Unsheltered

by Clare Moleta

  When he was done, he offered to help get her clothes on but the feeling was coming back into her fingers in stabs by then, and she wouldn’t let him touch her again. He fiddled with the radio and she knew that if he told her to get out now she would have no choice. But he put the truck in gear and pulled back onto the highway.

  He asked her if she liked classic rock and when there was a newsbreak he asked if she’d been anywhere near the howler, if she’d heard about the flu outbreak in Fengdu. Then he just drove and she leaned against the window and counted each turn that brought them down the pass.

  * * *

  Hey, wakey wakey. The driver was nudging her shoulder. She sat up fast, shrugging him off. Don’t be like that, he said.

  The snow was gone and the sky was brilliant. Her eyes followed a hawk labouring up and up and then diving in a steep V. The mountains were hills now, green with bush. A fast-flowing creek running alongside the road.

  This is the last bit, he said. Thought you’d want to see. He palmed the wheel into a slow turn, humming to the radio. Around the bend, the view opened onto a wide valley, and there was the XB again, running through it under the sun, as if the range had just been a minor interruption. But this was a different XB, this was the first one. Fengdu. Its wall ran north and south, beyond her sight, but she could only see one gate, fortified with barbed wire and guard towers. The road cutting through the No Go to the gate was fenced in and lined with concertina wire. A queue of vehicles and a queue of bodies. That human queue was built on hope, on the hidden promise of something better, but Li was still high up enough to see over the wall. She had a brief impression of a long metal cage running between the wall and a second barrier. On the far side of that, smoke rose from a vast industrial zone. A flash of greenhouses further north and the start of a metropolis that made Valiant look like a suburb. But Li tracked back over the wall to what was outside it.

  The driver said, That’s where you’re headed, right?

  Permacamp sprawled north and south along the No Go’s perimeter fenceline, like makecamp, but it carved into the No Go as well, and it was gated and fenced like Transit. It wasn’t like either of those, though, not really. There were checkpoints and guard stations, roads branching out through defined settlements. Precise, endless rows of army tents interspersed with toilet blocks and washing lines and solar panels, and small container settlements and fenced-off administration areas with real buildings, and patches of cultivated land. It looked like Agency. She imagined the numbers of unsheltered living in this camp, moving through its ordered world, where everything was recorded and accounted for.

  She tried to imagine Matti in there but she came up empty. So she looked east instead, across Fengdu, squinting against the distance, and imagined she saw the grey shine of ocean. Boats that didn’t sink.

  I can drop you on the outskirts, the driver said. I can’t risk getting spotted setting you down before I clear customs. There’s taxis running to the camp all the time down there.

  She saw where the highway came out on the valley floor, how much traffic there was on it, the trucks queuing up outside the gates of Fengdu. The fringes of the camp started at the side of the road and there it looked scrappier, dustier, less regulated, like you could jump a truck, or maybe just walk a while before anyone stopped you.

  A beeping started up inside the cab. The driver glanced at the CB and then at his phone in its dock, frowning, but Li already had the phone out of her pocket. Two messages.

  You didn’t say you had a phone.

  Two messages. She couldn’t listen with him there, the smell of him, his body filling up all the space. Can you pull over? Let me off here?

  I would’ve traded for the phone.

  Li looked at him and what she felt must have been in her eyes because he shut his mouth, turned back to the road. A few minutes later there was a passing lane and he pulled over. She threw her pack down and got out without speaking or looking at him again.

  * * *

  The first message was from Rich. I wanted to call you before we get out of range, see if you heard anything yet. Might be a while before I can call again. I hope you made it across, Li. And I hope you find her. I’m not worried about you cos. He laughed, scrambling the reception into static. Haven’t seen anything yet that could kill you. But just take care of yourself. And wish me luck, yeah? A pause, she thought he’d gone. There’s so many birds up here, Li, never saw this many birds, true to God. Following the river now. I got your saint looking out for me, so we’ll see what we find.

