Inside the Tiger

by Hayley Lawrence

  ‘I’m sure hardly anyone watches the news anyway,’ Tash says. ‘And probably the girls who do won’t recognise you.’

  I raise an eyebrow at her as I struggle with my tie. ‘I’m going to assume that’s a bad joke.’ There’s not a girl in school who misses the footage and she knows it.

  ‘Imagine the frenzy if you were still rallying with him. You’d be like a celebrity.’

  ‘Yeah, well, luckily there’s no risk of that.’ I sling my bag over my shoulder and grab my folder. ‘I’ve had enough political fun and frivolity to last a lifetime. I can’t believe Dad made me do that. Who does that to their kid?’

  ‘Politicians,’ Tash says. She shoves me playfully as we head out the door to breakfast. ‘Where’s Bel the optimist when you need her?’

  It takes less than five minutes for Airlie to catch us on our way to the cafeteria.

  ‘Hey, Bel, how long are they going to keep flashing up your home videos on the news?’ she says from behind.

  I pull Tash by the arm – keeping us moving before Airlie’s disciples join her. But Tash turns around to face her, and Airlie jolts to a stop.

  ‘Probably till her dad gets the justice her mum deserves,’ Tash says matter-of-factly.

  Airlie is silent. And when I open my mouth to say something, nothing comes out. Tash has never mentioned my mum to Airlie before. It’s the kind of thing everyone knows but no one talks about. And Tash usually plays nice because if your pilot and co-pilot don’t gel, it creates spice in all the wrong places.

  Why’s she standing her ground now?

  Airlie shifts her weight to the other foot and clutches her folder tighter to her chest.

  ‘Well, good luck to him,’ she says, jutting out her chin. ‘Maybe the opinion polls will turn around for the Government in time.’

  ‘Hopefully,’ I say. Even though I don’t give a toss who wins. I’m not even really on Team Dad.

  Then Tash goes one step further. ‘Good luck to your Dad, Airlie. Last time I checked, he’d need to win some serious votes to pull off a victory.’ Then she turns her back, flicking her to-die-for curls, and links her arm in mine. ‘Come on, I’m so hungry I could eat a dead goanna.’

  I’m stunned for a moment, mouth open.

  ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘You’re so …’

  ‘Uh, I’m so hungry, I could eat a … kangaroo.’ I pause. ‘And her joey.’

  ‘Oooh. That’s gross. Baby eating. I’ll give you that round.’

  Tash stretches the space between Airlie and us as we move down the hall.

  ‘What was that for?’ I whisper once we’re out of earshot.

  Tash shrugs. ‘There are bigger problems in the world. All she cares about is who’s winning what. She has no idea how privileged she is.’

  I think of Micah in prison, Gulgara with its empty streets. People like Airlie only know privilege. But Airlie is just a sliver of what the rest of the day holds for me. Post-Dad-news days are never fun in the cafeteria.

  Bel the optimist has checked out. ‘Can we eat somewhere else?’ I say.

  I don’t have to ask twice.

  Tash takes a bite of her sushi. ‘Sydney, you are at your finest.’

  I scan the harbour. You get the full view from our grassy spot at Lady Macquarie’s Chair. The Opera House is all gleaming curves, like freshly whitened teeth. And the Harbour Bridge is dotted with ant-like cars. From here, you can’t hear drivers cursing at L-platers. You can’t see the broken-down bus causing a traffic jam or smell diesel from the exhaust of the truck ahead. I hate the journey over the bridge. It usually means I’m heading to Dad’s place. But from a distance, with the deep blue water of the harbour sparkling, it’s hard to hate anything.

  ‘Only a few more weeks till the holidays, Bel. Volleyball will be over, and my next eisteddfod. I can’t wait to get home.’ Tash’s eyes light up when she says home.

  I know what home means to her. It’s laughter over fancy dinners, two parents at the dining table and games of tennis with her brothers – the only games when her mother isn’t keeping score. It’s swimming in her pool under the stars and eating chocolate bullets with cups of tea.

  ‘Home.’ The word falls dead on my tongue. Have I ever been more than a visitor in my father’s house? I can’t remember the last time I bothered to unpack my suitcase.

