Wajeehah Aayeshah is a Muslim, female, brown, academic geek who loves collecting stories. She is interested in combining history, personal experiences, and contemporary socio-cultural context to create empathetic narratives.  She is a Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, designing curriculum and investigating kindness in higher education. She likes writing short stories, creative essays, bad poetry, and developing games with a dark sense of humour.

The girl who sat in a corner and sneezed

‘Buzz, buzz.’ I wake up due to the buzzing of my phone. It’s a text from Fatemah. She wants to know if I am still up for her Garden sculpture exhibition at the Heide.

‘It’s not even 7.00 Fati.’ I groan. 

Ignoring her message, I try to get back to sleep. It is useless. My mind knows I am up and wants me to clear up the nasal passage. I try to find FES saline nasal spray. It ought to be somewhere on my bed. I can’t find it. Grumbling, I get out of my bed and go to lounge to grab another bottle from meds drawer. I have only done one nostril when my phone starts to ring. Keeping the spray in my hand, I rush to receive it. It’s my Kiwi partner calling from a different time-zone. He wants to know how bad the bleeding was. 

‘What bleeding?’ I ask in a groggy voice. 

Turns out that at some point at night, I had sent him a picture of my nosebleed. I have no memory of this action.  Putting him on speaker phone, I check my WhatsApp. The picture shows a considerably higher amount of blood on three tissue papers. I try to look for the tissues for physical evidence. I find two with dried blood on them. Half listening to his concerned voice, I try to locate the third one. 

‘Yeowwww!’ I find the FES nasal spray. It is right under my foot.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Riz can hear the pain in my voice. 

‘Is your head hurting? Should I call someone to get you an ambulance?’ he is frantic.   

‘No, no. I just stepped on something.’ Trying to calm him down, I pick up the bottle.

‘What about the nosebleed? How bad is it?’ 

‘It’s okay. Relax. I don’t even remember sending you this bloody picture.’ I take a pause to congratulate myself on my brilliant display of wit.

‘Did you see what I just did there? Bloody picture…’ I put the spray in my other nostril.

‘Zoya, would you stop being carefree about it?’  I can hear a distinct ‘beep beep’ tone of someone else calling me.

‘It’s just a nosebleed. Due to dry nose.’ 

‘Just go see your GP. Please. Just do it,’ he is literally pleading.

‘OK. OK. I will.’ 

The next 5 minutes are spent me convincing him I will get an appointment, while blowing my nose. He is still unconvinced, but we end the conversation and hang up. 

‘Buzz buzz’. It’s Fatemah again. 

‘Zoya, pick up.’ 

I call her back. She wants to make slight modification to our plans. She has added my name to the list of volunteers who would give visitors a tour of the exhibition.  I am to reach the Heide Museum of Modern Art a couple of hours earlier to get a debrief. I am the ‘bestest’ person in the whole world. I say ‘OK’.  Hanging up on her, I blow on my nose again. There is blood.

—

The doctor wants me to get another biopsy done. I tell her I had one done 3 months ago. This isn’t my regular doctor. After an hour of heavy nosebleed, I have Uber-ed into an emergency ward. My neck has started to cramp. I have been stretching it for too long now, holding a tissue trying to stop the blood flow.  The doctor has already ordered an emergency MRI. I had an MRI 5 months ago. When I tell her this, she looks at me in a way only emergency doctors look at you. It is a mixture of exasperated, kind, bored, and overworked look. She asks the name of my GP and tells the nurse to get my records transferred as a priority. She doesn’t use these words. I have been into hospitals far too many times now to decode them. 

‘Buzz buzz.’ It’s Fatemah. She wants to know where I am. All of sudden, I feel very tired and groggy. I tell her I am at Royal Melbourne Hospital emergency ward due to heavy nosebleed. I am fine and very sorry about not being at her exhibition. The nurse’s shadow is looming over me now. She wants to take me to MRI room. I tell Fatemeh this, put my phone on silent, chuck it in my bag, not wanting to deal with more phone calls, and follow the nurse. 

She gives me a gown to change and tells me to lie down on the table. I have to remove my ring. It gets chucked in my bag as well. I think of Riz. He doesn’t know where I am, but I am too sleepy now to tell him. I doze off before the MRI starts. 

—

I wake up in a room filled in a dim white light. I try to recall what it is called. It is the colour of my dad’s beard. Is Dad’s beard a good name for a colour? It can be a good name for a race horse. But I am against racing.  Why would I think of a race horse name?  I can’t move my body or my mouth. I try really hard. I can barely keep my eyes open. Is this how race horses feel when they are drugged? Someone is next to me. They are saying something, but I don’t understand. I doze off again.

—

I wake up again. This time, I can move my head. Fatemah is sitting on a chair next to me. Her head is covered, and she is reading a book. No, I correct myself. She is reciting a holy book. She senses my movement, looks up and smiles, finishing the line she was reading, closes the book. She says something to me, but I can’t hear her. I tell her that. But I can’t hear myself. I say it out loud. And again, and again. Nothing. It is super quiet. I can’t hear the ambience; light, air-conditioning unit, building, anything. My heart is starting to race. I am getting palpitations. I can feel my throat aching. I know I am yelling but I can’t hear it. A nurse rushes in. Fatemah is trying to calm me down. But she is making me more anxious. The nurse picks up a note pad, writes something on it with big letters shoves it into my face.

                                          TEMPORARY HEARING LOSS. 

I stop yelling. My throat a bit hoarse now. I look at the words for a few moments. Then look at the nurse. He is smiling at me. I look at the notepad again and look at Fatemah. She is staring at me with a smile as well, but her eyes have an alarmed look. As if, she is worried I might scream again. I point at ‘TEMPORARY’ and look at the nurse. He nods quickly, assuredly. He is very good looking. I feel my body slumping down. Something is trickling down my right cheek. I touch it. It’s a tear, I have been crying. Fatemah holds my right arm and shoulder tenderly, then gives me a soft, lop-sided hug. I hold on to her right arm, still unsure why I am crying. 

—

‘So avoid wool, carpet and plants as much as possible, FES spray needs to be taken before the NASONEX one. Clean your nose after FES and keep the NASONEX liquid inside, every morning and at night. You can use FES during the day as well.’ It is the same emergency doctor. 

All of my tests are clear. Just as before. There is nothing wrong with me. I only have allergies. I am told I can do Allergen immunotherapy or desensitisation test if I like. It is a bit expensive, but it lasts for 10 years. What about after 10 years? Will it get worse? I want to know. The doctor isn’t sure. It can’t really be predicted. One of those things. 

I have had my share of one of those things. I leave the hospital with Fatemah, thanking Medicare and BUPA for covering my bills. I can no longer visit or be forcibly recruited as a volunteer for her Sculpture Gardens exhibition. Too soon to be around so many plants. She waves it off as if it isn’t a big deal. I know it is. She has been designing her exhibition for the past two years. She drops me home, fills my fridge with stuff that I might need for the next ten days and lets me be. 

I make myself some tea, pick up a book and sit in my reading nook but fall asleep. 

 ‘Buzz buzz.’ It’s Riz. His plane has landed. He’ll be at the house in a couple of hours. I read the message, smile, and blow my nose. There is blood. 

Ana Duffy is an Argentinean-born writer. She teaches in Communications and Creating Writing units at QUT; her work has been published in Island, Coffin Bell, Swamp and has been shortlisted in QWC Flash Fiction Competition and long-listed for Fish Anthology (Ireland). Ana holds a PhD in the field of Latin American literature from UQ and, in between teaching semesters, she is working on a novel.

Language spoken at home: Spanish

A mess of application forms are scattered on Josefina’s table. I see one with a green stain that will need to be reprinted.

If not for the rain, it would be a more pleasant day.

If not for the day being a Sunday, it would be a less gloomy day.

I pour a bit of water that is no longer hot into the mate that no longer tastes of anything. The quintessence of Argentinean infusions disgracefully vandalised somewhere 12000 km away from home. I sip. It is washed-out and cold: lavado and frío, as expected. I was never pedantic enough about the whole ritual: the slow pouring of the water on the Yerba Mate, methodically set in bevel into the gourd; the right temperature of the water, never boiling hot, unless you can live with the unsupervised sticks of Yerba Mate floating as in a shipwreck. As for the mate-drinking ritual, I know of my bad habits:  a widely accepted legacy from the uni years, when the same mate could go on for as far as to a full chapter (with inevitable green stains), or as far as to the first half of a deconstructed two-hour lecture; when the end of a full mate round was determined by our concentration span, and not water temperature or taste.

I sip again. Josefina jumps at the sucking sound. I pass it back to her.

She mumbles something and keeps on filling in the application form.

‘No me va a gustar’, Josefina says, and rolls her eyes when she sees the green stain at the centre of page 2.

(I agree that she will not like this job either. But she will push on, and keep doing the work that architects from UQ or Melbourne uni will take credit for, while her own UBA degree coils in a black tube along with five years of study and green mate stains in a stationary vortex of defeats).

I put the kettle on and refill the mate: an old gourd with Josefina’s initials carved clumsily with a pocketknife. I have the same gourd. We bought it together at the markets, in San Telmo, at a time when having it meant nothing of what it now means: a whole ocean, and decades away from there and then. The gourd feels so loaded now, so heavy with every past tense plastered to it. 

Josefina fills in her third application. Nothing out of the ordinary. A name that anyone could say, and a surname that no one could: Rodriguez. An un-rollable ‘r’. An ‘o’ that was not meant to be turned onto an /oʊ/ and an impossible ‘d’, if you try to sound it with your tongue behind the teeth, instead of squeezed between them. The carnage done to the poor ‘gue’ sound is by now such a given, that she’s stopped trying to fix it altogether.

She says she would, if she could, add subtitles to everything around her. Subtitles or a voiceover. And everyone would be happy. The reader and the writer. The speaker and the listener. Maybe, she says, a full-time hologram: a three-dimensional translation under everything said, written and done. And everyone would be happy.

Spanish. Brief description: 27 grafemas. 24 fonemas. If you care to listen closely, it sounds as if you could dance it. Closed embrace. Walk. Figure. At the right time of the day (that can be any time of the day), it tastes like asado, slow-cooked, on an open fire, medium-rare. The signature sound of the “y” and the “ll”, the same fonema: as if we were pissing on the language to own it, to make it Argentinean, to sound it our way.

Spanish. Ancestral tongue, all flat-packed and put away during business hours.

Josefina asks me if I would like to hear about her dream last night.  

I say yes, because no one would want to leave an untold dream festering under Josefina’s vindictive skin. Or maybe because it’s a rainy Sunday, and rainy Sundays make me mellow and a little conforming.

She tells me about an eulogy she was giving in Argentina. An eulogy for a friend. En Puerto Blanco. In a white church. I think of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes because that’s the only church I remember. In any case, you can whitewash the walls of a church that lives, roughly sketched, in your memory. 

(No one really does eulogies in Argentina, Josefina, I know you know it too). No eulogies: we rather cry ourselves dry and exchange hugs and kisses and flowers and tissues and donate to Pétalos de Vida if playing the local philanthropist is your thing. It almost feels as if when dead people die over there, they are a tad dead-er than here in Australia, or we are a tad sad-er because we are all a tad inoculated with tango lyrics, and we are able to sip mate for hours on end in a profoundly depressing, ceremonial silence. Endemic things that give us a kind of death that is thicker, more substantial.

It’s her turn with the mate now and her hands are soft around the gourd. Her fingernails are splitting under a badly applied, inexcusable blue nail polish. She purses her lips and takes a long sip, “el agua de Brisbane no es lo mismo” she says frowning. I do not feel the difference; hot water tastes the same here than in Puerto Blanco, but agreeing with her, today, takes no effort. I nod.

And then she goes on; she describes how she was reading the whole eulogy in English, ‘in fucking English’ (she has been using fucking lately, and it pains me to see that it’s starting to sound almost natural); she says that yes, that she is sure that it was her speaking, when I ask; by now her voice has that pitch voices have when the images run too fast and the narration starts to feel out of sync. A vortex of dead and alive, known, and unknown, friends and foes, in a white church, listening to Josefina’s eulogy.

I can picture the general confusion of a non-English-speaking congregation when Josefina goes “we are gathered here today to bid farewell (a bit overdone, I’d say) to the amazing (she cannot remember who had died) whose goodness was beyond measure, a beacon of light (really? Is that what you said? Did you ChatGPT it, or what?). 

She tells me how she was hyperventilating when the alarm went off, and when she sat on her bed, she was toda chivada: all drenched in sweat. She brushes her fingers up and down her body, with a contorted face.  Now she’s all big-eyed as she brings the kettle back.

The dream story goes on and on and on. About how she had tried hard to stop and go back to Spanish. But again, and again she would revert to English, as if her own words were gone, as if they were trapped in the coffin with the beacon of light. And then, as you would expect of her, she Googled. She told me all about an article from the BBC on multilingual dreams, and how hers could have been a ‘linguistic anxiety dream’. She is sipping her mate slowly, holding on to it, watching the hollow gourd as if trying to find deep answers by dowsing in the yerba. 

“Porque es como vivir con un pie en cada cachete del culo” Josefina says, the metaphor of an expat life, quite un-Borgesian indeed, of living as if she were standing on a giant butt: one foot on each butt cheek, makes me chuckle. The living not here, not there, and with a looming fear of falling into the crack. Her metaphor lingers heavily between us.

(At times, I know how much I hate speaking. When my LOTE language cannot be tamed, nor hidden. When it bobs up, unrequested as a Spanish-sounding-English. Because it is always there. At home. In songs I sing along. On a t-shirt. In books and books and books I cannot share. In instructions for the blue Anilina Colibri that was never used to dye a tattered shirt into its senses. Over the years I have fought it; pushed it in, scratched it out, painted it over, flattened it down. Nothing worked. Languages can be some stubborn creatures.)

‘Y si un día lo perdemos del todo?’ she says, half a spewed thought, and half a rhetorical question.

And the truth is that I do not know what would happen if suddenly, we could not find ourselves in Spanish anymore. If one day we wake up and we see pieces of rolled ‘Rs’ spread out like starfishes on the ground; or if we see an ñ (please, pronounce eh-nyeh, like you do for Enya, the Irish singer) clearly determined to get rid of its wormy hat in a way never seen before in anything with no arms, only because it wants to fit in. What if, the mourners in a sad, Argentinean funeral start to sway uncomfortably because of an English eulogy without subtitles, and we feel nothing at all.

(Is anyone able to un-dream a dream, Josefina? Can you at least, edit an alien eulogy out of it?) 

The mate is cold now. And maybe tasteless, again. The biggest and lightest Yerba Mate sticks are floating up and I am butchering the most basic mate etiquette turning the bombilla around and around, stirring thoughts and sticks together like a narcotic cocktail.

‘Tengo Pilates a las 5’, Josefina checks her phone. Broken screen; battered cover; battery almost flat. She walks while slipping into a pair of black leggings. Her Pilates mat is next to the door (it lives there, but she forgets it again and again). 

“Te llevo?” she asks me as she frantically searches for her car keys in one of the many miscellaneous, poli-rubro, drawers.

I say no, that I rather walk. I always rather do.

I hum a Seru Giran song that lands me on the 80s (our 80s) and I forget Josefina’s dream. No one died recently, at least no one that I know of. No one I care for. Or maybe someone did die. And maybe in Argentina, they do eulogies now. I don’t know. I will Google it when I get home. 

Not a clue how to say eulogy in Spanish, though. 

A pity, really.

Sevana Ohandjanian is a writer, translator and film programmer of Armenian descent, living and writing on Wallumedegal land. Her work can be found in Meanjin, Chogwa, The Suburban Review, Shabby Doll House, The Wrong Quarterly, Tincture, SBS and more. Her unpublished manuscript Black Grass was shortlisted for the 2017 Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Prize. Find her online @ichbinsev.

DRIP

The drip started when I came back. Or maybe it had always been there and I just hadn’t seen it. Felt it. You’re always leaking, faulty, dispensing parts of yourself unknowingly. The drip begins and you simply continue. There’s no before or after timestamp. A faucet with the slightest leak, a midnight droplet that gathers on the showerhead and plops down with its weight, a drop in the ocean. But the ocean is a sponge and it soaks everything in. My drip is expelled from what it feeds on.

I wanted her to have become ugly. But she looks the same. Maybe I can’t see her any other way. Standing at the back of an Armenian Saturday school classroom, I watch the children clamouring to get her attention. Miss Lily! Miss Lily! Every child is a remodelling of prepubescent me, enamoured.

When Lily sees me, blood flushes my face, my breath caught. Caught like a 10-year-old being told for the first time, “You’re my best friend”; caught like a girl found out. She smiles, approaches.

She stands beside me during the principal’s announcements. Leans towards me to speak softly.

“It’s been a long time, Eva. Are you married yet?”

“No? I’m sorry. What?”

“I’m engaged.”

“Congratulations?”

“Thanks.” Her bunny rabbit teeth briefly appear when she smiles at me. “I haven’t seen you around here in a long time.”

“I was living in London for a while.”

“I know, I saw the photos on Insta. How come you’re here though? I didn’t think you kept in touch with anyone from school.”

“I’m just doing a favour for one of mum’s friends. They said they needed another teacher.”

“Yeah, Ani had to quit. Her baby’s due in a couple of months.”

“Sure. Right. Then I’m here to replace Ani.”

“Are you back in the suburbs then? With your mum?”

“Yeah. You know, trying to take care of her.”

“And you’re not engaged?”

“No.”

“In a relationship?”

“Nope.”

“Dating any boys?”

“That’s also a no.”

I had arrived airtight, the excommunicated package returned to sender, not a leak to stain the exterior of me. But questions kick my sides into dents. I’m devoid of meaning in this place. Yet I can’t resist the urge to ask.

“So, who are you marrying?”

“You know him actually! He was a year above us–”

The principal calls to me: “Eva, we’re ready to start, let me show you where your classroom is.”

I’m tasked with overlooking the work of three pre-teen girls in the back of a classroom, minimal responsibility while an experienced teacher manages older students emanating static exam preparation energy. The room coils with summer heat, brick-encased sweat, blinding yellow sun glow. The girls kick their feet and rapid-fire questions. We’ve never seen you before Miss, where are you from Miss, how come we don’t know you Miss, did you come to this school too when you were learning Armenian, Miss?

The heat brings the warm sweat drip. Frizzed ends of hair damp at the nape, elbow crease droplet a wet snake. Soles melting into asphalt, fire hits hot, until it swallows feet and turns into statue grey stone. I’m pebble-footed, fog-headed, standing in front of these children, teaching them words I’d forgotten.

Afterwards in the parking lot, my car idles as I avoid the touch of molten metal fixtures against bare flesh. An atomic sizzle between my fingertips and steering wheel, my skin branding and moulding itself to machine. Gathering itself back together, water to jelly to rock. Baby hairs dance around in air conditioning vent choreography, and I see her, striding gracefully towards an electric blue car. Nissan Skyline, Fast & The Furious fantasy for the high school dream boys with fade cuts and bubbling aggression.

The car pulls out, drives by me.

—

There’s nothing to do here besides walk through grass smoked into hay, and stare into people’s backyards. Jumping back when a dog comes barking up a driveway, its snout snarling through the gate. Hearing trucks barrelling down the main highway. Driving for the sake of hearing an album through car speakers, to give it motion. Other peoples’ houses and time-haunted shops, the only places to go.

Western Sydney suburban ennui cushioning my red skin, my squinting eyes, dripping into my vision when shut, all squiggly flashing lines. I can’t leave it. I’ve taken it with me to every city I’ve lived in. An empty street is home even if it’s hollow.

The shopping village that still holds the dirty yellow glow of too-low lighting and too-dark corners. Butcher meat stink pulses, bakery loaves expand in their racks, the newsagency ceiling fan whirrs dust over untouched magazine covers.

In the unnaturally bright grocers, I’m slumped over a shopping trolley in the produce section, eyeing off the fruit, willing light to disperse me amongst the blood red apples.

A hand on my shoulder brings me back, collecting and rearranging me. Of course she’s here. Actualised from my mind where she’s found residence since I saw her in the classroom a week ago.

Carrying a shopping basket like a handbag in the crook of her elbow, she is what activewear ads convince me I could be: slimmer, fitter, happier, wearing leggings to the shops after the gym session. She exudes a glow that highlights my dullness.

She’s talking to me but I’m still the pillow crease from the morning, blue light shining in my face. My finger surfing over my phone screen at speed with a tender touch, cautious voyeurism. She is amalgamating before my eyes: crucifixes, gold and silver, shiny helium anniversary balloons, lace and chiffon. His pink nose filtered to snowy white, tight shining faces dripped together and melted, pushed in so close as if to pull apart would tear the conjoined sinew.

She’s inviting me to a party in her backyard. As I agree, I’m thinking of excuses not to go.

—

I have been here before or I haven’t. Down cul de sacs lined with palms, into townhouse driveways signposted with identical beige postboxes. Two years of sucking in smog and suffocating sound is compacted into the back of my mind, an already othered memory.

The backyard grips me by the neck, thrusts me face-first into nostalgia. Plastic white chair-seated men, hookah pipe passes, women in constant motion to buckle a trestle table with food.

This is every backyard from high school house parties when we’d stand around, flip phones grasped like prizes, being fed alcohol by parents who didn’t care for local laws. The so-small world looking remarkably wide in a fenced-in, half-concrete yard.

He’s not beside Lily, he’s amongst the white chair men. Legs spread, possessive eyes, shisha in hand. Déjà vu so strong I’m convinced he hasn’t moved an inch since 2004. His nose the same ruddy pink as that hot humid day, when I had squirted my water bottle at him while we waited to climb into the school bus. The second last day of school. Giggling to coax male fury off the ledge when he said, “I’ll get you for that”.

My skin pink the next day walking down the highway home, water dripping from hair and hem timed with shivers. Truck drivers honking at my now transparent cotton sports uniform. My ears echoing the smack of litre on litre pouring over my head. Ice cold shivers from frozen water bottles, then lukewarm waterfalls from orange juice-stained canisters. His deep laugh slicing through the cascade.

Now, a bead of sweat tickles down my back. I plant myself in a corner, let my sandaled feet brush grass. Sinking myself in deep, deep enough to become a nutrient for the soil, enough that I might fertilise and dissolve. As I watch him watch her, I know when she is watching me.

There’s small talk and a barbecue, drinks and cigarettes, heels poking holes into garden grass. My eye can’t leave the white chair corner, even while three ex-classmates come to interrogate me. They’re trying to strike gossip gold to take home tonight. Lily joins and stands across from me, that beaming warmth enveloping.

“Having fun?” she interrupts the conversation to ask me.

“Yeah, thanks for inviting me”.

“Of course. You should come to the wedding too, maybe you can meet a nice Armenian guy, make your mum proud.”
She laughs, a delicate thing. How is it so intimate yet the furthest thing from close. A reminder that the space is so vast between us, it is practically solid.

I move closer to Lily as someone takes a drum out, slapping a rhythm that draws people into hand-held circles. An unrushed dance, hands grasped with strangers, two steps forward and one back. A movement that should be in my feet already, a genetic predetermination. She’s the centre point of it, like a fountain timed to music, her hair splaying out, her body spinning, her arms elegantly shaping in the air. When our eyes meet briefly, my smile is second nature. I feel stripped down, heart stuck in throat. Melted as if to expose the centre of myself.

She is the person they sing about in the song, and I’m the person who dances to it.

—

Heat has a personality of its own. It demands. Craves the attention of all your senses. Heat sticks in your throat, it inflates humid into the lungs, it sinks into pores and forces your insides out.

I stand under the lazy ceiling fan in the classroom, in another lesson that has blurred into the weeks preceding it. Saturday mornings of burning sunlight and irritable children desperate to be elsewhere. Lily in the morning gathering, hearing her voice ring out an octave higher than the students during the national anthem. Afternoons of parking lot small talk, disappearing into cars and separate worlds.

The fabric on my skin is becoming one with me. Cotton tendrils sneak into microscopic pores, latching onto cells and choke-holding them until shirt is body and body is shirt. I want to flatpack myself. Ship myself back across oceans, until all that falls on me are snowflakes turning water, until my hair is drenched and my breath is tangible fog.

Once the bell has rung, I turn off the lights and stand in empty midday darkness. The stale air, the flecks of dust, the beige brownness of it all. I was never afforded silence in this space. Even now, I can feel the squeeze of time against me. Siren songing me into the past, into a safety that regresses and reidentifies.

Lily is sitting on a bench outside the school gates when I approach her. A backpack sat at her feet, she types speedily on her phone and doesn’t look up until I’m sat beside her.

“Did you have a good day today?” she asks, looking up from her phone, eyes directly on me.

“Same same really. I don’t know if I’m actually helping these kids learn anything.”

“I’m sure you are. They’re good kids.”

“Do you need a ride?”

“No, Sako will be here soon. We’re going to get a late lunch.”

The sun is bearing down on my unprotected face, marking its spot red. The drip is puddling around me, forming a lake on which I’m drifting. When was the last time we sat so close.

Back when she was ankle socks and me regular-length folded and pushed down. Back of the school bus giggles, we’d gotten lucky that the older kids let us sit there. We felt older than our 12 years with the privilege of hiding in the corner, huddled close. Grease of morning margarine sandwiches still on our lips, discarded foil crunching beneath our feet. She told me her underwear was black. Everything I wore underneath was a virginal white. Show don’t tell, we lifted skirts, reached across and under as if to confirm that the differences between us ended at the colour of our underwear. A Year 10 girl turned around to look at us and we knew somehow this wasn’t allowed.

We’re in a cone of cool silence now. The heat is away, the drip has stopped. Like an ice cube down the back of the shirt, there is something kinetic here. Something that wants to burst out of my pores and slide over the seat. Where are the lines drawn on our bodies now, that didn’t exist then.

“Do you remember those bus rides we’d have to take here every day?” My voice is not my own. It’s liquid turned sound, moved its way from stomach to trachea and out.

“They took so long! How did we even do it. They were so boring.”

“I liked them.” Me and you. Shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, leg to leg, knee to knee. Gossip and giggles, a level playing field.

“Sako used to ride on that bus too, you know? He said he had a crush on me even back then”. Glimmering eyes, bunny teeth, the child peeking out of the adult. “But he never did anything about it.”

A car honks and the sun hits my eyes, firing down my face. She walks away, a gentle wave, a slide in and shut door.

I drip away in a sun melt. Until I can fall from the bench in droplets, slink my way down the gutter, foist myself into the drains. Let myself be carried to the dam, rushed alongside the drips of others, funnelled into drains mapping our suburban yellow underground. Until I slip down her tap, into her glass, and am entirely consumed.

A. D. John is a Wiradjuri writer residing on Gadigal land. He is a recipient of the 2023 Penguin Random House “Write It” Fellowship and the 2023 Writing NSW Diverse Writers Mentorship with World Fantasy Award finalist Eugen Bacon. He is currently studying for an MA in creative writing at the University of Sydney.

My Blood, Your Blood

Beyond the distant scrub on a strangled ridge, rhythmic rifle fire snapped and cracked – the powder smoke lifting like a delicate veil and dispersing as it cleared a dense regiment of parched saplings. Jimmy heaved the saddle onto the officer’s horse as another volley of shots pierced the damp evening air. He watched as the men around him flinched. 

“Jimmy,” a white officer called from his seat near a smouldering fire. “You see them boy?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Nah boss, can’t see a thing in this light.”

The officer scratched at his shabby beard, nodded and went back to stoking his piteous heap of embers. 

It was a lie. Jimmy could see the soldiers perfectly but was in no mood to play “spot the white fullah.” He secured the saddle and started with the bridling. 

They called him Jimmy Jackson. That’s how he introduced himself around camp and to his troop, even though he hated the name. It was a white fullah’s name, and it didn’t fit. Whenever he got the chance, he would introduce himself with the name his mother gave him – Mugi. The night before her son was born, she dreamed of birthing an eaglehawk and took that as a sign, dubbing him accordingly. Like the formidable raptor of his name’s sake, Mugi had the gift of sight. Put a jag-spear, knife, or rifle in his hand and he’d find his mark – sometimes from hundreds of metres away. 

His sight wasn’t limited to hunting. 

Mugi could cast visions of the abstract and slip into a place most other folk couldn’t. He’d soar above the hushed paddocks and the dense, suffocating scrub bordering their perimeters, rushing high over the magnificence of gumtrees. From up yonder, he took in everything. His mind’s eye traversed the expansive, sapphire skies tangled with wisps of cloud and surveyed the ravaged landscape below. 

He was all at once untethered up there in the eternal blue, but a slave chained mercilessly to the earth. Mugi would never mention the Dreaming to the white fullahs. He could only imagine they’d hack off his head or burn him alive. These men only believed in the Bible and that was that. 

Every so often, Lieutenant Wilson would be full of the spirit, rum or a mixture, and he’d limp up onto a discarded supply crate and begin spitting verses from his tattered St James Bible. There he’d be, unsteady in his boots, swaying and gabbling, fighting to keep his eyes from rolling back into his skull, as spittle caught in the nest of hair around his mouth. He’d speak of the end of days and Mugi wondered if those times had already come for his lot.

“Watcha doing?” A voice called from behind him.

Mugi turned to see Paul standing next to an open tent, its flaps whipping and snapping in the wind.

Paul was Koori as well, but no one knew his real name. He was tall, lanky yet strong. His skin stretched taut across his face and betrayed a menacing intent when he smiled – like he was now.

“I’m saddling the horse for the Lieutenant.”

“Which?” Paul’s eyes squinted into slits. He spat a peach seed that landed not far from Mugi’s boots.

“Daniels.”

“Uh huh, goin’ get it done then.” 

Paul buttoned his jacket and marched into the open tent. 

*

Mugi had noticed Paul striding through the camp from time to time as if he owned the place – like he was one of the white fullahs. This was his first interaction with the man, and it went as well as he imagined. The other Kooris nicknamed Paul “the White Dog”. Stories about him spread through the troop quicker than any cold or flu. These weren’t the type of tales Mugi would have recounted to his nephew back home. Rumours were that Paul played his part in desecrating a whole mob close by. The mob were charged with stealing cattle – so the settlers said. 

Other Kooris told Mugi that Paul had unsheathed his sabre during the battle and hacked at limbs and sheared off heads, all the while grinning that maniac grin of his. Mugi had seen enough bloodshed to last him an eternity. He could feel the malevolence of the mission weigh damp and heavy on his spirit. 

Mugi and his unit were sent to arrest the warrior Dawarang, whose mob was accused of disturbing the day-to-day lives of the nearby settlement. Mugi knew what it meant when white fullahs said “arrest.” Dawarang and his mob’s so-called crimes were miniscule to start with. Snatching a few chickens here, some pigs there. When cattle began to vanish, the settlers called in a local regiment of soldiers. 

Then there was the clash and the mob speared a few of the soldiers, one fatally. This was the story that the white fullahs drilled into their heads along the dusty trails all the way from Wagga Wagga. A young Koori officer named Dirru spread rumours that the real reason they (the white men) wanted Dawarang and his mob gone had less to do with protecting settlers and more to do with panning for gold. 

*

Mugi had spotted unfamiliar faces mulling around the creek beds with all sorts of equipment – he’d never had the chance to stand still long enough to gander at what they were up to. He also noticed they were clearing the forests slowly, two or three trees at a time. Mugi was beginning to agree with Dirru. There was foulness in the air, and he wanted to know which direction it was blowing in from. 

Mugi didn’t want to fight anymore. He wanted to go home. He wanted to hunt, cook damper and brew billy tea with his nephew. This wasn’t his nation. This was some other mob’s and now he was here trying to pry it away on behalf of these white bastards. 

He hated the way the white fullahs strode around like they had a right to it all – like they were some kind of gods. The only thing godlike about them was their opinion of themselves. He’d seen them bleed just like his mob. They weren’t anything ethereal. Just blood and bone like anyone else. Mugi wasn’t sure what he despised most: the white dog’s greed or their ignorance. They wanted to take, conquer and rape the land. Like it was a prize to be won. They had their heads so far up their own arses they didn’t realise how deluded they truly were. The land wouldn’t allow itself to be conquered. It wasn’t some fruit that sat heavy and plump on the lowest limbs of a tree. It was as harsh as it was beautiful, and it could show you who was really in charge if you were stupid enough to give it a good hard poke. 

Mugi closed his eyes so he could recalibrate. He was doing this for his sister and her boy back home.  That’s why he was here, no other reason he could think of. 

After they came in and stole the land from his people, they sold it back to them. They called it civilisation, but Mugi couldn’t find the civility in anything they were doing. The only white folk he gave a good goddamn about were the Irish. They were the only ones that seemed to cop it as sweet as the Kooris did. Poor bastards – all of them – poor, poor bastards. His lot and theirs. 

Mugi stood there with his eyes closed. The breeze lapped sweat from his cheeks. He imagined peeking through the kitchen window of his sister’s house. Her and the boy would be making damper or soda bread and laughing and gently elbowing each other. A fire blazed somewhere and it cast a long shadow that moved back and forth like someone pacing. He saw her, in his mind’s eye, the woman from the creek. 

Then he remembered he did have other reasons for being out here.

*

At night Mugi would sneak away. He crept past the tents and the officers snoring like smokestacks of old locomotives. He stayed low to the ground and waded through waist-high grass. He dove into the deep, cool shadows of the towering gum trees. He sprinted, hard, into the heart of the bush. His legs burning and his chest heaving until he reached the creek.

Until he reached her.

*

Mugi rounded a clump of tents. As he crept past the last one, he heard Captain Miller conversing with Lieutenant Daniels. The night had truly settled over the camp now and he crouched down behind a stack of logs, assured that the darkness would shroud him from the camp’s collection of paranoid eyes. 

“I don’t know how they know we’re coming. It’s like someone is giving us up.” Captain Miller’s voice was distinct—rough and deep like a rockslide in a quarry.

“Yes sir. It is quite perplexing,” Daniels said.

“I’m glad to hear you’re perplexed, Lieutenant. It shows you care. I was beginning to think you wanted to tend the land and raise cattle here.”
“Sir?”

“We should have dispatched this Dawarang fellow weeks ago and been back home with our wives and children. I was beginning to think you liked it out here so much, you wanted to stay.”

Mugi listened as Daniel’s cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir, I am not following.”

“If you truly hated the heat and the stink and the general sense of melancholy this place imposes on one, really felt it on a day-to-day basis, I’d have thought you’d do everything in your power to achieve your objective?”

“Yes, sir I –”

“I don’t want to hear any more words from you Daniels. I want action. You hear me? Action.”

“Yes, sir,” Daniels said again.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags bloody full, sir. Just find the bastard, understood?”

There was the loud sharp click as Daniel’s snapped the heels of his boots together and then – silence.

Mugi waited in the shadows, waited for the tent flaps to open and the light to spill out and a dejected Daniels to slink past. A few seconds and nothing. Mugi froze as he heard hurrying boots clomping towards him. He turned to see Daniels striding for him, the weight of his footsteps kicking up plumes of dust. He must have exited Miller’s tent from the rear.

“You, there. What the hell are you up to?” 

Daniels stood over Mugi – a looming storm cloud.

Mugi began to gather logs from the pile and bundle them into his arms. He stood so he was face-to-face with the lieutenant.

“Sorry, sir, I’m just collecting wood for the fire.”
Daniels looked him up and down, his thin lips curling into a sneer.

“Well bloody hurry up then will you. Get back to your tent officer. I’m imposing a curfew tonight.”

Mugi saluted, almost dropping some of the logs. Daniels didn’t break eye contact until he’d stomped off behind one of the tents. 

*

Mugi knew that when a curfew was imposed, the white fullahs employed an extra level of vigilance. They’d have sentries strewn all around camp. Most officers who had the pleasure of a night shift were already exhausted and it was inevitable that they’d nod off – it was just a matter of time. Then there was the lackies, like Paul, who loved to catch a dissenter just so his white masters would pat his head and say “good boy.”

*

The horse Mugi had saddled earlier was still tied to the log where he’d left him. No officer had bothered to investigate why one of the horses wasn’t back in the stable with the rest, or why it was still wearing a saddle.

Mugi stalked his way toward the animal. The horse dug at the dirt with its hoof and whinnied when it saw him approach. 

“Shhh, ya dumb bugger,” Mugi said.

The horse flicked it’s head up and down and started pulling at the rope clipped to its bridal. Mugi reached the animal and stroked its mane, until it stopped jerking.

A calm fell over beast. 

Mugi spotted one of the sentries standing in the paddock only a few meters away. Yawning, the officer gazed up at the luminous stars that exploded across the canvas of the night sky.

Mugi searched around in the dust. He stood once he found it, a small round stone. He ran his fingers over the rock’s smooth edges and then lined up his target. 

 “Sorry, Brother,” he said. He wound back his arm and snapped it forward in a fast whip. 

The stone cut through the cool night air and struck the distracted sentry on the back of the skull. He didn’t want to cave the man’s head in – just blow out his lights. 

Mugi watched the man’s knees buckle and his whole body seemed to crumple in on itself and the tall grass swallowed him.

The sentry now asleep—probably the deepest he’d had since being deployed—Mugi didn’t waste any time. He knew there’d be more sentries milling about and didn’t think there’d be enough rocks for all of them. 

He led the horse through the long grass, making sure to crouch down and stay out of sight. He appreciated the symphony of insects. Crickets and frogs and the slow buzz of cicadas. He reached the middle of the clearing when a bat screeched and swooped overhead. 

Mugi felt his heart slide into his throat and stood frozen until he was able to regain his composure and push on. As he reached the deep, elongated shadows of the tree line, he glanced up at the sky. He could see why the sentry had been so enraptured. Thousands of jewels burned through the blackness, their sharp trails of light reaching down toward him. 

Mugi sunk into the darkness of the thick bushland, and he and the horse clambered over the dense scrub and fallen branches. They crept carefully through the brush until he could no longer smell the whispers of the campfire. He then mounted the horse and charged towards the creek.

He heard the creek before he saw it. The burbling of tannin-stained water trickling over the pock ridden stones that cut the bed of water in two. Mugi jumped from the horse and tied it to a nearby tree branch. He went on foot until he reached the creek bed, lit by the radiance of the full moon. 

She was there. 

The woman knelt by the bank, her hands cutting circles in the water, humming an unfamiliar tune. She turned ever so slowly, and her onyx eyes caught his in their rapture. Mugi felt his heart soar. No matter how many times he saw her, he swore she was the most beautiful vision. She was the ethereal shimmer of the moonlight.  Her name was Alinta, a name that meant fire or flame, he couldn’t remember which. The woman rose and floated towards him.

Mugi didn’t move – couldn’t move. 

Alinta threw her slender arms around his neck. Mugi felt the chill of her flesh, which soothed him. He slipped one arm around the small of her back and pulled her body tightly against his. Eyes shut, two white hot mouths heat seeking, soft wet lips melting together. It took everything Mugi had to breakaway away from the ache of her want.  

“We don’t have much time,” Mugi said. “Those dogs mean business this time. You must warn Dawarang. You must tell him to leave this place.”

Alinta smiled, and she let go of Mugi.

“He can’t leave this place. It’s not that easy. This place owns him. Needs him.”

“I’ve seen what these bastards are capable of. They’ll burn this place. They’ll take it all.” Mugi stood closer to Alinta and took a handful of her soft curls, spinning them around his fingers.

“It’s getting harder to leave,” he said. “What if I can’t tell you when they’re coming for yas?

Alinta swatted away his hand and smiled again. 

“Let them come, let them see what happens.”

There was a sharp crack as a heavy footstep splintered a branch, then a metallic click. Mugi and Alinta turned to see Paul, the White Dog, who had thumbed back the hammer of his rifle.

“We’re already ’ere.” He smiled that sadistic grin of his and levelled the weapon at Mugi’s chest and pulled the trigger. 

Mugi felt the impact snatch the breath from his lungs and the creeping heat of the wound slowly enveloped his entire body. He fell backwards onto the soft wet earth of the creek and tried to cough up the torrent of blood lurching through his windpipe. He waited to die, waited for Alinta to scream but instead thought he saw her laughing. 

“What are you smiling at ya daft bitch,” Paul said as he began to slide the rifle’s trigger back.

What happened next, Mugi thought was conjured from the dying embers of his imagination. 

The trees seemed to move. Not like they did in the wind. They appeared to take steps. Their roots tore free from the ground dredging up dirt and dead leaves. They circled Paul like a pack of ravenous dingos. Their skeletal branches tore at his clothes, grabbed at his arms and he dropped the rifle. 

He screamed as angry limbs hoisted him high into the air and, as if they’d practiced it a thousand times before, they wrenched his arms and legs from their sockets simultaneously. His body broke and shuddered violently. Paul’s eyes were wide and Mugi thought they’d burst but they grew dim and closed. His mouth went slack and hung open in a frozen twisted howl.

Alinta kneeled and ran her hand over Mugi’s chest, slick with blood. Her soft caress stole his mind from thoughts of death that swarmed like flies.

Those eyes locked onto his and she grinned.

“See,” she said. “Let them come.”

Natasha Rai, an Indian-Australian woman, was born in India, migrating to Australia with her parents at the age of ten. She lived in the UK for several years as an adult, and the influence of three homes features in her writing. Her work has appeared in Australia’s first #MeToo anthology, Enough anthology about gender violence, Overland, Verity La, StylusLit, and New-York based Adelaide magazine. Her first novel, AN ONSLAUGHT OF LIGHT, longlisted for the 2017 Richell Prize, 2018 KYD Unpublished Manuscript award, and highly commended for the Ultimo Press/Westwords 2020 Prize, will be published by Pantera Press in 2025.

 
 
Pairing Off

The first pair are thongs. She almost misses them, running past the yellow house on the pretty street with overhanging trees. For a moment, she considers stopping, but doesn’t want to break the rhythm of her run. The image of the thongs glues itself onto her brain. She deliberately loops back on the way home. They’re still there, undisturbed.

‘They looked so weird. On the street, one in front of the other facing the house, as though the person wearing them evaporated and left their thongs behind,’ she says to her husband, at home, after a cool shower.

He grunts, staring at his phone.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ She wants to rip the phone from his hand and smash it on the kitchen tiles.

‘Flip flops,’ says her husband, smiling at his phone.

She leaves the room, knowing he hasn’t noticed she’s gone.

Her Friday run is by the water’s edge on a street where a straggly row of houses looms silently. Trees with triumphant roots bursting out of the tarmac, watch impassively as she dodges the bumps. This time she stops. A pair of women’s black flats. Like the thongs, they are placed in the style of someone who has stepped out of them mid stride. Should she take a photo? She looks up and down the street, empty apart from her and the shoes, the promise of day showing in the gold and pink edging of clouds.

She takes a photo and runs up the hill, irritated at herself for stopping for something that is so obviously a joke. Or a prank? Is she going to stumble across a Tik Tok of her staring dumbly at shoes while the world laughs at her? At home, she shows the photo to her husband, who glances at it and away as though she’s shown him hardcore porn. Looking at the photo anew, she sees the banality of the shoes. One click, and it’s deleted.

Her best friend, Chloe, comes over. They stroll down to the shops – coffee, shopping, maybe a cheeky afternoon wine.

‘There’s a house I saw online for sale,’ says Chloe. ‘Wanna see?’

They head down one of the steep streets towards the glinting water. A trickle of sweat runs down her back, and her face is awash with it. They go past the pub, a blast of aircon through the open door beckoning to her.

‘Let’s go in here. It’s so hot,’ she says, wishing she could tug Chloe’s hand and pull her into the cold interior of the pub; the promise of oblivion in every bottle, winking at her behind the bar.

‘We’re nearly there,’ says Chloe. ‘C’mon.’

The house is gorgeous – two storeys, recently painted, a miniscule rectangle of waving plants lining the short path to the front door.

‘It’s nice,’ she says to Chloe, knowing her friend’s penchant for looking and not buying.

‘It’s just big enough. But as the girls get older, they won’t want to share a room, so there’s that issue. It’s only two bedrooms.’ Chloe’s brow furrows as though she is serious about this house.

‘Hmm,’ she says, calculating the quickest route back to the pub. She turns and her heart hammers unsteadily.

At the base of the large tree on the edge of the pavement, is a pair of red, strappy heels. Like the other pairs, they are not side by side, but mimic the stance of a walk.

‘Do you see them?’ she asks, pointing.

Chloe looks at them and laughs. ‘Do you need a pair of shoes?’

A nervous giggle rises unsteadily from her throat into her mouth. ‘I’ve been seeing different shoes everywhere. Placed like these. All of them are women’s shoes. Do you think it’s a joke?’

‘If it is, it’s not very funny.’ Chloe turns her back on the shoes. ‘I’ll talk to Adam about the house. C’mon, let’s get a drink.’

She turns back several times to look at the shoes as they walk away. Why are they getting to her so much? What do the shoes mean? In the pub, they order a bottle of sparkling wine. Amid their conversation, the shoes flash in and out of her thoughts like a lighthouse beacon, luring her closer. Did the women intentionally leave their shoes on the street? Were they stolen and arranged like that? Perhaps it’s the same woman. She realises she never checked the sizes of the shoes.

‘I’ll be back.’ Chloe heads to the toilet.

She checks her phone – no messages. A woman sitting at a nearby table is staring at her. Her brown hair is trimmed and shaped like a halo around her face. The woman’s dark eyes lock onto hers, and she’s embarrassed by the slow flush of arousal that starts in her groin and moves up into her belly, shooting up into her chest and face.

Chloe returns to the table, and she wrenches her gaze away from the woman, forcing herself not to check if she’s still looking at her.

‘Should we have another bottle?’ Chloe asks.

‘Let me check what Matt’s doing.’ She sends the message. Seconds later her husband replies telling her to stay out and have fun – he isn’t home.

She goes to the bar, clutching her card. The haloed hottie materialises by her side.

‘You saw the shoes,’ she whispers into her ear. The haloed woman is so close, her lips graze the top of her ear, sending waves of desire through her.

She’s misheard. ‘What?’ She tilts her head to look up into the woman’s eyes.

‘The shoes. You know about them.’

She’s drunk. That’s what it is. Her drunk mind is weaving the stupid shoes and this sexy woman together.

‘It’s not a joke.’ Her tone is insistent. ‘You choose. You choose to leave them behind.’

‘And then what? Buy a new pair?’ She giggles. What would happen if she leant into her to smell her neck? Tell her she’s hot and that she wants to feel her naked chest against her own.

‘You’ll see. You’ll know your moment when it arrives.’

The bartender interrupts and when she turns to resume the conversation after ordering, the woman is gone. Back at the table, she’s disappointed at the sight of the empty glass where she was sitting earlier.

‘Did you see that woman?’ she asks Chloe, pouring prosecco into their glasses.

‘Which one?’

‘The one with the short dark hair. She spoke to me at the bar.’

Chloe’s eyes light up with mischief. ‘What did she say? Where is she?’ She looks around the pub.

‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter. I think I’m pissed.’

‘Me too!’ They clink glasses.

Once home, her head buzzing with prosecco, she thinks about the woman and the shoes. She can choose to leave them behind. What does that mean?

