Luck in the Greater West

by Damian McDonald

  —Sonja, the female cop said, shifting her chair to engage her. Are you okay?

  —Yes. I’m okay.

  —Are you a relative? Or family friend? the cop asked Whitey.

  —Um, yeah, a friend.

  The male cop got up. And hitched his heavy belt.

  —And what’s your name, sir?

  —Patrick. White.

  —Let’s just step outside, sir.

  Just outside the door, which the cop closed, Whitey was already missing Sonja’s smell.

  —How do you know Sonja, mate?

  —I’m her friend.

  —How long have you known her?

  —A while. A month. Or two.

  —And your address?

  —Here. In Brunei Court.

  —Why don’t we go up to your place, have a talk there.

  On the way up to his flat, Whitey again felt something familiar and foreign. He’d been through this shit before with the cops. But Sonja hadn’t. Should he lie? He’d never worried about lying to the cops before. Or keeping things to himself. What would Sonja keep to herself?

  There was also the cold familiarity of incarceration. Or at least the familiarity of dealing with people trained to treat you as incarcerated.

  They stood in his flat.

  —Do you have some ID here somewhere, mate?

  —Yeah. Licence.

  —What happened to Sonja last night?

  —She was with me.

  —Do you know her mother was unaware of Sonja staying out last night?

  —No. Well yeah, I guess.

  —Are you having a relationship with Sonja?

  —I guess.

  —Sexual?

  —I’m her boyfriend.

  —And how old do you believe Sonja to be?

  —She’s a teenager.

  —Yes, she’s a teenager. And you’re how old, sir?

  Whitey looked at his sink. With the two coffee cups in it. He didn’t answer.

  —I’ll just have to check your ID down at the car, mate. Stay here for a while, okay, we’ll come and have a word with you shortly.

  The flat was raw. Concrete walls. Sink. It smelt only of himself. Sonja had taken her scent home with her. Whitey smoked a few cigarettes. Drank tap water. Both cops came back, and told him that Sonja and her mother had decided to leave things the way they were now, with Sonja staying at her mother’s place. Whitey was not to go over there and to avoid any further contact with the Marmeladovs. No charges would be pressed. The constables were aware that Patrick White had recently done some time.

  —It would be a good idea to stay well away, the male cop advised him. The girl could get you into trouble.

  Whitey went out for a walk. There was too much of that imprisoned feeling growing. You learn to live basically when you’re in prison. You take some solace in it. But this was complex. A complex stripping of liberties. Nevertheless, it brought back his sentence. He’d been able to not think about it, to move forward. Because of Sonja. But now it came flooding back.

  You have the basics in jail. Water. Shelter. Food. Company. The taps are like outdoor domestic ones. But stronger, and unbreakable by hand. And the water tastes like a garden tap’s: tinny — flavoured by the corroding pipes. The thick walls only let in a faint, filtered figment of the elements. And though removed of choice and taste, the food was looked forward to. And you could talk. And bullshit. Or confess. Or listen, and try to work out what was bullshit. Whitey had tried, in his first few weeks inside, to think that things could be worse. He could have been destitute, or dying slowly and painfully. But it was best not to look for comparisons. Or to think too much about anything. Especially time. The way he’d been made to pay. It was an experience that would one day be over — gone with the accompanying slice of his life. Things could only be worse if he was serving more time, like most of the other guys in there. So he kept this thought to himself and watched the other guys, without looking, or being seen to look. Whitey was thankfully excused, because of his short term there, from the bulk of the politics. There were networks of hatred. Allies. Dogs. Cunts. But they did all live together. Mostly the hatred just simmered. And mostly it was misdirected. True enemies existed outside the walls of H Block.

  These bricks of memory began to mesh and set with the present. So he walked and tried to direct his mind into another stream. He hadn’t drunk or smoked pot or had any speed while in jail. He hadn’t really missed it either. There were drugs in there, but Whitey couldn’t afford them, and no one had offered to blow him out. He’d have to be careful now, if he was going to play along with this new imprisonment, as he’d be under surveillance now. Sonja’s gone. Drugs’ll have to go, for a while, he thought. Or I’ll have to move. Because the cops, he knew, wouldn’t look away for long this time.

