The Last Time We Spoke

by Fiona Sussman

  ‘What do you mean?’ Carla asked, her chest tightening.

  ‘In eight month we send Jin back to China for few year to learn Chinese way of life and language. It also give me chance to work full-time. Then she come back for New Zealand school.’

  ‘But … You … How can you send her away? You’re her mother!’ Carla felt the loss already. ‘Surely …’ She’d been foolish to allow herself to start caring for someone again.

  Mingyu looked up, clearly taken aback by Carla’s tone. ‘Carla, is the way we decide to do it.’ Her voice was gentle but firm.

  BEN

  The buzzer chiselled through Ben’s dreams. He’d overslept, thanks to the dope he’d scored off Storm. Daylight saving hadn’t helped.

  He rolled off the bunk and pulled on his trackpants, rubbing his eyes to sharpen the outline of the new day. He took a leak, his urine dark and strong smelling.

  Metal grated on metal as the guards moved down the wing, unlocking the cells. The key turned in Ben’s lock. He waited for the guard to pass before pushing open the door and presenting himself for the first muster of the morning. On his left slouched Storm. On his right … No one. The Pakistani was probably still asleep.

  Storm noticed his absence too. ‘Wakey wakey, Osama,’ he taunted.

  A gruesome snapshot popped into Ben’s head. The marijuana had definitely worn off, because the image broke through in crisp detail of the skinny Indian kid lying on the shower floor the day before, his trackpants bunched around his ankles.

  Ben squeezed his eyes shut, but the picture was still there.

  ‘Prisoner one-seven-nine-seven … Prisoner one-seven-nine-seven.’

  ‘He’s not coming, miss,’ Ben called out to Shirley.

  ‘Go wake him then, Toroa. I had to present myself on time this morning; he can do me the same courtesy.’

  Ben yanked open the unlocked cell door.

  The nervous Indian was a first-timer. Still a ‘clean skin’, with not one single tattoo – not even a small skull or cupid’s heart or clenched fist the size of a fingernail. Nothing. Rumour had it he was a bright kid all set to go to university, then got pissed up to his eyeballs after final school exams. First time he’d ever touched the hard stuff. Crashed his old man’s car into a bus stop, putting two people in hospital. When the cops hauled the kid from the wreckage, his blood alcohol was three times the limit. Some judge decided to send a strong message and gave the kid three months in the slammer.

  ‘It’s gonna be a tough bid if you play different from the rest, praying to … to whoever the dude is you pray to, and only eating rabbit food, bro,’ Ben had warned on the kid’s first day inside. But after that, Ben made sure he ignored the noob. It was safest. And it wasn’t long before Storm and his crew did the boy over.

  Ben stood in his neighbour’s doorway. The skinny brown kid was hanging by a strip of sheet from the window bars, his spindly legs crumpled under him like a dead insect.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What’s up, Toroa?’

  Ben turned. Shirley was standing behind him. ‘IRO, Code One, East Wing! IRO, Code One, East Wing!’ she shouted into her radio.

  Ben lifted the boy onto his shoulders while Shirley cut him down. He was so light, just skin and air. A soft sound bubbled out of the dead boy’s mouth.

  ‘Shit, bro,’ Ben whispered. ‘It would’ve been okay. You should’ve just stuck it out.’

  After his sentencing, Ben had to be shipped out of Remand. He was destined for Paremoremo, or Pare as it was known on the ground – Auckland’s maximum-security. It had a reputation for being the toughest joint in the whole of Aotearoa.

  Diamond took sadistic pleasure in painting a terrifying picture of the place, but Ben knew his descriptions would be pretty accurate. After all, Diamond was a prison-made product. He’d grown up in borstals and done time in every lock-up in the country.

  He told Ben to make sure he ate his meals with his back to a wall and not to go anywhere without looking over his shoulder at least twice. His advice didn’t help. Already Ben hadn’t been sleeping well, and his dreams just grew more weird and frightening. The Paki’s dead eyes. The Reid woman’s hair. Dolphins and naked kings. A sharp red sea. Red waves up to his neck and so thick he couldn’t swim through them. If he woke and opened his eyes, the wet would be sweat and the thick waves his blanket, all twisted and tight. Then he’d lie awake till morning to keep the blood at bay.

