Living on Hope Street

by Demet Divaroren

  The börek ready at eleven. I put it in foil and then in plastic bag and it smell sweet like butter melting. Then I take bus to Meryem’s house. Sam’s school finish in four hours. I sit next to old woman with skin white and thin like the yufka I use to make börek. The woman next to me not smile back but poor thing have many problems. She walk with stick and wear glasses. Touch wood, my eyes and legs still work.

  Meryem live far, in Essendon where houses big, pretty and cost too much money. I know this from newspaper and television. Tsk! People talk talk talk about money money money but they not think. Yes, money buy a house, but too much money bring with it many problems. When house too big, it make you lost. When me and Mr Aslan make enough money to buy house we never move, we stay in our ev with big garden. The paint still good on walls, the roof not leak like home in Türkiye, our bed soft. When Mr Aslan die, Allah bless his soul, Meryem change, she go too, then the house feel empty. Money big or small not change this.

  I get off bus next to football oval with red and black flag. It make much noise flying in wind. Sometimes I walk past and hear men yell inside. I not understand this game. When I see this game on TV, I always change channel but when Sam come to my house, I watch it sometimes and people so loud, they scream till faces like red balloons! Essendon Sam’s team. He have pictures in bedroom and he always laugh to me when I say you team is Essendon Bumbers. I not understand why.

  I walk ten minutes up hill to get to the house. The börek warm, it make my hands sweat. When Ada Sam age, she love to sit in lap and play with my hair. Meryem love this too when she young. Meryem love when she young but I never stop loving. Not even after Meryem throw me out like dog. Many years this hurt me too much, make me so angry. But time and loneliness make me forget anger.

  My back hurt so I stop and stretch. It hurt too much. Here, the trees big and green, the gardens bright and flowers colourful like picture. If Mr Aslan here, he say maşallah! Look at God’s beautiful smile!

  Meryem’s garden nice with roses and many flowers and her driveway empty. I step on grass, it make noise under feet. I take one step, two step, three step and hold börek like baby. My heart beating too fast when I next to porch. I hear noise on window and look up. Curtain move inside and I drop börek on grass. I take big breath, big breath but I have to go because my blood pressure too low and black dots in my eyes. I blink, shake head and run back to street, my hands empty and börek cold on Meryem grass.

  There’s an art to pulling sickies.

  All I needed was an instant heat pack. I woke up one hour before Mum and got to work. I pressed the metal disk and, like magic, the heat pack turned hot in my hands. You gotta love science, Ms Santos said in every class, and I did. Scientists were true magicians – but when I told my teacher this, her eyebrows shot up. ‘Science and magic are like fact and fiction. Science relies on evidence and magic is … well, foolish, Ada.’ She spat out my name as if it was dirty. ‘Are you calling me a fool, Miss?’ I said. ‘No,’ she muttered, and turned to the board. Science was more than facts and evidence. Evidence belonged in a police station.

  By the time Mum got up to get ready for work I had put the final touches on my fever. My cheeks were rosy, my forehead was clammy and my skin was burning. I put the heat pack on my feet for good measure. Heat rises. There’s a scientific fact, Ms Santos. I burrowed into the blanket and waited for Mum to barge into my room.

  She arrived at eight on the dot. ‘Why aren’t you up?’ she said, switching on the light. They were the first words she’d said to me since last week.

  I made a croaky sound and squinted. ‘Sick,’ I said into my blanket. ‘Fever.’

  Her fingers spread out across my face. ‘Hmm.’ She walked out and brought a thermometer. ‘Thirty-seven point nine. It’s a bit high.’ She stood there, hands on hips, a red shirt tucked into a pencil skirt. She always looked good. That’s how she tricked people into thinking she was normal. ‘This is what happens when you stay up watching that anime junk.’

  It’s pronounced ah-nee-meh, I wanted to say, not en-i-me, but I bit my tongue. The longer she stayed, the more of my time she wasted.

  ‘Stay in bed and drink lots of liquids,’ she said. She put Panadol and Lemsip on my bedside table and rushed off to work, her perfume lingering in my room.

