The F Team

by Rawah Arja

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him off, ay?’ Huss asked, shaking his head. ‘Did Aaron tell you not to?’

  I wanted to reinstate him as the goal kicker, but he still strolled lazily across to make tackles on his line, which put us in a dangerous position and jeopardised the game. We needed all three wins for our school and nothing was going to get in the way of that, not even Huss.

  We finished the game against Team B with a close victory when Lee made a break in the last minute and flew down the line to score. While the rest of the team cheered and celebrated, Huss packed up his gear and left. It had become his pattern after every match, and I was getting sick of it.

  I hadn’t forgotten my promise to go and see Big Haji after school. But it was the last Friday before Aunty Salma was to go back to Lebanon, and when Amira asked me to join them for some bonding time, I couldn’t say no. Amira painted Aunty Salma’s face with makeup as we chatted about what she would do when she got home. I finally bit the bullet and said what had been on my mind all week.

  ‘Aunty, I need to make it up to Uncle Charlie after what I said to him.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, as Amira smeared glittery shadow over one eye.

  ‘He’s been avoiding me, though. Can you help me, please?’

  ‘He’s awake right now, and he’s in the shed,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry, I gave him a heads up.’

  I stared at her. ‘But I only mentioned it to you just now.’

  She winked, the eyeshadow sparkling and shimmering. ‘You think I’ve spent all this time with your family and I don’t know you, Tariq? Go, before he runs away again. Make things right.’

  I peeked through the shed window and saw Uncle Charlie sitting, blank-faced, with a cup of tea. The lines on his face deepened around his eyes like he was lost in thought. It hit me that since most of us had grown up, we rarely spent time with him in his shed. It must have been so lonely being on his own.

  ‘Can I come in, Khorloo?’ I said.

  He opened the door before walking around his kitchenette, trying to find something to feed me. ‘I have halloumi. I have eggs. I cook for you now. Give me moment.’

  ‘It’s okay, Uncle,’ I said. ‘I just wanna talk.’

  He sat back down and poured me some tea. ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No, it’s not okay, Uncle. You should’ve punched me in the face.’ He smiled gently. ‘You good boy, Tariq. I sorry if I make you embarrass. Very sorry.’

  I didn’t like that he was apologising when clearly I was in the wrong. ‘You don’t make me embarrassed. I make myself embarrassed. You do a lot for me and I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘It’s okay, Tariq. Everyone make a mistake. We should forgive and try to learn.’

  I’d never stayed long enough in the shed to notice the tapestry hanging above his head, of what looked like an old Arabian desert town. He saw me looking at it, and wordlessly stood up, took out a photo frame from his bedside drawer and placed it on the table. It was a black-and-white photo of a woman, one hand on her round stomach. By her side, much younger and with no moustache, stood Uncle Charlie.

  I picked up the frame and studied it. ‘Who was she, Khorloo?’

  ‘She was my wife,’ he said. He took a few deep breaths. ‘I was at work then one day I come home and I find her.’

  He stopped.

  He drank the tea.

  He stared at the photo in my hands and smiled. ‘I not tell people cos is very hard for me to say.’

  As much as I was trying to process that my uncle was actually married long ago, I didn’t want to bring him any more pain by forcing him to share his story.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, handing him back the photo. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  Uncle Charlie held the photo close to his chest. ‘They kill her and the baby in war when I away. I try to make her alive to help her breathe but it was too late. She die.’

  I was stunned. I knew the civil war in Lebanon in the seventies had been brutal but I didn’t know it had directly affected our family. ‘Khorloo…I am so sorry.’

  He stroked the photo once, twice. ‘I never marry anyone cos I have only love for her.’

  I couldn’t believe that Uncle Charlie had been holding on to so much grief and never mentioned it. I hated talking about my own feelings, but I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to keep that much bottled up inside and still go above and beyond every day for my family.

  I had no words, and the truth was, words were the last thing he needed. I hugged him tightly and let him know that he was like a father to me.

  ‘Will you tell me about her?’

