Ghost Child

by Caroline Overington

  I said, ‘Yep.’

  He nodded and said, ‘Yeah, right. I thought so.’

  He dragged on his cigarette, saying nothing for a minute, then he said, ‘So, you know, like, what happened out there?’

  I said, ‘Where?’ and he said, ‘You know, in that house. People reckon there was blood all over the walls.’

  I hadn’t heard that before. I knew it wasn’t true, but I said, ‘I don’t really know.’

  He nodded, and stubbed out his cigarette.

  He shoved the gear stick into first and, with his other hand, used a lever to collapse my seat and lay me flat. He kissed me and soon he had my pants down around my ankles. His pants were around his ankles, too. I thought to myself, ‘So, it’s going to be one of those. He’s not even going to get undressed.’

  He had barely managed to get inside me when he came. He eased himself off and found his way back to his own bucket seat, where he sat with bare buttocks against the vinyl, the hair on his thighs thick and curly. My own nakedness, from the waist down, seemed ridiculous. I crouched over my abdomen, and searched for my jeans on the floor of the car. He popped the glove box, and took out a box of Wet Ones. He wiped over the head of his penis.

  ‘Want one?’ he said.

  ‘I’m good,’ I said.

  He zipped his pants. I zipped up my own. He put the car into reverse, and soon had us back on the road to the railway station. He parked where he’d picked me up.

  ‘You good to get home?’ he said.

  I said, ‘If it’s okay, I need a cigarette.’ I lit one before he could object. Oh, sure, I could sense that he was done with me, that he wanted me gone, but since I’d started to smoke he lit one of his own. We didn’t speak.

  Finally, he said, ‘You right to go?’ And I said, ‘No worries.’ He didn’t move. He was waiting for me to get out of the car. I said, ‘Well, thank you.’ Only now do I think, ‘For what? For not dumping me by the weir when you were done with me, maybe? For having sex with me and making me walk home afterwards, in the dark?’

  ‘No, thank you, mate,’ he said. ‘You’re a good root.’

  I walked home and went to bed, and the next day I used the red phone in the motel foyer to call the Department. I told them that my caseworker had gone missing the night before – it wasn’t entirely untrue, since it was the one who often went missing. A man had tried to break into my room, I said. Nothing frightened the Department more than the idea that one of the kids might get raped, not because of the trauma they might suffer but because the tabloid TV programs might find out about it, and in so doing find out that hundreds of kids were living practically unsupervised in caravan parks and in motels across the state of Victoria.

  They said, ‘Stay there and we’ll get somebody to you.’ When they did, I told them flatly, ‘I want to move.’ I knew they wouldn’t refuse me. I was too old for foster care, and although I was technically too young to be turned onto the streets, it was certainly time for me to transition to some kind of semi-independence. So they set me up in a group house, with other kids who were also almost off the books. All I had to do was prove that I could support myself, which wasn’t too difficult. I was still at school but I’d been earning a small income of my own for some time.

  I’d taken my first part-time job at fourteen, behind a counter at a lunch place, earning $4.25 an hour. I’d stayed there until I was sixteen, and then, when that place closed down, I got another job in a restaurant, waiting tables after school and at weekends. It was a pretty good job. The boss was Greek. I’d never met a Greek, except for the guy who sold pizzas in Barrett. This guy’s name was Alexander, but everybody on staff called him Pop. He seemed, to me, incredibly old, although looking back now I’d guess he was fifty.

  On my first day, he’d said, ‘I’m going to be watching you pretty closely,’ and then he’d taken a lock of my hair, twirled it round his finger, and said, ‘You better keep this up in a net, or something. We don’t want it in the food. I don’t want the Health Department here.’

  I twisted my hair into a bun and then a customer came in and took a seat by the window.

  Pop said, ‘There you go. Your first customer. What will you do now?’

  I said, ‘I’ll go see what that guy wants?’

  ‘It’s not that guy,’ he said. ‘It’s that gentleman or that customer. I don’t want anybody called guy here.’ And I thought, ‘Oh. So it’s not only the Childless that talk properly.’

  Pop gave me a vinyl menu and said, ‘Off you go.’ I gave it to the customer and told him I’d be back to take his order.’

