Too Much Lip

by Melissa Lucashenko

  Pretty Mary’s bed creaked. Kerry heard the repeated clicking of an empty lighter.

  ‘Yeah, hang on, old girl, it’s coming!’ Kerry called out in panic, not knowing what else to do or say to keep her mother in the other room a few minutes longer and to thereby preserve her innocence. So. The decision was made. Now she had to stay. She put her boots back behind the lounge, and wondered what the hell to do. Would it make a single iota of difference whether Pretty Mary had a cup of tea in her hand when she got the news?

  Racing.com was still on as it had been on all night: muted, showing recorded footage. Today’s races wouldn’t start for hours but there were talking heads looking serious, and ads for stallion services. Statistics flashing up. What yesterday’s winners had paid. Kerry looked at the betting slip Pop still clutched grimly in his left hand, and slid it out. Like taking candy from a baby. Race twelve, Warwick. Belle of the Ball had placed fourth and Pop had blown five bucks. Oh darling. Save that last dance for me.

  ‘Just not your lucky day, Pop,’ Kerry told him, folding the betting slip – suddenly heavy with significance, the last bet he ever made – together with her own redundant note, and shoving both deep in her jeans pocket. She looked at the clock on the wall. Six forty-five. In exactly one week it would be Christmas.

  Chapter Five

  A raucous wolf whistle filled the air, and Kerry stiffened in her stride. She didn’t look across the road to the pub. Wouldn’t give them arseholes the satisfaction. Next to her, Black Superman spun on his heel, shaded his eyes, and then blew an extravagant kiss to the invisible observer, jerking his hand upwards only at the very last moment into two savagely upright fingers. Loud laughter erupted from the Droughtmaster Bar.

  Entering the corner store, Kerry glanced up automatically. No cameras. Durrongo really was in a time warp. Behind the counter Kath, who was fifty-eight and morbidly obese, raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I remember when I used to get whistles, love. You’ll miss it.’

  ‘Excuse me. He was whistling at me, darling.’ Black Superman drew himself up. Kath grinned, opened her mouth, then discovered she had nothing to say and shut it again.

  ‘And our Pop died four days ago – ya think I need some random dickhead telling me how much he likes my tits?’ Kerry said as she went to the fridge.

  ‘Oh, sorry, darl. I heard. It won’t be the same without him. Never go down the pub without seeing him having his bets on.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Kerry pulled a twenty out of her bra for two loaves of bread and four litres of real milk to replace Pretty Mary’s Sunshine powder. It was already not the same. Pop’s cot had been collected by the hospital, and the gap in the lounge was filled with Brandon and Lub Lub’s toys and kiddy mattresses. Racing.com was a thing of the past; the TV was welded, now, to the cartoon channel, or the reality shows Ken loved to hate. And the smell of an old man slowly decaying had been chased out by the determined puffing away of Pretty Mary, Aunty Val, Savannah and Black Superman, who were trying to outdo each other in their race to exhaust the world’s supply of tobacco.

  ‘Mum’s durries,’ Black Superman reminded Kerry, dragging two fifties out of his wallet and thrusting them at her. ‘Get the old bag an extra pack. And the paper, for the notice.’

  ‘When’s the funeral, hon? I’d like to try and get there.’ Kath attempted to hand the change from the hundred back to Kerry. Black Superman promptly knocked his sister’s forearm aside.

  ‘I’ll have that. Two-thirty today at St Michael’s,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All very welcome to come and make sure the old bastard’s really dead before we spark him up.’

  Kath was rendered speechless for the second time in a minute.

  ‘Shut up, fuckwit.’ Kerry shoved him hard towards the door as she grabbed the free local paper off its metal rack, adding over her shoulder, ‘You’re welcome to come, Kath. Wake’s at the pub.’

  ‘Oooh, forgot, mustn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Black Superman cried, stumbling as Kerry pushed him down the low stairs at the front of the shop.

  ‘Do you have to be such an Attention. Seeking. Queen?’ Kerry lectured loudly, handing him the bread. ‘Some people have to live here, y’know.’

  Black Superman hooted with laughter and allowed his voice to drop an octave.

  ‘Can’t help meself, honey. I set foot back in the shire and I’m fifteen again. Anyway, it’ll give Kath something to talk about down the razzle Friday night.’