  He smiled. ‘She very funny, Tariq. So funny. Always laughing and joking. You know, she love bees?’

  ‘No way?!’

  ‘Yes, she wanted to have her own bees, so she could have honey every day.’

  And in Uncle Charlie’s cramped shed, the tea long gone cold between us, he told me all about the woman who had been my aunt, who would have been an amazing mum, and whose memory still lived on in his heart.

  Chapter 29

  Aaron: You busy?

  Tariq: Nah. Why?

  Aaron: Bored. Come and hang out before the boys come over.

  Abi opened the door and welcomed me. ‘Mr Furner is waiting for you outside.’ I hurried through the house, not wanting to bump into Aaron’s mum. She opened the kitchen bi-fold doors to find me standing in her living room. She looked like she had just come back from a run.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Back so soon?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Yeah, just footy team stuff we need to discuss.’

  ‘I hear your mother cooked a feast with the tastiest chicken in the world,’ she said, rearranging the cushions on the sofa. She then knelt down and lit a candle on the coffee table. ‘Aaron hasn’t stopped talking about it. How does your mum find time to cook and clean and work?’

  ‘Oh, she doesn’t work,’ I said trying to figure out why a candle needed to be lit in broad daylight. ‘I mean, not like a job. She does heaps in the community, though, as well as for our family.’

  ‘I see,’ she said before closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths. Her bare face revealed the tired lines and her body arched over the table, as she whispered softly to herself, almost in prayer. I felt I was intruding on her space but before I could leave, she broke her silence. ‘The candle serves as a reminder of the departed. Aaron worshipped the ground his father walked on and so this candle lets him know that he’ll always be with us.’

  Up until now, all I’ve gotten from her was cold stares or snarky comments so I wasn’t sure why she was opening up. She had a softer look about her and there was no sharpness in her face or her words.

  ‘Aaron talks about him all the time. He always says he was the best person he knew.’

  She smiled then shook her head, as if snapping out of a daydream. ‘So your mother doesn’t work. She must live an easy life.’

  I felt myself growing defensive again. ‘She feeds six kids and my uncle and sometimes our neighbours, Mr and Mrs Wallace. She runs around for the whole family and puts herself last. She’s always helping out Big Haji and other elderly people in the area. And on top of all that, she’s about to start a community garden project at my school. There’s nothing easy about staying at home, Mrs Furner.’

  ‘You don’t mind that your mother will be at school with you?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Heck, no. If I had my mum around me all the time, I’d be over the moon.’

  Aaron walked in, bouncing a basketball. ‘Yo, what’s up, man?’ he cried, shaking my hand. ‘What took you so long?’

  Mrs Furner snapped her fingers to get his attention. ‘How many times have I said no balls in the house?’

  Aaron laughed. ‘No balls?’

  ‘Aaron!’ she snapped.

  ‘Can you calm down? It’s just a stupid ball. Why do you always make such a big deal out of everything?’

  She cleared her throat, her ey
es darting to me. I got the impression that she was embarrassed that I was witnessing this conversation. ‘Remember what we discussed about guests in our home. See to it that you follow the rules.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s go, Tariq. I can’t handle being around her for too long.’

  I looked apologetically at Mrs Furner, who stood frozen in the doorway, looking as if she’d been slapped in the face, then followed Aaron out of the room.

  ‘Bro, I know your mum doesn’t like me and you’ve got beef with her at the moment. But c’mon man,’ I said. ‘You can’t speak to her like that. I’d get my teeth knocked out if I even looked at my mum the wrong way.’

  ‘Yeah, but your mum has a heart,’ he said. ‘She’s around all the time and doesn’t care about stupid balls in the house.’

  ‘Are you normal? If Mum saw me playing with a ball in the good living room, I’d have each part of my body buried around different parts of Punchbowl.’ I shrugged. ‘She keeps all the good stuff in there, so it’s the only room where she has strict rules. If we lived in a place like this’ – I gestured at the grandeur around me – ‘she’d care a whole lot more about the rules, trust me.’

