by Anna Krien
He had asked her, when his dad started to make contact with him, why she never said anything, and she replied, ‘I don’t want to get in the way of your relationship with your father.’
Gerry had lost his temper. ‘Well, that’s fucking impossible,’ he yelled, ‘considering you fucked him and had me.’ And she did that thing she used to do with Toohey, shrank, her eyes turning round and scared, and for a second he thought, no wonder Dad hated you.
*
‘Here!’ Toohey said, pointing at a neon sign atop a building, a neon waiter holding a neon bowl of spaghetti, yellow strands flashing.
Gerry hung back. ‘Maybe we should call it a night?’ he suggested, cringing as he heard his pathetic voice.
Toohey stopped and looked back. ‘What?’ he replied, scowling. ‘Why?’
Gerry pointed to the main street. ‘The trains will stop running soon.’
Toohey snorted. ‘Don’t be an idiot. You can stay at my place. We’ll just have a couple of drinks. A nightcap. I haven’t seen you in a year.’
Gerry looked down the laneway. It was crowded with bars. People were overflowing onto the footpath, laughing, exclaiming, men showing off their tattoos, raccoon-eyed girls flicking their hair, cut asymmetrical on purpose. His dad looked lost in the middle of it, with his neat blue jeans, white cross-trainers, old but clean – he put them in the washing machine, for sure – and shirt buttoned all the way up.
Out of the darkness, two skateboarders glided up, cigarettes parked on their lips, and Toohey jumped as they flanked him. Swinging his fist in a wide drunken arc, he hit air. ‘Hey, ease off, old man,’ the skater called and casually tacked his board away, his mate laughing. Toohey whirled again, his fists ready. He looked shaken. Gerry went to his side. ‘C’mon, Dad,’ he said, hand on his arm, pulling him into the stairwell. ‘Let’s go in.’
Inside, Toohey’s eyes shone. ‘It’s exactly the same!’ He spun around the restaurant, pointing at the laminated posters of Italy, the photographs of cheese and bread, the newspaper clippings tacked to the wall. Gerry looked around too. The place was a dive. Like one of those weird coffee shops that were fronts for something else, and inside old men sat around playing cards.
Only a few tables had diners. Some of them glanced at Toohey as he walked around, checking everything out, and they poked at their plates of half-finished dessert with little forks, and lifted their coffee cups to and from puddled saucers.
Then Gerry saw her. He looked at his dad, but Toohey was in his own world, brimming with nostalgia. She was standing at the register, holding out an eftpos machine for a customer. She looked up at Gerry, catching his eye. ‘Kitchen’s closed,’ she called, and Gerry felt his stomach bottom out. His father looked over and recoiled. The girl, the waitress – she was wearing one of those black religious things that covered her hair and went all the way down to her ankles. Gerry didn’t know the name for it, but he knew it meant trouble.
*
‘Could you show me how to wear one of those?’ The girl pointed at Nasim’s black abaya.
That was how Nasim Amin, now Sabeen Tahir, met Robbie. They were both bringing in their bins. Nasim felt the girl looking at her, trying to catch her eye, and pretended not to notice, but then she parked her bin and they did that little dance, stepping the same way and then the other. The girl laughed. Then asked her curious question. Nasim was tempted to be offended, but something about the girl’s candour vanquished the feeling. She was unusual-looking, with brown skin, dusty dark hair and eyes set deep. She was barefoot, in faded blue jeans and a worn grey T-shirt flecked with paint.
The girl inclined her head, waiting for Nasim to answer, balancing on one leg as she wiped the dirt and tiny gumnuts off the sole of her foot and onto her jeans.
‘Why?’ Nasim said, her voice croaking into audibility. It was the first time she had spoken in days.
The girl propped her bin on her hip. ‘I thought it would be interesting to wear one for a few weeks,’ she said. ‘See what it’s like. How people react to you.’
It was naive, Nasim thought. Rude, even.
‘I mean,’ the girl continued, ‘have you experienced any racism wearing it?’
Racism. This country was obsessed with that word. ‘Racism?’ she said, thickening her accent.
The girl blushed. ‘Sorry. Stupid question.’
