by E. M. Reapy
You gulp. ‘I just suppose I hadn’t really – I didn’t really pay attention.’ Your face burns.
Louise butts in, ‘It’s easy for that to happen, pet. We’re trying to adapt down here. It’s hard to focus on everything.’ She gives you a warm smile and opens the door of the small wardrobe in the corner. Inside, dresses choke the space. ‘This is where our stuff is,’ she says and starts freeing a shelf, ‘but you can probably fit all your clothes here?’
You think about your rucksack sitting in Fletchers’ hallway. The cockroaches nesting in it. The men going through it, finding your underwear and sanitary products. Finding pictures of your family. The fridge magnet souvenirs from the East Coast. The scrawls of email addresses and phone numbers of people you barely remember that you met on the way. The ones that joined when you were drunk the whole time when you landed in Australia first, when you were blowing all your money.
You nod and get embarrassed again. ‘I – I left my clothes with a mate. In Melbourne. Just brought that bag for the farmwork.’
Gráinne says, ‘Oh,’ and looks pleasantly surprised. ‘Good thinking. It’s hardly like we needed this, working in that stinking garlic factory.’
You sit up in the bed. ‘D’ye work there?’
You want to know more about it.
‘Can you not smell it?’ Gráinne says and her face crumples.
You inhale through your nose and can get garlic, faintly, underneath the sickly sweet flowers. ‘What’s it like? I’m starting tomorrow.’
Louise says, ‘It’s grand. Me and Gráinne are both doing canteen jobs as tea ladies so we’re not touching it. But still, it fucking stinks.’
Your heart sinks a little bit.
‘You’ll be okay,’ Mel says. ‘You get used to it.’
★
The factory is a huge warehouse and has a metal bridge running the length of it with walkways and stairwells to connect all the sections. Fans whizz everywhere but it’s still pretty sultry inside. You’re put on Section Twenty-Two and your supervisor is a lad from West Limerick called Mitchell Dunne.
‘Why ‘West’?’ you ask.
‘So you know I’m not from the city, girl. I’m from the county of Limerick. People don’t get that.’
The lot of you are just ‘Irish’ here in Australia so it doesn’t make a difference.
Three others work on your section, Si-won and Amy Park from South Korea and Tommo from Dublin who sits across from you.
Tommo is great fun but how much work he does depends on the severity of his hangover. He’s got a chip on his front tooth and dimples when he smiles. When he laughs too hard, he gets wheezy.
You get three short smokos and a forty-five minute lunch break on the work shifts. You catch up with Louise and Gráinne. They’ve to have teas, coffees and Milos waiting in the big canteen when you get in.
‘So yer breaks aren’t any shorter waiting for the kettle to boil,’ Louise explains.
They have it soft enough inside, wiping down the counters and tables, sweeping the floors and washing the dishes between breaks but you don’t mind it too much on the line. You do ten hours snipping the roots and stems off garlic mostly. But some days, you have to sort it into nets or for paste. Some of the workers, mainly the backpackers, pretend they don’t see anything septic in the garlic that goes down for paste. It’s because if they take the rotten stuff out to drop it in the waste shoot, the gunk and wet garlic will cling to their fingers and they’ll have to have a couple of showers in the evening to get rid of the smell. You’re not too bothered by it, the job is decent overall and you smell of garlic anyway, so you just go with it.
Sometimes, Tommo’d be in top form and you’d be struggling to breathe from laughing so much. If Mitchell isn’t about, Tommo does his Dracula impression, ‘It burns,’ and throws himself off his stool. It’s lame but it gets you every time. The garlic rolls past you. Amy Park and Si-won have to do your work. You bring in Double Choc Tim Tams and offer the biscuits to them on smokos to apologise for messing. They don’t really mind it, they’re just mad to work.
Amy is a hip hop dancer in her spare time, she tells you when you wait for the line to start one morning. Tommo is late again and Si-won is talking to Mitchell.
‘Are you really?’ you ask.
She nods shyly.
‘Will you show me?’
