The Gulf

by Anna Spargo-Ryan

  I cooked for him and made a plate for Mum as well, left it by the bedroom door and knocked on it. She came out later, sat on the couch opposite and we watched the news together, sort of, her barking at the many-faced politicians and me watching the weather in case I needed an umbrella. Down the hallway, Jason shouted into his phone. He went outside a couple of times, slammed the door so hard the walls shook. Mum changed the channel and we watched a couple with drawn-on faces renovate a house they had bought after his parents died.

  I thought about my parents dying. Not for very long, just while the ad break was on. In the kitchen, Ben’s pens scraped against the lino table.

  ‘Go to bed!’ Mum shouted. ‘It’s half-past bloody nine.’

  Our bedroom door closed. I could tell it was that door because it stuck at the last second, like it was resisting. You had to force that door.

  On Wednesday I did it all again. Only this time, Raf wasn’t on the bus. I rode it a couple of times, in a loop, all the way to Jason’s house and then back to the u-turn, around again. We went past his house, all lit up, me and the bus driver on our way to somewhere worse. And I kept doing it on Thursday and Friday, no Raf on the bus, just me and the supermarket and the plan in my pocket that still just said EARN MORE MONEY. I got off at his place and left a note in his letterbox – Miss you – then took it out again. Wrote on the specials board, fetched bits of chewed-up food from under the shelves in the lolly aisle, broke up fights between the old people and the deli manager. Stood across from Jeannie and watched her hair change from one day to the next, sometimes pinned across her eyes and sometimes loose around her ears. Sometimes the skin underneath it was pink and sometimes yellow. She wore big gold earrings and small glass earrings and the people came through her checkout and didn’t listen to her questions.

  I had a regular, by Friday. A man trapped inside clothes far too big for him, face all bunched into clumps of dirt. One of his hands was bent into a claw and he used it to hold money, coins that smelled like he’d been keeping them in his undies. He bought the same thing every day: a can of homebrand cola and two twiggy sticks in butcher’s paper. He never took a bag, just shoved it all in the pockets of his oversized hoodie and went out the back way, where the path went out to the jetty.

  Jeannie told me to watch out for him. She said he was her regular, once, but didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Is he . . . homeless?’ I said. I’d thought a homeless person would ask for a dollar but he’d never asked me for a dollar.

  ‘Probably,’ Jeannie said.

  In my lunchbreak I went out through the freezer and sat on the milk crates by the door. The jetty was empty except for some old buckets rattling around, and my regular sitting on the end with his hood up, legs dangling over the edge. Next to him was a dog the size of a rat. Its legs shook, knees knocked together. He broke off bits of his twiggy stick and the little dog did tricks for them. Rolled over, played dead, shook hands. My regular’s laugh busted out dry and hoarse. He rolled a cigarette, cupped his hand around it while he tried to light it. The wind was strong. He put the white stick in his pocket and rubbed the little dog’s head.

  I had a bit of bread and some ham so I ate them together and pretended it was a sandwich. Thought of the money I’d have in the bank on Monday. Five hundred dollars. No one I knew had ever had five hundred dollars. I wondered if Raf would wait for me on the bus again. I only needed a few more weeks without questions and then we’d have enough to do whatever the next part of the plan was. I had the weekend to think about it and then on Monday I could take the five hundred dollars and get it started.

  My pay went in on Monday morning. I checked it at the ATM outside the supermarket, saw all those numbers staring back at me. The first thing I did was go to the cigarette counter and buy a pre-paid phone. A cheap one. Chose one with a phone number I thought Ben would remember, with lots of zeroes in it. Daryl ran the counter, of course. He only trusted himself with all the important stuff like lighters and razor blades and newspapers.

  ‘Gonna call your boyfriend, huh?’ he said, mouth right up near my ear.

  ‘My mum,’ I said.

  I charged it on the power point in the meat freezer until lunchtime, then took it out and activated it. The box had a pair of earphones in it. I shoved them in and listened to my heart beating back at me.

  ‘Whatcha got there?’ Jeannie said.

  ‘A phone,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had a phone.’

