Ghost Child

by Caroline Overington

  To my horror, I heard the words slurring.

  We reboarded the bus. I wanted to get into a seat with one of the other aides, but they were resolutely ignoring me and squeezing in together. I found myself down the back, alone, with my face against the thick curtain. My head was spinning. As soon as the driver started the engine, I vomited.

  Lisa said, ‘That’s so gross!’

  The bus trundled through city traffic. The street lights seemed to be galloping. I vomited again and I must have nodded off because, when I came around, it was close to dawn, the bus was parked at some kind of transport interchange. My head was pounding. I had a blister on the back of my heel. The other girls were gone but the driver was sitting up front, drinking coffee from a thermos, reading an early edition of The Sun.

  Lisa didn’t speak to me again and, like Terri at Barrett High, she had a knack of making sure that others didn’t either. Still, I heard on the grapevine that she and Rick had started going out. Apparently, he told her I tried to seduce him.

  A few weeks later, at my next meeting with the social worker who was helping to ‘transition’ me, I asked whether it was possible to get a new start in a new city. They were big on that. They actually had a program then called ‘New Beginnings’.

  ‘It’ll do you good to get a fresh start,’ my caseworker said. ‘Where would you like to go?’

  I think they expected me to say Ballarat or maybe Geelong, but I had bigger plans. I wanted to move to Sydney. I’d seen the Opera House on a postcard. I’d heard about the Harbour Bridge. It was a fair way from Melbourne – an hour by plane or twelve hours by Greyhound bus. I knew that the Department would pay for the bus ticket, and they’d arrange for me to spend a week at the YMCA. I had some money coming from the Corrections department, money for being a ‘victim of crime’, and they said I could use that to put down a bond and pay a month’s rent in advance.

  Oh, and one more thing: if I left Melbourne, I could have my things.

  I said, ‘My things?’ I didn’t know I had any things, but my caseworker said, ‘There are some things that we have on your file that belong to you.’

  They came to me in an envelope, the kind that might hold an A4 report. There were some notes in there from Mrs Islington, and a photograph of me, as a little girl, holding some kind of tea party for dolls. There were some school reports from Barrett Primary, and a copy of a drawing that I made, during group therapy.

  There was something else, too: a piece of card, like a birthday card, with a photograph inside. It was a portrait of my family, the family I’d had before Jake died and my mother went to prison. A portrait of four children in blue jeans and white T-shirts, sitting on some kind of table, all smiling for the camera. Except when I looked closer I noticed Jake looked kind of upset.

  I looked at that photograph for a very long time. I couldn’t remember having seen it before. I stared into the faces of my siblings and tried to feel something, anything, but nothing came. They were like strangers to me.

  Still, I took the portrait to Sydney with me. I had it in my briefcase when I went for a new job at the Sydney hospital, and to this day, if I haven’t got it with me, I can tell you where it is.

  I didn’t intend to change my name when I got to Sydney, it just kind of happened. I’d got the Sydney job, and I was filling out some paperwork, and the old lady who was taking it all down and entering it into the computer said to me, ‘What does that say? Lauren? Lauren Cameron?’ and instead of correcting her, I just said, ‘That’s right. Lauren Cameron.’ Things were different then: you didn’t have to have a passport to open a bank account. You didn’t need a driver’s licence to get a Medicare card. You told your employer what your name was, and they accepted that. If you were going to rent a place, they’d write a letter saying how much you earned. You’d use your lease to get a Bankcard, and so on. It was just much easier to change your name, in a kind of informal way, and I must admit I kind of liked not being one of the Cashman kids.

  I told the manager at the Royal in Sydney that I wanted to work all the hours they had, every shift they could give me. She was delighted. She showed me around the hospital: here’s the geriatric ward, here’s oncology, here’s maternity, and here’s the chapel. I hadn’t previously been inside a church since Jake’s funeral. Late that day, I went back there, and sat in a pew with my head in my hands, only to find that I had no idea how to pray. What were you supposed to say?

  Please, God, help me?

  I tried that but I didn’t get anything back. All I could hear was the sound of nurses in rubber-soled shoes, squeaking down the corridor outside. Still, I stayed for a while, imagining what it might be like to have faith, and to really be at peace with the world.

  It was a nice idea but, of course, the past is always close behind.

