6
ONE SUMMER, NONNO bought an outdoor setting and put it on his back verandah and I ran in circles on the grass while Dad barbecued chicken wings. The smell was amazing. After a few minutes his neighbours from down the road turned up, their singsong ‘Hello?’ at the side of the house and the rattle of their bottles.
‘Time to christen her!’ someone said, and there were kids running everywhere, blurry with their legs pounding the grass and their squealing bouncing out into the valley, and my dad had his arm around me and he was smiling.
It took all the guts I could muster to get on the bus for day two. Ben was still on the couch in his pyjamas – ‘School’s so close I don’t have to get dressed until five minutes before the bell!’ – and Mum’s door was closed. Mum and Jason’s door. Jason’s door, with Mum behind it.
There were a few other kids from school on the bus. Heads down, curled over their phones. I didn’t have a phone. Who knew anymore whether it was because Mum couldn’t afford it or because she just plain didn’t want me to have one? Even a bad one without a camera. Just so I could have something private. Searching for stuff on the internet on Jason’s computer made my skin fizz.
The bus stank. A kid next to me blew his nose into his arm. The driver shouted at the guys in the back seat. At the front of the bus an old lady started banging her walking stick on the floor and the sound bounced in my brain until all I could hear was the walking stick and I wasn’t sure why I was even on the bus. Finally, the driver shouted, ‘Mrs Nerington, stop it!’ and the bus was silent for a split second before the laughter.
We pushed through the school gate as one mass, popped out the other side. I stood by the office for a while, thought about asking them to call the mayor of Adelaide to tell him I would need a lift home; stood at the bottom of the stairs a while longer and thought about smashing my foot with a brick so I wouldn’t be able to walk up there.
Our homeroom teacher – Miss Fan, I had learned – gave me another copy of my timetable and sketched out a map of the rooms I would need. Raf had sat next to me again. He took one look at it and started laughing.
‘The only rooms you need to worry about are the science labs and the ones downstairs near the gym. That’s where we have everything else.’ He scribbled his own drawing over the top. ‘So many subjects to fail!’
‘I’ve never failed any subjects,’ I said.
‘Figures,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘No reason.’ When he smiled, his left cheek cracked into a deep dimple. ‘Other important things: at recess we go across the oval and get the good spot at the top of the pipe; Mr Tostini is the most hard-arse English marker in the whole school; everyone plays footy; never get the chicken rolls from the canteen, because they’re secretly made of camel meat.’
‘Um, gross.’
Raf laughed. ‘It tastes okay. Like, for an animal that’s mostly bones and can run faster than a car. Tough as shit. Better than turkey, not as good as crocodile.’
‘You can eat crocodile?’
‘If you can catch one.’ His breath was hot on my skin. I pulled away.
‘Don’t think I’ll try.’
‘Whatcha got first? Maths?’
‘Maths.’
‘Then we’re going the same way.’
He walked right next to me, down the stairs and out into the quadrangle. Everything had a thin layer of damp covering it, but the rain had broken and we walked to class in the sun.
‘Are you doing work experience?’ I said.
‘Yeah. My brother’s doing an apprenticeship at the mechanic so I’m just going to hang there with him. He can show me how to change some oil or something.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Good free child labour. Where are you doing yours?’
‘Dunno.’
He was quiet for a second. ‘Footy is my dream job, though,’ he said. ‘It’s not just guys playing here, either. There’s a girls’ team that goes on trips around the coast.’
‘Did you see me yesterday? I’m really more of a “read books in bed” kinda girl.’
‘You just need a bit of training. Maybe something one on one.’
God, how did his skin stay so warm all the time? He wasn’t even that close to me, but it burned my own. We got to Maths just in time, before I could say something ridiculous, or worse. I sat at the front, next to a girl I’d never seen before. Raf went to the back, someone passed him a footy over another guy’s head.
