Living on Hope Street

by Demet Divaroren

  ‘You not be stupid, Kane! You mum very upset, she call from hospital. She worry for you!’ Mrs Aslan’s voice came from inside and I hid so they wouldn’t see me.

  ‘He has to die or we live like this. Don’t you understand? If he’s alive then we’re dead.’

  ‘Put knife down. You think of Sam. Huh? That boy need you. Who hit him yesterday? You dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you dad hit him?’

  ‘Nah …’

  ‘He have bruise on stomach. Big. He try hide from me in bath but—’

  Vomit came up my throat and in my mouth. I tried to swallow it but it fell out and it went quiet inside coz they came out running.

  ‘Sam!’ Mrs Aslan rubbed my back and Kane looked white. ‘Is okay. You let all out.’

  ‘Don’t kill him. You’ll go away,’ I said, wiping the milk vomit from my mouth.

  Kane walked on the porch like Dad did before he screamed. ‘Who hurt you, Sam?’

  ‘No one—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. Buddies don’t lie.’

  ‘You did. You said you and me against the world but you’re gonna go to jail, you’re gonna leave!’

  He grabbed me in a bear hug. ‘I’m sorry, bud, I was angry. I wasn’t thinking straight, you know? Now I’m good. I’m really good and we are like the Ninja Turtles. Strong together, you and me. I promise.’

  I said okay but his vein popped out on his neck. ‘But you’re still angry.’

  ‘Not with you buddy. Never with you.’ He kissed my head. ‘Now you promise me something. No more lies, okay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Who gave you that bruise on your stomach?’

  ‘Bad Bill from class.’

  ‘Tsk.’ Mrs Aslan made that noise when she got mad. ‘I go that school, I squash him!’

  Me and Kane laughed coz Mrs Aslan could squash Bad Bill with her foot.

  Sam vomited in front of his house. I watched him from Ubaba’s bedroom window. Mrs Aslan washed the mess with the garden hose and wiped his face with her hands. She lived in the house with the pretty garden. Sometimes she came to visit Umama and brought a plate of food. She was not as tall as my grandmother but she liked to cover her head too. Her head cover was flat like it was keeping her head warm. My ugogo’s was big and looked like a crown on her head. I used to help her wrap the cloth over her hair. It had brown, red and yellow spots on it.

  ‘Gugu? What are you doing? Come away from the window and change from your school clothes.’

  ‘Okay, Umama.’

  Her hand waved like a handkerchief, as my grandmother used to say. It made me smile to think of Ugogo but sometimes my memories from home felt like clouds in my head. They were very far away, like Ugogo’s voice. What if I woke up one day and forgot her?

  I rubbed my eyes to make the tears stop. I went into my room and put on my favourite skirt and singlet. Pink made me happy. Yellow made me sad. At the refugee camp the ground was the colour of sand.

  In the kitchen Umama was putting isitshwala in a bowl. White dots of isitshwala were on her red T-shirt. She always dropped things on herself when she cooked. Ubaba called her an artist. There was a lot of room in our kitchen because we didn’t have a table yet and sometimes Umama and Ubaba danced and twirled before dinner. ‘How was your day at school?’ Umama said.

  ‘It was good. My teacher likes my stories.’

  ‘Yes, you are good at writing them, like Ubaba.’

  The boys at school told stories too. Today Sean with the mean wolf mouth was telling one to his friends when I walked past. ‘What’s black and swings from tree to tree?’ he said. And all his friends said ‘Goo-goo!’, stretching my name so it sounded wrong. They laughed and laughed until I ran and couldn’t hear them anymore. I ran around the oval and didn’t cry. Not one drop. Goo-goo! That wasn’t me. My name’s Gugulethu and it means precious one.

  ‘Umama, is it bad to be black?’

  Umama stopped. She looked like a statue. She put the bowl of isitshwala onto the bench and stood in front of me. She had sweat on her skin. ‘Where did you hear that?’ she said.

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Did something happen at school?’

  ‘No, Umama. Just asking.’

  ‘Gugu, if you are being teased I will go to speak to your teacher—’

  ‘No, Umama!’ My thoughts came fast. ‘I saw something on TV. On the news, a white woman was calling a black man bad names.’

