Noah's Law

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  Nadine let out a long sigh. ‘The defendant wants to go to Terrigal with his mates full stop. But he can’t go if he’s stuck at Aunt Nirvine’s for the entire holiday full stop. My affidavit outlines all the details of the Terrigal trip, including dates, times, parties involved, both in the human-being sense and the music/girls he can’t get/dorky-dancing sense full stop. So he seeks your permission to reduce his sentence so he can go to Terrigal full stop.’

  Mary was writing furiously. She had a gift for speed writing and had developed her own shorthand. I wanted to say something but I knew I’d blow my chances if I spoke without permission. Usually, I would have had no problem getting Dad worked up with the meat tenderiser, but there was too much at stake. I needed my sentence reduced or I’d miss out on the best holiday with my mates.

  ‘Thank you, counsel,’ Dad said. I have considered your explanation for the delay and concur that your client engaged in inappropriate behaviour warranting a temporary severance of your retainer agreement. Noah, in future you are ordered not to embarrass your sisters in front of your mates.

  ‘I have read the affidavit and have reached a decision. My reasons follow. Would Mary please note that these are my reasons, and not my orders, as there was some confusion between the two in the last transcript of proceedings.’

  ‘Noted, Your Honour!’ That singsong voice of my little sister just killed me.

  ‘First, given the defendant’s ongoing outrageous conduct at school, I consider his sentence to be perfectly proportionate to the offences committed. Second, in deciding on the sentence, I have given consideration to the social utility in requiring the defendant to work on a voluntary basis in a law firm. I am confident he will learn responsibility and accountability, qualities which will not only be of value to him, but be of value to the wider community in the long term. I am not convinced that a reduced sentence for the purpose of attending a beach party at Terrigal is consistent with the message I am trying to convey to the defendant and the community in applying the maximum sentence. The defendant is a remarkably intelligent human being with enormous potential. That potential has so far been an untapped resource. His intelligence has been misapplied.

  ‘However, I am not a cruel judge. I am fair and just.’ He stopped and took out his BlackBerry. ‘I am just consulting my calendar. Hmm . . . yes.’ He cleared his throat and continued.

  ‘On Wednesday 28 January I will convene a further hearing. The defendant will have been working at Saleh & Co Lawyers for approximately six weeks by then. If, at the hearing, the defendant is able to demonstrate that he has become a responsible human being who has changed his attitude, I will permit him to cease his work at Aunt Nirvine’s law firm and go on his beach holiday to Terrigal. Therefore, these are my orders . . .’ He looked at Mary, who nodded.

  ‘One: the defendant’s application for a reduced sentence is denied.

  ‘Two: the defendant’s sentence may be reduced and permission granted to cease his work at Aunt Nirvine’s law firm and go on his beach holiday to Terrigal if, and only if, he satisfies the court that he is a changed man at the hearing listed for 28 January.

  ‘For the sake of clearing up any misunderstanding, teenagers can be men, and any arguments to the contrary, which have been aired by the defendant before, are not valid. Those are my orders. Court is now adjourned.’

  Dad slammed the meat tenderiser down on the wooden chopping board, placed his wig in its round steel box and stretched.

  ‘Nadine, is there any ice-cream cake left over from yesterday?’ he asked.

  Honestly, the man had no conscience.

  I was furious. Dad was known for his excessive sentencing. I was used to being grounded for weeks on end. I’d been on dishwasher duties for what seemed like forever. Even an Xbox ban was manageable. But this was criminal. He’d never gone this far before. It was child labour. I was being made to work against my will. There had to be legal consequences for that kind of sadism. Maybe I could hire an important barrister to take on my case for free. Convince them to see the bigger picture: parental abuse; children’s welfare; the right of a teenager to their school holidays. Human rights observers would come along to take notes on the trial.

  The only problem was that Dad was so far up in Sydney’s legal world that probably no barrister would dare to take him on. Assuming they believed in my case. For all I knew they were holding these court hearings at home with their kids too.