  Tash studies me as she finishes another piece of avocado sushi. ‘You okay?’

  I smile and, just to prove how okay I am, I drench my chicken sushi in soy sauce and shove as much of it into my mouth as I can.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re super.’ She flashes me her cheesiest smile and gives me the thumbs up. ‘You’re not cutting, or doing drugs, or flunking school, or sleeping around and you’re still eating –’

  I laugh. ‘Exactly. Even with my family wounds being aired for, like, the millionth time this month, I am completely boringly normal. Also fine.’

  She frowns into the morning sun. ‘But seriously, if it bothers you so much, can’t your dad just tell them to quit with the yesteryear footage?’

  I sigh. ‘Yes he could. But he won’t. He thinks he’s doing all this for me and my mother, and that’s tangled up with his policy agenda. Plus, I seem to pull at the heartstrings. Who doesn’t love an orphan, right?’

  Tash baulks. ‘Honey, you’re not an orphan.’

  ‘No. But I may as well be. I hardly ever see him.’

  She goes quiet for a moment. ‘You’ve never said that before.’

  ‘Look, the way I see it, if school feels more like home than home, you’re screwed.’

  Tash purses her lips and wriggles next to me. Wraps her arm around my shoulder. ‘But he’s your Dad. Home is where your family is, right?’

  I shake my head, squint out at the harbour to push down the swelling in my throat. Going home this time feels exponentially worse, because Eli won’t be next door. He’s in Asia somewhere, finding himself or whatever, so there’ll be no convincing him to go for a walk on the beach or play board games in his room.

  ‘What does it matter?’ I say. ‘When I want the home experience, I go to yours. Anyway,’ I force out a smile, ‘I have no right to complain.’

  ‘You have every right to complain. You lost your mum.’

  Normally when I think about losing something important, I break into a cold sweat. That’s what happened when I lost my wallet on a school excursion. Surely your mum is more precious than a wallet? Losing your mum should feel a hundred times worse. But I don’t feel anything. To lose someone, you had to have them in the first place.

  ‘You can’t pine for someone you never knew.’

  We sit silently for a while as Tash dissects her next roll of sushi into perfectly symmetrical cylinders.

  When she’s finished, she says, ‘So tell me something. What made you pick him?’ She nudges the remainder of my mangled sushi towards me with her chopsticks. ‘What made you pick this Micah guy, specifically?’

  ‘Oh. Well, most guys on the list asked for money. Micah just asked for someone to write to. He’s never had a visitor. No contact from the outside world. There was just something about him.’

  ‘Ooh … so maybe you didn’t choose him at all. Maybe he chose you in a weird way.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for his next letter.’ I stretch out my legs to catch some rays. ‘Maybe he won’t write back. It’s been seventeen days.’

  ‘Not that you’re counting.’ Tash dusts her hands together. ‘I’ll admit, his letter was pretty cute. In a down-and-out sort of way.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ I frown into the sun. ‘You sound so private-school-girl.’

  ‘I’m not a snob. I’m not.’

  ‘But we’ve never gone without, have we? I mean, don’t you feel insanely guilty when you think of people like him? Even before he ended up in prison, he probably didn’t have much.’

  Tash tilts her head to one side. ‘The world’s never going to be fair, honey. You know it. I know it. Some of us get more than others
.’ She drags the elastic band around her sushi container, snapping it shut. ‘No point feeling guilty about other people’s bad luck. Poverty’s been a stain on the planet since the beginning of time.’

  ‘Careful,’ I say. ‘You’re sounding awfully like Dad in realist mode.’

  She laughs. ‘You’re the one who needs to be careful. You forget how long I’ve know you. Micah lives in a different world. Don’t go getting hung up on him.’

  ‘Who said I’m –’

  ‘Remember the time you rescued all those cats when you were staying at my place in the holidays? You looked after them for weeks. And their kittens. Micah is not a stray cat. And if your Dad wasn’t interested in kittens, there’s no way he’ll put up with a stray prisoner.’

