Unsheltered

by Clare Moleta

  She counted until she slept. And while she slept, Matti called to her, I just don’t want to be in the other room without you Mum, because it’s dark. And when she woke and passed through the gates and stood in the food queue and rode the van and worked shift, all the memories came ripping, the flashes of her voice and face, her smell. And it stayed like that, day after day after day. It couldn’t be lived with but Li was still alive.

  You don’t talk too much.

  Megan stood with Li by the fence in the weak sun, smoking. Rest day. The gale had beaten itself out overnight and now the tussock was still and silver in the afternoon light. Megan’s hand shook a bit when she passed the cigarette and Li knew she was still thinking about the dogs. A couple of hours earlier, Megan and some other Essos had been repairing a damaged section of the outer fence, near maingate, when a pack of dogs had come at them through the gap. They’d shot a couple and the rest of them got busy fighting over the carcasses while the Essos closed up the fence.

  Cigarettes were on the points system, some kind of cheap knock-offs. It was mostly just the Essos who could afford them. Li had never been a smoker but she understood Megan was sharing something that had cost her. The chemical hit to her lungs was thin and harsh. It made her jittery and then calm, dulling her headache. The smell had none of the richness of tobacco she remembered – it didn’t remind her of anything much. What it did was mask the stench from the dump. Megan said Sumud and New Flinders both used it, so it kept expanding across the No Go between the precincts. She said in the hot season you could pass out from the smell.

  Megan knew all kinds of things. She’d been Transit security for three years and she got on with people. Supervisors, drivers, even management. Some of the labour treated her like she was the enemy and that made it harder for her to do her job.

  I knew you weren’t going to be one of them, she told Li.

  Some of the other Essos had come to Transit looking for work. Megan had been picked up off the highway, same as Li. People got assigned according to their history, their abilities. Megan had done security before, for a container farm that went under. She carried herself right, had some combat and weapons training.

  That doesn’t make me an arsehole, she said. I didn’t put my hand up.

  A lot of Essos were like Megan. They remembered people’s names, they joked around with them, went as easy as they could on the searches. Vouched for people when they were too sick to work. The Essos had their own compound, better food, hot water, but some of them had people they cared about in the labour compounds too. Megan’s younger brother worked in the medical-supply facility. She’d been trying to get him upgraded to security for two years. She didn’t see him much because women didn’t guard the men’s compounds.

  Li liked listening to her. Maybe that was what Megan got out of it. She didn’t want sex, or at least she hadn’t asked. It wouldn’t have mattered much but Li preferred this.

  Megan was quiet for a while and Li focused on a scavenger bird circling outside the fence. A bird was good. There were so many of them around Transit because of the dump. Too many at once reminded her of the lake, but she only had to look at one.

  * * *

  Sometimes she worked the smelter, or on the crushing machine, feeding in CRTs and monitor glass to be shattered in a grey cloud and then carting the debris to the skips for dump transport. Sometimes the glass dust was too thick to see the woman next to her. Sometimes she tasted blood. Her eyes and throat stung from the PVC and the flame-retardant but she couldn’t smell the lead, couldn’t feel it quietly accruing in her soft tissue, settling in her bones.

  The medic had said she might not walk easily again. The damage was too sustained – the tearing and breaking on top of the sprain that she’d walked on for so many days. But she didn’t have to walk far now. Just from the sleepbox to the van, the compound to the food shed. The medic said her blood lead level was up and asked if she was following procedure. Li thought about the decontamination block where they hung their overalls and showered at the end of their shift. The water was heated on the complex’s power supply because hot water was more effective. She liked the warmth, the feeling that the shift ran off her and went down somewhere below ground with the other shifts. Except the water was recycled like everything else. They all went round and round.

  * * *

  When she thought about Matti’s horse now, her certainty was gone. Had she ever looked at it again, after the first time? She could only remember touching it. Why hadn’t she looked? She tried to hold the horse in her mind, there on the salt pan, the hot belief of it, but all she could see was a piece of wood.