  ‘He was our grandfather,’ Kerry pointed out acidly. ‘For all his faults, he was still an Elder. We wouldn’t even have a house if it weren’t for him.’

  ‘He wasn’t an Elder’s arsehole,’ Black Superman retorted. ‘Flogging me unconscious for coming out. I’ll never forget that, and I’m certainly not gonna fucken forgive it, either. The miserable homophobic prick can rot in hell, girlfriend.’

  Kerry twisted her mouth. There were things you could let go of in life, and things you couldn’t. Black Superman drew the bar higher than most.

  ‘Why even come back then?’ she asked, shortly.

  ‘Like I said. To make sure the old prick goes in the oven. And to see you, my darling tidda girl.’

  ~

  ‘Susu,’ Kerry said five minutes later. She plonked two heavy plastic bottles on Pretty Mary’s kitchen bench, where they immediately made watery milk rings. ‘Bread.’ The loaves thudded beside the Norco bottles. ‘And the paper and ya smokes.’

  ‘Ooh, Rothmans, my little angels!’ Pretty Mary answered approvingly, arms deep in washing-up water and eyes fixed sideways on the tobacco. ‘Light us one, will ya bub? And can ya make sure them cups is all ready for the pub?’ The phone rang for the thousandth time that morning as Kerry placed a lit fag carefully between her mother’s pursed lips, and Black Superman swooped down to confiscate the kids’ laptops and lock them in the hire car.

  ‘No lappies before ten o’clock!’ he told them.

  In the wake of this sudden loss, six-year-old Lub Lub sooked loudly for her Sydney gran. Her older brother, Brandon, arced up, swearing and hurling the remote towards the plasma TV. Ken leaped to his feet, knocking over a kitchen chair, and grabbed the lad’s arm, lifting him clear off the ground for all that he was a chubby forty-five kilos. Ken grabbed the remote and turned the TV off.

  ‘Knock your bullshit off!’ he growled, shoving Brandon onto the lounge and holding Pretty Mary’s mobile to his ear with his shoulder. ‘I can’t hear meself think.’

  ‘Uncle Donny’s allowed on his computer!’ Brandon protested fiercely. ‘It’s not fair!’

  ‘Uncle Donny’s seventeen,’ said Black Superman, returning to the house and lifting the bawling Lub Lub onto his hip. He put himself between Brandon and Ken. ‘When you’re seventeen you can do what ya like too.’

  ‘I fucken hate it here!’ Brandon snarled at both men. ‘I’m going back to live with my Nan, ya faggots!’

  ‘Shut them fucken jahjams up, will ya?’ Ken roared. ‘I can’t hear Uncle Richard!’

  Lub Lub cried louder, lurching on Black Superman’s hip like a sailor clinging to a mast in a cyclone. Black Superman was unperturbed.

  ‘Ya Nan’s real crook, bud, so ya stuck with me. And I told yez,’ he took Brandon’s shoulder, voice stern, ‘no computer till ten o’clock. Go outside. Go climb a tree.’

  Brandon looked at Black Superman like he had two heads.

  ‘What for? I’m an eel. Eels don’t climb trees.’

  ‘He gotcha there, son,’ Pretty Mary smiled through grief-swollen eyes, drying her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Eels don’t use iPads, either,’ Kerry pointed out. ‘Or watch TV. Or go to Maccas …’ This provoked a fresh scowl from Brandon, who pushed savagely free of Black Superman, and stomped to the back door. Elvis saw him, and went to hide beneath the house.

  ‘What for? Jesus, call yourselves Koories? For bird eggs, for honey, for the bloody exe
rcise. Go on, git! The internet won’t disappear just because you aren’t online for a couple of hours.’ Black Superman hunted both kids outside. ‘These jahjams, make ya weak! I’m gonna go shower before I strangle em on their own guts. Can ya watch Lub Lub?’

  Kerry nodded and pushed her chair back.

  The kids went outside but that was exactly where their compliance ended. When Kerry looked into the yard they were using fragments of a broken brakelight to scratch their names into the pale trunk of the leopard tree. Brandon had carved BRANDON EEL MAN RULES and was underlining it three times for emphasis.

