Act of Grace

by Anna Krien

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ a woman said. ‘Everyone needs to get as dry as possible and then we need to go.’ People stared at her numbly. She pointed at Eva, who was holding the plastic bottle of milk. ‘You can do that later. We’ve got to get out of here. I’ll tell the others,’ she said and started to walk over to another group around a fire.

  There was a pop and the woman dropped.

  ‘Fuck!’ Gerry said, running over to her. Then came a roar of water again, and everyone screamed as the tarps were torn away, the spray knocking them backwards, fires sizzling to black.

  Gerry got the woman up and ran with her. ‘Eva?’ he shouted, finding her and pulling her along with them. She was soaked again. ‘Come on,’ he said, and around them people were yelling. ‘We gotta go! Everyone! We’ll die of hypothermia!’ But Eva wouldn’t move. Gerry knew why, but he pretended not to. He took off her jacket and his, removed his thermal shirt and put it on her. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she murmured.

  He looked at her, pleading.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ she said quietly. ‘He’ll still be here.’

  Gerry sighed. He squinted at the bridge, trying to see through the debris and smoke. ‘I’ll go,’ he said, giving her a gentle push. ‘Okay?’

  Eva laughed. They were both shivering, the wind biting. ‘Don’t be a dick,’ she said simply. He loved her, he realised, watching as she went back into the fray. He hurried to catch up. Everyone was running the other way, telling them to turn around, until the road emptied, leaving only an eerie feeling. All their paraphernalia of protest – bin lids, discarded placards, crushed water bottles, red cardigans curled up like dead foxes – lay as rubble. And through the haze, the marble-eyed cops watched them from the other side of the bridge.

  ‘Amos!’ Eva yelled. They saw him. He was lying under one of the wrecks. He turned, hearing her voice. ‘Amos!’ she called again and began to run.

  Gerry followed. He’s got something, Gerry thought. Something’s not right. He craned to see as they ran towards the wrecks.

  Amos waved them away. ‘Get back!’ he yelled. ‘Get back!’ He had rigged something up, Gerry could see now.

  It was Eva who pulled up first. Her hand shot out to Gerry. ‘Stop,’ she croaked. Under the wreck, a white, fizzing light lit up Amos’s face. Magnesium, Gerry thought, instantly recalling the thin ribbon he’d held in metal forceps over a flame at school. ‘Don’t look at it directly,’ he remembered the teacher saying. So you did learn something, he mused as he looked away, to the police on the other side of the bridge. They levelled their guns. It’s just rubber, he thought, reaching out to catch Eva’s hand. And then there was a bright explosion.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  Shh, I Can Hear the Sea

  ‘Put it on speaker,’ instructed Robbie, as she drove too fast along the narrow suburban streets, taking a shortcut to the highway.

  Nasim was in the back seat, next to the baby capsule. She frowned at Robbie’s phone. ‘I don’t know how,’ she said finally. Robbie stretched her arm back, opening her palm like a clam. Nasim put the phone in her hand and Robbie flicked her eyes from the road to her lap, tapping the screen with her index finger. A static ringtone filled the car.

  ‘Hello, Robbie?’ said a voice.

  Robbie tossed the phone onto the empty seat next to her. ‘Mum?’ she asked loudly. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ the voice said.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Robbie said, putting her indicator on and creeping forward on a red light.

  ‘Hello, dear. How are you? How’s little Sid?’

  Robbie instinctively glanced over her shoulder. Sidney was gazing at Nasim with wide, happy eyes. ‘He’s good. Sabeen’s here, too.’

  ‘Oh, hi Sabeen!’

  ‘Hello, Claire,’ the Iraqi woman replied, leaning forward. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Mum,’ interrupted Robbie. ‘You’ve got to get in your car.’

  ‘Why? Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing’s wrong. It’s great. They’re putting it up, on the West Gate Bridge.’

  ‘Putting wha—’ Claire began, then stopped. ‘Really? Today? I thought it was suspended.’

  ‘The premier overruled it. They’re going ahead!’

  ‘That’s fantastic!’

  ‘Yeah. But you’ve got to get moving, Mum, otherwise you’ll miss it.’

  ‘Nathan’s in the bathroom.’

  ‘Well, tell him to get out!’

  The station wagon was on the highway now, Robbie weaving across the lanes. From Robbie’s phone came the muffled sound of her mother’s footsteps, then knocking and murmuring.