  She saved the message, the glint of him following those northern rivers back to the source. Went with him for a moment because, after everything, she wasn’t ready. To listen to the next message, press one.

  She had stopped walking, was standing where the gravel met the open side of the hill, facing east. Torn-off pieces of cloud and below was the valley and the wall and the camp outside the wall. To listen to the next message.

  She pressed one.

  Li. She’s alive. Call me.

  Li sat down on her pack to make the call. She dropped the phone on the gravel, scrabbled to pick it up with hands that didn’t belong to her. She felt boneless, unable to take the next step. A living child. Not a body. Not a witnessed statement of time and cause of death. She was the living mother of a living child.

  She looked at the hand that wasn’t holding the phone and then slapped her face with it, hard. Then she called Chris back.

  He answered like he’d been waiting. She’s in Permacamp with the unaccompanied minors. They processed her more than a month ago.

  A month ago. When Matti was crossing the range Li had already buried her. Couldn’t let herself believe in her again yet. Not till she was sure.

  How do they know it’s her?

  DNA match. And she verified everything on her record: status number, parents’ name, date and place of birth. It’s her, Li.

  Then what was wrong with his voice? Why was he talking so slowly, what hadn’t he told her yet? She said, How did she get there? How did she get across the range?

  She came in with a few other kids in a truck. Apparently they got picked up early on, that’s why they made it. She said there were a lot more kids. Some of them died, some of them got into other trucks. A lot of them are still unaccounted for. She was lucky.

  Lucky. That slowness in his voice again, like he was medicated. You’ve talked to her?

  No, I read her file. You gave me access, remember?

  What else did she say?

  She confirmed her father’s place and cause of death.

  What about me?

  He didn’t answer and it made her afraid. Does she think I’m dead too?

  No, he said reluctantly. She doesn’t believe you were in the camp when the fire started.

  And what, Chris? What else?

  She says you were claiming for the Deep Islands. She thinks she’s going to meet up with you there. Apparently she’s tried to get out of Permacamp a couple of times.

  Everything that had been too big, too borderless to wrap feeling around, came down on Li now. She couldn’t breathe. This this this.

  Li. Li? She’s all right, are you listening to me? She’s alive.

  Then what’s wrong? There’s something wrong. What’s wrong with her?

  He sighed, a terrifying sound. She waited for him to find the words he needed and lift them, one at a time. It’s not her. It’s Aaron. We lost Aaron.

  You lost?

  He died. Three weeks ago. Flu.

  Lucky, she thought. She was lucky, said Chris.

  He said, We thought. Never thought we could have a kid. Suyin tried before. But then we had him. But we were right.

  She felt the distance from their childhood to now, with this waiting for them all the time. I’m sorry, she said. I’m sorry for you. Both of you.

  He was silent. She wondered if Suyin was there, listening.

  Chris?

  I’m still here.

  Thank you. For wh
at you’ve done. I won’t ask you for anything else. I’m going to go to the camp now.

  Wait, he said, but she had to hang up the phone, the weight of it. When she placed it carefully at her feet, she felt the gravel against her knuckles, skin on stone, barely tethering her to the hill. Her child was alive. Her brother’s child was dead. Get up, she told herself. Go and get her.

  But was this how it worked? All the weight that had lifted off her had to fall somewhere else? Robbie had to drown so Matti could run towards her through the miracle rain? And Carl and Angie had to carry it. Chris had to. He was her little brother but when they played families he was always the dad.

  She was suddenly terrified of Matti. Of what had happened to her and what she was now. What she had cost. Of standing in front of her and looking into her eyes.

  Mum! Look! She tried to. And in and out of focus she started to see her again. Her road-to-Valiant freckles and the gaps between her teeth, the nut-coloured crop of her hair three weeks after lice. All lost to the months of searching. But there would be new teeth, new gaps. The top of her head had come up to Li’s bottom rib but she would be taller now. Li was starving to see what she had become. It opened her up and shook the air around her, the idea of Matti down there in the camp, holding onto the idea of Li.

