Who Sings for Lu?

by Alan Duff

  Fuck, she was ugly.

  ‘What, you turn up out of the blue, wearing flash clothes you must’ve pinched or bought stolen, hair flashed up like a girl’s, all them spikes and yellow streaks, a ring in your ear. Gidday, Mum. Goodbye, Mum. Kiss my arse, Mum. See you in another six years, Mum. Yer own mother?’

  ‘Not like that, Mum. Just been away for so long I’m not used to it.’

  He looked at his siblings — assuming they were all siblings, might be a couple of faces he didn’t recognise were friends-of — who were pleading in their otherwise blank eyes he stay but, he knew, only to add some excitement, only to hope he hung around long enough to see the old man come home and fireworks to start — more like a fuckin’ bomb go off. That was why he called at this hour, middle of the afternoon, knowing the old man would be out drinking — did it on impulse, not planning, more out visiting Daysh’s grave. But he wasn’t stupid. Just mistaken.

  ‘But I will call again — soon.’

  ‘Sure. I waited the first seven years. Can wait another seven. See ya later then. Give my love to your mother — oh, that’s right. You don’t have one of those. Or you did but you forgot her.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Nah, mate. Piss off. You can’t just turn up and disappear in two minutes flat. G’won. Take a hike.’

  ‘Are you me brother?’ one asked, aged about thirteen, same age as when Jason had done his runner.

  Looking at the kid with his own blankness — till the name came. Jason grinned, held out a hand to slap. ‘Nathan, right?’ Shit did the kid smile. Handsome little critter too.

  ‘Yeah! You got it!’ Grabbed his big brother’s hand and gave it a strong boy’s shake. ‘How ya goin’?’

  ‘I’m goin’ good.’

  ‘No he isn’t,’ his mother said. ‘He’s just plain goin’ — for good. Aren’t you, boy? You’re goin’ for good this time, I reckon.’

  She turned to the rest of her brood.

  ‘Don’t be saying gidday to him, you’re wasting your time, he’ll be gone in a sec. Scram. Don’t be setting eyes on him ever again.’

  But they were all smiling and winking at their long-lost, even as their mother swept them back inside that place the prodigal son had run from.

  Her hand went up to the door. ‘Not today, thanks. Even if I wanted one and could afford it, I wouldn’t be buyin’ nothin’ from the likes of you.’

  And she slammed the door, but not before Nathan and the smallest one ducked out. Stood there staring in awe at Jason. ‘See ya later, mate,’ Nathan said. ‘Reckon I might be joining you one day.’

  Going down that same broken footpath Jason flicked flies from his eyes drawn by, it must be, the tearing up. Not supposed to happen like this. It was a last-minute, almost spontaneous decision.

  He knew sets of eyes would be on his back but not hers, his mother’s: she’d be in the kitchen, a beer out from the fridge and him as today’s excuse for a drink to relax her, sit at that cracked Formica-top table with her sulking expression as she sucked back piss. Shit, she looked in bad health. Needed to lose weight. One good thing about living your teen years mean, it made you lean, and even when things got better you still didn’t pig out in case it was just a dream, a fantasy born of wanting the impossible.

  Daysh was the impossible. Poor Daysh. Why did she go in that car with that speed junkie? She wasn’t fucking him was she?

  Well if you were, he’s in a wheelchair now and you’re dead. Please don’t let it be that you were. You almost saved me, Daysh. Thought we might go places together. Meeting Rocky and hearing his broader take on life, we even dared to talk about renting our own pad, and one day you said how good it would be to live in a house you owned, no landlord to answer to, hike your rent, kick you out for making a noise. ‘We could make all the noise we wanted, Jay.’ Yeah, we sure could.

  Put pace in his walk to leave the thoughts behind — and his mother and her kids, siblings sure, but he felt little or maybe nothing except for Nathan. Poor fucker, growing up there. I should’ve grabbed him and he could come live with me. Jeezuz, Mum, you could’ve at least smiled. Shit, this neighbourhood sux. He couldn’t wait to get back to the company of his mates.

  Pulled out his mobile. Gave Lu a call.

  Chapter four

  Cocks, her whole remembered life: her mind was filled with cocks wanting to possess her. The subject on Lu’s mind after visiting Rocky at Long Bay Prison. Grim place it was, more the inmates and how loud and proud of themselves they were, like her worst customers, no idea of themselves.