  His case officer, Eric, seemed to start taking more notice of him – especially after he found the booby trap Ben had erected around his own bunk. So he booked Ben in to see the mental health nurse. She had a downy blonde moustache and a tuft of black hair growing out of a mole on her chin. Ben sat in her windowless office while she pelted him with questions. How did he feel about his mother’s death? And the Indian boy hanging himself? How did he feel about moving to Pare?

  Ben didn’t say much. He didn’t know how to say what he was feeling. There was a disconnect between the words he owned and the feelings he felt.

  The nurse decided his ‘paranoia’ was caused by depression, so got the prison psychiatrist to prescribe him some meds. Then she explained all the possible side effects in nauseating detail – tiredness, diarrhoea, delayed ejaculation … Ben laughed. It wasn’t as if he was getting any inside, and when he was wanking, well he had all the time in the world. Fourteen years, in fact. Anyhow, he didn’t swallow a single tablet, and not because of any side effects. He reckoned the screws were trying to poison him.

  The pills were no use for trade either. At least cold-and-flu tablets had some buying power, but no one in prison was interested in trading ten cards of Cipramil.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  BEN

  ‘Pare was built in the 1960s when you wasn’t even around, kiddo,’ Diamond said to Ben. ‘You wasn’t even a swimmer in your old man’s balls.’ He let out a throaty guffaw.

  Sometimes Diamond could drone on about absolutely nothing. Today, however, he owned Ben’s attention.

  The Chubb van they were riding in swung around a corner, forcing Ben up against his fellow lagger.

  ‘Was based on a U-S-of-A design,’ Diamond continued, shouldering Ben off him. ‘The quadrangle meant for ex-e-cut-ions.’ He stretched out the word for maximum effect.

  ‘And you will swing from the neck until you are dead,’ he said, mimicking an American drawl. ‘But,’ he added, his mouth turning down in disappointment, ‘never came to that. There’s three cells next to the quad which spos’d to be the waiting cells for the condemned. Know what I mean, eh? Fuckin’ death row, man!’

  Diamond hadn’t stopped talking about maxi since they’d left Mount Eden. It was just Ben’s luck to get transferred with him. Mind you, he was hungry for any information about his new home.

  He closed his eyes and climbed the scaffold in his mind. Saw the cloud of darkness fall behind his lids as a black bag was dropped over his head. Felt the rope tighten.

  He opened his eyes wide, pulling his lids right back over his eyeballs.

  ‘What you staring at?’ Diamond barked.

  ‘Nothin’.’

  Diamond had his back against the square of window, blocking Ben’s view; so when the van stopped, Ben was surprised to discover that they were already in the middle of the Paremoremo yard – another regulation enclosure with generic familiarity. But that’s where the similarity ended. And it wasn’t long before Ben found himself wishing for the long, cold corridors of The Rock. Paremoremo was different. Bigger. Blanker. More serious.

  This is it, thought Ben. The final stop for the next thirteen years. The place where hope dies.

  He and Diamond were locked into one of the holding cells until processing. The cell was bare, save for a brass plaque positioned above the door. Diamond read out the words, parading his literacy and mastery of Māori. ‘Kotahi ano te kaupapa; kote oranga o te iwi: There is only one purpose to our work, the wellness and well-being of the people.’4

  Ben liked the sound of the w
ords. They were full and round and had a sort of rhythm.

  At the Receiving Office he learnt about his new crib: Ground floor. Cell 3. B Block. West Wing. Colour code blue. He couldn’t believe it. Gang colours were forbidden in the boob, yet here he was being given a blue overall. One of the units at Pare was officially blue! The Crips and Black Power guys would surely be having the last laugh.

  He lined up for the regulation strip-search of new inmates. He’d endured one in Receiving at Mount Eden too, and another the time the drug dogs picked up the scent of dope in his cell. But rumour had it, as per Diamond’s info, that at Pare at least two strip-searches were done every day on random laggers.