  He did want Sonja though. And really, he was prepared to defy law and family to be with her. It all depended on her.

  They both cried when she turned up later that afternoon. They cried and hugged in the kitchenette. Until Whitey broke from her, and wiped his face with his T-shirt.

  —So, he said.

  —I’m going to stay here, with you.

  —The cops’ll come and get you.

  —My mum won’t call them. She hates them. They weren’t very nice to her before we got there this morning. She hates them anyway. So does my dad. They always have, I think. She says I made her desperate though. Now she knows where I am, she won’t call them.

  —What did your dad say?

  —He doesn’t know. Mum isn’t going to tell him. Until he’s better. Until he comes home.

  —So you’re mum’s just letting you?

  —Well, I won’t be seeing her anymore.

  —What do you mean?

  —She said to make a choice. If I thought I was old enough to have a boyfriend, I was old enough to make a choice. Between her and you. And I’m here, Patrick.

  —Fuck.

  —That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for, she said.

  —No. No, not a bad fuck, I mean, you know, it’s heavy, but I love you. You know.

  —So. Can I stay?

  They hugged and kissed and had sex in the kitchenette, Whitey pulling her close to get her scent on him. Because each inward breath that caught her scent excluded everything in the world but her, and his immediacy with her.

  After, they lay on his mattress, Sonja with her head on Whitey’s chest. Home and Away was on, but it was just providing a perfect half-light.

  —What about your family, Patrick, you’ve never mentioned any of them once. Tell me about them.

  —I don’t talk to ’em. Well, haven’t for years. I think maybe we don’t care for each other, at least not the way your family cares about you.

  —Tell me why.

  Whitey’s dad had been a long-haul truck-driver. Sydney to Melbourne, Sydney to Cobar, Sydney to Brisbane. Sydney to anywhere on the eastern side of Australia — some of the destinations sounded more like they were in Africa, or India. Whitey knew the names of places even his primary school teachers hadn’t heard of. It was cool when his dad would bring one of the rigs home. The cabin — it wasn’t anything like a car up there; it was like the control room from that show on the telly, Time Tunnel. And the dog-box in the back — Whitey had asked if they could put one on the side of the house and he’d have it as his bedroom. He’d gone on a couple of trips with his dad, but it was really only exciting for the first few hours; then Whitey would wish he was back at home, out in the yard, or riding his beat-up old BMX. His dad would wish Whitey was back at home too.

  —Ya doin’ me head in with that bloody moanin’, kid. Put a sock in it, hey.

  But really, Whitey didn’t see much of his dad other than when he’d come home for a few days every couple of months. And the house would change when he was there. Whitey would be shocked to see this man, his dad, walk out of his mum’s bedroom, or out of the toilet. And Whitey and his little sister would lose their mum while Dad was there. Instead of bein
g the mother, she’d be more like another child — playing up to Dad, acting a bit silly, giggling, and spending too long in the bedroom with him. But then his dad would leave again, for Gunnedah, or the Glasshouse Mountains, and Whitey’s mum was back for him and his sister.

  He couldn’t remember ever really getting in trouble from his mum. Couple of times for letting the dog maul the towels on the line or for teasing his sister. But life was calm and uncomplicated until that morning; or maybe it just seemed that way looking back because of how everything slid into a different world from then on.

  His mum had just gotten them up for school. Whitey was in the toilet, and hadn’t even heard the phone ring. But he heard his mum scream. Or howl. And he knew. He was only ten. But he knew. Dad was dead. Killed flying down the highway in his time tunnel.

  His mum had held it together at the funeral, at which Whitey and his sister had had to wear clothes borrowed from the neighbours, and he was surprised because seeing the coffin — his big dad in that small box — made him spurt out sobs where he hadn’t felt the need to cry at all until then. But really, from the moment they got back home after the strange party at his auntie’s house, Whitey’s mum was changed. The fussiness over every little grain of dust that used to drive him nuts dissipated. And the mash potatoes were watery, or were really just that: mashed potatoes — no milk, no butter, no salt. And sometimes it was just Weet-Bix for dinner. And then, a few months after the funeral, the migraines. His mum would be crawling — like that chameleon lizard he’d seen on telly — down the hallway, and vomiting and groaning in a voice so low it was like a man’s. And then she’d be in bed. And she wouldn’t move or answer when they’d ask if she was okay.