  She had her hair curled at the ends, and it flicked underneath her chin like it was holding her head up. ‘You’re a proper grown-up now, huh? A proper grown-up who doesn’t have to go to school, right?’ She smiled a bit, teeth ringed brown around their edges. I started to tell her why she was wrong, but the old lady with one leg came through Jeannie’s checkout and she turned away from me. I sent a text to Raf so he’d have my number and he texted right back: welcome to the 21st century, Sky! I tapped Kirrily’s number in. Sent her a text with my name at the end. Put it on silent so I could imagine her replying.

  My regular came through with his paper-wrapped sticks.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said.

  ‘Morning.’ His voice was all tied up inside his throat. I scanned his cola and it came up on sale, fifty cents off. ‘Wait a minute.’ He left his stuff right there on the belt but there was no one else in the store, so I waited. Pulled open the drawer – no message from Kirrily. I thought about asking her if we could stay. Just for a couple of days before we went up to Nonno’s. Maybe her brother could drive us there, if his house was a long way from the bus stop. I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t even remember how old I’d been when I was last there. Eight?

  ‘Thanks.’ The belt started moving again. An extra twiggy stick.

  ‘What’s your dog’s name?’ I said.

  He looked at me, but like he didn’t know how to look at people, eyes going from side to side. After a few seconds he said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Just curious.’ I took his handful of coins. ‘She’ll probably be pretty excited about the extra twiggy stick, right?’ Jeannie was watching me then, spun around on her stool. Daryl, too, sweaty behind the cigarette counter with his priceless razor blades.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She loves them.’

  ‘You know you can tie her up by the door. She doesn’t have to wait way over the other side of the car park.’

  He snatched his receipt from me. ‘I know.’ And then he was gone, clipping his hand on the automatic doors on his way out. Jeannie turned her stool again. She had a magazine open to a crossword but none of the answers were filled in. Sometimes she twisted her hair into a bun and stuck the pen through to hold it there. I’d have to ask her to teach me how.

  A customer came through and she ran her spiel. ‘Mr Greenslade, so nice to see you. New shirt? Get in to Port Pirie much? Got the big Target there. Heard they had a sale on. Ha ha, yeah, I guess they always have a sale on! Five bucks for a shirt? You’re joking. Well, have a nice morning. Ooh, not sure I’ll make it to church this week. I know. Okay, bye.’ The old man pulled his little cart along, paused for a second to watch the doors open and close, like it was magic.

  At ten o’clock, Ellie arrived and Jeannie took her first break of the day. She told me to come with her, that Daryl was on a work call and wouldn’t see me, so I slipped out through the meat freezer and sat next to her while she chain-smoked. At the end of the jetty, my regular sat with his little dog and the boats went past.

  ‘Gotta watch out for Simmo, Skye. All the ones like that.’ Jeannie pushed one still-lit cigarette into the next. ‘Show them a little kindness and they’ll be all over you. Waiting for you at the bus stop. Finding out where you live.’ She breathed, a tobacco dragon.

  ‘Simmo?’

  ‘Your new fan.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he bother?’

  Her laugh came out in one gasp. ‘Pretty young thing like you catches his eye. He’s lonely, you’re locking up by yourself one night. Just saying, it’s not u
nheard of.’ The paper crackled as she inhaled. ‘He’s been coming here a long time. Never seen him make a beeline for a new girl the way he did you.’

  I watched him tear off bits of twiggy stick, watched the dog stand up on its back legs to take them. Not aggressive. Not like Murray, who’d take off your whole hand, but gently, one paw bringing the food closer to her mouth. When the food was gone, he put his arm around the dog and pulled her closer to his body. The wind was cold. Her legs banged together like trees in a storm.

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ I said, but Jeannie had gone back inside.

  Daryl cornered me in the meat freezer. ‘Better not take up that filthy habit,’ he said.

  ‘None of your business if I do.’ I tried to squeeze past him.

  ‘Don’t go thinking I’ll sell them to you. You’re sixteen. Disgusting. It’ll make your skin like an old handbag and then who’ll want you?’ His breathing was laboured. He could have been eighteen or forty; it was impossible to tell from looking at him, with his skin pulled so tight around his face.