  Aaron shrugged and motioned me outside. We played a quick one-on-one game on the basketball court when I noticed his garage door open. ‘Please tell me you still have the Ferrari.’

  ‘For now,’ he said. ‘Someone is picking up the Audi in a few weeks and two Mercs were sold yesterday. The guy’s wife couldn’t choose which one she liked more.’

  ‘Well, at least you have that,’ I said, pointing to his view of the water.

  ‘What? This craphole?’ He shook his head.

  I looked around, trying to figure out which part of his place was crap. Was it the large games room near his dad’s car collection? Or was it the massive fish tank that looked like it had swallowed the Great Barrier Reef? I thought about how rich people could buy anything without even flinching at the price tag.

  ‘You know,’ I said carefully, trying not to piss Aaron off. ‘No matter how hard I work when I leave school, if I work every day for sixty years, I will still never be able to live the life of luxury you have.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You go on about all this stuff way too much, Tariq. It’s just stuff.’

  ‘You’d only say that if you’d never not had “stuff” before,’ I retorted. I tried to change the topic before he joined the ranks of people who were mad at me. ‘Why is she selling the cars, anyway?’

  ‘Something about keeping up with payments,’ he replied, bouncing the ball. ‘I don’t ask too many questions. She doesn’t listen to me, anyway.’

  ‘Aaron!’ we heard his mum yell. ‘Riley’s here. And there are a bunch of other very loud boys waiting at the door with him.’

  ‘Yeah, up the lads!’ he called out to me with a giant smile on his face. ‘That’s the rest of my team, Mum. You know, in the comp you forced me to enter?’

  And like a tornado he was away. I could hear the boys cheer and holler out the front as once again he left me on my own with his mother.

  He really needed to stop doing that.

  Ibby and PJ’s eyes were wide and they walked through the house like kids in a lolly shop.

  I looked over the group and noticed who was missing straight away.

  Aaron gave the boys the tour and they didn’t waste any time making themselves feel at home. They raided the kitchen and messed up the new flowers planted beside the pool before walking into the house in their dirty shoes.

  Ibby thought it was a good idea to introduce himself to Aaron’s mum by hugging her tightly. ‘I’m Ibby. Nice to meet you.’ I tried not to laugh as she stared down at Ibby in shock. She tilted her head back and tried to shuffle back but it was no use fighting Ibby’s grip.

  We gathered in Aaron’s room to talk about Riley’s possible evidence against Hunter.

  ‘It’s too risky to do anything now,’ I said. ‘I get not telling the cops, but let’s just lay off until we’ve sorted our school stuff.’

  I knew they wanted to get him good, but I wasn’t going to be part of something that could blow up in our faces and set back our school’s chances.

  PJ agreed. ‘We’re on thin ice, man. Anything dumb now, and we’re screwed.’

  Lee slumped. ‘Damn! I got excited for no reason. I thought we were going to dress up in balaclavas and hold him for ransom, you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t know, Nintendo,’ Ibby said staring at him. ‘That was never going to be the plan.’

  ‘I’ll just keep the footage until we make a decision.’ Riley suggested. ‘He shouldn’t get away with the stuff he’s done.’

  ‘As long as we don’t have any solid evidence, there is no use for that footage,’ I told him. ‘If you want, investigate a little more and then come back to us.’

  Aaron brought up the Grand Final Bulldogs jersey for the boys to admire. It didn’t go down well with his mum. We could hear them arguing outside.

  ‘You’re so disrespectful!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I hate being in the house because of you. You don’t let me breathe,’ he yelled back. ‘You’re always in my space. You piss me off!’

  He stormed back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. It was bad timing, but I was busting for the toilet, and I left the room just as Ibby and PJ started telling him off about how he spoke to his mum. In my rush to leave, I didn’t shut the door behind me.

  ‘She’s your mum at the end of the day. It’s not right that you spoke to her like that!’ I heard PJ say as I bolted for the loo.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I spotted Aaron’s mum hovering awkwardly at the top of the stairs. It took less than a second to work out what was happening. She was right. The boys really were loud.