  Hayley Cashman

  People go to me, ‘Must be hard, raising a baby at your age.’

  I go, ‘I’m doin’ a better job than my mum ever did.’

  They go, ‘Right, where is your mum?’

  And I go, ‘She’s dead and I’m happy about it.’

  It spins ’em out, obviously, but I’m fair dinkum. She’s dead, and I couldn’t give a stuff. Me and Jezeray, we’re better off without her. That’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it. When I was little, they used to make me go see her in the clink, but then I told ’em I wouldn’t go any more, and they couldn’t make me.

  When Mum first got locked up, I got sent to live with a lady who was supposedly a great-aunt, or somehow related to my old man, a bloke I wouldn’t have known if I’d run over him in the street. She was a bitch, that lady. She had heaps of these kids that she reckoned was my cousins, but half of ’em were Abos. We had no shoes and she never bought nappies, and if I pissed on the floor she’d whack me one.

  I didn’t have a room, I didn’t have a bed. There were all these dogs. Once I saw one of the kids drinking from a dog bowl. I don’t remember that she sent me to school. I just remember the welfare lady come one day and said, ‘Oh, right, this placement hasn’t worked out, your great-aunt can’t take care of you, and you’ve got to go to Mrs Mac.’

  And I was, like, ‘Whatever.’ I didn’t really care.

  Mrs Mac was dead strict, saying, ‘Oh, you gotta go to school, and you gotta wear a uniform and you gotta visit with your mum.’ That’s why I went to the jail, because she said, ‘The Department says I got to take you, and you got to go.’ It took forever to get out there. It was this really long drive in a bus. But first I had to go to the Department and get ticked off the list, like I was the criminal.

  Mrs Mac – that was my foster mum – used to take me there in her car. It was bloody hot and she can’t bloody drive. How many times we nearly smashed.

  I reckon that Mrs Mac didn’t think I should go to the prison, but she goes, ‘I gotta do what the Department says.’

  It was pretty bad. Mum would be sitting there, outside the prison. Not outside the walls outside, but outside the building, in, like, the garden. It’s not like the TV. They don’t make ’em wear those jumpsuits. They don’t have handcuffs and chains around the ankles. You don’t gotta talk to them through the glass with a phone.

  So I’d go there, and Mum would be sitting there on a bench or sitting on the grass, or else I’d go sit down and they’d say, ‘She’ll be here in a sec.’ But sometimes, she didn’t even bother to come out until the visit was half over, and I’d sit there like a lump, waiting.

  When she did come out, she wanted smokes, or else she wanted to whine and carry on.

  She’d go, ‘It’s not my fault I’m here.’

  She’d go, ‘You know why I’m here.’

  I’d go, ‘Don’t talk about it, Mum.’

  She’d go, ‘You remember what happened?’

  I’d be like, ‘Right, I was eighteen months old.’ That’s about as old as Jezeray and, like, she can’t even talk.

  She’d be like, ‘Why didn’t you say nothin’?’

  I’d be like, ‘Say wh
at?’ All I know is I had a brother. I had two brothers. I had a sister. And then it all went crap and we were dumped like dogs on the welfare state, and shifted from pillar to post. Whatever Mum did or didn’t do – and I’m not going into the ins and outs of it – she ended up in prison and that loser boyfriend went with her, and that was it.

  I got jack of going to the prison pretty much as soon as I could say I wasn’t going no more. I can’t say why, it got to the point where she made me want to spew.

  After that day, when they said, ‘Oh, you gotta go visit your mum,’ I’d just go, ‘No, I’m not going, and you can’t make me. If you shove me on the bus, I’ll sit in the bus, and if you drag me out of the bus, you’ll have to drag me right through the door, and the minute you let me go I’ll be out of there.’

  They said, ‘Oh well, you have to talk to her on the phone,’ and I was like, ‘You can’t make me. Because she’d just scream at me down the phone, saying why don’t I visit? She got stuck into Mrs Mac. She’d go, ‘That Mrs Mac, she’s poisoned your mind against me.’

  I’m like, ‘No, Mum, you did that.’

  Anyway, I stopped speaking to Mum for about a year and then they called me and said, ‘Right, you gotta talk to her again, cos she’s sick.’

  And I go, ‘I don’t care.’

  And they go, ‘No, it’s serious.’