Nothing was much different about sitting in a classroom, trying to understand trigonometry. The numbers and letters were the same, and the dickheads in the back row were the same. Our teacher paired us off to do some kind of problem-solving exercise. The girl I’d sat next to was also from Adelaide. Her dad had come up to work on the mines two years ago. When I asked her if she missed it, she just shrugged.
‘I like it here. Hardly takes any time to get back to town anyway. We go there about once a month usually, so we can go to Myer and get a decent coffee.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘We get the train down most times.’
‘That’s cool.’
We tried to figure out the lengths of some lines with some angles next to them, but my lack of ability frustrated her and she said she’d do them herself. I stared out at the footy oval, the expanse of yellow grass. Felt a pang of homesickness for the cricket oval down the road. Even missed, for a second, the guys hitting balls around in their stupid white costumes. The air dripped thick and wet around the window frames and slipped across our desks. My hair stuck to my forehead. Fans on the ceiling just pushed it around from one of us to the next, until we were swimming in a pool of teenage guy stink.
When class ended I went out under the building and through the toilet block. I had History after recess, but I didn’t have the book and the woman at the front desk told me they were out of photocopier cards.
‘You can go into town and do it at the post office,’ she said. ‘Go early. Usually a pretty big queue there at lunchtime.’
‘How will that help me for the class I have in fifteen minutes?’
‘Not my problem.’
I thought about Raf spending recess at the ‘pipe’. I didn’t know what the ‘pipe’ was. A football thing? Something to do with skateboarding? Other kids cast long shadows across the grass but I didn’t follow them; found a spot under a gum tree instead and leaned my head against it. The bark was smooth and cool. Noises from the yard bounced in and around it, so my ear became a kind of conch shell in reverse. Hold your ear to the tree and listen to the sounds of dickheads shouting in the middle of nowhere.
I ate my chips. We got the individual packets, now that Mum was working with Jason. Not the brand name ones, but still.
In History I read over someone else’s shoulder. We learned about Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I, history so ancient I couldn’t relate it to my current world at all. Someone said: ‘Who fights over countries the size of Tasmania?’ Someone else said: ‘Why can’t white fellas be happy with the land they already got?’ A little cheer went up in the back row.
The History teacher, tiny inside his grey jacket, closed his textbook. ‘We’ll get to that later. We’re doing World War I right now.’
‘Sounds about right.’
The bell rang.
I glazed my way through the last three periods. Geography: places are close to other places. Science: things explode when near other things. Drama: some people like attention more than other people. By the time I walked through the gate, I had forgotten all of it.
‘You okay there, my cloudy friend?’ Raf had flakes of sausage roll around his mouth. ‘Finding your way around?’
‘It’s not the Louvre,’ I said.
‘The what?’ A football came flying at his head and he caught it without even looking. ‘Dickheads.’ He turned and kicked the ball back; someone shouted ‘Modra!’ and they fell in a pile on the grass. ‘I can help you, you know,’ he said. ‘If you
want.’
‘Why would you?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s hard to be new.’
‘Has someone asked you to look after me?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then why?’
He swung his bag over his shoulder. ‘I liked your ball-handling skills.’
‘Are you for real?’
He smiled, crushed me in his solitary dimple.
I thought about getting onto the other bus, heading south as far as it would take me, hitchhiking into Gawler and out the other side. Maybe there would be a boat there that could take me to Kangaroo Island or somewhere, and they would never find me.
For a moment, I felt relief.
Then I thought of Ben in his walking bus with all the other shitty kids, imagined him arriving to home to find me gone, just him in the rotten house with Mum and Jason and Murray, who couldn’t see him anyway.
I crossed the road. Sat on the ground with my knees to my chin. Someone at the other bus stop shouted: ‘We can see your undies!’ but I kept sitting. The wind was cool against my legs and more than that, I just didn’t care a single bit.