  ‘Don’t even think about going near that bike, eh, cobber?’ she told him, as Brandon wandered idly towards the clothes line. There had been stern words about the Harley when Black Superman first arrived, but Kerry had no faith in his warnings. His foster grannies had long been trained into deafness. Their first language was one of raised voices and closed fists.

  ‘Don’t call me copper!’ Brandon spat, turning away and hurling the broken brakelight loudly at the chook shed. A cacophony of squawking ensued.

  ‘Cobber, not copper. It’s an old whitefella word. It means mate,’ Kerry explained.

  The kid kicked at the dirt and was silent.

  Poor little bugger didn’t know her from Adam. Brandon and his sister were rellos in a distant complicated way, but the kids, Sydney born and bred, hardly knew Durrongo existed until a month ago. Of course he’d be suss of some random Aunty bossing him around. He’d be wondering what her agenda was, how long it would take her to promise him the world and then deliver considerably less than fuck all. Or maybe bash him, or start in on his sister. Or (d) all of the above.

  ‘You ever set a chook shed off?’ she continued, knowing the answer. Keeping chickens required land and stability, not the overwhelming features of his life until Black Superman stepped in last year just before Childstealers did. Brandon shrugged. Kerry went down to the shed and launched into her best cock-a-doodle-doo. Beneath the stairs, Elvis tilted his head. Kerry crowed again.

  ‘You try!’ she urged. Sulky at first, Brandon gradually got into it.

  ‘COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!’ crowed Kerry, arms flapping.

  ‘COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOOON’T!’countered Brandon, top note.

  Elvis emerged. He began to bark and run in circles. Lub Lub appeared and joined in.

  ‘Louder!’ said Kerry, doubting if Brandon had ever in his entire life been urged to make more noise. Pretty Mary’s young roosters soon grew excited and began to sound off as well, until the chorus of crowing and barking reached such a pitch that an urgent tinny banging came from inside Pop’s caravan.

  ‘Can youse fucken keep it down a bit?’ yelled the caravan.

  Chris had been fast asleep, Kerry suddenly realised, after working a late shift at the Top Pub. Whoops.

  ‘Sorry, cuz!’ she called, grimacing at Brandon. He grinned at her and Kerry ruffled his hair.

  ‘You done that, bub,’ she told him, gesturing to the roosters. ‘That’s down to you. You’re the boss chook whisperer.’

  ‘Pop’s spinning in his grave with all ya racket,’ called Pretty Mary from the loo. ‘Give it a blooming rest will ya?’

  ‘Can we go play next door, Aunty?’ Lub Lub asked. Kerry looked towards the pack of feral white kids on the neighbour’s back patio.

  ‘You know them jahjams?’ Kerry was doubtful.

  ‘Yeah, they’re our friends.’ Lub Lub’s dark face shone with innocent joy. Six was still too young to notice skin colour very much, or to notice others noticing hers. Brandon had spied Dr No and the others frolicking in Aunty Val’s blow-up pool, and was halfway to the gate. His own man at eleven, already making his own rules, and why not, when he’d raised himself and his sister in a world of angry faces and stony hearts. Kerry narrowed her eyes. Death penalty for ice dealers. One warning. Then a spear through the fucking carotid artery.

  ‘If they say yes, it’ll only be for a little while, bub, cos of the funeral. Hang on.’

  She slid on her mother’s thongs and headed next door with her hackles up. You never knew what to expect. That flag on the Ford might mean folded arms and murderous eyes, or it might mean genial morons as pleasant as the day is long.

  ~

  ‘How do I look, Kyles?’ Jim asked, preening in the mirror at Patterson Real Estate. He picked up his suit jacket, and squinted at the sun-baked town outside. Summer funerals were godawful affairs, and those at St Michael’s were hotter than most. But when old-timers shuffled off, even black ones, you had to show your face; and in this particular case, doubly so.

  ‘You look like a fifty-nine-year-old politician, Jim,’ Kylie answered. ‘Hard to believe, I know.’

  ‘Just like a real boy,’ Martina teased from her office. She was more interested in realestate.com.au than in Jim’s visit to retrieve his jacket. Houses in Rose Bay were trending up sharply. She exhaled. Easy money to be made on the ground in Sydney, and here she was, stuck at the arse end of hell. Jim picked up his car keys.