  Umama’s chin went up and her eyes were like big brown eggs. ‘Being black is not bad. Nor is being white. Black and white people are like night and day, both necessary to this world. People who see a difference cannot see. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, Umama.’

  ‘Now go and eat this with Sicelo outside.’ She gave me the isitshwala. It looked like mashed potato. ‘It has peanuts on top. Next time I buy enough, I will make peanut butter.’

  ‘Thanks, Umama.’ I ran to the front yard and Umama yelled for Sicelo to hurry. I sat on the edge of the porch. The street was quiet. There was a grey cat stretching on a car. It looked lonely. There were a lot more cats back home. The streets made more noise too. I used to play kudoda on the street with my friend Noma. We played it with stones and sometimes when the sun was very hot, the ice cream man would park his bike on our street and ring his bell very loud. Me and Noma would put our heads in the fridge at the back of the bike to pick our ice cream. Nutty Squirrel was our favourite but the vanilla would melt very quickly and make our chins sticky.

  Maybe Sam from next door liked ice cream too? He was still in his house. Sam’s dad wasn’t hungry. He was angry. I hoped he’d never come back. Maybe he was the reason why Sam never smiled at school. He always looked like he was about to cry. It was how Umama and Ubaba looked at the refugee camp.

  I made the isitshwala into a ball and put it in my mouth. It was soft and chewy but the peanuts made it crunchy. Sicelo came and put a big chunk in his mouth.

  ‘Hey, leave some for me!’ I said.

  ‘I got bigger hands, not my fault.’ He licked his fingers. ‘Next door is quiet today.’

  My hairs prickled when I remembered the bad man’s screams. I rubbed my arms. ‘Do you miss home, Sic?’

  He took off his socks and put his feet on the grass. ‘Yeah, sometimes.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t miss the roads. No potholes here or big lines at the shops. You were younger, you might not remember.’

  I remembered a lot but some of my memories had fire in them.

  ‘People look different here,’ he said.

  Different but necessary to this world, Umama had said. Sam’s hair was the colour of strawberries. He was the boy with no voice. Ugogo used to say that the baobab tree had healing powers if you ate the leaves. Maybe there was a healing tree here to help Sam? The trees here were long with skinny bodies. Back home trees had purple flowers but none were as big as the baobab trees in Ugogo’s stories. One was so big, she said, it could fit lots of people inside. When the baobab tree lost its leaves its branches looked upside down.

  Sometimes I felt like that too.

  Sunshine was a free spirit.

  He followed Mr Bailey outside for their afternoon walk but his nose took the lead before they reached the front fence. Mr Bailey checked to see if the ‘no junk mail’ sign he had made was still on his letterbox. It had disappeared once and he blamed the Indians who distributed catalogues and brochures up and down the neighbourhood. He made the sign again and stuck it on with superglue and clear sticky tape this time. He left out ‘please’ because it had obviously undermined the authority of the first message. Instead, Mr Bailey made his point with two exclamation marks that the Indians now understood with a nod of their heads. Not that he had anything against Indians. They worked hard, even in the rain and some without umbrellas. Like his daughter Katie’s husband, Arjun, who worked at a bank. He was the decent kind, who didn’t carry the smell. Mr Bailey called him Aaron for short and had served him pappadums on his first visit. They were tasty little things
, for sure, but they made the kitchen stink like feet. Aaron’s face scrunched up when he saw them and then he and Katie laughed so hard that it had pissed Mr Bailey right off.

  ‘Thought your people liked these,’ Mr Bailey had said.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘What?’ What had he said that was bad enough to turn his daughter’s face scarlet? Here he was being welcoming and look at the thanks he got!

  ‘I … ah, we do,’ said Aaron, smiling at Mrs Bailey. ‘Sorry, it’s just that, ah, we don’t eat them with tea.’

  And that’s how Mr Bailey and his wife came to understand a thing or two about Indian chutneys and curries.