  ‘Hey,’ I say, mock frowning. ‘The point is, we saved the cats from being euthanised. And we managed to palm off the kittens. Win win.’

  ‘Just be careful, Bel. You can’t save prisoners. It’s called Death Row for a reason. Guys like Micah are kind of beyond saving, you know?’

  ‘Not beyond need, though.’ I pluck at a clump of grass, but I can feel her eyeing me, so I add, ‘It’s not like I want to bring him home, Tash. It’s just an assignment.’

  Except by the time we arrive back at our dorm, there’s a letter waiting on my pillow. A letter with a photo.

  And suddenly, Micah has a face.

  Four faces stare back at me from the picture. Actually three, because one of them is looking off to the side. Thick chains connect the cuffs on their wrists to cuffs on their ankles. Chains that say hard-core prisoner. I hold the photo closer, examine each face carefully. Which one is he? When I turn the photo over, their names are scrawled in order in Micah’s slanty writing.

  I flip the photo back and study him. He looks so normal – tanned face, smiley eyes and a school-boy grin. Brown, shaggy hair hanging across his forehead. In spite of the chains, his elbow is resting casually on the shoulder of a huge tanky guy with a shaved head. But I’m not interested in the tanky one. I look back at Micah. Relaxed, in black boardies and a blue Nike singlet. The only sign the chains are heavy is the way his arm muscles strain a bit under their weight.

  I’d imagined Micah would be skinny, bones protruding from malnutrition. I expected him to be grimy. He asked for soap and shampoo, but you wouldn’t know he needed them. I could pluck Micah out of this picture and dump him into a St Martin’s school camp. That’s our brother school. He’d blend right in.

  I clutch the photo in my right hand, wriggle back against my bedhead and read his letter.

  3/11

  Hey Bel,

  Thanks for the parcel. I’ve never got one before, so it was like Christmas. Can’t tell you how good that new toothbrush and towel is. And the vegemite, ha. Dutchy and Leo screwed up their noses at the smell of it, but me and Boxer told them they don’t know what they’re missing.

  The picture is the only one I’ve got of my time here. Thought you might want to see who you’re writing to and who my boys are, if we’re going to keep doing this. I’m on the left. That’s not a fake smile on my face either – prison put on a Christmas feast and the screws took pictures of us eating and playing ball. It pissed Leo off and he wouldn’t smile at the camera, cause he said it was all for show – so they could say how good they’re treating us. But if you ask me, it’s a small price for a feast.

  Boxer’s the big one on my right. Built like a house and strong as one too. Best fighter in building five. That’s how we found Dutchy – he’s the white-haired guy next to Boxer. Boxer squared up to this big American guy who was laying into Dutchy and said, He’s one of mine. Boxer trains up a heap of guys in Muay Thai. He’s got himself a whole damn army in building five who’d fight for him, so when he said to leave Dutchy alone, the guy did. Dutchy’s always smiling, and he’s the smallest one of us so he needs someone to have his back.

  The last of the boys is Leo. Leo doesn’t talk much, but he’s smart. He’s travelled half the world and draws good enough to hang his stuff in an art shop.

  Hope the shackles don’t freak you out. First day they cuffed me, the chains felt as heavy as concrete, and I had to drag myself round the cell. You get used to them but, and they come off for the yard, so that’s another reason we love going out. Like how you and your friend watch the clouds – you can run like you’re made of air in the yard, but then it’s back to the cells for fourteen hours.

  There’s not much to do in there. You can’t sleep the whole time so sometimes guys fight. Just the way it is when you’ve got knees and elbows poking into you. The old guys say the cells were built for sixteen, but they keep filling, so it’s hell crowded and every day’s the same unless you gotta go to court. I don’t have music to listen to, but every cell’s got its own TV, so most guys watch football.

  A screw rings the bell six times to start the morning. There’s no real morning or night in the cell but, cause there’s always a light on. That means there’s always someone doing something. Like me now, writing to you.

