Living on Hope Street

by Demet Divaroren

  The next morning, they called four shelters and there were no beds available. She couldn’t afford a motel, couldn’t go back to Becky’s house. She didn’t have enough money to run. She had no other choice but to go back home.

  A knock on the door jolted Angie out of her daze.

  ‘Angie?’ Mrs Aslan’s voice rang like a doorbell.

  Relief rushed through her as she got up, fighting vomit and fatigue, to open the door.

  Sam walked in front of me. His shoulders drooped as if his school bag weighed a ton. He stared at the ground whenever he had a problem.

  ‘Bud, you okay?’

  His bottom lip shook. He shrugged and walked faster.

  How long had he been going to school shit scared? How long had Bad Bill been laying into him? I kicked a rock and it smashed against a tree trunk. Today I’d show Bad Bill what ‘stinky’ really was. When I found him I’ll drag the coward by the neck, shove him in a corner and piss on his face. Aim it straight in his mouth so he never opened it again to hurt Sam or anyone else. I felt better just thinking about him screaming and crying.

  This morning, Sam had looked like a kid again when he was making Mum breakfast. He’d smiled; his face wasn’t scrunched up like a ball of paper. I wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from him.

  ‘Hey, bud, slow down.’

  He walked faster, waddling like a duck.

  ‘Sam!’

  Just then an African girl shot out of her front yard and smashed into Sam’s shoulder. They both fell on their bums and sat there like idiots staring at each other.

  ‘You alright, bud?’

  ‘Y … yeah.’

  ‘You okay?’ I asked the girl.

  She looked at me as if she didn’t understand. ‘Sorry!’ she said, her hand covering her mouth. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ I said and helped them stand.

  ‘I’m s … sorry,’ said Sam as if he just woke up.

  An African boy came out of the girl’s house carrying two school bags. He handed her the pink one and she held it with one hand and waved the other, which was scratched and bleeding.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ he said, the words thick in his mouth.

  She nodded and the boy blew on her hand. They started talking fast, their words clicking. What kind of a bloody language was that? They’d moved in a few weeks ago hugging plastic bags and boxes like they were scared to drop them.

  ‘Here,’ said Sam, eyes wide and wet. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ His voice was whispery and he held out a red hankie to the girl. Mrs Aslan had given it to him for Christmas. She had a lot of this handmade stuff with fancy edges lying around her house. She gave Mum some too and our house was full of frilly Turkish decorations.

  The girl took it and smiled. Her teeth were so bright against her dark skin it looked like a torch had lit up her mouth. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Keep it,’ said Sam. ‘I have lots more.’

  We walked down our street dodging kids who poured out of every second door. The African kids trailed behind and Sam kept looking back. ‘They’re new at school,’ he said. ‘Kids are scared of them coz they’re black.’

  ‘Does Bad Bill give them a hard time too?’

  He froze for a split second, then walked like he didn’t hear me.

  ‘Sam! Wait!’

  He stopped in the middle of the footpath shaking his head.

  ‘What’s up with you, bud? If this is about Bad Bill it’s okay—’

  ‘I don’t want you to come to school! If Bad Bill sees he’s gonna be mad! He’s gonna think I’m a chicken coz I dobbed!’

  My blood went cold. Who the hell was this kid to scare my brother so bad? He was going to learn the hard way that nobody messed with my family.

  ‘Bud, it’s cool if you don’t want me to come. I was just going to talk to him, to tell him to stop. But you understand this: as long as I’m around, you don’t need to be scared, okay? Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore, I promise.’

  He wiped his nose, his freckles glowing under the sun. ‘So you’re not coming?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘And you promise you’re not gonna do anything to Bad Bill?’

  ‘Uh huh.’ I looked away. Not today. It was just going to take a little longer to find this Bad Bill and handle things without Sam knowing. ‘But I am going to pick you up after school, okay? I’ll be there before the bell rings.’

  The corners of his lips moved up a bit. ‘Okay.’ He gave me a high-five. ‘Later, alligator,’ he said, bolting to the end of the street.

  It made me smile seeing him free, running like he weighed nothing. No one would ever touch him again. Not Bad Bill. Not Dad.

  I followed Sam from afar to make sure he got to school okay and fingered the twenty bucks in my pocket. It wouldn’t get us much. Mum didn’t want to let on but she was worried when she spoke about work. There’s no way she was going back. The agency would give her nothing. You needed two hands to clean and cook for old people in their homes.

  Now she was just as broken as them.

  The street was falling apart.

  Every second house had a problem. One was missing a few of the wooden boards that kept it off the ground. Another was patched up with bits of plastic. A black couch slumped in someone’s garden. It was the kind of street they showed on the news with close-ups of people in pyjamas complaining about neighbours or a burnt-out car that was dumped on their nature strip.

  I held onto the straps of my school bag and walked towards Grandma’s house. Kids ran past me screaming as if they’d been let out of a cage. An African girl knocked over a white boy, a woman in a blue nightgown smoked in her front yard yelling for her kids to hurry up. At home in Essendon, our neighbour Nancy wore stilettos to check her letterbox.

  An old man grumbled past me and gave me a once-over the way Mum inspected dust. His poor dog ran away from him. Its fur was tangled and I wanted to take it and give it a bath, snuggle with it on our couch until Mum came home. Her face would be priceless. ‘Dogs are dirty,’ she’d said when I begged her for a pug, ‘are you going to clean up after it?’ ‘Yes!’ I said, but she rolled her eyes. I don’t know why she cared. It’s not like she did the housework. She paid a cleaner for that.