  ‘Is there something you need?’ I said finally.

  He took a hanky from his pocket and blew his nose into it. ‘Yeah. Someone here to see you.’

  ‘Someone, who?’ My heart beat faster. The school principal. The police! Could they arrest you for not going to school? No, I was on work experience. Everyone was. They wouldn’t be asking about me yet.

  ‘Little kid. Says he needs to speak with you.’ He pushed beside me, let his body brush up against mine for a second too long.

  Ben had his school hat on inside, but it was easy to see his face anyway. Blotchy. Puffy. He’d dropped down in front of the cigarette counter and had his knees pulled up to his chin. On the floor next to him, his school bag, covered in paint and something that looked like yoghurt.

  ‘Ben?’ He looked up, took a huge breath in, let it all out again in a shudder. ‘What’s going on?’ I kneeled next to him, put my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I rang . . . your school . . . from my school.’ He was half-sobbing, trying to get his words out around the air going in. ‘They said you weren’t there. Went there. Went to all the classrooms but everyone said it. No Skye. Haven’t seen her.’

  ‘But I told you I’d be here this week,’ I said. ‘Work experience. Remember?’ My ears burned like I was in trouble, like I’d been found out. There was paint on his shoes as well. Laces all frayed at the ends.

  ‘I was too worried to remember so I went to the front desk again.’ He let go of the sigh in his throat. ‘The lady there said about work experience and after that I remembered.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ I said.

  ‘Walked.’ His head fell back to his knees. ‘Walked down the train line, like you showed me.’ My heart stopped and then kicked back in.

  ‘Were you safe?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You were right. You can hear it coming.’

  I went to Jeannie’s checkout. ‘That’s my brother. Can you cover for me while I take him outside for a minute? Tell Daryl I’ve gone to the toilet?’

  She tapped her nose. ‘Women’s issues,’ she said.

  We walked across the car park, found a spot under the public toilet roof that was out of the wind.

  ‘What did you need me for?’ I said.

  He took a couple of deep breaths. Found himself again. ‘Some kids at school said some bad stuff about Mum,’ he said. ‘They said she might go to jail.’

  I frowned. ‘Why would they say that? She’s not going to jail.’

  ‘They said everyone knows she’s doing something bad with Jason.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Some grade sixes. One of them said his brother goes to your school and someone told him about a party where some bad stuff was happening and they said it’s because of Jason. Why would there be credit card stealing at a party?’

  ‘Skimming,’ I said. Yardy’s party. ‘There wouldn’t.’

  He wiped his nose on my sleeve. ‘They wrecked all my things. They made me feel like I’m a criminal even though I’m only ten and ten-year-olds can’t be criminals. Look at this stuff on my bag. I think it’s yoghurt.’ He put his head down to sniff it. ‘Gross.’

  ‘They’re wrong. Mum’s not going to jail.’ I tried to bundle him up in my arms. ‘Kids say all kinds of stupid shit.’

  ‘Well, anyway’ – he pulled the little notebook and the flamingo pen from the bag’s front pocket – ‘then I wanted to talk to you about the plan, but urgently, not after school. Not our plan, but a plan to find out what’s going on. Like, whether any of this stuff is true. So that’s when I called you and then all that other stuff I said, and now I’m here.’ He opened the notebook to a new page. I took a deep breath. Kids were supposed to learn this stuff from their parents; about sometimes doing the wrong thing because you wanted to get it right in the long run.

  I put my hands on the open pages. ‘You know how we’ve got this plan? To get out of here so we can be safe? It costs money.’

  ‘You think I’m a baby,’ he said.

  ‘No I don’t. It’s just, I know what I’m doing. And I’m going to keep working here, even after work experience is over, and you can’t tell anyone. Okay?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this way, we can have the money we need in six weeks instead of six months.’

  He frowned, kicked the ground with the heel of his shoe. ‘Six weeks? That’s forever. That’s six times as long as butterflies live. Their whole lives.’

  I grabbed his knee to stop the kicking. ‘We just have to keep our heads down, okay? Stay out of Jason’s way. If we go now, we won’t have enough money and then what’ll we do? Sleep in boxes? In the park? Do you think Mum wants to sleep in the park?’