  ‘Wankers near every one of ’em,’ was Rocky’s take on his fellow residents. ‘Gonna put my head down and do me time. Though God help the man who tries me on.’

  A cock put Rocky in there. Forcing itself into a young runaway kid’s arse. And why no justice? ’Cause life is a mirror — right?

  Fuckin’ boys, fuckin’ worse bastard men. At least some of the boys had an ignorance about their urges. From about age nine or ten, she could tell the difference between dumb innocence and premeditated ill-intent, as a series of different-aged males tried to violate her, or just made her grab the thing — it. IT. Yank IT, put the thing in her — yuk — mouth. She could tell by how the male reacted to her rejecting him.

  Most boys cried and said sorry and begged please don’t tell no one, as she felt this strange, separate living piece of boyhood going down like a balloon in her hand and actually felt sorry for the would-be violator, thinking maybe she shouldn’t be doing this to him, making his stiffie droop and his bottom lip and eyes drop in shame.

  Unlike the men who’d growl, ‘Don’t be telling no one. This is our little secret and if anyone finds out you’ll be hated for ever. You’ll be called a slut, a whore. No one will want to be your friend.’ Or, ‘I’ll kill you.’ Which she believed.

  Didn’t matter when it started, what age. Didn’t matter who was first, probably some older boy who didn’t yet know any better but knew vulnerability when he saw it, they all did: picked up on her parents being hardly ever around, always out drinking and gambling. Or they’d come to her house and see her parents either too drunk — her old man — or away with the fairies in the head department — the old lady. She must look the weak one they could move in on without much chance of getting caught. Could be they claimed her big sister too? Not entering her, not at that age, though they all tried. Minimum demand: take care of my dick.

  Remembering only a vague, ghostly parade of stiffies, men visitors, older boys, married neighbours, and always her Uncle Rick, Mum’s brother, who knew exactly the whole family’s daily routine. Exactly when a girl was at her most vulnerable. Though he called it something different. And she didn’t know how exposed she was, not till she looked back on it. By then a zillion years too late. And it seemed word got out she was claimed, as it became mostly her uncle.

  He’d say, ‘This is our special secret, it’s like God wanting us to be alone, why He gives us the time.’ Us, he called it. Him and God, sex abusers together.

  The scheming conniving prick, he’d drive from where he lived out at Leichhardt on certain late afternoons, on Mum’s twice-weekly bingo sessions and with the old man down the road every night getting pissed at The Bells pub, her brothers never home out roaming the streets like little Aussie social terrorists. Nor was Monica around: God knows where she got to that had her arrive home half drunk, or stoned on something — from a young age she was into shit.

  Some years of taking a mouthful of his sex, as she was too young for it to go in her thingie — ‘yet’, so he told her. Like he was holding back the best present till later. He trained her to yank it till it spurted white stuff, went all over her school uniform, drops like funny-coloured cream on the bare wooden floor, sticky, clinging just everywhere. He’d put a finger to his mouth, make eyes of a shared secret, and say, ‘Don’t ever, ever tell a soul.’ As if they were on this special journey together and no one must know, the bastard tricking a dumb, innocent little girl like that.

&
nbsp; And she never did say a word about it, as the shame built, and nor did her siblings ask, might be they were copping their own abuse. Might be in their house that to talk about pain meant you could no longer endure it so you might as well be dead. Could be she took his dire warning with utmost seriousness, or why else hold back on telling anyone?

  Cocks. Her sole role in life to be confronted by them, stiff and on the rise, with that strangely compelling intention to penetrate. Put it somewhere warm and moist, she later found was one of the reasons. But there were other reasons she couldn’t fathom. And since it began long before she had understanding of near anything, and it was men who came home with her father, then Uncle Rick took over, she’d wake up to a cock in her face thinking she was dreaming, a rough hand grabbing at her down there, the smell of alcohol, stench of man’s sex, and so she acquired an acceptance, a resignation this was her lot in life, and maybe that of a few other girls, or a lot of other girls. To be the object of erect, desperately wanting snakes, and be denied of voice to speak about it. Even to herself.

