I say, scanning Dad for signs of life.
“Don’t worry about him. You know what he’s bloody like. It’s your bedtime,” she says, and I scurry down the hallway to my room.
A little after midnight a knock at my bedroom window breaks me from an early dream. I turn my head sharply but there’s nothing there. I close my eyes, wide awake.
A second knock freezes me.
I hear laughter and get out of bed tentatively. At the window I see the face of one of Dad’s mates. He has ridden my bike around the back and is standing on the seat of the bike propped against the wall under the window.
I hear laughter and get out of bed tentatively. At the window I see the face of one of Dad’s mates
He motions for me to slide the window open.
“Didn’t scare you, did I?” he laughs, his breath stale with beer and smoke.
“Nah, course not!” I reply, my hands sweaty.
He puts his hands on the window ledge and jimmies himself up until he is high enough to swing one leg through the window and then the other.
He’s in my room.
He turns his back to me, looks out the bedroom windows to the backyard.
“You ever see people doing any funny shit?” he asks, motioning over at the windows of the flats facing ours.
“Nah, not really,” I say. “Mostly old people in those flats.”
He turns back around to face me and steps closer.
“You know what?” he says, his eyes searching me. “If you can see them, it means they can see you too.”
I stare at the buttonhole of his shirt and trace the zigzag stitching with my eyes. I see the beat of his heart in the shirt’s fibres.
He swallows.
“They don’t know what they’re missing, you know. Watching you from out there would be real special. I’d like that.”
Up the hall in the lounge room a glass smashes. Someone yells, “Taxi!”
The adults shriek. Hilarious.
He grins.
“Better not forget your bike in the morning, kiddo,” he says. “Wouldn’t want it to get nicked.”
– – – – – – – – –
Tessa Piper, author of 'The Usual'. Source: Supplied
Mum and Dad still aren’t up.
I’m lying on the floor in my room on the carpet, re-reading an old Dolly magazine for the umpteenth time.
The hot afternoon sun is streaming in. Last night’s urine stain on my sheets is now bone dry.
Mum walks in. Retreats.
“Jesus, what died in here?”
“I wet the bed, Mum,” I say. “Can you change the sheets?”
“For God’s sake, Tess,” she says. “Bit old for that now, aren’t you?”
She walks over to the window and slides it open to let some air in. Sees my bike propped up against the bricks below.
“What the fuck is your bike doing down there? Want it to get nicked, do you?”
I freeze, worried she can see me floating.
We’re interrupted by a knock at the front door.
“COMING!” she yells, and we pad up the hallway.
It’s one of the other men from last night. He goes to hand mum something but sees me behind her and keeps his fist tight. Mum’s hand reaches to his. Their hands slide against each other and Mum, receiving, closes her fist quickly, but I see it. The tiny plastic bag with the white stuff.
She nods at him.
He laughs. “Told ya I’d pay ya back, sweetheart. Always keep me promises.” He heads off.
Mum hurries past me to the out-of-bounds bedroom Dad’s still in.
I go back to my bedroom.
She’s forgotten about the sheets.
I lay on the floor.
Eye off the windows.
– – – – – – – – –
The usual:
Music loud. Walls yellow. Smoke thick.
The slamming of a neighbour’s window.
The thlack of semi-flat bike tyres on concrete around the side.
Me: Alert. Standing by.
Dad: Colourless. Slack.
Mum: Shrieking. Busy.
The piercing squeak of bike brakes.
The pulsing, heady, evening air.
The watching.
The urging.
The rest of them squawking at one of the comedians in the lounge room. Hilarious.
Me: Dropping the towel, facing the window.
Him: Possessed and helpless. Raw and erect. Charged and arrested.
Unzipping, rubbing, frantic.
I have three secrets:
One: I can turn windows into mirrors. You can too. First, stare through the window at his face. They like that. Now, very carefully, shift your gaze from him to the reflection of your small body in the glass. He’ll disappear.
Two: I can make a monster. You can too. You need to concentrate for this one. Stare at your face in the window’s reflection and do not stop. Watch it start to shift and change. Watch the angles and shapes of your face blur and contort. Watch the monster come. He’ll disappear.
Three: I can fly. You can too. You don’t have to try with this one. Feel your limbs buoyant with blood. Your cells, helium. Do what you will. There is no me. I disappear.
Release.
I slide the window and he jimmies in.
Shallow, stinking, shaking breath.
Pupils dilated; our bodies forever captured by those windows.
His calloused fingers under my chin, gently lifting my shy gaze to meet his.
“Good girl,” he whispers.
“Good girl.”
“Good girl.”
He walks up the hall to the adults and I get into my bed and replay it over and over.
Him, learning my body.
Me, learning it too.
– – – – – – – – –
Come sit with me here in the neon stars.
Can you see me down there in that room? The girl, preparing to dance.
See the windows, keeping only the elements out.
Sit with me here and press record. You and me: the silent observers, the future collaborators. When she’s ready – a long time from now – we’ll be here, pressing rewind and play for her a thousand times over.
See the others in the lounge room. Still chasing. Sad old bastards. Yellowed eyes and swollen guts.
Dad’s not there. Hasn’t been for a long time, though.
See me look out those big windows and mark the steps of that old routine in my mind. How I learned over time to tilt and arch hips, how I learned to brush fingertips on nipples and stare into maddened eyes and how he’d put fingers in wet places to prove a point until I’d start to hover and then take flight.
See how it’s muscle memory now.
Tonight though, there will be no dancing. They feel it too, the shift in the air.
See me step up onto the windowsill, the silhouette of my body stark and backlit.
See me slide the window open wide and move closer to the edge, curling my toes on the bricks and propping my hands to steady myself in the window frame as I dare to lean forward.
See me breathe in the still evening air surrounding those flats.
Watch long enough and they’ll come, the monsters of the night. One by one they’ll find their way to that window, each man marking blazes as he comes, making the pathway up and through the window easier for the next.
See me look out those big windows and mark the steps of that old routine in my mind
They won’t come tonight though.
See me dare to lift one hand off the frame, and lean further out of that window, the weight of my body entrusted in curled toes and gripped fingers.
Will I fall?
Yes. Over and over. My body and yours and hers and theirs and all of ours never a match for the weight of the men and their secrets.
Watch as I teeter even closer to the edge, fingers starting to slip on the brick windowsill, my body dangling into the night.
Will I jump?
Yes. Over and over. Into wrong beds and mattresses propped up by milk crates, into dangerous infatuations stinking of shitty stale spirits, and into the arms of silver men gouging fingers in warm places.
I’ll try, in those moments, head spinning, to take flight. Anything for one last chance to sit up here and play it over, searching for the moment where someone should have pressed pause.
Watch as I sit down on that window ledge, my bare legs and body emerging into the evening air. One foot and then the other reaching down to that old bike propped against the wall, the bricks scraping the skin on my back as I slide down and then propel myself with a jump to the concrete below.
See me swing one leg over the seat to sit on the bike.
See the secrets pour from our thighs.
See my bare foot on the pedals.
See me grip and push and glide.
See that empty room.
See me fly.
There’s nothing here for the taking.
This story by Tessa Piper is the winner of the 2022 SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition.
If you need support, you can contact 1800 Respect on 1800 737 732 or visit , or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit .
Listen to winner Tessa Piper and runner up Monikka Eliah on the final SBS Voices podcast episode of , in the , , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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The winning competition entry that took 20 years to write