  But one day she got a job at the doctor’s as a receptionist. She was there at home when they went to school, but she wouldn’t get home until after eight in the evenings. She’d never taught Whitey to cook, but he’d had to learn. And he learnt pretty quickly, although he couldn’t manage more than one thing at a time. So they’d have sausages or mash potatoes, or chops or chips. One night Whitey burned the frozen shepherd’s pie to a cinder, so he and his sister had a cup of white sugar each for dinner.

  By the time he was in high school, his younger-by-six-years sister was starting to give him the shits. She was so clingy. He had to cook, listen to her talk about this and that girl at school, and explain every little thing about everything they were watching on the telly. Sometimes he’d just take off on his bike, cruise around, and go lie on the cool grass up at the local sports oval.

  Soon he was meeting up with kids from school and smoking pot with them, and not long after he got a job at Hedda’s café cleaning up after the old ladies, and was able to buy enough pot to sell. He moved out of home one night without telling either his mother or sister. He slept on people’s lounges or on mates’ bedroom floors. He knew, even back then, that it was a cowardly thing to just piss off like that, but time soon filled in the feeling with a numbness, and it was two years before he had any contact with his mother or sister.

  It was his sister’s birthday. It was a date he always remembered, so he turned up at the house. It was as if they were expecting him. They didn’t act surprised at all. Just said hi, let him in. They were having a barbecue, some of his sister’s school friends were there, and Whitey offered to cook. Towards the end of the last batch of snags his sister came up to him.

  —Happy birthday, he said.

  —Thanks.

  —I didn’t bring you a present. Sorry.

  —Thought not.

  Whitey hadn’t even thought of a present, until he’d seen that there was a table with several gift-wrapped CDs and books.

  —I think I’ve got some money if you want.

  He had a single ten in his pocket, which she took.

  And when he was leaving — he would have to walk, as he now had no bus fare — his mother grabbed his forearm.

  —We knew you weren’t dead. We’re just waitin’ for the call though.

  Whitey didn’t know what to feel after that. They were his family, but he treated them, and they treated him, like a former neighbour or less. That was the last time he’d seen them. He’d wondered, while in jail, if they knew he was there. But he hadn’t even thought of them until now. Until Sonja had asked him.

  He held Sonja, and hoped that she’d never leave him the way he’d left his family.

  SIXTEEN

  Dad’s a fuckin’ loser, Abdullah thought. Lives by all those rules; rules that don’t apply to life. Like the religion. All that devotion. Devotion to things outside your life. Putting things first, things you can’t see or grab hold of. And all those rules at work. Keeping your mouth shut. Dealing with cunts all day. And Aussie bosses telling you about policies and that shit. Dad loves all that shit. And expects me to too. Disappointed in me, his own fuckin’ son. He’s the one who told us how, when he first came to Australia, the Aussies would spit on him at the bus stop, and the factory bosses would tell him they don’t employ bloody Arabs. Well, he can have the fuckin’ railways. And Allah. My cousins are the fuckin’ lucky ones in my family. Their parents realise how wrong all these big-headed arseholes and sluts are. Mum and Dad say we’re all lucky to be here, things are good here. Dad puts up with it. The Aussies looking down on him, sweeping their crap up off the station. Not Abdullah. I’m going to be like my cousins and uncle, he thought, as he drove to their house to have a smoke with his cousin Yift. No Aussies are going to look down their stubby noses at me, no sluts are going to laugh at me, tell me there’s no way they’d touch a Leb.