  Not only was he ruining my last school holiday before my final year (when I’d be stuck studying and officially have no life), he was putting my Terrigal trip at risk. We’d been planning the trip for months. Surfing and hanging out on the beach were part of the plans. Working with my aunt was definitely not.

  Aunt Nirvine’s law firm was in the city. She wanted me there at nine sharp. I guessed Dad put her up to that one. So I woke up at seven fifteen and left the house at seven thirty to catch the seven forty-five train which ended up being cancelled. I was dead tired. The benches at the station were all taken. Everyone on the platform seemed miserable, scratching sleep out of their eyes, fixing their lopsided lipstick, staring at the ground. Looking at their faces momentarily made me appreciate school. Now that was just wrong.

  When the train finally approached people jockeyed to position themselves where they thought the doors would open. Pregnant women and the disabled didn’t stand a chance. Nor did I. Unable to get a seat, I staked out a spot in the corner of the middle section of the train under some tall woman’s armpits and thought about Amit. He was probably having a good sleep-in. Probably planning on spending his morning watching DVDs. I could have killed him.

  Just over an hour later I was standing in front of a colossal sandstone building. It looked slick and fancy, like the one Dad’s chambers were in. There were marble columns in the foyer, huge paintings on the walls. You’d need a forklift to move the pot plants standing alongside the reception desk. And I’d never seen so many people in suits. They were rushing through the doors looking as miserable and harassed as the commuters on the train.

  I walked on to the building next door, where Aunt Nirvine’s firm was located. It wasn’t as fancy as the one next door.

  I took the lift up to the fourth floor then walked down the corridor to a set of double doors marked SALEH & CO LAWYERS. A receptionist looked up as I entered. She had blonde hair and crooked teeth.

  ‘Hi, you must be Noah. I’m Jill. Your aunt’s on a call. Just take a seat and she’ll be out soon.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The coffee table was piled with newspapers and boring news magazines. I slumped down into a chair and folded my arms across my chest. There was a painting on the wall. It looked like somebody had gone out to a childcare centre, picked some kid’s finger painting and decided to frame it. I glanced at a stand stocked with brochures: ‘Know Your Rights’, ‘Have You Been Injured at Work?’, ‘Families and the Law’. The office was quiet except for the sound of Jill typing. She was fast and the tapping started to bug me because it was all I could hear. It looked like this was going to be one hell of a long holiday.

  Suddenly the door to the office next to reception opened and a girl about my age walked out. She was carrying a stack of files which she slammed down onto the reception desk.

  ‘God she is such a cow!’ she said to Jill.

  ‘Calm down, Jacinta, she’ll hear you,’ Jill warned without stopping her typing.

  ‘She wants me to photocopy all these files and then put the documents in chronological order and then make up a table with a summary of each document. By tomorrow! She knows I’ve got a house inspection tomorrow. Which means she knows I’m going to have to stay back late. Just because she doesn’t have a life—’

  The door opened again and a woman stepped out. She was catwalk beautiful with raven-black hair, big green eyes and a killer figure. But she had a stuck-up look about her. Jacinta turned around, the colour draining from her face.

  ‘Jacinta, I can’t find the file note on the Bryson fil
e. It was just on my desk. Do you know where it is?’

  Jacinta looked down at the pile of paper on top of her files. ‘Er,’ she stammered, shuffling through them, ‘I’m not sure. I’ll just check. Oh, sorry, I accidentally picked it up.’

  The woman extended her hand and cocked an eyebrow. She took the file note and spun on her heel, closing the door to her office behind her.

  Jacinta turned to Jill. ‘Like I did it on purpose. Honestly. What a cow.’

  She swept up the pile of files and stormed down the corridor, turning into another office.

  ‘Hey,’ Jill said to me, looking up from her computer, ‘don’t go blabbing to your aunt about what you just heard.’

  Me? A snitch? Could there be a worse insult?

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ I said indignantly. ‘Where is my aunt anyway? I woke up early to get here by nine. I could have had an extra ten minutes’ sleep.’