  For she re-created it in her mind as being in a forest with her uncle, with whomever, having to push through thorny bushes and suffer pain in silence or the gold and diamond tiara wouldn’t be waiting to crown the little princess at the end.

  Not that her mind was filled with just stiff cocks and glittering tiaras. But she was aware at an early age in coming across any male in any close situation that sooner, rather than later or never, his cock would spring out, either the purple-headed, vein-swollen reality, or the subject on the back of a false cough or throat-clearing, followed by the object itself like a snake bursting out of trousers or shorts.

  Grab a hold of this, how about it? Come on, eh, girl, it won’t hurt you. Only want to move your hand up and down on it. Put your lips over it and suck like a lollypop. Just let me rub it on the outside of you, I won’t put it inside, promise. When nature had not gifted a male the means to keep such a promise. Or none she’d come across.

  Cocks and fingers that wanted to plunge into her, fill her mouth, and the first who did it down there being blood related, fuckin’ Uncle Rick — she quite a few years off legal age it later vaguely occurred to her — as she imagined cops and teachers, nuns and maybe a priest or preacher accusing her of being bad, grossly sinful, even evil. As if it was her fault. As if the sinned against is the sinner.

  The greatest pain, second to being pushed into the rose bush by a stupid boy when she was about seven and the rose thorn punctured her eyeball, not as bad as that but awful all the same. In her mind much more awful. The thorn injury left her with a white fleck in her right eye that kids said was a miniature crescent moon.

  She remembered kids said how pretty she was, for a while at least, but then Uncle Rick told her constantly she was ugly and what they were doing together was helping her become better looking. If he’d promised beautiful she would have done whatever he wanted, with, if not gladness, at least hope that one day she’d benefit by being blessed with good looks.

  Not feeling strong in the looks area, she still never quite accepted Uncle Rick’s assessment, not fully. It was like something beautiful glowed deep inside her like a little ember underneath all the ashes of her burnt being. Or a song sang only she could hear.

  For years he abused her.

  The shame of going to that doctor, out of her area, asking to be put on the pill and unable to tell even a woman doctor what was happening, just crying that if she got pregnant she would kill herself, and it was no act. To have a kid to her own uncle, wouldn’t that make her own child her first cousin or something? Wouldn’t Rick be its father and great-uncle at the same time?

  Not sure if this shit made her a lonely kid at school, seemed her memory of Plunkett Street School right here in Woollo was all right, maybe a lot of other kids hurting like her. Not as if she got unduly bullied at school. But kids till ten or eleven are dreamy, live in their heads and sometimes get forced to go there, like they are driven to hide under their beds for hours at a time wanting all pain to go away.

  She had dim recall of the school headmistress making her talk to this doctor and him checking her down there, asking her lots of questions, an expression like he was not pleased, suspicious of her. Told her he thought it was a police matter but she said if he did that she’d die of shame. Heard no more. Though the headmistress seemed to single her out for special kindness, same as she did to the kids with bad limps, with Down’s syndrome and dare any kid call one of them a Mongol in her hearing.

  High school, several years past being a virgin, choice between Glebe High or posh Vaucluse High, which her mother chose for her, don’t ask why, a zoning issue that gave the posh east Sydney suburb no choice but to accept Woollo kids. Like posh. People there lived in massive mansions looking right out over the harbour, the Opera House, the bridge, over everything and everyone, including kids from Woolloomooloo, with lawns bigger than ten Woollo rental properties put together.

  In class with rich kids who hated the Woollo kids and God help if you were a black; it was even worse for them, the Abos, poor blackfellas hated by their entire country, even kids knew that, and some like Lu thought it just so unfair. Growing up in Woollo where everyone had to look out for their own arses, and skin colour had nothing to do with it, could even be a positive as Aboriginals made good loyal mates who’d die for you in a blue. They were good at sport, great dancers, and when you knew them well they showed you their humorous side.

  They, the poshes, said you were Housing Commission, like stating your race, your fixed social class. Like you dwelled in Hell, and yet she would think, If I told you of the real Hell I know about, how would you be then?

  Housing Commission dwellers like you lived in a stinking, festering slum and everything about you was therefore more than disgusting, you were cockroaches, shithouse gunge, infected slime at any moment going to infect the whole school — infect them, the richies — with some disease outbreak.