  Ben took off his T-shirt while two screws looked on. He lifted his arms slowly. Nothing. He put his shirt back on before dropping his pants and spreading his legs. He bent over. Nothing. He knew they couldn’t do an orifice exam – only police permitted – so they never found the bundle in cling film he’d squirrelled away. It would keep him going for a time, a bit of crush and needle.

  His crib was smaller than his last, and there was no sharing in maxi. He thought he’d never want to share again, but the long hours alone since Jocko had moved on had changed his mind.

  He climbed onto his new bunk and peered out of the barred window. No green in sight. No grass, no trees, no moss, no leaves. Nothing but rounds of razor wire cutting up the sky. Razor wire moved when you touched it, sending ripples jangling down the line. According to Diamond, the bleed-out time was four minutes if you got trapped and sliced.

  ‘No point going to the yard,’ his case officer instructed. ‘It’s already after three. Kai is at four, then lockdown at five.’

  Ben knew what would be for tea. Roast chicken. It was on the menu at Mount Eden too, and would be at every prison around the country. It was part of the national menu plan for prisoners, all eating the same thing on the same day at the same time.

  He lay back on the grey blanket, which felt like a scouring pad and smelt like one too. That’s when it hit him how much he missed smells. Normal smells. Prison laundered out all trace of the outside world. As a kid he’d loved his mother’s smell – a sweet earthiness breaking through the cigarette smoke and cleaning agents.

  Ben breathed in deeply, held onto the air, then let it out with a stuttering sob. Pressing his fingers into his eyes sent ripples of green and white light swelling into black. He blew his nose on his shirt and stared up at the ceiling. A trail of ants curved across the cell, making a perforated line down one wall and ending in a dark full stop.

  He got up and went over to investigate. Where the line ended, the tiny creatures were swarming over a hardened blob of chewing gum. Ben pulled it off the wall, shook off the ants and stuck the knob into his mouth. It was hard and tasteless, but after he’d worked it a bit it grew softer and more elastic. He took it out of his mouth, divided it into four and used it to stick up his only poster – the one he’d found crumpled in the yard at Mount Eden. It featured The Blues just after they’d defeated The Force in Perth, so qualifying for the semi-finals against The Sharks in Durban. The poster was munted, but Ben liked the line-up of solid guys with their victorious grins. Sometimes he imagined he was one of them; he’d hear the fans scream as he caught the ball, outmanoeuvred his opponents and sprinted for the try line. And for a fleeting moment, when the crowd gasped and a Mexican wave rolled, he felt good about himself.

  He’d played rugby in school a bit, but by intermediate his mates had all bulked out, while he’d stayed lean and wiry. He stopped making the team. By that time, he was no longer a regular at school anyway.

  A shadow fell across his cell. He looked up. A huge guy, all shiny flesh, filled the doorway. His face was as flat as a dinner plate, and his right ear was missing a wide wedge of flesh.

  The visitor put his nose into the air and sniffed. ‘I smell dog. But hey, guess what, it’s the runt of the pack.’

  It hadn’t taken them long. Ben had been in his new crib only half an hour and already Ryan’s affiliations had caught up with him.

  Diamond told him he would likely be in with a mix of the gangs. It wasn’t like in Mount Eden where they kept you apart. Here it was divide and conquer.

  ‘Just don’t take the bait,’ Cole had advised. ‘And ignore the taunts.’

  ‘Know what’s for tea?’ the big guy boomed. ‘Roast chook. Roast fuckin’ chook. My favourite.’

  ‘Name’s Toroa,’ Ben managed, his insides wobbling as he prepared for the bash.

  ‘But a skinny runt like you won’t be needing a feed, now will you?’

  Ben stared at him.

  ‘My boss gets real hungry and he don’t like to see good food wasted on trash like you. So, listen up, brother. Every night I’m gonna come and get your tea. Just the meat mind you; Rider ain’t too partial to vegetables.’

  ‘Lockdown in twenty,’ a screw called out.

  The guy in the doorway glanced casually over his shoulder.

  ‘Leave the chicken on your plate covered by a piece of bog roll. When the plates get cleared, I’ll collect it. I don’t want to have to mess with your pretty face.’

  Later, Ben stared at the drumstick. The skin had been roasted to a golden colour and the flesh was going be sweet, he could just see it. The guys in the kitchen had done a good job.