It rained all afternoon. Ben took his cars outside and made the mud into jumps, and Murray lunged at him a couple of times but the chain held firm. Jason’s dead lawn drank in the water and became a bog; Ben had already lost a shoe in there. The dog stood with his one busted paw in the air. Sometimes he put it down again, but it flicked up again almost as a reflex. As the storm washed through he lifted his nose and sniffed the air.
The water running outside the house made a sound like dragging a couch along the floor. The gutters were full of grass and weeds, little trees growing all along the roofline, and there was no room for water with all of that greenery so it just gushed right out. In one corner of the kitchen the water came in through a crack in the ceiling, and it sped so fast down the wall that you couldn’t even tell it was moving.
‘I wonder if Bilbo would like the rain,’ Ben said.
‘You’re doing a good job keeping that secret. Where is he?’
‘Can’t tell you. What if Mum tortures you and you have to tell her so she doesn’t cut off your ears?’ He looked at me, straight-faced.
‘I feel like those are pretty long odds.’
‘Maybe. She’s done some weird stuff.’
‘Fine, you don’t have to tell me. You should bring him out for some fresh air though. I’ll make sure Mum’s not looking.’
Mum was on Jason’s computer. ‘You cooking anything?’ I said.
‘Too much work to do, Skye. Can’t you do it?’
‘Did you get any groceries?’
‘Nope.’ She didn’t look at me, just clacked away on the stained keyboard.
‘Great. Well done.’
Murray’s bark broke through the typing, a serious guttural sound starting right in his guts and punching the air, punch-punch-punch. Ben’s laughter, a light squeal. I ran out to the yard, saw Ben walking Bilbo along the porch right in front of the dog’s nose. Murray threw his head around, yanking on the chain, hunting for the source of the smell.
‘I dipped him in the mud,’ Ben said. ‘Look, his feet are covered. He’s leaving a trail.’ He pointed at the prints on the concrete, laughed again.
‘He’ll eat him, you know. If he gets off that chain, Bilbo is dead meat.’
‘Don’t say it so loud.’ He grabbed a clump of dry grass and made a nest on the pavement. ‘Tortoises lay eggs in nests like this.’
‘So there was one like this at the park?’
He looked at me. ‘I wasn’t there. Yiannis didn’t tell me if there was a nest.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
Bilbo stepped into the nest, left his muddy prints in it, stepped out again. I got down on my knees to look at him face to face.
‘Hello, Bilbo.’
He had a short neck and a look of permanent frustration, and his legs had squat little knees in them, as though this tortoise would one day need to jump hurdles. I touched my finger to his skin; it was soft and rough all at once. Murray barked behind me, pulling again on his chain. The Hills hoist groaned under his determination.
‘Seriously though, you need to get him away from here, or go out the front with him or something.’
‘He’ll be okay. How is a dog like Murray going to bite through a tortoise shell?’
‘He looks pretty angry.’
‘He can’t get off his chain.’
I brought my homework out to the porch and sat in a chair that was more rust than metal. History: Write three hundred words about the catalyst for World War I. Maths: Find the size of all these angles no one gives a shit about. I threw out a few lines from Macbeth under my breath. We were doing something else in English at the new school. Thomas Keneally. Something about a blacksmith.
I scribbled a few lines about Franz Ferdinand, and Gavrilo Princip’s sandwich. Heard Jason’s computer chair bump across the floor.
‘Ben!’ I hissed. ‘Mum’s coming.’
He wiped Bilbo’s feet on the grass and shoved him inside his t-shirt. Mum appeared at the sliding door, holding a couple of glasses of juice.
‘What’re you two up to?’ She smiled, a bit of her regular self spilling out.
‘Homework,’ I said.
‘Ho– homework,’ Ben said.
‘Homework? In Year 3?’ Mum drank from one of the glasses, handed the other one to Ben.
‘I’m in Year 4,’ he said, and took the glass in one hand. The lump in his shirt moved.
‘Are you?’
He squeaked. His face flushed red. ‘Ben?’ I said. He made a fist, unfurled it and stretched out every finger, made a fist again. ‘You okay, mate?’ He squeaked again.