  ‘Good,’ said Pop, when I came back. ‘Now you give him a minute to decide, and then you go back, and see what he needs.’

  I went back and said, ‘What do you want?’ but Pop, who’d been watching, raced over and said, ‘She’s new. She means, What can I get you?’

  The customer was amused.

  ‘Coffee, Miss New Girl,’ he said. ‘And eggs with toast.’

  I wrote it down on the pad I kept in the pocket in front of my apron, my hands shaking as Pop watched every move. Then he said, ‘You have to ask: How would you like your eggs? What kind of toast? Brown, white? Butter?’

  The customer must have been a regular. He said, ‘She’s all right, Pop. Give her time. She’s gorgeous. I’ll have fried eggs, white toast with butter, thank you miss.’

  It didn’t take long to get into the swing of things, and I must admit that I learnt a lot from Pop. He helped me with my manners: always say please, thank you, you’re welcome, may I, ma’am, sir, miss.

  We – us waitresses – wrote the orders on a whiteboard near the kitchen with a black texta that hung on a string. There was a code I had to learn: ‘H+C (T)’ was ‘ham and cheese, toasted’ (a T on its own, no bracket, meant tomato) and if you added a ‘B’ that meant ‘brown bread’ – which was, by the way, something I’d never seen, let alone eaten. We had WR, too, which meant ‘Welsh Rarebit’ – and that, too, seemed posh and exotic.

  I worked Friday nights after school and all day on Saturdays. Whenever it wasn’t busy I was allowed to sit at the staff table and have a coffee and a cigarette while I folded the paper napkins. After the lunch rush, I got thirty minutes to eat a sandwich. I used that time to smoke, too.

  When I told the Department that I wanted to move into Independent Living, they asked me whether I intended to make the restaurant job full-time. I didn’t. After about a year, Pop had taken to pushing me against the industrial fridge in the kitchen, and groping at my breasts. I’d had enough of it, and enough of restaurants. The problem was, I had no other skills and had no idea what I could do. Then one day, one of the customers, a girl who was a regular, told me about her job. She was a nurse in a city hospital, and she said they were crying out for aides.

  ‘You could do it,’ she told me. ‘You don’t even need your HSC.’

  I asked her what the job involved and she said, ‘It’s crap. You make beds, empty pans, and chuck out the flowers when people get discharged, but you get holidays and super, which you probably don’t get here.’

  It sounded all right. I told the Department I wanted to become a nurse’s aide and, to their credit, they were excited for me. They found out what I had to do – sit a test, basically – and after I’d passed, they arranged a three-month trial for me, at Melbourne’s Royal Hospital. Once I got settled, they moved me to Mernda, a group house with other foster kids who were moving toward Independent Living. Like most of the group houses, it had holes in the walls, the lights were fluorescent and coated in moths, and other kids brought in drugs and ghetto blasters. Nobody mowed the lawn. Nobody emptied the letterbox. Nobody let anybody else get any sleep, regardless of who was working shifts, but still, I was, at last, away from the gossip on the Barrett Estate.

  Then, too, for the first time, I was earning what seemed like decent money. I can still remember my first hospital pay. It came in a dark manila envelope, larger than a standard envelope, with stiff notes, never handled,
straight from the bank. There was a piece of paper inside. Across the top, it said, ‘North West Health Service’ and underneath, in smaller letters, ‘Name: Lauren Cashman. Employee number: 196875.’

  There were other details: taxes paid, union fees deducted, a compulsory contribution to superannuation. There were unexpected additions, too: a laundry allowance, $1.80; and travel allowance, $2.20. Then, in the last column, there was my wage minus tax: $280. It seemed a fortune, and it gave me the feeling that everything would be okay – not immediately, maybe not even soon, but one day, eventually, I’d be on my feet, and everything would be okay.

  I guess I’d been at the hospital a few weeks when some of the other aides started talking about having a girls’ night. I found myself feeling keen to go. I had never had too much success being friends with people at school, but things were different at the hospital. There was camaraderie among the aides. We were all so far down the pecking order – below the nurses, below the doctors, below even the administrative staff – that we had to stick together.