She checks around and nobody is looking so she gets off her seat. She jerks her head, shoulders and arms out and moves them back in, robotically. At the same time her hips twist her body around.
‘Amy, that’s really fucking cool,’ you say and clap.
She puts her head down and smiles. She re-adjusts her hairnet before going back to her stool.
Tommo lands in and winks at you. ‘How are the garlic warriors this morning?’
Mitchell pulls away from Si-won and turns to Tommo. ‘What time do you call this, boy?’
Tommo’s cheery face drops.
Mitchell takes a deep breath.
‘The belt hasn’t even started, Mitchell. Chill the beans,’ Tommo says and right on this cue the warning signal sounds. The belt begins chugging. Within seconds the garlic is at your section.
Mitchell walks away.
Tommo checks to see if he’s out of earshot. ‘I’ve a BA, a Postgrad and an MA, so I do. I know they’re only in Arts but what has Mitchell, the stupid culchie? Nothing but attitude. Seeping out his big pores along with the fucking garlic.’ His Dublin accent grows thicker when he’s mad.
‘Hey Tommo, I’m a stupid culchie too.’
‘You’re not stupid, Fiona. Never say that again.’
Mitchell is always fuming with Tommo. He’s constantly catching him out arsing around. Even if Tommo is doing some work, Mitchell still threatens him.
‘I’ll ask them to move you out of this section. I don’t give a fuck if we’re both Irish,’ Mitchell says as he rubs the beads of sweat under his hairline up through his hair making it wet and high off his head. ‘Not a fuck.’
★
You’re happy coming home from work and hanging out with the girls, even though you see Louise and Gráinne at break time. Mel worked in the factory before you were here but got a bar job and quit. You can properly relax in the room in the evenings. You don’t even do much. You don’t need to. It’s just comfortable. Everyone has their bad habits, Mel is constantly popping her zits and talking about men, Louise bursts into song in the middle of conversations and Gráinne is so sarcastic it’s hard to know when she’s joking or when she’s being a total cow. You wonder what they dislike about you and try to keep off their toes.
You take turns making dinner for each other. You never tell them about the outback and the things you’d eaten, you can only give them weak smiles when they frown or are grossed out by onions or mayonnaise or fat on meat.
They loan you their clothes and once you get paid, you get some bits – a cheap Nokia, strong sun block, factory boots, a small backpack.
You read snippets of Dorothy’s book whenever you can, trying to learn more facts about Australia’s environment.
Saltwater crocodiles or ‘salties’ are the most dangerous species of crocodiles to humans. They loiter and bask in sunshine during the day and hunt at night. They aren’t picky eaters and usually deploy the ‘death roll’ to kill. They seize their prey in an inescapable grip and roll over, throwing their prey off balance, making it easy to drag into the water, sometimes eating it all in one go.
★
Mitchell is running around the place, his shirt sleeves rolled past his elbow. His hair standing tall. He puts his hand on your back gently. You shirk it off like it’s burning hot.
‘Don’t touch me,’ you say.
‘Hey, girl, I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ Mitchell is confused.
‘You didn’t, it’s fine. Sorry. I just got a fright.’
‘Is it going okay here?’ he asks in his lilty accent.
‘Yeah, it’s grand, Mitchell, cheers,’ you say. You feel bad ab
out your initial reaction so you smile at him and ask, ‘How’s Ingrid?’
Ingrid is his Swedish girlfriend. She sometimes offers you lifts back to the hostel. Her English is crisp and Mitchell is relaxed around her. She’s expecting, due at Christmas.
‘She’s good, girl. Still a bit sick in the evenings. But it seems to be passing.’
‘Any word on sponsorship?’ you ask.
Mitchell sighs and says, ‘Not yet. But we’ve got buyers coming over from Italy and Greece next week and I reckon if I can get along with them, I should be elected for the visa. You know, two of the backpackers got it last year so maybe. Fingers crossed, eh.’
You smile at him and return your attention to the belt. He walks away.
‘This is probably the height of his career. This and the hamster porno he’ll no doubt star in,’ Tommo says over the rhythmic shrill of the conveyor.