  Get up, she’s waiting for you.

  She could make it there in daylight. And if she couldn’t, and if they wouldn’t let her in after dark, she would sleep outside the gates.

  She put a hand on the pack underneath her, saw that the phone was ringing. Grabbed at it with both hands. Matti.

  Li, Chris said and his voice was different. Don’t hang up. Listen. We can claim her.

  What?

  That’s what I wanted to tell you. Suyin and I can claim her now, under One Child. If that’s what you want.

  She didn’t understand. If that was what she wanted?

  When was the last time you logged on at a Source Centre? He said. Not on the phone.

  His words had speeded up but Li felt stupid, slow. Three months ago, she said, maybe longer? Town called Kutha.

  Where is that? Listen, Li, would that be in the howler zone now?

  Maybe. What do you mean, claim her?

  He said, I can convince the Agency you’re dead. I can match DNA and claim Matti. We can sponsor her, bring her in.

  Li heard her voice come out but she didn’t recognise it. Matti doesn’t know about you.

  Oh. Yeah, I figured. We didn’t tell. Aaron didn’t know about you either. I was going to tell him when he was older, when he could understand.

  She could hardly hear him over the blood rushing in her ears.

  He said, It would only work if you stayed dead, Li. They’re saying they’ll never be able to ID all the unsheltered who died in that howler, but you’d have to disappear, go somewhere there’s no Source, no Agency, no reason for anyone to run your status.

  She understood now. He meant no goodbye. He meant all she had to do was stay lost. Turn around, was what he meant.

  Chris said, I was wrong, Li. I do owe you. I got this life and you got that one. I can change that for her, if you want.

  She made herself speak. Is that what she wants too? Suyin?

  Suyin wants Aaron back, he said simply. She’ll come round, she’ll see this is right. Matti can have a life here. She can have Aaron’s life. He stopped for a minute. Inside, it’s not what you think it is but it’s better than out there. She’ll get more time. And maybe, who knows, maybe we’ll get to the Deep Islands.

  There was a flower growing up through the gravel, a weed. Sour yellow stem and frail cup, white with blue veins. The cold season was almost done. She said, I need to call you back.

  Okay, I know. Do you have credit?

  Yeah.

  Okay. I’ll wait for you to call.

  Chris.

  Yeah?

  Was there a photo? Did she look. How did she look?

  She waited, hardly breathing.

  Li-Li. She looks like you.

  She sat still at the side of the road, holding everything in, and she’d never hated Chris for being chosen but she hated him for giving her this choice. Because he was right. She got the other life. Her deep desire was to go down now and walk until she found Matti and touch her to know she was real and say, I’m here, I won’t leave you again. You are my best place. But it wasn’t enough. What could she offer her? A lifetime queueing for islands not even sheltered people could get to? A long drive north into the heart of Weather? She touched the shape of the chocolate in her pocket and it felt pathetic, someone else’s gift, not even hers. Chris had been loved, raised, sheltered – didn’t Matti deserve that same chance?

  A truck went past, spitting gravel. She tried to lose her thoughts in the roar but they found her on the other side. How did her own mother make the choice? Knowing so little, having so little power. Did she just do the best she could? Save one child and trust someone else to save the other one? What did it mean to her at the moment she decided and for the rest of her life? What would she tell Li now if they were face to face and her voice didn’t fail her? She listened for a sound from the other room but she was alone with this decision, just like her parents had been alone. If she went to Matti now and put her arms around her and told her she was loved and safe, half of that would be a lie. Matti wasn’t safe with her, not out here. All Li knew how to do was walk, seek shelter, find the next place, make the same mistakes. And she would leave her again. Matti wasn’t safe in there either but she would be safer, for longer. And Chris would love her. She had heard the slow wonder in his voice remembering Matti’s photo, when he saw his eight-year-old sister in her face.

  Was this what she had needed to see? You’re not the one who can save me. You’re not the one.