  ‘I’ll be back at council by four,’ he told Kylie. ‘Did those docs come through from the department?’ Jim was sweating, not because it was Christmas in a few days, but because he had a cool two hundred grand riding on the sale of Lot 14, Settlement Road.

  ‘They hadn’t five minutes ago.’

  ‘Text me. And Martina, we need to sit down and go through those transfer details, asap. It’s got to go through first time, with all this NIMBY bullshit starting. Can you be at Chambers at four?’

  Martina stretched and smiled, as though Jim had all the time in the world. Endless weeks in which to sign dodgy transfers to make it look like she, not he, was flogging Settlement Road to a state government–backed consortium. Due to some strategic delays, plus the absolutely sweet bonus of a Greens-led groundswell against the project, Jim was now well and truly under the hammer. Martina knew he was in for a killing – provided ICAC didn’t find out he was still trading while sitting in the mayor’s seat. Poor foolish Jim, thinking he could use her as the fall guy.

  ‘Yeah. We need to talk about that, actually,’ she said, smiling at him through her open door with cold commercial eyes. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Jim paused, Cruiser keys in his hand, and his world tilted on its axis by precisely one degree. Had he underestimated this smart Sydney bitch?

  ‘What’s to talk about?’ he snapped, walking closer. ‘I told you the deal. Five listings you wouldn’t otherwise have. Money for jam.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Martina said. ‘Five shotgun shacks in outer Bumfuck. Sorry, Jim, I just can’t get too excited about the deal …’ she paused and counted to three before adding, ‘as it stands.’

  Kylie goggled. Nobody ever spoke to Jim this way. Even the cops deferred to him. Magistrates. Business people went out of their way to lick his substantial arse. Martina clearly didn’t know what she was starting. Jim strode to Martina’s office and closed her door firmly from the inside.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing,’ he growled. ‘But don’t try and play a player, honey, cos you’ll live to regret it.’

  Martina gave not the tiniest sign of feeling intimidated. You have no fucking idea who you’re dealing with, pal, she thought. She suppressed the urge to rip Jim a new one. Instead, she gave the faux-relaxed shrug she had observed in Will and decided to adopt – that icy English cool. More productive in the long run.

  ‘Settlement Road is a sweet listing, Jim. And I’m helping you out. Thirty per cent cut sounds about right to me.’

  ‘Thirty per cent!’ Jim’s face was beetroot red. ‘Are you fucking insane!’

  ‘That’s my negotiation point, Jim. I’m all ears if you change your mind.’ Martina made a note in her diary and turned serenely back to her computer screen, dismissing him. Jim had the strange and distinctly unpleasant sensation that he had been outwitted by a female. It d
idn’t make any sense to him at all.

  ‘Are you a dyke, are you?’ he snarled. Martina laughed. Did this vain little cocksucker really think she would put herself in the line of prosecution for so little while he waltzed off with over two hundred grand? She was used to being underestimated by men, but for fuck’s sake. It was time to let him know how things really stood. She swivelled to face him again.

  ‘Me? No. But several of my good friends at ICAC are.’

  Jim’s mouth made some unfamiliar shapes.

  ‘You really are a piece of fucking work, aren’t you?’ he finally spat, rage mingling with a horrified new-found respect. Martina tilted her head back at her screen.

  ‘Well, I’d say at least thirty per cent of me is,’ she agreed.

  Jim flung her door open, and stalked outside. As he slammed the sliding door to the street, a blast of hot December afternoon hit Kylie, sending her reeling.

  ‘It’s like a pizza oven out there,’ she observed, dying to ask Martina what the story was and suss out who was winning the fight.

  ‘Whose funeral is it?’ Martina called from her desk. ‘Must be important to get buggerlugs into a suit.’ Jim never wore anything but moleskins, elastic-sided boots and blue cockie’s shirts. The country uniform made the farmers feel relaxed, and the city people feel like they were in valuable communion with some kind of deeply authentic Australia. People are so very fucking stupid, Martina reflected.

  ‘It’s at St Michael’s. I think one of the Aboriginal Elders died.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Forgot my coffee,’ said Jim, returning just long enough to snatch up his World’s Best Dad travel cup with a glare at Martina. ‘This fucking heat’s trying to kill me. Kyles, get some iced coffee in, will ya!’

  ‘Will do. And whose funeral is it?’