Her phone pings. It’s her husband texting to say he’ll stay at a mate’s place. She sighs. There was a time when he hated being away from her. She messages a couple of friends, suddenly wanting to be out in the world, seen by others. No one replies. Is this her life now? Flinging crumbs of longing into the world that are met with indifference and silence. When did she become invisible?

Her routine shudders along, the connection to her husband growing fainter. They now spend entire evenings in silence on their devices, sitting together, separated by a continent of unsaid things. Netflix is always on, actors playing out lives vibrant and brighter than her own.

She sees the shoes everywhere, during her runs, buying groceries, out for a coffee. Each pair different, worn. She checks on the ones she’s seen before. Some are still there, others have gone. She no longer wonders why their owners left them; she wonders where they are. Do those women miss their lost shoes? Increasingly, she thinks about that woman in the pub. About what she said. She can just choose to leave them. Where will she go if she chooses? Can she return and reclaim them?

One night without a word of explanation, her husband sleeps in the spare room. In the morning, when she asks, he says he didn’t want to disturb her as she went to bed hours before him. Without any further discussion, he sleeps in the spare room most nights returning to their bedroom, occasionally, wearing an expression of distaste when she asks him. Summoning her courage, she strokes his arm, leaning in for a kiss.

He recoils like he’s been bitten. ‘I’m tired,’ he says, his gaze already returning to his phone. ‘Ask me tomorrow.’

Summer sharpens to winter, and back to spring. The shoes multiply, becoming more visible even as her life disappears before her own eyes. She brings a brown pair of sandals home, cleans them, gets them repaired by the local shoe place, and stares at them at night as her husband laughs in another room. Nothing happens. The shoes are inanimate, lifeless next to the other pairs she owns. Cleaning and mending them feels like a desecration.

She doesn’t tell Chloe or any other of her friends about her decaying marriage. She knows she needs to talk to Matt, but she’s so scared. What if he says things she doesn’t want to hear? She’s taken to weeping silently in bed, hating herself for being so weak, but finding solace in the wet pillow. Perhaps, tomorrow she will be stronger. Perhaps, tomorrow the words trapped in her throat will fly out of her mouth like birds released.

On Saturday, Matt puts on his suit and knots a blue silk tie.

‘Where are you going?’ she asks.

‘I told you. Dave’s invited me to Randwick. He’s a member.’

She stares at his back; absolutely certain he never said a word. Do you still love me? The question hovers in the space between them, but she snatches it out of the air unable to bear the look that might settle on his face if she utters it aloud.

After he leaves, restlessness urges her into the car. She drives down to the bay, deciding on a different, longer run. She’ll reward herself at the bay side café with breakfast afterwards. The usual loop of thoughts jog through her mind in rhythm with her feet. She realises as she sweeps up the path, there are no shoes here. She stops, looks up and down the empty track. It’s time. She decides. Today, she’ll leave her shoes here. Make a mark in an untouched place. Another woman will run by and wonder about her shoes. Someone will wonder about her; someone will want to know more about her. First, she’ll finish her run. Then, she will offer her shoes.

She rounds a bend, the golden sun dancing on the lapping water, when she glances behind. Her running shoes are behind her. When she looks down at her feet, she still wears them, yet they are also behind her, left in the same position as all the other pairs. Slowing down, she walks back to the shoes on the path. Yes, they are hers. And yet, not. There are two pairs, the ones on the path and the ones on her feet. She can choose.

She feels no curiosity about this contradiction. For the first time, in a long time, a space opens in her chest. She breathes a lungful of sweet air, noticing the loveliness of the water, the bright pink flowers of the trees lining the path. She feels free. She resumes her run. Nearing the café, she is unsurprised to see the halo-haired woman from the pub nearly a year ago who told her she could choose. Well, she’s chosen. She comes to a halt in front of her, for once breathing easily after such a long run.

She takes her outstretched hand. Her shoes are forgotten, as is everything else. The world brims with possibilities.

Patrick Flanery is the author of four novels, including Absolution (2012), which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award, and a memoir, The Ginger Child. He is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

Photograph by: Andrew van der Vlies
 
 
 
 

Casualties

Logic

Logic aside, I blame my daughter. She was not here when it happened and has not been here for some time. And because she went ahead with the move only a week after the accident, I cannot stop blaming her. I know she knows I blame her and although this makes me fret from time to time it does not keep me awake, even in the afternoon when sleep overcomes me. Sometimes it concerns me so little I almost don’t recognize himself. My despair is to blame.

 
Fool

Ilse insisted she would go for a walk on her own. I was in the kitchen drinking an espresso and told her to be careful but did not drive up the hill to place myself at Ilse’s terrace door and prevent her going out when anyone would say a 95-year-old blind in one eye and deaf as granite should not be walking alone in the mist on a cold July morning. Natalie asked what I was doing at the time, but I can’t remember. It may have been the morning a brushtail fell down the chimney and sat dazed in the ash blinking until I put on the fireplace gloves and wrestled it screaming into a box while France whined from the bedroom.
        What I do remember is that when I went to pick up Ilse for lunch that day, she was greyer than usual. At the organic market, she would not eat her sweet potato soup or slice of sourdough. After dropping her at home and insisting she turn on the heat, I phoned Natalie in Taipei and reported what Ilse had told me: that she took a fall on her walk and might have bruised her ribs. She said she was nauseated and having trouble breathing.
        ‘A fall to folly,’ I said.
        ‘What? You have to take her to hospital,’ Natalie said in her dogmatic way, ‘she might have broken something. And you’d better call her sons. We can’t do this again.’
        ‘I don’t want to go behind Ilse’s back. You know that’s part of our bargain.’
         Later that afternoon, at Natalie’s urging, I went to check on Ilse. She wanted to go buy a crate of wine, which made no sense when she had a cellar full of it. I told her Natalie thought she should go to hospital and let her sons know what had happened. That was the first time I was seriously worried because I could see she did not understand what I was saying. I had to repeat myself three times and when she did finally understand she snapped.
        ‘I just want to go to the fucking bottle-o,’ she whispered, ‘so stop wasting my time.’
        We were sitting in my car, which she had laboured into, wincing with every move. It was the second to last time we sat together in my car. For twenty years we had sat together in cars, going to Shakespeare in the Vines, Chardonnay May luncheons, La Bohème on the beach. It’s not Europe, but then nothing else is, Ilse always complained, even when she’d enjoyed herself. It’s not the Royal Shakespeare Company, but then nothing else is. It’s not Meursault, but then nothing else is. It’s not La Scala, but then nothing else is.
        ‘I don’t need to go to a hospital or phone my bastard sons,’ she gasped. ‘They will simply do what Natalie has done, which is to say respond as if this is the disaster,’ she wheezed, ‘that it clearly is not. Now take me to the bottle-o.’
        I knew she meant the disaster for which her sons had been waiting to have an excuse to put her into a home. Six months earlier, the eldest, Laurent, sold the car out from under her after she changed lanes on the Prince’s Highway coming home from the theatre and sideswiped a Ute whose driver threatened to sue. Even though I disapproved of Laurent’s highhandedness, it was a relief not to have her driving anymore. A month later Laurent took away Ilse’s black pug, Fool, and rehomed it with one of his clients in Kenthurst because he said a dog as pudgy and aggressive as Fool would pull her off her feet and make her break a hip. She was never the same after.

 
Reason

The morning after her fall in Cleland, when I phoned Ilse at our usual check-in time, she did not answer. I drove to her house and found her unwashed and lying on the white Italian leather sofa in muddy jeans and sweatshirt. On the coffee table were two empty bottles of the single-vineyard pinot she’d bought the previous night. She blinked but did not reply when I spoke. I approached to see if she was alive and her breath was wind through sheoaks in my ear. At that point I told her we must seek medical attention.
        ‘No fucking ambulance,’ she whispered before struggling one last time into my car.
        The young doctor who clearly fancied himself did an x-ray while we waited and after an hour returned and reported: ‘Two broken ribs and a collapsed lung. You’re going to hospital, Ilse, whether you like it or not.’ Dogmatic, like Natalie. He did not make eye contact with either of us but kept checking his own reflection in the mirror above the sink.
        Laurent arrived after lunch on a flight from Sydney and the youngest, Florian, rolled in the next morning from Melbourne, by which time Ilse was no longer speaking and neither the doctor nor nurses could say why she was not speaking or whether her lung would reinflate. They did a scan to check for signs of stroke, but there were no such indications.
        ‘Sometimes,’ the doctor told Laurent in my hearing, ‘this happens with very old people. One significant trauma and they go headlong over the edge. It’s just nature culling, to put it bluntly.’
        A short while later Ilse no longer recognized me and did not recognize her sons and by the time her middle child, Maurice, arrived from Singapore, she was thrashing around and had to be sedated. By the end of the week, she was dead. I was not in the room when it happened and did not for a while believe it had and then spent an hour alone with Ilse’s body and understood it had definitely happened. Her skin grew cold. I thought of my mother and father, how icy their hands were in death, how unresponsive.
        That evening I phoned Natalie in Taipei as she was packing to move to Los Angeles with her husband. She made sympathetic noises and looked as though she might cry. Her new job was starting and they had been waiting on the American visas for more than a year. ‘I cannot fuck this up given the direction of travel vis-à-vis the whole China situation,’ she said, ‘and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that it’s past time we got out.’
        ‘Does that mean you won’t come?’
        ‘It means I can’t come, Dad. I’m sorry. I wish I could be there for you. But I can’t let passion get in the way of reason.’
        ‘Passion? Is that what you’d call it?’
        ‘Don’t make this more difficult for me than it is. I was fond of Ilse, you know that.’
        So, I blame her. I have tried to reason myself into a more forgiving frame of mind but cannot manage it. If Ilse had been her mother, or even, I believe, if Ilse and I had been married, Natalie would not have delayed. But because of the nature of the relationship, neither my daughter nor any of Ilse’s sons think we were anything other than flirtatious friends. So, I blame them. I blame all of them.

 
Witness

Laurent, Florian, and Maurice make all the arrangements without consulting me, going ahead with the cremation and not even doing me the courtesy of asking if I might want to attend. On top of it they have chosen a ghastly funeral home called Practical Services, which gets only two stars online. Ilse would have been furious. I also fail to understand why I was not named as a witness on the death certificate.
        ‘Yeah, but, you weren’t even in the room when Ilse died and therefore you cannot technically have been a witness. Do you understand that?’ Natalie says when I mention it. ‘Just because you think you see everything does not mean you are witness to the whole world.’
        I want to tell my daughter I have repeatedly imagined the thrashing and rattle and frantic gaze followed by an exhalation and silence. I have seen it as if I had been there, so some part of me believes that I did witness Ilse’s passing.
        Also, what does it matter whether I was there or not? Who does it serve, except Laurent, who was alone in the room and wants everyone to know it.
        Ilse would not have quibbled over facts.

 
Inheritance

Florian phones the following afternoon.
        ‘Hi, hiya, Peter, I just wanted to see if maybe there’s anything from Mum’s house you want?’
        ‘No,’ I assure him, not a scrap, although there are several of my items in the house. Baking trays and muffin tins left behind over the course of years. A red enamel casserole dish of some value. Sheet music from when I still had the upright piano, the score to Puccini’s Tosca. LPs and CDs and cassette tapes. A complete recording of the Shostakovich quartets. Several rare books on music, a selection of modern novels. But I fear the sons would suspect me of inventing ownership to do them out of their inheritance, the fiends.
        A few days later, Florian drops by with some blue napkins Ilse bought when Natalie and her husband took us to Kyoto a decade ago. Florian is thinner than I remember, balder too. I think of him as perpetually thirty but he is over fifty now and still dressing like a boy.
        ‘I thought you might like these little tokens as a remembrance of my mother. I know you were, you know, special friends.’
        ‘We were more than friends, Florian.’
        ‘Yes, of course, you know what I meant,’ Florian coughs, blushing.
        ‘Would you like to come in for a coffee?’
        He peeks behind me as if assessing the state of the house. ‘No, I won’t trouble you. I’ve still got lots of clearing out to do before I head back to Melbourne. Thanks anyway. Okay, bye, Peter, bye. See you soon.’
        The boys sell or donate most of the smaller articles and take away only a few pieces of furniture while their wives divvy up Ilse’s jewellery. Without the boys knowing I am the bidder, I purchase some of the discarded furniture at auction. That way I get Ilse’s cane porter chair in which I used to sit on summer afternoons during a break from working in her rose beds. I also buy back my casserole dish, a gift from my ex-wife more than forty years ago, and a box of my books that neither the boys nor the auctioneers noticed are all modern firsts. These, I note with horror, are sold by meterage of shelf space. For twenty dollars plus the buyer’s premium I get three metres of my own books and all of Ilse’s cookbooks. Someone outbids me on the Shostakovich LPs, most of which Natalie scratched beyond repair as a child.

 
Property

As the weeks pass, I suspect my daughter is back-channelling with the bastard sons because Natalie keeps asking if I have keys to Ilse’s place, telling me if I do have a set I must absolutely not under any circumstances at all go in the house.
        ‘They’ve had an alarm system installed and if you do have keys and aren’t telling me—no, let me speak, Dad, stop interrupting—or you find a set that you’ve forgotten you have, you should courier them to Laurent.’
        ‘I have no keys, I assure you. That was one thing Ilse would not part with,’ I lie.
        It is true I thought of entering the house after it was cleared but when I got to the front door I noticed the alarm panel just inside and did not want to face a security company or the police.
        A month after Ilse’s death, the realtors dress the house professionally, filling it with ersatz French Country furniture and giant framed photos of kookaburras and banksias, lavender fields, and Highland cattle. They are unbecoming in the space, but that is what people want these days. While there is not a pool, the brochure acknowledges, the old croquet lawn could be dug up. There is staff accommodation that might be turned into a holiday rental. And the Bunya pine in the garden is described as ‘a tree of note’. The façade and roofline are both on the historic register, the terracing at the front all edged with box. At the open house the first Saturday after its listing there is a forty-minute queue to get inside. A koala has clambered into the gum near the front door.
        The estate agent, a man who looks too young to be selling a house of this quality, nods at the koala: ‘That little bugger should add a hundred thousand to the price.’
        Because it is ‘a large heritage property’ and significant expense has been put towards creating the illusion it is a naff boutique hotel, crowds have come to gawp, even those who clearly have neither the intention nor means to buy.
        Ilse would have been horrified.
        The house sells in less than a week. After the sale, I stop walking past it when I go on my daily to Cleland, although it’s on the most direct route. One night, however, I drive over and stop the car just short of the wrought-iron gate. As I watch, the new family goes about their evening routine, curtains open and lights on. It’s either too late or too early to phone Natalie and there is no one else to call but I can’t for some time pull myself together to drive the two minutes back home past the line of skeleton gums. When I do make it back, I feed France before pouring a large glass of finger-lime gin and slumping down to watch the food channel. In the morning I wake to find my laptop purring on the floor but cannot remember leaving it there.

 
Service

Ilse’s sons conclude no one would come to a funeral held in winter, at least not the relatives from elsewhere, those who have emigrated or, now the borders are open, locals who might be spending the winter in scorching southern Europe or boiling North America. So the interment of the ashes has been delayed until summer, and I foolishly imagined Natalie and her scowling husband would attend. But getting settled in America is taking time and they have only just moved into a house in Echo Park where she claims to be too busy for such a long trip so soon after the move.
        ‘If I’m going to come,’ Natalie says, turning her face from the camera, ‘it needs to be a trip of, you know, real consequence.’ These days she rarely speaks without looking away from me. Eye contact appears to cause her almost physical pain.
        I wake one morning having dreamt I was looking for a job as a music teacher in Santa Monica. A few days later, I begin receiving job alerts for such positions and disconcertingly personal communications from recruiters who thank me for having already taken the time to speak to them and asking for a follow-up meeting or evidence of my credentials, C.V., etc. These messages come in such quantities I begin to wonder if I am really alone in my own house, dealing with my grief, alone, and there is not some secret companion, Ilse even, haunting like a dark angel or foul fiend, making mischief for me.

 
Rest

So you find me now, abandoned by my daughter and left alone to negotiate with Laurent, Maurice, and Florian, plus their four-score cavalcade of relatives flying in from Auckland and the south of France, from Switzerland and Bali. I have thought of saying to Natalie, if Ilse’s all-and-sundry can pitch up, then why can’t you?
        Since I began receiving those recruiting messages, Natalie has started managing my email. She relays only what she judges important, so I no longer hear from the local Labor Party. I no longer hear from the World Wildlife Fund or the State Theatre or the vineyard outside Hahndorf where I’m certain I’m still a member of the wine club but from which I have not received my usual half case. I communicate with my book group and other friends via message or phone. I suspect Natalie has been betraying me but have no proof. She insists on scheduling my doctors’ appointments for early morning so she can join by phone from Los Angeles.
        There is to be a graveside service and a luncheon at Mount Lofty House where, I am aghast to discover, ‘people are invited to tell stories about Ilse, whether or not they are true’. All of Laurent’s communications about his mother have an edge of glibness, as if the man is relieved she is gone and wants to needle her in the grave. In the evening there will be a dinner at a wine estate near Uraidla whose whites Ilse judged pale imitations of their European antecedents. The beggarly sons have spared no expense on the events where their own enjoyment is paramount. Ilse is paying for it all, even in death.
         The morning of the service I get up at six and take a terracotta pot full of pink pelargoniums, drag it on a tarp to the car, drive to the Stirling Cemetery, and manoeuvre it to the plot. With my phone I snap a photo of the crypt and my terracotta pot next to it and send this to Natalie, who responds asking whether it would not have been a good idea to take a newer looking pot and not one covered in moss. She fails to understand that Ilse would have thought such a pot perfectly right, because used and useful. Ilse, in fact, might have been the one who bought the pot in the first place, but Natalie does not know that.
         I drive home. The grouting in the bathroom should be redone but is unlikely to reach a crisis before my death. Although Ilse did not want a stuffy funeral, I put on a suit and collar shirt and tie. Ilse would say someone dressed in such attire risks being mistaken for hired help. Ilse is not here to say it.
        The sons have brought their spouses and children and their children have brought their spouses and children, and those children, in two cases, have brought their own spouses and children. Ilse could never remember the names of her great-grandchildren because there were already twelve grands and she struggled with them as well. In recent months she could not retrieve her son Maurice’s name and often blurted out ‘Mollusc’ or ‘Mortice’ and after three or four false starts might land on ‘Morris’ which is not, in Ilse’s family, homophonous. I can remember the names of the grandchildren (bar two whose faces I find offensively smug) but none of the great-grandchildren.
        The sons greet me. Their spouses greet me. Some of the grandchildren nod in my direction but do not speak. In the parlance of Ilse’s family, I am the late matriarch’s ‘boyfriend’. They look at me as if I were some geriatric gigolo, fifteen years younger than Ilse and with designs on her fortune. Only the point about age is true. Would they be surprised to know Ilse and I never did anything more intimate in two decades than hold hands, share a bed on travels, and kiss chastely, which is to say only on the lips, always with eyes closed. It was what she wished. As with all things, she had been frank about that when her husband died and I, passing the house on my daily walk to Cleland, began stopping to chat once we discovered common tastes. Blues and pinks in a garden, no hot colours. Pinot Noir and Grüner Veltliner, no Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc. Wagner and Shostakovich, no Haydn or Prokofiev. How easy. A case of happy casualty, as someone might have put it.
        Because Ilse did not want a traditional funeral there is no clergy. Laurent officiates. It is hot with no shade. A flock of fairy wrens flits chattering around the monuments. Laurent tells a story about his mother that describes a person I do not recognize. Maurice reads a rhyming poem by a poet no actual poet would credit. Florian is the only one who tries to speak from the heart, as it were, the only one who appears moved. Leave it to the youngest, the one picked upon by his older brothers, to mention his mother’s garden and love of birds, walks, and even the joy she found after their father’s death. It is as close as anyone comes to acknowledging their mother’s relationship to me. Florian invited me to speak but I could not find words I trusted myself to pronounce without losing the capacity to finish. She is dead, I would say, gone forever, dead in the earth. I see my reflection in the polished stone her breath no longer stains.
        A few of my friends from the university retirees club and book club have come to support me but the only person I wish were here is in Los Angeles waiting for the opportunity to make a trip of consequence. I suppose she has in mind the consequence of a retirement village in Hahndorf. She can get stuffed if that is the idea.
        The family tomb, Ilse’s rather than her late husband’s, is in the corner of the cemetery, at the juncture of the pine forest and valley of gums to the southeast. It was the late husband who chose the dour black granite and neoclassical design with engraved thistles because his family was once Scottish. It is a two-person tomb. If I wished to be buried near Ilse it would be at some distance, not even in the same alley of graves. Natalie will not approve of me being interred so far from wherever she chooses to live—if she ever makes a definitive choice. More likely she will have the ashes compressed into a diamond she can set in platinum or port me about in an urn as the political winds shift. There is a strong chance she will be moving on from Los Angeles in less time than it took her to flee Taipei.
        At least Stirling’s is a well-kept cemetery. Not like British cemeteries so often neglected, overrun with ivy. This is more like a French or Austrian, even a Swedish burial ground, although it has not quite achieved the refinement of those countries that raise tending the dead to a national art. A cemetery in Uppsala once made me weep, after the divorce, because I could not imagine anyone tending my own grave so assiduously. The only signs of neglect here are several of the older graves whose plots were topped with concrete and the surface has collapsed in grisly, body-shaped oblongs. Stone is more durable. The monuments to those killed at Gallipoli look as new as the day they were erected. In another century, Ilse’s grave, notwithstanding earthquake or fire, will appear just as it does today.

 
Contract

At the last minute I decide not to attend the luncheon or dinner, offering an excuse about the new variants and being around so many unmasked people, but I can tell that none of the sons, not even sympathetic Florian, really believes me. Instead, I go home to prune the Japanese maples and send Natalie a message asking her to arrange for garden services to do a full clean-up before it gets any hotter or drier. The flowers are wilting in the heat because I’ve not turned on the irrigation system. The bore needs a new pump. I take France for a walk past Ilse’s old house and don’t even clean up when it squats in her driveway. At home I pour a double measure of finger-lime gin and then a second and turn on the high-brow movie channel where a Japanese film featuring an old man in a medieval setting is reaching its violent conclusion. Superimposed on the beard and long white hair of the actor I again notice my own reflection in the rain and wind and thunder. France sticks his snout in the glass trying to get the last of my gin.
         Tomorrow the boys will be returning to their homes. Flights out on Sunday morning. Late that afternoon, I drive back to the cemetery where the arrangements of flowers have been heaped on Ilse’s side of the tomb. In the heat they are already drooping. Since there is no one else about, I gather the arrangements, half a dozen bouquets, and carry them to the car.
        At home, I pick out what can be salvaged and put the rearranged flowers in five vases along the sideboard as France watches, panting. When I tell Natalie about it on Monday morning she acts as if I have committed a crime, as if she does not see that I am, although never married to Ilse, her widower.
        ‘But the point is to leave the flowers, Dad. That’s why people take arrangements to graves,’ Natalie says. She does not say what I imagine she is thinking: the only people entitled to take the arrangements are the bastard sons, who are, legally speaking, Ilse’s only next of kin. I know I am a legal nonentity. ‘There might have been surveillance cameras.’ No, I assure her, there are no such devices. ‘What if the police had come?’ she asks.
        ‘The police have graver concerns.’
        ‘Is that meant to be a joke?’
        ‘Take it as you like, Natalie. Don’t let it disquiet you.’
        ‘I don’t think it’s funny.’
        ‘As far as I can tell, you think very little is funny.’
        On her side of the planet she is sitting in the evening glow of a wildfire sky. When the day comes that my doctor tells me I have no choice, I am going to hospital, when the words stop arranging themselves in my mind, when the faces of strangers look like friends and friends like strangers, I wonder if Natalie will have time in her schedule to make the trip from Los Angeles, or wherever else she may be living. In her face there is stark concern, not for wildfires in the San Gabriel Mountains, but for a father who does what she thinks he should not. Imagine her asking friends for a gut check to see whether others think it strange that I should transgress an unwritten social contract with the dead. He would not do well in Asia, I imagine Natalie saying to her husband. No, perhaps not. Some new facet of myself, new to the self who is present on this call with Natalie, sees that the self who took the arrangements from Ilse’s grave was not acting out of love or common sense but was instead fired by malice. New selves are best handled as mercy cases. Put them down before they suffer.
        But how dare Ilse’s sons? How dare she herself? Did Ilse not think, even in her final months, that I might wish to accompany her, as was long the case, wherever she might travel?

 
Belonging

The next day I drive to the half-acre burial ground next to a vineyard where my parents are interred. With kitchen shears I cut the grass around their monument, collect dead leaves, wipe dust from the stone. Using an old toothbrush, I scrub away what has accumulated in the engraved letters. My mother’s determination to be buried next to my father still troubles me; I cannot understand why she should wish to spend eternity lying next to a man who had been so cruel to her, so cruel to me. I scrub my father’s side of the grave, harder than my mother’s. My grandparents are here, and great-grandparents, and their parents who came from England as Primitive Methodists. Though not a Primitive Methodist I have a plot here, adjacent to my parents’; I do not wish to be buried with my forebears. There is little reason to believe such a feeling will translate into action. This is where I will lie, in sight of the vineyard, down the road from the house where my people first settled. They came and they stayed and I have stayed, as if that great leap from North to South was so taxing that every generation hence could not imagine moving on, until Natalie.
        Natalie will not be tending my grave. Perhaps if she puts up a monument, she will visit when she returns to the city where she grew up. With no family left in these parts, however, my death may mark her final trip home. My resting place will be left to the mercy of the council or whatever volunteers take it upon themselves to tend the forgotten.
        On the drive home, I recall my mother’s funeral. There had been solemnity and kindness for her. Ilse’s family seemed to feel little more than relief that this chapter of their lives had reached its conclusion and they would no longer have to tolerate her sharp tongue. The promise of inheritance perverts relations between the generations. I have written Natalie out of my will, though she does not know it.
        When I turn the key in the lock, I wonder why France is not at the door to greet me, why I suddenly catch Ilse’s scent. A woman stands a few paces from me. Her face collapses as she cries out. A man has appeared, shouting, and children are sobbing in the corridor behind the adults, a little girl wailing as if she has, at last, seen the ghost of her nightmares in the flesh.
        ‘Oh,’ I hear myself say, ‘oh.’ Ilse’s scent flows from the kitchen cupboards, from the parquet and sisal rugs. I raise the key in my hand, dangling its chain. ‘This must be yours.’
        Natalie phones me the next morning. It is late afternoon in Los Angeles. Laurent has been in touch with her. Police were involved, although the new owners have been persuaded not to press charges.
        ‘I had to explain that you were deranged by grief,’ Natalie says, dogmatic.
        ‘Mad as the sea?’
        ‘Huh? Stop it, Dad.’ Her features are fixed. She scarcely moves her lips. It is obvious she is in some kind of state. A consequential state, perhaps. ‘I’ve booked a flight for tomorrow,’ she says, staring off to one side. ‘It is time we made arrangements.’
 

Zoe Karpin lives in Sydney’s inner west with her partner and dog and also works as a Learning and support teacher at a south west multicultural Sydney High School. She has had short stories published in journals such as Going Down Swinging, Gathering Force, Hecate & Femzine recently and online journals such as Dotlit and Sūdō journal recently.

After the Bushfire

Jack’s house burnt down in the year with the terrible bushfires and the driest spell since records began in this part of southern NSW.  He would often travel from there to see Sophie in Sydney, expelling carbon and burning rubber on the way. When the bushfires began he was stuck in Sydney. He built the house with his brother and father. He had lived there with some other woman. The woman had left a long time ago. She told him she couldn’t cope with her loneliness, the use of glyphosate in all the gardens and the plastic waste; water bottles, bags and bottle tops, which not only rattled along the gutters of the town’s centre, but along the bush trails edged with wattles and eucalypts out where they lived. She had miscarried twice, one had to be birthed in hospital and it was born dead with a tail. Thank goodness it didn’t live then.
It was not too soon in their relationship for Sophie to tell him. ‘But we will have lots of happy children.’
He looked at her with a half-smile.
Doesn’t he believe her?

When he can, he drives back to his home that is now a block to be cleared. This time he will do it alone. There is not very much left of the house anyway, a skip full.
He will tell her, ‘last time I breathed in the scent of hope but now the smell is of nothing but shovelfuls of charred, crippled tree skeletons dangling torn roots, bricks and glass.’

On his return to the city she sees there are deep cuts in the webbing of his right thumb and index finger. He has bound them together with band aids.
‘You should have stitches,’ she gently takes the plasters off and reapplies fresh ones so he can still move these vital digits. He doesn’t even wince.
In her third storey brick flat in bed at night, with the cool air conditioner turned on so it will run through their torrid dreams, she strolls her hands down the long caterpillar shaped spinal column of his body –  although the spinal column is hard not soft. The vertebras one after the other are like joined together shells. His ligaments hold these shells together; stabilising his spine, and protecting the internal discs. There are three ligaments but she can’t see them only feel their rope length and breadth as she massages his back in the after light. He hasn’t asked for this massage but she gives it to him anyway.
His ligaments have not been torn nor worn away with the weight of what he has carried for all these years;  black handled axes, red bricks, tawny wood, glass, wooden furniture, ghosts of children, other people’s children, chickens, dogs, herbs and vegetables and even her today. He is like many men. His yellow ligaments are rubber, bouncing the weights he has carried as easily as a leather ball. Then there are his discs, shock absorbers, hard on the outside and soft in the core as she has learnt. The discs have never bulged or slipped. However, his spine can get too stiff and he aches before sleeping.
Her palms have five flesh coloured sailing boat extensions each and they travel his body.
But will it become her task every night now to tack the shells apart with her transporting hands?
‘You must talk about the pain,’ she tells him.
‘What pain?’ he says.
However, it’s only after the massage he can make noiseless love to her.

In the morning, he takes her to his no-longer house. They are engulfed in a special smell, a stench, rolling along the freeways, running through the bush. It is the odour of endangered dead native animals. She has never felt like crying because of a fetidness before. However, this time is not like other times and she catches sight through the smudged car’s window pane of one brown, grey kangaroo by itself in the bush; a thin, straggly kangaroo. She hasn’t seen a kangaroo alone in the bush before.  Its back is curved like a singular fluted pearl shell on a wide expanse of beach-like peat. Finally, at his no-longer house  there is the garage he never mentioned, somehow left clinging to its purpose. The Roll-A-Door was up during the fire and it is curiously undamaged. However, all his fine tools he carefully kept on a crumbling bench of withered steel are now reduced to ornamental shadows of their former, solid metal utility. She sees how he clasps these old broken implements in large strong fists, holds them for a while and says, ‘I’ve done a lot with these.’
Her black eyes blur and the tools he clutches merge into his hands.  She says, ‘No doubt.’
She can’t see any self-pity in his gaze nor does he look at her in a way that suggests he wants it.
They move on to the rest of the burnt emptiness. Yet, there are still the concrete steps out the back that don’t go into the no-longer house.
She knows what he means about this particular smell. It is of smoke and burning; the charcoal soil is steeped in the brew.  She is young enough though not to be daunted by any of this.
However, in the once tree filled backyard, a little bird, a young sooty myna bird flies down to land and block their pathway.  The myna with its small specially flight built back and head with the yellow patch behind its eye, shakes itself at them – as if to say, ‘what have you done to my world?’
Then Jack weeps.

Peter Gilkes is a writer, artist and previously an operations and business manager based in Kuala Lumpur. He recently returned to Australia after working in SE Asia for nine years. He has had articles published with the Sydney Morning Herald and is now compiling a book of images and memories of travel from the last 30 years.

The Man with Shaking Hands

June 1980.  Baluchistan. Pakistan.

My bus to the Iranian border slowed down and the driver steered off the highway and parked beneath the canopies of some welcome trees.

It was 11am, a roadside shop cum restaurant for drink and food and ablutions in the Kharan desert of Baluchistan. The scenery was arid. Flat sand plains in 35+ Celsius heat. The hills on the distant horizon were blocks of gold, ethereal in the hazy light, almost imagined.

The coach I travelled on was a landscape itself, a brilliant glistening beetle. Pakistani buses are crazy, colourful creations so distinct from the drab brick cities. The metal frame was adorned with lights and painted colour. There were blooming flowers and strutting peacocks bannered across the front cabin. Between and around the windows were swirling tendrils in rose and green. Lower down the bus fuselage were patterns of gold circles bordered by bright silver squares.  Even the tyres were rimmed in fluorescent blues and orange. For the show of night, strings of coloured globes criss- crossed the roof and sides. Inside the cabin, above and around the driver’s windscreen were strips of multi-coloured mirror embroidery and little threads of swaying beads and sepia pictures of the Kaaba.  The vehicle was an amulet on wheels, a talisman. 

We stepped down from the bus to be met by the silence of the desert. The passengers soon filled the quiet as they entered the restaurant with their chatter in Urdu and Farsi and the seating fuss of the scrapping of wooden benches and chairs across cement, the kitchen clatter of pots and dishes, the wails of tired infants and the sudden scratchy sound of background radio music, now that customers were here.

This was an old route for travel. Thousands of travellers had come before, even Alexander the Great had travelled through Baluchistan. Alexander had entered India via the Khyber Pass but after many campaigns he led his tired armies on an epic journey back towards their Macedonian home via southern Baluchistan around 324 BCE – hear the smack of leather against flesh, the whinnying of horses, the grunting of camels, the shout of foreign tongues.

There were a few armed soldiers on the hill above the roadside halt, guarding the desolate desert highway. There had been a special carriage on my immediate train travel before the bus, an open roofless carriage set in the middle of the train with high armoured sides with firing slits and soldiers on watch for attack. 

Though its population is small, Baluchistan is the largest province of Pakistan. Relations with the government in the capital Islamabad have always been bad. The Baluch are a proud tribal people with many grievances against the Pakistan government. Sudden violent flare ups of resentment have always been likely in this region. 

I entered the roadside world, thinking of some tea or drink and wondering what food I could eat and let’s be careful not to get sick. As I looked around, and as I was looked at in turn, I saw a man who looked different from the rest, sitting just outside the main dining space.

He was perhaps 30 years old, gaunt and tall. I couldn’t place his culture, perhaps Mediterranean, seemingly not a Pakistani and probably not Iranian. 

He wore a black business suit that was creased and stained.  His skin was taunt across his cheekbones and his lined forehead glinted sweat yet he had a handsome well-rounded face except for some acne scars across the cheeks. He had a long narrow nose and milky green brown eyes that glowed and he was clean shaven with a thin black moustache carefully shaped to the edges of his dry pale lips.  His black hair was a thick lustrous clump that he kept tussling and fidgeting with. He could have been a musician, a classical violinist I thought, or some thin gangster type but there was a dignity to him that spoke of responsibility and something earnest. 

His white shirt needed a good wash but it was still a business shirt and his laced black shoes still had some patches of shine. I spotted him first because he stood out amongst the other people who were wearing local clothes in pale tones of brown and green and crème. Shalwar Kameez – long loose cotton shirts down to the knees and baggy trousers of the same colour – coupled with shawls and sandals. There were some other travellers in jeans and t shirts but most of the forty or so men and women and children at the roadside halt wore the practical, traditional dress.

His suit caught my eye, as he sat on a bench on the other side of the tea shop, keeping away from the bustle of my fellow bus passengers, resting in the half shadow beneath a tarpaulin stretched from the corrugated iron tea shop roof. 

I took the wooden bench seat near him and watched him light his cigarette.

His two hands tried to move toward each other to light the cigarette. The matchbox in his right-hand palm gripped tight by his long thin forefinger and his thumb. The match held in his left hand like a needle or a wand. 

His pale lips held the cigarette in place, pucking, as it slipped and slid in the waiting, a thin black line of moustache twitching up and down.

The hand holding the matchbox tried so hard to hold the cardboard box still, and his eyes watched the process so intently, but the box and the match would not meet. 

The match and the box were held in hands that shook so much that after two minutes of trying to strike the match against the flint side of the box there was no success. He could not control his wildly shaking hands.

He seemed as surprised and perplexed as I was. His hands would simply not do his bidding, they shook desperately like the panicking wings of some trapped bird, refusing his will. He turned his eyes up at me and I leaned down taking the box and the match from his fingers and with one strike I lit the match and cupped the flame and he leant down and sucked in the fire and inhaled the magic smoke of the crackling tobacco. 

 I asked, “Why are you like this?”.

He stared at me, regarding me for a long time, a piercing regard, and then he began to explain in carefully pronounced English.

“We were in a car accident in Paris, near the Champs Elysees. One month ago. A big truck was out of control. It came across the traffic and hit our car. I was driving. My baby daughter was in the backseat, she was crushed and killed. My wife was decapitated. I was hardly injured”. He spoke so softly. He was so completely and utterly exhausted. He could have been talking to the whole planet. 

I bought him a cooled bottle of Coca Cola, fished up from a dank well by a young boy, a clanging bucket of clinking bottles dripping wet brown water, and after the flipped rusty bottle top, the stain of rusty grime around the rim. I wiped the rim and he drank.

The cool sweet fizz and the blue tobacco smoke were a breakfast for travellers. 

He sat beside a large battered silver metal trunk and he told me all he owned was inside, but each country’s customs inspectors took a little of what they fancied and it had become lighter and easier to lift, but it weighed heavier on his mind – I later thought to myself that perhaps soon all he would have left after the thieving would be an empty trunk and people would think he only carried it to put things in, not comprehending his loss.

He had a Portuguese passport. He’d worked in the Paris embassy. He had travelled across Europe and had come through Greece and Turkey and Iran to Pakistan. He was now heading to India. “I am going to Goa. I was born in Goa.I want to open a restaurant”. I lit another cigarette for him and smoked one too. He seemed a bit calmer and we talked some more.

But I was travelling in the other direction. My bus going west to the Iranian border blasted its air horn and I said goodbye and left him and went across the highway with the other passengers and we climbed back aboard and I took my place on the roof. I waved back to him and he waved and we were both gone – but he stayed restless in my memory – that awful image of his shaking hands. 

Jordon Conway is an Irish/Australian writer who lives on the east coast of Tasmania. He is a professional landscaper with a background in fabrication, construction and waste management. He has a BFA from the University of Tasmania. His stories draw from his experiences growing up in suburban Brisbane and concern the conditions of working-class life in Australia.

An April Day in March

At 30 years old, in an inclement month of 1981, the now old man purchased a small suburban block of land and began building a two-story house of brick and reinforced concrete. The construction was planned and executed in an intuitive and flawed order, the labour of an impatient and impractical mind.

By the eighth year of construction, it became clear that extensive repairs were needed, and each year following the idea settled deeper that there may be no end to the renovating and repairing of his flawed handiwork. No matter how well he tried to time it, plan it, visualize the exploded view, the reverse engineering necessary to not be lightless, stove-less or without heat and water, it was regularly so. Now in his later life, it became necessary to scale back continuous maintenance and except the fate and limited comforts of his imperfect labours.

The house had become the total of everything he’d achieved in his life. His self-worth waned and pitched with the structure and his back bent like an overburdened rafter as he wound down after a lifetime of struggling with insubstantial endeavours.
From habit, he moved through the house and garden cataloguing the things that needed attention, the flaws and degraded underpinnings. To divert his attention from this irredeemable list and to gain a degree of self-assurance he’d seek out small successes. He’d enjoy switching on the lights over the kitchen countertop to study its polished surface. With his coarse hands gently brushing over it he’d decide that a small triumph was made and the fine grain he devotedly drew out in the wood impressed him and filled him with pride. The cement sheet and wood dust had gone. On the surface of his palm was the grey dust of his skin and the tiny dark fibres of his clothes.

Letting go of needing to maintain the house didn’t come naturally but with practice, over time, what he began to feel wasn’t complete indifference or acceptance but short reprieves. He couldn’t entirely allow that part of the wall he neglected to score properly abandon his mind completely. The inadequately keyed mortar allowed the render to fall away in chunks. But It didn’t occupy him quiet so much or fill him with self-loathing as it once did. The absence of a damp course, a thin inexpensive strip of thin plastic that would have stopped the rising damp, didn’t shame and depress him as much. He could somewhat live with the linoleum curling at its edges around the laundry sink and he drew less from that well of anxiety bore from a lifetime of living up to a standard exceeding his ability.

With this new-found capacity he was lately surprised by the moments he found himself moving back and forth across the unevenly polished wood floor lost in daydreaming and remembering and he found himself sleeping more regularly and restfully. His fingers curled up in his lap formed a grip as though around a brick as he dozed or watched the T.V turned low slumped in his worn leather Morris chair. His firebox rumbling and clicking, expanding and contracting in the cool night air. Often, he’d shuffle off to bed just before dawn.

On one such morning, he stopped at his bedroom window and watched a light rain drift across an erratic sunrise. A young boy caught his eye in the neighbouring back yard. The yard has for years been cluttered and overgrown, an eyesore. Long ago landscaped with dreary slate, crushed limestone and Grey Basalt rock. Pine retaining walls twisted by the weight of poor drainage. Spruces haphazard growth among thick clumps of yellowish agapanthus. The gravel walkway had gone to Titch and Arum lilies. There’d been digs on several occasions over a week before, scrapping back the earth with an excavator and making piles, but it had been quiet since then. The machines engine hood had been left open exposing its vulnerable blue grease coloured core to the weather.
The boy dragged a heavy plastic box across the yard to a long-dry cement pond in the corner near the old man’s fence a few meters from where he stood watching. The pond was bordered with a Basalt wall a half meter high. The boy seemed to be working on his own and after crossing the yard again, and spending some time unravelling a tangled extension cord, he opened the box and pulled out a heavy, grey Jackhammer.

The old man himself worked for many years in construction and landscaping and remembered the bittersweet experience of working alone. The freedom to run his own day, to make and fix his mistakes without scrutiny. But that was all tempered by wanting others to see his invisible efforts. A cut made through an impeding rock to expose its mass deep in the ground, then smashed apart with a Jackhammer and reburied was an effort concealed in the earth forever. A broken pipe he’d dug out repaired and buried again was delicate Invisible labour interred unless he told a co-worker about it. But the old man saw a contradiction in his efforts to not care what his co-workers thought while attempting to prove himself to them. To mention his hidden efforts, to diminish self-effacement, would expose to them his secret desire for approval.

As the old man watched the boy, he remembered unfurling tangled power cables every cold morning of winter and teasing out the knots in the stiffened rubber. Moving tediously back and forth through ankle-deep mud, mixing cement with sodden road base day after day. He remembered as those weeks and years progressed reaching lower and deeper to find the strength to keep going until he felt as hollowed and immovable as a tree stump. Every paycheck was sunk into debts and house repairs preventing any opportunity to step away. And all the small failures at work inhibited his labours at home, keeping him firmly rooted on-site as though ceaselessly stuck in that numbing slush of mud, even in his dreams at night. Some weeks he prayed for injury and a long convalescence. He never saw things progressing and every task was equally tedious right up till the last effort of a long and difficult project. At the completion of a project, his co-workers invariably agree it felt like “it would never end”, but to him, there was never an end and each week, month or year was equally spiritually wasted. With the pressures of work the progress he made on the house, drawn-out over weekends and late evenings was also too slow to perceive any triumph. It seemed to grow imperceptibly like a dark cloud appearing in a clear sky.

He watched the boy pissing against a tree and he wondered if he felt he was being observed. The old man was always painfully shy around other men and felt constantly observed. He’d held in his piss all day if he had too. He’d nudge himself into bushes or jump a fence into a neighbouring yard to find trees or shrubs to conceal himself. His co-workers never went to these lengths, they watched curiously his efforts to cover himself. He understood that being devoid of this nervousness was a great privilege.
He’s watched now, with a touch of envy, the boy pissing against a tree in the far corner of the yard not troubling to conceal himself.

~~~

In his kitchen, the cornices, which hid the uneven cut of cement sheet edges, had long, dark hairline cracks where they no longer met the wall. Sometimes those cracks occupied his mind all day. He’d follow them around the well-lit house at night, into every corner where they met. To clear his mind of these fixations he’d carry them down to the end of the street. He’d take them where the street lights end. Where the trees are gold and reach into the pitch-dark bushland. Where the cold galvanized handrails reminded him of the clicking of boot studs where he’d jump the fence and run along the bitumen around the soccer pitch, slipping on the hard-black surface. Where he’d sit on a cold thickly painted wood bench resting and breathing heavily. He’d be reminded of his boot mud drying to dust on the slate entranceway his father laid in a rental house they couldn’t keep. Limping from his painfully blistered feet, the pain of growing out of boots his parents couldn’t afford to replace. The agony of ingrown toenails and groin strain when he quietly wept on his bedroom floor three days a week after training. After home games he’d kicked a ball against the clubhouse wall under a street light, alternating left to right to strengthen his legs evenly. His father drank in the clubhouse and spoke to the other boys’ fathers more than he ever spoke to him. He drove an XC Falcon four-door sedan. One-night driving home he was drunk and quietly furious. The powerful engine reared the front end gradually up as they increased their speed along a long straight stretch of road. A tan Labrador appeared in the headlights on an unsealed shoulder and his father swerved to hit it in a silent rage, the wheels losing traction on the gravel. The dog barrelled under the wheels hitting the firewall under their feet as they mounted the road again. His father’s anger was always internal and silent until it found its expression in violence. It was always a guessing game as to why he was bitter, but its effects were often terrifying. The old man recalled this with some of the same fear, even now after so many years. With memories like these he felt his shallow foundations, his self-worth seemingly always vulnerable to the mysterious unspoken standards his father held him to. In some part of his mind, that dog is still laying on that road slowly dying.

He mimicked his father as a child at school, turning morose and scowling at people for no reason. He wouldn’t talk and sat alone at lunch hoping someone would notice and try to talk to him so he could ignore them. Through mimicry, his father’s sadness and anger were refined in him. He carried it into adulthood until the sudden realization that nothing was tempered by it. The world didn’t stop for a second no matter how much he willed it to. And no amount of sadness or anger prevented any tedious, back-breaking task from needing to be done.

Sitting on a bench one night at the end of his street he looked back down the road towards the gently sloping gardens of newly built estates and remembered a family trip to the botanical gardens. His parents fought, and his mother walked away down a hill and sat under a tree. He and his father circled her as they walked the path around the gardens. He asked his father to let him go to her. But his father kept them walking as tears welled in both their eyes and they both watched her peripherally, motionless and staring at the ground. They passed the duck pond which had been drained for repairs, and he felt empathy for the ducks left wandering without the comfort of water. They passed a group of boys from his school and they saw his father crying. One ran up behind him, tugged his shirt and fled. His father’s hand shaped as though around a brick against his chest hooked his son’s shirt collar and he pulled hard and down. His father seemed to awaken after a moment and looked at him as though he were a stranger. Taking his wrist, his father led him down the hill to his mother and they all sat mutely listening to each other breathing. Under a wet tree waiting in silent rage and sadness, he switched off like a TV. He knew it wouldn’t be ok until he could close his bedroom door behind him. He had to endure the long silent walk to the car, the mute drive home, he had to stop pining for comfort that seemed impossibly far away. A longing that stretches time too painful proportions. It was here that he learnt the malleable contingent distance of the passage to a sanctuary of his own. And he’d prayed for the patience to endure the expanse between him and an unobserved refuge that breathes in his presence, a place that holds its breath till he returned.

He remembers that same feeling of exhalation on recently visiting his childhood home. A cul-de-sac not far off a newly built motorway. He turned the car towards the field he played in as a child as the long pastel-tinged shadows of late evening triggered the memory of tangled bushes you could build tunnels and caves in and the exhaustion of constant movement. He parked before the long thin path leading to the field and felt unable to leave the car. A smell of burnt plastic and exhaust in the air as he wound down the window and the car quietly idled. A discarded crumbling asbestos stucco sheet was leaning against the alleyway wall. A brown leather purse discoloured by the weather discarded under Dicot weeds, everything seemed like it had been there since he was a child, on pause, ageing again in his presence. Like the street had begun to breathe again exhaling the dust of him. He felt his heart sink as he stared at the cement archway to the field. A patch of dirt where the grass died back, where kids had ignored the walkway and taken a short cut to the open field, leaving indentations of boots and the tough grey roots of titch grass exposed. These marked the shortest route to immunity. Where he could be hidden from the street and those apertures into the lives of his parents. He thought about how even old sanctuaries hold their allure as he turned the car around and drove back towards the motorway.