  He dipped a finger into the pool of gravy. It was salty. He swept his mashed potato through the sauce. In two scoops it was gone. Then he toyed with the chicken, pushing it this way and that around his plate. Finally, he covered it with a square of white toilet paper.

  It would be many months before he got to eat meat again.

  Beyond

  Benjamin, I feel a blooming in my breast. You responded to te reo Māori – your people’s language – even though you did not understand the very words you heard. This is good. So good. The words, they belong to you. Their pull is deeper than any conscious thought or tutored knowledge. Your response springs from a deeper place, a place with origins in the beginning of time.

  Time … I must move on with my story.

  So determined was the white man to assimilate all Māori that he worked hard to dismantle our tribes and our whole Māori way of life. Even our precious language was discarded. Our children were now taught in English, te reo actively discouraged.

  And we bought into this ideal. The English dream. The clothes, discipline, the sports and high teas. Many of our people melted under the heat of city lights into this whiteness, their Māoritanga soon just a puddle from the past. A new life beckoned, offering work, excitement and the English way. Ah, the English way. Rugby, tennis and big brass bands. Pikelets, scones and wedges of bright-orange cheese.

  How hard we strove to be citizens of this ‘superior’ world. We even went to war alongside our pale-faced compatriots to make real our intent, to fight for their Crown. Yet despite our bravery and the honours steeped upon us, we remained brown. Too brown.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  CARLA

  Carla covered her head with a pillow. She couldn’t say why she set an alarm, but she always did. It wasn’t so much having to be somewhere – she rarely had to be anywhere – it was more about lending shape to the day. It also gave the weekend a point of difference; she never set an alarm on the weekend.

  After a five-minute snooze respite, the beeping began again. She sat up and dropped her legs over the side of the bed, letting her toes brush the carpet. The coarse fibres prickled her soles. Slowly she stood up. It was important not to rush; the day had to be carefully filled.

  After putting on her new slippers from the Two Dollar Shop – the old possum-fur ones had finally disintegrated – she reached for her dressing gown. As she tied a perfect bow in the mirror, she was mindful to keep her eyes on the task at hand and not allow them to explore the rest of her reflection.

  In the kitchen, water spluttered out of the tap into an empty kettle, the pipes, like the day, still stiff and awkward. She placed an already used tea bag into her mug – her cu
e to now attend to the drapes and blinds. If timed correctly, the kettle would start to whistle just as she was opening the last blind.

  She lifted the steaming jug and poured. The crumpled brown tea bag floated to the surface, releasing stingy ribbons of colour. Carla added a thimbleful of long-life milk, a spoonful of sugar, and stirred. Three rotations.

  Mug in hand, she sank down into the chair at the window and watched Oteha Valley Road wake, cars gliding out from nowhere like disturbed woodlice.

  At nine o’clock she stood up, prepared and ate a buttered slice of raisin toast, then placed two frozen sausages on the bench to defrost, before going to get dressed. Lunch, a ham sandwich, was at twelve. A midday nap would follow, then a trip into Browns Bay to visit Kevin. By five-thirty she’d be home again, seated in front of the television, with a glass of cheap sherry in hand. Sausages and mash were at six, and after that, the day could be allowed to seep into the long night. This order and routine was everything. It harnessed the flux.

  She was having her afternoon nap when the telephone rang. Her mouth clunked shut, arresting her sleepy drool.

  She reached for the receiver. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Mrs Reid?’ A strong Australian accent.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Bryce Deacon, Auckland Prison.’

  Still drugged with sleep, Carla sat up.

  ‘This is a courtesy call, really. Just to notify you that Ben Toroa’s first parole hearing is coming up at the end of the month. You are invited to attend if you wish. You may, however, simply prefer to write a letter in opposition to, or support of, the prisoner’s release. Should you elect not to attend in person, we will notify you of the outcome in writing.’

  ‘Oh.’ Carla’s mind sluggishly made the relevant connections. Even the name Toroa was momentarily foreign. It had been over four years.

  ‘I’ll … Um … I’ll have to think about it. I mean, I’m not sure whether I—’