  ‘No one is gonna drive,’ one of the girls said. ‘We’re gonna get a minibus. It’s gonna be ace.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ I said.

  ‘You go everywhere!’ she said. ‘They drive you round to all the discos, the clubs. It’s grouse.’

  The tearoom was alive with enthusiasm. There would be eight seats on the bus. You could drink all you wanted. It was better to get pre-mixes – UDL cans, they called them – and then you didn’t have to carry two bottles.

  ‘You’ll come, Lauren?’

  I said I would.

  Here’s what I didn’t say, ‘This is the first time I’ve been invited to go out with any girls, anywhere.’

  I didn’t know what to wear, but one of the other aides said, ‘Go to Sportsgirl. They’ve got great gear,’ so when I knocked off on the Thursday – the day before the bus tour – I went late-night shopping. I told the sales girl, ‘I’ve got to go on this minibus. We’re going around the discos.’

  She said, ‘Cool. Everybody’s wearing stirrup pants at the moment, and a big shirt.’

  I tried them on. The pants had a strap of material that went under the arch of the foot. The shirt had floppy cuffs, and lace across the bodice.

  ‘It’s cool,’ the girl said. ‘Get yourself some heels, you’ll be grouse. Cash or Bankcard?’

  I didn’t have a Bankcard. I said, ‘Cash,’ and gave her some of the bills that had been folded inside the manila envelope I’d started to use as a purse.

  The aides worked late on the Friday. Instead of going home, we got ready in the toilets. One girl, Lisa, said to me, ‘Where’s your make-up?’ I had eyeliner and a small lipstick, a sample that I’d picked up at a foster home. I had an old eye-shadow, with blue chunks, like chalk, falling loose in the case.

  Lisa said, ‘You can’t wear that. Here, let me do your eyes. Look up.’

  I turned my eyes toward the ceiling, and let her rest her hands upon my face.

  ‘Up, up!’ she said, flicking my eyelashes with a curled rod of mascara, coating my brows, and blushing my cheeks. I hadn’t worn so much make-up since Barrett High.

  ‘Mate,’ she said, stepping back. ‘Look at the difference.’

  My eyes were watering. I went to rub them, but Lisa said, ‘No! Don’t touch. You’ll smudge it.’ When the pools of water receded I looked in the mirror. The girl looking back at me seemed much older than the one who had been there before.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Lisa.

  I went into a toilet cubicle to get dressed, using my teeth to snip the tags on my new clothes. My new shoes were tight, but the shop assistant had told me they would give, so I stuffed my aide’s uniform in the plastic Sportsgirl bag, toddled out said, ‘What can I do with this?’

  ‘Just shove it down behind a seat on the minibus,’ said Lisa. ‘Nobody will take it.’

  We started drinking on the bus, starting with something called Blackberry Nip, and something else called Brandavino. I sat near a window, with a heavy bus curtain knocking against my cheek. I hadn’t previously been a drinker, but I’d heard the girls talking all week: ‘Make sure you eat something. Make sure you have a glass of milk. It lines the stomach. You won’t chuck up.’ I’d had a glass of milk from the hospital fridge. The alcohol was sickly sweet. I started to feel loose.

  On the bus, Lisa told me that some of the guys from the hospital – young cleaners, mostly, who pushed the buckets around and mopped the floors – would meet us at the club.

  She said, ‘They’ve probably already had a few,’ and laughed. She looked so pretty and excited.

  ‘Do you know Rick?’ she said. She was sitting in the seat in front of me, and had turned around so we could talk. I said, ‘Rick?’

  ‘He’s the tall guy, the real tall one. You must have noticed him.’

  I said, ‘Rick? Rick. No, I don’t know any Rick.’

  ‘You do know,’ she insisted. I sensed that she was keen to share something with me. ‘Tall guy, really tall. Dark hair. Wears, like, those trainers with the high tops. Wears ’em all the time.’

  I could see it was important so I nodded, and said, ‘Oh, right. Yeah. Rick.’ But I couldn’t remember him at all.

  Lisa looked relieved. ‘Do you like him?’ she said. ‘Do you think he’s good-looking?’

  Now what to say?