  * * *

  Scheduled break. Li, Camila, Susanna and Trish were out in the loading bay, sharing gum. They got one meal on shift, usually readybars, so the gum helped. They got counted off before and after break and there were two Essos out there with them but mostly they left them alone. Li and Trish lay on their jackets on the concrete with their legs up on the bench – Trish had varicose veins.

  When there wasn’t a wall of trucks in the way, they could look north from here and see the No Go’s perimeter fence and the highway outside it. Today they looked back the other way instead, beyond Transit, to the dump. On a cold, still day like this they hardly noticed the smell.

  Camila said, Tammy says you could walk to Sumud in four hours.

  The women on the dump shift had a clear view of both precincts’walls from the southern face of the dump. They said if you were working up high enough on a clear day, you could see the tops of buildings inside Sumud.

  Trish said, You wouldn’t make it. Dogs’d get you.

  Or you would, Susanna said, and they’d shoot you from the top of the wall. There’s no gate anyway.

  Li put another quarter of gum in her mouth to bring the taste back. She closed her eyes to ease her headache and listened to Trish chewing. Most of Trish’s points went on gum. She’d found God and given up smoking years ago, back when you could still get cigarettes without any special kind of trade. Still missed it. She’d told Li that every time she lit a match she tasted nicotine.

  What do you reckon it’s like? Camila asked. Inside?

  Better than outside, Susanna said. Better than here.

  Trish stopped chewing for a second. Tammy says a lot of the rubbish is the same stuff we would have chucked out. Really munted stuff.

  Not all of it, but, Susanna said.

  Camila said, What d’you think, Li?

  Li didn’t open her eyes. Company wouldn’t have the contract unless there was money in it.

  I bet you can still get anything in there, Susanna said. Look at the trucks.

  The buzzer went. Trish eased her legs down, making a huffing sound. Susanna helped her up. Li got up on her own but Camila waited, held her crutches ready.

  * * *

  In the shower block, Camila asked Li if she believed in the children walking.

  I heard about them, Li said. People had stories. But nobody ever saw them.

  * * *

  It was the lightning storms that battered the camp. It was when the rain came in violent dumps that washed away topsoil, carving rivers through the mud and flooding containers. It was the burning cold in her hands and feet at night and the ice on the ground in the morning, it was the hail that smashed the van’s windscreen and killed half the dogs. It was the crying from Family compound because another child had coughed themselves to death. The signs kept accumulating until Li couldn’t turn away from them anymore, had to face the truth.

  She stopped counting the days, then, counted the lost things instead. The baby she never wanted, who had stolen a year of her sleep, who Frank had rocked and she had shaken. The one who said Dadda first, the one she had wished away, who ran away and ran away but was always with them. Who bounced on the sofa naked, flexing her muscles, and ran wild with Robbie, who was stung by bees and loved a rag horse. Who swung on the high monkey bars, face shining, calling, Mum! I don’t need you! Who kissed the radio
when the Mynas scored and wrestled with Frank and made herself sick laughing. The kid who made up the Best Place on the road to Valiant. Who cried because she missed walking. The one who said, I hate you and, Just can you stay? Who said, Mum, look!

  Li held her close, rubbed her worn. Never told the others. Matti was dead now. She would never find the place where it happened, never know for certain, but she felt the truth of it in her body. Lightning and flood told her, freeze and hail and weeping. There was no way for a child to survive the cold season out there. And this, in here, this wasn’t life, it was something else, something that couldn’t be added up.

  * * *

  The Essos wore surgical masks now, when they came close. Gloves when they body-checked. Li submitted to the handling, opened her mouth obediently, keeping her tongue flat, but she could have told them it wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t going to kill herself. What she thought was that she would get one of the sicknesses, something you couldn’t be vaxxed for. Or eventually the lead would do it. She just had to wait.