  Boxer and Dutchy got visits a couple of months back and they let me and Leo come. We saw their parents across the glass corridor. I haven’t seen my mum since I’ve been in here cause I told her not to come. She can’t afford it. Truth is, I wish she didn’t even know where I was, but there was nothing I could do to save her from it. Mum said it was all over the news, and the embassy guy called her. After he spoke to her, he came to tell me that cause I’d just gone eighteen, I was being tried as an adult. And the prosecutor was going for death. Happy birthday, hey.

  I don’t mean to be all poor me, but when my old man checked out, he left Mum with a stack of debt. I don’t want you thinking this whole mess was about cash but. It’s not that simple, Bel. Nowhere near. Shit, I can’t even Forget it. It’s done.

  So tell me something else. You write like your mum’s not around so I’m guessing your parents split. Shit happens, yeah?

  You know ever since the first day when you lost me that game of poker, I’ve been listening out for the mail. Never used to wait on anything, but now I don’t let the boys deal me in till after the letters are handed out. Truth is, I get attached to things too quick. That’s got me in trouble more times than I can count. There was this one teacher at school, Miss Crouch – she thought she had me all figured out. Called Mum in one day to say I had an addicted personality, but she was wrong. I’m not addicted to drugs or anything, not even to poker. I’m kinda addicted to reading your letters but. I’m already hanging for your next one.

  I like doing this with you.

  Peace out,

  Micah

  I reread Micah’s letter, glancing from his words to his picture, over and over again. The paper shivers in my hand.

  He almost told me what he did. Came so close with those scratched out words. What was it he couldn’t say? Everyone has secrets. Ugly, dark scores across their hearts. Mine aren’t hard to uncover. They’re free to view online. Type in Annabelle Anderson and you’ll find out everything.

  That’s something we have in common.

  Micah’s not just a young guy who got arrested. He’s a young guy who got the death sentence in a foreign country, and the entire thing played out live in the media. For the first time, my own public airtime doesn’t seem so bad. His secrets are online too, and they’re surely worse than mine. My fingers itch with the desire to know them. I told him I don’t need to know, but suddenly the need is fierce.

  I yank my laptop from my desk, open it up and type Micah Rawlinson into Google. My heart thuds as my fingers hover over the keyboard.

  Tash is in the shower – thank God. That guarantees me a half hour of solitude.

  What did Micah do to get death? What if he doesn’t want me to know? Or I don’t like what I read? Would the media even have the facts straight? Half the time the reports on what happened to my mother are totally screwed up.

  I force myself to delete each letter until there’s no evidence of his name. It’s his story to share, not mine to f
ind. Instead, I type: How many people sentenced to death each year?

  Nausea spreads over me as the Amnesty page gives me my first answer. Thousands. Then comes the second answer: Amnesty doesn’t know the full stats. They do know China kills more people than all the other countries combined, but they don’t know the exact numbers because it’s a state secret. And who’s going to leak that secret? Not the people they execute. No one keeps a secret safer than a dead person.

  I try to conjure the faces of the thousands of people sentenced to die every year. It seems half the world is executing people. Thailand, China, Indonesia, Iran, the US …

  I study Micah’s photo, his shackles, his grin. His scribbly, slanty handwriting on the back. He’s just one of all those thousands of people. The only difference is, he’s Australian. His government cares. Because of where he was born, Micah’s not faceless or nameless. It suddenly occurs to me there’s something worse than becoming a Death Row superstar: it’s nobody giving a shit. Being handed the death penalty and not making a single headline. The reality is, most people executed in other countries aren’t newsworthy. How has this been allowed to happen?

  I type in Executions in Thailand, only to discover there’s no trial by jury over there. It’s a judge who decides your fate. And once you’re arrested, there’s nothing the Australian government can do besides offering some embassy help and directing you to a Thai lawyer. How did Micah afford to pay for a lawyer, or did he get some dodgy legal aid one? Do they even have legal aid?

  I’m relieved to see there hasn’t been an execution in Thailand for a long time.

  There’s an account by an English guy who got a transfer back to England. His family have posted his journal entries on a blog, from his time in Bang Kwang.

  One thing I’ve learnt is this, right. They take a long time to execute here, like years and years. If you can get your sentence commuted to Life, then you can apply for a transfer back home. This fills me with immense hope. I miss the UK terribly. I miss having my family close by …