‘I don’t know why you’re so harsh on him, Tommo. He’s sound enough.’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yeah, go on.’
‘Nah, I’m saying nothing,’ Tommo says and laughs. He’s quickly choked by his raspy cough. He slaps his chest. ‘Fucking joints are ruining me lungs.’
‘They’ll ruin your brain too,’ you say.
‘Ah, that’s well rotted by this place.’
★
The Friday before the buyers come, Mitchell walks around and Si-won lets out a little scream. Mitchell comes to see what’s happening. Si-won never fusses. He holds onto his finger tight. He’s slit the skin with the trimmers. Blood streaks from the clean nick. You wonder if he’ll need stitches.
Mitchell says, ‘Look, I’ll get you a band-aid but you should know, if you don’t cut yourself at least once during your shift, you’re not working hard enough.’
Tommo gives you eyes.
Si-won’s soft face goes a bit white but all he wants to do is get back to trimming.
About thirty of Tommo’s cloves go by as this is going down. Amy Park sorts them.
‘She’s a sexy garlic assassin,’ Tommo says and winks at her.
Mitchell shouts over at him to get back to work. Tommo doesn’t move so Mitchell storms over and speaks with his jaw clenched.
‘You know what your problem is? You think you’re still in Dublin. That this place works like there. Well it doesn’t. I was in Dublin before. Awful. Homeless junkies, stuck-up bitches and lads who think they’re fucking class at everything. You’re not there anymore. You’re in Australia and none of your Dublin city bullshit is of use here so get back to fucking work.’
He goes off to get Si-won’s plaster.
Tommo starts, ‘Here, d’ya wanna know the truth? What happened with us? Why I hate that dope?’
You nod. You’ve at least forty minutes to next smoko. And you like his mad yarns.
Tommo takes a big breath and says, ‘One day, I pissed myself at work.’
He stops and checks your response. You stay still. You want to hear more.
‘It was way before you got here. So, yeah, I’m not proud of it or anything. It happened because Mitchell wouldn’t let me go. He knew I was hungover to death. He knew me bladder was full from all the water ’cause I was parched at the beginning of work and drank about two litres. I was hopping up and down like Elvis with me legs crossed and me face was sweating. I said, “Come on, please. I’m absolutely busting”, and he said break was in twenty and I could wait.’
You press your lips tight and try not to laugh at the image.
‘So I’d been waiting. I’d been waiting and waiting and I couldn’t anymore. The first drop sprung hot and dangerous and next thing I was proper leaking. A relief and a shame too. It reminded me of a weird experience I had one night in Cambodia with a local girl but that’s neither here nor there. So the jeans were sopping and the floor was dribbled underneath me. The heat and wet was uncomfortable. The piss went cold on me skin. I sucked a breath in and called him over. Pointed to meself on the quiet. Said I told him this would happen, I was bleeding dying to go. He sent me home to change me jocks. And as I walked away from my station, he announced it again. Much louder this time so that even the non-English speakers knew something was off and they all looked me up and down and stared. Some laughed. Some gasped. Some just put their eyes back on the line, disappointed they’d become part of the drama between me and him. The routine of their shift broken. I didn’t really mind though.’
‘Really?’ you ask.
‘Yeah,’ Tommo says, ‘Embarrassing and all as it was, I snuck in and changed back in the hostel. Had a good auld chinwag with this girl from the next room. She was sick of picking oranges and had told the hostel owners to go fuck themselves. Wasn’t going to bother trying to get the second year. Ireland has to be better than this slavery she goes and asked me why I was finished work so early. I faked a cough and said I’d to get me medicine but I was heading back to the factory. I gave her the nod. Pints later. Got into the van, got it started after a few scratchy attempts and on the way I had a stop in Hungry Jacks for a feed of pancakes and some coffee. Checked me Facebook on the phone. Checked me Paddy Power and swanned back in just in time for second morning break. I wouldn’t let him know any of it got to me. I don’t think it did really. Life is messy anyway.’
‘I suppose it is,’ you agree and chop at the never-ending garlic.