  When her car roared out of the driveway I flew out of bed and made a stack of pancakes oozing with ice cream and maple syrup. I ate in bed and turned on my laptop to watch my favourite anime online. Mum called it junk, but what would she know? She thought tacky Turkish soapies were entertaining. She used to make me watch them too so I could improve my Turkish, but the words were too slippery. ‘Culture is good,’ she’d say, ‘but don’t take it too seriously, kızım, or it can be limiting.’ Huh! What a contradiction!

  The problem with Mum was her nose. It was big and she poked it in all of my business. She inherited this from Grandma, who years ago poked her nose in Mum’s business and shit hit the fan. The night Dad moved out, I cried in Grandma’s arms. She was warm and soft and used to hug and kiss me like I was the only important thing in the world before Mum kicked her out. When she walked me to school, she’d get so tired she’d breathe in big gulps. ‘Good morning, Mrs Aslan,’ people used to say, and she’d wave and smile like a celebrity.

  ‘Your grandma is crazy,’ Mum said after their big fight. She’d cry and tell me stories that turned Grandma into a villain. But the older I got, the clearer it was that Mum was the crazier one.

  Take last week for example.

  She busted me in the car with Dimitri. It was after school and Dimitri had parked his car near the reserve opposite our house. He was three years older and we were making out in the front while the Virgin Mary statue stared at me from the dashboard where he’d stuck her on with Blu-Tack. Mum came home from work early with a migraine, and caught me with my hand on his dick. She knocked on the window like a crazy person, shaking and yelling with her spit on the glass. Dimitri put his hands in the air as if it was a hold-up, like we were at fault and not Mum. She was the villain here, worse than the ones in anime.

  Mum wouldn’t leave until I got out of the car. She walked behind me like a guard marching me back to my cell. Dimitri sped off, his two exhausts fuming. When we walked inside, Mum fell on the couch crying and wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘You should’ve dragged me by the hair too!’ I said. ‘You’re so embarrassing!’

  ‘Why do you do this, kızım?’

  ‘Do what? Huh? It was only a kiss but you’ve probably forgotten what that feels like!’

  ‘How dare you talk to me like this!’ Her nose was red from crying and bits of tissue were stuck to her nostrils. ‘I’m your mother!’

  ‘Yeah, not my dictator. I’m fifteen!’

  ‘It’s my job to protect you. You should be focusing on your studies, not boys! It’s too soon for sex!’

  ‘What the hell, Mum? We had our clothes on!’

  ‘What do you think happens once you touch and fondle? Ha? Where do you think it leads? Virginity is not something that should be thrown away—’

  ‘You should know.’

  Her face crumpled.

  ‘All you care about is your reputation and what other people think.’

  She shook her head, squeezing a ball of tissue in her hand. ‘All I care about is you and our family—’

  ‘Oh please. What family?’ It was only us two. Dad left when I was seven and gave us the house as a sorry present. He wrote Mum cheques for my school fees to pretend like he cared and turned up twelve days a year. His new family had him for three hundred and fifty-three. Apparently they were worth sticking around for.

  Mum confiscated my phone as punishment and it felt like someone had chopped off my arm until I found it in the freezer the next day. She’d hidden it under a bag of minced meat. Luckily, it still worked once it defrosted.

  My head throbbed and I swallowed two Panadols. I pressed play and the anime started. It was the best kind of soul food. Pink and purple col
ours burst onto the screen and everything was so cool and ridiculous, unlike real life. In real life truth was blurry. In Dimitri’s car, a part of me made sense. His lips were soft and slippery and his body hard and warm under my hands. He made my insides sizzle. But other things made my insides melt too. Like the thought of a girl’s glossy lips on mine. My head began to ache even more so I focused on Erza’s scarlet hair on the screen.

  The sun shone through the gap in the curtains and aimed straight for my eye. I sat up to close it and saw an old woman creeping in our front yard like a thief. I nearly shat myself before I realised who she was. Grandma. My heart raced and I inched closer to the window. She’d never gotten this close before. She looked older, her skin folding in. It made me want to hug her tight, but years of Mum’s warnings froze my feet. My nose touched the cold glass. She looked up at that moment, her face shocked, and she dropped the plastic bag on the grass and made a run for it, waddling like a penguin.

