Free Brown Skin Blue by Belinda Jeffrey

the bathtub, his home was unrecognisable. Houses were gone, the streets – if there was any way of telling what streets were and houses were not – were covered in timber and glass, cars, metal sheeting. Fridges, tables, chairs. An entire human world blown to smithereens and demolished into one giant rubbish heap. Nature did this. Nature could do this to people.
    It was the girl from up the road who first saw him standing there. Pretty little thing with blonde hair. Her clothes were patchy, wet and smeared with dirt.
    â€˜What’s your name?’ she said to the bloke beside his bathtub. There was no flat, no front yard, no neighbours, no nothing, just...
    The bloke shook his head and it was hours before he said any words at all.
    There was a small group of people huddled in the corner of the world near where their houses and homes and cars and lives had been. The girl and the bloke clambered over the uneven ground, their feet disappearing in between the rubbish. They stood with the others.
    Their eyes were taking everything in, but their minds could not comprehend what had happened. Not truly.
    After a while, the bloke lifted his arms to wipe at his eyes and, for the first time since Tracy arrived, realised there was something squashed in his fist. The muscles were so tight around it, clamped shut for hours, that at first he could not open it. The girl took his hand and rubbed it. Her fingers were warm and blood came back into his hand, painfully at first. His fingers opened slowly and, inside, flat against the palm of his hand, was a teabag.
    The girl laughed and took his hand in hers. Teabag, for his name, was a tease, at first. Something to bring back a trickle of forced laughter between them all.
    â€˜Geez, mate. Of all the things to hang on to.’
    â€˜Bloody Norah, you’re the laugh.’
    â€˜Shit, hey.’
    â€˜My ring,’ said a woman in the group with them. ‘My ring is gone.’
    But something happened there, between that girl and the bloke. She became his first wife.
    Long after that – though not as long as it should have been – Dolly was the excuse for a while. How could he love his wife when he felt so strongly for the woman in the van?
    Dolly knew what she was to Teabag and it didn’t matter. This one cried on her shoulder.

13
    Three more facts. Crocodile attacks.
    1. A woman paddles a canoe down a waterway in Kakadu and thinks she hits a log, but it’s a crocodile. The croc tips over her canoe and death rolls her a few times. It mauls her body before she manages to claw herself out of the water and up a bank to safety.
    2. A man falls asleep on the McArthur River. He’s taken by a large saltie. His body is found in the croc’s stomach.
    3. A yacht moors near a waterfall that empties into a saltwater river in Western Australia. A tourist dives into the water to swim to the waterfall and is attacked by a crocodile. Her body is found in the mangroves.
    Three things in common:
    1. Crocodiles hide
    2. Crocodiles kill humans
    3. Humans who lack enough fear die.
    I’ve got the napkin in my fist. Held tight and crushed into a ball. I’m on a bus heading out of Humpty Doo towards Darwin. I’m in a cage with windows and wheels at two dollars fifty a ride. And everywhere around me there could be fathers. Predators. Paedophiles. I know there’s not. But fear says otherwise.
    I’m mad with Sally. And Bessy. They’ve got no right butting in on my life. But every time I think of Sally I love the way she looks. I remember the way she felt. But a panic rises at the same time. I don’t want to find Teabag Jones. I don’t want to have to knock on his door and tell him who I am. The dark-skinned bastard of Dolly Mundy. Who are ya, boy? I can see him saying to me. That’s if he doesn’t shut the door in my face straight away. Me: serious, dark, dirty. His skin will be dark. But he could be anyone. And he probably won’t