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘But doesn’t your school mind?’

  I imagined Miss Fan calling my name from the roll book next week, never really sure exactly who I was. ‘I think they’ll be okay with it. Now’ – I sat next to him with my knees up to my face, like his – ‘I have to go back to work, but let’s talk about this tonight, okay? I’ll bring home some of those chicken wings you like.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You don’t have to go back to school today, if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Nah, I will. We’re doing a science experiment and I’m going to show them this trick Yiannis showed me where you mix two chemicals together and put some soap in and they explode.’ His eyes came alive at explode.

  ‘Sounds dangerous.’

  ‘Yeah, some kids in America set themselves on fire doing it.’ Then he was off, bag bouncing him along the street.

  I put the chicken wings in the oven and we sat at the table with our notebook out.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Pilates. But Jason went too so I don’t know if they’re really at Pilates.’ He turned to a new page. ‘We need to figure out what Jason is doing,’ he said. ‘Not parrot exporting.’ He gasped. ‘Unless – maybe that’s where Raf’s parrot has gone? Exported?’

  ‘It’s not parrot exporting.’

  ‘So is it credit card stealing? How many people do you reckon can get robbed like that before the criminals have to move on?’

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘Maybe it’s not that then. But we have to keep Mum safe’ – he nodded furiously while he talked – ‘so we need to find out what he’s doing and then we can tell someone.’

  The oven beeped. Ben’s hands were quickly covered in honey and soy sauce. He talked around the bones: ‘The bedroom with his stuff in it is always locked. Jason always locks it. I don’t think Mum even has a key.’

  ‘Right.’ I tried it every day, gave it a shake. Felt relieved when it didn’t budge.

  ‘So maybe if we could get Jason not to lock the door, we could see inside and look for clues? Or we could get a copy cut for ourselves. He must put his keys down sometimes.’ He chewed thoughtfully. ‘Maybe if Murray distracted him.’

  We looked out to the yard, Murray standing
in the mud with his nose pointing right at us.

  ‘Did you know that cooked chicken bones can kill dogs?’ Ben said. ‘They get splinters of bone in their stomachs and die.’ The dog did one slow circle of the clothesline. ‘I just thought it was interesting.’

  I closed the notebook.

  ‘Something exciting for your specials board today.’ Daryl had the texta in my hand before I was even in the door. ‘Got a celebrity chef coming. One of those guys from the TV, you know the ones. Wear the fancy scarves, get close-ups of them sampling the food? They’re doing a special on the food around the Gulf.’ He puffed out his chest, like he’d invented food and the Gulf and they were coming just to see him. ‘Gotta let all the oldies know he’s coming. They’re the ones who’ll watch some arsehole use a frypan in a supermarket in the middle of the day.’

  I wrote a few words about it. Drew a man in a chef’s hat and with a big knife in his hand, turned his eyebrows down so he looked like a murderer. Wrote GEOFF GARLAND underneath in bubble letters. He was bringing his team of chef bodyguards so none of the old ladies would kidnap him.

  ‘Nice one,’ Daryl said, standing close behind me. ‘Good use of bubble letters.’ He pointed to the board. ‘He’s coming on Friday. Write that. Eleven am on Friday.’ I wrote it. ‘Need to make sure they know when to come. Got an order of organic stuff coming from Clare and if I don’t sell it to them, it’ll just rot on the shelves.’ He wandered off, picking his pants from his arse crack.

  My phone vibrated. Raf: Hey SKY what’s UP! haha miss you hope no one pissed in any aisles today. I thought about his warm skin, the way his hand felt when he slipped it into mine. He seemed far away. Not in the plan. EARN MORE MONEY. Not BRING RAF. I tried to imagine him leaving Claud behind, walking away from her while she watched from their glowing front door, but couldn’t. He would be angry when we left. Probably wouldn’t want to visit.

  I texted back: No peeing in the aisles thank god.

  My fingers were slow and stupid on the touch screen. I didn’t know what he’d want to know, whether I was just drama to him. I shoved the phone in my pocket.