  ‘We could all do with some extra sleep. I told you she’s on the phone. Oh, the light on her phone is off now. She should be out soon.’

  Sure enough Aunt Nirvine appeared in the hallway. She looked nothing like my dad, which was a good thing.

  ‘Noah! Hello!’ She walked towards me with arms outstretched and gave me a big hug. I don’t like hugs. Especially in public.

  ‘You made it. Come into my office. We’ll have a quick chat and then I’ll get Jill or Jacinta to show you around. I’ve got a meeting in ten or I’d take you around myself. I’m so glad you’re here.’ She sat down at her desk. ‘Your dad tells me you want to be a lawyer and you want a first-hand insight into life in the law?’

  ‘No.’

  I would never admit to my dad (or anybody related to him for that matter) that I wanted to be a lawyer. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m here because I got into trouble at school and Dad wants to punish me.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘Oh, so that’s why you’re here. So this arrangement is non-consensual?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m being dragged here.’

  ‘Kicking and screaming I can see,’ she said, grinning at me.

  ‘So what will I be doing?’

  ‘Well, helping Jacinta mainly. She’s just about to start her first year as a law student. She’s working three days a week. She could do with some admin support, photocopying mainly. I know it’s not exciting but we’ve got some cases that are going to hearing soon and the photocopying builds up.’

  ‘Okay. Do I at least get to go to court?’

  Going to court would make this whole punishment bearable. That way I’d have some interesting stories to tell Amit and the guys. Just last night Amit had sent me a text message telling me to bring home some juicy files.

  ‘Sure,’ she said distractedly, standing up. She grabbed a notepad and a pen. ‘Follow me, I’ll take you to Jacinta. I’ve really got to get moving.’ As we walked down the hall she added, ‘I’ll tell Casey to keep you in mind when she goes to court next. She’s our workers’ compensation and personal injury specialist.’

  ‘Do you do criminal law?’

  ‘No, not really. Why? Were you hoping for some Law & Order type action?’

  ‘Well yeah, of course,’ I said, a little too enthusiastically. I quickly shrugged, like I didn’t care either way.

  She laughed. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Noah. But the real legal world isn’t that exciting. We’re just a small firm here. Pretty simple, low-profile cases.’

  Great.

  We walked into a room with two photocopiers, two printers, some filing cabinets and a row of bookshelves. It was warm and stuffy and Jacinta was at the photocopier, her sleeves rolled up, copying a document. She seemed stressed and gave us a startled look when she noticed us.

  ‘Jacinta, this is my nephew, Noah. He’s going to be spending his holidays here. Kind of on work experience. I’ve got a meeting with the Cowls now so could you please show him around the office and give him a bit of an orientation? He’s happy to help out with the photocopying.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Jacinta said, flashing Aunt Nirvine a big smile. She was cute (Jacinta, not my aunt). She had a tiny smattering of freckles across her porcelain-white cheeks. Her eyes were light hazel and an interesting shape. I guessed her parents were mixed race. Although I was mixed race myself (Dad was born in Egypt and Mum was born in the UK), I’d missed out on looking ‘exotic’. Dad insisted that my wanting to look exotic was an ‘Orientalist fantasy’. When I was younger he would tuck me into bed and read aloud passages of Edward Said’s book Orientalism while other parents were reading Harry Potter to their kids.

  The one good thing about my parents procreating was that I got Dad’s olive complexion and Mum’s sandy blonde hair. I’m also really tall and built pretty solid (okay, that’s a lie, I was built skinny and owe the solid part to weekends at Jim’s Gym). Apart from that, I’m about as average-looking as you can get.

  I tried to avert my eyes from Jacinta. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was some desperate, girl-crazy high school kid.

  ‘Okay then, Noah,’ my aunt said. ‘I’ll leave you in Jacinta’s capable hands. I’ll see you later. Bye.’

  She walked out and I turned to Jacinta, whose smile had transformed into a grimace.