  I watched her leave like I did the night of the fight when Mum and Grandma’s yelling shook the house. ‘It’s your fault,’ Mum screamed in Turkish, ‘you ruined my life!’

  ‘You should have thought about that before you did what you did!’ Grandma said, and I put the blanket over my head to shut them out. When I heard the door slam, I looked outside and Grandma’s silhouette rushed past my window. The next morning Mum explained that Grandma wasn’t coming over for a while, except she showed up from time to time yelling my name outside the door. Mum never opened it. ‘Your grandma hurt me too much,’ she said. ‘One day, when you’re older, I’ll tell you everything.’

  But Mum had a way of twisting things. She had a flair for melodrama and exaggeration that belonged in a Turkish movie. What if Grandma wasn’t the only one at fault? Grandma may have stuffed up her life but Mum made mistakes too. For years she made me feel guilty for wanting to see Grandma and I took her side.

  Not anymore.

  I’d stick a knife through his heart. Dead in an instant. There’d be no struggle. I’d strike when he’d passed out on the couch stinking of sweat and beer, his hair ratty, the booze making him heavier. To give him a final lesson, to make him flatline.

  When he disappeared for three weeks on the rig, life was good without him. Sam didn’t piss himself, Mum smiled more. Until Dad’s ute pulled up and she skittered around the house.

  When I was younger, I had Dad’s murder all planned out in an A4 exercise book. Suffocation by pillow was on top of the list. The closest I ever got was a few years ago when he was snoring on the couch after a big night. I crept up to him with my pillow and was close enough to smell his rotten breath when he rolled onto his stomach. I could have sat on him, pushed his face into the couch, but I wasn’t strong enough. Not then.

  I looked for the knife that had nipped Dad’s arm, the one with sharp jagged teeth. Mum kept it with all the others in the drawer below the sink. I sat at the kitchen table, running my finger along the knife’s edges. A yawn ripped my mouth open. My eyes burned like hell but sleep wasn’t an option. Not until this shit with Dad was sorted.

  I’d do my time in juvie but it’d be worth it. Sam would grow up normal. Mum wouldn’t be damaged.

  ‘Is that where you want to end up?’ Mrs Archer said once after English class. ‘Juvie?’

  ‘I only stole some paperclips, Miss. No big deal.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It’s a trade secret.’ I shrugged. The paperclips were the good kind that could pick most locks.

  ‘You’re a smart boy, Kane. Don’t waste it. You think stealing and scaring other kids makes you stronger? You think using fear to your advantage gets you respect? You have a good heart.’

  But some hearts don’t stay good.

  Like Dad’s.

  The coward hadn’t shown up last night. I watched emergency like a hawk. I sat outside till three in the morning when the cold froze my bones. Broken people came and went, their heads bandaged or arms and legs in plaster, but no sign of Dad. He wasn’t easy to miss, with biceps like rugby balls. He was fit. He worked out on his family.

  When I went inside, the woman at reception buzzed me in. Mum was knocked out from all the drugs. I watched her sleep for a few hours till the fat nurse tried to kick me out again. ‘She’s okay, Kane. Go home and get some sleep.’

  ‘What about her ribs? Are they broken?’

  ‘We’re still waiting for the results.’

  ‘I’m not leaving without her.’

  I waited in a chair near Mum’s bed. No one but doctors and nurses in blue and white rushed outside the glass window. Light zigzagged into the room from the slits in the blind. Mum whistled through her broken nose while I thought of ways to land a knockout punch on Dad’s face if he turned up. A moment of distraction and bang, I’d smash him in the jaw so hard they’d need to stitch him back together. He was strong but this wasn’t about strength; it was about timing and precision.

  At about six, the same nurse gave me a cup of tea and a couple of packets of biscuits. The coconut and jam crumbled in my mouth. Mum used to make cookies, and I’d help her roll the dough into balls, flatten them with my palm. Mum’s laughter used to crackle back then.