  And I’m like, ‘I don’t care. You can ring me up and tell me when she’s dead and then I’ll care.’

  And that’s actually what happened. They ring up and say, ‘She’s got cancer. Do you want to visit?’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ And then they ring up and say, ‘Oh, she’s passed away.’ And I go, ‘Has she?’ And they go, ‘Yeah. Do you wanna go to the funeral?’ And I go, ‘Like, no.’

  Around that time, they said to me, ‘Oh, you can see Lauren. You can see Harley. I’m like, ‘I don’t even know these people.’ They were like, ‘Yeah, but we have to get you to see them.’ So Mrs Mac drove me into this place in the city and we go in this room and Lauren is in there, and Harley is in there, and it’s like, what now? It freaked me out. They’re strangers to me and I’m supposed to talk to them and I can’t think of anything to say.

  I mean, yeah, there was a moment where I did think, ‘This is all right, this is kinda cool, she’s my sister, he’s my brother, and they’re not totally dorky, although Harley’s a bit odd.’ He came in with this fat lady wearing a kaftan thing, who he called Mum, which was a bit weird. It was okay. We did have a bit of a talk about things, and later, I did kind of think, ‘Okay, maybe we’ll keep in touch,’ but it wasn’t really up to me, it was up to the Department, and they never mentioned it again, not for ages, except, after Lauren got over eighteen, they rang and said, ‘Here, you can have her phone number now, but she lives in Sydney.’ And I’m like, ‘How come?’ And they’re like, ‘Don’t know.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, well, I don’t blame her.’

  There were a couple of times when I wanted to call the number, but I had no credit on my mobile and it would have been a bit strange, anyway, calling this person I didn’t know. You’re supposed to have feelings toward your sister, but she was basically no more to me than a person on the street. We didn’t have anything in common. When we had the visit that time, after Mum died, Lauren told me that she’d never visited Mum, and I went, ‘You’re lucky.’ So, no, it wasn’t like we were gonna talk about Mum.

  The truth is, I had one interest, and one interest only when it came to Mum. The social workers had told me, ‘Hayley, when you’re older you’re gonna get this money for being a victim.’

  I’m like, ‘What?’

  And they go, ‘If you’re a victim of crime, they give you this money, like to make up for it.’ And when I told Mrs Mac, she goes, ‘Yeah, and when your mum gets out of jail she’s gonna try and get that money off you.’

  I’m like, ‘How much money?’ Mrs Mac wouldn’t tell me so I asked the social workers and they wouldn’t tell me how much, either. They just said the same: I’d get some money when I was older, and I’d find out then how much.

  I used to have a guess at it. I’d go, ‘Is it a thousand bucks? Is it more than a thousand bucks?’ But they never said.

  It didn’t matter anyway because Mum got the cancer so she’d hardly be coming for the money, would she? And when I got to sixteen, I was up the duff. Mrs Mac got all hysterical about it, saying, ‘You’re under age,’ and all that, but I wasn’t worried. I knew I was gonna get the money, and I figured, that’d set me up all right. I just go, ‘Mrs Mac, when they give me the money it’ll be sweet. I’ll set up with some other girls in a flat and study to be a beautician at night, until I get qualified.’

  And she goes, ‘And who will look after the baby, Hayley?’

  And I go, ‘It can go into day care.’

  Mrs Mac goes, ‘They don’t have day care at night, Hayley.’

  I could see what she was gettin’ at. She wanted me to have an abortion. She was like, ‘If you have a termination, you can stay here and finish school.’ I’m like, ‘No way, this is my baby, and nobody is gonna abort it.’ And I got in touch with the Department and said, ‘I’m up the duff and Mrs Mac says I’ve gotta move out.’ They go, ‘We can move you into independent living,’ and I go, ‘Sweet.’ And I moved into this flat, and Mrs Mac came and saw me once and said, ‘This is no good.’ I was like, ‘Mind your business, old lady.’

  I was pretty pissed off with Mrs Mac for a while after that, but I did ring her up when I went into labour. Mate, I’m telling you, that was frickin’ agony, and I’m like, ‘Mrs Mac, you better help me.’ She did come to the hospital and all that. She reckoned Jezeray was a cool name. ‘Give her a bit of glamour,’ I go, and she goes, ‘Yeah.’ But when I said to her, ‘Oh, can you hang onto the baby, I gotta have a ciggie,’ she was like, ‘The baby’s hungry.’ And I was thinking, ‘Why are you telling me?’ And then I remembered, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s my baby.’ That was a wake-up call, I tell you.