Nasim nodded and, despite herself, smiled. The girl grinned back. Her teeth were wide and white. Nasim surprised herself. ‘Come,’ she said, her voice stronger now. The girl followed her up the driveway and into the stairwell.
Nasim had never had any visitors in Australia. As the girl walked behind her, she wondered if she was doing a very silly thing – what if the girl robbed her? But she was so childlike: the way she looked around the bare flat and, spying a patch of sunlight on the carpet, sat in it, crossing her legs, instantly intimate.
In the corner Nasim’s single mattress was made up with a purple throw and a cheap flat pillow. On the opposite wall was a clothes rack she’d wheeled home from the second-hand shop a few weeks ago. On it were three abayas, black and dark blue, with their matching hijabs, dangling like hanged women.
Nasim put her hand on them and felt tricked suddenly. She’d spent – what, ten years? – taking these off girls, and now this silly Australian wanted to put one on. She looked over at the girl, her silver clips keeping her dark hair out of her eyes. Nasim felt hot with anger. She didn’t want to put an abaya on her; she didn’t want her in here.
The girl looked up at her and smiled. ‘I’m Robbie, by the way. I live in number eight.’
Nasim did not take her hand. Instead, she stiffened. ‘It is not proper for you to wear an abaya,’ she said, and went to the door, holding it open, waiting for the girl to leave. As the girl passed by her into the stairwell, Nasim added, ‘You are very rude,’ and shut the door.
She stood for a while, hands over her face, breathing hard into her palms. Then she drew the curtains and took off her abaya, her hood, and lay on the mattress, pulling the throw over her. She had been doing this lately, going to bed in the day. What she loathed in this country, the lethargy, was getting to her too. A tram rattled past, shaking the thin glass, the driver ringing the bell. Ding, ding, ding. She rolled onto her side and stared at the clothes rack. She had taken her most beautiful dresses with her to Damascus – a black crushed-velvet tight-fitting abaya, a long red dress with navy embroidery, and her favourite, a teal abaya with a diamante peacock on the skirt, its tail feathers fanning up and across the chest, an eye feather adorning the hood. She’d allowed herself a small fantasy, whenever she put it on in the Baghdad apartment, that she was waiting in the wings, a grand piano onstage; but her girls always interrupted, shrieking as they spilt nail polish on the couches. They were so tacky, and Nasim knew she too was tacky, the dress too showy, and there were no wings to wait in, just a crude apartment with velour drapes, heavily perfumed to cover up the stink of fucking, her only cue a knock on the door.
In Damascus, with her visa assured, she had persuaded herself that once in Australia she would take off the gloomy robes she’d donned for her final months in Baghdad and then Syria. But when she arrived in Melbourne, equipped with a new name and bureaucratic grief for a baby accidentally killed, the shops overflowing with cheap and lovely lilac jumpsuits with silk hoods, cheetah-print abayas, even swimsuits – everything she and her girls had yearned for – the black abaya stayed. Why, Nasim barely knew. Back in the Middle East, she’d used it to hide, but now it could hardly be called hiding. If anything, she stood out. What did that man yell at her from his car – that she was a Grim Reaper? But it was as though it had attached itself to her, its material fused to her skin.
As a child, she had imagined the descent into hell to be like travelling on a slide, fast and breathtaking. She had even composed a piece on the piano to mimic it, a staccato dance descending rapidly to the lowest note, where the music ended with a dramatic death rattle. Now she knew that the descent to hell is
slow, never-ending, the ground always opening further. If she were to dare compose something now, which she would not, hell would be relentless. Notes would cut across one another, clash, smother, simper, until even her fingers couldn’t be trusted, refusing to yield. Every now and then there’d be a drawn-out chord, flat and bone-tired.
There’d been a piano for sale at the second-hand shop where she’d bought the clothes rack. Nasim hovered near it, pretending to go through a box of linen but really inhaling the scent of wood, felt, wire and dust. While she stood, a woman in tight jeans and a singlet dragged a little boy over and lifted him onto the stool, directing him to bang on the notes while she shopped. The instrument was out of tune. When the boy tired of it, he wriggled off the stool and Nasim went over, sat down and held her hands above the keys, not touching them.