~~~

The boy slams the chisel into the Jack-hammers chuck unaware of the need to release the locking pin. The hammer awkwardly slipped from his hands as he reaches for another chisel from the box, a threaded chisel this time. As the jackhammer silently fell between the rocks in the wall of the pond the old man felt glad the boy was alone and not subject to the scrutiny of his co-workers. The boy threw down the chisel and left the Jackhammer leaning against the rocks, purposefully striding out of view towards the house and returning with a sledgehammer.

The old man examined the seams of his double-glazed windows through the sheer curtain, he pinched the roughly patterned lace and pulled it aside to run his eyes along the edge of the window frame inspecting the rubber. He touches his hand to his face, running it down his cheek, across his chin feeling the uneven surface and the deep hollows of his eyes. With these hands, as an interface with the world permanently thick and dry, everything is course and peeling even the surface of glass. He had long ago felt the smoothness of skin but not with these hands. Burying his face in his lover’s loose dressing gown, his cheeks and lips on the soft skin of her chest. He remembers how she craned her neck to look down at him and stroked his hair as though comforting a child, kissing his forehead as he wrapped his arms around her waist his fingers gripped as though around a brick. A soft, green light enveloped him as he closed his eyes and thought how unjust it is for these memories to be so clear. His hands described a permanent decay in their swollen joints and peeling callouses. So much injurious weight saddled by these fingers between now and the memory of her. But as the things they’ve built had begun to ruin, he’d built monuments in his mind to intangible things. Now undistracted by his labours he’d turned to experiences long forgotten and was tortured by the memory of things hopelessly unreachable.

~~~

He slipped into his boots and despite the deteriorating weather, left the house on the pretence of weeding along the fence line. The job didn’t especially need to be done but he couldn’t resist telling the boy how to use the jackhammer. He just needed a reason to be outside near the fence. He approached the fence and began pulling weeds making small piles every few meters. After a few minutes, he stuck his head over the fence and watched the boy as he struck the rock wall with the sledgehammer sending shards across the yard. “You’re going to break a window doing that, strike the mortar,” said the old man to the boy. His hard, nasal inflection expressed a menacing pitch. As much as he was aware and ashamed by it the old man was unable to prevent himself from sounding superior. It was obvious that when he spoke in a condescending tone, in that thicker drawl reserved for other labouring men, that he wanted to show, but not to share something with the boy.

The boy stopped immediately. he looked anxiously along the fence line before his face sunk in the knowledge he was being watched and now felt obligated to engage in conversation. “You’re not using the Jack Hammer?…… Why not?” the man asked attempting, unsuccessfully, to diel down his condescending tone. The boy looked down to the prostrate hammer among the rocks, about to speak but instead silently gestured towards it. He recognized he’s not being paid to talk to this guy and felt no reason to be polite. He gripped the sledgehammer again and struck the rock. “Wow,” the old man bellowed mockingly as shards of rock hit the fence and slashed through clumps of Freesia’s skirting the pond wall. “You should be able to get through that no worries with the Jack Hammer”, ‘I’ll show you, hang on there,” he said as he began moving towards his side gate.

~~~

Out on the road, the street was lined on both sides by large 4wd utes and trailers. It seemed every house on the street was busy with construction a symptom of the recent boom in house prices. He continued moving over the neighbour’s lawn taking a shortcut across a thinly mulched garden bed and around a slightly leaning faux sandstone letterbox.

In the neighbour’s driveway, the compacted gravel had been scrapped back to re-expose the clay beneath. The rain had pooled in wheel ruts and boot-prints. He reaches the driveway gates and released the latch, the drop bolt had dug a semi-circular cavity deep into the mud making it unnecessary to lift it, he pushed the gate and stepped into the yard. A row of uprooted acacia trees lay on the ground waiting to be mulched. An upright wood-chipper, looking new and practically unused, stood just beyond the gates. A 24-litre air compressor tilted into clay dragged across the yard as far as it could reach without sinking and tipping over into the mud. Scraps of timber we’re piled with empty cement bags, coffee cups, bent star pickets, concrete, mangled Rio bar and chicken wire in a freshly dug hole filling slowly with grey-brown water. The six-ton excavator stood motionlessly bowed at the rim of the hole. It seemed inexplicable how different the yard looked than from his window. The ground had been heaved up chaotically, earth, rock and plants rolled together in messy piles. The clouds had condensed to make the day prematurely dark and added to the scene of desolation and although he could see the boy on the other side of the yard he felt interminably alone. The haunting feeling of being subject to an insentient world came back to him, a place where there’s no use in begging against an unassailable force. A place where your dread is as useless as the squirming of a worm cut by the teeth of a giant excavator, the ground engaging tip of a huge pitiless machine.

The boy knew the man was coming towards him but didn’t look up. He scowled down at the earth. He was excavating around the rock wall with a short-handled flat shovel. “You should be using a spade,” the man said to the boy as he mounted the incline to the pond and watched the boy bending the blade of the shovel to its limits. He noticed the boy had uncovered a sinew of reinforcing bar which ran the length of the rock wall encased in concrete. The man reached for the extension cord and the cable of the jackhammer. Suddenly he heard the sound of a motor starting and a dog began barking over the neighbouring fence. Looking over towards the house he could make out the movements of a figure crouched by a petrol-powered Gurney adjusting the throttle and choke. The stammering motor smoothed out as the man turned to watch the old man take up the jackhammer. It occurred to him now that there were other men who were working on a garden area along the left-hand side of the house which he couldn’t see from his window. A feeling of cold dread washed over him as he approached the rock wall with the jackhammer. The boy leaned his shovel on the fence and after a short pause to look at the old man, he walked towards the house to join the others. He had been wrong about the boy being alone. The boy knew he was watched but had shown no interpretable care whether he was or not. The boy was gifted with that privilege he had envied all his life. The longest stretch of earth yawned before the old man, a volcanic plane of shifting rock and ash of enormous weight. He could feel the men gather together at the end of a low veranda that stretched around the back of the house. Its timbers half trimmed and nailed down, a clean almost dry platform for them to observe him. He couldn’t hear the men over the gurney but in his periphery, he knew they were talking to each other, discussing the situation and smiling as he pressed the tip of the jackhammer into a divot in the mortar and pressed the trigger detonating the hammer into brutal thrashing noise and movement.

Quickly he understood, after the hammer made light work of the mortar and hit solid reinforced concrete underneath, that he’d made another terrible mistake. As his hand gripped around the handle of the hammer and pivoted the heavy machine hopelessly back and forth to find a weakness between the concrete and the rock, a cold sweat of terror began to bead on his upper lip. How had he misinterpreted the situation so completely? The concrete was far too hard for the Jackhammer to be effective and it’d need to be cut into sections with a demolition saw if there was any hope of removing it. His embarrassment at his arrogance made him determined to make an impact on the wall with the Jackhammer, but deep down he knew it was hopeless. His hands gripped tighter around the handle and his thumb joints began to ache under the strain and vibration. He wished he’d stopped to grab gloves, safety glasses, and earmuffs but it was hopeless now as they watched him skip comically across the surface of the concrete with the hammer showering his face with dust and debris. Sweat began to drip down his face and thighs as he attempted to control the direction of the hammer tip. The men stood smiling and shaking their heads gathering closer together to hear each other over the sound of the Gurney motor. The dust began to settle on his face and hands, mixing with his sweat, forming a clay-like layer on his exposed skin. His hands battling the barely restrained vibrations gripped so tight around the handle they felt as though they were fusing to the aluminium frame. The shuddering tore up his arms and through his shoulders and into his head distorting the form of his body hunched over in stiffening agony. His foundations exposed in delicate ruins. The yard seemed to be expanding and he felt as though he was sinking and leaning into the softening ground, his joints hardening as he was weighted downward. He felt his body giving way like a badly built platform for an enormous weight of time. These men watched attentively his final futile posture upwards against gravity as he slated into the mud, first in small parts than larger exposing his unsupported core. He Tilted heavily, as though an overburdened crane without outriggers, stretching out and reaching beyond the limits of his arms. Impatiently finished he decreased in his flawed outer limits while increasing the bore inside. Carving away at the pitted surface of the hammer cylinder in a dizzying circular motion. The stroke of the gurney’s piston worn loose till it noiselessly moved along the polished surface and oil pushes through the gaps in the rings. The pump over-heated and seized no longer able to fight the pressure building in the hose. A dark substance burned in his chest as one rough painful cough of blue smoke dissolved in the air as he blinked through a sheet of rain towards the square-faced profile in the window. The man inspecting the seams on his windows was holding the sheer lace curtain with a clawed hand as though gripping a brick against his chest.

