The Dark Part of Me by Belinda Burns

lovely man. He’s picking me up tonight at six-thirty to go and see
Phantom
, so you can meet him if you like.’
    ‘I’m working.’ It was my plan to avoid meeting Randy Andy for as long as I possible.
    ‘Oh, that’s a shame.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘I’ve told him all about you.’
    ‘What does he do?’
    ‘He’s some kind of a scientist out at the university. But he didn’t really go into it.’
    That was right. While I was killing the Asian Bitch and vomiting my guts out, Mum had been tangoing with some nerdburger who hadn’t the balls to give her some decent tongue.

    I am six years old, lying in bed listening to Mum and Dad fight. Tomorrow is Easter so I’m trying hard to get to sleep, worried that the Easter Bunny won’t come if
I’m awake. I stick my fingers in my ears and cover my head with a pillow but I can still hear them shouting.
Shut up. Just shut up
. I say it over and over, my fists tight as rocks
against the mattress. Their voices are muffled but I can tell them apart: Dad’s booming thunder; Mum’s timid squeak. It’s like Dad has grown into a giant and Mum has shrunk to the
size of a mouse. I can hear Dad kicking the lounge chairs around and punching the walls, the fibro crumpling like paper. Each time he makes a hole, Mum goes to Shoppingtown and buys a new laminated
poster so that there are posters all over the walls, Blu-tacked at odd heights: a clown with diamonds for tears; a ballerina with pink legwarmers; a ‘Life Be In It’ one with Norm the
fat guy; the Daintree rainforest with the slogan ‘Queensland – Beautiful One Day, Perfect the Next’. But my favourite is the talking vegetables with smiling faces and shiny
button-eyes. It’s in the hallway, hiding one of Dad’s kicking holes. In my imagination, the carrot says, ‘I’ll make you see in the dark’, the fat potato with specs
says, ‘I like sitting on the couch’, and the family of peas say, all in happy unison, ‘We love it in our cosy pod.’ Sometimes I sit down cross-legged to chat with the
friendly veggies. That night I am scared and want to talk to them, but they are fast asleep, being good for the Easter Bunny, too.
    Dad tears through the house like Cyclone Tracey. Mum begs him to stop. Then, I hear a big smashing sound. I scamper out of bed, down the dark hallway, past the sleeping vegetables, towards the
living room. I hang back in the shadows, wondering where Dad is, afraid. Mum is slumped in the corner near the sliding door which is shattered, shards of glass hanging like icicles from the frame.
Her head is bowed to her chest, and her feet, twisted at a strange angle, are cut and bloody. I want to run to her but Dad is kneeling beside her, speaking in a low voice. His back is to me so I
can’t see what he is doing. I creep out into the light, softly, softly, so he can’t hear me.
    I can see better now. Mum is breathing, her breasts straining in and out against her flowery, cotton shirt. She stares at Dad, her eyes blank and stony. A streak of blood, red as paint, runs
down her left cheek. I crawl in closer, crouching down in the shadows under the kitchen table, scrunched in a ball, watching.
    What have you done to my mum?
    But Dad’s words are gentle. His fingers are tender as he picks splinters of glass from her legs and her feet. ‘Janice, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never
meant to hurt you. Janice, I love you.’ He kisses her forehead but she winces and pulls away. He is crying. I haven’t seen Dad cry before and it makes me feel so sad.
    From the floor, he takes the neck of a broken beer bottle and twists the jagged edge into the white inner side of his forearm until blood spurts out of his skin. Without thinking, I dash out
from under the table yelling, ‘Stop, Dad! Stop!’
    He looks up, unseeing, as if he doesn’t know who I am.
    ‘Rosemary! Go back to bed, pet. Go back to bed!’ Mum says, struggling to get up.
    Dad turns and runs out of the house,