The keys were yellow, nicotine-stained teeth. Her fingers shook, and to stop them she pressed down, the piano belching in reply. Nasim recoiled, her hands jerking to her lap. She remembered how guilty she had felt when her mother stopped playing – how an awful ambitious relief had coursed through her with the knowledge that her mother had finally left the stage. The keys on their piano, Nasim recalled, had been grubby with her mother’s prints. There were pencil marks, too, tiny words on bone. Nhour, unable to read music, would sometimes mark a note or a series of notes to record a sound, a chord or a melody. Much of it had been in a code only she understood, but there were also clues such as ‘Daw Almadi’, last light – and when Nasim played those four notes, she could see it as well: a thread of gold over their city’s skyline, a green-blue night. When her mother stopped playing, Nasim cleaned the keys with lavender oil and a handkerchief. Rubbing out her mother’s markings, she had felt, briefly, as though she could rise out from under her mother’s shadow. Now Nasim tried to remember her mother’s notations, to map them on the piano in front of her, but the boy was back, pushing her out of the way, smashing his chubby hands against the keys.
*
‘Closed?’ Toohey said to the waitress, drawing himself up, taking in the length of black material gathered around her face and draped over her shoulders. ‘What do you mean the kitchen is closed?’
The waitress’s face hardened. She moved a step closer to the register. Gerry saw that she was wearing black lace-up Doc Martens under the long dress. In blue pen, she’d scrawled notes on her hand. ‘Kitchen closes at eleven,’ she said coolly, gesturing towards the clock on the wall, which read 11.02.
Gerry felt a wave of fury come off Toohey, and a familiar stench of something on his own skin. Fear. ‘I remember when this place used to be open —’
‘All night,’ the girl interrupted in a bored voice.
‘— and used to serve wine in —’
‘Coke cans,’ she supplied.
Toohey glared at the waitress, and Gerry felt unsteady. He put his hand on the wall, his vision blurring. For a second or two he shut his eyes.
‘Look,’ he heard the waitress say, in a kinder tone. He opened his eyes to see she was looking directly at him. ‘I can get you dessert and drinks, if you want. Not coffee though, we’ve cleaned the machine.’
Gerry looked at his father, Toohey giving a barely perceptible nod.
‘You can sit there.’ She pointed to a table next to the drinks fridge.
Gerry started to walk over, but his father did not follow. He spun around and went to a large table set with napkins and cutlery. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘We’ll sit here.’ As he sat, he pushed the cutlery to one side.
The waitress paused, then shrugged, pulling a white tub along the bench towards her and extracting a fork, polishing it with a tea towel. After Gerry sat down opposite his dad, she brought them a bottle of water and two glasses. ‘The desserts are written up there,’ she said, ‘and can I get you some house wine or beer?’
‘Thanks,’ Gerry said quietly.
‘We’ll have a bottle of red,’ Toohey said. He was staring at her in that open-faced way he had, daring her to react.
The waitress ignored him. ‘Do you want to order now, or do you need some more time?’ she asked, but he didn’t say anything, just kept staring.
‘Dad,’ Gerry said, feeling his face redden.
‘Why are you wearing that?’ he asked finally, thrusting his chin out.
‘Dad!’ Gerry said again.
‘You don’t look like an Arab to me,’ he continued.
‘Well, if you knew anything about Muslims,’ the waitress replied curtly, ‘you’d know they’re not all Arabs.’
The restaurant had gone quiet as the other diners tuned in.
‘“They’re?”’ Toohey said. ‘Don’t you mean “we’re”?’
The waitress gave a small smile, as if conceding him a round. ‘Look, are you going to order or not?’
*
‘Ngardang?’ Nasim heard the plea as she closed the door behind her. She paused at the top of the stairs, contemplating going back inside, waiting for whoever was out there to leave.
‘Ngardang?’ It was shakier now, a man’s voice. Whoever was saying it was scared. Nasim took a breath and went down the stairs.
In the car park stood a man with blotchy brown skin, hunched and gaunt. The girl from number eight, Robbie, was with him, her hand resting on his arm. ‘Ngardang?’ he said again, and to Nasim’s surprise the girl answered, ‘I’m here. It’s okay, here I am.’ The man relaxed, his features loosening. He took a step, then stopped and looked wildly around, fear in his face.