  I went from the hospital back to the flat, where I was living before Jezeray was born, and basically got screwed, money wise, all over again. The Department said there would be all this support for single mums, but basically I got the Commission flat and Jezeray got to go to the clinic for free, and when she’s older she’ll go to council day care for free, but that’s about it. And the building is full of junkies and pros, and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, when I get the money I’ll go, but when the money came, they took, like, tax out of it, and it was pretty much gone. I did get a nice bed, but.

  Mrs Mac said to me, ‘When Jezeray goes to the day care you can get a job,’ and I did get a job for a bit, working in this call centre, but it was basically a crap place to work. They give you a desk, and they give you a headset and you basically just ring people up and try to sell ’em stuff they don’t want. You aren’t allowed to talk to the other girls, and you only get one ciggie break, and all you have all day is people abusing you, so I quit that job. They shouldn’t make single mums work, I don’t reckon.

  I don’t deny that I’m still angry at my mum. She left us in the lurch, and I never got an explanation for what happened that day on Barrett. Like, I got an explanation from Mrs Mac and all that, but I wouldn’t have minded a bit more, from the Department, or somebody who had a clue. Maybe somebody who was there when Jake got killed, or whatever. I got so desperate once, when I was still a kid, that I tried to ask Jake. Like, I shouted up at the sky, ‘Jake, are you up there?’ But it’s not like I got an answer. And then, that other time, when I had to go see Lauren and Harley after Mum died, I did say to Lauren, ‘What happened that day? Do you remember? You know, don’t you?’

  The weird thing was, she didn’t say nothin’. I reckon she knew a whole lot and just wasn’t sayin’. And she still isn’t sayin’, not to me, anyway.

  Lauren Cameron

  I suppose we were three hours, maybe more, into our journey to Melbourne when Harley told me how much I reminded him of Mum. At first I thought our mum, but no, he meant his own mum, Ruby.
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  ‘She’s into Cheese and Bacon Balls,’ he told me. At the time, I was putting one yellow-stained hand after the other into the jumbo bag between our seats. I’d taken my shoes off and was riding with my toes near the windscreen. We’d long ago lost metropolitan radio and now we were losing the fuzzy stations, too. John Farnham and Cold Chisel and the ditty that Deborah Conway sings about the fellow who leaves pubic hair on her pillow, it was all turning to buzz and static, so I switched it off. I had many things on my mind: the inquest we’d left behind in Sydney, and the stories about me that were surely starting to circulate. I didn’t want to think about them, so I said to Harley, ‘Do you know we have the same dad?’

  He said, ‘That’s what I’m told.’

  I said, ‘You don’t think so?’ And he shrugged and said, ‘Mate, from what I gather, Mum had a few blokes around. Who knows who belongs to who.’

  I said, ‘Well, I can tell you, we’ve got the same dad. You look just like him.’

  I expected him to steer off the road, since I’d done that, metaphorically, when Dad was first mentioned to me, but Harley is steadier than me. All he said was, ‘Fair dinkum? Come on, tell me about it.’ So I told him. I said, ‘I was living with this couple I called the Childless. They had no kids and, from what I could tell, they took me in as some kind of experiment.’

  Harley snorted with laughter, and said, ‘You’re kidding.’

  I said, ‘I was an experiment to quite a few people. A failed experiment.’

  He said, ‘How many homes did you go to?’ I told him the truth: I had no real idea. Four, maybe five? There was Mrs Islington; then came the Childless, and after that, the Christians, and then the motel, and the caravan park, and there was a woman, the one I called ‘Dry Foot’, because she had some kind of foot disease that made the skin on her heels all red and flaky. She was a weird one. She made it plain that she was in fostering for the money and yet she had no money. All she ever wore was this beige-coloured slip, morning and night, a nylon thing with spaghetti straps, and all she ever did was sit in a floral recliner, one with an ashtray Blu-Tacked to the right armrest. She’d take off her shoes and say, ‘I need somebody to do my feet, Lauren.’ She kept a pumice stone in a bowl of water – grey water – near the recliner, and she’d get me to slough off the dead skin and rub cold cream between her toes.