Parker Lane - TW Dr*g use, child neglect, abuse.

Layla narrowed her eyes as she stared through the windshield of her mother’s peeling Subaru Outback. She studied the quiet street, the parked cars that glinted under the yellow streetlights of Parker Lane. Her knuckles threatened to tear through her skin as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. The sound of choked breathing drew her gaze to the slumped body beside her in the passenger seat. Bony fingers scratched at its mottled face, loosening the scabs. A field of blood spots bloomed on sharpened cheekbones. Eyes swept sideways. Layla looked away.

‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ the body croaked. A yellow tongue slipped between cracked lips. A hand reached out. ‘You just have to do what mummy taught you…’

Layla cringed. Bra-less breasts hung over sweat stains. Ribs heaved, about to break through paper-skin. The breathing quickened. The body forced mouthfuls of air into its chest, wheezing at every inhale.

‘Can you do that?’ she slumped back, smearing greasy hair away from her eyes. Layla let go of her breath, her lungs ceasing their burning. The smell of blood and rotting teeth burrowed into her nose. Her tongue was too big for her mouth.

‘Just go slow…’

Layla nodded. She jostled the key on the withered lanyard, shaking fingers making it difficult to find the ignition. The car hadn’t been used since mum had tried to teach her how to drive, a week after she was released from hospital a year ago. Layla didn’t know if it would even start.

***

‘Gimme gimme gimme a ma-an after mid-night!’ Layla’s mother sung, driving round the Figtree Grove carpark to demonstrate. Layla laughed at her out-of-tune voice, the lyrics scratching the air.

Layla’s mother grinned at her daughter and rolled down her window, ‘Don’t worry gal, you won’t have to drive until you get your L’s! This is just in case of emergency.’ Sunlight stippled her skin. The wind ran fingers through her hair, giving her the appearance of a film-star. There was colour in her face.

Layla wasn’t listening, she chanted back in reply, ‘Won’t somebody help me chase the shadows awayyyy.’

Her L’s were in a year and a half. The day was a cotton-ball over the barbs of truth. The emergency would come, and when it did, Layla was not allowed, under any circumstances, to call for an ambulance. It was too expensive.

When Layla’s mother overdosed the first time, Layla panicked over the phone to the Triple Zero operator about her mother seizing on the living-room floor. About the smell of weed and ammonia corroding the walls. The paramedics arrived minutes later. They told Layla’s mother she was lucky to have such a bright daughter.

‘A bright daughter,’ she sneered from her hospital bed days later, ‘would have saved me the two grand it cost to cart me here.’

Layla’s mother wasn’t a bad person. She just had a lot of stuff going on. Which is what every adult in Layla’s life informed her of. Her mother lay there in the white sheets making countless promises about getting better. Making countless apologies for what she had done or said or stolen. Working through the stuff. Nurses and doctors Layla didn’t know nodded wisely at this and told her to listen to her mother’s adultness, her strength. And then disappeared the day she was discharged.

Layla thought of them often: those doctors who gave her mum rehab pamphlets and the locations of NA meetings. The number of the local counsellor. Her mother had smiled. Thanked them with all the warmness in the world. Hugged her nurse goodbye.

The bin round the corner got a full meal of every recommendation.

The whole ordeal stripped away fresh food for weeks while Layla’s mother paid back the bill. Weeks of rummaging through the garbage behind Baker’s Delight and Woolworths for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

‘It’s actually pretty hip,’ she reassured her daughter, down to the shoulder looking for something somewhat-okay, ‘all the… eco-warriors are doing this type of thing.’

The next battle was the social workers. They came round only twice. Both times, the house was clean, the empty wrappers in the pantry stuffed with newspaper and junk mail. The calendar marked with the NA meeting dates at various churches and halls. Layla’s mother saved up for the petrol to take them to the beach for a shower, barking nastiness if Layla so much as winced at the cold, harsh stream of the water that funnelled from the head. The beachgoers in their mini bikinis and Hawaiian boardies stared. Other mothers clasped hands to their mouths, shaking their small heads behind large sunglasses.

Then to Kmart, where clothes were ripped off their hangers. Bottles of travel shampoo and soap swiped with feline quickness. All things shoved down into the depths of the peeling leather purse clutched tightly beneath a sickly arm. Layla’s mother would instruct her to grab something cheap. Something like the 75c loofahs hanging below the white display lights. They could at least pay for that. And it would get that bloody greeter off their backs about not buying anything.

The man in his blue uniform peered at the receipt and the singular item clutched in Layla’s hands. He shook his head at this thin woman and her begrudging teen, who never seemed to buy anything other than something worthless.

School was the third obstacle that seemed to be never-ending. Layla’s mother was bombarded with emails about missing assignments from the Year 8 advisor. About missing school fees from the principle. About missing attendance. About about about. She turned on her daughter when they blipped into existence, hurling anything she could get her hands on.

‘You lazy brat!’ She had screamed, ‘If I get one more email about a fucking missing assignment you’re out of this house!’ The frying-pan narrowly missed Layla’s defiant head.

‘That’s so fucking rich coming from you!’ Her daughter had raged back, dry-faced and fuelled by the spitefulness of every young person ever.

The year and a half dragged. Layla’s mother’s absence from home increased. Sometimes out for a whole day. More than a day. A week. A week and a half. Each time she returned to their roach-infested flat, she was worse. Older. Higher. Bloodier. Nothing Layla could say would make her stop. Make her stay. Nothing.

***

The two of them sat now, marooned on Subaru Outback Island upon the sea of Parker Lane. A car drove by, blinding them momentarily with modern LED headlights. The sound of bass-fuelled music thrummed faintly in the distance. Layla pulled the key from the ignition, placing it gently in the space in front of the gear lever. She wound down the window, breathing in the night. Wondering if the distant party contained people she knew. Her mother wheezed.

The cool air brushed her face, powdering her cheeks with blush. Her mother’s eyes turned and looked through her.

‘Do you remember I had a best friend in kindy?’ Layla’s breath fogged out the open window. ‘Her name was Nina.’

Rasping filled the space between them.

‘Do you know she goes to school with me? We’re in the same English class. Not that I’m there these days anyway. She doesn’t talk to me. Why would she? Everyone knows to stay away from the kid with the fucked-up mother.’

Her mum jerked in her seat, as if the words had whipped her. Let out a quiet moan.

‘I know.’ Layla sighed. ‘I know.’

Layla leant over the centre console, over the ghost beside her, reaching for the glovebox. She shook the broken latch and the cover fell open to reveal the backup pack of darts and lighter that mum had stashed. Her fingers closed around the box. She sat firmly in the driver’s seat. Her fingertips drew the last one out, raised it to quivering lips and lit it. She pulled the smoke into her lungs. Breathed out with relief.

Her mother looked at her sideways.

‘It’s okay, mum,’ Layla took another drag. She found her mother’s icy hand with her warm one. ‘You just close your eyes.’

Pale eyelids fluttered shut. Bony fingers growing lax around Layla’s firm ones.

‘That’s it. Just relax, alright?’ She stroked the small thumb lightly.

The body slouched into the seat. Layla unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for her mother’s. It clicked free. Her fingers searched for and found the lever to recline the seat. Lowered her mother’s spindly frame gently. Brushed strands of hair from her face.

Layla leant back in her seat. The breathing faulted. The gasping grew fainter. She watched the clouds that came from between her lips twist up into the sky. Billow over the moon. Faint stars smiled down at her.

‘I know you won’t stop,’ Layla said. ‘I knew the day you threw those pamphlets away.’ The moon winked.

Layla smoked.

She held her mother’s hand.