Too Much Lip

by Melissa Lucashenko

  ~

  ‘What about Jiminy Cricket then?’ she asked her mother, expertly twisting the end of a newly rolled spliff. Pretty Mary sweated on the veranda in a pink singlet, stripping her weaving grasses and worrying about the power bill. Elvis hovered near the foot of the back stairs, waiting to relive his golden age when he was fast enough to nab a pullet before Pretty Mary’s wrath fell on his head. Elvis had slowed with age, but then so had Pretty Mary. This question of speed was a constant equation in his doggy mind. While Elvis waited patiently for the exact moment, he raised a hind leg against the passionfruit vine growing on the sunny side of the back shed. Kerry made a face and thrust aside the unwashed purple fruit she had collected earlier.

  ‘’E got brain damage from that accident, poor fella,’ Pretty Mary mused, getting ready to throw her weaving water on Elvis if he got just one step closer to her speckled favourite.

  ‘What!’ Kerry spat out coffee from where she sat cross-legged on the bare wooden boards. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since his accident.’ Her mother seemed unnaturally calm about it. ‘When Matty Nunne first bred him—’

  ‘Matty Nunne bred him? What? Buckley?’

  ‘Jim? No!’ Pretty Mary screwed up her face. ‘Which way! When Matt Nunne had Elvis as a pup, and he run under the tractor. That’s how come we ended up with him, damaged goods, see …’ Both women laughed, and Kerry was pleased for her mistake. Laughter had been in short supply since the hearse drove out of the church gates. Having Pop on top of the kitchen cupboard in a grey plastic container put a bit of a dampener on things. ‘Mind you …’ Pretty Mary reconsidered, measuring grass stalks as she drew them out of the soaking basin. She sighed at their inadequacy. ‘I do wonder about Jim …’

  ‘Buckley’s not brain damaged, he’s just plain evil, the dirty thieving dog.’ Kerry remembered another agenda item. ‘Whaddya want for your birthday, Mum? How about a run over to Westville, go see Aunty Tall Mary mob?’ Pretty Mary had been partly raised on the Westville mission with Aunty Tall Mary, the mother of Doris and Helen; they were classed as family.

  ‘Oh, no bub, just leave it,’ Pretty Mary winced. By a hideous coincidence, her birthday fell in the same week as Donna’s. The coming month of March was purely something to survive.

  ‘Mum.’ Kerry wasn’t giving up.

  ‘I hear Doris is back on the ice too, she’s buggered off from rehab and gorn proper silly,’ Pretty Mary added, clinching her refusal. ‘And Jamey boy bin go hospital, for his epilepsy, and you know Uncle Tony in Kyogle, well his oldest daughter, Sjaan, the one with the twins? Well, you remember how she got that good job with the Koori Mail—’

  ‘Shit, that’s no good ’bout Doris. But you’re not gonna get away with doing nothing,’ Kerry told her, interrupting what threatened to become a three-hour gossip sesh about the doings of the Kyogle and Westville and Toowoomba mobs. ‘It’s a big deal making it to sixty-five, hey Ken?’ she called inside. ‘And sissy woulda been, what, thirty-five, too.’

  ‘She is thirty-five!’ said Pretty Mary vehemently. She had never let go the scant thread of hope that her daughter wasn’t lying in a shallow bush grave.

  ‘Bloody oath,’ Ken agreed, reaching into the workings of the busted loo, hauling the wire up and holding it high to flush the cistern. He wandered out, wiping his hands on his shorts. ‘Let’s get a keg and a pig on a spit and get the old joint hopping again. Speaking of joint—’ He gestured to Kerry, and she handed over her spliff of homegrown bush. Ken drew back hard and shortened it by an inch.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Pretty Mary said insincerely, accepting the joint off Ken before turning to Kerry. ‘Listen. I wanna go over to the coast, bub,’ she said. ‘These reeds is too short. I dreamed last night we went and got some nice long ones from Sandy Beach. Look—’ Pretty Mary lifted an asymmetrical basket and handed it to Kerry. There was no denying the shape was off. Mum could spin a good yarn with the tarot and come home three hundred bucks to the good, but turning a profit off wonky fruit bowls was a different story.

  ‘Sandy Beach? It’ll take a full tank.’ Kerry was dubious.

  ‘I’ll take the bike for a run,’ offered Ken, grinning broadly.

  ‘No, ya fucking won’t,’ Kerry said, dropping her eyelids and making a mental note to hide her keys. ‘What’s wrong with plain river reeds, Mum?’