  Mr Bailey smoothed the bubbled face of the ‘no junk mail’ sign and followed his dog down the road. Sunshine maintained a slow pace, as if he could hear Mr Bailey’s bones creak with each step. Age was a sharp knife that shaved millimetres off him every day. Katie and Aaron’s kids, Anita and Daniel, reached just below Mr Bailey’s shoulders. They were good-looking kids, smart too, made him and his wife laugh when he saw them last month. They were more white than brown, lighter than milk chocolate, Mrs Bailey always said, thanks to their genes. Sometimes, Mr Bailey couldn’t help but wonder what his grandkids would have looked like if Katie, their only child, had married her own kind. He had always imagined grandkids with eyes blue like a clear midday sky, with his wife’s milky white skin, his daughter’s blonde hair, carrying on their ancestry, their family history on their features.

  The refugee kids sat on the porch eating with their fingers. Fingers instead of forks! And in public! There was no sign of their father, who left the house early in the morning with a green grocery bag that he held as if it was a briefcase. What did he do all day? Where did he work? He may not have to with all the assistance the government gave to the likes of them. Ridiculous, thought Mr Bailey. A waste. He decided he’d take a closer look tonight; see if he could find another window in his house that offered him more clues.

  In the morning, he’d watched the refugee woman from his porch. She’d watered the only plant in the front yard, near the wooden terrace. He thought he saw her smile but couldn’t be sure with the distance. She stood in the garden, hands open, and faced the sky. This he saw for certain. He thought he heard her sigh – or maybe it was a chuckle similar to the muffled sound of his wife’s laugh when he made a joke. She puzzled Mr Bailey greatly. What did she have to smile about? Her weatherboard house was flaking, the poles rusty, the corrugated iron roof dented in the middle. He and his wife had had a good look when the Johnsons left. They were concerned that it would attract rodents or become a haven for squatters. How wrong they’d been.

  That Mrs Ass-la woman sat outside Angie’s house. Sam sat in her lap and she hugged him so hard he just about disappeared in the woman’s arms. Mr Bailey hurried past as quickly as his bones would allow. He found it odd how people could hug so freely like that, especially with no blood ties. And how on earth could Angie trust her children to this woman with the covered head?

  Sunshine wandered in and out of front yards, sniffing letterboxes and bushes, pissing on car tyres. His favourite garden belonged to the Arabs. It made Mr Bailey’s heart beat faster than his body moved every time Sunshine trespassed on their property. The lads who lived there, they were the greasy kind, hair slicked back with too much oil. They had tattoos, the markers of trouble; he saw their kind on the news every day. Three were in the front yard now, their heads bent into the bonnet of a car like doctors inspecting an X-ray. The yard was full of metal scraps and loose tyres – you wouldn’t think it belonged to a house if it wasn’t for the leafy apricot tree in the far corner that stretched up to the tiled roof.

  ‘Sunshine,’ Mr Bailey yelled when his dog veered into their yard. ‘Sunshine, come here!’ He took out the pig ear, his dog’s favourite treat, for emergencies like this. ‘Look what I have for you.’

  The lads poked their heads out. ‘Bro, this dog can’t get enough of us,’ said the oldest one with the full arm of tattoos. ‘Come here, Sunshine. Yalla.’

  Mr Bailey watched his dog run to the lad, who spoke to Sunshine in a harsh language, as if he was clearing his throat.

  ‘Leave him, bro, he looks like he got fleas!’ This second one wore a thick gold chain around his neck, much like a collar.

  ‘Now, you listen here, young man,’ said Mr Bailey, heart hammering like a bird’s, but his sentence was cut short by the third lad who was tall and bulky with muscles that bulged under a white singlet.

  ‘Nah, you listen, old man, we don’t mind your dog coming here, hanging out with us, but if he does another shit on our grass, this time you’re cleaning it up.’

  ‘Leave him, bro, he’s old.’ Tattoo Arm carried Sunshine and put him in Mr Bailey’s outstretched hands.

  ‘I beg your pardon. It could be any dog who – ah – could have dirtied your lawn.’ Mr Bailey wanted to say, what grass, what lawn? This house is worse than a junkyard fit for … for crooks!

  Mr Bailey turned to leave and Muscles’s voice trailed behind him.

  ‘How do you think he’d like it if our dog done a shit on his lawn, huh? He’s a hypocrite, bro.’

  ‘But we got no dog,’ whispered the lad with the chain.

  ‘Is that the point, bro? Why you gotta be an idiot? The point is, he loses his shit if others even touch his fence! You weren’t here when he yelled like a piece of khara to that Islander kid last week!’

  ‘Yalla,’ said Tattoo Arm, ‘get back to work.’