  Somewhere down there in the managed sprawl of the camp, was Matti. Matti was alive. There was all this joy inside Li, this blazing joy, but it was held in check, waiting for her to choose. Could she turn around now and walk back into the cold, and love Matti without wanting her? Hadn’t a part of her been doing that from the beginning? She closed her eyes and was in Nerredin again. Dark, early, the cold pressing in around the bed. She felt the sunken space that Frank had left, smelled woodsmoke from the kitchen stove, koffee, heard the radio on low.

  Matti’s arm was flung back across her throat, resting there. A school morning. She felt through the arm that her child was awake and not ready to be awake. She kept her voice low. Do you want a piggy back, a carry, or do you want to walk?

  Matti laughed quietly. All small kid things.

  Even walking?

  Except walking.

  So, do you wanna walk?

  I’ll walk.

  * * *

  Li came back to the hill and the road and the sun, the end of the cold season. When it came she let it come in a great hot rush that brought her to her feet. She lifted her pack and faced the camp and started walking.

  Acknowledgements

  This story takes place on a continent that floats somewhere above the one I grew up on. I want to acknowledge the Traditional Owners and custodians of Country all throughout Australia, and their Elders past and present. I pay respect, especially, to the Whadjuk Noongar people, whose plains I was raised on, and the Arabana people, whose extraordinary country fuelled a central part of my imaginary one. ‘Kutha’ is the Arabana word for water. I’m grateful to the Arabana Aboriginal Corporation for letting me give that name to the last town before the lake.

  Thank you Leon Davidson for years and years of belief, encouragement and collaboration. And for always being right about what was wrong, even when I didn’t appreciate it.

  To Franka Christine, the number one storyteller in the family, for all the great ideas and all the great titles, for offering to be my publisher, for making sure I never give up.

  Thank you to my father, Vincent Bartolo Moleta, for your steadfast example of the life of the mind, and your translation of Montale’s ‘A Liuba che parte’, way back a
t the start. And to Sophie, Gabrielle and Benedict Moleta, with my admiration and aroha.

  To my supervisor and workshop convenor Emily Perkins for every single thing you said. I reckon you knew Li before I did and I was so lucky to have you on the road with me.

  To my workshop whānau: Anthony Lapwood, Antonia Bale, Frank Sinclair, Kirsten Griffiths, Lynne Robertson, Maria Samuela, Mia Gaudin, Nicole Colmar and Sharon Lam, for your company and your many contributions to this pukapuka, and for the way you always get to the heart of things.

  I’m grateful for the support of everyone at Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auaha o Te Ao | the IIML, and the writing community that thrives around it. Thank you most of all to Katie Hardwick-Smith for your friendship and for making 2017 possible.

  My thanks to Alyson Barr and Chris and Margaret Cochran for New York Street, where I got to the end. And to Anna Smaill and Yadana Saw for good advice, early and late.

  I owe a lot to my perceptive and generous early readers: Elizabeth Knox, Fergus Barrowman, Rajorshi Chakraborti and William Brandt. Particular thanks to Alison Arnold, for a structural edit that made all the difference.

  Thank you to the magnificent Jenny Darling for that first phone call and every one since. I can’t wait to meet you kanohi ki te kanohi.

  To Ben Ball, ngā mihi nūnui ki a koe for your faith in this story and its unknown author from across the ditch and outside the bubble. And to you and Meredith Rose for your care and attention in editing: especially all the pātai, big and small, that made things clearer.

  I’m grateful to Ebony Lamb, Kate Breakey, Lisa Bailey, Sandy Cull and Stan Alley for their invaluable artistic contributions, and equally to Anna O’Grady, Anthea Bariamis, Elena Gomez, Michelle Swainson, Sandra Noakes and all at Simon & Schuster for their time, skill and manaakitanga. And a big thank you to Emily Maguire.

  The fragment of lullaby Li sings to Matti and to the children on the Range is my memory of an old Welsh song ‘Ar hyd y nos’ | ‘All through the night’. The real lyrics turned out to be different from how I remember them, which is maybe also true of childhood.