  No, Pretty Mary insisted, growing peevish. Was Kerry deaf, she’d had a dream. A trip to Sandy Beach was required, and the trip needed to happen while the moon was still waxing, too. Kerry swore quietly at the chickens. Since the funeral, Pretty Mary was increasingly anxious about making decisions if her dreams, or the cards, or the myriad signs from the birds and animals were against it. It was a wonder she ever left the veranda.

  ‘The Harley’s nearly as thirsty as the car,’ Kerry said, remembering that her mother was still waiting on funeral money. A trip to the coast might be just the ticket to get her across the threshold of Sphincterlink. ‘We may as well take the Falcon, eh. Make a real go of it and clean up at the Channon next week.’

  ‘I was gonna fix them brakes tomorrow too,’ Ken said, inspired by the yarndi to start putting his life in order. He was a man with plans, big plans.

  ‘Aw, deadly!’ Kerry said, pretending to believe in him. ‘You got them parts?’

  ‘Not till I get paid Friday,’ Ken told her, no shame. ‘Wanna sling us a hundred in the meantime?’

  Kerry snorted. Ever since Ken had assumed control of Pop’s Ubet account he was biting hard for gambling price, morning, noon and night.

  ‘Do I look like an ATM, brother? Hit Chris up, he’s working,’ she suggested, and Ken went back inside in disgust. Pretty Mary cackled. Gotta get Mum some hair dye on payday, Kerry thought. That regrowth’s bloody shocking.

  ‘Now, what about your birthday, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll see,’ her mother muttered, hoping the idea would be dropped. ‘So long as I get me grasses.’

  ‘We’ll go soon,’ Kerry promised her, turning the wonky basket in her hands. The lomandra fibres felt good. Strong. Natural. Perhaps she should take up weaving. Get all cultural and that.

  ‘What’s the lingo again?’ she asked her mother, putting the basket down.

  ‘Dhili,’ Pretty Mary said wistfully. ‘Granny Ava always used to say, “Yan bulloon, granddaughter, go river, and fetch me punyarra dhili, pretty ones.”’

  ‘Aw, solid,’ Kerry said. Granny Ava was the link: the last heathen of the family to speak the lingo fluently, before the Church waltzed in and jammed the Lord’s Prayer in Granny Ruth’s twelve-year-old mouth instead.

  ‘Granny only sat still if she had something in her hands,’ Pretty Mary went on. ‘We’d be under her tree for hours, jalum bira, and weaving our dhili.’ A picture entered Kerry’s head of herself and Pretty Mary sat on the veranda in a few years. The fuzzy white caterpillar at the centre of her mum’s scalp had grown out, making her entire head snowy white. Kerry’s dark curls reached to her waist. Ken had fucked off somewhere, rehab with any luck, and she and her mother had built themselves a castle of woven-grass baskets, were working away inside it like two old spider women. They didn’t leave home much; instead rich white people came to them, proffering copious hundred-dollar bills for their precious work. They were renowned far and wide as the famous hermit weavers of Durrongo—

  Jesus wept, Kerry thought in sudden horror, I’m turning into a fucking old-age pensioner. She leaped to her feet and hurled the butt of the spliff down to the gravel where it sent up a tiny smoke signal. SOS! I’m trapped here, turning into my mother, attention all ships at sea. Action, Kerry thought, bracing her hands on the railing and channelling Ken. Girl, ya gotta bloody take action. Either go back to Trinder Park onetime, or stay and do something, anything, to stop Jim Buckley. Or you’ll wake up before you know it with a big ugly prison plonked fair and square on Granny’s river bend. But how to organise a campaign w
ith nothing in the fridge or the bank or the petrol tank?

  ‘We can get your dhili tomorrow, and then go see Centrelink, find out about that funeral pay, eh?’ Kerry said. She clapped her hands down hard onto the railing.

  Pretty Mary’s expression shifted rapidly during the course of this last sentence, from joyous to pained. ‘Centrelink,’ she said sourly. ‘I don’t wanna go see them mob. Standover merchants! On the phone for nearly two blooming hours and then it cuts out! Now I got no pay ’n no credit! Person could starve to death for all they care!’

  ‘I know, Mum,’ Kerry reassured her, ‘but it’s thousands ya get for funerals, biggest bungoo.’ Personally, she thought Ken had it all over Centrelink in the standover department, but Pretty Mary flew into a rage if Kerry dared criticise him lately. For all Uncle Richard’s pronouncements at the funeral, all his praising up of Black Superman as the heir apparent, inside Pretty Mary’s four walls Ken was very clearly the new boss.