  Mum woke up at eight in the morning. She was so groggy she couldn’t keep her eyes open for too long. ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered. ‘You should be at school.’

  ‘Not when you’re in here. I’m not leaving till I know you’re okay.’

  She reached for my hand. ‘Go home, Kane. The results won’t be in for a while yet.’ She swallowed. ‘I need you to be home for Sam. Please,’ she said. ‘I’m coming home. I promise.’

  I left with Mum’s bruised face flashing in front of me. This was the last time Dad would touch her. Where the hell was he? If he didn’t rock up at the hospital then it was only a matter of time before he turned up at home.

  I sharpened the knife on a whetstone. It was time for me to step up now. To do what I’d planned when I was too young to pull it off.

  To be my family’s protector.

  After school Mrs Aslan carried me all the way home. She was upset and she had hiccups coz of her crying. I wiped her cheeks with my hand. ‘Was someone mean to you?’ I said. She hugged me tight and said no, she just missed her family.

  Mrs Aslan washed her face in the kitchen and her crying went away. She made me meat pizza and Ziya pecked at the crumbs on my plate.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, sniffing my head. ‘You need shower!’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Bad Bill’s punch was on my stomach. It was pink and purple.

  ‘Tsk. I make for you now. Is not good for you to stay like this.’

  I shook my head. I didn’t want her to see.

  ‘Okay, I make for you bubble bath.’

  I said okay coz I wanted to smell good for Mum but only if there was lots of bubbles to cover the bruise.

  After the bath, Mrs Aslan dried my hair with a fluffy towel and made me honey milk. She kept looking outside the kitchen window.

  The smell of piss was gone. Kane was gone too. I knew it coz he wasn’t at home when we checked before. That squishy feeling was in my heart and I tapped it, the left side like Mum did when she said she loved me. Mrs Fuller looked at me like that when I said nothing in her office today. She was the school counsellor, she said, and she wanted to help. We played picture games coz I didn’t talk.

  Pins and needles hurt my feet. ‘Where’s Kane?’

  ‘Maybe he still at school. You no worry, my Sam. He come soon.’

  I shook my head coz my breaths were not coming.

  ‘Sam.’ She held my face. ‘Breathe.’

  ‘He didn’t come this morning like he said.’ He promised he would never leave. He said it was us two against the world.

  ‘Breathe, Sam!’

  My crying came out and fell on Mrs Aslan’s hands. My breaths were bigger now and I hugged her tight.

  ‘Have I tell you before the story of the donkeys and chickens in my country?’ Mrs Aslan had scrunches on h
er face.

  I shook my head. ‘Like on a farm?’

  ‘No, in village. It is where I met Mr Aslan, he live in same street. I younger then, maybe Kane age, and one day, Mr Aslan’s chickens come to our backyard and I chase them down the street back to his house.’

  ‘What colour was the chickens?’

  ‘Brown, sometimes black if they very dirty.’

  ‘Did Mr Aslan yell at you?’

  ‘No! I yell at him!’ She laughed and made coughing noises and her arms jiggled. ‘I say to him, “Next time I see them in my garden, I not give them back.”’

  ‘Then did he yell at you?’

  ‘No, Sam. He was very gentle man.’ She talked in her language and looked at Mr Aslan’s picture on the TV. He looked mean like Dad.

  ‘You talk funny.’

  ‘My English not very good.’

  I giggled coz it wasn’t. Bad Bill and Jay and Ted poked fun at Feng all the time coz he sounded funny too.

  Mrs Aslan filled a glass of water from the tap and looked out the window again. ‘My Sam, I going to check letterbox, just outside, you sit here. One minute. You not move.’

  ‘Okay.’

  But I counted up to sixty and Mrs Aslan didn’t come back so I went outside to look. She wasn’t near the house-shaped letterbox. Now she was gone too. I looked around and our front door was open. Kane was home! I ran in socks and rocks and sticks dug into my feet but I didn’t care. Then a bad feeling made me stop outside the door. What if he did something bad to Dad?