  * * *

  Sometimes they prayed at night. Not all of them. They took turns to lead the prayer and they prayed in different ways and languages. Li never led but she liked the call and response, the murmur or drone, the silence. She felt closer to Matti and Frank at those times, closer to Nerredin. And something else that she thought she remembered when she listened to them praying with Saint Anthony in her fist. She thought maybe it was her mother.

  Often Camila was beside her. Li had never had a friend before Angie, only Frank. Camila was nothing like Angie but there was a warmth in her, some quality that hadn’t been extinguished, that was good to be near.

  Trish led the most. She still had a smoker’s voice and she was older than Li, too old, really, for the work. She’d been a minister once, and then, after her town was gone, an itinerant preacher. She lost her husband and her grandchild in a forced evacuation, didn’t know if they were together or dead. Trish could recite whole passages from the New Testament, if that’s what they wanted, or she could just talk. She asked them to think of someone who had wronged them, and forgive. Li thought about Jasmine’s warm hand at the side of the truck, heard her saying, We do this all the time. She thought about how they could have done her over on the road in Tarnackie but they’d strung her along instead, had waited until they knew what she had to lose so they could take it from her.

  Something raw and violent opened up in her but she turned away from it.

  * * *

  That’s what I like about you, Megan said. We can just have a smoke and I don’t have to worry what you’re going to come out with.

  They stood further apart at the fence now and they didn’t pass the cigarette back and forth anymore, but Megan still gave her the last few drags when she was done. She looked over at the sleepboxes. I don’t get some of them. Always going on about what’s out there for them. It’s just noise, you know? They know it’s not gunna happen.

  Li said, Could you leave? If you wanted to?

  Megan shrugged. This isn’t bad. I get food, I get smokes, I know where I’m sleeping, I know what I’m doing every day. And I can keep an eye on Benj. It’s just a job, you don’t want to think about it too hard. She passed the butt to Li. Nobody out there’s looking out for me, you know? And you and me, we’re not getting inside. So maybe this is as good as it gets.

  Li finished the cigarette. She said, I’ve got no reason to be out there.

  * * *

  Get up, Tammy said. This one’s mine.

  Li rolled over slowly to the edge of the cot and groped for her crutches. There were about a dozen women in the sleepbox, not long off shift.

  I see you by the fence with your little screw, Tammy said. What’re you giving up for the smokes?

  Nothing, Li said. We just talk.

  We just talk. Don’t you have any fucking self-respect?

  Li shrugged. She was on her feet now and Tammy faced her across the cot, reeking of dump. Li kept her eyes down. She’d worked fourteen hours and she was lurching with tiredness but it was too soon to move away to an empty mattress. Tammy wanted to hit people, mostly that was what she wanted.

  You’re wasting your time there, Trish said.

  Tammy turned on Trish. You telling me what to do?

  I’m just saying. What are you going to do that hasn’t already happened to her?

  The box was quiet with listening. Then Tammy sat down heavily on the cot and settled onto her back with her arms folded behind her head. Looked up at Li with her jaw working. Yeah, she said. Too easy.

  * * *

  Sometimes there were fights in the food queue but mostly people were too tired. And mostly there was enough food. Sometimes when there were fights, Li lost hold of where she was and mixed this queue up with the queue at makecamp, but then one of the others would talk loudly in her ear or shove her forwards, and she would take her bowl and sit and raise and lower the spoon until the bowl was empty. She felt like a child then, and felt a tenderness that she didn’t know where to direct.

  One day she was leaving the food shed as another women’s compound was waiting to go in. In the queue she saw a face she knew. She stopped walking and stared until the woman behind Angie nudged her and Angie looked up and saw her too. It was the strangest thing, like looking through time. She hadn’t seen Angie since she and Carl left Nerredin without saying goodbye, more than two years ago.