  ‘Like I have time,’ she muttered.

  ‘Hey, I’m not here to be a burden on anyone. I don’t need to meet people.’

  ‘Yeah, well, if the boss makes a request you’ve got no choice. I’m just swamped at the moment. Come on then.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll give you a quick tour.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I shrugged and followed her.

  A cute girl with attitude. How original.

  The place was pissing me off already. Everybody was in a bad mood with the exception of Aunt Nirvine, who seemed only too happy to flick me onto somebody else. And the worst part about it all was that I wouldn’t even get a chance to do some exciting cases. The accused murderers and toxic chemical companies were probably in the sandstone building next door.

  Well it didn’t look like there would be much chance of me seeing any courtroom action given that Casey was the ‘cow’ Jacinta had been referring to earlier that morning. In fact, Jacinta had a whole list of adjectives to describe Casey and using any one of them would probably have had her jobless in less time than it took to photocopy a document.

  Casey didn’t smile. She frowned a lot. Rolled her eyes constantly. When Jacinta explained I was here to photocopy (an unfortunately misleading slant on things), Casey managed to express her pleasure by pursing her lips together and dumping four binders of material in front of me. ‘By tomorrow,’ she ordered, minus a please.

  Get serious. I refused to be prostituted to the photocopier by Jacinta the Paper Pimp. So I said, ‘My aunt suggested I go to court with you sometime.’

  Casey cackled (she couldn’t even do ‘laughed sarcastically’) and explained that would be highly unlikely given she wasn’t paid to babysit.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need you to get up close and personal with Toshiba because Jacinta here can’t keep up with me. Just how I’m supposed to keep this firm afloat without proper support is beyond me.’ Dismissing us with a wave, she picked up the phone.

  I did get up close and personal with Toshiba. I was tempted to throw it out of the window only that would have meant I had to first push it out of the room, down the hall, past Casey’s office and into another office because the photocopier room had no windows. It didn’t have any ventilation either. So although I wanted a kebab for lunch, I opted for hot chips. I wasn’t going to risk bad breath when Jacinta and I were stuck in an airless dungeon.

  ‘So what’s this file I’m copying?’ I asked Jacinta after lunch. ‘It’s a killer. I’m spending more time removing staples than I am copying.’

  ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I’ll be eighteen in June. You?’

  ‘Seventeen in March.’

  ‘What ye
ar are you in?’

  ‘Going into year twelve.’

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘Well, your height’s misleading. But you’re still a high schooler.’ ‘You only just finished year twelve. You aren’t exactly a senior citizen.’ ‘Well, girls are more mature than boys. That’s a scientific fact.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ I said with a laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those hairy-armpit feminists who doesn’t shut up about women and men being equal by pointing out all our differences.’

  ‘My armpits are perfectly hairless, thank you very much,’ she said and then giggled.

  ‘I have two sisters and a tree-hugging mum. I also have five-year-old twin half-sisters who insist on being served first at dinner in the name of feminism.’

  ‘Teach them when they’re young is what I say.’

  ‘So whatever you plan to say about males and females won’t be original. I’ve heard it all before so save the Germaine Greer speeches for uni.’

  ‘How many sisters did you say you have?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘That explains a lot.’

  ‘Anyway, if you hate all this so much, why do you do it? At least I’m forced to be here.’

  ‘I’m going to study law, so it’s ideal to be working at a law firm. It’ll look great on my CV. I will have seen how a law firm works from the inside.’

  I picked up a piece of paper. ‘Duplicating trees? Sounds like a great way to learn about the law.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s mind-numbing stuff. Got to start somewhere, I suppose.’

  ‘What are you copying anyway?’

  ‘Discovery.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’ve got to exchange documents with the other side.’

  ‘So why the urgency?’

  ‘We’re on a court timetable.’

  ‘Does the court order you to exchange documents?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How does it know which ones are important?’

  She let out a laugh. ‘Are you cross-examining me? What’s with the million questions?’