  Abdullah was born in Australia. As was his sister three years later. His parents had emigrated as refugees, with Yift’s parents, in the 1970s after their whole town collapsed from Israeli shelling. Abdullah’s father had told him how he and his brothers had helped the Hezbollah — clearing the roads for them, feeding them and giving them water. And how he’d seen corpses left like animal pelts to evaporate in the sun. How he’d seen a friend of his from the town, dragging his severed leg by a still-attached rope of flesh. Abdullah loved to hear the stories. But his father was sparse with them. So was his uncle. But where his father had left war behind for good, Abdullah’s uncle had identified the war going on here, in this shithole country. Not a blatant war with ordnance and jet-bombers, but one where the Aussies, like the Jews, had all the backing, and the Lebs were the freedom-fighters. The Aussies had the pigs and the politicians on their side, but the Lebs had the courage, and the history of war. The Aussies tried to keep you down with their rules and laws suited to their backward Christian ways; made you talk all English with a stupid skip accent, made you stay in school and learn their stupid Abo history, and the blondie, tarted-up girls avoided or just laughed at you. Abdullah’s uncle and cousin had both done time. Attempted murder and possession with intent to sell. They never talked about it. Abdullah didn’t know the whole story. But it impressed him, and it impressed his mates even more.

  Back when he was a little kid, Abdullah and his sister had attended a primary school in the western suburbs because his mother was a cleaner there. His cousins and all his friends had gone to school in the area they lived in, in the Arabic precinct of Punchbowl in south-western Sydney. Abdullah and his sister were the only Lebanese kids in their school. There were some Turks, but they were Christians, and snobs. There were a couple of boys that Abdullah made friends with, David and Thomas, but, although they were friendly, they were also bookish, and would talk about things Abdullah would get lost in, like some stupid novel they were reading, or that dragons and dragons game or whatever it was, and they’d laugh when he’d try to chip in on a conversation. Eventually they became enemies, like everyone else there, after he jobbed David for teasing him about his bum-fluff moustache that was starting to grow.

  Abdullah could handle the boys — they were all scared of him by Year 4 — but the girls baffled him. They’d giggle and flitter around David and Thomas and the other boys, but avoid even eye contact with Abdullah. Some
days they’d be hysterically laughing and falling about each other at recess, but then crying their eyes out at lunch. Abdullah’s sister, his cousins, none of the girls from his area were like that. They were quiet and gentle, and he never saw them display their emotions as though they were actors on a soap opera; and never engaged in the games with boys that these girls did. There were two he really liked though: Jillian and Liz. Jillian had thick, dark hair, and her dark eyes were even darker because of her milky skin. Liz was blonde, and all the boys liked her. The girls never talked to him, and often moved when he sat next to them. One lunchtime though, when he was in Year 6, Abdullah’s sister came to him and told him that Alison, the little sister of one of the girls in Abdullah’s class, had told her that Liz had a crush on him, and if he asked her out, she’d go with him. Abdullah thought about nothing else for the rest of the week. And over the weekend convinced himself to ask her out. On Monday at recess, he went up to Liz where she was sitting on the benches outside the girls’ toilets with her friends.

  —Can I talk to ya? he asked her.

  —Um, why? she said.

  —Just wanna aks ya something.

  She laughed, but said —Well, go, I’m not stopping you.

  —Um, would you like to go out with me?

  —Go out? With you?

  —Yeah.

  —Yuck! She burst into laughter, and her friends followed. Other kids heard and scuffed over to see what was so funny.

  —But my sister told me you liked me, he whined, anger and nausea boiling up in him.

  —Your sister’s a woggy freak like you. As if. Keep away. Please, Liz said, and the swelling group laughed, and Abdullah just wanted to cut sick and thrash out with arms and legs and make pies out of their stupid skip heads. But he went up to the back of the sports oval and sat with his back against the football posts. He found out later that week that it had been a set-up. And he’d gone for it like the dog they thought he was.

  He hated Liz then. He just wanted to bash her. She was ugly. And fake. And a slut for all her Aussie boys. Jillian he fell more in love with. But he would never talk to her. He would never talk to any of the bitches here. But he would fantasise. He’d dream of getting Jillian alone. Just the two of them. Lifting her skirt. Seeing her undies. Pushing her down. Lying on top of her. Pinning her down. Making her love him for his strength. And then leaving her half-naked, or fully naked, and letting everyone see her how she was. Weak and small, and defenceless without her confidence he’d so easily overcome. And she would want him. Because no one else would like her. But back in the reality of Plumpton Primary, everyone loved Jillian and hated Abdullah — whispering and snickering and carrying on in that language and manner that had always eluded him.