  ‘No matter what your mum says to you, you have to shut your mouth, bro,’ Ibby’s voice floated into the hallway.

  ‘She gave birth to you and raised you,’ came PJ’s voice. ‘So what if she’s got rules? It’s her house, she can have all the rules she wants.’

  The ghost of a smile passed across Mrs Furner’s face. I coughed loudly as I walked back to Aaron’s room, giving her time to disappear back down the stairs and pretend she hadn’t heard anything.

  I entered Aaron’s room in time to see Ibby’s face fall in shock as he checked his phone.

  ‘It’s Huss.’ He looked at me. ‘Big Haji’s had a heart attack.’

  I sat and stared at Big Haji’s tired body wrapped in wires and tubes. Huss held her hand and sobbed softly. Machines beeped and nurses walked in and out of the room. The boys waited outside, while Feda talked to the staff in the cardiac unit to make sure Huss’s mum was taken care of. I could hear her crying to my mum in the hallway.

  Silence stretched out between us, heavy with Huss’s grief.

  ‘So, you made time now when she’s going to die?’ he said to me at last, watching her face. ‘Don’t you have more important things to do?’

  ‘She’s not going to die,’ I said. ‘I should’ve come before but I didn’t. You have every right to be angry with me.’

  He wiped his cheeks. ‘What happened? It’s like you forgot our friendship completely and only cared about yourself.’

  ‘I’m trying, Huss,’ I said. ‘Honestly, I am. But there’s been a thousand things going on. I don’t wanna start a fight with you right now but we’ve both done some dumb stuff.’

  He laughed bitterly to himself and said nothing.

  There was quiet again. I wanted to make him feel better. When I looked out the door, I could see the boys sitting with their heads bowed. We’d been here for hours.

  ‘You know Aaron and the Shire boys are here, as well as Ibby and PJ?’ I said. ‘They wanted to make sure you were alright.’

  Tears welled in his eyes before he wiped them away. ‘Why would they come?’

  ‘Because we’re a team, Huss. Wallah, they’re not the bad guys. Look!’ I pointed out the door. ‘They didn’t need to be here but they came anyw
ay, even Aaron.’

  I stood up, wanting to give other people their turn to sit with Big Haji. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore. You’re my brother, Huss, and Big Haji is my tayta.’ I was walking to the door when he called out, ‘You still doing that poetry thing?’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah, man.’

  He looked down at his grandma, his fingers tightly wrapped around hers. ‘I want her to be proud of me. I want to make things right.’

  ‘Of course, bro,’ I said, returning to his side. We hugged it out, and I felt a pressure in my chest finally ease.

  ‘Tell Aaron I want my role back in the team.’

  ‘Tell him yourself,’ I said. ‘Trust me, Huss, this Yahooda is actually alright.’

  Chapter 30

  I watched Jamila sit by the pond and feed the ducks that swarmed around her. Her hair was tied up neatly in a high bun and her feet touched the water.

  I had organised for the Wolf Pack to finally meet Jamila and start the slam stuff after school, since we only had a few weeks left until the end of term. Even though it was another job added to our list, we knew that stepping out of our comfort zone to do something we’d never tried would get the outside world to see us differently.

  I watched Jamila a little longer, and was just starting to feel like a creep when she looked up and spotted me. She waved her hands at me to join her. I wanted to spend some alone time with her before the boys came.

  I never knew how to greet her. Should I hug her, should I kiss her on the cheek – not sure if we’re there yet – do I wave or shake her hand?

  But as with everything, she made things easy and hugged me.

  ‘Where are the boys?’ she asked, looking around. ‘Don’t tell me they backed down?’

  ‘No, no. I just thought we could hang out and talk about our own school slam before they came.’

  She shook her head and smiled. ‘Even though we already spoke about it earlier today at the workshop?’

  I was stuck. ‘Well, yeah, but I – ’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m just joking.’