  These posh kids who ate sushi — sushi — for their lunch, when you’d never heard of the stuff. Raw fish and a hot green mustard, which they let you dumb Woollo kids try, and it belted your brain like an electric shock, there were these rice things wrapped inside a black/green covering you found out was fuckin’ seaweed — seaweed! — orange lumps and bright red splotches of raw fish, on a sushi plate of mind-blowing creation. Looked like art work. And these spoiled brat kids, with their fixed sneers for you, they ate with chopsticks! And when it wasn’t soo-shee, their mothers packed a salad for their lunch: tuna and chicken with all the vege trimmings of a kind you’d never seen before, not on a plate, not eaten by anyone you knew.

  ‘You slum dwellers eat fatty food,’ they’d remark as they walked past. So you were not only ugly and smelly but ‘Most of you have a weight problem.’ How about their mouth problem? Except you couldn’t whack them or you’d be in serious trouble, their lot controlling all of this town, even Woollo kids got that.

  Most of the Woollo lot came to school with no packed lunch. You lied, Nah, not hungry, am I? Filled up on white budget bread as the week wore on, not that you’d admit to them, the Vauclusians. And they’d say, ‘You’re hungry all right, you little liars. Your shit solo mothers just can’t afford your lunch, can they? But they can afford to play the pokies all the time you’re at school. And bet they smoke and drink.’

  Kind of right they were, but it still hurt, even the truth. And how did they know these things of a separate species they had nothing to do with? Who told them about you? And why no neg shit about them?

  Still, good things happened there too. Like Sarah Crichton in Lu’s class for two years, who tried to educate her on how to behave among Vauclusians, what to say and what not, know when to say nothing, certain words never to use, manners and how important eye contact was, which Lu struggled with but got used to. Couldn’t understand Sarah saying she was so beautiful. How could that be of a girl getting fucked by her own uncle? I’m as filthy as a sewer.

  Then Sarah invited
her home after nearly a year of friendship, but her mother gave off such unwelcome signals Lu knew she’d never be invited back. Bitch asking questions like a cop. What does your father do for a living? Wiped out on the opening question. Lying, he’s got his own hotel. Mrs Crichton said, ‘Oh? Whereabouts in Sydney?’ The Bells, Lu shot back, in Woolloomooloo. ‘Oh,’ said the duchess. ‘How many rooms does it have?’ ‘Only thirty,’ Lu answered. ‘Just a small place. With bars, of course.’ Of course. ‘With poker machines one assumes?’ Oh, yes, plenty of them. Thinking that would impress Mrs Crichton. Till she scoffed, ‘They’re degrading. And so are the people who play them.’

  A glimpse of how the other half lived came with that hurt, which she had learned not to let take her over. To be fair, Sarah hung in for a bit, but in the end it was like she was swimming off while Lu drowned in that sparkling sea Vauclusians had full view of.

  Lu loved her school uniform and would walk round the streets of Woollo feeling like a fashion model, best clothes she’d ever known. Washed them on the weekend, ironed out every crease and had them ready, perfectly folded shirt and skirt end of her bed, first thing Monday; jumper in the cold months, tie at a diagonal on the pile, shoes all polished.

  When her duty to Uncle Rick was oral in her menstrual time, his semen stains on her uniform felt as if he had attacked its very integrity: her best outfit, the school, everything. And she’d scrub and scrub the stain for ages.

  Funny how terrible the world got when you didn’t have any mates. Or the ones you had were like you, not out of choice and qualities and outlooks in common, but drawn together by the same cruelty suffered. You had next to nothing to say to each other, your mind didn’t connect, only your troubled souls. And that ain’t enough.

  At home with her two brothers and sister, as if life wasn’t bad enough their mother’s strangeness developed into this mental condition that made her even more odd and distant. With him, the old man, on the dole using the crook back rort, combined with what was going wrong with Mum, they got extra government benefit, meaning the old man could drink more and the old lady could gamble when her head was straight enough to hear the bingo caller or read the pictures on the pokies, hear the joyful jangle of coins spilling out. Or, more like it, watch her money get swallowed by a machine and her never getting it that she could never win. Always some reason why: ‘Me luck turned, Lu. I could sense it.’ ‘Bitch on the machine next to me kept giving me the look, put a hex on me.’