★
On the Saturday afternoon, the Irish girls suggest drinking some wine in the room before going down the town to converge at a hotel where they let backpackers in. Some of the other drinking establishments are hostile and have ‘Locals Only’ signs. You hear stories of backpackers getting jumped and beaten up if they are alone and how hostels with low security have been raided. Passports, laptops, phones, cameras and designer clothes stolen from travellers.
‘Why do they hate us?’ you ask.
Mel says, as she fills a glass with wine, ‘It’s ’cause before the second year visa laws changed, the locals did the work that backpackers do. Not the factory jobs, more the farming, you know? They did the work and got well paid. Livelihoods, innit? We came along, desperate for jobs and undercut the locals. Not our problem. The farmers could pay fairly if they wanted to. They could also still employ the people from the area, like. But would you, if you could get cheap workers?’
‘I’d exploit the shit out of them,’ Gráinne says and laughs.
‘Out of us, you mean?’ you ask.
Gráinne shrugs.
★
Mel says she loves Irish men.
‘Really?’ Louise asks with a high pitch in her tone. She grimaces.
‘Yep. Can’t get enough of them. Love the way they speak to me and the crap they do to charm me.’
She’s dating two Irish lads from different hostels in the town and also seeing one of the Italian supervisors in the garlic factory.
You like your male friends from home and Tommo is good craic. But when you think about Irish lads romantically, an image of Malley bullies its way to the fore of your mind. You try to blank it out, like you usually do, but the alcohol won’t let you this time.
You remember your last argument. He wanted you to change your outfit for an evening in the pub with his friends, something that didn’t make you look so ‘mousy.’ You had long since abandoned your own friends. He hated them. He said they were manipulating you. You went home and put on your nicest top, a silky royal blue shirt and skinny jeans. You spent ages on your make-up, spritzed perfume on your neck, wore your pearl jewellery and brushed your hair. You couldn’t get it to sit right. You changed it from being tied in a tight bun, to down with clips holding it back to wearing it loosely on your face but no matter what way you did it, you looked shit. You knew he’d be disappointed but he texted telling you to hurry so you went back and forced a smile.
You were in a booth near the fire, sitting glumly surrounded by his friends. A couple and two single men. They talked about themselves and how interesting they were. They congratulated each other on being co
ol. Malley smoked weed in the smoking area, downed pints, ranted about what was wrong with the world. How frustrated it made him to see so many stupid people going about their lives, not realising all he realised. He never wanted kids. He said he’d never bring another human into a disgusting place like this. The couple seemed impressed by his self-sacrifice. You were sad about it. You never knew. You’d always imagined that you’d get married and have a few of your own. That he’d change and mature and be kinder when he was a dad.
When you brought it up with him back in your flat that night, you knew you were playing with fire but you’d had a few vodkas.
‘You don’t want children?’ you said.
He didn’t answer. He smoked and put on a DVD.
‘I don’t want children yet, but further down the line, you know?’
He stared at the TV. His jaw fastened and a vein throbbed in his temple.
‘We shouldn’t rule it out, should we? I think we’d be good parents,’ you say. His silence was spurring you on. You were about to start again when he caught you by the arm and pulled you down. His face was so close to yours, the tobacco stains black between his teeth, his moustache wispy, his navy blue eyes bright with rage.
‘Say another fucking word while I’m trying to watch this show,’ he said and released you.
You rubbed your arm. It was pink from his grip. ‘Why do you threaten me like that?’ You were shouting. You shouldn’t have shouted.
He sprung and pushed you. You fell back against the wall, your teeth chattered.
He returned to his spot on the couch. ‘You make me so angry and I’m not an angry person.’ He wouldn’t look at you. ‘Your stupid nagging. See what you make me do?’
You stayed leaning against the wall, fearful that he’d go for you again, fearful that he meant what he said. He kept his eyes on the TV, turned the volume up.
You eventually left, walked around the town for hours, only wearing that blue top. Freezing under the wind and drizzle. You walked back to your parents’ house, found the spare key under the flowerpot and went into your childhood bedroom with its turquoise carpet and postered walls. You lay down and stared at the roof.