Seeing Nasim, Robbie nodded at her, then turned back to the man. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Here I am.’
He gripped her hand and his eyes veered over the car park, the block of flats, the sky. Then he turned, letting go of the girl’s hand, walking fast towards the street. ‘I want to go home,’ he said.
‘Stop!’ Robbie called, jogging a few steps to catch him and trying gently to pull him back. ‘Dad, stop!’
He shrank from her, and Robbie froze. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry, I mean Danny, stop. It’s okay. We just need to make a few phone calls and then I’ll get you home, I promise.’ She pointed up the driveway. ‘Just this way,’ she said, taking him by the arm.
Nasim watched as they passed her, sad suddenly that she had ordered the girl to leave her flat that day. ‘Can I help?’ she asked, and Robbie looked up.
‘No, it’s okay,’ she replied.
The old man closed his eyes, lifting his chin, his lips moving, Nasim unable to make out what he was saying as Robbie put her arms around him. ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘It’s okay, here I am.’ She led him towards the stairwell, then stopped, looking back at Nasim. ‘Actually,’ she said hesitantly, ‘yes, you can.’
*
Danny warmed to Nasim. She bustled around the girl’s kitchen, making him a cup of tea, popping in a couple of ice cubes to cool it down, talking and humming to soothe him while Robbie spoke on the phone in another room. It was a kind of hamming it up, playing an Iraqi woman, one she imagined these Australians would like. At the same time, she took in the girl’s flat, revelling in its curiosities: small delicate skulls; odd ceramics with phantom animal faces; jade plants in olive-oil tins, green heart-shaped leaves cascading down the kitchen cupboards. She’d cut cellophane into feathers and covered the window over the sink with them. Nasim ran her hands through a patch of coloured sunlight.
‘I know it was stupid, Mum,’ she heard the girl saying on the phone. ‘I know, okay? I’m sorry!’ And then, more quietly, ‘Okay, let’s do that. Will you call the home? I’m sorry, Mum, I just thought he seemed better the last few weeks. I know. Okay.’
When the girl came back into the kitchen she looked so sheepish and sad, Nasim wished she could hug her. The girl sat next to the man and rested her forehead on the table. ‘I’m such an idiot,’ she declared dramatically, and Nasim couldn’t help but laugh. The man was buoyant from Nasim’s fussing, and he laughed too. The girl looked up in surprise. She smiled at Nasim. ‘He likes you,’ she said.
*
‘This place used to be open all night,’ Toohey said again, his eyes glazed from the wine. ‘Your granddad brought me here. They served wine in Coke cans because of the liquor laws.’ Gerry nodded, silently willing his father to finish his tiramisu. ‘All the waiters used to come here after they knocked off.’ Again, Gerry nodded. They were the only customers left.
He had been aware of the waitress the whole time, watching as she finished polishing the cutlery, then dragged a chair to the counter and used it to climb onto the bench. Her black dress lifted as she did, Gerry taking in her black boots and black-and-red striped tights. She poured Pepsi from a can onto a cloth and wiped the chalk off the blackboard on the wall, leaving ‘Specials’ at the top, and climbed down. She took a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and poured herself a glass, then drew two uncooked sticks of spaghetti from a container and gave one to an Indian guy in the kitchen. He grinned and they crossed their spaghetti sticks like swords, twirling their free hands in an upward flourish. Gerry forgot about his father as he watched them joust, foiling one another and laughing. When the girl’s stick snapped, he felt weirdly crushed, hoping she’d draw another.
‘The history here,’ his father said again. ‘You listening, Gerry? The history here!’ He twisted in his seat to find the waitress. ‘Do you have any idea of the history in this restaurant?’ he called out.
The girl looked at him, her expression deliberately blank. Gerry started to panic. She was going to say something, he could tell; the way she squared her shoulders, held her head high. Then she glanced at Gerry, and whatever she was about to say, she didn’t. She gave him a quick sympathetic smile instead.
The chef came out of the kitchen, pushing his baseball cap back on his head and leaning on the counter. ‘Hey, Robbie, do the till.’ The waitress nodded and went to the till, tapping the buttons until a reel of white paper started to whir out.