  The day before flying south Black Superman had handed Kerry an envelope with six hundred dollars in it. ‘Make sure Mum gets the benefit,’ he told her, ‘and not the bloody TAB. I’ll send the same next month.’

  ‘Shit, I’ll be long gone by then, bruz.’ Kerry recoiled. Black Superman had just nodded and pressed her hand down onto the envelope. That had been a fortnight ago, and the bungoo had quickly dwindled to a single blue ten left in her wallet. One rates bill, two tanks of juice, one overnight trip to retrieve some clothes from Trinder Park, and the odd six-pack to keep Ken happy.

  ‘I’ll talk for you at Centrelink, if you want,’ Kerry offered. Pretty Mary remained subdued, her earlier laughter wiped away.

  ‘I still got this bad pain,’ she muttered, holding her belly. ‘I can’t be going Centrelink with this pain.’

  ‘Well, you wanna go doctor?’ Kerry asked impatiently.

  ‘I just want some decent grasses,’ Pretty Mary erupted. ‘Not a birthday party, not Centrelink, not doctor! Grasses! How do you lot expect me to go bury Pop in a plastic blooming can, like an old bitta rubbish! Like he was nobody! I just want to do right by him! I promised ya father when I married him that I’d always do right by Pop and that’s what I’m gonna do, by jingo!’

  ‘Okay, okay, keep ya hair on. We’ll go get em tomorrow. And maybe we can do Patto market this weekend. I’m down to the bones of me arse.’ Kerry stomped her way inside to sweep the kitchen out and start dinner. No wonder the culture taught you to respect your Elders and treat them well no matter what bullshit they served up. There’d be the biggest bloody spate of mass murders if it didn’t.

  ‘Shout us a six-pack, sis,’ Ken said automatically, looking up from the lounge where he was texting an entry to win a brand new Toyota Yaris. ‘Pay ya back Friday.’

  ‘Kingilawanna! Finished! I got nothing!’ Kerry told him, throwing her hands up in annoyance. ‘Mum’s drained me for petrol price. You heard her.’

  ‘Ya had big bungoo in ya hand Monday,’ Ken argued.

  ‘Paid the rates, didn’t I, Einstein?’ Kerry raised her voice. ‘And went and got dog food and groceries and juhm since then. Never mind what’s in my hand, brother, how about you chuck some bungoo this way. And how do you fucking know what I’ve got in me hand anyway? Fuck me!’

  For the first time in years she simply ignored Ken’s outrage, and reached for the broom.

  ~

  ‘You mob ready or what?’ Pretty Mary called from the Falcon, noticing with displeasure that the lawn was now high enough to cover the rusted base of the chicken coop.

  ‘Hold ya horses!’ Kerry yelled, as she manoeuvred Donny’s heavy wooden tallboy back into position. She’d grabbed her wallet from beneath it.

  ‘Last chance for a trip to the coast,’ she told Ken on her way through, knowing he wouldn’t take her up on the offer. He was shaved and showered and waiting for Savannah. They were having lunch at the pub now that his ban was finally lifted.

  ‘Definitely no need for you lot to hurry home,’ he grinned.

  ‘Whatever. Just keep them fucking rugrats of hers away from my bike.’ Kerry ran down the stairs, scooped up an unsuspecting Elvis and chucked him through the back window onto Donny’s lap. Donny hollered. Elvis trampled on the lad’s privates as he did ecstatic laps of the back seat, spraying dog spittle far and wide.

  ‘Aunty Kerry!’ Donny wailed, shoving Elvis off and bending forward in agony.

  ‘Why shouldn’t the El-Dog have some fun too?’ Kerry grinned, hopping into the driver’s seat and sliding her wallet beneath it. She steered towards the coast while Pretty Mary cranked up the volume on the CD player. Only two of the car’s four speakers worked, but it was enough to hear Uncle Archie singing over the top of Elvis barking. Sensual Being was finishing for the second time as they pulled in at the Sandy Beach lagoon. The water rippled under a light breeze, shining brilliant sapphire blue, and there were a couple of smoking hot chicks on stand-up paddle boards. Kerry eyed them with great interest. A Goorie wouldn’t be dead for quids.

  ‘Look at them lovely big dhilla,’ beamed Pretty Mary, taking her scissors out of her handbag. She smiled, thought Kerry, realising in astonishment how long it had been since she’d seen her mother looking really happy.