  ‘Okay, Nathan’s ready,’ Claire said at last, her voice clear. ‘We’re walking out now.’

  *

  It was Nasim’s job to entertain Sidney, to keep the boy from crying, as he often did in the car, but she allowed herself an amused smile as they passed the strange, vacuous structures dotting the highway. ‘Public art,’ Robbie had told her once, listing their colloquial names. ‘Here’s the cheese sticks . . . this is a whale’s ribcage . . . they’re the pick-up sticks.’

  Nasim had chuckled, feeling a rare spark of love for this peculiar country with its unusual shape, alone at the bottom of the world. There was a newness here that sometimes made her feel as though she were in a toy city: the toy boats on the bay, toy people with their toy concerns. ‘You’re so young,’ she’d clucked when stopping at a building in the city to read a brass plaque. 1854, it said, as if the sandstone structure – underwhelming, she might add – had seen enough history to merit recognition. This dumb-headedness gave her an odd sensation of superiority. And relief. Her main concern was that more of her kind would come, and bring their ancient feuds with them. Nasim and Robbie often clashed over that. ‘But you’re a refugee,’ Robbie would insist in disbelief whenever Nasim complained that Australia was letting in too many migrants.

  ‘Yes,’ the older woman nodded, as if it was merely a query. How to trust stories of forced exile? Nasim’s own claim to sanctuary was based on a lie. Even Robbie, whom she’d come to love as a daughter, did not know her real name. To the girl, to the landlord, she was Sabeen. To the authorities, she was a Baghdad mother who had found herself on the receiving end of the Australian army, her mewling baby lost, their compensation an act of grace. She knew her real past was horrific, perhaps even worse than her stolen one, but she also knew that her actions in Baghdad would cancel out the sympathy of this docile, clumsy country. Here, a victim must be pure to stay a victim.

  In Baghdad, the only ‘public art’ had been the looming spectre of Saddam. His regime had built four enormous bronze heads, so that his face glowered over the sprawling city, his gaze criss-crossing with his own, his blank metal eyes all-seeing. Massive statues of the man rose out of wedding cake–style plinths, and in the centre of the ancient Arab metropolis were the two huge fists of the Swords of Qādisīyah. They towered over the road, and in each fist Saddam held a stainless-steel sword, the blade extending forty-three metres into the sky. When Nasim was young, they’d driven under this arch, and her mother had shuddered at the sight of the arms coming out of the ground. ‘It is like he is underneath us,’ she muttered.

  ‘Shh,’ Nasim’s father had said, his two-fingered hand on the wheel of their boxy Renault. Saddam was everywhere. He even resided in their pockets, a statesman on greasy dinar notes. Nasim was unable to shake Nhour’s vision after that. The entire city was his skin, stretched over monuments and domes, houses, apartments and bunkers; when he yawned, he made graves for people to fall into. In his time, Saddam had rebuilt the ancient city. He’d changed the faces of past rulers to resemble his own. He even banned surnames, so no one could accuse him of starting a dynasty.

  The Americans had pulled down the statues and melted the bronze heads – but found they couldn’t bring themselves to destroy the sword-clenching fists. Instead they positioned their headquarters just beyond them, as if to say that some
things would stay the same.

  ‘Why didn’t they just disarm him?’ Robbie asked, when Nasim told the girl about ‘public art’ in Baghdad. ‘Leave the hands, and remove the swords?’ It was ideas like this that made the older woman adore Robbie. Since Sidney was born, Nasim had taken two days a week away from her salon to look after him so Robbie could keep working. The girl was a talent; she had a studio in Collingwood, and several younger artists helped her create large-scale projects. For a moment, Nasim yearned for the youth and ambition to remake herself, to return home and demand they remove the blades. But then, in her mind’s eye, she saw what would remain: a martyr, his hands reaching upwards, like a drowning man begging for help. Like so many boys of Iraq buried in the desert, their bones crushed to grit by British tanks, ignoring the scraps of white material in their surrendering hands.

  They passed the Melbourne Star, a bulky Ferris wheel, its glass capsules dangling like baubles. Nasim sniffed. What does this country think it is – a carnival? Billboards flickered past, with smirking breakfast-radio hosts. The highway was about to split in two, and Robbie shifted to the right lane, which would take them towards the bay. In the distance, over the shipping yards with giraffe-like cranes, where the sky and sea compared blues, was the West Gate.