Winding down the Gurney motor shuddered and shifted its weight on the wet surface, clicking as it cooled and completely stopped. Cycling down and ringing in his mind like a tiny bell. Subtle green shadows moved imperceptibly slow across the sky as the hammer dropped awkwardly between the rocks. The clouds continued their formless fusion as the rain continued to gently fall and wash the dust into the topsoil. The delicate labour sinking deeper out of view. As the soft green light enveloped him completely, he thought he heard the heavy footfall of the men approaching from across the yard.

~~~

He remembers the sound of his father’s shoes echoing across the courts, a persistent measured approach which he couldn’t quite tell the distance of. He let his ball roll away off the bitumen and into the dirt. And when he turned to face him there was no one there and he felt abandoned. He dreaded the long silent drive home but equally feared being left there alone. He ran towards the sound of the car starting and idling in the car park.

Dominic Carew is a lawyer and writer from Sydney. His short stories have won or been shortlisted for several awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His first collection of short fiction, No Neat Endings, will be released through MidnightSun in February 2020.

The Barbecue

One spring when I was thirteen, my best mate’s family moved in around the corner. We lived in Manly, with the beach close at hand. My parents had recently landscaped the backyard, put in a new deck and paved part of the lawn. The centre-piece of all this, without question, was Dad’s brand new eight-grill Weber. With the hedges trimmed so neat and the bougainvillea flowering, the Johnsons seemed happy coming over.

“You should open a shop,” Ed’s mum said one time. “The place looks that nice.”

“Mum,” Ed said, rolling his eyes. “What kind of shop?”

“An outdoor one. A BBQ shop. Go and play with Mike, Ed.”

“Have a look at this Weber,” was all Dad said, in Mr Johnson’s direction. “You can wood-fire pizzas with it.” But Mr Johnson said nothing. He just stared at Dad from across the lawn, his eyes narrow and his head held back. I didn’t realise until a few weeks later, when we hosted another barbie, that this gaze had confrontation in it. Militant, was the word I would have used, had I known what it meant when I was thirteen.

Ed and I had been mates since year one. We played soccer together and went to St Pauls High up the road. We looked pretty similar, blonde and gangly and sunburnt half the time, though the biggest thing we had in common was our dads. They weren’t the same people but they had the same hang-ups. Time and distance were two of them. Money was another.

Ed’s Dad was a financial accountant. He worked in the city at an investment manager with its logo on a Sydney-Hobart yacht each year. He was forty-eight. Mine was a surgeon. “Bones and joints,” he’d say when asked what kind. “Things that go crack and pop.” Then he’d laugh at himself until Mum, arms folded, would shake her head at him to stop. He had, for as long I could remember, always laughed at his own jokes.

“Better than never laughing at all,” Ed said to me one time when we discussed it.

“Rick? He’s got a sense of humour, doesn’t he?”

“I’ve never seen him laugh.”

“Bullshit.”

“I haven’t. Once he tried to laugh, when he got promoted, but he couldn’t.”

I looked at Ed. “I never noticed.”

“Hey,” he said, “let’s stop talking about our dads.”

“Deal.”

This year, like last, we didn’t make the semis. Soccer was over until March, which meant we’d have to find new ways to spend our Saturday arvos.  As thirteen year olds, hanging out in my backyard while our dads stood over the barbie, competing about whose steaks were a better cut and who got the best deal on a kilo of sausages, was not on our agenda.

“You boys’d wanna stick around,” Dad said as we made our way to the back gate. “These are gonna be delish.”

“We’ll be back later,” I said, though he wouldn’t have heard me. He’d bent forward already to scrape last weekend’s char from the grill. We could hear the sound of that scraper, like rapid-fire, half a block away.

*

We went to Copenhagen one day, the ice cream joint on the corso. It was cheaper than the place at the wharf. Not as good. Fewer options. But on our pocket money, we really should’ve been getting paddle pops from Coles. With hands around our single scoops to protect against gulls, we walked to the beach and sat on the steps there. It was quiet. The surf was flat and for a moment, despite the crowds of stumbling toddlers, all seemed still.

“This ice cream’s shit,” Ed said.

I agreed with my friend. I would’ve said so too, but was chewing a piece of honeycomb that must’ve been really old. It tasted bitter.

“Know what I saw the other day,” Ed said, staring at his cone sadly, as if it were a person, a father say, who’d let him down. “Dad reuse oil from brekky on dinner that night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Dad does that too.”

“It’s not the tightness,” Ed said, shaking his head at his ice cream, which was melting down his hand, “it’s that he makes so much money and doesn’t spend it.”

This, I happened to know, was true. The Johnson’s had lived in Dee Why since Ed was born. A cheap suburb by Northern Beaches’ standards, and one Mr Johnson had always refused to leave. Despite his huge income, he’d had no intention of selling what he referred to as “a perfectly adequate home.” Then Ed’s grandad died, leaving them a house in Manly. They moved in as soon as probate cleared. I knew all this cos my parents discussed it one night after the Johnson’s left our place. Something in their tone of voice was mocking. Like they were a little bit better than that.

“Dad spends it,” I said, swallowing the honeycomb at last, “But only on the house. On that stupid barbie.”

“It’s a good barbie but,” Ed said, gazing into the distance. “Fwor, see that bloke on the body board? He just kooked it.”

*

Ed and I had started surfing a year earlier and were still both hopeless. It didn’t bother me so much; I’d have preferred to have been good but wasn’t out to change my fate. By thirteen, I’d developed what I see now as a philosophical system, able to resign myself in the face of my inadequacies. Over the years, it’s been a useful tool. It still is today, probably more than ever, as a father, with two sons of my own.

Ed, though, had a different view. He took his failed attempts to stand up on a board as a personal affront. As if the other surfers, the world, God himself, had all conspired to sleight him.

One arvo, we ate shit for an hour on a shore-break, gave up trying and headed home up the beach. “Fuck this,” Ed kept saying, his leg rope rattling against the hard waxed surface of his board.

“Oi Johnson,” someone yelled from behind us; a girl’s voice, high and teasing. “You looked good out there!”

We turned around and saw it was Emily Miles. She stood on the sand in a pink rashie, her blonde hair wet and knotted, her tanned, freckly face glowing like a dimmer version of the sun. She was in our class at school. Year Seven like us, and already sponsored by Quicksilver.

“I just can’t seem to stick it,” Ed said as we walked up to her.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Shoreys are the worst to learn on mate. Wait till it’s high tide.”

“Yeah,” Ed said, looking at his feet. He’d gone red and was trying to hide it, I knew. He liked Emily. He hadn’t told me this yet, but I could tell he was keen to pash her.

There was a silence. You could hear those shore-breaks thudding into the sand.

“Well,” she said, “here comes Rach, see you’se.”

We watched her run with her board under her arm to Rachel Sullivan, a Year Nine girl on the junior pro circuit. They were both infinitely better than us. As they jogged up the beach towards Queensie, giggling and nearly stumbling over themselves, I couldn’t help but think they were laughing at our expense.

*

A few weeks later, I was in Coles with Dad, helping him prepare for the barbie. He had a shopping list that ran across three pages, all in landscape, tabulated, with a space in the far right column to record the prices.

“I know it seems pedantic,” he said to me, “but once you’re in the habit, it’s no trouble at all.”

I didn’t really listen to him explain why he did it. Something to do with keeping them honest; who ‘they’ were, I didn’t know. The fifteen year old check-out chicks?

“Ooh, ooh, ice cream special. Neapolitan Mike, three o’clock.”

“Hang on,” I said, “don’t we have some at home?”

“Yes mate. But this is the best price I’ve seen for it. Get three tubs. Then meet me in the meat aisle.”

I got the tubs and carried them, stacked and cold against my chest, across the store. This would make six tubs in total. I wasn’t even sure we had space in the freezer. I knew we had the barbie this Sat, but even so, based on my rough estimation, there’d be enough Neapolitan for the guests to have five bowls each. In the end, I resolved not to question it, the memory of a two-for-one baked bean deal, and the drama that came with it when Dad tried to buy fifty tins, too fresh in my mind for comfort.

When I got to the meat aisle with the tubs, Dad was on his knees with his head and most of his torso inside a fridge.

“Mike,” he said – his voice sounded tinny, and echoed like he was in a cave – “take these as I hand them to you,” and he passed me tray after tray of grey, icy, priced-slashed steaks.

As I unloaded the trolley at the check-out, Dad stood behind me, scribbling into his table. The sound of his pen, the urgent scrawl of it, made me clench my fists.

“Beautiful,” he said, after we’d packed the boot. “That took six minutes less than planned. Mike? Hold onto your seat, mate. Bunnings is still open,” and he laughed full pelt for the next ten seconds.

*

On Saturday, Ed and I helped my parents set up for the barbie. The Johnson’s were invited, as well as the Crawley’s and the Mitchell’s from Mum’s church group and a few other adults I’d not met before that Ed’s dad knew from work. We carried two long tables down from the deck and placed them on the grass, end-to-end. Mum had collected an array of different flowers from around the neighbourhood. Not exactly legal, but this didn’t seem to matter. She had us arrange them in terracotta vases along the table. “Put the wisteria and the birds of paradise together at the ends. No Mike, the wisteria? And the birds of paradise?”

Once we’d finished that, Ed and I pleaded our case to be let off for an hour. We wanted to surf. Ed’s sister, Melanie, was around, helping with the salads, so we got our wish. As we left, I noticed Dad and Mr Johnson standing near the barbie, staring intently at their watches and twisting the dials, like they were synchronising time.

There wasn’t any swell. We sat offshore straddling our boards and talked about girls. Ed said he didn’t want a girlfriend. And I said that was bullshit and he should just ask Emily out. He said if I was so sure why didn’t I ask Beth Simpson out, cos he knew I liked her and hung around her locker every arvo to watch her pack her books. “But her locker’s next to mine,” I said, “where else would I be at final bell?”

“Don’t deny what you know is the truth,” he said, frowning. He held the frown for a moment, then we both cracked up. It was what his dad said whenever they argued. Ed liked to mimic it, though never in front of Mr Johnson.

“Don’t deny, young man,” he went on, swinging his arms and splashing up water, “what you know in your guts is true.”

*

After showering and getting into a clean polo shirt and a pair of pressed shorts, I sat at the table in the yard next to Ed. It was sunset. A peach-coloured sky spread overhead, streaked with golden clouds. The Crawleys, the Mitchells, Mum, Melanie, Mrs Johnson and three other adults were seated, pulling bread apart and buttering it thickly, or pouring hefty splashes of wine or picking grapes from the heaps along the table.

Dad and Mr Johnson stood at the barbie which, by now, was covered in cooked meat. They each held tongs. And a European beer – Dad had bought three cases on special a month earlier. Every now and then he’d take a sip, then say something over his shoulder to the table, laughing.

“The salads look divine,” Mrs Crawley said to Mum, piling her plate with a healthy serve.

“I just think those kinds of short-term fixes are nonsense,” Ed’s mum was saying to a man opposite her, “you can’t expect to tax rich people and promote a healthy economy.”

“Agree entirely,” the man said. He held the stem of his wine glass between his thumb and finger like he was pinching it.

“Who wants rare?” Dad yelled.

“Bloody for me,” Mr Mitchell said.

“And me,” said his wife, throwing back a full flute of sparkling wine. “Would you look at the sky?”

My steak was perfectly cooked, the marinade Dad used so thoroughly soaked-in, you couldn’t even tell it was old. I chomped away. As did Ed and Melanie and everyone else. The sun had slipped behind Dobroyd, leaving Manly in shadow. Up above, fruit bats commenced patrol, their angled wings spread wide, like little stealth bombers.

“Good steak,” Ed said, his mouth full.

“Potato salad’s awesome,” his sister chipped in.

I nodded, my own mouth full, and turned my head in Dad’s direction; he was sitting with Rick at the end of the table. They were entrenched in their own conversation, to the exclusion of the rest of us. I couldn’t make out the words, but the way they moved their hands, their heads wobbling in my periphery, suggested a topic of some severity. Then, as if the last ten minutes had been building to it, Mr Johnson threw down his serviette and yelled in a frantic, high-pitched voice, “Incorrect!”

It was like a car had just smashed into the house. Knives and forks clinked onto plates; all went silent.

“That is incorrect,” Rick said, his voice even higher now, and still very loud, “and you bloody well know it.”

“Rickard,” Mrs Johnson hissed from halfway down the table. But he didn’t seem to hear her.

“It’s not incorrect,” Dad said, squaring back into his seat and pulling a piece of gristle from his mouth. “It’s bang on accurate.”

Now at this moment, we witnessed an event rarely beheld so that, when it happened, no one quite comprehended it. Mr Johnson gripped the edge of the table with both hands and he, well, laughed.

“Rickard?” his wife said.

“Har har har,” her husband went, his mouth contorting into some kind of smile.

“It’s four hundred metres or under, and I’m not kidding you,” Dad said.

“You’ve measured it, have you?” said Rick, whatever imitation of mirth he’d offered, no longer on show.

“Not per se. But I make the walk enough to know, within five metres, how far we live form the sand.”

“If it’s four hundred, I’m the next prime minister.”

“Well,” Dad said, “I hope you’ll have us over to Kirribilli House.”

“What on earth are you two talking about?” said Mum; she had her wine glass up, away from her face, like she was showing it off.

Neither man spoke for a moment. Rick stared at Dad through narrow eyes.

“Why won’t you take my word for it?” Dad said. “We’ve lived here five years. I think I’d know.”

But Rick just kept staring.

At the time, and for a long while after, I thought Dad’s a reasonable question. We had lived there five years. Dad walked to the beach at least once a week. He could guess pretty well about distance. What’s more, Rick was sitting on his lawn, at his table, eating his half-priced steaks. The least he could do was pretend to agree. Over the years though, I have, if not come around, at least come to appreciate Rick’s position. I’m in finance myself now, a controller in a hedge fund, and I’ve learned over the course of my career about men like Rick. Put simply, they can’t help it. Accuracy’s a type of vice. They thrive on and, at times suffer for, it. Of course, in this case, pride was at play too. The Johnsons lived a K from the beach, maybe more. If we lived within four hundred metres, what did that make them, the house that they’d inherited?

“Listen,” Dad said, getting up from his chair, “if you’re so bent on this, let’s go and measure it.”

“Brian, for goodness sake!”

“You’re on,” said Rick, standing up as well, but far too quickly, with rigid shifts in his limbs, so his chair went toppling over.

Dad disappeared inside the house while Rick remained standing at the table, looking around at everyone with pursed lips, his eyes focused, as if we were a corporate board he had to convince of something.

“This won’t take a moment,” he said. While his tone was polite, there was not, as far as I could tell, apology in it.

“Got it!” Dad yelled from up on the deck, waving a cricket ball-sized GPS in his hand. “Let’s go.”

*

At school on Monday, Ed and I avoided each other. When we talked about it later, we both agreed this had nothing to do with our friendship, which, as it turned out, would remain intact for the rest of high school. It was more out of a sense of duty. A mutual interest in keeping our families away from each other, at least until the heat came off. Tread lightly for a day or two while the ceasefire took hold. That kind of thing. When on Tuesday we met at recess, the first thing Ed said from across the quad, before I’d even reached him, was, “I don’t wanna talk about Dad.”

No beef from me. I didn’t want to go there either. We walked over to the table by the bubblers and sat down to eat.

“He’s taken it pretty bad,” Ed said, ignoring his veto of moments ago.

I nodded solemnly. “Well he shouldn’t. One more metre and he’d have been right.”

“He was convinced, convinced, the GPS was wrong.”

“He made that pretty clear,” I said, nibbling on a shape.

There was a silence. Then he said, “How’s Brian’s nose?”

“It’ll be alright,” I said, though by alright I meant the fracture would eventually resolve into a permanent kink.

As we ruminated over this, a little embarrassed, tacitly committed to delicate words, a voice sung out from behind us.

“Oi Johnson,” it said.

We turned around.

“Heard your old boy bashed Mike’s dad on Sat.”

It was Emily again. She was smiling her white Aussie smile. Beth Simpson, to my horror, stood beside her, blowing a bubble with grape chewing gum.

“Rach was down at the beach. Saw the whole thing.”

“They were mucking around,” I said, not sure who should feel more ashamed, me or Ed.

“Not what Rach said.”

“Yeah, well, they were,” I said, feeling my cheeks go hot from Beth’s stare. And from trying to lie.

When they left the house, at a jogger’s pace, we looked at each other around the table then jumped up together and followed suit. The kids, the adults, everyone. Dad and Rick charged ahead, their eyes glued to the GPS. As we trailed them, I noticed how different they looked from behind. Dad, tall and broad-shouldered with a thick wall of silver-specked hair at the back of his head. Rick, short and wiry, his arms moving quickly at his sides. When they got to the sand at North Steyne, they stopped and peered down at the machine. Dad raised a fist to the sky, a great smooth violet arc, scratched here and there with etchings of cirrus.

“Told ya,” Dad yelled, so we all could hear – we’d held back on the promenade. He laughed. First to us, then in Rick’s face. The punch, when it came, was so swift, I had to ask Ed if it actually happened.

“Maybe they should go easy for a while,” Emily said. “Or only hang out when grown-ups are round.”

“That’s a good one,” I said and I kind of meant it.

The girls stood still for a bit, then walked over and sat down opposite us.

“My dad bashed someone once,” Emily said after a pause; she rested her arms on the table.

This got Ed’s attention. “Really?”

“Yep,” she said, leaning forward. “Some bloke tried to sell him a car. Said it’d done fifty thousand,” – she looked at Beth, then back to us – “turned out it was fifty thousand… and four hundred metres.”

We watched them walk across the quad a second later, laughing and pushing each other.

*

As soon as my boys were old enough to walk, I had them in the water. It’s part of growing up in beachside Sydney. By eight, they could both surf. This delighted me, though Dad, seventy by now, thought it chagrined.

“You could never surf. But your kids can. Are you saying that doesn’t annoy ya?”

“It doesn’t,” I said. I meant it.

What annoys me is when they leave for school with their shirts hanging out. I can’t stand it when their shoes are scuffed, their hair’s messy or when they don’t wash their hands. I try to be generous with them. More generous than Dad was with me. And I think I do a good job of that. I make a point of not caring about distance, time, prices, even though I’m paid to count. But when they look like slobs, leave their plates lying around, even for a minute, I let them know I’m not happy. I’ve learned that every father has his own nuanced hang-up, and neatness is mine. I’m not naïve enough to think my kids don’t dislike me for it. But I’m also not about to change. As I’ve said, you resign yourself in the face of your inadequacies. Ed still hasn’t accepted this, and in that respect I guess he’s just like his dad. But look. That’s another story.

Maree Spratt is an educator by day, writer by night, and reader at all hours. In 2016 she was shortlisted for Seizure‘s Viva La Novella V, and has since expanded that piece into a novel. In 2018 she completed the Hardcopy Professional Development Program for Australian Writers. She writes to celebrate people.

The Ice Cream Girl

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m the last student left on the school grounds. All week it’s been 40 degrees, and the courtyard outside the staffroom feels like the inside of an oven. I’m sitting at an old desk Miss Waters has pushed up against the glass outer wall for me, just next to the locked door, so I’m easy to see but still not invading her exclusive, air-conditioned space. She looks pretty comfy sitting inside on the brown sofa, working her way through a stack of exam papers as she drinks cold water from a coffee mug.

Hardened balls of chewing gum cling to the wood beneath my desk like molluscs attached to the bottom of a ship. It’s gross, but sometimes I run my fingers over them, and in this heat they feel dewy. I can feel my butt sticking to my plastic seat, and I’m scared that when I finally stand up there will be a circle of sweat on my skirt. I can see it now: when I walk home later down Kelly Avenue, the grade 12 boys will already be sitting in their camper chairs on Jack Wood’s lawn, each of them onto their third or fourth tinny, and when they see me they’ll cat call and ask me why I’m wet.

Frustrated, I use my pencil to shade out the picture of a penis that someone has drawn on the desk, covering it in a shining layer of lead. From time to time I look up and stare longingly at the water cooler in the staffroom corner, watching the bubbles that float cheerfully to the surface whenever Miss gets up to pour herself another cup. They have a fridge in there, too. Back in grade eight, when I was a major try-hard, I used to collect ten rewards stamps a week and claim a free ice-block from the freezer every Friday. I’d usually go for a Cola flavoured Zooper Dooper, although one week I collected twenty stamps and Mr Moreton let me have a rainbow Billabong. The sight of that fridge makes my throat tighten.  In primary school, our teacher read us a super depressing story called ‘The Little Match Girl’ in the last week of school. Right now, as I stare longingly through the glass, I reckon they could write an Australian version of that story about me.

I do my best to keep adding lines to the piece of A4 paper Miss Waters thrust at me when I arrived outside the staffroom for this, my after school detention.  Miss hates me because she thinks I don’t respect her. She thinks I don’t respect her because I talk all through her lessons. What she doesn’t understand is that I talk because I can’t concentrate on what she’s got to say anyway. The staffroom has air-conditioning, sure, but this is Malooburah High: not some fancy school in the city. The majority of classrooms have this thing called an AirBreeze, and although it’s not great at cooling down the room, it’s excellent at creating what my Mum would call ‘an infernal racket.’ It’s a hungry, box-shaped monster affixed to the ceiling that noisily sucks hot air out of the room like it’s slurping a milkshake through a straw. I think everyone knows that it doesn’t really work, but at the start of every lesson we badger the teacher to use it, raising valid arguments about our human rights, until eventually – no doubt because the heat is driving them crazy too – they give up and turn it on. At that point the lesson may as well be over. I’m not going to sit and try to lip read in a noisy room that still reeks of BO, no matter how often Miss Waters wants to shriek my name and her catchphrase – show some respect! – over the asthmatic wheeze of the AirBreeze and the hum of twenty-seven other kids ignoring her too.

The detention is supposed to be about the fact I never bring my laptop to school, but she’s added a dig about me talking in class to the sentence that she wants me to copy out. She wrote it on the first line in blue ballpoint, with x100 circled in the top left hand corner of the page. This simply confirms that she hates me. I asked around at lunch to see who else has had an after-school with Waters, and pretty much everyone said that she only ever makes you write out sixty lines, max.

‘I must bring my laptop to class every lesson, and I must respectfully listen to my teacher when she is talking,’ I write for, if I’ve been counting correctly, the forty-third time.

What Miss Waters doesn’t realise is that in the last year, since the second round of lay-offs happened at Maloobarah Mine, things around my house have been going missing. My father was the first, and arguably the most notable, disappearance. He told us he’d gotten a new job as a FIFO – but instead of just flying out, he fucked off. Not long after that I noticed that Mum was no longer wearing her pearl earrings, and when I checked the bathroom they weren’t in her jewellery box either. The rug disappeared from the living room floor. The TV went missing, and the only explanation we got was that we should be doing our assignments instead of watching it anyway. But then my laptop vanished too, and I had nothing to do said assignments on. All that we’ve gained in the face of all this loss is a growing pile of empty wine bottles in the cardboard box underneath the sink. When I walk them to the recycling bin on a Friday night and lift the lid, I always grit my teeth before I drop them because I feel sure they will shatter. In actual fact they never do– but the thump they make when they hit the bottom always, to me, feels violent.

It would have been far too complicated to explain this set of circumstances to Miss Waters when she asked where my laptop was, so I settled with a safer excuse: I forgot to bring it. It’s still charging up at home on my desk. I used that same excuse for weeks, even after my desk had disappeared too. Eventually I swallowed my pride and put my name on the list at the library to borrow a school-issued device, though not before I’d earned this detention with Waters.  Every school laptop has a numeric code written in yellow permanent marker on the back of the screen, in big, bright numerals so they don’t get lost or stolen. Mine is number 8-2-3, but it may as well say P-O-V. It takes about twenty minutes to load at the start of every lesson. Another reason why I talk in class.

My punishment for neglecting to bring technology to school is to sit and write with what I could have used instead: a pencil. I wonder if this is an example of an ironic situation. I’d know for certain if I’d listened to that lesson on ‘comic devices,’ in which Miss went through 57 Power Point slides on what it means to be funny without cracking a smile once – not even when the class erupted in laughter at the moment she realised that Dallas was stuck. Incredibly, he’d managed to crawl all the way to the other side of the room without her noticing and squeeze the first half of his body through the window in a botched effort to escape. I really hope that he got more than sixty lines.

The pencil she’s given me to write my lines with this afternoon is covered in bite marks. The rubber is missing and someone has crushed the thin metal casing that used to hold it with their teeth. Kids can be real feral sometimes. I get hungry, sure, especially lately – but I’m never going to start gnawing on my stationary. When I cross the T on teacher for the 52^nd time, the lead breaks. Typical. I stand up and press my face against the glass. Waters looks like the star of some furniture commercial, relaxing on the sofa with a plumped-up pillow beside her, her perfect hair framing the sides of her face as she calmly writes feedback on another exam paper. I tap on the glass –I guess a bit aggressively. She looks up at me, although I feel like she’s looking through me. She puts her marking aside and walks over to the sliding door, wrenching the handle down to unlock it. She puts her head out but keeps her feet in. it’s enough for me to catch a gust of the air-conditioning.

‘I need a better pencil,’ I tell her.

‘Now. Could you say that in a politer way?’ she asks. I hate the way she speaks. It doesn’t matter what she says, what I hear is always the same: you’re an idiot.

‘Probably.’

‘I can’t address this problem for you until you ask me to do so in a politer, more respectful way. So what are you going to say to me instead?’

I know exactly what she wants me to say, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to say it. If I bat my eyelids and chime ‘may I have another pencil please, Miss Waters?’ I reckon I might vomit in my mouth. Which would be saying something, because I haven’t eaten anything yet today. There’s a withered brown leaf at me feet. I grind it into the concrete with the tip of my shoe.

‘The pencil you gave me is fucked,’ I say. ‘Reckon you could fix me up with one that actually works?’

I’m definitely not the first student at Maloobarah High to talk to a teacher like this. It’s a style of communicating with authority that I’ve only adopted in the last year or so, though. I look into her eyes defiantly. She stares back. A thin film of tears starts to cloud my vision. For a moment, I think I can see the same intensity of emotion in her eyes, too. Then she turns her back on me, takes her pencil case off the coffee table and withdraws a better, sharpened pencil. I sit back down at my desk, my skirt practically squelching, and drag the feet of my chair against the concrete as I move forward in the hope that the sound makes her flinch.

She doesn’t react.

‘I’m going to choose to ignore the fact that you swore,’ she says, placing the pencil on my desk without looking at me. ‘This one is brand new. When I hear from you again, I want it to be because you’ve finished all your lines.’

She slides the door closed and returns to her place on the sofa. I’m glad that I didn’t cry. A slow rage simmers in my chest as I pick up the new pencil and write for the fifty-third time that I should bring my laptop to school and respect my teacher. I think I’ve actually managed to upset her. She’s picked up her exam papers again but her pen remains poised over the top one, and her eyes are staring into the page instead of darting over it. She’s also forgotten to relock the door.

I remember feeling overcome with anger when our primary teacher read us that story called ‘The Little Match Girl.’ She lies outside the window of some rich family in the freezing cold, staring in longingly at their Christmas turkey and their fireplace, until she suffers hypothermia and dies. A few sooks in the class cried when they realised she was dead, but more than anything, I felt anger.

“Why didn’t anyone help her?” I asked my teacher.

“I think that’s the question the author wants you to ask,” she replied, without actually answering it for me.

“Why didn’t she break into the house?” I asked.

I remember my teacher laughing at that. “I guess because she was a good girl.”

Back then I saw myself as a good girl too, but I still thought that if I were in her situation, I would have tossed a rock through the window. Right now I’m fairly sure that I’m not going to die of heat exhaustion, so my situation is not as desperate as hers, but I still feel almost as pathetic. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. My head feels light. The lines seem to blur and shift as I write. I’m not going to throw a rock through the glass, but I decide that if the chance arises, I will do something to help myself. I’m not going to let Waters, of all people, make me feel this small.

I’m finishing off my eighty-sixth line when the opportunity presents itself. She puts her glasses down on the coffee table, stands up and smooths the edges of her dark grey pencil skirt. She turns on her heel without acknowledging me and walks down the short hallway, disappearing into the toilet for female teachers. I know I have to act right away. If I’m lucky she’s gone to do a shit, but Waters strikes me as the uptight sort of bitch who would only ever want to crap at home. She’s had so much to drink from the cooler that I reckon she definitely needs to piss, and although I should factor in time for her to wash her hands and primp her hair in the mirror, that still only gives me three or four minutes at the most. I stand, slide the door open properly, and walk in. The cold air envelopes me instantly. It feels as good as jumping into the town swimming pool on the first day of the holidays. I walk swiftly but softly across the carpet to the water cooler, collect a plastic cup and fill it up to the brim. I skull it. Much like the air-con, it feels glorious. I crush the cup with my hand and toss it in the wastepaper bin. Then I make my way to the fridge. The plan is to grab a Billabong and hide it in my backpack. Finish my lines quickly and then eat it on the way home, even if it is half-melted. My hand is on the freezer when I’m suddenly distracted. There is a photograph pinned to the bulletin board nearby that commands all of my attention.

It’s me.

There is a photograph of me on the wall.

I know that time is running out, but this is too weird to ignore. It’s sitting there beside four other school portraits, lined up in a row like a series of mug shots from an old-school Western movie. And based on the other photos, I am in the company of outlaws. There’s Ethan, who deals drugs in the toilets. Sarah, who threw a chair at Mr Oberton last year. Tia, who I haven’t actually seen at school since week one, but who I did see drinking with some older guy down by the creek on Saturday. Roger, who is suspended for smoking behind the industrial bins. And then, right next to Roger, there’s me. Of all people, me. I walk over and run my finger down the laminated edge of my photo. It’s the first time I’ve seen my school portrait this year – Mum hasn’t bought one since year two– and although I look kind of pale, and the small community of pimples that lives on my forehead is very visible, overall I reckon I don’t look half bad. The deep blue background they make you pose in front of actually brings out my eyes. There’s a heading above the mugshots: YEAR 10 STUDENTS AT RISK, it says. I don’t get it. This is supposed to be an English staffroom, but that is surely not a complete sentence.

At risk of what?

What do they think I’m at risk of?

Is it something they think I’m going to do, or something that will happen to me?

Is it so bad they can’t bring themselves to say it?

I hear the unmistakable gurgle of a toilet flushing, and I know I should hurry back outside, but it might already be too late now, and the anger is surging in my chest again. If you ask me my picture belongs to me, so I remove it from the bulletin board and stuff it in my pocket, the thumb tack still in place. The ice-creams I know I have no claim to, but I’m angry, and I want one. I can hear the tap running in the toilet as Ms Waters washes her hands. I throw the freezer door open and my eyes fall on a packet of Zooper Doopers, a few loose Billabongs, and – praise God – a box of Magnums. I grab the Magnums and make a run for it. I don’t even bother to close the freezer door. There also isn’t time to pack the box into my backpack, which is slouched against the leg of the desk. As I scoop it up off the floor and toss it over my shoulder her new pencil falls and lands on the concrete. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lead breaks.

When Miss exits the bathroom I’ve already blitzed half-way across the courtyard with the box of Magnums held tightly against my chest. She doesn’t bother to chase after me. Over the sound of my own laboured breathing I hear her shout something about phoning my parents. Well, I think, good luck to her. Mum doesn’t answer the phone when she’s drunk, and Dad – I’d actually love it if she managed to get in touch with Dad. He doesn’t pick up when I call.

Jane Downing has had poetry and prose published around Australia and overseas, including in Griffith Review, The Big Issue, Southerly, Island, Overland, Westerly, Canberra Times, Cordite, and Best Australian Poems (2004 & 2015). A collection of her poetry, ‘When Figs Fly,’ was published by Close-Up Books in 2019. She can be found at janedowning.wordpress.com

Spitting Out the Bones

The interior of the restaurant in the small town south of Bordeaux was warmly lit. Ainslee had not met Rees and Pru Hardwick outside of their son’s storytelling but she instantly recognised the couple being shown to a table inside. The progress of the two across the restaurant was framed by first one and then the next broad window. Ainslee paused on the cobbled street to watch them and Finbar turned to urge her to hurry.

She should have known there’d be problems when Finbar told her they’d have to dress for dinner.

‘Really? I was planning to go naked,’ she’d joked.

His face had told her all she needed to know about the seriousness of his meaning. She’d already been made to understand how incredibly generous his parents were being to include her in the invitation to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. In the south of France. When her parents celebrated twenty-five years of marriage, they did it in the backyard surrounded by family, friends and barbeque fumes, not on the other side of the world. So Ainslee did count herself very lucky indeed to be in Europe. She and Finbar were tacking a few weeks of travel on the back of the trip, a smattering of capitals and fine art. She knew showing enthusiasm wasn’t cool so she’d kept it under wraps like a Christo coastline. She was pleased with herself about that comparison: her first taste of the effects of French sophistication.

Predictably, because when men dress for dinner the instructions are black and white, Finbar and his father were mirror images of each other in well-fitted suits and discreet black ties buttoning up starched shirts. The older Hardwick, seen through the restaurant window, was carrying his age well, with some help from a supporting cummerbund. Less predictably, Ainslee found her boyfriend’s mother a shock. Pru Hardwick was wearing the same shade of grey – called charcoal with poetic license on the label – as the dress Ainslee was wearing under her coat. The same fitted Mad Man style dress. Damn the advice of women’s fashion magazines.

‘It’s not the exact same,’ Finbar laughed. But there were enough similarities for him to have noticed when she handed in her coat at the vestiaire. ‘You’re going to fit right in,’ he added sarcastically.

She’d piled her hair up, equating this with adult elegance. Finbar moved towards the tables and Ainslee pulled out an elastic tie, two combs and five pins and played cheap Santa, depositing the hairdressing aids at the foot of a potted pine tree. She shook her hair free. It’d look like a bird’s nest, which had all the advantages of not being a bit like his mother’s style.

She also prepared a smile which was wilting by the time they too had gained the specially booked table in the far corner of the restaurant. The carpet was so thick she felt herself sinking with every step. The depth if the carpet pile muted all sounds. The ensemble on the back wall played pianissimo, the maître d’ glided ahead of them as if on wheels.

And then the rush was on them. The older Hardwicks were up and Finbar was embraced and bear-hugged and he turned to pull her into the circle and there was all the awkwardness of an introduction when all parties know they’ve been talked about, but do not know to what extent, and by which details.

Ainslee knew about the money, the generations of successive accumulation through business interests, whatever that meant; the advent of paid parking lots had been spoken of, as someone had to be on the side being paid. She knew about Rees Hardwick’s private school, the name of which she’d vaguely recognised, of the class he was in with a former Attorney General. She knew he paid a fortune for hair plugs and had a line of PAs who were invariably swipe-rights, and that he barracked for Richmond, or at least one of the clubs with an animal as its mascot. She knew Pru Hardwick was a keen gardener and had three employed at peak times on their block and had a Daphne of particular temperamentality which was the bane of her life.

As she offered her hand to shake, she wondered what the parents had heard about her. Mr Hardwick looked her directly in the eye, implying he knew things even Finbar didn’t know to divulge. Or maybe that was her projected fear. No one mentioned her spot-the-difference charcoal grey dress. Politeness maybe, or because by then Rees Hardwick was in full flood with his own concerns.

Champagne was opened by a waiter at her side in the traditional way, the air escaping around the released cork with the sigh of a contented woman.

‘Son, a good trip?’ the father asked after he’d detailed his own.

‘Did I tell you Ainslee is vegan?’ Finbar said as a reply.

All eyes turned on her. So that’s something you couldn’t have told them earlier? When discussing a big silver anniversary dinner in the south of France? Thank you very much. Ainslee reached for her champagne.

Pru Hardwick spoke for the first time, with some of Ainslee’s feeling of ire in her voice. ‘No Finbar, you didn’t tell us.’

‘They can rustle up something our dinner eats,’ Rees Hardwick said loudly, waving his hand in the direction of the discreet wait-staff.

Ainslee didn’t look at Finbar. She gulped down too much champagne in one go then realised she should have waited for a toast, then didn’t care and downed the rest of the glass.

‘Thank you for answering one question for me,’ his father congratulated Finbar once the dietary requirement was conveyed with exaggerated eye-rolling. ‘That old one about whether vegans fuck meat eaters. Sleeping with the enemy.’

Mrs Hardwick slapped her husband’s arm. ‘Behave,’ she hissed.

Ainslee realised this was not the first bottle of champagne for the night. She pretended not to notice the atmosphere and reminded herself of the dangers of first impressions. Finbar wouldn’t have got a look in, with that name for starters, and the plum accent. They were probably sweet gracious people when they weren’t celebrating. In the south of France. Her own mum was indiscretion’s first cousin when she had a few Moscato in, and hadn’t Ainslee and her friends made the same jokes about the products of other animals and blow jobs? Besides, the champagne flute was miraculously full again and they had a train to Barcelona booked for the next afternoon and they had food to concentrate on in the meantime.

‘I am sorry you’ll miss this unique experience,’ Pru assured her with great sincerity. Ainslee looked for traces of Finbar in her dragged and plucked and redrawn features. No, there was nothing off the distaff side. She wondered if the Botox was an anniversary present. The lips smiled. ‘Is this a health thing?’ the woman asked. ‘I’ve heard it is an excellent diet for keeping weight down.’

Ainslee eyed Pru across the rim of her glass, wondering where her cheekbones were under the layers of makeup. Ainslee could have been polite. ‘Yes, it is a health thing,’ she answered. But she wasn’t. Polite. ‘I don’t eat animals – for their health and wellbeing.’

‘Well at least this one has spirit,’ the older male Hardwick boomed.

Ainslee blushed. She felt a stab of complicity, because she agreed with him entirely. Finbar’s last girlfriend had been a mouse: posh like him, quiet like him. Then she registered the preface to his father’s observation. At least. She suddenly wondered, belatedly, was she Finbar’s bit of rough?

Finbar’s shoe touched hers under the table. Maybe she’d passed a test with this faint whiff of approval from his father. She slipped off her right shoe and rubbed her foot up his calf. He kept his eyes on his father and she gasped silently to herself: I really am in France, the land of Proust and Colette, of castles and cathedrals, of cafes and Existentialists. And cabbages and kings. All the things she’d fantasized about when she was bickering with her sister in the shared bedroom of the family’s ex-govie house, their mother’s sewing machine going like the clappers in the nook beside the kitchen. And now she was here.

She glazed away from the conversation as she took in more of her immediate surroundings. She figured Rees Hardwick was deliberately describing the killing of animals in detail for her benefit and she was pretty sure she didn’t owe him her ears. The restaurant was full, each table like the candle-lit interior of a Dutch painting. She noted how young she and Finbar were amongst this crowd.

Before she could take in details, she couldn’t help tuning back in on the word ‘illegal,’ which Finbar’s mother echoed for effect, clearly having had twenty-five years of practise being her husband’s cheer squad.

‘This is a very special night,’ Mr Hardwick murmured more softly than any of his previous announcements. He touched the side of his nose, an international gesture of collusion. ‘I’ve paid an arm and a leg.’

Which was a lot less than the birds were paying. Ainslee put the echoes of his lecture together: the little songbirds that were soon to be served were illegally caught in nets as they migrated to Africa. Ainslee was no longer surprised by the techniques of animal farming, but that was the easy bit to hear and she was listening now. There was a hush all around them, all stray sounds absorbed by the carpet and their intense concentration.

‘The ortolan feeds at night and it’s an easy matter to trick the birds into thinking they live in perpetual nighttime. They’re kept in dark boxes, nothing barbaric like the Romans who stabbed their eyes out. There they gorge 24/7. Right little porkers, gobbling down the grain until they’re obese.’

The word was an insult on his tongue.

Ainslee kept up a protective commentary inside her head. Oh the French, oh là là, she told herself. Don’t be shocked, she told herself. It’s another culture. She’d get a salad for sure, they’d try to sneak in a blue cheese dressing but she’d be gracious while not eating it. Instagram reassured her constantly, when in Rome – you could do whatever you wanted these days.

‘Ingenious these people,’ Rees Hardwick approved.

Her host was clearly enjoying himself. Ainslee imagined boyhood dinners with only-child Finbar hanging on every word. The poor little bugger. She rubbed her foot higher up his calf, contemplated resting it on his lap, but realised for all his father’s self-absorption, he had an eagle eye.

‘They’ve figured out the best way to kill our ortolan dinner. Drown the birds in Armagnac. Death and marinate in one go.’

Ainslee blanched just as the restaurant’s volume was turned up high. Clapping started near the door to the kitchens and rose in a wave across the tables. The smell and the sizzle arrived at once. A trolley for each table, manoeuvred by a chef in a double-breasted white jacket and a high white hat. Upon each the obese little birds rested on a bed of flames. No more than a mouthful of flesh and bones taking the central role in the performance art of flambé.

Blue flames lay as foundation for the mesmerizing shots of red and orange. Ainslee tore her eyes from the blubbery songbirds in the midst of the fire, from their staring eyes, and she watched the Hardwick family continue to watch them cook in brandies and oils. Was it greed in their eyes? Was she reading too much between the lines, pivoting on the hard word ‘illegal’ and the soft word ‘songbird’? Finbar was almost certainly hungry from jetlag and journeys. Hunger and greed are related, though not twins. She wanted to see only hunger.

But she wasn’t to see much more.

She had a friend who grew up in a cult. She still heard Wendy’s astonishment when she realised anew that the rituals she’d taken for granted as a child could make her new friends laugh.

Ainslee laughed as the group on the next table each placed a large white serviette over their heads. Then their chef condescended to explain how this operation served to contain the aromas and flavours of the ortolan and thus optimised the dining experience. He bowed before he pushed his empty trolley back to the kitchens.

Pru Hardwick was giggling rather than laughing. ‘They say the serviette protects you from God’s eyes,’ she added. Then she went under.

Her husband made a great display about placing and straightening his God proof fence.

Ainslee caught Finbar’s eye. The omnipotence of God was the great mystery here. If only she’d known a thin layer of starched linen could arrest His gaze. She said all this in lover’s morse code, a wide-eyed goggle followed quickly by three blinks.

Sighs and groans emanated from under the tent city of gourmands around them. Ainslee followed Finbar’s look downwards to the dead songbird on his plate. It was a bloated yellowy blimp with stunted wing nubs and blank eyes.

‘Beak and all?’ he whispered.

The crunching around them answered yes. They’d watched her neighbour’s cat eat a mouse together. Even it had left the head.

‘You’re not…’ Ainslee gasped.

But he was. He shrugged. ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do.’ His face disappeared and his disembodied hands passed the ortolan unto the maw that lay beneath.

There was no-one left for Ainslee to roll her eyes at. If they could only see themselves. Her dad would cack himself. She could hear him in the rough voice she’d become embarrassed by once she got to university. Bunch of cultured twats, he called people like this. Looking like dicks under starched serve-you-rights.

Finbar gurgled beside her. The bird was to be eaten in just one mouthful. She imagined his tongue reaching the skull of the bird. She knew the weight of it in her own mouth: heavy and firm. The bone would shatter under the weight, collapse into creamy brain. The ribs would splinter around the organs, the nutty heart bursting, the punctured lungs released gulps of Armagnac. One mouthful, to be eaten in one go. A crowd masticating alone, shielded from God’s eyes. Chewing and sucking. Not one of them would notice if she got up and left. She could take her pretentious mistake of a dress and her spurt of ‘spirit’ and her retreating footsteps would be muted by the carpet and eclipsed by the introspective sensual pleasures the patrons had paid a fortune for.

A tintinnabulation of bell-like noises sounded around the restaurant as she pushed her chair back. Tiny chimes as the larger indigestible bones landed on pure white plates.

She was simultaneously inside Finbar’s mouth being sucked and gnawed and outside on the cobbles again looking in on the velvet curtains and brass lamps and depth of history and saturation of high culture. She might condemn but she saw that she was the one who didn’t fit the world. For the length of a bird’s song she was a class traitor and longed for such an incontrovertible sense of belonging.

But birdsongs, she realised, don’t last long even when they’re not cut short by nets and torture.

Caitlin Doyle-Markwick is an activist, writer and performer from Sydney, by way of Newcastle. Her writing has appeared in publications like Overland, Antipodes and Otoliths. Working with her theatre collective BigMuscles SadHeart, she wrote and produced her first play, JobReady, a surreal, black comedy about the welfare system, in 2017. In 2019 she was a resident playwright at the Old 505 Theatre, where her latest play, As She Lay, will premier in 2020. Caitlin is a member of Solidarity and the Refugee Action Coalition.

Cunjevoi

Tiny bubbles of oil swell and pop, and swell and pop, occasionally sending boiling droplets flying outwards like golden spittle. Little red-black dots speckle my forearms where it has got me before.

The blood smell has gone and has been replaced with the protein smell. The meat smell. I flip the patty and it hisses at me. Steam billows up and around my face.

I feel a hand on my waist. Not my waist, the bit halfway between back and bum, whatever that bit’s called. Jamie leans around me, but not so close that the steam gets him.

‘Mairana, would you mind jumping up to the counter for a while? We’re a bit short.’

‘Ah, yeah… sure’, I say, shifting to the left to let his hand drop off my body.

‘Geordie, can you…?’ he looks at Geordie and indicates, with a yellow-white latex-gloved hand, to the two hotplates. Geordie nods, moves in between the two plates. You get to be dextrous with those spatula and tongs after a while, like Geordie is.

I go out the back to swap my apron for a clean one and examine myself in the mirror. The sweat sits thick on my face. I wipe it off but it appears again straight away. My skin has broken out in pimples again. There’s a halo of frizz around my head, and my black curls spring out at all angles. I try to flatten it all with my palms, but then give up and pull it all back into a hairnet.

I step back to see myself from a distance. My shirt stretches too tightly across my boobs. I gained weight, will have to lose it so that button doesn’t pop. I pull the apron up and re-tie it.

I look through the round window into the kitchen. The door keeps out most of the sound and it’s like looking in on a silent film, one stuck on loop where the machines and the people keep doing the same movements. I cross my eyes slightly to blur my vision. Now it looks like a watercolour, where the paint hasn’t dried yet and is still sliding across the page. All smudgy silver, yellow, red. Sometimes I do this, just to soften things a bit.

Jamie’s face appears in the window, a blot of pink.

‘Coming,’ I say, refocusing my eyes. I swing the door open and walk up to the counter.

For the year I’ve worked here I’ve managed to stay mostly on cooking, where I don’t have to face the public and I can’t hear the train announcements flooding in through the front doors every other minute.

A customer waits while I navigate the ordering system. I pretend not to notice him. If I say sorry he’ll think I’ve done something wrong, so I don’t. I want to tell him, it’s this computer, the bastard-of-a-thing, but I don’t.

‘I need to jump on a train at 10:50,’ he says.

‘Just a minute.’ My uniform is sticking to the sweat on my back. ‘Okay. What can I get you?’

‘A large chicken nugget meal, please, with Fanta, not Coke.’

I notice the man’s collar is stained yellow where it meets his neck. Doesn’t he know not to wear white twice in a row?

‘Will that be all?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Tap here, please.’

He pulls his card out of his breast pocket, which has a blue logo on it in a star shape, and a pen stain.

‘Thanks, Darl’’. He’s happier now his nuggets are coming.

‘Mairana, you’ll have to pick up the pace before peak hour.’ Jamie’s voice comes up from behind me. ‘We’ll be getting slammed soon.’

‘Okay.’

He walks back into his office out the back.

‘Little prick,’ Clara says, only loud enough for me to hear. She’s behind the computer next to me. Clara’s worked here for three years, Jamie for nine months.

‘Geordie reckons he’s getting promoted to regional manager soon,’ I say.

‘Scum always floats to the top,’ she replies.

‘Ha…Yeah.’ I wonder if scum would have bought us all Celebrations chocolates for Easter when he arrived, like Jamie did. Probably. A scummy ploy, maybe.

For the next two hours, the orders come non-stop. It’s just past two o’clock, the end of my shift, when they slow to a halt.

‘Where’d you say you moved to, Mairana?’ Clara asks in front of the lockers.

‘Arncliffe,’ I lie.

‘Ah yeah, that’s right. Same line as me. Leaves in five, we better be quick.’

‘I’m actually going to stay at a friend’s house nearby,’ I lie again.

‘Oh.’ She smiles and winks, ‘got it.’

Some clothes and a book fall out of my locker onto the ground.

‘You wanna squish a bit more in there?’ she says.

‘I keep meaning to clear it out but… you know.’

‘Yeah. G’night. See you tomorrow.’

‘Yep. See ya then.’ I wait for her to leave before I pull out the blanket.

I check my phone. I’ve missed the Lithgow train. Damn. The Newcastle train, second best, leaves in five minutes. I check that Clara has gone and then run across the station hall and through the gates.

I manage to go unnoticed by the noisy lads going back to the Coast, and find an almost empty carriage. The nylon seats are purple now. I like it better than the bureaucracy-green of the old seats. Purple feels softer, more like a colour someone might paint their bedroom.

I lie down on one of the three-seat chairs and pull my blanket around me as the train starts moving. A voice comes through the overhead speaker in a tired, indifferent drawl. Sometimes I feel like the surly tones of the drivers are reserved for me, as if they can see me through their cameras, curled up on seats that were made exclusively for bums, thighs and backs, not for torsos, heads, feet. Or like I’m a stranger they found lying on their porch in the morning.

‘Thank you… we hope… journey.’ I catch the driver’s last words.

I open my book to the dog-eared page. I found this book on the last train. Next door to Number Twelve-and-a-half was an empty shop. It had been empty for so long that Mumma often groaned and grunted her way through a hole in the paling fence and hung here washing in the backyard. When Roie and Dolour were little they had often peered through the black glass… But I’m too tired to keep reading. I drape a scarf over my eyes to block out the light as the train staggers out of the city.

A hand pats my shoulder gently.

‘Good morning, Mairana.’ Rohit is looking over me with his nice smile, holding his cleaning equipment, a bag in one hand and the long pincer tool in the other.

The train is still and the sky outside is turning pink.

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Pretty well.’ My body feels heavy and my eyes aren’t ready to open yet. ‘Deeply, anyway.’

‘No trouble?’ he says.

‘No, no trouble.’ I rub my eyes. ‘Thanks for waking me.’

‘You are welcome. You have a good day, take care.’

‘You too. See you soon.’

He pincers a soggy newspaper and puts it in the bag before going upstairs.

A coal ship sounds its horn as it is pulled into the harbour. A deep groan that rumbles under my feet and up through the city. Another fifteen ships sit waiting in a sullen line along the horizon.

By the time I arrive at the beach the sun is up, casting a greyish light over the flat ocean.

I pile my things close to the water where I can keep an eye on them, and change into my swimmers under my towel.

I walk slowly into the water until it reaches my waist and then dive in. The water’s still cold. It’s that time in December when the ocean is still catching up to the air.

Under the cover of the water I rub my underarms and my groin clean. The grease on my skin rises to the surface and swirls around me for a moment before it drifts off. I get some sand between my fingers and rub the skin on my face until it feels smooth.

I put on my goggles, take a breath and dive down as deep as I can. I push the air out of my lungs so that I can sit like a stone on the sand.

I used to do this as a kid, only then it was in those chlorine suburban swimming pools, where the sides are curved and painted that aqua colour so the pool looks like it goes on forever. It was part of a game I would play with my friends, called ‘Stone’. I’d stay down there as long as I could, until I thought I might pass out. I got to be very good at it.

I move my fingers side to side front of my face. They look like they’re glowing. Why does everything look whiter under water? Beads of air cling to the tiny hairs all over my body. I touch my belly and feel movement under the surface. Does the salt water make your organs float? My skin feels liquid to touch, like it might just dissolve in the water.

All I can hear now is the blood pumping out of my heart, up my neck and past my ear drums, so that it sounds like the whole ocean is pulsing around me. My lungs start to feel tight after a minute. I can’t hold it long these days.

I wish humans had evolved to have bigger lungs so I could stay down here longer, in this blue blue blue where there’s no clanking or announcements or complicated orders of chicken-burger-without-the-cheese or fat-sizzle noises. What if we rewound evolution and went back to the sea? Back past the point of fish and their shark terror to the calm of being a jellyfish, floating along with the current, not even needing lungs or breath, maybe glowing, if it’s deep enough. Or a Cunjevoi, squirting a bubble of air out every so often to keep things fresh. Or seaweed, or some other part of the seabed, thinking that the sky is that silvery layer that is the top of the water and never knowing what the real sky is, never needing to know.

The edges of my vision are going dark now. I push myself back up to the surface and my lungs inflate with air again.

The first morning swimmers are arriving. A late middle aged couple, retirees probably, who go to bed early and wake up at this hour by choice.

I adjust my swimmers as I get out of the water. They’ve gone saggy around the bum and the underarms.

‘Stunning morning, isn’t it?’ says the man.

‘Lovely,’ I say.

I rinse off in the shower and buy a coffee to drink while I wait for the bathrooms to open. Not sure why the coffee shop opens first. I unwrap the burger from last night in my handbag – I’ve learned to leave the tomato and mayonnaise off so it stays dry – and sit next to the rock pools while I eat.

The tide has only just gone out and the wet, blue-grey rock in between the pools looks like damp, pockmarked skin. Just below me is a manhole-sized pool. The dark seaweed that lines the walls moves slowly to and fro, as if the pool is its own tiny sea with a current of its own. Maybe the pools are all connected underneath by tiny tunnels that all lead back to the ocean. A few fish swim around the bottom, too big to swim through any possibly-existing tunnels, waiting for the tide to return and take them back out to sea.

Seagulls start to gather around me. I shoo them away with my foot. ‘Piss off’ – like they understand me. I wonder sometimes if they feel any shame, scavenging like this. I finish the burger and fill the rest of the space with coffee.

In the bathroom I get back into my uniform. Haven’t had time to wash other clothes yet. My uniform smells like chips, but nothing worse than that.

The woman next to me on the platform looks familiar. She’s got a travel bag on wheels and too many layers of clothes on for this weather.

I remember now. I’ve seen her once, maybe twice, on the Lithgow Line. She looks tired, but a resigned kind of tired, like she doesn’t expect to be not tired any time soon. We lock eyes for a moment and I think she recognises me. She looks away and walks along the platform to the opposite end of the train.

I find an empty carriage. I don’t bother to take out my book this time, the coffee did nothing. Caffeine when you’re this tired is like trying to paint over a crack in a wall when the wall has actually been split in two. I fall asleep before the train leaves the station.

‘Nah, I didn’t even see it happen—’ I open my eyes just as the boy sees me. He whispers something to his friends and they go back up the stairs. I fall back to sleep for ten minutes.

‘Morning ladies and gentlemen. Just need to check your Opal Cards’. I pull my blanket off and try to push it out of sight. The inspector holds her hand out for my card. ‘Thank you.’ She looks me up and down before walking off.

I don’t get back to sleep. The carriage fills up at Hornsby and there’s no way to lie down.

I buy the paper and sit on a bench where no one can see me from work. Around me are a few old people with their own newspapers in all different languages, sitting here pretending that they’re waiting for a train when really they’re just watching, waiting for nothing. Then there’s the intercity passengers, or customers, as we call them now, waiting with their luggage, half an hour early for the train just to be safe. Some of the older ones are well dressed, as if country trains are still a fancy thing. Pigeons walk around on their club feet picking up crumbs with their broken beaks. If only they knew how healthy the pigeons in the suburbs are, maybe they would go there. Then there are the lumps along the edges of the hall, like mushrooms growing in the cracks of the building, that are actually humans in sleeping bags.

There’s a commotion near the entry gates. I look over my newspaper with the other bench people.

‘There’s nothing we can do about it Ma’am,’ a station guard says. ‘There are some complications with the new timetable.’