  Mr Bailey’s tears blurred the world, and the sun and trees, cars and homes swam around him. That Islander kid had scraped his fence with a stick! What would these greasy lads know of decency and respect for property? There was none of that where they came from, just violence and barbarism! This was a decent neighbourhood before the ethnics came. They knew nothing of the Australian way. Mr Bailey’s grandfather fought for this country, helped build it, defended it against the Turks. Mr Bailey spent two years wading through mud in the Vietnam jungle, honouring this country. His roots dated back over a hundred years, more than a century of hard work and duty.

  Mr Bailey moved away from the lads, walking his fastest, risking a break or a fall. Sunshine kissed his face before wiggling out of his arms, knocking the pig ear to the ground. It landed by Mr Bailey’s foot and before he could ready himself for the dangerous squat to pick it up, Sunshine snatched it and ran like lightning towards the small park at the end of the street.

  Mr Bailey wished desperately to be home, behind the fence. The sun was too bright now, burning his eyes, making them leak. He headed towards his house, remembering the street before it was filled with these brick homes and cars. Time shifted and he saw himself as a small lad standing on the quiet street with his grandfather. His grandfather had lost an arm but he was an ANZAC, a legend. Mr Bailey wore his pop’s honour like a badge, felt his heart stir with courage.

  Mr Bailey knew war, he’d lived it, smelled it, and he’d be damned if a bunch of greasy lads would scare him into hiding.

  It was dark when Mum got home. Sam was asleep and didn’t see the stamp of Dad’s fingers on her face. She was held together by skin. There was a small bandage on her nose that made her wheeze. Mrs Aslan dropped off a pot of lentil soup and I put out a bowl for Mum. We sat at the dining table with the knife glinting between us. Her gaze flicked from me to the knife.

  ‘You’ll have to wait a while longer if you want to use that,’ she said, her voice rough like the knife’s edges.

  I couldn’t speak past the anger that was stuck in my throat.

  She ate from the good bowl, the one with gold trimming I nicked from a fancy home store, and she clinked the spoon like the bell at a boxing match. ‘I spoke to the social worker at the hospital, Kane. Told her I wanted to press charges.’

  I held my breath and was scared to look at her in case I saw her lie.

  ‘I told the police too when they came to see me at the hospital. They locked Dad up last night, charged him with assault but he’s o
ut on bail.’

  I felt like I’d been king-hit to the side of the head. ‘They locked him up for a night? That’s it? That’s all he gets?’

  ‘They also served him with a safety notice. He’s not allowed near us until the hearing for an intervention order in three days. He’s agreed to the conditions this time.’

  He gets a piece of paper and we get all the scars. ‘Who’s to say he’ll stick to it? Who’s to say he won’t be back tonight? We’re not safe until he’s in jail. In a few days he’ll come knocking us around again.’ In a few days his anger would be worse.

  Her face was set like the plaster on her left hand. She used to look like that when she stood up to Dad, until he put her in hospital.

  ‘Don’t you ever try and pull a stunt like that again. You hear me?’

  I got up and paced to get my thoughts straight. ‘When’s the assault hearing?’

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  I stared at the knife. ‘Yeah. I heard.’

  ‘You’re better than that, Kane. You’re not him.’

  You’re not him. But his blood pumped inside me.

  Her spoon scraped against the bowl. ‘His court case will be in a few months. I’m going to testify.’

  ‘You’ll cave in, Ma.’

  She shook her head. ‘No more. I’m going to testify, Kane. Don’t want him near my babies. I’ve had enough. There’s a good chance he’ll be convicted of assault and get a prison sentence.’

  ‘But it’s not guaranteed.’

  ‘This is our best chance. I’m going to ask the magistrate for full protection at the intervention order hearing on Friday so he can’t come near us at home or in a public place for a long time … twelve months …’ She massaged her head. ‘Maybe even two years …’

  I slumped back in the chair. Only iron would keep him away from here. ‘We could move.’

  Mum sniffed. ‘We’re not running, Kane.’ Her eyes got darker, turned hard. ‘I’m fighting him. I give you my word.’

  But her word had crumbled too many times. And even if it didn’t, our new life would be a game of hide-and-seek, always checking behind our backs until the day he stopped breathing.