  Robbie leaned forward, hunching over the wheel to squint at the bridge. ‘I can’t see it,’ she said. The sun was bright, pinching at the horizon, and she put her hand above her eyes like a visor. Nasim moved forward, trying to see, but her sight had long since failed her at a distance. Up close, though, her vision was crisp, and in the oblong of Robbie’s mirror she caught sight of herself and was startled to see, looking back at her, the uncannily combined features of her mother and father.

  It was happening more often, this reappearance – be it genes or ghosts, for who was Nasim to distinguish? – of her parents. And again, it was Robbie who had given her the words for it. For when Robbie’s father died, she spoke of how she kept seeing him in others: the shape of his head; his frame, shoulders hunched; the familiar incline of a stranger’s chin. It was as if, Robbie said, in the long space of her father’s dying, he had vanished, only to reappear after his death in the guise of other people. She had to stop herself from calling out when she thought she saw him.

  These strange recognitions didn’t always pain Nasim as they did Robbie. It was easy to brush off the unkinder qualities, like detecting her mother’s sharp tongue in her own voice, or catching her mother’s unflinching, critical gaze in the mirror. The gentler glimpses caused more pain: the crinkle of her father’s eyes, say, and Nasim would remember his teasing smile. She would see the fullness of her mother’s lips in her own, the fuzz of bleached hairs, and she would remember the strangeness of her mother’s kisses, how she pressed her lips to people, her love bruising, rather than puckering and pulling back.

  Sidney began to mewl, preparing to wind up to a wail. Nasim shook herself to attention as Robbie bent sideways to search through her bag on the floor. The car wobbled as she tugged free a sachet of baby puree and flung it onto the back seat. Diligently, Nasim twisted off the cap and offered the nozzle to the baby, who clamped his lips around it and began to suck.

  Steadying the car, Robbie fixed her eyes on Nasim in the mirror. The older woman’s skin prickled. Robbie had a ‘look’; Nasim had seen it turned on others, but rarely was it trained on her. It was an almost surgical gaze in which the girl peeled layers off a person’s being until there was only a bare truth. Nasim started to hum to the baby, but Robbie was undeterred.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘who were those two men in the mall?’

  *

  That morning, Robbie had pinched her nose before peering inside the nail salon. ‘Sabeen here?’ she’d asked, nasally, cupping her other hand over Sidney’s mouth and nose.

  The girls in the salon smiled and Aisha leapt up from her table, abandoning her customer. The baby was strapped to Robbie’s front, fat legs dangling in a cotton jumpsuit. Often when she walked, she’d hold a foot in each hand. ‘Ooh, baby Sidney,’ Aisha cooed, coming close and pulling down her white mask. Robbie shifted so Aisha could see him better, watching Sidney’s eyes bulge a little as he took in the girl. She was wearing a crimson hijab, and her oval face was thick with make-up, lashes fanning outwards. Extensions, Robbie had learned the previous year, the salon girls laughing at her incredulous expression. Aisha tickled Sidney’s chin with a magenta acrylic talon. Robbie tried not to gag. She hated the things. Yet, despite this, the Oushk Nail Salon, tucked between a carwash and a Lebanese sweet shop, had become part of her mid-morning Friday routine, even if she didn’t dare inhale.

  ‘Robbie’s here!’ one of the girls called up the stairs at the back.

  There was a muffled reply and Nasim emerged, carrying a plastic bag. ‘My darlings,’ she sang, swinging the bag. She was dressed elegantly in a silk blouse, wide-legged black pants, embroidered slippers and a headscarf of sophisticated pale blue. ‘I finished it!’ she said, removing a crocheted bundle from the bag. She shook out a blanket, stretching it between her hands. Robbie gasped as she took in the vivid colours and shapes.

  ‘Do you like it? I did it in the style of Hundertwasser for you. Very ugly, I think – but you like ugly things.’

  ‘Sabeen!’ Robbie said, throwing her arms around the older woman, Sidney squished between them. ‘It’s amazing!’

  Nasim smiled proudly. She took a swift step back to gaze at Sidney. ‘Hello, my darling boy,’ she murmured. Sidney gave her a wet gooey smile and tried to lurch forward for a hug. Nasim touched his cheek, then busily wrapped the blanket around him, tucking the corners into the straps of Robbie’s carrier. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Perfect for winter.’