‘How does a train just get cancelled? It’s just sitting there not moving.’

‘There will be another train leaving from Platform 19 in ten minutes.’

‘Why can’t you people just do your jobs properly and make the fucking trains go?’

‘I am doing my job, Ma’am.’

The backs of my eyeballs hurt. The screen leaves white rectangles in my vision when I look up at the woman in front of me.

‘Just a chicken burger please.’

The burgers fly across the screen at my fingertips. Chicken burger.

‘Anything else?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘That’s six ninety-five.’

She gives me cash. I open the till and slowly count out the coins for her change. It feels as though someone is pushing on my head from all angles. I picture myself lying down to sleep on the counter between the computers.

‘If you see unattended baggage… please do not touch it… notify staff immediately.’ An announcement moves across the hall from the platforms and through the front of the shop. I don’t know if I would have heard it if I didn’t know the words off-by-heart. It’s like when a friend calls from far away and you only hear them through the ruckus because you know their voice. Except this isn’t a friend. It’s more like when you hear a song you know from a distance, and suddenly you can hear the melody clearly, because you know it.

I count the coins again and put them into the woman’s hand.

‘Sorry, I need another dollar,’ she says.

‘Oh, sorry.’ I hand it over.

‘Thanks.’

‘Next please.’

‘Just a large chips please.’

Large chips.

A little girl looks over the counter next to her father. I can tell he’s her father by their heavy eyebrows.

‘And a Coca Cola,’ she says. Father looks down at her, then back at me.

‘And some orange juice, please,’ he says.

Orange juice.

In the top right hand corner of the screen the fifty-nine turns to two zeroes and the thirteen before it turns to a fourteen.

I log out and walk out the back. Clara is gathering her things, moving quickly. Or maybe my mind is moving slowly. She looks up.

‘You look buggered. You alright?’

‘Yeah. Just tired. Didn’t sleep well.’

Jamie walks through the door behind me.

‘Hey guys,’ he says. He’s smiling. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this, but we’re a bit understaffed today and I just need one of you to stay for another hour or so until Jason comes in.’

Neither of us speaks.

‘Just an hour. Really. Tops.’

‘I need to pick up my kid,’ Clara says. ‘I get charged more if I’m late.’

I rest my forehead against my locker and close my eyes. I think about lowering myself down into a deep rock pool. How I would take a deep breath and dive down to see if there were any tunnels leading out to the sea, and if I were to find one, would I swim through it? There would be every chance that the tunnel might go on for so long that I would run out of air, and not come up again. I would remain forever a part of an underwater system that maybe no one knows about, become part of the rocks, and the algae, and the sand, in all its million pieces. Or I might swim out into the open ocean. The blue blue blue ocean that goes on forever.

I lift my head up and look at Jamie.

‘I have a train to catch,’ I hear myself say. I open my locker and pull out my bag, and my blanket. ‘And she has to pick up her kid.’

Kavita Nandan recently moved to Sydney and teaches creative writing and literature at Macquarie University. Her first novel Home after Dark was published in 2014. She is the editor of Stolen Worlds: Fijiindian Fragments. Her short stories have been published in Transnational Literature, The Island Review and Landfall.

Photo: by Michael Kosmider

The Family Circle

Arjun steps onto the cool marble floor of the Se Cathedral. Away from the hot stickiness of the street front, he can breathe. They have cleared four tourist attractions so far, and this is to be the last for the day. A giant chandelier spills like a waterfall from the ceiling. Brass candelabras rise like stalagmites from the low altar, and above it, in a panel of the gold screen, Saint Catherine awaits martyrdom. Sublime paintings of biblical scenes suddenly turn feral on a ragged wall, throwing up his suspicion that God is more absent than present in these holy structures. A loud clatter echoes behind Arjun and he turns. His aunts sit in the pews with their digits darting into bags of salty cashew nuts and one of them, probably Aunt May, has let fall the gaudy plaster model of the Se Cathedral with a digital clock face embedded in the remaining bell tower. Bloody aunty fingers! Perspiring nephews and nieces in their ‘I love Goa’ flea market T-shirts trot in twos down the aisle. Uncles fling themselves this way and that way as if part of a dance routine, in their attempts to capture every angle of the architectural wonder. How they gushed all over the centuries-old Portuguese church like a tidal wave. Surely, only his family possessed this special talent of diminishing grandeur so completely.

At first, Arjun had ignored the summons to the reunion. But as he sat outside under a cloudless Sydney sky eating carbonara pasta in a café he liked, the email with its subject heading, ‘Reunion is the go in Goa’, revisited him. A red-tipped tailed shark of a Qantas plane, slipped away in the distance. The sky’s spectacular clarity unnerved him and a feeling of loneliness reawakened in his heart. It had been a decade since he had gone back to the country of his birth. Then, whether vision or visitation, he swore he saw his long dead grandmother, gesturing North-West with her fleshless finger from heaven. Arjun booked his flight from Sydney to Goa.

*

The family commandeer six standard rooms at an inexpensive beach resort. The aunties, who had promised their mother before she died that they would remain a close-knit family despite the geographical challenges, organised for the clan to meet, every ten years, in a different part of India. On this occasion, May, Maggie, June and Preeti bubbled with moral superiority at the absence of the two elder sisters who lived in the UK and Australia. At least, they consoled themselves with exaggerated sighs, their strange children, with their Indian faces but foreign accents and values had come from overseas.

Jetlagged, Arjun, and his cousin Arti and her husband who have come from London, go to bed early. The domestic travellers settle in industriously, putting clothes away in cupboards, storing cooked food and snacks brought from home in the mini fridges, scolding the children for turning the ceiling fan on and off, pressing the buttons of the TV remote control at random, juggling ornaments and stabbing at the fruit pyramid gleefully.

The next morning, Maggie, dressed in a floral-patterned kaftan, is jubilant that consensus has been achieved: all 16 of them are visiting the Spice Plantation. A keen cook, she savours the aroma of vanilla, then cinnamon, then cardamom. Andrew, her son, excavates his nose with a grubby finger and retracting it says, “Look ma, spice!”

Arjun grins to himself. Obnoxious kid. Then a glimpse of a scarf the colour of kingfisher blue. He remembers that afternoon in Uncle Joseph’s and Aunt May’s bedroom – the first and only time Lara and he were together – how carefully she had placed her scarf on the side-table as if it was a fledgling bird. His cousin Lara darts through the spice trees chasing after her own child.

The guide leads them though the leafy green plantation, stopping often to point out the different spices and tropical trees. He hands out bananas and star fruit to the kids to soften their boredom.

Like the others, Arjun tries what’s on offer but he is not satisfied. He remembers this gnawing sense of want, of wanting more, from his year spent staying with his Aunties in his twenties. For a moment, he thinks back to those nights he smoked hash on his Uncle’s and Aunt’s terrace and how he’d stare up at the night sky, smeared with stars, seeing a portal warbling between a familiar and an unknown world. Always, Lara, there, by his side. Squeezing his hand. Back then, they’d thought fuck parents, fuck the establishment . . . fuck making money when the family already had enough to see them through to kingdom come. Now, he can’t get to that state of being high with a pre-party Ecstasy tab or hit of LSD.

*

One of the twins’ stuffs a handful of black pepper into his mouth and yells for a straight five minutes. The little potbelly of the other twin is convulsing with shrieking laughter as Aunt May skips and hops and scolds.

After the plantation excursion, the family return to the hotel restaurant for an early dinner. Light-hearted banter between family members soon turns personal and vicious.

Maggie, his mother’s sister reaches for two of the extra-large Goan chapatis, and looking first at May, then at the chapati pile again, says “The twins have grown fat, May, but poor little Bunty . . . is he not getting enough food? Look at him. Thin as a bhindee.”

May like a snake provoked, bites immediately, “Andrew has become very naughty, don’t you think? And his sister seems a little behind at school. I hope she doesn’t have to repeat class four.”

“Arjun, are you losing your hair?” Asks Uncle Harry as he runs his hand through his own, then repeats the gesture. “Pity your parents couldn’t make it. They always seem to be going to some overseas conference. Intellectuals eh?”

The bastard, Arjun thinks. He wouldn’t have minded so much about the hair comment if Lara, still cold as hell towards him, wasn’t in earshot.

Uncle Rai slurring and slurping his third glass of Feni begins his worn-out tirade: “It was Maggie’s butter chicken that finally killed the old bird. She knew Mummy’s doctor had expressly forbidden rich foods.” Maggie’s fingers are greasy and flakes of chapati are all over her lap, but Arjun can see her left ankle beginning to shake and he wants to stride across the room and slap his uncle for being such a patriarchal jerk.

Uncle Rai can’t stop himself: “So Maggie, I suppose it’s all decided now that the kids are going to private schools?”

“Rai! It was in our mother’s will that we get the house. We did spend a lot of time with her after you and June moved to Chennai.”

“Maggie!” June says heatedly, “You know we moved to be closer to Rai’s family after his father had the triple bypass.”

Aunt Preeti, who had been listening silently to the conversation up to this point, explodes like corn kernels hitting hot oil, one after the other. “YOU. ARE. ALL. OBSESSED. DID. ANY. OF. YOU. CARE. WHEN. MY. HUSBAND. WAS. DYING!”

Aunt May, red faced and perspiring replies, “Preeti, you never did see the value of money.”

“That’s why we all pay for her now!” shouts Uncle Joseph from the opposite end of the table.

“What an ass,” Arti mutters under her breath to her husband. Mark hurriedly hides the sucked curried prawns on his plate under the serviette, conscious that he might have taken too many.

Why do they bother? Arjun thinks. It’s as if the weeks of goodwill it took to work out the logistics for every family member coming from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and as far away as Sydney and London, and meeting in one spot – Goa – had only pushed their divisive emotions underground temporarily. They toured the churches, the beaches, the plantations, the markets together, but seemed only vaguely interested in the attractions themselves, and only too willing to argue at every turn. A gap of ten years was a reasonable time to expect quarrels to be forgiven if not forgotten, but neither seemed to be the case. The family’s differences were returning like resurrection plants.

Maybe his cynicism came from his lack of innocence. Since nobody had committed murder within the family yet, he was probably the biggest deviant here. Though sleeping with his first cousin had felt. . . inevitable. . . for both of them.

Knowing that the year was almost up and he would be returning to Australia to start an MBA had made him daring and insanely horny. Lara had been willing, flirty and in unison they had drunk several whiskey gulps from Uncle Joseph’s liquor stash kept in his cupboard that he thought no one knew about. Three days later, he had left.

It was almost annoying how she gave nothing away, no secret looks in his direction or holding his gaze a little longer than necessary. She was behaving as if nothing had ever happened between them and seemed completely engrossed in the child. Since when did Lara have a child? He regretted now that he never hit send on that email he wrote to her. On all those emails he wrote her. What kind of an insensitive bastard was he? He had only thought of his own embarrassment.

Lara yanks back the pallu of her sari from Max who is gripping it with both hands and using it to slide around the room. Then she cuddles the boy and gives him a piece of papaya.

He needs her to look at him. He remembers the diffused, sexiness of her eyes like she was either tipsy or in a state of desire that she used to have. He feels guilty for wanting her, again. Christ. He’s nearly thirty-five, surely . . . He thinks of Michelle back home redecorating their small Sydney apartment so they might sell it and buy a house, start a family.

Lara grips the knife she is using to cut up the papaya and turns to him, transforming into Kali, the goddess of death, with human heads around her neck and arms of men in a girdle around her waist.

He knows then that he’s terribly wrong: of course she remembers and hasn’t even come close to forgiving him. Max is sticking out his orange-Fanta tongue at him.

The family spend the next day at the beach. They encircle three tables joined together in a beach shack. They are practically hijacking the place with their sheer numbers. But then he remembers this isn’t Darlinghurst. The waiters gossip amongst themselves in Konkani. His uncles consume bottles of local Kingfisher beer, except for Uncle Rai who is silently reading a philosophical tract at the table and avoiding everyone’s eyes, especially Maggie’s, after the insults of yesterday.

Boney M and Michael Jackson interspersed with Indian movie hits spin around the room, escape outside, tumble and disappear into radiant waves.

His aunts are chatting with each other and laughing as if they have forgotten the angry things that were said to each other the day before. Aunt Preeti, however, is sitting apart, on a deck chair. She wears her hair in a stylish knot under her European-styled hat and the leg of her salwar billows in the wind. A young man prances on a jet ski in gold speedos near the seashore. Arjun sees that his aunt is older and sadder but still beautiful like her daughter Lara.

The men, having eaten and drunk too much at lunch, lie like overcooked lobsters in deck chairs on the beach and the women fret about the kids drowning and what to prepare for the next meal. They pass the usual comments about the tourists being too fat, too skinny and too liberal. When a topless woman walks past them, Aunt May does not have enough hands to cover all three sets of eyes of her unruly boys. When she realises that the woman in the white triangle barely covering her private parts is her niece, Arti, her hands drop, enabling her sons to get an eyeful.

The next morning, Arjun wakes up before the others to go sightseeing on his own. Walking around the seventeenth century church, he looks at the revered statues of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Peter and Saint Paul and remains unmoved. The broken body of Jesus on the Cross, however, strikes a chord. All those years of going to church and reading the bible to please his grandmother, what did they amount to? He feels regret at all the wasted Sunday mornings at bible study, but not a lot, too much time has passed.

He finds Sonya, Aunt June’s and Uncle Rai’s grandchild, sitting on a pew, head bent deep in concentration. Perhaps like him, she had wanted some time alone. Sonya is sketching something on a large notebook. He sits silently behind her, taking a peek over her shoulder, which is newly branded with a thick white stripe from yesterday’s swim. She is drawing a caricature of Jesus on the Cross. Her Jesus looks a lot like Uncle Harry, the family’s only politician and self-proclaimed martyr. He wishes he’d been that savvy at her age.

At the Bom Basilica, he stops several times to take photographs for Michelle. Photos were the only thing she asked for apart from some Goan silk, ‘preferably in marigold yellow, beaded along the edges and large enough to cover a Queen sized bed.’

“Arjun,” she had asked while she was chipping away at the tiles in the splashback, “is the real reason you don’t want me to come that you are ashamed of me?”

Why does she walk like a giraffe? Arree, her clothes are so drab. She should close her mouth when she smiles – her teeth are too big, don’t you think? How could he explain to her that his family would find fault in everything he loved about her. So instead he offered no explanation at all and reiterated that of course he wasn’t ashamed of her. When he discovers extra pairs of underwear and sunscreen in his suitcase, he knows that this is Michelle’s way of forgiving him.

He notices Mark, Arti’s husband, up ahead talking to a dark and pretty Goanese girl. It is the waitress who served them yesterday at the beach shack. He sees Mark touch the girl’s arm and he strides forward, not willing to wait for something more to happen as it does so easily in this hot and fleshy city, when he hears a sudden braking followed by a series of skids, a loud bang and waves of screaming.

As he turns around, the crowd rushes past him leaving him isolated on a square of concrete, dwarfed in front of the great church with the heat piercing his brain like a bullet.

He can hear Mark’s voice, dream-like, as he runs past in the same direction: “Shit man, are you coming?” The crowd is forming a circle on the road up ahead.

Arjun is standing by Mark now who looks unsure of himself. He grabs Mark’s arm to steady him, but when it looks like Mark is about to spew, he shoves him away.

A person lies under a vehicle with his knees facing upwards. It almost seems as if he is repairing the bus. But why would he be doing that in the middle of the road? And holding up all this traffic? Now that he looks more closely the legs are remarkably still. He starts to notice, even though he doesn’t want to, other things like the paleness of the legs, the tattoo of a tribal lion covering a large area of thigh and one bright red flip flop still clinging to a foot.

The bus driver is sitting in his seat, his eyes darting everywhere and sweat running down his face like monsoonal rain. Soon they are surrounded by noises and activity: ambulance sirens blaring, cars screeching to a halt, doors being slammed, and policemen running about dispersing the unheeding crowd. The commotion dies down and some people within the circle leave, satisfied that they are abreast of the latest in Goa. They are easily replaced by others whose curiosity is yet to be satiated.

“Some poor foreigner,” Mark says in a hopelessly Scottish accent.

Arjun looks down at his shaking hands and legs. As he raises his head again he sees familiar faces interspersed in the crowd. Maggie is standing next to Rai and June next to Harry as if they have swapped husbands. Joseph picks up Preeti’s hat that has fallen on the road and gives it to her. May’s three boys are holding hands and Lara is covering her child’s eyes with the pallu of her sari and waving. It seems as if the whole family are there, looking through the multitudes and smiling tenderly at him.

As the ambulance workers are piling the foreigner onto the stretcher as they might a dead body, the bloodied and broken corpse sits up. The crowd gasps collectively, cheers collectively.

Arjun trembles as the ring of people holds fast, then breaks, and breaks again.

Elleke Boehmer was born in Durban and lives in Oxford. She is the author of five novels including Screens against the Sky (1990), Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015). Screens against the Sky was short-listed for the David Higham Prize, and Bloodlines for the Sanlam Prize. The Shouting in the Dark was long-listed for the Sunday Times prize (South Africa). She is the author and editor of over fifteen other books, including Stories of Women (2005), Postcolonial Poetics (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015) was the winner of the biennial ESSE 2015-16 Prize. South, North is her second collection of short stories, following Sharmilla, and other Portraits (2010). The Australian edition of The Shouting in the Dark, together with other writing about the global south, is coming out from UWAP in early 2019.

Evelina

17:30

Evelina liked to hang around airports though, till today, she had never yet left an airport on an aeroplane. She liked to sit in the arrivals halls, in the coffee place close to the exit where families waited with balloons and smiles. She liked to absorb the ambiente, she preferred the Spanish word. She was absorbing it now, though in departures not arrivals, the café alongside the security gates, drinking her coffee and smiling as she watched the families smiling. It made her happy, that she could be included in their ambiente though she wasn’t required to say a word.

Her airport hobby had started a few years ago, three or four, she couldn’t remember exactly, back in the old century, the day she said goodbye to her best friend Marta. After her marriage went bad Marta had decided to make a clean break. Evelina and Marta had sat here in the same café, Marta retouching her lipstick, peering with narrowed eyes into the clip-open lipstick case she always kept in her bag.

Evelina had watched Marta walk that day through the departure gates sobbing into a tissue but with a kind of skip of her left heel, a definite spring in her step. Watching Marta’s departing back Evelina couldn’t help noticing the spring.

These days Marta was teaching languages in Spain, near Toledo. She was earning good money and seeing someone, she wrote, a nice teacher at the secondary school. Although she worried sometimes that he was so much shorter than herself. What their future children might think.

Their other friend, Teresa, mouthy Teresa, took the same exit route a year or so later. Again Evelina came to say goodbye. Again she bought a round of hot chocolate here in the café, and again stood with her face pressed to the security glass, watching Teresa sink down the long escalator to the departure gates, Teresa waving and smiling and then as she stepped off the escalator quite briskly tucking her tissues away in the side pouch of her bag.

Teresa had aimed to join Marta in the language school in Spain but then she had got talking to people, and people had talked nicely about her, so now she was working on cruise ships in the Caribbean. Everything had changed for her and was raised up to a new level, and now, Teresa wrote in her last birthday card, it should be Evelina’s turn. Now Evelina had her chance to go away like the others. She should grab the opportunity in both hands.  

By the time Teresa left, Evelina was already in the habit of coming to the airport. She came perhaps once a month, especially on quiet weekdays, in the evening, sometimes still in her tour-guide uniform. The only person who knew about her habit was Jorge himself. She liked coming even without anyone to wave off, perhaps more so. She liked having time to watch the families, the kids in their Brazil-made chanclas running and chasing each other around the chairs and tables like these two little girls  about six or seven here at the table besides hers. Round the table they chased, now one way, now the other, the smaller one giggling helplessly. She liked it so much she sometimes skipped going over to stand in the departure area, though she liked it there, too, watching the travellers being hugged.

But her best bit, secretly, was her own private regreso, coming back into the city after her airport coffee. This she liked the most. Sitting at the airport and then coming home again. She liked swooping her car into the fast lane, nearly empty at this hour, and then up the steep ramp and down her own avenida. She liked that feeling of coming back into her tiny flat, up the three flights of concrete steps that the janitor washed at five every evening, and opening the door onto her two neat rooms with everything standing exactly where she had left it. Even if that was just a few hours ago and no one could possibly have been in.

How grateful this journey made her for everything that she had here in this city. Which is why she didn’t get enough of visiting the airport, that heady feeling that the trip back home gave her every time.

Her family didn’t know about this habit of enjoying the arrivals hall or they might have come along on this mild Saturday evening, to help her get away, to give her the push she needed.

Her parents lived up country now, in the campo. They had held their send-off last weekend in her flat—her parents, her older brother Enrico who was a small pets vet, a couple of cousins from her mother’s side. They had made the four-hour round trip together in Enrico’s car. They had served oozing facturas from the panadería downstairs, and black tea with lemon, plus stronger stuff for those who wanted it, and they had talked about the repairs to Enrico’s new house and when he might start converting his extra garage into a practice. One of the cousins would be coming to stay for a while in Evelina’s flat, to have a long-expected holiday in the city, they said. They had talked only about solid things. As if by not saying much about Evelina’s leaving or about Jorge, the reason for her leaving, they could all pretend it wasn’t really taking place.

On the washed concrete steps they had said goodbye and their hugs were dry and unfussy. They were immigrant people, a little Welsh, a little Irish, and a lot of Buenos Aires. They set their faces to the future, which is to say, the future that was here, now, and solid.

From the beginning Evelina’s father had refused to say Jorge’s name. He had refused at first to meet him and when he did he refused at first to shake his hand. But he had never paid any of her few boyfriends even a morsel of attention.

‘His eyes want to undress you,’ he said of the first, Luciano, all of seventeen, still at school at the time. ‘It’s disgusting, arrojalo, get rid of him.’

Evelina had, but none of the others she brought home later had fared any better. Papá said he wanted to hit them all. In another day and age, he swore, he’d have taken a sword to them, pure and simple.

So this afternoon it was Evelina’s turn to sit in the airport waiting for a plane, on her own, without her family, but this time with a ticket in her purse. It was her turn to begin a new phase, in North America, in New York, a new phase to go with the new century, a chance to explore a new life with Jorge her fiancé, her energetic, open-hearted Jorge who had gone on ahead to set things up.

Sitting in the departures coffee shop, smaller than the one downstairs, Evelina noticed for the first time the good view through the big window beside the check-in gates. Even from here she could see through the window a section of the runway and the lit-up planes criss-crossing like fireflies against the sky now darkening towards evening.

Next time she’s here, she told herself, she’ll go over to the window to take a longer look. There was a shiny rail to lean on. There were people right now leaning on it, looking out, pointing, their dark profiles stamped on the glass. But then she remembered there wouldn’t be a next time and she had to put down her coffee, her hands trembled so.  

The bag of toiletries and warm clothes she had packed stood beside her. She kept her leg pressed against the bag and her handbag pressed between her feet. Their box crates had gone ahead. For the air-trip itself she hadn’t known what to pack. What do you pack when you are changing continents, setting out to make a new life in New York with your beloved, your prometido? You could pack everything, or you could pack only your most special things that you wouldn’t want to send in a crate.  

When her alarm rang this morning, she couldn’t find anything special enough to take along, nothing anyway that was small enough to carry, so she packed just this compact bag and in the end put in the wind-up alarm clock itself, on top, wrapped in a hanky. Couldn’t do harm, to start a new life with a reliable alarm clock.

As for the box crates, filling them had been like filling bags for charity, piling in stuff you never expected to see again. Even now, a few weeks on, she could barely remember the contents, Jorge’s kitchenware, yes, with the special block of knives, a needlepoint picture of snowy mountains done by his late mother as a young woman, also a few old pieces of furniture, hand-me-down stuff dry and cracked from standing long years in the sunshine in relatives’ apartments.

Old stuff for a new country—to her it didn’t make sense but Jorge insisted. It would cost the earth, he said, beginning a new home in New York from scratch.  

Evelina wished Jorge was here now to give the encouragement his bright face always sparked in her, not that she ever let on. She didn’t want to raise second thoughts in his mind. She didn’t want him to know how scared she could get. With his big voice, his big muscles, his strong stride—nothing gave him a way of understanding this tremble now in her hands.

Perhaps it wasn’t wise for him to have gone ahead, she thought, though she had pressed him to go, so that he’d believe in her. It wasn’t wise, too, that she hadn’t yet let out her flat, her little home in the big city with its panadería downstairs and the outdoors gym painted in rainbow colours across the street. Would she, would they, be able to find anything so well-set-up in New York?

Right now Jorge was staying in some cheap hotel trying to find them a new home. They’d talked through every detail. He’d said he’d get in touch as soon as something worked out but he hadn’t yet called. She wished he’d called. She told herself he was waiting for her—waiting for this plane out there now on the runway, waiting for her to arrive in it, to come to New York to be with him and make a new home. She knew he would tell her everything then.

Home! Evelina looked around at the familiar purple sky beyond the window, and, closer at hand, the children in their flip-flop chanclas, two small boys this time kicking an empty drink carton back and forth, the little girls had disappeared. She looked at the shiny stickers of saints on the menu board over the coffee machine, and the two old men in crisp polo shirts talking at the exit, gesticulating just the same as they would meeting in a park in town.

Already these things were starting to look flat, two-dimensional and flat, as though they were already receding from view. Soon, within an hour or so, they would be pushed into the far distance by the whoosh of the aircraft, and then, tomorrow, by Jorge and his dreams, Jorge whom she really liked and thought she could soon, very soon, begin to love.

Jorge, she thought, and saw him sitting again in front of her with his hair tumbling over his forehead just as he had sat right there across the table at this exact coffee place those weeks ago at this exact time, give or take, the two icy red aperitivos standing untouched between them. He had bought them como una celebración, he said, to mark the start of their big adventure together.

Jorge’s pale eyes in his bronze face searching hers for some sign of reassurance, she could feel the pull in them, and she had told herself silently sitting there with her hand in his that she would see him again soon, in only a couple of months, seven or so weeks, though it felt a lot longer. And she had wished, still silently, it didn’t feel so long.

‘The planes for North America always leave around now, in the evening,’ he had told her, following her eyes watching the departure boards. ‘So that when you arrive es un nuevo día, the start of a new day.’

He had been making conversation, she could tell, thinking she knew these facts, but she hadn’t really known these things. She knew nothing. She worked in tourism but she had never yet left the country, not in her whole life, not once.

All she did know was that every day around nightfall, wherever she was, she felt a pull to go home so strong it upset her to resist it. She had felt the pull then waiting in this café with him. She felt it now.

But how could she have told him this? It would have sounded like doubt. It would have given him second thoughts. Yet all she wanted right now, today, even on this day of her departure, was to be in her flat and draw the curtains and scrunch up in a corner of her armchair with a cup of something warm. She thought of her armchair, the red one her mother had given her, the armchair that right now, unbelievably, was making its way across the sea squeezed in a crate alongside Jorge’s stuff.

‘Now promise me,’ he had urged that evening, his forehead shining like a lamp. ‘When the day arrives, just lock up the flat, and come. We’ve sent everything ahead that we need. I’ll be at the other end, remember, waiting for you. I’ll take you back to our apartamento, the one I’ll have got for us. We will start our new life. We’ll marry as soon as. I’ll begin straightaway to get our paperwork in order.’

And Evelina had waved him off, watching him descend down the long escalator, blowing kisses, till all she could see was his waving hand, and then, nothing. She had stood a while longer, in case he popped back into view. It was like him to step back, to give one last kiss, one last wave. But he hadn’t. So, when she was sure he was gone, she had slipped down to the café in arrivals and ordered herself a coffee. Her mouth had been dry from something she couldn’t place, though she knew it wasn’t sadness.

Evelina now bought a second coffee, a takeaway, and wondered about going downstairs for a while, to the arrivals hall. It was still ages before the flight. But then she sat down once more at the same table in the seating area, and pushed her used cup and saucer over to the edge, to make room. She sipped her coffee and looked around at all the familiar things, the stickers of the saints, the stainless steel bar, the children in their chanclas kicking and running. No one seemed to notice she hadn’t paid the drink-in extra. No one bothered about her sitting here at all.

20:30

Evelina checked her watch and tucked her chin deeper into her cretonne scarf. The sky beyond the viewing window was dark now and the evening cool settling in, even here in this air-conditioned space, but there was still plenty of time. Coming to the airport so early she had left plenty of time. She had shifted now from the departures coffee shop to a row of angled chairs alongside it. There was more than enough time still to go through security and buy a bottle of water and an eye-mask at the other end, as Jorge had instructed.

‘On the plane you make your own refugio, your own night capsule,’ he had said. ‘You tuck up in your seat and pull your blanket tight and close your eyes, and then, before you know it, you’ve arrived, you’re there.’

‘I know you,’ he’d also said, just before he left, swallowing his aperitivo in one gulp and glaring in that unblinking way he had when he was concentrating. ‘Don’t sit around and think or you’ll never be able to get away. Take your bag and walk straight through to the gates.’

Pressing her legs together and pulling her coat hem to her knees—her coat against the New York winter—Evelina tried now to bring his face into the very centre of her memory, to hold his image there so she could believe again in everything he had told her, in her new life in New York together with her handsome, savvy fiancé, believe in the restaurant business he would set up there, in a city full of restaurants.

But though he had sat across that table only a month or so ago the main thing she remembered was the pale eyes burning in his tanned face, that and what he said about the nuevo día.

When she arrives it will be the start of a new day.

Easier was detail from further back, the funny way his curly hair blew across his forehead when they went out cycling on Sundays, and their picnics in parks all over the city, and the food he liked to prepare, the curried eggs and spicy beef salads that were his speciality, the plastic dishes of food spread out along with his metal mate pot on her printed cloth on the grass.

She remembered their first date, at a rival steak restaurant to his, away from the centre, and the lovely loose feeling in her limbs that his energetic talk gave her, the pictures he painted of hiking in Patagonia, and seeing a mountain leopard, and then his dream of setting up a steak restaurant on 5th Avenue. These details felt like just days ago.

Clearest was the very first time of course, that startling and magical day when they had first met. There he had stood at the city event for young entrepreneurs, talking and making gestures with his big arms. She had worked through the exhibition hall looking for him, trawling up and down the aisles, and found him at last standing beside a poster that showed a steak jugoso in gleaming close-up, handing out leaflets, his fine wide face shining like a bronze mask.

Earlier, she had been at her post at the exhibition hall entrance just beyond the sliding doors and he had passed her. She was in her brown and orange tourist-board uniform checking nametags and handing out convention maps. She had given him a map and he had been the only one to say gracias, politely, looking her in the eye.

She found his stall by remembering the number on his tag. For her whole break she stood and looked at him from beside a pillar. She had never seen anyone with so open a face, so confident and shining a look, the kind of face you’d travel halfway across the world to see again.

On his way out he caught her eye for a second time and she smiled.

‘I saw your talk,’ she said.

He wrote her number on the company card she gave him and called the very next morning, just before nine.

Their first date was that Friday and they had got to know each other quickly after that. He had taken her to film festivals all over the city to see the old Argentinian films, BA a la vista, Rápido, La casa del ángel. She liked the dusty smells of the art house cinemas. She had only ever gone to big movie theatres before, with Enrico and his friends.

When Jorge proposed he had taken her back to the exhibition hall entrance, to the exact spot where she had stood and given him her number. It was a windy day and old leaflets and other rubbish bowled about their feet.

Later, he said he’d invited a saxophonist friend to come and play them background music from Rápido there on the steps but the guy hadn’t shown up. Who knows why? Jorge shrugged. Perhaps he hadn’t given him enough money for the cab.

But it hadn’t bothered her. She had her ring, she had his declaración. She assured him she preferred a proposal involving just the two people themselves.

Her father was more scornful and probably she shouldn’t have told him. It wasn’t his business. And yet she had blurted it out, there at her send-off party, the dulce de leche squeezing out of the pastry in his hand. And straightaway of course he harrumphed something about young men who thought too much about their grooming and too little about their bank balance. Which was unfair, she knew.

But she’d kept quiet, she’d said nothing in Jorge’s defence. She’d merely turned her eyes away from Papá eating his oozing factura and remembered the Chinese burns he used to give her and Enrico as children, when they were naughty.

‘See how much you want to stick to your silliness,’ he’d say, wringing their arms like a rag, twisting harder if they squeaked.

‘People go to New York and become anything they want, dancers, directors, professors, even princesses,’ Jorge had said those weeks ago over their untouched aperitivos. ‘It doesn’t matter if you come from los confines de la tierra, New York makes dreams come true.’

‘Sueños,’ he had said, cupping one hand like a scale. ‘Realidad,’ he had added, holding up the other.

She had looked hard then into his pale eyes. She saw in them excitement and hope. She saw the shape of the New York skyline. She would have liked to see something more, a little fear perhaps, so they could talk about that together. But Jorge’s eyes were the eyes of a man who would forge ahead and press on regardless of what setbacks he might meet, who would build his dreams in the streets of New York even if he didn’t have an Evelina to support him.

She jumped up now in a sudden impulse of horror, her coat falling to the ground. Jorge forging on without her, she couldn’t bear to think of it. She must go through with this now, fly away or else! Or these extremities of the earth would swallow her up. Jorge had the power to save her. Jorge would fold her in his arms and make new things possible. He had hope enough for two. Her chance lay in his hands, no, in his hands and her hands. Tomorrow morning she would be with him, pressed to his side, travelling with him on the subway into the heart of New York. But getting there depended on her, on getting herself on that flight. That was it with fretting. She could lose everything this way. Her chance lay here in her hands.

She picked up her bags and saw there was still time, un poco, a bit of time. She checked her watch against the digital clock on the departures board and made her way over to the viewing window. She wanted one last look at the familiar sky, the familiar line of hills still discernible above the distant city, the planes with their illuminated windows ascending and descending. If she put it off now, she would not see it again for years.

21:00

The tannoy announced that the flight gate was open. Evelina turned from the viewing window and saw the clear bubble of the telephone booth on the near wall. She didn’t want to see the booth but once she had seen it she couldn’t forget it. One last thing she really had to do, this is what it was telling her.

Jorge hadn’t called though he’d said he would, so now she would call him. Surprise, surprise, she would make a joke of it, laughing lightly. Sorpresa, little did you think! At the airport, where else? Just to say—this time tomorrow, our nuevo día, we’ll be on our way home, beginning our new life together.  

But what if there was no home, no new apartamento? What if their papers had been refused? She’d heard nothing. She put down her bags at the booth and checked the slip in her passport, the numbers he had given her, first his friend in the steakhouse business, and then his father’s colleague’s nephew. He’d be staying with either the one or the other, whoever had space.

‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ he’d said. ‘For a few days I won’t have a phone.’  

But he hadn’t called. And it was weeks, not days. She didn’t doubt him but still he hadn’t called. Evelina felt suddenly empty, cavernous. She felt the great dark seas that separated them wash over her heart.

No, she thought, no, and reached suddenly for the back of the chair closest to her, the rough woollen shoulder of the gentleman sitting in it.

Somebody then took her arm and guided her to a nearby counter.

‘You look very pale,’ the attendant at the counter said. ‘Look, why not give me your bags? I can help you to your gate.’

‘Let me take a moment,’ Evelina heard herself say in a composed voice. The cold steel edge of the counter pressing into her palm gave her comfort. It was like holding onto a raft.

‘I was trying to make a call but somehow it didn’t work,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get through. Maybe I don’t have the right number.’

21:30

The last call for her flight, for the second time they were calling out her name, Evelina, Evelina, as if they were welcoming her. She was on her way, she really was. She had worked in the travel business and now she was a traveller, too. She had made it through security and passport control. Her documents were here in her left hand, slid inside her travel company’s own white plastic folder. The folder was her goodbye present from her colleagues, that and a smart purse containing a nail-care kit. Had she remembered to pack the purse? She wanted to check but as she made to bend down she caught sight of the gate number there ahead of her, silver numbers on a blue screen, and a flight attendant waving. There was no one else about, theirs was the last plane out, she was the last passenger to arrive. She was almost at the gate. Now it was just the flight bridge to go and then they’d seal the great aeroplane door behind her. She really was on her way. Tomorrow she’d be with Jorge in New York, riding the subway with him as they somehow had never done here in their own city, pressing herself to his side.

Jorge, she could see his pale eyes burning in his bronze face—his face like a mask sometimes, polished, shining. She tried to imagine him waving at her like the flight attendant was waving, waving across the great dark seas that stretched between here and New York. She made herself see the moving waters as if from high up in the dark sky, from the plane she would soon be flying in, soaring above those black waves she had so recently felt curling around her heart. From here up high, her seatbelt pressing into her lap, she could see, peering down, the stars reflected in the dark waters, and the lights of the city shimmering at their edge, and, though it was still night, the black arrow of the plane’s shadow rushing across the moving, churning sea.  

Harold Legaspi is a Sydney-based author who is currently completing the Masters of Creative Writing program at The University of Sydney. His writing has appeared in The Kalahari Review, Verity La, The University of Sydney Anthology 2016, among others. He has completed the final draft of a first novel.

Lucy just stands there in the kitchen. She’s frying bacon and eggs with a vacant look while I sit with the kids, forcing them to eat their breakfast. Lucy had slept at the opposite end of the bed last night. Now she won’t even look my way, even though I’m wearing a new shirt that bursts in the seams and shows off my pecks. So for the umpteen time, I wipe my son’s face and pour my daughter some orange juice so she could swallow the bacon. And here we were, pre-packaged and nuclear like in those ads that you saw on Netflix about breakfast cereals or free-range produce.

I don’t even know what to say to her in the mornings. I keep silent, reading the paper and turning to sports for news. Panthers flogged the Sharks 25-to-1, or so I read, not that that meant anything to her these days. She was into footy when we first got together; now I’m not so sure. The upshot is: I won some money in the footy tips at the office.  I swear to God, if my team wins this year, I’ll marry her again. She won’t join us for breakfast today. She keeps flipping those damn eggs and adding strips of bacon on our plates. As I am leaving, she picks up my suit jacket and places it on my shoulders. Then she hurries me out the door and kisses me on the lips.   

At the office, some clown in accounts named Larry hounds me to raise a purchase order so that my bills could get paid. He has one of those faces scrunched up real tight, which morphs into a snarl the moment he turns away. It didn’t register that he could have raised the PO himself or dealt with my secretary for the insignificant sum. He thinks he’s real clever and confronts me about my 500 percent budget overrun, right in front of the GM. So now I’m the bad guy, and Terry’s the one exercising control, with all the rest of them cost-cutting at Oden Financials.

At the lifts, Terry stands next to my secretary then asks for my pen. As we descend to the ground floor, he writes a note, which he hands to my secretary. Terry gives me my pen back then makes a quick exit as the lift door opens. My secretary reads the note beside me and bursts into a fit of laughter. When I ask him what it says, he stuffs the note in his suit pocket and downplays what he read. Next thing he’s giving me that sordid look like I’m the one with something to hide. In a flash, he scuttles away. I don’t even know what. All I know is that Terry has it in for me, bad.

Meanwhile, I have a pile of insurance claims to sift through and stamp. I roll in-and-out of meetings, file in hand, drilling the experts in investigations. They are a funny lot. A calculating breed of bored actuaries and fraud analysts. One of them, Barry, won a Fields medal for his ‘contribution’ to stochastic partial differential equations. He says it has something to do with statistical mechanics, but what, I’m not quite sure. We tend to leave Barry be. He plugs away in his other dimension, with all his mathematical modelling and in jest we nod confounded.

We lock the doors while our meetings are in progress. Having the doors locked gave the impression that our work was vital; that we couldn’t be disturbed. I’m sitting there running my fingers through my slick hair trying to get a straight answer. What if we slipped up? What if the client staged their accident? What’s the probability of depleted reserves? At what point did bacterial growth render all stock obsolete? We turn our heads to face Barry. Barry gives us a blank stare.

At lunch, I got to thinking. I pull aside Ted, my mate from sales, and talk shop for a bit. Then we talk hypotheticals about our missus. I begin to set the scene:

“It’s mayhem at this restaurant. I’m there with my wife. The kitchen, which is in the middle of the room, is in full swing. The chefs are screaming abuses at the waitstaff, and there are lashings of ginger tea. Factory-line style dining tables surrounded them, with cushions on swivel chairs. The dining space is an oval shape with clean lines and a garden landscape.”

“What are you eating?” asks Ted.

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that a guy walks into the restaurant with his wife and he’s looking real dapper,” I say.

“Why does that matter?” asks Ted.

“There’s something not quite right about him. He’s got one of those flowers in his suit pocket, and he dresses real neat. He’s looking around the room, while his wife peels off her scarf. Next thing, the guy is taking a seat beside my wife, to her right. I’m plonked on her other side beside her, to her left, at the end of the line.”

“Wait, wait, wait…So where’s your missus?” asks Ted.

“She’s bang, smack in the middle, in between this fella and me,” I said.

“So, where’s his wife?”

“She’s ducked off to the ladies. Gone to freshen up, who knows? Just pretend she’s not there,” I said.

“So?” Ted looks at me wearing a wry grin.

“Anyway my wife, well, she’s looking real sumptuous, and she smells real clean like someone you could trust. It’s an open kitchen, and everyone’s on show. The food is being dished out in rhythmic synchronicity. Then, the guy next to my missus asks her to pass some wasabi,” I said.

“Well, it’s open plan isn’t it? You’re mingled together with strangers,” says Ted.

“The thing is, he’s right there, next to my wife and he asks her with this comforting grin that seems real inviting and friendly. My wife cackles, which turns to a smile, and she’s handing it over. She goes to fix her hair then shifts her eyes back to me discretely,” I said.

“So what do you say to her?” asks Ted.

“I have her attention again but only for a split second, because now the guy next to her is asking for soy sauce. She smiles again, showing off her perfect teeth. She has a killer smile. A smile that could solve the energy crisis coz it’s real warm. I feel their chemistry. And although I’m not the jealous type I feel rotten. Her eyes are only meant for me,” I said.

“What do you do?” asks Ted.

“Well—I lose all my appetite,” I said.

Ted eggs me on. He’s like, “Just tell her, ‘If you ever, ever do tha—.’”

I cut in, “she’ll be all like, ‘Do what? Pass the wasabi and soy?’… She’ll be saying crap like ‘Now we’re even or that I’m the one paranoid.’”

Ted rolls his eyes and says, “You, my friend, are under the thumb.”

“I almost got up to thump the guy next to her. But that’s not the sort of guy I am.”

“Did she say anything to you on your way home?” asks Ted.

“Not a word,” I said.

Ted thinks I give in too easily. He’s been married for fifteen years since he turned twenty-one. He has a real housewife of Sydney – always dressed to the nines; she wears a headscarf on sunny days and prances around with Chanel, her Chihuahua. Ted says marriage isn’t for everybody – especially not the gays. He’s real conservative like that, like Fred Nile. His family think he’s God’s gift. He got into the property market before the boom and made a killing. Now he drives a red Corvette. Ted’s mad. He’s always mad about something or someone, but never at me. Once Ted’s neighbour deliberately poisoned their orange tree. Ted built a fence between his neighbour so quickly they couldn’t even get a word in. Then he stuffs an invoice in their mailbox quoting some arcane piece of legislation saying they had to pay half. Because that’s the kind of guy he is.  

At the water cooler, a bunch of guys are talking about some new recruit. They say she’s in IT, a real fox. The guys are saying she’d be all like “show me how to do this and show me how to do that…Where do you find this and what’s the deal with that?” Quid pro quo, Y’know. Well, that got them going.  The guys are pandering to her every need. They say she’s got one of those pencil skirts that’s real tight around the waist. Her bust so firm it reminds them of rockmelons. Real jugulars. So they be all like “I’ll show you how it’s done good and proper…Why certainly miss, it’s my pleasure.” They say she’s a real man-eater. You show her this and that, and she’ll get real close so you can smell her perfume. Then she’ll purse her lips and flick her hair to reveal her slender neckline. They’re all like, I would.   They’d all reach over there and grab something. Why the hell not.  

On the drive home, I’m the bad guy, again. I’m on the hands-free with my folks who remind me it’s Lola’s birthday. “Why did Y’all miss church last Sunday? … Go see a doctor about that ulcer.” Yap, yap, yap. My folks, they’re trying to kill me. No, seriously, they mean to cause me pain. I look in the rear-view mirror and see a dead bird squashed on the motorway. I see its entrails, bits of red, bits of brown and bits of feather. I’ll end up like that bird if I stay on the phone too long with my folks. No really, my folks, they are going to kill me.

I look out the window and think of the kids. Little Angelica and Max on the couch, trawling through Tyrannosaurus-Rex YouTube clips. Having them loose on their playpen with Play-Doh, mingling the reds, the purples and the greens. My folks ask me about our future plans for Angelica, going back and forth in rhetoric. The cars pile up in front of me on the exit of the M4. It’s bumper-to-bumper. Everyone’s being so God damn slow. I just want to get home to play with my kids.

My mind wafts. On my dashboard, a gyrating Hawaiian girl with a grass skirt and a floral wreath stares right at me. She remains topless and grinning with all grass covering her itty bits. I bought the Hawaiian girl on our honeymoon before the kids arrived. It was just the two of us back then, on American soil, and we went berserk. Lucy and I did it like rabbits. Every night, we did it, with champagne and strawberries and saxophone music. We had Careless Whisper on repeat. The Little itty skirt had been on my dashboard ever since.

I must get out of this traffic jam. I make a bad joke to my folks about some distant cousin that has claimed genetic ancestry to our family name.  What am I supposed to do, welcome him to our home all of a sudden? We might be free on the weekend in a couple of months time, but he’ll have to wait it out. Apparently, he’s a thespian of sorts; a real artist. “What’s he got that you don’t,” I hear my folks ask me. He’s got an audience, that’s what, like he’s real entertaining. He’ll come around, play pranks on my kids like he’s on show or in front of the camera.  Lucy’ll be there seething like I’m the bad guy in this, and all weekend it’s going to be pranks, iced tea and cucumber sandwiches. Dad will be complaining about an itch on his belly. Mum will drill him about his methods till he turns blue.

I play with the kids after speaking with Lola, long enough to know the names of their new friends in school. I learned about Mr Shawn’s antics at school – he pulled faces, and found out the kids planted a lilly pilly in the playground. Little Max, who is almost three, darts his eyes to the fan in the hallway. He says something quirky like, “Dad…Fan…Os-cill-a-ting!” He’s so smart; some day he’ll know more than me. I just wish he wasn’t so darn hyperactive! Little Angelica, who is four and a half, got a real gold star. She turns up to class with a butt that’s nappy free. She went all the way to the toilet holding Mrs McFarlane’s hand without pooping her pants. Next, I hear a thud in the sun-room then discover my little guy with the boxes all stacked up. He’s at it again, climbing the mantlepiece to reach the lolly jar, coz he’s craving sugar in pyjamas. I find him up there, one hand elbow deep in the Gummy Bears and the other stuffing Jelly Belly beans in his mouth.

“Don’t kid yourself,” says Lucy, “It’ll only be for a little while.” She’s doing that raised eyebrow thing in front of her vanity mirror. I swear I can physically feel the power being taken away from me. She wants me to apply for paternity leave so I can babysit the kids during school holidays. She says it’s like a very “Scandinavian thing” to do, and we all know they live better.  “All their dads do it. It’s their law,” she harps, “You’ll be a latte papa.” The longer I think about how little I’ve accomplished in the office, the more I freeze up. I’m running stagnant. Either my boss will chew me up and spit me out, or my wife will tear me to shreds. I reach over and pop the door shut so that the kids won’t hear. “Oh, honeeey.” I’m in my underwear, and I turn to face her, but she has her back where my manhood ought to be. She’s facing the mirror. So I lie down and caress the dooner, which by the way has a very high thread count. I nestle my head on her pillow and purr; come, come. She applies on her lotion with that smouldering look, and I picture her in the open air under the roof of the sky. She’s that twinkling star; the brightest and she burns. When I forget how I got here, she’s that light, cosmic and I see. She lies on the bed where we sleep – my favourite destination. It’s finally dark, and I’m home. The only place where I couldn’t say no.

Zahid Gamieldien is a writer, tutor and former lawyer. In 2015, his fiction has been published in Overland, Tincture Journal, Bahamut Journal and Pantheon Magazine.

The Boy Who Believed in Magic

The camp gets attacked on a Monday afternoon. I’m in the antechamber of the medical tent, administering the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella to a young girl. She’s afraid of the syringe, and I tell her not to worry, that everything will be okay. Her mother soothes her in Manding language, probably Dioula, but even she seems tense. The girl is bawling and I call the Dutch nurse, Klaas, into the antechamber.

I’ll show you a magic trick, I say to the girl.

Klaas nods and I turn to a cabinet, on top of which is a Styrofoam cup. I make a small hole in the cup and push my thumb through it, and then I grip it with both hands. Feigning intense concentration, I lever my fingers and palms from the cup, which is held in place by my obscured thumb, and I shiver the cup through the air as if it’s levitating. The girl goes quiet. Klaas kneels beside her and swabs her upper arm with an alcohol wipe. He jabs her with the syringe. She begins to wail and I grab hold of the cup while Klaas and the girl’s mother apply a bandage to her puncture. Sighing loudly, I return the cup to the cabinet and listen to the girl’s crying fade from the medical tent.

You should give this doctor business up and get into the magic shows, Klaas remarks. We chuckle; I like the way he shushes his S’s.

I’m about to reply when I hear a convoy of jeeps in the distance. Klaas and I step out of the medical tent and stand there, watching. The camp is in chaos. People are running every which way: some roil the dirt as they sprint to nowhere; others dash into their tents, which are draped in white sheets like Halloween houses or Californian bungalows being fumigated. The sheets carry UNHCR branding.

Through a rust-coloured cloud of dust, I spy a man that I recognise. He’s barefoot, carrying a machete, leading his family toward the dirt road.

What’s happening? I ask.

It’s better for you to run, doctor, is all he says.

I don’t move.

The regular doctor at the camp, a South African named Sissy, sprints past me and into the medical tent. Klaas and I follow her. She heads for the tent’s main room, which has two rows of eight hospital beds divided by a narrow aisle. I realise that most of the patients must have fled behind my back: only four remain, and each of them is unconscious.

Too late to move them, Sissy grunts.

Klaas and I wear guilty expressions and now, close by, I hear peals of gunfire, the screech of brakes. My skin feels numb, tinnitus in my ears — no, not tinnitus: I can isolate the screams of individuals, of children, of women, of men, and they get cut short, these screams, abruptly, like when you press the mute button on a TV remote.

Klaas’s brow is moist; he wipes it with a shaky hand. Sissy, the only one of us with her wits about her, drags a sheet up over the face of one of the patients. Klaas and I realise what she’s doing and we follow suit, until the four patients are entirely covered. We head back to the antechamber and wait.

The footsteps on the ground are heavy, jackbooted perhaps, and I know immediately that the people sheltering in their tents are not going to survive: their choral screams rise and grow elliptical and fall silent, the tempo dictated by a grim layer of percussion. I dap my Adam’s apple in my throat and try not to picture it, but I can’t help it. Klaas whimpers; he’s pale as a waxwork and wet with sweat. Sissy places her hand on his back, as if to steady him in case he passes out. Her mouth is shut tight.

Two soldiers, dressed in black shirts and camouflage pants, enter the antechamber. Both have AK47s. One of the soldiers is tall, not yet twenty; he’s wielding a machete as well as a gun. The other is pubescent, a boy, although he has no laugh in him and his brow is as creased as a forty-year-old’s. The tall soldier raps something in a Kru dialect, directing his question at Sissy. He jerks his rifle toward the main room. Sissy stares at him dumbly and he repeats the question in French.

C’est une morgue, Sissy responds. Allez jeter un oeil. She’s defiant, but her voice quavers. Squinting dubiously, the tall soldier issues a command to his accomplice, the boy, who adjusts his aim.

The tall soldier ambles into the main room. He pauses near a covered patient and slings his AK47 over his shoulder, and then he takes out his machete and drives it through the patient’s chest. There’s the crack of a ribcage and the gurgle of blood in a throat, the strain of ungreased bedsprings. I stifle a scream, Sissy’s eyes go to her feet, and Klaas holds his breath. We don’t watch any more. The tall soldier returns to the antechamber, dragging behind him a white sheet with which he wipes the stains from his machete. He shrugs and says something to the boy, before he drops the sheet and exits the medical tent.

The boy’s forehead grows more serious and he’s yelling at us in Kru which, of course, none of us can understand. He’s becoming frustrated and I realise that he’s asking us — no, ordering us — to turn around so that he can shoot us in the back. We comply, slowly.

Don’t do this, Sissy pleads. We’re doctors. Médecins.

I glance over my shoulder: the boy is unmoved, or otherwise, he doesn’t understand. I see that Sissy and Klaas are holding hands. Klaas is muttering a prayer. They’re resigned to their fate.

I’m about to clasp Sissy’s other hand when I spot the Styrofoam cup on the cabinet, and I don’t know why, but I grab it and push my thumb through the little hollow in it.

I’ll show you a magic trick, I offer.

There’s confusion on the boy’s face, yet I press on with the routine, releasing the cup from my hands, leaving it perched on the end of my thumb, giving the illusion that it’s defying gravity.

See, it’s magic, I say.

Mah-jik, the boy repeats.

That’s right, I say. Magic.

He takes a couple of paces back and glances outside of the tent. I crush the cup in my hand. Sissy’s expression betrays her puzzlement, Klaas’s his relief. The boy mimics turning a key in a lock, and I’m confused.

Unlock? I ask uncertainly.

I think he wants a car, Klaas observes.

I take my keys from my pocket and jangle them, as if I’m performing another trick. The boy beckons with his rifle and I cant my head to the others, indicating that we should follow.

In single file we step out of the medical tent. In Dutch, Klaas recites the Lord’s Prayer. The camp is a Golgotha of corpses upon which dust is settling like ash, like in the aftermath of a volcano. The tents are silent and riddled with buckshot. Sissy’s hand is over her mouth. I also want to vomit. The boy prods me in the side with his AK47 and we walk — the three of us now in front of him — toward the dirt road, past booted and barefoot soldiers, and the dead, and firewood that is being kindled for a pyre. In the shade of a palm tree is a group of armed men, who laugh out of the sides of their mouths, gravely, or as if they’re chewing tobacco.

