Gina

by Rebecca Klassen

I find my beheaded lipsticks pressed across my bedroom wall like impasto petals. I know Gina is responsible, but greasy corals, peaches and scarlets will be on my daughter’s fingertips, not Gina’s.

‘Gina did it.’ As Lizzie wipes her tears, she streaks the glossy red palette across her cheeks. Warpaint, except there’s no fight in her when I discover the lipstick cases under her pillow, useless as discarded milk teeth. The aching beat in my temples quickens.

Gina moved in when Brad finally moved out for good after years of drinking and affairs. She steals from my purse, leaves the stove on, and dirties Lizzie’s clothes. That’s why Dr Knowles, the school counsellor, called me in. She said that Gina was Lizzie’s way of dealing with her father leaving, coping with the alcohol and deception.

With a dry mouth, I told Dr Knowles that I worried Lizzie might be crazy, that she’d lost a grip on reality by blaming Gina for wrongdoing.

Dr Knowles shook her head. ‘Lizzie’s dealing with a lot. Engage with her about Gina, ask her questions. And make sure you’re getting support, dear.’ She patted my trembling hand, her wedding ring knocking my knuckle.’

But I’m too angry about Gina to ask Lizzie questions, and I’ve got no support now that Sarah Gundersen walks past me in the supermarket after she saw Lizzie pushing glass shards under the laurels on our front lawn. When Sarah asked her about it, Lizzie swore it was Gina who threw one of the shards at Sarah, just missing her bony forehead. Also, someone’s been ringing the Gundersen’s doorbell at 3am, and when Nathan Gundersen asked us about it, Lizzie said Gina had done it. All of this means they don’t speak to us now, don’t invite us to their barbecues anymore. I miss watching Nathan lick smoky sauce from his fingers, the sound of his mouth sucking thick burgundy.

But it’s my lipsticks on the bedroom wall that make me wish for the first time that Gina was real, because it’s really her I want to slap, not Lizzie, and it’s Gina’s shoulders I want to shake as I scream that she isn’t the only one abandoned, and to get her childish shit together, my flecking spittle mixing with her tears. We were supposed to go to the church picnic, but I tell Lizzie to get a bucket and scrub, and I lie down on the sofa to sleep off my accelerando headache.

I start to wonder if my outburst has exorcised Gina from our home. Aside from decapitating the flowers in our front garden and scattering the foliage in a procession to the Gundersen’s door, Gina hasn’t appeared in two weeks. Lizzie’s been withdrawn, and it feels risky to ask her about Gina now, like saying her name might summon her, a Beetlejuice effect, but something loosens my tongue as we eat buttered spaghetti and cheese. Lizzie starts to cry, says Gina didn’t mean any harm, and as I hold Lizzie to me, I wish Brad was dead.

Lizzie holds my hand and guides me between candy floss, a throaty organ, hook a duck, and union jack bunting at the school fête. Her touch makes me feel loved, then smug when I see Sarah Gundersen studying us, her own daughter walking sullenly behind. It’s warm, so I stick a tenner in the donations tub and down plastic cups of Pimm’s, the mint leaves sticking to my teeth. Dr Knowles mans the coconut shy, and while Lizzie throws balls at the hairy shells, I tell the doctor that Gina’s dead.

‘And are you getting the support you need?’ she asks, and I tell her she’s missing the point, that I don’t need support now that bitch is gone. The children in the queue behind stare at me, and Lizzie walks away. I call after her, start to follow, then I spot Nathan. He’s at the cake stall licking frosting from his fingers, and then I’m in front of him, lifting his sugar-coated hand to my lips. But he snatches it back. He says we shouldn’t have let things go on for so long, that my drinking is out of control, and I tell him he’s fucking crazy.

I’m a stone dropped in a pond as people ripple away: Nathan, his wife and daughter, Dr Knowles, the crowd of fête-goers, my own daughter. A rosette of frosting is pulled from a cupcake and thrown at Nathan, but it misses, hitting a button of a girl in the eye. I know Gina is responsible, which is why I’m screaming, ‘Gina did it! Gina fucking did it!’

Then Lizzie is at my side. ‘Don’t you remember, Mum? Gina’s dead.’