  ‘I really love it,’ Robbie said, running her hand over the wool.

  Nasim nodded. ‘Good.’ She looked around at her clientele then, and moved to one of the pedicure chairs, where a thin blonde woman was sitting with her feet in a girl’s lap, the bony knobs of her ankles on show. ‘Ah, Mrs Pearce,’ Nasim said with a smile, ‘you getting ready for the big day?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the woman replied in an excited, girlish voice. She picked up the phone in her lap. ‘The dress was finished just in time. Would you like to see?’

  ‘Of course!’ said Nasim, looking over the woman’s shoulder. She sucked in her breath theatrically. ‘My goodness, Mrs Pearce,’ she exclaimed. ‘What an exquisite dress.’ The woman nodded avidly. Nasim inspected the varnish on the woman’s toenails. ‘Wonderful choice,’ she said. ‘They will go together splendidly. Aisha?’

  Aisha looked up from her table, where she was buffing a woman’s nails.

  ‘When you do Mrs Pearce’s hands, be sure to add some diamantes – free of charge.’ Nasim looked at Mrs Pearce. ‘A wedding gift for the mother of the groom.’

  Mrs Pearce beamed.

  Robbie retreated to the footpath to breathe fresh air, and rocked Sidney as she watched her friend through the window. She considered the way the older Iraqi woman charmed her customers, the confident manner with which she moved around the salon. Robbie was proud of her friend, thinking how far she had come from the voiceless and fearful woman of six years earlier. How cleverly she’d landed on her feet. But recently there had been something else, something that made Robbie less sure about her friend. She had always assumed the Iraqi woman’s story was too painful to tell in full, not that she was hiding something. But now Robbie wondered.

  It was the piano that did it. A garish purple instrument had appeared in the Coburg Mall where, since Sidney was born, the women had a weekly routine, strolling to the area where people sat on metal chairs around wobbly tables. Here, the two would have morning tea, drinking sweet coffee and sharing pink cubes of Turkish delight.

  ‘Oh!’ Robbie had said last month when they saw the piano placed under a dusty stunted tree, the painted instrument flecked with pigeon droppings. Play me, read the words scrawled on its front. Nasim had paused. Robbie leaned over to sound a few notes, with Sidney
gurgling in delight, immediately stretching out his hands to the source. And then Nasim sat down. Not once had the older woman mentioned being a pianist. But the moment she sat on the rickety stool and held her hands over the keys, even in the seconds of silence before her fingers touched the notes, Robbie suddenly had a feeling that she’d been naive.

  *

  It was the piano that did it, Nasim was certain. It was, how do the Australians say, a moment of weakness. Less than a week after she had played the piano in the mottled sunshine of the mall, the two men came to the salon. It was true, there were other ways Nasim might have been recognised. Oushk Nail Salon was a success; no doubt she’d raised the ire of the Chinese-owned salon up the road. Who knew what connections they had? And she had dropped her guard, become too involved, both in the lives of her girls and in those of her customers. Since opening the salon, Nasim had attended many weddings – big, loud affairs in reception centres with meringue wedding dresses. All the nails done by Oushk, of course.

  Nasim had taught the girls. She had demonstrated how to work the nail drills with foot pedals and attachments. They learned to apply gel and acrylic, and effects like marbling, practising on rubber fingers, hands and feet. She showed them how to organise the work trays, dipping ointments and powders, and at the back of the salon, the sterilising equipment that hummed like a dishwasher in the evenings.

  It was inevitable, considering Nasim’s history, that the girls became ‘her girls’. Her seven employees were a mix of Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese, as well as Laila, a shy and lovely Afghan girl. After a period of good revenue, Nasim had negotiated to rent the upstairs as well, and she decorated her new flat with rugs, wall hangings and cushions with wispy golden threads, her girls sometimes joining her for bubbly smoke and sticky baklava. She created a sanctuary for these unusual Aussie Arab girls, many of whom lived under the watchful eyes of their fathers and brothers. In this, Oushk was a kind of penance, an atonement for the forced labours Nasim had had to inflict on her girls at Nostalgia – and for that she slept better, even in the fog of acetone. Sometimes she even forgot, albeit briefly, that she’d taken the name of a dead prostitute who had once been in her care.