As we reach the dirt road, I can hear yelling from behind us. It’s the tall soldier. He’s about thirty metres away, striding toward us and waving his hand to call the boy back to the camp. I expect the boy to stop, but he presses the AK47 against my spine, forces us to quicken our pace. We get to my four wheel drive, which is near the parked convoy of jeeps, and the yelling is getting louder, closer.

I jump into the driver’s seat and the boy gets in the other side, pointing his gun at me. Sissy and Klaas hop in the back.

Make it fast, Sissy urges.

Ja, ja, ja, Klaas adds.

They buckle their seatbelts. I start the engine and immediately my window smashes. The tall soldier is opening fire on us. I reverse and lose the back wheels in a ditch, and I hear them spin unavailingly, and the spittle of bullets against the side door, and then the tyres gain traction and we’re away.

Once we’re out of sight, I move to switch on my GPS and the boy stays my hand.

Where do you want me to go? I ask, and he shuts his eyes in meditation.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, Klaas says.

He saved our lives, Sissy replies quietly.

The boy opens his eyes and yawns. Miles of dead road drift by, and when we reach a fork he indicates that we should take the road to the left.

The other way goes to the city, I suggest, pointing. He sits up straight and places his finger on the trigger; he’ll brook no argument. I say, Okay, okay.

After we’ve been driving for ninety minutes, the boy straightens his fingers. I bring the car to a halt near a village that’s been burned to the ground. There’s no sign of life; only the outlines of the dwellings remain. The boy taps his chest and blinks back tears.

I think he was kidnapped from here, I say. We drive a little farther down the road and then get out of the car. Beside us is a dried up cocoa plantation, the trees forked like dowsing rods that have lost the art of divination.

As we enter the plantation I notice that there’s a camp there, hidden from the road. Tarpaulins are tied to the branches of the cocoa trees and curious people with sunken eyes begin to emerge, to study us as we approach. The boy says something to a middle-aged woman, who nods approvingly. He guides us between rows of trees to one of the campsites near the end. It’s sheltered by a faded tarp and there’s an old man seated there. He’s fanning flies from the face of a woman, an elderly woman, who’s lying on the ground; she has a severely infected wound on her neck and her lips have gone white. The boy puts down his weapon and holds her hand in both of his.

He gazes up at Sissy. Dok-toor? he implores.

The breath flows heavy through her chest. She shakes her head. Sorry, she says. There’s nothing I can do. Désolée.

The news sinks in, and then the boy’s eyebrows rise with hope as he looks to me. Mah-jik, he says, and I begin to sob, and I see that Sissy’s jaw is tight, and Klaas has his head tilted to the sky, and I watch as the boy realises that there’s no such thing.

Peter Boyle lives in Sydney. He has published six collections of poetry, most recently Towns in the Great Desert (2013) and Apocrypha (2009) which won the Queensland Premiers Award in 2010. A new book of heteronymous poetry Ghostspeaking is due out next year with Vagabond Press. As a translator of French and Spanish poetry he has had four books published, including Anima (2011) and Tokonoma (2014) both by the Cuban poet José Kozer. He is currently completing a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney.

My attempts to find Maria Zafarelli Strega

During my partner’s absence in Bhutan I went by myself to Buenos Aires in late May 2014 to find out what I could about Maria Zafarelli Strega. I had read the few poems by her included in the 2011 Antologia de Poesía Rioplatense published by Alianza Editores and wanted to find out more. It seemed she was still alive but where? A friend in the film and theatre business in Buenos Aires had suggested an address but no one there had heard of her. Asking at nightclubs and bars in the Palermo district (a suggestion sparked by correspondence with one of the staff at Alianza) eventually brought a result.

After three nights of useless searching, I met a middle-aged woman who gave her name as Carlotta and immediately sparked up at the mention of Maria Zafarelli Strega’s name. “Of course I knew Maria”, she said. “Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you about her.” The chill from an open side door drifted across us. Up on the stage a rather shrill singer had just finished a round. A noisy group of Spanish tourists had moved on to another nightclub. We settled down at a table in the rear of the bar and she began, “Maria was tough – her life was tough. When she was young she was wealthy, I mean they were all wealthy, her family, but cursed because of that father of hers, a monster if there was ever one. Dead now and anyone might have done it though I’ve got my theories. The only really happy time in her life was the summer holidays with her grandparents in Uruguay – at Punta del Este. She’d talk about the huge drop from her grandparents’ house to the ocean and the din of cicadas. And then, when she was twelve, her grandparents both died. I don’t think she ever got over that shock. She told me too about when she was fourteen and another girl in her class sat on a window ledge to feel the top of her head, found all these bumps and told her she was destined to be a great genius. She never spoke about her father and the terror she and her mother knew because of him – I think she was too frightened ever to talk of that. But, as I said, he’s gone now, found in a lane near Teatro Colon with three knives in him. She disappeared just after that.” She said this last phrase slowly, with a knowing look I thought, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. “Maria told me she was twenty two,” Carlotta went on, “when she finally got free of her father. She’d left secretly for Uruguay, finally ready to become someone else – the only way she could ever be herself. It was tough, her three years in Montevideo. Moving from place to place, half-starved sometimes, looking for cheap places to eat or sleep or escape from it all with alcohol or pills, mostly in Aguada and Villa Muñoz, never that far from the Estación General Artigas – that was when she met Aurélie, the great love of her life. But if you know about Maria you know about Aurélie. I don’t want to talk about Aurélie – if you know how it ended it’s too painful to talk about, and maybe I’m jealous – maybe I hoped somewhere I would be loved like that. But I was never Maria’s type. We got to know each other around the time she and Aurélie broke up, after she’d tried to kill herself with barbiturates. But I don’t want to talk about that.” And at that Carlotta looked worried, confused, downed her drink, swept everything into her handbag, and prepared to leave. “I forgot. I should be somewhere else. Come back tomorrow night and I’ll meet you here. I don’t want to talk any more but you can see the scraps of writing she left me. It’s all I have of hers . . . she never liked photos.” And with that she rose to her feet and, slightly the worse for her several drinks, vanished into the chill late autumn night.

The next day I went back to the bar and waited and waited. At one in the morning there was still no sign of her so I left. I returned the next night and waited. When she hadn’t turned up by twelve thirty I started to leave. We almost collided in the door as Carlotta walked in, making no apologies as if the missed night had not existed. Once we were seated at the same table in the rear of the bar she produced from her handbag a battered dog-eared copy of a French edition of Aurélia by Gérard de Nerval. And, as I opened the front cover, there on the title page was the word “Aurélia” surrounded by hand-drawn stars and a strange shape that on closer inspection was a bolt of lightning severing a pigeon into two parts. Flipping through the book I saw pasted onto various pages small cards covered in what I took to be Maria’s handwriting, at times in a peculiarly disjointed Spanish. Were these really the writings of Maria Zafarelli Strega, the poet born in September 1961 whose whereabouts had been unknown since 1995? Her name was written on the front cover, in a neat miniature script that certainly looked like the one letter of hers I had been shown from the archives at Alianza Editores or, to my mind, like the scrawl on a handful of similar cards later brought out by the owner of a bookshop on Florida, another enthusiast of her poetry whom I met through introductions from my film and theatre friend, Fernando. (When I spoke to the woman at the bookshop a few days later, shortly before flying back to Australia, she gave the impression she was tired of the mysterious disappearance and the endless speculations. She seemed fairly certain that if Maria had disappeared it was because Maria had wanted to disappear. After all, she said, the years of the dictatorship were long gone and there seemed little reason to suspect foul play, and yet?)

Carlotta spoke very little that second night, content to give me time to read the notes and, with her permission, I copied down several of the cards. There were many I barely glanced at, cards with only phone numbers, names of people, individual disjointed words or phrases scrawled in ways I could not decipher. They seemed to point towards a privacy I already felt should be left as privacy. It was Maria’s writings as a poet I was interested in. I already felt I had come as close as I ever would to the real Maria. Her thin volume of poems I have never been able to track down – only 100 copies were produced in 1988 and there have been no re-issues. It is only her poems in the Anthology I have ever been able to find. The fragments I found on the cards I will reproduce (in translation) here. I was struck by the strangeness with which she wrote about herself, almost always, in the third person, not unlike the poem in the Alianza Anthology titled “From the notebooks of Maria Zafarelli Strega”[1]

[1]Only later on the plane back to Sydney did I recall a certain phrase used by Ana, the woman in the bookshop, “Sometimes when people disappear they stay exactly where they are.” It occurred to me that if Maria had changed her name once she could do so again and for a few moments I wondered, but it seemed too crazy a thought, could Carlotta be Maria?

The Card Collection

MZF’s vertiginous reinvention of herself began at age 22 on a sidewalk near the Cementerio del Norte in Montevideo, a cold morning in mid-winter. She no longer had a name – that baggage of evil had fallen into the sea on the ferry from Buenos Aires – and for three days she had wandered the city without a name. That morning she saw it appear all by itself on a shop window frosted over by 6 am chill: Maria Zafarelli Strega. Her name.

She heard only the sounds no one hears.

Poor Maria. If she could just climb out of herself and step down into the other world. Then she could love.

She always dreamed of living in Paris but every time she saved up money to go there someone would break into her flat or strangers would steal it. Even when she had no flat, even when she had no money. She was destined to survive here only or not at all.

It will not be easy to be born under the earth. I have heard plants tell me that.

An ordinary evening in the park near Paseo de Florida. She was invited by two mice to accompany them and she tracked her way across the park into a deserted building, the two mice constantly looking back to make sure she was following. Once she entered the building, they wanted her to go down into their underground burrow and she had to explain patiently that this was not possible. And from the window, just above her, the leaden weight of the sky kept trying to force her to surrender.

For a whole month during the bitterest winter of my memories, in a hovel near the docks I would unfold my map of Paris. The two working girls who let me stay there marveled at the joy I took in my map. I would say out loud, I will write this novel on this street, on this street I will write a poem, at a bar near this corner I will begin my most famous book. And I would imagine making my way through the curves and steep tunnels of lanes leading to Père Lachaise or heading across the Marais. The two girls watched with incredulity as I played with the map. I was at some time the lover of both girls but we did not make love anymore. Our bodies had become too strange, too much a tangled skein of catastrophes. I remember once kissing the long scar that trailed down one girl’s belly. I remember a very drunken dawn when one of them tried to kiss the knot of pain that kept exploding deep under my skull. When they made it back to the room at dawn after all the clients of the afternoon and the night, after working the streets and sometimes being kicked and beaten, they came back to sleep.

Years later I had a much older woman who was my lover. When she left me she said, “I have made this for you. Lay this small sack of herbs over your eyes and you’ll find sleep. Someday you’ll see. When you can’t give love anymore, at least you can give sleep.”

I was destined to survive here only, to invent my name, to discover almost nothing – but that slender thread would be everything.

Self-sabotaging faces in a frosted mirror at dawn.
We were breathless like the wire of the sky.

When the cat came to play with me and I had to explain that I would be dying soon it understood everything straightaway. Everything I could never explain to people was clear straight away. And because words were almost unnecessary, new playful words migrated into my head or suddenly were just there, secreted by some twist in a vein or fold of tissue, puffed up there and then like balloons in the vexing inner chamber of my head. The words were not audible. I simply saw them, like the words of my new name that just wrote themselves out before me one morning. They made me remember things that came from another world.

She was being driven out along the magical bridge of the seven rivers. River after river flowed slowly by under the narrow bench of her carriage while, in front, the driver sat idly flicking a knot of string into the air above the horse that shifted a little forward every few moments. An immense dawn sky stretched in layers of gold and pink interrupted by white wisps of cloud but there were no birds. She wondered why in all the teeming flow of waters there were no birds, and why the silence of the world was so total. “India” she thought to herself, and here she was, being driven towards this secret India devoid of people, this plain of silent rivers and limitless dawn. Each river she crossed was less than a river – it was as if every river had been shredded into thin ribbons of water in an inexhaustible plain. Is this the Ganges or the pampas, she wondered. “Nous voyageons vers l’Orient mais nous sommes en ‘Oriente’”, she said to herself in French, using the old Argentine name for Uruguay, and then, counting each separate stream she was passing, she thought “when the sequence of finite numbers has run out I will wake up at my grandmother’s house in Punta del Este”.

Waiting out the grey wind. Sometimes I wake and I think: it is somewhere. In a small box slipped under the floorboards of the stairs, my blue wish, my breath. What came out of my eyes one night, what hid away.

At a certain time I had to say, No, I will not go any further down the dark road. I will stop just here, under this tree, and write for two days, then I will die. And the two days grew and grew and started to look, almost, like a lifetime.

Along the flat endless road where I walk sheltered from the brisk wind by fragrant burning piles of cow-dung, I stop beside a small one-room house where I catch sight of a tiny mirror dangling from the ceiling. Stepping through the doorway I am suddenly in a corridor of whirling mirrors each turning at different angles at different speeds as if in answer to a multitude of undetectable breezes, a myriad of off-centered climates or micro-whirlwinds that arise only in private deserts. Fearfully I step among them and my face slips into one mirror while my hands, my legs are elsewhere. I am enjoying my fractured loneliness when a woman steps from behind a curtain. She is wearing purple gauze and a conical blue hat that is topped with the sign of the moon. “It is all frightfully simple,” she says. “You just choose.” And her smile slides back and forth between a wide gentleness and a knowing carnivorous intensity. Between the small circling diamonds of glass I freeze and I wonder, Am I she?

Who is it who comes to me, who is almost known, almost visible, almost might leave a glance inside me, a thumb print on a wall, a name, even just a single word, now in extremis as a curtain falls back into place when the breeze stops, something or someone whose gliding past brushes me, glare of the one day so awful, yet needing to be stayed with, this absolute face I yearn for, the longest arc of days, washing of the sea through the window of death, wave on grey wave tilting towards the end of vision, almost slightly, who?

Yesterday all day rats circling round me – first in the rat eyes of the old woman nibbling at the fingers and toes of the children caught in the sugar house, then in the two small sandals worn by the woman eaten by rats. When all that is left is terror and hunger. When we are both the rat with its numbed eyes and the victim unable to escape, a wilted starved body nailed to a bed of collapse. In the distance the rising falling notes of the legendary piper who would lead away our nightmare. A music in the world’s far corner that holds the key to our unsuspected otherness. The part of us already elsewhere.

Annette Ong studied Creative writing at the University of Western Australia. She is a published writer of fiction, articles and reviews.

Feast

A crow surveys the scene; cocks its head to the side and eyes its kindred circling above. With hunger unabated, their squawking increases as the single crow stands sentinel over its lifeless prey, shielding its form. Claiming ownership, it claws at the lifeless body of a rat; its tail the length of its body. Nudging the rat inches down the footpath, it is hopelessly exposed to the scavengers overhead. Instinctually, it snaps the rat’s already loose neck in its beak and lifts. Airborne for a short distance, it struggles to get proper lift-off. The dead weight weighs it down. The crow tries a second time; desperate to escape, it clutches the rat’s neck tightly in its beak, the still-warm body hanging, a sack of blood, flesh and bone. The crow expands its brilliant wings to full length and this time, manages ascension. Higher, higher, slowly, it flies. Landing softly on the branches of a tall pine tree, hidden by green, it lays the rat’s body down. Its beak has punctured the rat’s neck; a hole the size of a ten cent piece, gapes red and inviting. Sliding its sharp beak into the hollow, it pulls back on tender meat and sinew. Holding the body down with its claw, its beak meets bone. The crow feasts. It takes its fill until the rat’s body is turned inside out. Stepping back, it inspects the carcass. With a belly full, it carefully preens its wings, while the call of its kindred rises from the below the branches.

High above the city streets, shadows lose strength as the sun begins to rise. The crow perched comfortably, listens, as machines churn to life, traffic begins to spill into the streets and the rats… the rats, are awaking.

***

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, the clock flashes and the alarm screeches alive. He springs upright in bed, remembering a news report he’d read in the past, stating the dangers of being jolted awake. Something to do with letting your body wake naturally; a shock to the system is never a good idea they’d said. Listen to your inherent body clock, they’d said. If he did that, he’d never get out of bed. No, maybe a shock to the system was a good idea.

World weary and its only six a.m. Shuffling to the bathroom, he washes his face, brushes his teeth, shaves a little and tugs a comb through what is left of his hair. Inspecting his balding head in the mirror, he is reminded of Moses parting the Red Sea. His remaining hair stands on both sides of an ever-expanding patch of sunburnt scalp. He rubs sunscreen in and hopes it works.

He dresses mechanically; sniffs at yesterday’s shirt and puts it on. He grabs his battered briefcase and shuts the door behind him. On the way down, he meets others. They nod to each other in recognition as they descend the apartment stairs. They don’t know each other’s names but they know each other’s lives. Together they are channeled out into the street, under the growing sunshine, and into the maze.

Entering the fray, he walks with little purpose; defeated by the day already. Bodies on both sides of him, scamper from one side of the footpath to the next. Some whistle down taxis, others natter pointlessly on phones, while some stare down from the grubby windows of passing buses.

Arriving at his desk, he sits down and can’t remember how he even made it there. He can’t recall getting up this morning, let alone entering the office building. Everything is a haze of foggy memories, with no sharp edges, nothing to grasp and hold on to. He suspects it’s like this for most; as he sees the young girl from Accounts sit resignedly in her chair, her eyes blank and lightless, as her computer screen flickers to life.

The cubicles begin to fill. Together, they live and die by the clock. Glazed eyes survey the big hand, willing it to chase the little one faster, faster, faster. The hours pass but he can’t remember what he’s done all day. He has no memory of lunch; however, a half-eaten egg sandwich sits on his desk suggesting he must have got up at some point to buy it from the staff canteen.

When five p.m. comes around, he stands. They all stand. Together, they emerge from tunnels of different hallways to wait for the lift. Those with little patience take the stairs. He takes the stairs. Exiting the building, he heads home. Bodies merge as one, as neighboring buildings expel workers for the day. He stops off at his local supermarket to pick up dinner.

The automatic doors slide open to welcome him. Walking to the Deli counter at the back, he can’t recall how he arrived there. He takes a ticket from the machine: Now Serving 65, it flashes. He fingers his ticket stub; he’s number 75. He waits with the others as they survey the meats on display under glass countertops. A teenage boy wearing a hair net weighs five hundred grams of salami for a woman with a screaming toddler attached to her left leg.

There is a special on roast chickens: five dollars a bird. There’s only one left and it looks like it’s been there all day. The unforgiving glare of fluorescent lighting makes it look even sadder as it spins languidly on the rotisserie. Under hot orange lights, the oil drips from its headless body, resulting in a stagnant river of fat, reflecting its grossness in all its glory. He welcomes the rush of saliva in his mouth, as he desperately eyes the carcass.

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, growing secretly desperate as the numbers flick by and the chicken remains spinning. 71, 72, 73…the seconds feel like minutes and the minutes like hours. New customers join the queue and eye the bird with the same focused intent. He inwardly screams “It’s mine!” as he begins salivating at the thought of tearing into the white meat. They circle the counter, fidgeting with anticipation.

“75!” yells the teenage boy.

He approaches the counter, gives the boy his ticket and grandly asks for the chicken. With the bird safely wrapped in its heat insulated bag and tucked under his arm, he spins on his heel and the scavengers’ part, cowering to the sides as he marches down the aisle.

***

Slamming the door to his flat behind him, he can’t remember making the journey home. Standing in his kitchen, flinging his briefcase to the floor, he opens the sliding doors to his tiny balcony. Rolling up his shirt sleeves, he sits and places the still-warm chicken on a chair in front of him. Ripping open the bag, he tears a drumstick from the lifeless body. Biting down on the flesh sends him into raptures; he feels a gnawing hunger being satiated, albeit temporarily. He pulls off another drumstick and chews down hard. Chicken grease coats his stubby fingers as he splits the body in half; a hollow cavern within. Sucking the bones dry, he flicks them to the street below. There is nothing left but soggy skin.

Belly full, he leans back and closes his eyes. Shadows begin to form shapes on walls and in corners, as the sun loosens its grip on the day. A stale wind wafts from the street below and above him in darkening skies, a murder of crows circle.

Luke Johnson’s work has appeared in numerous journals and been shortlisted for such awards as the 2014 Josephine Ulrick Prize. His novella Ringbark was published by Going Down Swinging in 2015 as part of the Longbox series. He lectures in Creative Writing at UTS and UoW.

Toasting an Honorary Jet and Okay Son-of-a-Bitch

What a circus. Old people wearing red-rimmed wayfarer sunglasses and riding scooters, bums getting around in toupees made from real human hair, ugly teenagers dressed in t-shirts that say, so fucking ugly! so fucking what! I stopped in Newtown once before, to look at a sofa bed for sale. The man selling the sofa bed said to me, I can tell you it’s the most comfortable sofa bed I’ve ever screwed on; that’s a fact. It was his guarantee to me against discomfort, I guess. He was wearing a vest and I thought comfort was clearly not his big thing. I looked at him in his vest and asked him, Have you ever let somebody fact check you with that vest on? I tried pronouncing the word the way he had pronounced it, fact, with my nostrils forming a diaeresis over my vowel of a mouth. He flattened out his chin and said, Go back to the north side, arsehole. I said, Don’t be so sore. He went inside his apartment and left the sofa bed on the street out front with only his dog to look after it. I have a suspicion the mutt might have been named William Carlos Williams after the poet William Carlos Williams. At least, it had the initials WCW engraved on the pendant attached to its collar and when I petted it and asked it to tell me something interesting it barked in an offbeat, syncopated sort of way.

That was a year and a half ago. Today it’s, ‘Sir, we are trying to raise money for racism.’ Yes, reluctantly, but sure enough, I’m in Newtown again. Not looking for furniture but to help honour my father with a bronze cast in the foyer of the theatre where they staged his first ever play. Of five children, I’m the only one to have followed in his decrepit, artistic footsteps. My participation is expected. Something in the order of, ‘Yes, he was a tyrant to live with—but didn’t he know how to pull at the heartstrings.’ Maybe even an elaboration on how my own writing is going after that. Provided there’s some genuine interest, of course. Often hard to tell. But I’m getting ahead of myself. See, before any of this conjecture can take place, the man walking in front of me needs to drop a dollar into the girl’s bucket for racism, so that I can slip past without being harassed and the world can become the stupider, albeit slightly more tolerant, place she dreams of. ‘Against racism,’ he corrects her, impatiently putting his hand into his pocket. He’s black, she’s white—he should know, I guess. I’m tempted to ask him if he’s sure. She nods her head enthusiastically and in it goes. And on I go.

Past the red and white barber shop where dad used to get his beard trimmed and neck shaved. Of course, it’s a café now. The kind that expects its patrons to bring their own chairs. Not completely true: there’s a pile of dirty red and white cushions on the footpath out front. Then again, I suppose people who drink their coffees at places like this—places that have their web address built into their clever, lower-case titles, t h e j i t t e r y b a r b e r . c o m—probably don’t have any major prejudices against parking their skinny-jeaned derrieres directly on the asphalt anyway. They can watch to make sure their pushbikes aren’t being stolen while writing in their journals (they write with pencils in this suburb) or working on their MacBook Pros (and process with three-thousand-dollar Macs). What’s the wireless range like? I wonder as I pass. Not really; I know it’s excellent—I can see the simultaneous looks of contentment and annoyance. Actually, what I really can’t help wonder is what happened to the old barber who used to have signed photos of the ’51 and ’53 premiership winning teams on the wall of his shop and who drank cider and listened to the races while he was working and who’d dash out of the shop mid-shave to place a bet at the last minute. He used to think of my dad as an okay son-of-a-bitch too. At least, he never cut open his throat and let him bleed out over the floor after one of his horses got picked at the post. I’d call that an endorsement.

That was then. When even the gutters smelt like they’d run with Brut. Even Brut couldn’t save this suburb now. What it needs now is one big long moving walkway. The kind with glass panels down either side. High glass panels. You could stroll from Darlington to Enmore without being licked by some bohemian’s gypsy dog that way. On this occasion the mutt in question—not at all like the dignified beat-mutt I met the last time I was here—and its owner are standing at the stairwell entrance to one of the street’s many sex shops, two doors down from t h e j i t t e r y b a r b e r . c o m (or is it just the jittery barber, dotcom implied, like PtyLtd?), trying to argue their way in. For a moment I’m not sure which one of them has been refused the entry. ‘Come on, if she was a seeing-eye-dog you’d let her in,’ the mutt’s owner is defending his right to bring his non-seeing-eye-dog shopping for pornography with him. ‘Blind people don’t buy pornography,’ the shop keeper is arguing back, ‘they jerk off by sound, like whales.’ There’s your answer, I tell myself, feeling sorry that the dog should be discriminated against on account of its able-bodied mammalian jerker owner. I consider offering to stand there and hold the leash so the owner can dash upstairs and buy some new DVDs—or magazines, if it’s the sound of pages crinkling that tingles his blowhole. But I don’t want to be late to the theatre do, so I just pant my tongue at the poor mutt and press on.

Jesus, the theatre do. I can see it already. A soiree of handsome actors and actresses milling about with scarves wrapped loosely around their uncollared necks, volunteer drama-academy students playing the roles of waiters and waitresses (black-tie costumes borrowed from the department wardrobe), celebrated choreographers appalled with the pitiful range of vegan alternatives, and one or two professional bar staff—the poor RSA-trained sons-of-bitches—acknowledging shom-payne orders with the tiredest of nods. If there is time to elaborate (returning to an earlier thought, circa paragraph two), then I’ll state now that I intend to bite down on my lip, look them in the collective eye and respond, ‘Difficultly.’ Let them lower their heads then and understand how tough things must be for me—the talented bastard’s untalented son. ‘But we find a way to go on,’ I hear myself filling the awkward after-silence, signalling the end of my dismal blessing. ‘Hard as it is. We find a way, right?’

And between you and me, I must say, it gets harder every day too. The writing, that is. The letting go part was decisively easy. My father let go of us long before we ever had the chance to let go of him. He was an expert in letting go. First he let go of us and then he let go of himself. When it came time to grab hold of something again, the patch of chest covering his heart was about all he could manage. Even the number 0 at the bottom of the phone’s keypad was beyond his reach by that late stage.

A word on my dad, as I pass by a schoolkid with his socks pulled right up to his knees in a way that was squarely unpopular in my heyday: he hated the theatre. My dad was meant to be a famous rugby league player, not a divorced playwright. He trained with the Newtown Jets’ reserve-grade side in 1982. That was the year the first-grade team played their home games in Campbelltown in preparation for the merger. Dad probably would have been a second-rower for the rest of his life if the alliance hadn’t failed and the Jets hadn’t been booted out of the competition. As it was, dad fell in with the theatre crowd and never played rugby league again. This isn’t as dumb as it sounds. Well, it is, but we’re talking about a period when the players still held regular jobs during the week and worked out in public gyms at night and on Saturdays and held diplomatic immunity against DUI charges. My dad worked out at the Newtown gym every night and was the second strongest bench presser in the suburb. (By the time us kids came along he could lower the thing right down onto his sternum plate and shoot it back up with such force it felt like a special gravity ride you paid to go on.) Only one person in the gym could out-lift dad in those early days, and he was tied in with the theatre as a stagehand. That’s where dad started. With Roger. In the day Roger worked as a cop, at night he shifted props. He was a prop cop. Shifting props with the cop: that’s where dad met mum. And then some. (Like I told you, difficultly.)

Meeting mum was one of the stories dad didn’t wait till I was old enough to tell me. ‘Your mum, she was trying to be an actress,’ he liked to start, thinking I’d enjoy the bawdy rhythm he used to inflect it with right from the opening. ‘But the thing is,’ he’d whisper, ‘she was terrible. No matter what it was, they only used to give her background roles—usually playing the part of some piece of scenery, a tree or a rock or a farm animal or something. Then one day I see her waiting backstage, getting ready to go on and I say, “Hey, you’re too good to be playing a tree again. I’m going to write you a lead part. How’d you like that?” “You’re a stagehand,” she says. “Hey, I’m a stagehand like you’re a tree,” I tell her back. “I’ll write you a lead role but you gotta promise you’ll go out with me.” A week later, I finished Willow and when they cast her in the lead role, not only did she go out with me but she gave me a suckjob on the first date. Midway through she stopped and looked up and said, “I can do it like a tree if you want?” I just looked at her without saying anything and she went back to it, waving her arms about and making whooshing sounds as she did.’

Less than half a block from the theatre I come across dad’s old pub. This was where he used to go after each performance. Often he wouldn’t even bother with the show, he’d come here and get drunk instead and threaten to kill himself by driving his car across to the Sydney Football Stadium without stopping at a single set of lights regardless of the colour. This feat was one he famously achieved during his internship with the Jets. It’s what made him a club legend without having ever even sat on the reserve bench for a first-grade game. Another time he reversed his car all the way to the top of an eight-storey parking garage. They were set to inaugurate him for this. Then the collapse.

I decide to stop in for a drink. I tell myself it will help me with those questions which require an answer beyond difficultly, or the condolences which come in the form of tedious stories, beginning, ‘You know, I never told anyone this, but it was a performance of The Brave they put on at our university which convinced me to drop out of my degree in the final year and pursue fulltime acting…’ ‘You don’t say?’ ‘See, arts-law was the dream my parents had for me, not the dream I had for me.’ ‘What about your student loan debt?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘Never mind. How about swooshing your arms like tree?’

What shall I drink to? I ask myself, taking a seat at the bar. Besides me there’s only two other people in this hotel. One’s a permanent shadow on the wall of the poker machine room, the other’s the bartender. Maybe it’s too early to expect a crowd. On the north side anything before eleven-thirty p.m. is too early. I thought this was the suburb of premature crowds. What about those pagans I crossed coming out of the train station? Camped out with their sleeping bags like dedicated rock fans. Their toupees might have been made from the hair of the prophet Kurt Cobain, the way they shone up at me. The girl trying to raise money for racism could have learned a great deal from the way they went about their business too: head shamefully down, letting the sign do the talking. ‘To dad,’ I say, charging my glass.

After four beers and four toasts I’m just about ready to front the scene awaiting me, when a very unexpected thing happens. Russell Crowe comes into the bar. I know it’s him straight off because tucked into the front of his tracksuit pants, with the flap that contains his licence and Medicare card hanging visibly over the drawstring crotch area, is a South Sydney Rabbitohs wallet. That is, a bright-green Velcro wallet with a big Rabbitohs emblem on its front and red hemming. Before I can say anything the son-of-a-bitch comes right up to where I’m sitting and orders himself a beer. He doesn’t just order himself a beer, he leans over the bar and pours himself one. A stout. At first he drinks from his cupped hand the way we used to drink water from the taps when we were down at the netball courts kicking the soccer ball around. When he’s taken his fill that way he grabs one of the dirty glasses sitting on the sink top—could even be one of my lager glasses—behind the bar and fills it, leaving no room for head. He doesn’t sit down to drink either, but stands with his hairy forearms soaking the spilt beer back out of the soggy bar mats.

‘What’s your story, morning glory?’ he says to me.

‘My dad used to play reserve grade for the Jets,’ I say.

‘Then your dad’s a bloody legend,’ Russell says back.

‘My dad’s dead.’

‘Yeah, cheers to that,’ Russell nods his head, decent son-of-a-bitch that he is.

Marion May Campbell is a Melbourne writer who currently teaches in Professional & Creative Writing at Deakin University. Her latest work of fiction is the short novel about failed revolutionaries konkretion (UWAP 2013). ‘Geometry & Geography’ is from a work-in-progress.

​

Geometry and Geography

Little sister is doing a maths assignment on the card table under the salty-louvred window in the Shoalwater Bay shack they are renting. There is the good feel of sand on linoleum underfoot. No one cares about housework here. One clean sweep is all. She’ll do the ten Euclid problems then get ready for Saturday arvo dancing classes — shave legs, shampoo hair to squeaky clean, since this is before conditioner, draw up silky stockings, trying not to ladder them with chewed fingernails, clipping each stocking with the rubberised suspender buttons, shimmy into the tight green and black hound’s tooth skirt and grey cashmere jumper. Slip into the patent leather shoes with the squashed heels. On the first floor Dancing Studio she and big sister will be lined up with the others, teased and bouffed and sprayed, along the studio wall for the boys, who’ll skid across the polished boards to choose their partners for the Pride of Erin. Will the tidal wave part around them, leaving them there? The word wallflower hovers. Oh the Red Sea dividing. Red is the blood that flows from me. Let the boy-wave not divide like the Red Sea around us, and leave us stranded like two cooling lumps of pumice stone. But let me not be chosen ahead of her. Then I’ll have to drag her sorrow, ball-and-chain. The mother has her hand cupped over the speaker of the receiver and says something to the blue-eyed grandmother, a tiny wrinkled and painted doll sunk in the depths of the cane armchair. Voice broken, the mother coughs. The big sister asks hoarse, What, what?

The scream comes from another world. With its savage ripping force it skins her. She sees herself blue, blood pulsing under the moon sheen, a skinned rabbit. That voice is a killer wind. She dares not look. She’s not where her big sister is. She cannot be. That space is always taken.  She doesn’t know what her sister knows. She’ll never know what her sister knows. She rents the space of not knowing. I still rent the space of not knowing. The scream rends the space of not knowing.

There’s only the scream in the room, all the air’s stolen by it. It’s a tearing of the voice box and there’s no stop to it, like a line with arrows on either end, it might be infinite. It’s a destruction of wave harmonics.

The dead father is made alive out of myths.

When he’s two the dead father’s Enchanted Mother lets him take apart the Mantle Clock, Mainwheel, Mainspring, Wheel Train, gears serially undone, the whole Escapement: Escape Wheel, Pallet Fork, Balance Spring and Balance Wheel, until wall-to-wall, the lounge room floor is Time dismantled. Endless space now between the tick and the… At two mind you, the mother on the phone has said. The younger daughter thinks that to dismantle is not to mantle. Now that’s all he is: a photo of a uniformed moustached head on the mantle. The dead father is the first on his block to make a crystal radio set and he makes them for the neighbours as well. This is around 1927 in his twelfth year, common enough, since they were widespread, even in WWI. But it’s from these he gets hooked on microwaves and condensers. It’s not far to radar and beyond. Just waves big and small.

In this family they are good at making up genius boy children. The younger sister will have a boy child who speaks in clear crisp words at nine months and at ten months in telegraphic sentences — uzza icecweam as they glide past a Peters Ice Cream sign on a Deli. Maybe it’s because myths make magnetic spaces. Events are pulled to them. The grandmother says, Isn’t that a-mazing, as the Toyota Corolla glides under a freeway pedestrian overpass. Under the next pedestrian overpass from the elevated safety seat at the back the Baby Genius voice pronounces, Uzza mazing. With these enchanting boys it’s serial mazing.

The two sisters in the beach house enchant no one. They understand that they are girls. The space of the dead father draws the big sister, who remembers everything about him, indelibly out of her own life. Only the little sister can have her own life. She knows she can rent the father if she wants because he has retreated and she can make him over for herself and from faded bits and pieces she can borrow him when she wants.

From behind the dunes through the house the jade waves pound. The boom, the crack, the boom. And the gorgeous salt sea-weedy smell rises to fight that ripping scream. There’s been a fire, the mother says, re-cradling the receiver, threading the cord through her fingers, lighting a Capstan cigarette.

Little sister has just had her first period. It’s over now. Outside, away from them, she slips her undies off on the warm weathered boards of the front porch, safe behind the unpruned tee-tree hedge. The wood presses into her bare skin. Wood prints into her. Things press and impress and your body speaks back. The sun draws on her sex. She thinks it drawls. The sun drawls on me, speaks intense and slow. It works on me, like that stuff for wounds that pulls out the gunk, like what is it, like Magma Plasm. Her young sex milkily responds. What is this, what is this, it says.  It is sweet salty liquid almond speech.  The world drawls on you. You whisper back.

Even when mother sister grandmother are sucked into the black sinkhole of the telephone—there’s been a fire; it’s all gone—you can let the sun draw on your body. The sun pulls like a poultice. She reads her geography text. She has a state exam approaching. Study is the sun’s drawl, letter-by-letter, map-by-map. The sense of sun and the drawn Earth orbiting. Geography and geometry are what Egyptians did as part of sun worship — earth drawing and measuring. She reads Huddersfield and Halifax. She has her memory tricks. She gives her own names to them. Her body drawls back its slow language. Shuddersfield and Whollyflex. The industries. Smelting. The likelihood of what goes with what —where there’s coal, there’ll be smelting. Steel. Summat like that. Where there’s moock there’s brass, her grandma says her Scouse great grandma used to say. Coals to Newcastle. The weather, the climate and geography. Sun- struck daughter of a man who would’ve made it rain. The rainmaker father is dead and dead again.

So much later the Midlands and the North Country will carry their charge back to this scene. Oh the smelting. She will top the state in Geography.

Sooner she’ll learn the microclimates of a lover’s body. The quite non-tristes tropiques.

Now from the fibro shack perched on the low dune over the road the daggy burred Border Collie comes and sniffs her legs, licks the salt. What’s happening here, whatcha been up to, the moist nose reads her. Dusty Springfield is singing on the leather-clad transistor, I only want to be with you. The younger sister and the Border Collie are you for now, for Dusty’s voice.

The scream has died in the dunes. All their stuff was in the removalists’ storage shed. Is in another form. Chemical change is irreversible. But not for the younger sister. She can reverse. Most of it’s gone. They will be repeating in their broken voices over and over. Gone gone. She hates their voiced grief.  She sees with satisfaction the great gothic span of twisted metal hangars above the ocean of ashes punctuated by small heaps of foul reeking globular nothing.

The mother’s voice is blank. What this means is — all the photos and pictures and furniture from when he was alive are gone. The scarf, the sister’s voice is a roar of stolen air, exiting. Like the scream of the bushfire. Maybe her sister is a fury. A fate. One of those Erinnyes. She had one thing that was the father’s — the Air Force scarf, not a uniform scarf, but in the deep grey blue wool, that someone, maybe one of those endless volunteers knitted for one of the NZAF boys, in thunder blue basket weave stitch. The bigger sister’s relic from the father gone — he to sea, now the scarf to fire. This burning of all his things, of the antiques he chose, the books he’d read or meant to read, incinerated in the cremation he never had. Of course the mother will not jump in the two-toned, olive and apple-green finned Morris Major Elite to inspect what remains, as the Storage Management invites her to do— the sprinklers saved some things, you are welcome to inspect, the mother says they said.

There’s never been a body to identify, so why would she run to contemplate the remnants of thingsthingsthings? The photos would’ve burnt first, she says, lighting another cigarette. No I couldn’t bear to rake through the wreckage. The older sister howls and howls until the younger one slinks off again to the dunes where the old Border Collie will follow her. They’ll sit together and watch the swollen body of the ocean roll and break. This loud grief will always upstage her, until she becomes a subtle actress, or so she thinks.

And the younger sister, callous, letting the sun milk her like crazy, sets her mind free to do geometry and geography, or daydream the German teacher taking her in her arms, meine schöne meine Liebe, or even the boys’ eyes lighting up as they skid across the dance floor to choose her. The ones with oily rock n roll quiffs, more than shiny Beatles’ mops, the rebel boys in tight black jeans and winklepickers are the ones she wills to notice her. She’ll tease her hair into the biggest beehive. Take that, Pride of Erin.

Emily O’Grady is a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology, where she won the 2012 Undergraduate, and the 2013 Postgraduate Writing Prize. Her fiction and poetry have been published in The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks, and Award Winning Australian Writing.
 
 

The Sky Had Turned Pale Green

When the drama captain dived into a shallow swimming pool in my final year of school the chaplain held a vigil in the chapel every lunch break. Each afternoon we gathered around a battery operated candle on the teal carpet in a blobby oval, offering significant memories while eating toasted sandwiches from the tuckshop and passing around a packet of Minties or Snakes. Each session began with two minutes of silent reflection and a meditative Angelus. When it was my turn to contribute I pretended I was too distraught to speak.

The vigils came to an end when she woke as a quadriplegic twelve days afterthe fall. The administration organised a free dress day to raise money for her family to renovate their bathroom, and renamed the end of year Cabaret in her honour. On graduation her parents dressed her in the school tracksuit and styled her short hair into a braided stump for the occasion. No one had thought of a ramp to get her on the stage so she sat by the bottom of the stairs—her parents gripping her shoulders—while a scrolled diploma tied with a purple ribbon was placed in her lap and subsequently rolled onto the floor. I couldn’t tell if the mood was one of mourning or celebration. She wasn’t wearing shoes, and I remember looking at her socked feet and thinking of sleeping lambs.

Irma Gold is an award-winning writer and editor. Her short fiction has been widely published in literary journals, including Meanjin, Island, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies, most recently in Australian Love Stories, edited by Cate Kennedy. Her critically acclaimed debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward, was shortlisted for SPN’s inaugural Most Underrated Book Award and won her a Canberra Critics Circle Award for Literature. Irma is also the author of three children’s picture books, and the editor of a number of anthologies, including The Invisible Thread, an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013. Irma is Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. She recently received a special one-off award for Outstanding Service to Writing and Publishing in the ACT and Region.

Bus 864F

When Celia got on at Currie Street, he was already there. She didn’t notice him at first, but then he wasn’t swearing right off the bat.

Before the bus filled up, she quickly ate the salad she hadn’t finished on her lunchbreak. Just mushrooms and rocket. All that had been left in the crisper. She’d forgotten dressing. It tasted awful. But she felt guilty about the Flake she’d crammed in at the bus stop.

Celia opened the novel she was reading. She liked to read in bed at night but she needed daylight for this book or she’d have nightmares. By Pultney Street all the seats were taken, except for one next to a man in his sixties who sat on the aisle. He wore a gold watch so yellow it was clearly a fake, and he kept checking it. As the bus lurched away from the kerb he began muttering, loud enough to be heard just above the engine. ‘Fucking shitting cunt of a world. Fucking shitting cunt.’

It was the C word that made Celia look up from her novel. She wasn’t sure at first which mouth it had come from. But he was still going, his face expressionless. ‘Fucking shitting cunt of a world.’ He looked straight ahead. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, his legs opened wide.

Celia was sitting diagonally behind him, up against the window. She noticed the ingrained dirt on his denim jeans, the long grey hairs on the back of his neck. He ran on like a soundtrack. Two teenage boys smirked.

Celia tried to concentrate on her novel but she kept treading over the same sentences.

‘Shut up, Mister,’ one of the boys said eventually. ‘Seriously.’

The man paused, looked at his watch, pulled out a bus timetable.

The boy flicked a wave of hair, turned to his mate. ‘So, you know sugar sachets, right?’ he was saying. ‘This guy that invented them spent, like, forever, working out how to make it so that you could, like, bend it in the middle and, you know, open it that way.’

The man folded his arms across his chest again and took up his mantra. ‘Fucking shitting cunt of a world.’

‘Seriously, Mister,’ the boy said. ‘Give it a rest.’

Celia wanted to tell the cocky boy to shut up himself. What if this man had a gun? What if the boy pushed him over the edge and he turned it on the passengers? Celia wondered if she’d have time to get on the floor. Maybe if he shot the woman next to her first, her dead body would fall on Celia and Celia could just wait it out, until it was safe. The woman was small but wide with a large handbag in her lap. Celia wondered how long she could take the weight.

The man kept going and the boy rolled his eyes at his friend. ‘Anyways,’ he continued. ‘In the end the guy – this inventor dude – topped himself. Cause no one appreciated his genius.’

‘For real?’ Celia heard the friend say.

People were pretending not to hear the man. ‘Fucking shitting cunt.’ Celia kept sneaking sideways glances. If something happened and they needed to put together a profile for the police she’d need to remember every detail. His eyebrows were blowsy and his cheeks were covered in red patches, old scars. His nails were neatly trimmed. He had a small paunch. His grey polo T-shirt was buttoned up to the throat. She’d heard that it was remarkable how accurate artists’ depictions could be from description alone. That sometimes seeing their pencilled perpetrator made victims cry.

At Aldgate the teenagers got off. As the bus pulled away they turned to wave slowly at the man, provocatively. He saw them. The expression on his face was unbending. Idiots, Celia thought. They were marked now.

The bus passed a sloping hill full of alpacas and thundered along towards Hahndorf, so fast she thought of the movie Speed. If the bus veered off on the corner and ended up on its nose, would she survive? She was near the back so perhaps all the bodies in front would give her a soft landing. Or perhaps the sheer force of propulsion would hurtle her over them all and into glass. Best not to think about it.

The soundtrack had stopped. This was almost more unsettling. They were already at stop 44 and the man still hadn’t got off. She didn’t want to get off before him. What if he followed her? What if he beat her to death with a rock? On the weekend she had been reading Raymond Carver.

But then a pretty young thing with red hair and tiny diamonds in her ears got on and Celia felt a terrible kind of relief. The man looked at the girl as she settled into a seat, assessed her, Celia felt. For once Celia was grateful for her mid-forties invisibility.

The man looked at his watch again, and then again only seconds later. Celia had abandoned all pretence of her novel.

In Hahndorf he pressed the button and instead of getting off at the door closest to him he walked to the front. Celia thought, Is this when he pulls out the gun? But then she heard him complain to the driver. They were ninety seconds behind schedule, he said. He would be taking this matter up with Adelaide Metro, he said. His words were crisp.

As the bus pulled away the man stood in front of a popular hotel, all fake old-fashioned brick and grape vines. And Celia thought, Perhaps he’s tourist hunting.

He had foolishly left his timetable behind. She took it. It would have his fingerprints on it.

 ***

‘There was a man on the bus yesterday.’

Keith had the paper open to the crossword, a Saturday ritual. ‘Not that guy from the hills? The one that stinks?’

‘No.’

‘Cause apparently he’s some genius artist. Real famous. Or that’s what Susie reckons anyway. But honestly, I don’t think the guy’s ever washed. He sat next to me the other day and I had to breathe through my mouth.’

Celia picked up a vase from the table. A browned petal stuck to its rim. She thought about cleaning it, then put it back down.

‘If that’s genius I don’t want a bar of it.’ Keith looked at her over the rim of his glasses, his pencil hovering. ‘So who then?’

‘No one in particular. He was unwell.’

‘Didn’t vomit, did he?’

‘Nothing like that,’ she said. Keith turned back to his crossword.

‘Another word for chimera? Five letters?’

‘He wasn’t quite right in the head. I thought he might be psychotic. You know, the kind that kills young girls.’

Keith snorted. ‘How’d you figure that?’

‘Dream,’ she said.

‘So it is.’ Keith pencilled it in.

‘Where’s the rest of the paper?’ she said. ‘You haven’t binned it already?’

‘Over there,’ he thumbed. ‘Maybe your psycho’s in it.’

Celia half expected Keith to be right, but there were no local rapes or murders. Or none that had been reported anyway.

 ***

It was nine days before she saw him again, after work on the homeward bound route. For a moment her heart stood still.

He sat on the aisle again, checking his watch every few minutes. His knee joggled up and down. She hadn’t noticed that last time, perhaps he had been doing it but she hadn’t noticed. She put her book aside to focus better. In case her testimony was needed. She was reading Rankin now and it made her realise that people just didn’t pay attention to what was happening around them. Meanwhile these girls were disappearing, being murdered. What if this man was a Rankin imitator, right here on Bus 864F, and she was the only one to notice him, really notice him. She’d heard there were such things. In an interview the author had admitted as much.

He wasn’t swearing this time. His lips were moving but there was no sound. He was wearing a pale blue polo T-shirt, the colour of a starling’s egg, also buttoned up to the throat. She considered repeating this phrase to a police officer. While she sat in a room empty but for a desk, framed by a single spotlight. It was the colour of a starling’s egg, she would say, folding her hands neatly in her lap. They would record her, of course. And when the case reached the courts her words would be read back to the jury. Or perhaps she would have to testify. She saw herself in a sleek maroon two-piece suit, the pencil skirt falling to just below the knee. She would wear her glasses, even though she only needed them for reading.

He stood and Celia realised with a jolt that she had not been monitoring him at all. He swayed and stumbled against the movement of the bus, grabbed onto a rail. For a moment he looked just like any frail elderly man.

He got off at stop 24A this time, just after the freeway. She couldn’t work out why.

 ***

Their dining table was red laminex, a gift from the previous renters. Celia loathed it, but nothing in the house was hers. Sometimes she stabbed the underside of the table with her fork. It made her feel better.

Tonight it was Keith’s turn to make dinner and he’d prepared one of his five standards, bangers and mash. Celia hated bangers and mash, especially his bangers and mash. The sausages were always overcooked, black and crusty. And the mash was from a packet, pasty reconstituted stuff.

‘Could you pass the salt?’ she asked. She didn’t need the salt. Sometimes she spoke just to pierce the silence.

Keith managed to pick up the shaker and pass it to her without his eyes leaving his book. Another biography, he was always reading biographies. She had hoped for a word, a brief moment of eye contact at the very least.

With her fingers she scraped together a mound of mash, watching to see if Keith would notice. She rolled it into a perfect golf ball, held it poised in the air.

Keith turned a page. Celia pressed the ball onto the underside of the table.

‘You done with the salt?’ Keith said. He looked up and Celia smiled.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’ She wiped her hand on her skirt and passed him the salt.

She considered telling him about her most recent encounter, asking Keith for his thoughts on why the man had got off at 24A. But she decided against it, he wouldn’t give the issue due consideration. Everything rested on her.

***

On her lunchbreak Celia bought a spiral notebook with a hard plastic cover. She recorded all the facts, folded the timetable and tucked it in the back. During staff meetings she spent her time thinking about the man. Actually, she spent most of her time at work thinking about him. Processing applications for provider numbers wasn’t exactly mentally challenging. She took receipt of the scanned form, entered the data, printed off a copy, put it in the delegate’s in-tray, and repeated the process until knock-off time. It was so mundane that one of her work mates had taken to watching old episodes of Black Books while he worked. He was up to season three.

She had to wait a week before the man boarded the 864F again. It was a Tuesday, 5.47 pm. Everyone had that work-weary look, the knowledge that there were still three more days of drudgery and commuting ahead. And then suddenly there he was, up the front of the bus, too far away. He was wearing a business shirt this time. She would describe it as ivory. She recorded these facts in her notebook.

A ninety per cent chance of rain had been predicted. Nothing yet, but the bus was headed towards a bank of swollen clouds, their undersides bruised purple.

They entered a tunnel. The man looked over his shoulder, straight at her, Celia was sure. The faint orange light accentuated brutal features. Celia shrank in her seat. Was he onto her? He looked away. No, he couldn’t be. She’d been so careful.

Out the other side of the tunnel it began to rain in fat spatters. Within minutes the bus sounded like a killing field. At Crafters a passenger behind the man got off and Celia crept up the aisle to take her seat. Now she could hear anything he said above the noise. Examining him she immediately observed something of concern and congratulated herself on moving closer. She wrote in her notebook, carefully shielding it with her left hand should he turn around: 6.18 pm, long scratch on the back of neck commensurate with a fingernail. Possible sign of struggle.

A breathless woman climbed aboard and made to sit in the empty seat beside the man. He held up his palm. ‘It’s taken,’ he said. ‘You can’t sit there.’

The woman stood suspended for a moment, damp curls at her forehead, too many shopping bags clutched against her waist. Then she shrugged, moved up the aisle and braced herself against a pole. Celia thought about standing for the woman, but they were about the same age. And anyway, Celia was on duty. A minute later he pressed the button. He was getting off at stop 25, different again. What was he playing at?

The bus pulled sharply up to the curb and he rose to disembark. In a moment of clarity Celia thrust the notebook into her pocket, grabbed her bag and followed him off the bus. The rain was falling in greasy sheets but Celia paid it no heed. He walked quickly, head down, not looking back once. Celia kept pace.

Dusk was descending quickly. Up ahead a thin milky fog crept onto the road. Celia pushed her hands into her pockets, ran her thumbnail along the spine of her notebook. She kept just the right distance, her heart hammering. He turned a corner, and when she turned it herself, the space between them had narrowed. Suddenly he stopped. She would have him soon.

Harriet McInerney is a writer, editor, bookstore worker and tiny cacti grower. She recently completed Honours in Writing Studies at UTS, where she wrote on the blurring/unblurring of the real/unreal. She has been published in Seizure, Voiceworks, and is forthcoming in the UTS Writers’ Anthology, 2015.

Odessa

When my mother went missing I cleared out the slicky golden muck. It had puddled in her shower, dried up on her sheets. Stuck hard on the stairs. I didn’t know what it was. But it’s sweaty honey stench; I recognise that smell walking into Odessa’s. Somewhere lingering, masked underneath.

Mostly, it all smells of meat in her hallway. Rising up through the building. From the downstairs butcher. Odessa greets me. Towers over me. “Come in. Please. Take a seat with me on the balcony,” she says.

My mother had suggested I go to see Odessa. My mother, had that round-eyed belief in spiritualism. Made my own eyes roll. A healer, she healed me, my mother would repeat. She’d say it so clearly: unimpeded, unstuttered. My mother’s words, sometimes, they’d had a habit of being splashed and smashed apart. I remembered. Her voice in my mind. Smattering about.

Out on the balcony I can’t smell the butcher downstairs any more. Can just see the people walking in, and then out they go with dangling plastic bags. The butcher is one place where no one really says no to a bag. Needing to keep the squelchiness inside.

Odessa is very beautiful. Odessa is considerably obese. Rolling pink cheeks as she leans back into a wicker chair. They say that she has travelled far and wide. Learned the tricks. That she never says no, never says never. But knows when to say when. ‘They say’ is what my mother would say. Way back when.

We talk about the weather for not long. And what I am there for – to be healed. Odessa does not like to hear what needs healing, she stops me from explaining. Instead she asks of my mother, and speaks fondly of past visits. I had not really known they were close.