  Angie had more grey in her hair now, and the face of an older woman, more than two years older. From the stain on her fingers, she worked ammo. She just looked at her, why didn’t she speak? The women around her shuffled or stood blankly or leaned into the cooking smell. Li wanted to tell her everything. She wanted to tell someone who’d known Frank since primary school how he had died and she wanted to ask about Carl – if he was alive, if he was here too. She wanted to say Matti’s name.

  The woman behind Angie was watching Li, curious and hostile, protective. Li saw that this was Angie’s friend now, and felt the loss of Angie like she never had since Nerredin. She had let her go. She had turned away from the pain of Robbie and left them to carry it, as if two people could carry it. Angie looked away and then back again, like she couldn’t help it. Li saw what was in her eyes and she felt it too. That it was unbearable to show themselves to each other like this.

  The queue moved and Angie’s friend shoved her and she went into the food shed. Li stayed where she was until all the things that had threatened to spill out of her were quiet again, and then she went back to the sleepbox and counted the grids from the outside in. She remembered how this had happened before, when Rich called her name at the Delta fence. But it was different now – she wasn’t poisoning herself with hope anymore.

  * * *

  In the sleepbox they talked about the children walking, what they’d heard and what might be true. The women who’d lost kids approached this idea like a cliff edge. But when it was too hard to speak the names of their own children, then they prayed for the children walking.

  Susanna said, Why would God leave them out there alone?

  Maybe we brought it on ourselves, Azzi said. We knew there was no future and we went and had them anyway.

  Li tasted metal. Beside her, Camila made a small sound that wasn’t meant to be heard.

  What about the kids? Tammy said. What are they being punished for?

  A shudder ran through the room. But Trish said, The God I know is a merciful God. We’re never alone, God always offers a way back. Maybe the children are walking to find the way back.

  Camila said, What kind of God would ask something like that from a child?

  Li thought about how standing on concrete for twelve hours made Trish’s feet swell up, how slowly she climbed into the van at the end of a shift, and the painful way she breathed at night when her veins wouldn’t let her sleep. We think we’ve lost our children, Trish said, and it feels like a punishment, I know that. But what if they’re not lost? It’s too late for us, but what if there’s stil
l a chance for them to be saved?

  You believe that? Camila asked.

  Trish said, I believe all children belong to God. Her voice shook and steadied. Our children are held in the hand of God. They walk under God’s hand and they shall come to no harm but shall be lifted.

  * * *

  The way back from Central compound took her past Family compound. No other way. The kids under twelve roamed the compound while their parents worked shift. Sometimes there was an adult with them, organising activities, portioning out gum. Just like makecamp.

  In the beginning she’d stood by the fence through her breaks, searching the compound through the wire, but she’d given that up after Megan had called in a favour and ran Matti’s status number through the records.

  Now she never looked. Except one time when she went past, there was a kid at the fence on his own, tying long strips of plastic onto the wire. She recognised the packaging. There were grey strips and white strips and Serkel green and the kid was weaving them into a pattern. Tongue out, frowning. The wind caught the plastic and it unfurled like thin arms. Matti held the wire, she didn’t ask anymore.

  My girl, Li thought, dumbly. And there was nothing she wanted more than to hold the body of her child.

  * * *

  When the Essos came to take Susanna out of Charlie, every woman there fought back. They held onto Susanna and each other. They punched and kicked, shouted. Even the ones who had turned their backs in the showers. Even the ones who said Susanna should never have been let into Charlie – must have given some Esso what he wanted at procesing so he’d look the other way. Even Li. She fought to keep Susanna but she didn’t understand why Susanna, or any of them, mattered enough to warrant this. The blind heat of it didn’t feel like Essos against labour, it felt like a mob struggling over some resource that had already run out. More Essos came running in from Delta, men she didn’t know. They had batons and spray. One of them shoved her against the container wall, bashing her head back on the metal. For a stunned second their eyes met and she saw his uncertainty, that he didn’t know why either.