Mum blinked at me first, then at Ben. ‘No one has homework in Year 4. You guys are up to something.’
‘Yeah, that’s it. We’re the ones who’re up to something.’
‘Well, stop it.’ She grabbed Ben’s glass and the juice still in it sloshed over the side. The sliding door clunked into its latch behind her. Ben’s eyes had filled with tears.
‘What? What’s wrong?’
He shook out his t-shirt, frantic, and Bilbo clattered to the cement. Ben doubled over. Hyperventilated. Tips of his ears bright red. I grabbed the tortoise and sat him on the step. Finally, more fuchsia than ruby, Ben put his hand on my shoulder.
‘He bit me.’ A red circle seeped through his t-shirt. ‘In the nipple.’ Tears in his eyes. ‘Maybe I should feed him to Murray.’
Dinner was a few more dried-out sausages and bread. I poked at mine and the skin cracked open.
‘Are these even made from actual animals?’ I said. Mum had a vacant look about her. ‘Are these the ones that were in our fridge in Adelaide?’
‘Yep.’ She pushed her food around the plate. ‘Big day at work. Right, Jase?’
‘Right. Huge day.’
‘I thought you worked at night,’ I said.
‘Night, day. I work all the time.’
He’d grown a little moustache, like a bit of dead insect crawling across his lip. I stared at it. It moved as he ate.
‘Isn’t anyone going to ask how school was?’ Ben said.
‘How was school?’ I said.
He grabbed his bag from under the table and pulled out an exercise book. ‘Mrs Johansson told us about how she used to work for the School of the Air. That’s how kids learn when they live really far away from everything.’
‘Like here, you mean.’
‘No, like really far away. Did you know some kids live on camel stations? That’s a big farm where they breed camels.’
‘Why?’ Mum said.
‘I guess they eat them,’ he said.
‘They do eat them.’
Mum looked at me. ‘How do you know?’
I thought of Raf’s hand in mine. ‘I read about it.’
‘Anyway,’ Ben said, banging his fork on the table, ‘in the old days people from other countries came
and brought their camels with them so they could ride in the desert, and now there are heaps of feral camels just roaming around everywhere. So the camel farmers shoot them.’
‘Gross,’ Mum said.
‘Maybe then they make them into these terrible sausages, and people like us are forced to eat them,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘I mean, I guess they could be made into sausages. I think they can make them into pretty much anything. Steaks. Chops.’ He shoved half his bread in at once. ‘Mrs Johansson says the kids who live on stations have the best manners of any kids she knows.’
‘Is that right.’
No one asked me how my day was, so I didn’t tell them. Mum cleared her throat a couple of times, but no one asked her either.
After dinner I washed the dishes while she and Jason curled up on the couch together. He had his arms around her and his moustache moved up and down as they whispered. Mum’s body had collapsed into his. Every couple of minutes, her leg muscles spasmed. I put the dishes away and went to read in the room I shared with Ben.
When I came out two hours later, they were still there on the couch. Mum asleep. Jason counting five-dollar notes out onto the coffee table.
Ben and I got into a bit of a routine. Mum and Jason ignored us, and we fed ourselves and in the afternoons we walked across to the empty block and threw rocks at stuff that moved in the shadows.
One night before it got dark we went down to his school and he showed me where he’d cut his leg on the swings, and where he spent his lunchtime alone in the doorway of his classroom. He crouched down in there and crossed his legs. ‘I sit like this,’ he said. ‘I have to get up before the other kids get back because they step on me when they go back into the classroom.’
I sat next to him.
‘I don’t know why they don’t want to play with me but I guess that’s their decision.’ His skin and bones buzzed next to me.
‘You’ll make friends,’ I said. Hollow promise.
‘I tried showing them some of the things Yiannis taught me. I wanted to start with the one where you give Panadol to a bird and make it explode, but I thought that might freak them out so I just tied a balloon to a bee.’
The Gulf Page 6