Odessa’s skin is glowing. Wet. In the heat of the sun. Her balcony is very crowded, covered in big pots, and sprawling shrubs and vines spilling out. Strawberry plants and cacti on the table. Everything is thriving.

There is movement in the house. I had thought we were alone. But a tall man makes his way to the door. He greets us, holds out his hand to me, a little too high. I realise he is blind. He introduces himself as Miles and moves to sit on the balcony. There isn’t really enough room. But room is made and Odessa gets us tea. A quick medley of teaspoons hitting against cups. Miles offers his condolences. He knew my mother too, I discover.

“Such sad news. She was too young, too full of life,” he says.

I learn that my mother had done odd jobs for Odessa, from time to time. I’m not sure why I am surprised, we weren’t the kind of family to tell everything, but it seems a banal thing to keep quiet.

On Odessa’s earlobe is a golden honey-like substance. “Her body weeps. But it does not know what it weeps for,” I remember my mother saying. About this Odessa. In her vague kind of way. Odessa catches me staring and wipes it off.

Miles goes out and Odessa begins business talk, saying that she is not your typical healer. That she has come to healing later in life. The honey is on her ear again and is about to drip down. It distracts us both.

“This is kind of it,” Odessa says. “My body leaks sap.”

“What?”

“Sap, just like from a tree.” Odessa’s voice is calm and gentle.

“It comes out of my body. Through a few different places, sometimes in the creases of my palms, or my fingernails, or the piercings on my ears.”

“Oh.”

“It started a few years ago now. I’ve gotten used to it. But it took some time. It’s the sap that can heal. Just look at how all these plants are growing! I put the tiniest bit of sap on them while they’re young, and they grow up fast and strong.”

Half-drunk tea cups are still cluttering the table. Odessa picks up a teaspoon. Holds it under her ear. Collects the sap as it drips. Her eyes downcast. The sap is thick and it collects on the spoon slowly. When there is enough Odessa motions me to dip my finger in, and smear it on my forehead. Odessa closes her eyes. Then we both sit there, in silence, and I can hear the door of the butcher’s swinging back and forth, but it now seems far away.

Odessa asks, just as I’m getting up to leave, whether I would be interested in doing some odd jobs for her. Just from time to time. Running errands and the sort. Since my mother cannot anymore. It’s a strange request. Odessa says there aren’t many people she would trust.

When I get home I remember I have friends coming round. I keep my visit to Odessa quiet. Just for now, I think. Until I have it worked out. In my tiny apartment there is barely room for company. My friends, with families and children, live the conventional lives we all used to laugh at. They visit to escape their screaming toddlers. Or, sometimes, because they worry about me being alone. These friends have been all support in the time since my mother disappeared. Now, months later, there is little hope left. Her car had been found parked near the beginning of her favourite bush track, which took you deep into the valley, a walk really too difficult for her aging body. She must have fallen, been hurt, maybe, had knocked herself unconscious. No remains had been found though. Search teams had scoured the area, but unearthed nothing. I don’t know what to think.

I start doing odd jobs for Odessa the next week. Odessa doesn’t have a phone or internet so I go to her flat for any instructions. Even then, it is usually Miles who answers the door, and tells me what she needs. Often it’s collecting groceries or posting mail. It seems Odessa does not often leave the apartment. Or not at all. This goes on for several months. I like taking care of her, and thinking that this is what my mother used to do. When I go to the supermarket I wonder how many others collect things for Odessa. She hardly wants any food. She can’t live off the stuff I buy for her.

After a while Miles has gone. When I ask, Odessa says she thinks he’s gone to work in the country somewhere. She’s not too sure, he left pretty quick. People often come and stay to be healed, she mumbles. But sometimes it just doesn’t work.

One day I ask her if she leaves the flat at all. Odessa says hardly ever. That she worries about people seeing her skin with the sap. She doesn’t like the outdoors anyway, she says. Even though the plants on the balcony are thriving. I want to question her further, take the chance while I have it. This is the first time Odessa has mentioned the sap since our first meeting. I ask if she knows what causes it. My burning question. Odessa doesn’t. Sap in trees comes out when pressure builds up inside. The sap spills out any way it can. Odessa guesses it’s the same for her. Trees use the sugars in their sap for new growth, for flowering and fruiting, and after that there isn’t a lot of need for it.

I start spending more time at Odessa’s house. On the weekends. Odessa works from home when she can, but otherwise she has a job at the butcher’s downstairs. She rents the flat from the same family who own it, and they are always happy to have someone extra. Wearing the tight hairnets and long sleeves, it is manageable for her. She no longer believes in the healing, Odessa says, she doesn’t want to do it anymore because she isn’t sure it works. Doesn’t think it works and also doesn’t want it to.
Odessa is moody. Particularly when questioned on something. She gets lonely in that flat of hers, but refuses to venture any further than the occasional a.m. shift at the butcher.
One day one of the butchers notices the sap. Odessa doesn’t think he knew what it was, but he got scared anyway, told the boss that she was unhygienic. Butchers need to be hyper-vigilant about that. So she stopped working there, and stayed home instead. All the time. Just up there sitting on her veranda. Worrying about money. Thinking about being forced out of the apartment. Then Odessa got obsessed with fire risks. Called in building inspectors to assess the place. And then went around and tried to fix things, installing smoke detectors on the staircases and threw out all the rugs in the apartment. Trying to make sure nothing could force her to leave the building.

Odessa got so hard to handle, and so little in want of company. I stopped visiting her. Slowly. It wasn’t just me distancing myself, some days I would knock on the door and get no answer. I knew she was home. But the door was bolted, balcony empty. I tried to contact Miles to ask him why he left. I hadn’t paid attention at the time, but they’d seemed so close, and he’d left so suddenly. There were no details, no traces to be found.

Downstairs, at the butchers, they asked me about her. Said they always heard moaning from upstairs. Said about the different men and women that had come to stay with her over the years. The one’s who never stayed long. Just long enough for the butchers to get to recognise them, but not long enough for the apprentices who only worked weekends. They were just being friendly, neighbourly, but I left pretty quick with nothing much to say.

It’s a year or two later when I first notice sap, not blood, spilling out of a graze on my knee. I am shocked. I keep an eye on it, but it only stays there a little while, hovering and golden, before it drips down my leg. When the wound heals the sap disappears too. But then a few months later there is sap forming around my fingernails, then falling from my eyes. Thick gluggy tears. I think about calling in on Odessa. Then I never do go. I’m no longer interested in an explanation. The idea of being with her, indoors, it feels stifling.

I am out, having lunch in the sunshine when I realise I feel hungrier for the sun than any food in front of me. I eat because it feels normal, because the others are, not because it makes me full or satisfied. Later I am walking home, taking a short cut through the park, when I notice I want to sink into the grassy earth. My feet pull downwards. I struggle to keep moving.

When I think over these developments they are startling. But I don’t like to think things over so much anymore. I think about my mother trekking down that remote valley. Imagine her dragging apart sprawling undergrowth.

I go out to the scrubby land near the cliffs the next day. The sky is huge. Clear and welcoming. I walk along feeling the rustle through my limbs. Notice myself sinking. And I let myself crust over.

FJ Bridger was born and raised in Mackay on the Central Queensland coast. She studied arts and law at the University of Queensland, then practised as a lawyer in the private and public sectors, and as a government policy advisor. In 2007 she completed a Master of Arts degree from Griffith University. FJ Bridger writes novels, short stories and memoir. Her first novel manuscript won a place in the Queensland Writers Centre/Hachette Publishing manuscript development program in 2012. A short story was published in Idiom 23 in 2013. FJ Bridger lives in Brisbane with her husband and two sons.

Streetcombing

Not much of a haul today. People aren’t throwing away their perfectly good old stuff like they used to.

Still, I had a nice find the other day. Trick is, see, you’ve got to be the first there. Problem is, you don’t know who’s going to put out the good stuff when. But I’ve been studying it. Eight years now I’ve been doing the rounds. Perfecting the art. It’s not just random stumbling on terrific finds like some people think. You’ve got to be smart to make a good haul. ‘Streetcombing’, I call it.

Once a year or so, the council trucks pick up your old washing machines and furniture and mattresses, bulky sort of stuff. Meant to be things you can’t take to the dump in the average family car. But people are taking liberties with their cast offs, putting out everyday stuff, not just the bulkier things. Things like clothes and toasters and little plastic Christmas trees. Stuff the charities could do with. Gets ruined if it rains. A waste, really.

Annoys me a bit, thinking about the years I missed, before I got onto it. It was my wife Marjorie got me started. God, don’t think I’ve said her name in years!  We were only together for about three years. It’s one of the few things I can thank her for. When I was at work at the museum one day she cleaned up the house and put out the old suitcase I stored all my school reports and treasures in. Lucky I got home in time. Found it out on the footpath before someone swiped it or the council truck came. I would have been ropeable if I’d lost it. It was precious. Still is. I gave her a piece of my mind over that, I tell you.

After that, I set her some rules. No throwing my stuff out, for a start. It’s not as if I had much gear in the first place. She was the one who’d inherited all the furniture, and a thousand and one little things that came with the house. All the silverware and paintings on the walls and jewellery and dining suites and wardrobes and lawn mowers. Not that you’d want to throw out good quality stuff like that. But she could have gone through her mother’s old papers and tablecloths and got rid of them. Poor old Brenda had no further use for them. Not like me and my suitcase.

That same night, I had to get out of the house, I was that angry with Marjorie. So, I went for a walk. While I was out I saw stuff on the footpath in front of other houses. The trucks were due to come round the next day, see? Anyway, that near-disaster and seeing those piles of gear got me thinking. I noticed the kinds of things people put out. It was an education, I tell you.

There was the usual old rubbish, like rusted pots and pans, and old garden tools and prams and sports gear. Then there was the big stuff like dryers and couches and cupboards. But when I got up close I came across things I liked the look of. Figurines and vases, and really old bottles. All there for the taking. A blue china bowl that caught my eye. I picked it up and put in under my jacket.

It dawned on me, I could collect this stuff. And it wouldn’t cost a cent. I’d show Marjorie I could have a worthwhile thing or two. I’d do my research and learn all about antiques and collectables. I could take books in to the museum and spend work time studying up on it. My supervisor, Bethany Flangel, she would never know. She’s hardly ever there, and doesn’t take much notice of what I do anyway. I’m the one who keeps the place going. So many museums are closing, or cutting back opening days and hours. Not mine, thank god. I don’t know what I’d do without my job. It’s my vocation, see?

So, that night got me started. I’ve collected a heck of a lot of stuff in those eight years. Not just any old junk – fabulous stuff. And I’ve done my homework, reading up, honing my expertise. But I’m not greedy. I don’t like the idea of venturing far from home. I keep myself to just a few suburbs near me. Luckily, they happen to be some of the better suburbs in town. So, good pickings. You wouldn’t believe what some people turf out.

A few years back, I was tempted to throw out all my rules, be a bit of a rebel. Go out to far-flung suburbs to pick through their throw outs. Or stick to just the best streets of Ascot and Hamilton where I was bound to score well, and where locals wouldn’t be seen dead going through their neighbours’ piles. You never know what you’ll come across. But my conscience wouldn’t have it. That would be too much like scrounging from a dump. Almost like going through rubbish bins. I can’t come at that.

After I’d been in the game a few years, I did expand my territory another suburb, an extra thirty streets. With a bigger area, I could do my streetcombing for more weeks of the year, see? A very nice neighbourhood the new one is. Upmarket. Gives a good yield. Last time I found an ornate bedside lamp, and a lovely pair of china dogs.

I have to be sure to get to the good finds before those scavengers who drive round other people’s neighbourhoods. The council drops the flyers round in letterboxes a week before the pick up day. I’ve got to be vigilant, keep an eye out for people putting their discards out early. Others put them out at the last moment. Then there’s everything in between. You can’t take your eye off the ball, see? The bloke might clean out first and put his throw outs on the footpath, then the wife might have a go. It’s just too bad if one of them wants something that shouldn’t have been put out. If it’s anything remotely desirable, it’s gone.

What I can’t stand is those flea market people and second hand dealers who swipe stuff for profit rather than their own use. Some people say it’s just another way of recycling, so it’s not a bad thing. But I’d rather it was salvaged by someone who needed it themselves, or the charities, or me.

Once, I thought about if I should take time off from my job during kerbside clean up week. My boss Bethany is always on at me to take leave, since I’ve accumulated a lot in 18 years. I can never think what to do on days off. Public holidays are bad enough, but a whole week is almost unbearable. At Christmas, I’m beside myself during the two and a half week closing. When my wife was around she organised holidays, little trips away to the beach or the mountains. Now I’m on my own, it’s more of a problem. She did have her uses.

I decided to take a couple of sickies. Bethany would never notice I was off at around the same time every year. She’s not a details person. God knows what she’s doing working in a museum. Luckily, she lives on the other side of town, so she’d never know when it’s my suburb’s turn for the clean up. I’m always careful not to mention it. It’s cold and flu season anyway, so phoning in saying I’ve got a bad cold, after complaining of a headache and sore throat the day before, is a reasonable ploy. It’s ridiculous that I have to report to Bethany. She doesn’t know half what I know about the exhibits, but I need her approval for everything I do. Perhaps she’ll drop off her perch one of these days.

Some of the neighbours look at me. They think they’re being discreet, but I can sense them, or see them twitching the curtains in their front rooms, when I’m picking through their cast offs. I suspect a couple of them are low enough to deliberately smear disgusting muck on a thing I might want, so I either have to leave it or clean the muck off. A bit of rotting food doesn’t put me off. I always wear gloves, of course.

I don’t mix with the neighbours. I’m not into having friendly drinks, or weekend barbecues, or their noisy brats running through my garden.

My parents are dead now. I’m an only child. Not that I feel like I’ve missed anything, mind, not having a brother or sister. Far as I can see, there’s nothing but fighting and jealousy between siblings. Arguments about one being favoured more than the other, rivalry over who’s smarter or better looking or makes more money. Punch ups even. Accusing each other of neglecting their aged parents, and ripping off their pensions, and contesting wills.

There were a couple of cousins I saw a bit of when I was young. Once Mum and Dad were gone, I told them to stop coming over. I didn’t need them snooping around. I could tell they were looking for handouts, or hoping I’d die, thinking they’d inherit the house and all my precious stuff.

If I didn’t love my job so much, I’d think about going into business as an antiques dealer. High end stuff only. I’d have to learn to part with my finds, of course. Become a lot more hard-nosed. But I’d have to get used to dealing with other people. I wouldn’t only be going local with my streetcombing then. The world would be my treasure house. It’d be business, after all.

That good find I was telling you about. 1920s Lalique vase. Gorgeous! Not a scratch or chip on it. Did I look over my shoulder when I saw that sitting there? They must have only just put it out and I was the first to come across it. I hurried straight back home after finding that beauty, though I’d only been out looking for a couple of hours.

I reckoned when I did a bit of research it was worth $4,000. My glassware expert says more like $6,000 in the right auction. Just think! Six grand’s worth, just thrown in the garbage! Didn’t know what they had, of course. Spoilt brats with too much money and no appreciation of works of art. If I hadn’t come along and plucked it out of the pile it could have been smashed, or thrown on the dump like a piece of worthless junk.

Anyway, back to my technique. Soon as the council delivers those flyers in letterboxes about a clean up coming up, I’m out there. But that’s when the punters find out and start putting gear out. I’m onto it much earlier.

Here’s how I do it. I go through the phone book and find the name of a man in a nice street in my patch. Women are no good. I’m not going to go around impersonating females on the phone, am I? A man has his limits. Anyway, I note down the name and address. I phone the council, masquerading as the resident, asking when the kerbside clean up is happening in ‘my’ street. They always tell me, no problem.

So, I plan my attack. Dates, best time of day or night, whether I’ll drive the removalist truck or just the ute, which route to take, which streets I think will have the best haul that I’ll comb at the start of my run, then sweep past again to check if any more treasures have been put out before I head home.

There’s the odd occupational hazard in streetcombing. Once a vicious mongrel dog attacked me. I swear it was part illegal pit bull terrier. Damn fool owner left the gate unlatched. But I was crafty, see? Phoned up the council to complain, using the name and address of one of the blokes I’d found earlier. Then I thought, I’ll make a series of complaints under these names I’ve got. Make it sound real convincing. The dog’s gone, so they must have had to get rid of it, or moved house. Good result.

Occasionally there’s been an argument with one of those flea market scavengers over a find. In my mind, there are unwritten rules, but some people don’t live by them. One of the rules is, don’t go hunting through a pile if someone’s right there going through it before you. You have to wait till they’ve finished. Then it’s your turn. And you don’t stand over them watching either. Common decency.

One time, one of these second hand dealer types pulls up in his truck just when I’d started on a promising spread outside a flash house. Comes right up and starts poking around with a stick. I got in between him and the pile, pushed his stick away. Ended up being a bit of a scuffle. Had to do some quick thinking. I fumbled in my bag and pulled out a black skull and shoved it right in his face, giving a great big roar. Never saw a bloke move so fast in my life! Ha! That taught him. Some mother must have cleaned out her teenage son’s room and tossed it out. Bet she never thought it’d be put to such good use so quick!

I’ve perfected my strategy over time. Refined it. It’s only in the last six years or so I started recording my haul in the back of one of Marjorie’s mother’s old journals. (There, I’ve said her name again!) I could’ve kicked myself that I hadn’t been doing it from day one. Working in the museum, cataloguing is a big part of it.

I’ve just realised, I started recording my finds just after Marjorie disappeared from my life. My mind functioned so much better once she was out of the way. And that made way for me to sort out her and her parents’ things, and make room for my collection.

I guess in a way, the whole house is the jewel in my crown. Those in-laws of mine had some lovely stuff. Moorcroft, Meissen, Fabergé. Mine now.

It’s just a pity after six years I still have to put up with getting letters addressed to Mrs M Walstrum or Marjorie Walstrum, or even occasionally Miss M Parminter, as she was. Lucky Marjorie’s parents died years ago, and she was an only child, like me. She had no job, hardly any friends, and the neighbours kept away, so no-one missed her. Strangely enough, I find myself missing her occasionally. But I’ve got my job at the museum, and my collecting.

Sometimes, at the end of a night of searching, I stand at the end of a street that’s served up a good few treasures over the years, and give the neighbourhood a silent blessing. It’s the middle of the night, see? After one o’clock. No-one’s about but me. I stretch my arms up and do a little chant. For that moment, I’m the High Priest of the Kerbside Clean Up, Sultan of the Streetcomb. I am fulfilled.

YZ Chin’s first chapbook of poetry deter was published last year by Chicago’s dancing girl press. Her fiction has previously appeared in Malaysian anthology, Collateral Damage, Hong Kong’s Cha, failbetter.com, and other publications.

Strike

Hunger pinned her to the bunk. Starvation impaled her through the stomach, keeping her down on the thin mattress, resisting the momentum of her feebly raised head. Her neck strained to bring her vision to the requisite level such that she could observe the movement of sun against her prison walls. The sun was her way of telling the time, of estimating the next delivery of food.

Not that it mattered now. It was her third month in maximum security. She did feel secure, as if nothing would ever happen to her again, until death. The days lost their shape, shedding the definition of hours and minutes. Her body, too, lost its shape, pooling downward, lowering her center of gravity, rooting her toward dirt and dust.

They said she was staging a hunger strike. Isa, on her part, felt that the refusal of food was really to make life behind bars more interesting. The meals they brought to her cell were markers of time, and she had looked forward to the packets of rice and gravy as daily celebrations. But then she started feeling like a Pavlovian dog. The nods of the men who handed her sustenance became sinister, laced with degradation. She resented the regular reminders of her weakness and dependency.

After minutes of work, she managed to prop herself up on one elbow. A rolling wave of dizziness lurched her, listing, tipping. She smiled widely. In her teenage years, when she lived a sheltered life, she had tried many times, each attempt lasting days or weeks or months, to go on diet. It didn’t much matter what kind of diets they were, or how much science was behind them. The hope was what she needed, that blindness leading her around each awkward corner of her then-life. She wished, on the other side of each corner, to find a slim, beautiful her, standing still with folded hands, waiting.

And now, she was living the perfect set-up to obtain the thinnest body of her life. She dreamt, still smiling, of her wafer physique gliding effortlessly among obstacles thrown up by invisible enemies. Anything anybody erected against her, she slipped past with a slight sideway turn of her frame, her arms extended ramrod above her head, as if surrendering, but really, evading, winning.

She was disappointed to feel, on being next conscious, that she was again flat on her back, her previous progress negated. Shadows swum before her eyes. She opened them. Men. Men were leaning over her, explaining something, but not to her. To each other, or maybe to an unseen observer. She sighed. Rank air filled her nose. Rolling her eyes upward, she caught the glance of one man, who started talking faster.

Hands pressed down on her shoulders, pinning them. A hand touched her lips. Isa suddenly wondered what clothes she was wearing. Whether she wore any.

Another pair of hands caught hold of her ankles. Her mind, wandering, entertained the absurd vision of a single many-limbed being. It had paused its speech when it extended hands and fists to restrain her, but now it started up again. Isa thought it might be expecting a response from her, but she could not understand it. When she opened her mouth to tell it so, fingers slipped through and stretched her lips. She gagged, and mush rushed in, filling her.

Of course she tried to spit. Of course she thrashed. At first. Then the mush began to acquire flavor, become more than texture. It wasted first like somebody else’s vomit, and then like her own. And then it became her, and she was being force-fed herself.

She re-closed her eyes. A piece of advice from a lifetime ago floated up. It had been given by a man, who based his authority upon his being a loving father with a daughter of his own. He recommended that when losing out to a rapist, a woman should give in and acquiesce. In other words, have sex with him. Do not fight. For survival should be your only focus, and you ran the risk of incurring murderous wrath to no avail by fighting while you are down. Everything other than your continued breathing — be it jewelry, other possessions, body, honor — is expendable. Save your life. Do not fight.

Oatmeal. That was what was in her mouth.

Mark O’Flynn has published four collections of poetry, most recently Untested Cures, (2011). His poetry and short fiction have appeared in many Australian journals as well as overseas. His novels include Grassdogs (2006), and The Forgotten World, (Harper Collins, 2013). He has also published the comic memoir False Start. He has also written for the theatre, including the popular play Eleanor and Eve. He lives in the Blue Mountains. A collection of short fiction, White Light, was published by Spineless Wonders Publishing, 2013.

Jerry Stand Up

Remember that you have chance and possibility

           Paul Dempsey

‘Where’s Jerry?’

Jeanette looks up from her screen to give me a funny kind of look.

‘Who?’

‘Jerry. Jerry Burgoyne. Have you seen him?’

‘I thought I saw him earlier,’ she says.

Jeanette’s heavy-handed eye shadow resembles the lingering bruise of a couple of black eyes, like over-fried eggs. Her ear rings are Christmas decorations, even though it is July.

‘I haven’t seen him,’ I say.

‘Maybe that was yesterday,’ she says, unsure.

Jeanette’s cubicle is decorated with photos of her pets: a tortoise-shell cat and two dogs. The dogs, a Dachshund and a Doberman, have ribbons tied about their ears to make them look like cartoon characters of dogs, perhaps at a rodeo.  They look rather sad and humiliated about it. There are no photos of her children. I do not know if she has any. She turns back to the figures she is poking into the keyboard with bright pink nails.

I take my piece of paper to the next booth where Ken McKendry is doing something similar. His booth, comprised of purple office partitions, is decorated with pictures of his family whom he never talks about. Ken keeps pretty much to himself, for better or worse. In the cubicle sound is muffled, like being in a church made of fibre glass or builders insulation. It makes you want to whisper. His personalised coffee mug stands on the desk, at the moment filled with pencil shavings like the fins of tropical goldfish.

‘Have you seen Jerry?’ I ask, shaking my leaf of foolscap. All it needs is a signature and my work here is done.

‘Not since this morning.’

‘Are you sure it was this morning? I haven’t seen him all day.’

‘Er, no,’ says Ken. ‘Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him at all.’

I glance at the spreadsheet on his computer, but it doesn’t mean much to me.

‘How’s the family Ken?’

‘Fine, thanks Geoff.’

His return to his typing I take as my cue to leave. His fingers, minus the pink, sound like a stampede of miniature horses over the tundra, or perhaps birds in the ceiling.

I take my document and move down the corridor. No one has seen Jerry. Some people think they have but they can’t be sure.

‘Maybe he’s gone for coffee,’ suggests Trudy, in stores, but I find this idea preposterous.

‘Maybe he’s in the dunny with the runs,’ offers Dale, the office clown, from HR.

The security guy doesn’t know who I’m talking about.

‘Maybe he didn’t come in today,’ says Mrs. Hyland, our supervisor, who is preoccupied with getting her accounts ready for an audit. ‘Maybe he has another unexpected funeral?’

There’s some sort of snide tone in her voice, which I don’t respond to. Her face looks red and thwarted, like a wrinkled balloon with half the air leaked out of it.

‘Jerry was very rude to me the other day, which I didn’t appreciate, and you can tell him that from me when you find him.’

I refrain from pursuing this issue. Would the Jerry I know do such a thing? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.

I go to the toilets and thrust my head in the door.

‘Jerry?’

My voice echoes, as in an empty railway station. There is an intense silence, as if someone has taken a sudden breath and is holding it.

‘He’s not here,’ a voice comes from the end stall.

‘Is that you Jerry?’

‘No. It’s Mike.’

‘Sorry. Are you all right?’

‘Of course,’ he says rather indignantly. ‘Why wouldn’t I be all right?’

I leave, wondering what if Jerry is in the Ladies? What if he’s injured somewhere, waiting for the cleaner to find him?

The lady in the cafeteria, Mavis I think her name is, hasn’t seen Jerry either. Maybe he has stepped out for a breath of fresh air? Or is eating his sandwiches in the gardens across the road. I rack my brains to think where Jerry might have got to. I ring his mother. Jerry still lives at home, (or rather has moved back home again after a disastrous dalliance with Sonia from the pay office).

Mrs. Burgoyne says she did see him off this morning bright and early.

‘He looked so smart,’ she says, ‘wearing his nice new suit.’

She expects him home at six. It’s Thursday. She’s cooking rissoles. Jerry is forty three and he is still eating rissoles cooked by his mother. That will certainly show Sonia where she went wrong. I ask if she would mind if I come round to see Jerry this afternoon – evening really, as I have to stay at the office until five. There is something important I need to ask him.

She says, ‘That would be fine dear.’

After work I stop by the pub – The Cricketers Balls – where Jerry and I sometimes meet for a drink, also to disparage the gossip and office politics that somehow surrounds us and infects the culture of the working day. The pub is decorated with deep plum-coloured drapes that absorb the light and muffle the convivial chit chat of two or more friends after work. He isn’t there. The barman hasn’t seen him and, in fact, there is no one here I know apart from Sonia, over in a corner who gives me a glare, and I quickly take my leave

I drive to Jerry’s house in Glenferrie, but he still hasn’t returned. Mrs. Burgoyne lets me in. Her hair is tightly curled like a piece of brain coral. She thinks for a moment that maybe Jerry has gone to bed, he’s been feeling peaky.

‘Let’s look, shall we?’

When we open the door it is pitch dark in the musky room. She turns on the light but the bed is empty. She crosses the minefield of the floor, and opens the curtains, however even with the extra light spilling in the bed is still empty.

‘Is he happy at his work Mrs. Burgoyne?’ I ask. ‘Apparently he was rude to Mrs. Burgoyne.’

‘Do you know Geoff, I don’t know the answer to that. He used to be up bright as a sparrow, singing in the shower. But he hasn’t been doing that so much lately.’

‘What would he sing?’

‘Oh, songs… Come to think of it he hasn’t been running so much either. He used to go for a jog after work every day. He’s terribly fit. And then he bought himself a new suit. I thought it was to impress that Sonia. She’s a piece of work. But I was wrong about that.’

‘Perhaps that’s where he is now? Running.’ I suggest trying to fill the awkward, unexplained absence that occupies Jerry’s room. The air is stale. Private air. She tries to pull the door closed. I notice on his bedside table a book I cannot read the name of, I think it might be Chinese, and a little knotted piece of string. To an unfamiliar eye such as Mrs. Burgoyne’s it might look like nothing more than a sex toy, a garrotte for Jerry’s penis for instance; but I know it is for him to practice his affirmations, a ritual he has enjoyed for many years. I have seen him at it in his office cubicle muttering under his breath:

‘Every day in every way I am getting better and better.

Every day in every way I am getting better and better.’

However I have no time to explain this to Mrs. Burgoyne. She asks if I would like to stay and eat some rissoles but, tempting as this is, I have to get home to my own tea on the other side of the city, a far cry from rissoles let me tell you.

I ask if she can get Jerry to ring me when he gets home. He has my number.

He doesn’t call.

The next morning I phone Mrs. Burgoyne who informs me that Jerry is still asleep. He must have been late in. He’s a grown man, she can’t dictate what time he comes home.

‘Oh no,’ she corrects herself, ‘I think he’s in the shower.’

‘Is he singing?’ I ask.

‘I can’t hear dear. The radio’s on, and I’m a little deaf.’

At the office I visit Jeanette in her cubicle. The air smells of Spring Mist.

‘Have you seen Jerry?’

She gives me a funny look. Her two brown eyes like an astonished owl’s. Christmas in her ears.

‘Not since the last time you asked.’

‘I need him to sign this report.’

‘Sorry, I haven’t seen him.’

The cat and the two dogs look at her from the cubicle wall, framed by the unlikely stage props of a wagon wheel, a hay bale. Am I the only person who cares that Jerry has vanished? Ken McKendry hasn’t seen Jerry either. Someone told me a long time ago, maybe it was Jerry, that in the photo of his family on the wall one of the children had passed away and that is the reason he doesn’t like to talk about them. Well that’s probably a pretty valid reason, I told Jerry, if it was Jerry.

‘How’s the family, Ken?’ I hear myself asking.

‘Fine.’

Trudy in stores hasn’t seen Jerry.

Dale in HR hasn’t seen him either.

Nor has the security guy.

It’s like he’s just turning the corner in the street ahead of me, disappearing from the tangent of my eye. It’s like he has vanished into the ether

Mrs. Hyland, who is getting her accounts ready for an audit, can’t remember if she’s seen Jerry or not. She puts down her pen. Her red face looks like a – like a – I can’t remember what it is it looks like.

‘What’s on the piece of paper Geoff?’ she asks.

‘What piece of paper?’

‘That piece of paper you’re carrying around.’

‘I need Jerry’s signature. In order to finalise this report.’

‘What’s on it? Show me.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘Show me.’

‘I don’t want to bother you.’

‘I insist.’

Reluctantly I hand it over. I can sense the others have been talking behind my back again.

‘Geoff, there’s nothing on it.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s blank.’

‘It must still be on the printer.’

‘Why do you need Jerry so badly?’

‘I need him to sign it. To finalise things. He’s missing. Aren’t you concerned?’

‘Well Geoff,’ she looks at me strangely over the top of her glasses, ‘yes I am concerned. You keep looking for him, and when I finish here I’ll come and help you. We’ll get to the bottom of this once and for all.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

I back out the door. She doesn’t know where Jerry is. She hasn’t got a clue. She says:

‘You just keep looking.’

I don’t know which way to turn.

Ben Walter is a Tasmanian writer whose fiction has appeared in Overland, Island, Griffith Review and The Lifted Brow. His debut poetry manuscript, Lurching, was shortlisted in the 2013 Tasmanian Literary Prizes.

Winding the Land

I had felt a skin of regret at being compelled by party policy and the tidal whims of my constituency to vote against the private member’s bill tabled by David Beveridge, stemming as it did from the now-infamous arguments attributed to my former son-in-law, Ian Davey. Ian’s motives in marrying Sally had always been cloudy to me, forced as I was to acknowledge her lack of charm or beauty, but until the revelations I’d always felt a margin of gratefulness to him, tempered by concerns for his dynastic ambitions.

While Ian never sought the endorsement of the Tasmanian people, nor made inroads into my own convictions, Beveridge, the youngest member for Denison, so came under his sway as to table the bill that was to founder so spectacularly. I have searched my memories of dinner parties and summer barbecues, and I can’t recall facilitating the introduction; what’s important is that they crossed paths, and Beveridge was in the mood to make a difference.

The essence of Davey’s arguments centred on the economic and social benefits that had flowed from the Tasmanian innovation of daylight saving. Allowing for an extra hour of evening sunlight had minimised electricity usage and widening the evenings, bringing a little of the Mediterranean to our idiosyncratic local summers. Could this revolution, which had gone on to fiddle global clock faces, be applied to space as it had been to time?

How was the land to be moved? So scoffed a Braddon sinecure from my own side. Did Beveridge propose to up the ante on continental drift? Did he imagine the land would up and beg, roll over like a dachshund? Davey was quick to explain through his elected mouthpiece that just as daylight saving had not altered the movement of the Earth around the Sun or the planet’s rotation on its axis –   merely our conventions relating to it – the same could be attempted with respect to our experience of space. Was the entire population of the state to be moved to the east, the west, the south or the north over the first weekend in October, the first weekend in April? Would this lead to seaboard populations sleeping in dinghies and those nestled in the mountain valleys breakfasting on the peaks of the Wellington Range? Yes, Beveridge intoned triumphantly in parliament, that’s exactly what he was proposing – he was delighted that the honourable members had understood.

Ian was insistent, that far from attempting to dry the southern winds or cool sweaty shoulders through the brief, unexpected heat of summer days – this was popular whimsy, incidental to his goals – he was advancing the proposal as a spur to the development and innovation. Imagine, he would say, a whole second layer of infrastructure. Consider the policy revolutions for zoning and land ownership, the redistribution of wealth, energy flexibility, housing design and material efficiencies. Think of the growth of the construction industry, of the community blending and growth in social capital, of the tourism branding. Who wouldn’t want to spend and invest in the new, overwritten Tasmania?

“Just think,” he would insist, “an entirely fresh start, but one that would co-exist with all that belongs to us today. It would be a model for us. An exemplar. If anyone can sway opinion on this, you can. Support David’s bill.”

The relationship we shared rendered any help I could have offered implicitly nepotistic; it certainly wouldn’t have done me any favours in the party room. Beveridge’s own side were unwilling to support the bill; it was obvious to insiders that he had fought and lost a series of unbalanced debates. When it came to the vote the proposal was predictably defeated. Beveridge resigned his membership of the party and was bundled out of parliament at the next election; the people of Tasmania taking its revenge on the wrong sort of independent.

But it was only when the national papers picked up the story that the matter took the turn that it did. Naturally, the analysis was as critical of the policy framework as the local tabloids, but their aptitude for digging led to the scandal that was to bring the family apart, and for which I am willing to share little responsibility. It had nothing to do with Beveridge, who had relocated to Melbourne to work in light consulting; it was my son-in-law who became the object of the nation’s ghoulish fascination.

It wasn’t that he had decided to embody his principles, moving five kilometres to the east at the beginning of every October, pacing out the exact distance and making a nuisance and object lesson of himself. Sleeping on the roof of an unfortunate retiree’s house, developing his status as an idiotic cause célèbre. Features on the more idle current affair shows, updates buried in the inner rings of newspapers. Nor did he radicalise an allied cause, swivelling day and night and altering the clocks by twelve hours. I was expecting something like this, a strident spectacle swiftly forgotten, a depressed, insomniac tendency justified after the fact by adaptations of his theory.

He simply seemed to disappear. Surprise gave way to genuine concern when we also lost contact with Sally; after several weeks with no response to our phone calls, no answer to our knocking at their West Hobart home, I made a call to an acquaintance in the force who uncovered the scandal just as the major newspapers began to pick up the story.

What really caught the national interest was the tattoos, tattoos that voluntarily or otherwise had been inflicted on Sally’s body. The maps overlying graphs, plans engraved against diagrams, casinos in Cremorne and brick flats jutting from the Organ Pipes. And images of Ian and Sally’s own possessions, their wedding gifts, displaced into forests and other people’s homes, crudely drawn and redrawn, carved with needles and ball-point pens, layers and layers repeated. When they finally found her, emblazoned in blue and white like dense china, she was unable to stop quivering at the thought of further redirection and displacement. What had steered Ian’s ideas in this gruesome direction? Why had he decided to map and remap his wife, my daughter?

The images left a wake of speculation and fascinated outrage; even now I am burdened by memories that set me searching of fresh appalled responses, the casting of blame and the passing of moods to the friend across the road, the stranger in Buenos Aires. I stay awake well into the night, the outline of my wife waiting at the study door, mopping myself in the outrage and confusion of others, as Sally sleeps quietly in the spare room. She has finally settled calmly in our home, quite content remaining where she is.

***

June Glasgow is an Australian poet and writer of short stories. She is also the co-editor of a sporadically circulated zine, Bir & June (see http://www.birandjune.com for her unprinted works). In her spare time, she paints and enjoys studying animal behaviours. She is currently residing in Adelaide with her cat.

A Tail’s Length

He sees her in her bed.

She sleeps with her legs parted slightly, her belly voluptuous and full, her nipples placed daintily round and stiff as flower pods on the icing of a cupcake.

Fat pigeons fly in flocks next door, cooing, grooming, shitting on the tiles.

His head is held high as he peers over the bed. He stands behind the door half ajar, careful not to wake her. If he could touch her, he would.

In his head, he often wonders what she would look like fur-less. Or if her fur takes on a different color. Black gives her lips a mystic sheen, which he desires in the female sex. He thinks of the soft underside of her arms when he humps the fleece blankets at night. He humps it until the image of her, an antique Egyptian Queen, tall, agile, majestically black, fades into cold clouds on a clear autumn evening.

But here she is, open, sweet, so unlike her when she is awake. He wants to be just slightly closer so he could catch the scent off her tail that dangles off the edge of the bed. He tries to place his paws as lightly as feathers as he treads the floor of wood.

When she is awake, she never allows him so close. She knows even eunuchs can rape. The dark alleys in the Eastern suburbs where she strayed as a kitten taught her that. Gender is a disadvantage.

So she disassociates herself from others, lives the life of a celibate god, and dreams of a paradise of birds. A door shaped as a sesame seed will open unto such a world. Only in death could she experience true solitude, in which no gender, no sex will disturb the spiritual, the intellect, allowing full and thorough meditation and understanding of the self and the universe that surrounds. Sleep, to her, is as close as it gets. She is only nine but she feels that she has seen too much.

And he, one of the many that come into her life, leer salivating at her in a distance, stands in the doorway like a fool. Seven years younger and almost reaching his prime, he does not know her philosophy of life. He dwells rather simply between his leopard print, proud and a little reserved. He is never comfortable with how high-pitched his voice is when he doesn’t consciously lower the tone. He sees her, yet he does not see her fully. A part of what he sees is a mirror of himself.

He knows if he gets any closer, he will try to rape her again. But a part of him does not know yet, so he slouches his back, lowers his tail, crouches on his fore and back paws, spinning towards her light-headedly.

If he is too close, he will risk losing an eye, or a corner of his ear. Another grey, long-haired female who was much bigger than him and more experienced than his had taught him that last summer in a herb garden. Now, he still has not learned.

Driven by the same dreams: her whiskers, her strong tail that throws her scent of musk upon his wet nose, her gait ever so seductive even though she tries so deliberately hard to be as disinteresting and unattractive as possible, he still comes prowling in her siesta. She is targeted whenever her guards are down. But her guards are never down.

The sun that blinds him is a bonus to him. Fat pigeons cheer. He seizes her in dreams and gives her what he thinks is his love, while she plucks out something sticky— an eyeball of his.

***

Navid Sabet is a writer of fiction, poetry, and essays. He teaches creative writing at the University of Canberra, where he is also undertaking a PhD in cultural studies.

Names

I remember the really bad day. It was Monday and I hate Mondays and Mum asked me why I hate Mondays but I don’t know why. Dad prays on Mondays but he’s meant to pray every day I think that’s what Mum says but he doesn’t pray every day since we moved here. He doesn’t let me pray with him anymore because he says people don’t understand what praying is here and before I started school he said I could choose any name to call myself and I said I already have a name but he said I need a new one. He got me a dog from the RSPCA well he got it for my sister her name is Afareen but at school they call her Annie because that’s the name she called herself when Dad asked her and me to choose a new name. Dad doesn’t like dogs but he said Australian kids like to play with animals and we should also play with animals.

At recess Lucy said her dad’s country hated my dad’s country because they lost at soccer but I didn’t get it because her dad’s country and my dad’s country are the same things. I don’t know what she’s talking about but I think she doesn’t like me and that makes me really sad. I don’t know what soccer is but I won’t ask because I don’t think she likes me and she will think I am stupid and I think she is really pretty she has yellow hair and freckles and really shiny eyes. Sometimes I think if I had yellow hair and freckles then she would like me more. I like freckles I think they are pretty and cool they are like stars and I think Lucy should show her freckles at show and tell time. My hands get all sweaty before show and tell when I don’t have anything to show and tell or even when I do have something to show and tell they still get sweaty. If I had something cool to show and tell something cool like freckles then Lucy could not hate me so much and think I’m stupid but sometimes I think I’m stupid too. Sometimes I think I’m stupid because Mum says things to me in Persian like on the really bad day and she told me the dog died but she said it in Persian and I didn’t know what she was saying.

Dad got the dog from the RSCPA for Afareen but Afareen doesn’t like dogs because the dog bit her on the leg and now she’s scared of dogs so then the dog was mine after that. I think if I didn’t have a dog at all then the really bad day wouldn’t be really bad because if I didn’t have him then he couldn’t go away but then I get sad because I love him but when I think about him I get really really sad. Mum said dogs live for many years but my dog was only less than three years but it got sick I know that because Mum told me on the really bad day. He had big black eyes and they were shiny and I could see my face in them because they were so shiny. They were as shiny as a photo and then I remember on the really bad day in a second or less than a second they weren’t shiny anymore and they were like a poster that isn’t shiny like a photo. I couldn’t see myself in them when they were like a poster. When they were shiny like a photo I could see myself in them I was looking at someone through a window at night and then they closed up the curtains and then they were not shiny and they were really dry like a poster and I couldn’t see myself anymore because they were too dry. I don’t like that word.

Recess was over and we were on the floor and I was in the corner and there was a stapler on the floor in the corner and I picked it up and played with it behind my back even though I knew that Mrs. Drew would be angry if I was playing with the stapler when show and tell is on. I knew she would be angry and say go and see the principal but I wouldn’t care because then I wouldn’t have to do show and tell when I didn’t have anything to show and tell. She would be more angry because we’re not allowed to use the stapler even if it’s not show and tell time and even if we are doing arts and crafts. It’s a big kid stapler and most of the time it’s not on the floor it’s on her desk. Jeremy is doing show and tell and that means I’m next because he sits next to where I sit and he’s showing his Pokémon. My hands are really sweaty and the stapler is slipping around in my hands and I want to go home and ask Dad what soccer is and also ask him if his country is different to Lucy’s Dad’s country and if they are different then I want to ask him to stop beating Lucy’s Dad’s country in the soccer and then maybe she won’t hate me anymore. She’s really pretty I think the prettiest person I’ve ever seen except Mum and I think I want to marry her. She showed a doll and a necklace for show and tell. The doll was pretty it was like her but it was really small and plastic and the necklace was pretty too she got it from her grandpa.

One time last term I had a sore finger because Mum said the skin was too dry and it peeled off and it hurt but I thought I could bring it for show and tell because I never have anything to show and tell but I thought I could show my hurt dry skin. But when I got in front of the class to show and tell I saw my skin was all better and Luke said that I was lying and he said I never had any hurt dry skin and I cried in front of the whole class. That’s the only time I had dry skin like that and I still hate that word and I still hate Mondays. That word makes me thirsty and I always think about that word when I’m in bed and I have to get up and walk to the bathroom and get water from the tap that’s in there. The water tastes different from the tap in the bathroom than from the kitchen and I think that water is good for dogs because he liked that water better than his water from the bowl. His water from the bowl had biscuits in it and maybe that’s why he didn’t like it but then why did he put the biscuits in there all the time? His bowl was yellow and a bit green and it said XYLO on it but you don’t say it like that you say it like ZILO because X is a funny letter. It’s funny too because XYLO isn’t his real name his real name is XYLOPHONE but we called him XYLO because it’s shorter than XYLOPHONE and XYLOPHONE isn’t a name for a dog it’s a thing and dogs aren’t things dogs are dogs that’s why we don’t eat them. But we eat chickens and cows does that mean they are things? Dad eats bacon on his sandwich even though he’s not supposed to because it’s dirty but he says it’s good for him but I hate it and so does Mum but I don’t hate it because it’s dirty I hate it because I love pigs and I don’t think we should hurt them because pigs are not things. XYLO isn’t a thing he is a dog but I called him XYLOPHONE when I was only three and I didn’t know that dogs and things are different things. When we were finding a name for XYLO Mum says that we were looking at a book for names but it was just a normal book with words and pictures and no names and Mum said I pointed to XYLOPHONE in the book but then she said XYLOPHONE is a thing and we need a name for the dog and not a thing but then I cried and so she said yes. Now I know what things are I know that things are things like shoes and toys and keys. Dad bought me a keyring when he went back to Iran but I didn’t have any keys to put on the keyring and I lost it and I missed it for a while. Keyrings are things too and I hate Mondays and I don’t have anything for show and tell and I miss XYLO.

Jeremy is nearly finished his show and tell and that means I’m next because Jeremy sits next to me and now my hands are really sweating all over and the stapler is slippery in my hands because of the sweat. I closed the stapler on my finger and it hurt so much more than when I fell off my bike but I didn’t move because then I knew I’d be in so much trouble even though I didn’t care because I had nothing to show and tell but then I saw my finger and it was bleeding right next to the fingernail and there was a staple inside my finger and it was bleeding down into my hand. Mrs. Drew said my name and she said it was my turn and my heart was beating really fast and there was lots of blood on my finger and on my hand lots of blood and lots of sweat. I went up to the front to do my show and tell and Mrs. Drew looked at my finger and all the blood and all the sweat and she fell over onto the floor.

On Tuesday I was late to school because Mum said she wanted me to sleep in and that I would go in to school late even though she had to go to work. I missed assembly but I don’t care that I missed it because assembly is boring and the school hall is really cold in the morning. Mum dropped me off out the front because she was in a hurry but she said that I could call her from the office if my finger hurt too much but I said it was okay. The staple came out on the way home and Mum put some cold stuff on my finger that made it hurt more and then less after a little while. Then she put a bandage around it and kissed it because she does that when I hurt myself. Dad told me that Lucy’s dad went for the Australian team who isn’t the best team and he said that Lucy’s Dad needs to know that they’re not the best team but I’m not going to say that to Lucy. I walked past the office lady on my way to the classroom but she didn’t see me because I’m really short. When I got to the classroom the door was open and I could hear everyone being really loud and I knew Mrs. Drew was going to say quiet down everyone or something like that but she didn’t say anything. When I got to the classroom everyone was doing arts and crafts and I saw that Mrs. Drew wasn’t even there which is funny because she’s always in the classroom even at recess I think maybe she sleeps there too but that’s funny because there’s no toilet there. Luke saw me he was playing lego and he ran over to me and he wanted to see my finger and I showed him my finger and my bandage and he said WOW and put his arm on my shoulder like he was my friend. I sat down at my desk and then something fell over my shoulder onto the desk and I saw that it was a card and it was pink and it said I HOPE YOUR FINGER GETS BETTER SOON and then it said FROM LUCY. At recess Lucy asked me to play soccer because she wants to make a really good team and she thinks I might be really good at soccer because I’m Iranian. I told her that I didn’t know how to play soccer but she said it’s okay we can play any game I like. She told me that Lucy isn’t her real name and her real name is Lacramioara and it’s from Romania and she asked me if I could call her that instead of Lucy and I said yes.

Luke Johnson lectures in Creative Writing and Literary Theory at the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of Wollongong. His stories have appeared in numerous journals, and in 2014 he was shortlisted for the Josephine Ulrick Prize. He has a PhD in Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory and Creative Writing from UTS.

A Small Dead Thing

Daniel Young is a Sydney-based software developer, reader, writer and editor who was born and raised in Brisbane. He has had short fiction published in Issue Two of Hello Mr. Magazine and flash fiction in Seizure and Cuttings Journal. He is struggling to write a novel while remotely studying an MA (Writing) through Swinburne University. He is the founder and editor of Tincture Journal.

The Jazz Band

The jazz band walked onto the stage, quiet and unassuming, dressed in jeans and plain black t-shirts, and began to shift things around without looking at the audience. The shuffling and scraping of their chairs, the tuning of their instruments, the precise placement of their glasses of water and bottles of beer; it may have been part of the performance—they were known for including such things at the beginning of their albums—so the crowd began to hush, their conversations dispersing into the auditorium, hanging wastefully in the air before being forgotten, lost for all time.

When Billy suggested the jazz band, Alex baulked at the idea but went along with it just the same. After exchanging messages and flirting online for what seemed like an eternity, they finally decided it was time to meet. Billy was attractive: a cute Aussie guy in his mid-twenties with a stable job. He didn’t have a gym-built body, but Alex didn’t care about that and he tried more than once to arrange a date. He’d been nearly ready to give up, coming to the conclusion that Billy was either intractable, disinterested or already taken. A few times he’d met guys online only to later find out they already had a boyfriend; it seemed to come with the territory, although Billy didn’t seem the type to play around. He had a quiet understated sincerity that Alex liked. When Billy suggested an improvised jazz concert, Alex wasn’t going to say no, although he did wonder exactly what he’d agreed to.

For what felt like a few minutes already, the drummer had been scraping something metallic across the top of one of his drums. Alex had never been to anything like this back in Singapore. He closed his eyes and ignored the percussionist’s noises, wishing they’d just gone for a drink instead.

Alex’s mother had phoned last night, berating him for not buying a new phone card, for not calling home more often. She wanted to know everything, and each tidbit of news was relayed in a shouting voice to his dad before the conversation could continue. They both wanted to visit him in spring, but he told her that Australia was too boring, especially Brisbane; he would go home instead. Somehow he didn’t seem ready to share his Aussie life with them. He’d begun to make this town his own, although he did miss home sometimes. He thought about the hawker food stalls back home and started dreaming of claypot chicken rice with delicious lap cheong sausage; a hardened rice crust formed on the base of the claypot, and he savoured the change in texture as he reached the end of the dish. The thick wet humidity of the Singaporean air embraced him tightly as his head tilted forwards, waking him up. He glanced at Billy, hoping his daydream had gone unnoticed. Imperceptibly, the percussionist’s scrapings had been joined by the pianist’s hypnotic light touch; his fingers danced across a wide range of keys and the gentle tapping somehow resulted in a deep and complex reverberation that gradually magnified as it spread throughout the performance space.

The double bass joined in, striking just three notes slowly in a short melody, repeating it again and again. Alex began to dream about his mother’s famous Nonya Laksa.

Billy drew his attention from the stage and looked at Alex, sitting there, eyes closed. Absorbing the music to its full effect, or falling asleep? It didn’t matter. He’d agreed on the date because he hated coming to these things alone, but he had no expectation that Alex would enjoy it. The double bass player was plucking at the thick strings more fiercely now; each bass-laden thwap was a punch in Billy’s side. One of them fractured his rib, recalling that day, three years ago now. The others landed in a dull thud that he knew would emerge in the morning as a beautiful deep-purple bruise. He somehow enjoyed reliving the past, letting the music beat him senseless. It replaced all traces of the present.

The drummer was still scraping something across the top of his drums, tracing it in a slow circular motion. A set of house keys? Billy realised with a start that Qiang still had a spare key to his apartment. He hadn’t bothered to change the locks after Qiang left Australia. The scraping continued, now joined by the occasional sharp tapping of hi-hat cymbals. Tap-tap-tap, an insistent woodpecker keen to crack open his skull and burrow into his brain. He tried to keep each of the band’s instruments distinct in his head, tracking the almost imperceptible ways they were changing over time, wondering how the music had somehow made its way from Point A to Point B. The initially disparate parts had merged to become a single swirling mess.

The doctor had been friendly today. A GP in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, just across the road from where he was sitting now. The clinic, being in a so-called “gay area”, administered lots of sexual health check-ups, and the staff were good at asking the necessary questions without getting too nosy or raising an eyebrow.

“I see it’s your first time here. Is there anything else I can help you with today?” The doctor was tall and handsome, but not Billy’s type.

“Oh, no thanks. My normal GP is close to home but I came here because it’s close to work. Just the tests today.”

The doctor smiled, not skipping a beat. “No worries, just a few questions first. When were you last tested?”

Billy answered. Yes, it had been a while. And yes, he was sexually active. Though not so much lately. No, he had no real reason to be worried, but… you know how it is. He didn’t add that he rarely met new people these days because he couldn’t trust anybody and preferred to stay home alone and drink. Last night he’d received a message online from an anonymous person, advising him to get tested. It could be a prank—the person’s dating profile didn’t even have a photo—but it was scary stuff nonetheless. Enough to convince Billy that it was time to be tested again. No need to tell all that to the doctor.

As the blood left his veins and filled the nurse’s syringe, he sat there and blinked, wondering what his future might hold and whether or not he even cared. The nurse taped a cotton bud gently over his arm and he left the clinic. The results would come and could not be changed. His boss was out of town so he extended his lunch break and walked along Brisbane’s murky brown riverfront, trying to get as far from the office as possible. The sun beat down, even on this winter day, and people jogged past with confident strides. He thought of his small high-rise apartment in the leafy green inner west, clinging as it was to its own bend in the river, looking across to the towering heights of Highgate Hill. He could go home—nobody at work would care—and he could spend the afternoon with a bottle of Shiraz, some music and maybe a warm bath. But he was meeting Alex tonight for the jazz concert and the theatre was close to his office; if he went home, he’d never find the motivation to go out again. He thought about cancelling as he walked back to the office. It wouldn’t be hard to find some excuse.