  ‘I’m going in,’ she said, ripping her shirt off and straightaway feeling her skin heat up beneath the blinding summer sun. ‘Coming?’

  ‘Yeeaaaggghh!’ screamed Donny, running with his arms raised along the water’s edge, where fine white sand bore the tracks of a dozen different bird species. Elvis ran barking beside him all the way. In revenge for being trampled, Donny tossed him into the lake. Elvis began struggling towards the sandy edge, only his head visible. Pretty Mary tutted from the passenger seat.

  ‘Watch he don’t drown, Donny!’ she called fearfully. ‘You know he womba.’

  ‘Elvis … has left … the shoreline,’ Donny turned and announced, being Uncle David Attenborough. He had the Pommy voice down real good, complete with breathy pauses. ‘But soon … the canine … will be making his way … back to the vehicle … where he will endeavour to urinate … upon the clothing … and the possessions … of his entire clan.’

  Kerry cackled loudly and fell backwards into the lagoon, letting the sweet balm of fresh water flow over her hair and into her ears and up her nose. Donny was talking, joking, even eating a bit, lately. Mum had smiled. Ken was two hours away in Durrongo with someone else to annoy, and everything felt like it might – by some miracle – actually work out okay.

  Chapter Seven

  Three days later Kerry pulled up outside the Patto market. She loved the markets. From when she was young they had been an astonishing oasis in the rank shithole that was Durrongo Shire, where the goss about who was doing what sexual favours for whose husband or father or boyfriend was what passed for entertainment. Before the markets, one particularly dismal Sunday afternoon had lasted for about fifty or sixty years. With the rest of the town at the footy, Kerry had wandered the empty streets. The most interesting thing to look at – the only change she could discern in Patto from the previous Sunday – was a stray cat in a gutter, surrounded by brown autumn leaves. The poor thing was properly finished up – kaput, finito – its dark fur ragged and its dead eyes beginning to pucker. When she poked it with her toe it was as stiff as a bit of wood. To eleven-year-old Kerry, the dead cat came to stand for Patto, and all that her life there was ever likely to be. Then the wonder of the markets had arrived, and the thrill of discovering people who talked about things other than the pub and the footy and the rain gauge had never quite gone away. But the markets would have a job to work their charm on her today. Allie’s sister had rung two hours ago to ask her to collect her remaining gear from Trinder Park; her bedroom had just been given to a homeless Elder, and oh by the way, love had blossomed in B block. Allie had a new partner, a Wakka Wakka sistergirl from Morayfield, and there was a brand new fist-shaped hole in the wall beside Ke
rry’s pillow.

  Kerry pocketed her phone and went in. Go left at the ginger beer stall, Ken had said, and it’s on the slope just below the German-sausage wagon. When she heard German sausage, Kerry’s mouth had begun to water. As starving kids they had stood in front of the wagon with its sizzling pans, wishing they had the bungoo to do more than drool. Sometimes the wagon owner would sling them a burnt snag for free; occasionally tourists would take pity and offer to shout. Black Superman was too proud, and Kerry far too wary, but Donna would gammon light up every time, saying ooh yes please, even to the disgusting white men whose eyes slid all over you like you were naked. Who cares, Donna would laugh as she distributed the bounty, for German sausages they can look all they want. A few years later, Kerry realised that the shit talk at school about Donna’s six-pack head jobs might have been true, after all.

  She felt the coins in her jeans pocket as she made her way miserably around the footy oval at the centre of the market. She’d rather starve than have to talk to them ones again, the dirty white dogs. Even the sight of them made her sick. And fuck Allie, too! Doing dumbarse crime and getting pinched. Hooking up with a shiny new fuckbuddy after, what, three months? So much for undying love, yeah right. It was time she changed the wallpaper on her phone. Made it a picture of the Hog, or maybe Donny.

  It was true, of course, that Kerry was one tiny slip, one RBT or traffic check, away from the lockup herself, but that was theory, not fact. And the longer she stayed over the border the less worried she was. The New South Wales gunjies pretty much stuck to Byron and Lismore and Casino, the bigger towns where they could fish more easily to meet their monthly ticket quotas. Places like Durrongo were almost expected to police themselves. And because Ken had laid down the law at the pub – no fucken ice in my town, boys – Durrongo mostly did. A bit of small-time pot dealing and half a dozen girlfriends nursing black eyes and busted arms didn’t rate as a reason for the authorities to raise a sweat. Luke Chin drank at the Durrongo pub on Thursday nights but he didn’t often come by in uniform. Some things didn’t change in a hurry.