  I said, ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘He’s pug ugly,’ she said, laughing. The girl who was sitting next to her half-turned in the seat, looked over the rail, and said, ‘Bullshit, Lisa. You’re so into him.’

  ‘Am not, am not,’ she squealed, but the girl in front said, ‘Lisa, he’s all you ever talk about.’

  Lisa denied it, and slapped the other girl’s hands. She snatched them away from the handrail, and they both turned, grinning, toward the front of the bus.

  In defence of what happened next, I want to say that I didn’t fully get what had transpired in that conversation. I didn’t know that ‘He’s pug ugly’ could mean ‘I think he’s a spunk’. I didn’t know that ‘You’re so into him’ meant that nobody else could go near him. I wonder, though, whether it would have mattered. The affection of men had for so long been important to me, and the concept of friendship was so alien, that I’m not sure whether I did know that Lisa was into Rick, and just didn’t care, or whether I didn’t realise that it would matter to her that Rick was into me.

  Lisa turned toward me again, and our foreheads knocked against each other with the movement of the bus.

  She said ‘Ouch’ and rubbed her head. Then she said, ‘I don’t really like him. I’ll point him out to you tonight, and you tell me if you think he’s good-looking. But I tell you, he’s pug ugly.’

  I wondered where she’d heard the phrase. She seemed to like it. She said it again, ‘Pug ugly.’

  Our first stop was a club they called the York Butter Factory. There was a red carpet outside, and a red velvet rope, thick as a serpent, held up by brass rings, to prevent a line of blokes from getting inside.

  I went to join the queue, but Lisa said, ‘Just come up to the door. They always let in the girls.’ A bouncer – a big black man, blacker than any man I’d ever seen – lifted the rope for our group, and we tottered inside. I felt cushioned by the darkness – embraced by the darkness – and yet the lights pulsated, throbbed, at a distance. My ears felt full, too: the music was unbearably loud. We had to shout at each other to be heard, and even then, the words disappeared, so we took to smiling very white teeth at each other. At intervals, an unseen machine spewed smoke, which curled around the limbs of girls on the dance floor, leaving behind an industrial smell.

  The bar was full. We stood impatiently, ordering eight Fluffy Ducks, and then eight Tequila Sunrises; eight Slippery Nipples, and then eight Harvey Wallbangers. In the crush, we spilt sticky drinks over the backs of our hands, and as we got drunker, we had to guide the straws into our mouths.

  Lisa said something to me. I couldn’t hear b
ut it didn’t seem to matter. I nodded and smiled as she wandered off onto the dance floor.

  ‘Having fun?’

  That was the first thing he said to me.

  I had moved into a red vinyl booth, somewhere on the edge of the dance floor. The other girls were dancing. I was by now so drunk that I couldn’t focus my eyes. I nodded. My head felt loose and heavy on my shoulders.

  ‘You’re cute,’ he said.

  Did I know it was Rick? How could I have known it was Rick? I didn’t know what Rick looked like. He slid into the booth beside me. I felt a strong arm on my shoulder and I was grateful for it: the room was spinning. I felt his lips smear across my face. I turned to meet them. His teeth clashed against mine. I felt a hand in my lap. It took a moment to realise it was not one of the hands that belonged to the man with the lips. I was wedged now, between two men. One was kissing my face; the other was kissing my neck. There seemed to be four, maybe five hands on me. One was inside my ruffled shirt, feeling for my breast; another was in my lap. I moved about in the seat, responding to the hand between my legs and to the tongue in my throat. I felt another hand, a third, reaching under my bra, over my nipples. I was being kissed and caressed and I didn’t know who by and I couldn’t have cared less, but then I looked up and saw Lisa and another of the girls, each with a drink in their hands, their fingers holding the straw steady, looking at me with something like disgust.

  I broke free of the arms around me – it was like disentangling from an octopus – and stood on unsteady legs. I walked – stumbled, more likely – toward the bar, but Lisa was saying, ‘Let’s get out of here. This place is a dive. No decent blokes.’

  I followed them out to the bus. I knew I’d disgraced myself and was desperately trying to win back their approval.

  ‘Anybody need a smoke?’ I said. ‘How loud was that music?’