“A Scotch and dry and a Corona with lime thanks,” said Alex, smiling at the bartender and admiring his rounded butt as he turned to fetch a clean glass. Alex didn’t drink often, but Billy wanted one and it might help the rest of the concert pass by more quickly. The first half had been interesting in a way and it surprised him that traditional instruments could be used to create such sounds, but it had felt like it might never end. When he wasn’t nodding off, Alex tried to make a connection between the musicians’ actions and what he was hearing, but the link seemed so tenuous that he wondered if the whole thing was just a pre-recorded charade. No, it couldn’t be that—he just didn’t understand this stuff. At least Billy was something different; something he hadn’t yet experienced since coming to Brisbane to study business and hospitality management. He represented something other than the usual late nights out in tiny gay bars, with the same people every week dancing the night away. Nights that would often end with him waking up next a stranger in a cloud of awkwardness and sour morning breath. It never felt good afterwards, but it was a change from life back home.

The bartender returned with the drinks and Alex paid, resolving to just try and enjoy the second half of the show. Maybe they could grab a quick bite to eat later on.

“Thanks,” said Billy as Alex passed him the Scotch. “What did you think so far?”

“It was… interesting. Different,” replied Alex.

Billy rolled his eyes but still smiled that cheeky little boy smile that had attracted Alex so much in the first place.

“What music do you like? Kylie? Gaga? The usual shit?” he asked.

“That stuff’s all OK, but I prefer Chinese pop stars. Do you know Faye Wong?”

“Hah! I’m not a huge fan, but I saw her in Chungking Express. She’s kind of old now, right? It’s all about K-Pop these days. But I loved that movie. You know, I randomly saw it on the world movie channel about five years ago and I think I’ve been a rice queen ever since…”

“So you only like Asian guys? Here in Brisbane it’s mostly just the really old white guys chasing me. Lots of young people put ‘no Asians’ in their dating profile.”

Billy shrugged and said nothing.

“Don’t be shy, it’s fine. You’ll like me then, since I’m a potato queen,” grinned Alex, poking him in the belly in a teasing way. His belly was soft. “I love Wong Kar-Wai’s films too. To be honest, I’m more interested in film than music. I’d study that if my parents would let me…”

“The film festival starts soon, maybe we can check some stuff out? I love Korean films, and they also have a British and Irish showcase that looks interesting. And lots more.”

Alex watched as Billy drank his Scotch, finishing it with one last gulp. He seemed excited now. When they’d met before the concert he’d been shy, maybe even aloof. On the internet Billy was a tough nut to crack, but Alex was now thinking that his persistence might have been worthwhile.

A buzzer rang and Alex placed his arm in the small of Billy’s back, guiding him from the foyer back into the theatre space. The room was cool and the warmth emanating from Billy’s body seemed like a generous offering. They took their seats.

Billy didn’t know why he preferred Asian guys and the inevitable question always embarrassed him. It felt wrong to choose partners based on their race, and he wasn’t proud of it, but he also couldn’t deny his preference. It was best not to think about it too deeply. His friends had suggested he dated international students because he was afraid of commitment. They all leave Brisbane after a few years, maybe that suits you? There could be some truth in that. He was lucky that Qiang had left when he did, before the situation escalated further. He should have called the police, but had been unable to. On a logical level, Qiang’s departure was a blessing, and yet it was still in the forefront of Billy’s mind every day, both the good and the bad.

The band didn’t mess around this time. They came onto the stage and the pianist placed a metronome on the piano’s glossy black frame. It seemed to be hooked up to an amp. An electric metronome? He set it ticking and the sound filled the theatre, setting a fairly rapid pace for the music to come. And then he began, playing not music exactly, or at least not melody. No, he tapped at just one or two keys, repetitively, in time with the constant ticking, creating a fluid wall of sound. Billy relaxed, closing his eyes for a moment to savour the effect, listening carefully for the slightest change.

The metronome’s amplified ticking drew Billy’s attention to the inexorable onward march of time. It counted down the number of seconds since he had laid peacefully in Qiang’s arms; the number of days since Qiang had been inside him; the number of months since their brutal last few weeks together. The tapping of individual piano keys created a single reverberating mass and still the metronome ticked on, oblivious. Every tick brought each audience member one moment closer to their own end.

But the drummer had other ideas. He was using the full kit now and refused to keep the same beat as the metronome. The tangential rhythms became disorienting and Billy felt a rush in his arteries as his pulse quickened. The bass player began thwapping away at his strings again, but it was hard to discern the effect of his efforts on top of the now screeching cacophony of manic piano. It was the drummer who was really shaking things up, hitting his kit hard, completely freed from the restrictive bounds of the metronome’s tick. Goosebumps formed on Billy’s arms and the fine blonde hairs stood to attention like enchanted snakes. He felt tears in his eyes and, thankful for the dark theatre, let them flow without wiping them away. A crash of cymbals took over and it was no longer a beat but a wall of sound, joining the piano and bass with destructive force. Billy looked sideways and was surprised to find Alex leaning forward in his seat, simultaneously riveted and shocked by the jazz band’s climax.

The drummer broke away, regaining his individuality as a discernible beat returned, and Billy tried his best to follow it. The pace kept shifting, battling against the metronome. Occasionally the two beats would coincide and they’d seem to be keeping the same rhythm, but they would always fall out of step again. At other moments, the drummer went manic again and lost himself among the roar of the piano and bass. The incessant ticking became redundant, reminding Billy that boundaries were meaningless.

Yet as he smiled at Alex and looked back towards the stage, despite the cacophonous roar, all he could see was the thin pendulum, still swinging joyfully from side-to-side. Silenced, perhaps, but not stopped. And gradually, as each musician slowed and their sounds danced over the top of each other, Billy finally heard them again as three distinct elements. The metronome continued to tick, even after the musicians stopped, out of place and obnoxious. Finally, the pianist raised his hand and stopped the pendulum’s movement. The audience broke out in stunned applause.

They sat on the ferry, navigating their way home on the river’s lazy bends as they cut through the city and into the inner west. Alex, being slightly taller, allowed Billy’s head to rest on his shoulder. The ferry master looked at them a few times but Alex returned his gaze, feeling boldly protective of this strange Brisbane boy. The ferry master shrugged and gave up, walking outside into the bracing wind as the vessel skimmed over the black water. The window was dirty, a water-saving measure of the city council, who had decided to stop washing the ferries. Alex looked outside but saw only a scratchy dark mess, overlaid with the bright reflected interior of the ferry’s cabin.

Billy was sleeping by the time they reached their stop and a small wet patch of drool had soaked into the shoulder of Alex’s jumper. Alex smiled and tapped him gently on the head to wake him up, which he did with a confused, almost frightened look.

“We’re here. Let’s go.”

On a quiet dark street in a quiet dark suburb, watched only by the possums as they scurried over the power lines above, they kissed goodnight. In another time, they each would have asked the other to stay the night, but tonight it seemed that only silence and solitude could follow what they’d experienced.

“Thanks for taking me. It wasn’t my kind of thing, but I’m glad we met. Let’s have dinner soon.”

“OK. Goodnight Alex. See you soon.” Alex watched as Billy turned and walked away, trekking uphill to where his apartment building waited. He stood for a moment and thought about giving up his business degree to study film. Finally, hands in his pockets to ward off the cold night air, he walked in the other direction towards his own place.

In bed, happy to be alone, Billy didn’t think about Alex. He didn’t think about Qiang, or the dent in his bedroom wall where Qiang had thrown his phone that time. He didn’t think about the doctor or the blood tests. The sheets were smooth and soft against his tender, naked skin. He felt like he’d gone a few rounds in a boxing ring and shook his head to clear the fuzz, wondering if any of it was real. His ears were ringing with the silence, so he plugged his mp3 player into the speakers beside his bed and chose the “repeat album” option. The music started with the sound of chairs and equipment being arranged on-stage. This time the bass player began, striking a short wistful melody and repeating it again and again. The still and empty night, unlike so many before and after, passed by quickly, so that it wasn’t long before he awoke. The sun had risen, shimmering golden foil on the river’s surface, concealing the muddy brown reality beneath.

Tony Birch is the author of Shadowboxing (2006), Father’s Day (2009) and Blood (2011), shortlisted for the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award.  His new collection of short stories, The Promise, will be released in 2014.  Tony teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Father Divine

Walking home after the paper round one Saturday morning Sonny and me come around the corner and saw a furniture van parked in the street.  Workers were unloading cupboards and tea chests from the truck and carrying them into the house next door to Sonny’s place.  It had been empty for months and the landlord had cleaned it out, painted it up and fixed the roof on the old stable at the back of the house.  The stable had been used as a carpenter’s workshop from a long time back, but had been padlocked all the time I lived on the street.

We stopped on the footpath and watched the removalists wrestle with a piano, standing on its end and strapped to a trolley.  The workmen were sweating and swearing at the piano like it was some fella they might be fighting in the pub.
‘Fucken iron frame,’ one of them grunted to the other.  ‘I hate iron frames.  I’m marking up the job for this.  Fuck it.  Double time for the day.’
They stopped for a smoke.  One of them looked over at us, leaning against Sonny’s front fence eyeing them.
‘What you two looking at?’ he bit at us.  ‘Can you carry this cunt on your back?  If you can’t, stop gawking and let us get on with the job.’
It was our street they we on, so we weren’t about to fuck off any place.  I pinched Sonny on the arm and nodded.  We shifted to the front of my place and sat on the front step.
‘You reckon he’s happy with his job?’ Sonny laughed.
‘Wouldn’t you be?  No weight in that piano there.  Your pushbike’s heavier.  He’s piss-weak, I reckon.’
They finished their smoke and dragged the piano into the house.
‘My mum can play the piano,’ Sonny said.
It was the first time Sonny had spoken about his mother since she’d shot through on the family with some fella she worked with at the tyre factory some time last year.
‘You don’t have one in your place.  Where’s she play?’
‘Before we came here.  We lived with my auntie, mum’s older sister, for a time.  They had a piano in the front room.  Mum would play and we’d all sing.’
‘What songs did she play?’
He looked away from me, along the street, to the furniture van.
‘Just stuff.  I forget.’
The men came out of the house and stood at the back of the truck.  The one who’d abused us was scratching his head and looking over.  He buried his hands in his pockets and walked toward us.
‘You two want to make a couple of dollars?’ he asked.
‘You just told us to fuck off,’ Sonny called back.
‘I was just pissing around.’  He held out his hand.  ‘Jack.’
I shook his hand and Sonny followed.
‘We got a load of folding chairs in the back there, maybe fifty, sixty, and my mate, Henry, and me want to get away for lunch and a beer at the pub.  You two want to give us a hand for a couple of dollars?’
‘What’s a couple add up to?’ Sonny asked.
‘What it’s always been.  Two dollars.’
Sonny held up three fingers.
‘Two’s not enough.  It’s a Saturday, so we’re on time and a half.’
‘Jesus, you a union organiser or something?  Fuck me.  Three dollars then.  Let’s get cracking.’
The chairs were made of wood and weighed a ton.  I grabbed one under each arm and followed the removalists through the house.  It smelled of fresh paint.  We crossed the yard and walked through the open double doors of the stable.  The piano was sitting at one end of the room, next to a brass cross, stuck on the end of a long pole.  Picture frames rested against a wall.  They looked like the prayer cards the Salvos gave out on street corners, only a lot bigger.  I read one prayer aloud.

There Can Be No Being before God, As God Has No Mother.
‘Amen,’ Sonny laughed, making the sign of the cross over his heart.
One of the picture frames was covered in a piece of green cloth.  Sonny pulled it away from the frame.  We stared at a painting of a man in a dark three-piece suit and tie.  He had shining black skin, dark eyes and was posing in a big velvet chair.  Kneeling next to him was a young woman with golden curls, flowers in her hair, and white, white skin.  She was looking up at the black man and holding his hand.  Across the bottom of the painting were the words Father Jealous Divine & Mother Purity Divine.
           ‘Fucken weird,’ Sonny said.
‘Yep.  Weird.’
Jack, the removalist, called his mate over.
‘Henry, take a look at these two.’
Henry was stacking chairs against the far wall.  He shuffled over, scratching the arse of his work pants.  He stood next to me and crossed his arms and studied the painting.
‘She’s not bad looking, Jack.’
‘Look at the way that old blackfella’s into her with those eyes.  Bet he’s fucking the pants off her.’
‘Fucking the pants off her,’ Henry agreed.  ‘What do you reckon, boys?  He fucking her or what?’
The black man looked old enough to be her pop, although he couldn’t be, I guess, seeing as he was black and she was white.   Henry repeated the question to Sonny, who like me, was too embarrassed to answer.
I heard heavy footsteps behind me in the yard.

A tall thin man stood in the doorway of the stable.  He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and string tie.  His silver-grey hair was cut short, and even from the distance of the other side of the room I could see his cold blue eyes burning a hole in Henry’s heart, who was rubbing his chest with his hand and showing pain in his face.

The man stepped into the stable, walked toward Henry and stopped maybe six inches from his face.  He looked down at the ground, at his own shining black leather shoes and back up at Henry, who turned away, too afraid to look the man in the eye.

‘Your remark?’ the man asked, raising an eyebrow.
Henry licked his bottom lip with his tongue, trying to get it moving.
‘That wasn’t any remark,’ Jack interrupted.  ‘We were just mucking about with the boys.’
The man turned and set his eyes on Jack, making him feel just as jumpy and uncomfortable.
‘Do you often speak on behalf of your co-worker?’
‘Like I said, we were just mucking about.’
No one moved.  The man took a white handkerchief out of his coat pocket and dabbed his mouth.  He looked around the room.
‘Please set the chairs in even rows, an equal number of chairs, separated by a clear aisle.  And move the piano to right side of the room.  Would you be able to hang the framed psalms?  And,’ he looked down at the green cloth that Sonny had pulled away from the painting pointed to the end wall and said, ‘mount the portrait of the Messenger and Mother Divine in line with the aisle.  Are you able to do that?’
‘The Messenger,’ Jack smiled.  ‘Sure.  We can look after him, can’t we, Henry?  It ‘ll cost a little more … Mr Beck, weren’t it?’
‘Reverend Beck.’
Jack offered his hand.  The Reverend ignored it.  He wiped his hands clean with the handkerchief and put it back in his pocket.  He took a small bible from his pocket and held it in his hand.  His eyes flicked to the side, sharp as a bird spotting a worm.  A girl had arrived at the stable door.  She was around my age and wore a long plain dress, almost her ankles, and a scarf on her head covering most of her fair hair.  Even in her costume I could see she wasn’t bad looking.  The Reverend turned to face her.  She blinked and bit her lip.
‘Selina?’ he asked, stone-faced.
She spoke with her hands held together in prayer.
‘Some of the followers are here, asking what work you need them to do.’
The Reverend opened his arms, raised his hands in the air and closed his eyes.  And he smiled.
‘There is work for them to do here.  In our church.’
He stared up at the roof.  While Jack and Henry were looking at him like he was some circus freak Sonny and me slipped out of the stable, into the yard and jumped the side fence into his place.
‘Fucken lunatic,’ I panted.  ‘Did you see his eyes?’
‘Seen them, but not for long.  I was too afraid to look at them. And what about the picture of the old black boy?’
‘Yeah.  Did you see the girl who come into the stable?  She looked pretty, under that scarf.’
‘Your off your head.  I bet she’s crazy too.’
‘Still not bad looking.’
‘And crazy.  You hear what he said.  A church?  Must be against the law, putting a church in a back shed?’
‘Maybe. But then so is running a sly-grog.  Or an SP.  And the two-up.  Police can’t close any of them down.  Hardly gonna go after a nutcase running a church.’

Lots of people came and went from the house.  Men in dark suits and women and their daughters in the same long dresses and head scarves that Selina went around in, although she didn’t go around that often.  I never saw her in the street on her own, and if she went to any school it wasn’t to mine.  I sometimes spotted her sweeping the front yard with a straw broom or sitting up on the balcony with a book.  I made noises when I walked by the house to get her attention, but she never looked my way, not even from the corner of her eye as far as I could tell.

I was woken early one Sunday morning by banging in the street.  I crept downstairs, so not to wake my old man, who’d got home in the middle of the night from a road trip, and opened the front door.  It was cold out.  The street was crowded with cars and people were pouring into the Reverend Beck’s place. I went back into the house, made myself a cup of tea and took it up to bed.  I could hear the piano playing in the stable, followed by some singing of hymns and shouting and screaming out.

Sonny knocked at my window a few minutes later and let himself.  He had sleep in his eyes, his hair was standing on end like he’d stuck his finger in the toaster and he was wearing the jeans and jacket he’d had on the night before.  They were dirty and crumpled.  He must have slept in them.

‘You look like a dero, Sonny.’
‘Fuck up.  You’re no day at the beach yourself.’
He picked up my mug of tea and took a long drink.
‘You hear that racket going on next door?’
‘Yeah.  It woke me.’
‘We should go take a look.’
‘It’s freezing out.’
‘Put a jumper on.  Come on.’
‘Not me.  I’m staying in bed.’
He finished off my tea.
‘Please yourself.  Your girlfriend, that Selina will be there.’
He was halfway out the window when I called him back.
‘Wait.  I’ll come.  And next time don’t drink all my tea.’
I followed Sonny out the window onto his roof and down the drainpipe.  A thundering tune was almost lifting the roof off the stable.  Sonny unlocked his back gate and we crept along the lane.  He put an eye to a crack in the stable door.  I kneeled beside him and tried pushing him along so I could take a look.  He wouldn’t budge and was muttering ‘fuck, fuck,’ over and over to himself.
‘Move, will ya?’ I hissed, ‘and let me take a look’.
He pointed to a knothole close to the bottom corner of the door.  I lay down on my guts.  The ground was muddy and I was soaked through in about two seconds.  I put my eye to the hole.  All I could see were hundreds of chair legs and the ankles of old women and young girls, escaping the hems of long dresses.  I noticed one ankle, bone white.  I reckoned it might belong to Selina.  I followed it upward, tapping along with the hymn.  I wanted to reach out and touch that ankle and slide one hand up its leg and the other down the front of my pants.
The singing ended and it went quiet, except for my heartbeat and Sonny breathing.  When the Reverend’s voice boomed out across the stable, Sonny jumped and stood on my hand.  I bit on a lump of dirt to stop myself from crying out in pain.  The words the Reverend was preaching didn’t make a lot of sense.
‘… And we have been brought to this Holy Place at the call of the Messenger …  God Himself, Our Father Divine has called us here from across the ocean … and Mother Divine, in her chaste beauty and purity calls us to abstain in this place, this House of Worship …’
‘You hear that, Sonny?’ I whispered.
He nodded his head and stuck his ear against the crack in the door.
‘… And was it not proven in the days prior to the Great Earthquake of 1906, that the Messenger attended the city of San Francisco, a site of pestilence and evil, at the behest of the Holy Spirit, and bought wrath upon the sinful … And do we not know that when the Messenger was imprisoned for His works his gaolers were struck down by lightning and He was able to free Himself …’
The more he went on with the Bible talk, the louder and deeper his voice got.  Women in the audience started crying and the men called out in agreement.  The Reverend stopped preaching and people in the room stood up and clapped and cried out.  The piano struck up another tune and they sang some more.  Sonny tapped me on the shoulder and called me back along the laneway, into his yard.
‘You ever hear stuff like that?’ I asked.  ‘And all them women babbling?  Gave me the frights.’
‘Look at you,’ he laughed.  ‘You’ve been rolling in crap.’
The front of my jumper and the knees of my jeans were covered in a mess of mud and dog shit.  I tried wiping it off, but all I did was move it around.
‘My mum ‘ll kill me.’
Sonny couldn’t stop laughing.
‘And after that your old man will kill you double.’
I scraped a handful of the mess from my jumper and flung it at him, whacking him on the side of the face.
‘Don’t think its funny, Sonny.  She’s gonna flog me for doing this.’
‘Stop worrying.  Come inside and I’ll throw the stuff in the twin-tub and dry it by the heater.’
We sat in Sonny’s kitchen, me wearing a pink frilly dressing gown that belonged to his mum, while my clothes went through the machine.
‘You got any toast, Sonny?’
‘I don’t have any bread.’
‘No bread?  What about a biscuit?’
‘Don’t have any.  There’s nothing left in the house,’ he said, jumping from his chair and tugging at the sleeve of his jumper.
‘Where’s your old man?  In bed with a hangover?’
He sat back at the table and looked down at his hands
‘He’s not here.  Haven’t seen him for two days.’
It made sense all of a sudden, why he looked like shit and why there was no food in the house.
‘Where’d he go?  What have you been living on?  Nothing I bet.’
‘Shut up with the questions, Ray.  I can take care of myself.  You want to play copper, get yourself a badge.’
‘I was just asking …’
‘Don’t ask.  Or you can give back my mum’s pink gown and piss of home in the nude.’
With my father off the road we had roast for Sunday lunch.  He never talked much while he was eating, but my mother loved a chat.  Said that the table was the place for the family to come together.
‘Why’d you head off early this morning?’ she asked.
‘No reason.’
‘Come on, Ray.  You’re never out of bed early on a Sunday unless you’re off with your mate Sonny somewhere you’re not supposed to be.’             ‘No place.  I was in Sonny’s.’
‘Doing what?’ my father interrupted.
‘Nothing.  Just hanging around.’
He poked his knife in the air.
‘You spend half you life hanging around with that kid.  Ever thought of widening your circle of friends?’
I looked down at my half-eaten lunch.
‘Mum, Sonny’s father gone off some place.’            ‘What do you mean, gone off?’
‘Missing.  He’s been gone for a couple of days and left Sonny at home on his own.’
‘Probably better off.’  My dad tapped the side of his plate.  ‘His old man’s fucken crazy.’
‘Mum, he’s got no food in the house.’
‘None of our business,’ my father interrupted again.
She opened her mouth to speak.  He slapped the table with his hand.
‘None of our business.’

I made it our business later that night when I climbed out of my window, knocked at Sonny’s window and told him I’d made a leftover roast lamb and pickle sandwich for him.
He licked his lips.  ‘Where is it, then?’
‘On the top of my dressing table.’
‘Why didn’t you bring it here?’
‘Thought you might like to bunk at my place, seeing as you’re on your own.’
He didn’t want to make out like he was interested and shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t care one way or the other.
‘Eat here.  Or your place.  I don’t mind.  But what about your old man?  I don’t think he likes me.’
‘Means nothing.  He don’t like me a lot.  Anyway, he’ll be asleep.  Can’t keep his eyes open once the sun goes down after he’s been driving.’
He followed me across the roof, through the window and demolished the sandwich in a couple of bites.  He sent me downstairs for a second
sandwich.  The radio was playing in my parents’ bedroom.  My mother would be sitting up in bed, reading a book and humming in tune to the music.
Sonny was a little slower on the second sandwich.  He tried saying something but I couldn’t understand him because his mouth was full.  He waited until he’d swallowed a mouthful of sandwich and spoke again.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Time.  What do want to know the time for?’
‘Cause I’ve got a secret for you.’
‘And what is it?’
‘Tell me the time first.’
I pointed to the clock with the luminous hands, sitting on the mantle above the fireplace.
‘Nearly ten.  Now tell me the secret.’
He wiped crumbs and butter from his lips.
‘Same time, every night, I been in the yard watching the upstairs back window of the Reverend’s place.  First couple of times it was by accident.  Putting the rubbish in the bin when I look up and see this outline against the lace curtain in the room.’
His eyes widened and lit up like he’d just told me he’d found a pot of gold.
‘An outline?  What about it?’
‘The outline of that girl, Selina.  Side on.  I could see her shape.  Tits and all.’
‘How’d you know it was her?  Could have been the mother.’
‘Bullshit.  You had a good look at the mum.  She’d have to be twenty stone.  No, it was Selina.  I seen her there the first night.  And the next, when I put out the rubbish again.  I been checking in the yard most nights since.  And she’s there.  Every night.’
I swallowed spit and licked my dry lips.
‘What time is she there?’
‘Just after ten.’
The small hand on the clock was about to touch ten.
‘You think we should go down in the yard and take a look?’
‘Better than that.  I reckon we should climb out of this window and cross my roof onto hers.  We might be able to see something through her window.’
‘She’ll see us.’
‘No, she won’t.  Not if we’re careful.’
I looked over at the window and back to my open door.  I walked across the floor, closed it and turned the light out.  I nodded toward the window.  Sonny opened it, climbed out and crept across his roof onto Selina’s.  I followed him, trying as hard as I could not to step on a loose sheet of iron.
We sat under the window getting our breath back.  Sonny stuck his finger in the air, turned onto his knees and slowly lifted his head to the window.  When I tried kneeling he pushed my head down with his open hand, sat down, leaned across and whispered in my ear.
‘She’s got nothing on but he undies.  Come on.  Take a look.’
I turned around and slowly lifted my body until my chin was resting on the stone windowsill.  Through the holes in the lace I could see into the room.  Just like Sonny said, she had nothing on but a pair of white underpants.  She had no scarf on her head and her hair sat on her shoulders.  Her arms were crossed in front of her breasts.  She was crying.  And she was shaking.  Her whole body.
I felt bad for staring at her and was about to turn away when the bedroom door opened.  The Reverend came in, closed the door behind him and said something to her that we couldn’t hear.  She turned away from her father and faced the bed.  He took off his suit coat, slipped out of his braces, unbuttoned his shirt and took it off.  The Reverend’s body was covered in dark hair.  He moved closer to her and pushed her in the middle of the back with a giant paw.  She landed on the bed, her sad face almost touching the windowpane.   Suddenly it went dark and we could see nothing.

We both knew what we’d seen but didn’t know how to talk about it.   I made Sonny a bed on the floor with my sleeping bag and spare pillow.  I hopped into bed, my guts turning over and over.  I couldn’t sleep.
‘You awake, Sonny?’
‘Yep.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Not much.  You?’
‘I was thinking about her face.  I’ve never seen a look like that before.  Never seen anyone so frightened and angry at the same time.  Like she
was gonna die.  And like she was about to cut someone’s throat.’
When the bedroom door opened I jumped with a fear of my own.  My mother was standing in the doorway.  She spotted Sonny’s bed on the floor and closed the door behind her.
‘Jesus, Ray.  I thought you were talking in your sleep.’  She looked down at Sonny, who’d ducked into the sleeping bag.  ‘You warm enough there, Sonny?  Can I get you a blanket?’
‘No thanks, Mrs Moore.  This is plenty warm.’
She leaned over the bed and looked at my face.
‘What’s up?  You look like you’ve seen an ghost?’
I shook my head and answered, ‘nothing,’ without looking her in the eye.
‘Right then.  Sleep now, and no chat.  You don’t want to be waking you father.’
The next morning she knocked at the door with a spare pair of pyjamas under her arm.
‘Put these on, Sonny, and the two of you come down for breakfast.’
‘What about, dad?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry about he pyjamas,’ Sonny interrupted.  ‘I can climb back out the window here.  I’m okay.’
‘You won’t be climbing out any window.  You do what I said.  Put these on and come down for breakfast.’  She tousled my hair.  ‘And don’t worry about your father.  He might have the bark, but I’m the only one who bites around here.’

Sonny and me didn’t talk about what we’d seen that night.  I couldn’t speak for his feelings, but I knew I was ashamed of what I’d seen, even though I didn’t understand enough of it.  I also reckoned that speaking about what we’d seen would be dangerous.  I had nightmares about the Reverend turning into an animal, a bear, and other times, a wolf.  When I passed him in the street I couldn’t take my eyes of the long hair growing on back of his hands, something I hadn’t noticed before.  And if I came across Selina in her front yard I’d look the other way, full of guilt, like I’d done something bad to her myself, which in a way I had.

In the middle of the winter I was walking home from the fish and chip shop one night sharing a warm parcel of potato cakes with vinegar with Sonny when we heard the siren of a fire engine off in the distance.  His father had turned up back at home after a week on a bender.  He put himself on the wagon and an AA program and hadn’t had a drink since.  Kept himself dry but miserable.  But at least Sonny was getting a feed and the house was in order.

We turned the corner into the street.  The scent of wood smoke was in the air.
‘I love that smell of wood.  Means my mum will have the fire going and it ‘ll be cosy in the house.  You’re dad put the fire on?’
‘Yep.  Since he’s been off the piss, he orders in whole logs and chops the wood in the back yard.  Doing his punishment.  When he was on the grog he was happy to throw the furniture on the fire.’

I could see people were gathered at the far end of the street, and sparks leaping into the sky somewhere behind Sonny’s place.  Or maybe my place.  We started running.  Sonny’s father was standing on the footpath out the front of his place with his hands on his hips.
‘Is it our joint?’ Sonny screamed.
‘Na.  The religious mob next door.  In the back stable where all the singing goes on.’

Less than a minute later the Fire Brigade tore into the street, lights flashing.  The men jumped out of the truck and ran through The Reverend’s house, into the yard.  Another fire engine turned out of the street, parked alongside the back lane.  I could hear the old timber of the stable cracking and exploding.  Selina was standing outside the house, holding her mother’s hand.  She was wearing a crucifix and praying out loud.  The Reverend was nowhere to be seen.

By the time the fire was out there was nothing left of the stable.  It was burned to the ground, along with everything inside, including the piano, which turned to charcoal, on account of the intense heat.  The police had turned up and one of the firemen was explaining to them that they hadn’t been able to get close to the fire until some of the heat had gone out of it.
‘And then we had to break the stable door down.  It was heavily padlocked.’

While the copper was taking notes another fireman came out of the house and spoke to his mate.
‘We have a body.  A male.’
‘Where?’
‘In the stable.  Under a sheet of roof iron and framing.  Would have fallen in on him.  Got a decent whack in the back of his head’
The policeman looked up from his notebook.
‘I thought you said the door was padlocked from the outside?’
‘It was.’
‘You sure?’
The fireman looked insulted.
‘I know my job.  I’m sure.’
Sonny stared at me and I looked across the street at Selina.  Her face was as blank as a clean sheet.

Born in Shanghai, Jamie Wang is an Australian writer currently living in Hong Kong. She holds a master’s degree in business and worked in the field of business analysis before embarking on a writing journey to fulfil her long time passion for literature.  As well as writing literary fiction, Jamie creates local art gallery press releases and does volunteering work. She is a member of the Hong Kong Writers Circle. Jamie is currently working on fiction and nonfiction stories and studying literature and arts part time.

FUNERAL

My grandfather passed away.  He was 85. Died in peace. During his lifetime, he had five children; they all got married, and in turn had seven grandchildren. Sixteen of us, no matter where we were living in the world, all came back to Shanghai on weekend to see him the very last time.

The funeral was scheduled on Sunday, 4 days after my grandfather passed away.  I had already been to the wake that my aunty set up. We made the paper money. We burned the incense. We stayed up for 3 days and nights to make sure the white candles at the altar did not go out.

The day my uncle arrived in Shanghai was clear and rainless. I looked through the window and saw him and my cousin get out of the taxi.  He insisted on us not picking them up from the airport and went straight to our place after checking in to the hotel.

Tea was served.  My mother apologized for not brewing it from fresh green tea leaves. It was almost the end of the year and new tea would be only ready in spring.  My uncle sat in the middle of the couch, his arms folded, eyes red and swollen. My cousin was next to him.  He grew up so fast.  His body looked young and his muscles tightened under the shirt whenever he moved. The last time I saw him was years ago when I was on holiday in Hawaii.  We had so much fun.  I still have the photo of him snorkeling with all the fish nibbling his butt.  I took it while I kept throwing bread to him from the boat.  I was disappointed he did not make my wedding a few months ago. He had just started his first job after graduating from Berkeley.  

“What happened to Pa?” My uncle sipped the tea and asked, his voice dreary and almost impersonal.

“Father was admitted into the hospital last Saturday; he was stable at first.”  My mother went on telling how bad things then followed, how she had rushed to the hospital, how she had seen my grandfather the last time, how my father had cleaned my grandfather’s body. How she had held her grief to inform the relevant people. She would have repeated this so many times, the string of tears fell from her cheek to hands but she just kept talking. I wanted to stop this torture but I was not allowed to.  It was her duty; the eldest, to report to the son that everything was properly done while he was away.

“I am the eldest, so I should pay for the biggest portion.”

“I am the eldest, so I shouldn’t let my sisters take the blame.”

She said this to my father and me so often that we got tired.

Sometimes I grew impatient and talked back.  “So what, you take all the responsibilities and no one appreciated it. They only came when they needed help.”

This weekend she was not the eldest, as my uncle was there. He was the fourth of the siblings and the only son. My cousin was the son of him, which makes him the grandson. We else were just the third generation, as we did not bear the last name of Zhu.

“Ma, Jay kept talking about Yabuli, apparently Club Med built a new ski resort there. You must know that place right, somewhere in Heilongjiang?” My new husband was a huge snowboarding fan. He chased after the snow instead of sun.  I asked my mother because she was sent there when she was 15.

“I had to go. It was the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Chairman Mao didn’t want us to study.  He wanted us to go to the countryside to be farmers and learn from them.”

“Why did it have to be you?”

“I am the eldest, if I didn’t go, your aunts and uncle had to. I couldn’t let this happen.”

“Your mother got lucky,” every now and then some aunts would say this to me. “She went to Heilongjiang and got chosen to go to the army university. Then she became a lecturer and got sent to America. Not like us, we stayed in Shanghai, only graduated from high school then went to the factory and got laid off at 40.”

I smiled to them and nodded. I was a good niece.

“It was so cold there, the furthest part of China and bordered with Russia.  Most of the time was negative 20 degrees,” my mother always opened her story with the extreme weather condition and geographical remoteness of the place. “If you lick a metal spoon outside the room. It would get stuck and hurt like hell when you tried to take it off.”

“What did you do there?”

“Everything, so long as it was deemed hard that we city people could benefit from doing it.  We worked as farmers, as builders, or as anything Chairman Mao set his mind on.  There were so many times I had to jump into the dirtiest water up to my waist to clean up the linen even when I got my period.”

“That’s gross.” I frowned, “What did you eat?”

“Potatoes. Stewed potatoes, stir fry potatoes, steamed potatoes, potato wedges, potato chips, whole potatoes, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes.  Sometimes we had pork dumplings.  Rarely, but that was the best.  On those nights, the boys would play chess with the cooks and we girls would sneak into the kitchen to steal as many dumplings as we could, freeze them for the next few months.”

“But I never forgot studying. I smuggled books whenever I could. Oh boy, I could have got into big trouble if they saw the book underneath the red book of Mao.”  My mother always finished the story as a good role model.

“Your mum was only 15,” my grandmother told me when I went to her to verify the details of the story, “I still remember the day I sent her to the train station. Your grandfather and I were heartbroken to see our little girl off to that place, so bitter and far away.  She stayed there for four years.”

***

She is the eldest.

And he is the son.

She needed to report to him how they had tried their best to look after the old father after the son moved to America 17 years ago.

She needed to take the blame if the son was not happy with his sisters.

She needed to take the scolding from her younger sisters if they didn’t think

she defended them enough.

I sat at the other side of the room, watching.

A girl, an only child, an outsider.

I was the apple of my uncle’s eyes as he brought me up. But I was not allowed to participate in the discussion even though I was the eldest grandchild and I was 32. My little cousin was there, palms on his knee and silent. I wanted to take him away, cover his ears. He was tired, just had 16 hours flying and had to fly back in 3 days.  He was too young to be involved. But I was not allowed to. He was the son of the only son. That qualified him.

The tea was getting cold and so was I.  I almost forgot how cold Shanghai was in the middle of the winter.  I had left so long, came back so little that some old friends of my grandfather no longer recognized me.

But I remembered. Once I was here, my body would carry me of its own accord, sit, talk and eat the way I was supposed to sit, talk and eat.

Deep fried Chinese doughnuts and sweetened soymilk. Jay opened his eyes wide when he saw me swallowing these down without a fuss.

“Guess someone is not allergic to deep fried food and white sugar anymore,” he said this to himself giving me a wink.

Or perhaps I hadn’t changed, perhaps this was the real me with my roots.

No one can be exempt from their birth place. Not even my cousin, who left Shanghai at a tender age of five

The funeral started.

“Let us share five of our favorite stories of our father,” said my uncle. “I’ll share mine first. When I was born, my father got a call from the hospital notifying him the news. He didn’t ask if my mother was okay, he just asked was it a boy or a girl? Once he heard the baby was a boy he left work immediately, went to the shop, bought a pram, and went to the hospital. This had never happened to any of my elder sisters and would not happen to my younger sister later when she was born.”

My mother was crying, the eldest. She told her story; the loving father magically multiplied the dumplings in her bowl by eating none himself.

My aunts were crying, the sisters. They told their stories. A kind father picked up his daughter from the work place every day for years until she married because she finished work after midnight.  Later she was picked up by the husband.

Then another story plus another story.

Bow three times.

On your knees, bow three times.

The last prayer, bow another three times.

My mother stood there in black with a white flower in her hair,  looked even smaller than the rest. She was the eldest, but the shortest among all the siblings, 160 cm as opposed to average 170 of all my aunts.   Zhu’s family were very proud of their height.

“It must be because we sent her to that god damn place when she was still growing.” My grandmother always said this whenever someone mocked my mother’s height.

“Does he have any grandsons?” asked the officer from the funeral place.

I was silent, along with another 5 of us.  We knew he was not asking about us.

“I am.” My cousin raised his hand.

“Well, you need to hammer the last nail to seal the coffin.”

The coffin was dark red, solid wood.

Done.

“Well, you need to take the picture of your grandfather and lead the procession.”

Here we were, 16 of us, the son, the eldest, the sisters, the third generation along with the others, following the grandson to walk the last part of the journey of my grandfather.

The funeral was over.

The ceremony would then last 49 days.  The prayers would be sung by the monks in the temple every seven days.  I was secretly glad that Jay and my cousin would have left by then. Their nostrils were not used to the smell of the burning incense.  They sneezed crazily after staying in the room for a while.

The echoes of their sneezes were immediately swallowed by this city.  The city of the grandfather.  The city of the eldest.  The city of the son.  The city of the family.”

Susan Hampton is a Canberra-based poet. With Kate Llewellyn, Hampton edited a major anthology, The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets (1986), and followed this with two publications of her own work: a sonnet sequence, White Dog Sonnets: A Novel (1987), and a second collection of poetry and prose, Surly Girls (1989). She has published three further poetry collections, A Latin Primer (1998), The Kindly Ones (2005) – winner of the ACT Judith Wright award, and News of the Insect World: And Other Poems (2009).

Lesbo Riff                   

I think it was a beach show, maybe Gidget. It was when next door first got TV, and all the kids in the street were invited, maybe about fifteen of us. Anyway in the show these two girls are good friends and they go the the beach and put out their towels and get set up and have a lot of fun and then some boys turn up, complete dickheads I thought, kicking sand and showing off and next thing you know Gidget is kissing one of the boys. (pause) It seemed natural to me she’d kiss the girl – they’d been kind of flirting – so I said, Oh what? and all the kids turned around and looked at me and said, What?

Andrea Lemon had the best name of any lesbo I met. Lots of lesbians are called Lesley; Mase and Lesley Lynch to mention two.

She walked by me in the parade at Mardigras and my lesbometer erupted.

Maybe I want to look cheap.

I kept looking at the word lesion, it was so close. For a year we were Lebanese. No one likes the word lesbian. I’ve never met a single person female or male who likes the word.

It was the 1990s when we – that gay ‘we’ – pored over film history for evidence that we’d been there all along. There they were. Rock Hudson and Doris Day, whose real name was Doris Kappelhoff.

I knew a girl called Monique Blackadder whose sister was also gay and then her mother turned gay. The Blackadder women, I remember seeing them together on the street in Glebe one day.

This woman I knew put in to the Visual Arts Board for a grant to make a movie and have a scene set inside the vagina.

Could it speak?

No it was this beautiful cave with red velvet linings and ottomans and rugs and secret cupboards and an excellent bar.

And what was the scene?

The idea was there’s a host sitting in the room, or who appears in the room, a woman in her underwear, who invites members of the audience to come up and strip down to their underwear and talk to her. She asked them questions like, How do you feel about your vagina? and What was the best time your vagina ever had? Where were you? Were you alone? If your vagina wanted to speak what would it say? What objects have you put in your vagina? What would be a good idea for a vagina’s day out? Where would she go? Does your vagina have a mind?

Mum read somewhere ten percent of the population is gay. I don’t know how they work that out. Do they count family men who go to male sex workers, or go to beats and then go home to the wife and kids? There are plenty of men like that. They are basically family men and don’t identify as gay, yet they fuck men more than women. Or just as often.

Ten percent you say? All right, now this is a plane of four hundred people.

She half stood in her seat, turning around and said, All right where are the others?

The stewards, I said. Are all gay.

‘They think we are present by some sort of mistake or accident, and that thanks to their guidance and advice this mistake can be put right. . .’ Cocteau

Can you explain the circle kiss to Shannon?

All right. Shannon, we’re going out under the big tree at the back, there’ll be about fifteen of us when the others arrive, and sit in a circle and someone offers to start, and they kiss the girl next to them. They make the kiss as long or short as they want, but it must involve tongues. Girl B then turns to Girl C and kisses her, and so on, till the circle is complete.

Meanwhile the rest of the circle is watching?

Right, right. It can get interesting and very funny too. You should join us.

I don’t know any of these women.

That’s good. It’s actually harder if you know them, if they’re friends, I find.

But you do it anyway.

We sure do.

It was the winter of 1990 and they blew the lights out and sat around on rugs near the fire telling scar stories. Showing their scars in the firelight. Three of the stories involved hitch-hiking, and several happened in other countries. Most though were from childhood.

I don’t like to be competitive, Lara said, but – and pulled up her trouser leg. The mark of Ducati, she said.

To be born gay is to be born under the sign of chaos. There’s a significant problem of knowing who is telling you lies. All at once, through nobody’s fault in some cases, you are being lied to – in that people who love you assume you are something you’re not. It’s hard being raised by heterosexual parents.

She shoves the money in her boot, got money everywhere but in a wallet, it’s in her hat, her sunglasses case, under the car seat, falling from her pockets. It’s a permanent floating economy. The reason she likes men’s coats is because of the inside breast pocket. She folds notes into neat squares and puts them in there. She is also the kind of person who writes on money. Shopping lists and tips for the TAB. Arctic Angel in the fourth at Doncaster.

What did she study?

She went to TAFE and learnt how to handle a chainsaw. Clean it, sharpen it, use it safely. When not to use it. Steelcap workboots. Kept the chainsaw under the bed. She had an allotment in the state forest and went in for firewood. Fifty bucks a ton. Mandy worked with her for a while, throwing the cut wood into the ute.

When I was at college I found this ten dollar note with a mobile number on it. I was walking along the street with two of my girlfriends and they said, Ring the number! Ring it! So I rang the number and a guy answered and we asked him his name and what he was doing – we took turns talking to him, he was OK for a while but then started wanting to know where we were and wanting us to send photos, so we hung up. What can you do. It killed off a beautiful anonymous friendship.

Who cares about whether they have their legs waxed?

She getting power-steering fitted to the Falcon.

I mean if she can’t even get it together as a friend, just because she fancies me, well too bad. She loses on the friendship.

So why did you become a lesbo, Chris?

 On my birthday my father hit me over the head with a pair of ballet shoes.

We got to Burning Palms and at the café Sal raised her eyebrows at me twice quickly then turned to a table where two goodlooking local girls were sitting and said to them, May I sit with you?

Cath came in and gorged on a shank of lamb for lunch and when Janice said, ‘Nice hat’, Cath said, ‘Afghani national costume.’ She (Cath) is in love with four women. One lives with an orangutan, two live in Bendigo and are actually on together, so what hope has she got there, and one is a Fast Forward TV star, Magda. And, ditto.

Oh, Magda.

Then years later Magda came out as gay. Cath was onto it!

What does she drive?

Well she used to drive a Corona when she was with Cindy, but now it’s a 1978 HZ Statesman DeVille with mags and pump shocks. Airbrakes for towing.

She’s become a bogan?

She loves it.

I thought she was studying Italian.

She loves university too. She’s doing a thesis on body markings. She’d be interested if you have any tatts or scars.

I don’t have tattoes. Or scars.

Unusual

Thankyou.

Vixen on the Nile

The first image of Vixen. She is a small girl, in a white dress, wearing sunglasses. She’s walking along between her mother and a younger sister. They are holding her hands. There is another sister on the other side of the mother, pushing the stroller. The baby makes no noise. None of them make noise. They all walk along quietly. It’s hot, a hot day in the country town. The girl wearing the sunglasses seems to float between the others, her tread is not as purposeful as theirs. She seems slightly removed, it’s not just the sunglasses, it’s the way she walks.  

The second image of Vixen. Now she’s twenty, already married, walks along beside her husband Tony. At this point in the story her name is still Vicky. She walks along in the same quiet way beside Tony. He doesn’t mean to harm her, but he doesn’t like women who fret about stuff and remain busy. This is why, all through his childhood, he had watched the girl in sunglasses holding her mother’s hand, even when she was quite big, watched her walking, and why he later married her. Close up though, she fretted – and he found it hard not to hit her.

Third image. Here’s a photo of Vixen now. She’s been vixen for ten years. Her hair’s bleached and short. The six ear rings in her right ear are the narrative of her life. She found her name in a footnote in Robert Graves’ ‘The White Goddess’, Vixen the Dog Goddess, Vixen Queen of Sparta. She’s a lesbian. She eats breakfast at the Angel before work every day, lives in Melbourne now. She’s working in a council gang – they’re building a playground. She’s the forewoman. They decide where to put the trees. At night she goes home to her caravan in Anna’s backyard. She’s not unhappy. In this photo you can see she still wears sunglasses.

There was a fourth photo in the packet with these but it’s lost. Vixen on the Nile, before she went to do her trade course. Hitch hiked around Egypt and Morocco. It helped that she looked like a boy, and sometimes she travelled with other boys, young men, westerners like herself. Then in the town wrapped herself up, became anonymous, went to the souk. She learnt some Arabic but never said any to us. Someone had taken a picture of her on the boat.

Manisha Anjali is a folk story writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She has also lived in Fiji and New Zealand. Manisha won the People’s Choice Award for her short story Goldie the Turtle in the NZ Writer’s College Short Story Competition in 2012. She was awarded a Hot Desk Fellowship by The Wheeler Centre in 2013. She is currently working on her debut novel, Peanuts.

Fever Dreams

Aji has put me in a small cupboard. I am to lie here in the darkness with the hots and colds until it all goes away. My eyes are sticky. They have glue coming out of them. It hurts to keep them open. But I am afraid to close them completely in case they glue themselves shut forever. Then Aji would have to cut my eyes open with a knife. I have big red spots from my chinny-chin-chin down to my ankles. They itch like a bastard but I am not allowed to touch. Aji will smack me if she sees me scratching. The hots and colds keep me awake and put me to sleep. I am somewhere in between real life and a scary dream. I can hear my brothers and sisters playing hide-and-seek outside among the trees; and my pussycat is scratching on the cupboard door because she is worried about me.

My oldest brother T-Rex had the spots first. He spent ten days in the cupboard. Then my sisters, Marigold and Uma, had the spots at the same time and they did their time in the cupboard together. Then it was Rita, then Dari, then our smallest brother who we named Rambo.  I am the last to get it. Aji is our grandmother. She has had the spots three times. She has spent many times in cupboards and dark rooms. It is the only way to get rid of the hot spots, she says. No sun, no fun.

In the cupboard I meet Amitabh Bachan, a hero from Aji’s dreams. He wears a white suit and holds a shotgun. He has shiny hair and shiny teeth. But as he laughs, all his teeth fell out one by one, turning into little drops of blood as they hit the floor. In the shadows I hear the howls of my pussycat. She is trying to tell me something, but I cannot understand her. Amitabh’s laughter shakes my eardrums and my head throbs as more glue fills my eyes and my spots are aflame.

I have had enough. I cannot lie here anymore and let this famous man bleed all over me. So I try to get out of bed. I begin walking sideways like a sea crab. I walk up the walls and onto the ceiling. I look down at myself writhing like a shrub in my bed. I am sad. I miss the sun. What a small, smelly cupboard. What a bitch my Aji is.

Then I sink into the floor. The splinters in the wood hurt my body. I feel like I have broken through a sun mirror and the mirror has scarred my skin and bones. I can hear the bell on T-Rex’s new bicycle, Marigold and Uma laughing under the mango trees and the cries of my poor pussycat outside my cupboard door. When I awake I am not in a mirror anymore. I am wet all over and my hair is all over my face. I must look like the devil. I feel like I have just been to hell.

I feel cold on my face. It is Aji. She holds a wet sponge to my forehead.

‘One day when your children get the measles, you will hide them from the sun too,’ she says, then coughs into her shoulder. ‘You might hate me for this now boy, but one day you will understand.’ She hums an old tune and puts the sponge on my heart. Then she holds my eyelids open with her old fingers and squirts some cold medicine.

‘The sun has gone down,’ she says. ‘You must come join us for dinner.’ She picks me up and carries me into the living room. All my brothers and sisters are sitting cross-legged on the floor with plates of rice, dahl and butter. They eat with their fingers.

‘Your pussycat just gave birth to five little kittens. You want to see?’ Aji asks. I nod. I really do want to see. Aji points to the living room corner. My pussycat is lying on her side with her four new babies. The kittens are sticky and wet.  They have glue coming out of their eyes too. Their teeth are soft and they fit perfectly in my pockets. My pussycat licks her sleeping babies. They smile.

Khanh Ha was born in Hue in Vietnam. His debut novel is FLESH (June 2012, Black Heron Press). He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism.  He is at work on a new novel. His short stories have appeared in Outside in Literary & Travel Magazine, Red Savina Review (RSR), Cigale Literary Magazine, Mobius, DUCTS, and forthcoming in the summer issues of Glint Literary Journal, Lunch Ticket, Zymbol, Taj Mahal Review, The Underground Voices (2013 December Anthology), and The Long Story (2014 March Anthology).

Have mercy on the younger generation.

Yes, Mamma. I remember those words you said in a letter. One hot afternoon here in the IV Corps in the Mekong Delta, I stood watching the Viet Cong prisoners sitting in rows under the sun and none in the shade. Sitting on their haunches, blindfolded with a swathe of cloth over their eyes. Their shirts were torn, their black shorts soiled, their legs skinny. Most of them looked no older than seventeen, like those faces in junior high schools back home.

We have boys in our company too. Mamma, have you  ever had a good  look at the faces in a crowd? These  young-old faces that I’m looking at every day, I know them but I don’t. Some like me from the OCS, and those from ROTC, The Citadel. Sons of dirt farmers. Fathers of just born babies. Many of them will be in somebody’s home  under a Christmas tree, gift-wrapped in a war photography book.

Today I saw the new boys. They were lining up to get their shots along the corrugated metal sides of the barracks. They stood shirtless, the sun beating down on them, the khaki-yellow dust blowing like a mist when a chopper landed, and enshrouded in the yellow-brown dust the boys looked like a horde of specters.

He was one of them. His name is Coy. A week later I made him our slackman. He was seventeen. How he got here I don’t know. Maybe his Ma and Pa signed the papers so he could come here and die. Today is his third day in country. Now he left the line with two other boys, each pressing down a cotton ball on their upper-arms, walking together like brothers, one much shorter than the other two, past the Bravo Company tents, past the water tower where the local Viet girls every morning would crowd together on the old pallet, washing the troops’ clothes in big round pails, walking past the wooden pallet now dry and empty of buckets, going around the cement trucks, the water-purification trucks, crossing the airstrip and stopping at a row of three connex containers painted in buff color. Dust blew yellow specks on the grass and on a pile of boots that leaned against one another.

“What’s your size?” Coy asked Eddy, the shorter boy, who was already crouched in the grass.

“Ten.”

“Mine is twelve,” Marco, the other boy, said.

“I wear your size,” Coy said to Marco.

“Fucked-up size,” Eddy said, hand on a boot with a name tag. “They gave me size twelve. What the hell. What’s this size?” Eddy lined the boot alongside his foot. It was the same length. “Fucked-up size,” he said, spitting in the grass.

“How d’walk in them?” Coy said.

“You got twelve?” Eddy squinted up.

“Yeah.”

“How d’you walk in them?” Eddy said, snickering. “Hundred-dollar question, man. You stuff rags in the toe vamp. What choice d’you have? If I don’t get me a size-ten boot soon, I’m gonna end up with a fucked-up foot on one side and a crooked foot on the other.”

“These are dead men’s boots,” Marco said, bending to look at the name tags.

“Size ten,” Eddy mumbled, his hand hovering over the ownerless boots. “Give me. Give me.”

“’Cause you’re short, Eddy,” Coy said. “Five five?”

“Exacto,” Eddy said.

“He wears boys size,” Marco said then grinned. “Down to his boxer.”

“Size ten,” Coy said, shaking his head. They don’t make them, Eddy.”

“I don’t ever want to wear a dead man’s boots,” Marco said.

“I do, boy,” Eddy said, “I wear s-i-z-e t-e-n. How can you walk in the jungle in size twelve with your foot slipping and sliding in it? If I don’t get me a size-ten boot soon . . .”

“Dead man’s boots,” Marco said.

“Maybe they have a whole ship load here tomorrow,” Coy said. “You’ll never know.”

“More dead man’s boots,” Marco said.

Eddy was holding up a pair of boots. They looked like boots on display, neatly laced. Eddy weighed them in his hands. “Wonder why they got no tag on them,” he said.

“Maybe they’re still looking for whatever’s left of whoever,” Coy said, looking down at Eddy. Jesus Christ! He heard Marco’s voice, who had gone around the connex containers.

Coy then Eddy went behind the containers. There was a mound of body bags in the grass. The grass had yellowed in the heat and the bags were pale green, their nylon zippers white running straight down the middle. One bag had burst open and the remains, red and pulpy, spilled onto the grass. Bones, mushy flesh stuck with torn, bloodstained green cloths, intestines discolored and twisted of a maimed torso.

Marco turned away, slumping. They could hear him retch. Coy crossed himself quickly.

“It stinks,” Eddy said, swatting at a fly.

Coy held his breath. Marco sniffled, spat, but he wouldn’t turn around as he knelt on the ground.

“They musta dumped them way up from the chopper,” Eddy said.

“Bastards,” Marco said.

* * *

That boy Coy, Mamma, had a full scholarship to Duke University. He had big brown eyes. He still had pimples on his face. The way he smiled and looked at you, you’d never think he had ever left his boyhood behind. I asked him, “Can you navigate in the jungle?” He said, “Yes, Lieutenant.” I said, “What made you say that?” He said, “I’ve never got lost anywhere I go in my life, sir.” I said, “Well, you’ll be our slackman when we go out next time. You’re Ditch’s replacement.” He said, “Where’s he now?” I said,  “Gone.” He said nothing, just blinked. Those big brown eyes. I said, “Your other duty is carrying the litter when we’re shorthanded. You think you can handle it?” He said, too eagerly, “Yes, sir, it’s an honor. I will never let anyone down when they count on me. Being a navigator is a heavy responsibility.”

Mamma, on that sultry afternoon he was fifteen feet behind our point man, breaking a trail. I heard a round coming over us. That unmistakably long and thin mosquito-whine sound before it shattered. We all threw ourselves onto the dirt. It went off and I saw Coy’s back red with blood, for he didn’t hit the ground, and then I heard a crack of the rifle. It struck Eddy, who was carrying a machine gun to the left of our point man, and now Coy screamed as he ran to Eddy and I don’t know, Mamma, if he screamed because he was hit or what he saw from Eddy. Then there was a steady sound of machine guns. We were pinned down, flattened to the ground, the dirt in our noses, our mouths, until we could see the muzzle blasts of the guns hidden under nets of leaves, the white flashes in the over-foliaged jungle. We returned fire, machine-gunning them as we crawled for cover in the whopping sound, round after round, of our grenade launchers.