Kathryn Fox - Without Consent

Anya could hear heavy metal, somethingfrom the 1980s, pulsing into the street. She nervously knocked at the address from the Internet listing for L and D Platt . After a minute the music went quiet. Desiree opened the door. Despite being afternoon, her hair was wet and she smelt of coconut. This time she had a different oversized shirt on. With maternity clothes so expensive, wearing a man’s clothes made a lot of financial sense.

She seemed understandably surprised to see Anya.

“I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to see how you were, after the pain you had the other night.”

Desiree squinted. “Oh yeah, those contraction things. I get them all the time now.”

“They’re pretty normal later in pregnancy.”

They stood in an awkward silence.

“So you’re all right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You have a big yard,” Anya volunteered, unable to find anything more positive to say about the unkempt lawn and meter-high weeds.

“With Luke working so much on weekends, it’s hard to keep it under control. One day we’ll have something better, for the kids.”

Anya made up an excuse to stay longer, with the hope of finding out more about the rapist’s catchphrase. “I didn’t know taxidermists travelled.”

“Oh, yeah, he has a mobile freezer on a trailer for when he has to get bigger pieces, like the game fish. That way they are better preserved if he gets them fresher.”

“It must be difficult, with your husband travelling.”

“I don’t like it. I used to go with him but he’s been doing it so long now he stays with mates and bunks on a couch. We can’t even afford a washing machine, so motels are out of the question.” She patted her belly. “But that’s gonna stop when the baby’s born. I’m going to make sure he gives up his job and stays at home all the time.”

Anya coughed a few times, and tried to clear her throat. “Would you mind if I had a drink of water before I head back into town?”

“Sure.” Desiree opened the door. Inside, magazines lay piled on chairs, along with catalogues advertising every must-have baby product. “Have a seat and I’ll get you that drink.”

The woman returned with a cartoon-painted glass, the sort that started off as a peanut-butter jar. The rim was immaculately clean.

“Thanks for this.”

Her hostess lowered herself into a single-seater lounge and seemed to study her visitor. Anya responded by feeling more self-conscious than usual.

“Something you said the other day made me curious.”

Desiree flicked a strand of hair over a shoulder. “Was it about Nick? He’s a good guy, you know. You could do a lot worse than him.” She picked up knitting from a bag next to the lounge. It looked like lime green was in for baby jumpers right now. Either that, or she wasn’t sure of the sex of the baby and played safe with a neutral color.

Anya decided to pursue this line of conversation. “Have you known him a long time?”

Desiree smiled. “Nick and I used to go out when I was in high school. Back then, he couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants, if you know what I mean. But,” she added, “he’s changed now. That was when he was young and stupid.”

“You do go back a long way.”

Desiree stopped clicking the needles and reached for a photo on a side table. “This is me, Nick and some other friends. Luke’s the one sitting on the grass in the front. There’s Badger, Barry Lerner, he’s a real animal. He’s there with Carrot, and some others, too. I don’t like those two that much, but they’re good mates still. After all these years.”

Anya moved across the room and took the photo, returning to her seat. The faded color showed girls in shoulder-pads and teased hair and boys with mullets. Each face smiling with the promise of the future.

“When did you leave the Bay?”

“Oh, after Luke left. I bummed around fruit-picking for a few years, shacked up with a real loser and didn’t have the money to leave. A few years ago I caught up with Nick and there was Luke. We didn’t know each other that well in the Bay, but I knew right there at that nightclub that he was the one.”

Anya returned the photo to its place and took a sip of water. “Do you like Sydney?”

“Sometimes people can be a bit stuck-up, but it’s a good place for kids.” She did a couple more stitches. “We’re better off in a big city. At least our friends are all here. You know, there aren’t many of the old crowd left in the Bay.”

“I came back from England and it’s taken about a year to settle in.”

“We’ve been here three months next week.”

Anya needed to broach the idea of sexual assault, but was having trouble steering the conversation. Desiree looked tired. Black semi-circles underscored her smallish brown eyes-the kind of fatigue pregnancy always brought on.

Desiree sat forward a little, breasts folding over her abdomen. “I read in the paper you look after women who’ve been raped.”

“That’s part of my job,” she answered, relieved that Desiree had brought up the subject.

“It must be horrible. They get attacked when there are plenty of women out there just itching to have sex with anyone.”

“It is.” Anya was surprised by the comment and tried to read the expression on the face of the mother-to-be. “Sometimes memories of an assault can be triggered by pregnancy.”

Desiree nodded and unwound some more wool. “They asked me about that at the antenatal clinic. They said pregnancy could bring back all kinds of stuff about abuse and all that.”

“That’s true. It’s part of the routine questions they ask all the women who go there.”

The conversation stalled.

Anya needed to recover it. “I was thinking about what you said the other night about having to feel pain to feel love. That was quite profound.”

Desiree laughed and waved one hand at Anya. “Yeah, the boys at home used to say it before they had sex with a girl. Turns out, most of the time it was true. At least, until I met Luke. He says the opposite. But then you’re a doctor, you’d know about all that.”

It saddened Anya that young women could be coerced into accepting painful sex because “that’s the way it is.”

“Is Luke looking forward to being a father?”

“He’s getting used to the idea.” Desiree sat forward, inching herself along the cushion. “Let’s just say sometimes nature needs a little help.”

Anya didn’t follow.

“You doctors aren’t that smart, are you?” she mocked. “I put pin-pricks in his condoms.” She jabbed the air with a knitting needle, as though piercing an imaginary balloon. “Tiny holes that he’d never notice. That’s our little secret,” she said, and slid back in her seat.

Anya could not believe that Desiree would proudly boast about deliberately getting pregnant. Maybe they did come from different cultures.

Something about the photo drew her back to it. “What were they like, the boys back home?”

Desiree laughed. “They thought their shit didn’t smell because they played football. The Pit-Bull Maulers hadn’t been beaten in years so it made them all a bit full of themselves. Except Luke. He was always quiet.” Knit one, purl one. “The girls loved them. Treated them like popstars. Guess I did, too. You could always pick them with their tattoos.”

“What tattoos?”

“They got pictures of pit-bulls on the back of a hand. It was part of being on the team. Everyone except Nick did it. He whinged about how ugly the dogs were.”

“Did Luke have a tattoo?”

“Oh yeah, he was one of the boys, but was a lot nicer to girls than the others.”

Anya could just imagine a group of adolescent males in a country town, thinking they owned the place because of their sporting prowess. Like a gang, they hung together with a tattoo for membership. Sadly, young girls probably helped perpetuate their misogynistic attitudes by idolising them.