  I put my school bag on the ground and crouched next to a Camry across the road from Grandma’s house. I kept a safe distance from the yellow-stained mattress sitting on the nature strip a few doors down. You could catch something permanent from that.

  Grandma’s house hadn’t changed much in seven years, except for the grapevine. It was bigger than I remembered and was taking over her front porch. She used to feed me grapes straight off that vine. I remembered their sweet and sour taste, Grandma’s strong hands lifting me up to pick my own bunch. A lump burned my throat. I hadn’t realised just how much I missed her until she turned up with the börek yesterday. They were my favourite, crispy and delicious, and I’d eaten all of them while I followed Grandma home. Her grey vest flapped around her floral dress and people did a double take when she walked past, especially one woman with boobs pushed up to her chin. She gawked at Grandma’s socks and sandals, her mouth open. I gave her a look that made her mouth snap shut.

  Grandma came outside and stood in front of a rose bush, touching the petals with the tips of her fingers. She breathed them in before trimming the leaves. Mum loved roses too. She made our gardener Barry plant them next to the fence. Sometimes she’d cry just staring at them and I’d make her a coffee to cheer her up or we’d see a movie and eat buckets of popcorn till it rose up our throats.

  I mean, I got that Mum had a shit life but was that a reason to make mine hell? She made me an insomniac! Dimitri’s look haunted me at night. His mouth had curled up and he bared his teeth like an angry dog. He screened my calls now. It made me want to vomit.

  Grandma stretched and I got out of my hiding place. I took a deep breath, tried to still my heart. It was racing like crazy. What if I walked over there and she didn�
��t want to see me? What if she was as ignorant as Mum said? ‘Get a grip,’ I whispered. There was one way to find out. I stepped forward as Grandma turned around and headed to the neighbour’s house. I crouched back down next to the car. Grandma knocked on the door and a blonde woman with a plastered hand came outside. They hugged, not a pat on the back like Dad gave me, but a genuine hug that turned you both into one person.

  I waited a few seconds before walking up the street. The bus stop was crowded and I stood back till the bus arrived. I jumped on and sat next to an old woman with whiskers. I tried not to look but they were long and waved when she breathed. If Seren was here she’d refuse to sit down until she disinfected the bus seat. She’d probably try to disinfect the woman too. She carried a bottle of Dettol in her bag and sometimes her hands wrinkled from all the hand sanitiser she used. The thing I didn’t understand was this: how can a person who hates germs not have a problem with sticking her tongue down her boyfriend’s throat? The human mouth is infested with germs. And Seren’s boyfriend Jake was hardly an ambassador for hygiene. His tongue had a white coating, which was a sign of bacteria. But Seren’s tongue dove into his mouth at every opportunity.

  Last year someone showed Seren’s mum a Facebook photo of her and Jake kissing. Her mum freaked out, but did she embarrass her in public like mine? No. She asked to meet Jake and then took Seren on a coastal trip to Turkey so they could ‘reconnect’. Seren got a free trip for fooling around with her boyfriend while Mum made me feel dirty. That’s what hurt the most. Turkish soapies went on about honour and shame. ‘Don’t spread your legs’ was the moral of every story. Mum knew the script off by heart because of the past. It’s not like I was desperate to have sex but I wasn’t waiting around for true love like Seren was, either.

  I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

  School dragged like a bad song. At lunch, music blared from iPods and iPads. A bunch of guys jumped over the ‘do not trespass’ sign and stood on the manicured grass, pretending to choke themselves with their ties. At this school, they used words like ‘academic’ and ‘distinguished’, gave us chequered brown uniforms that brushed our knees and boys wore ties that they whipped girls with after school. Here, excellence was ranked by whose family had the most money.

  Seren and I sat on a bench that had a silver plaque on it. It was in memory of a Mr Ken Welsh. It was creepy sitting on a dead man’s seat.

  Seren stretched her legs. ‘The sun in Turkey is different,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t roast you like it does here. Look! I have red patches on my legs.’ She faced the sky, her eyes squinting. ‘I just want a nice tan for the party on Saturday night. Please!’

  ‘Good luck with that, snowflake.’

  ‘Ha ha. Look who’s talking, Ice Queen. Roll down your socks. Your poor legs need some love.’ She tried to grab a sock but I pushed her hand away. ‘At least don’t pull them up so high,’ she said.

  ‘I’d pull them up to my stomach if I could. Skirts are overrated.’

  ‘But you have nice legs. Look at mine, they’re stumpy, but I don’t hide them in jeans at every chance.’

  ‘Dimitri liked my style.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I hate that loser!’

  ‘He unfriended me on Facebook.’

  ‘That’s low.’ Seren punched the air. ‘You didn’t do anything!’

  ‘Would you want to be with Jake if his mum barged in on your make-out session and yelled like her arse was on fire?’

  She covered her mouth but her laughter made her double over. She wiped tears from her eyes. ‘You’re too good for him anyway. I’m serious.’

  ‘He said I was too much work! We were only dating for a month!’

  She held my face in her hands. ‘It’s his loss. Okay?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Seren let go and bit into an apple. She leaned back against the bench. Three girls walked past hugging folders like it was a part of the uniform. One was beautiful. Her blonde hair fell to her shoulders and she walked in a way that made her butt stick out.

  ‘… Ada?’

  ‘Huh? What?’

  ‘You’re so scattered today.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry … I got distracted.’

  ‘By those girls?’ Seren looked confused and flicked the apple core onto the grass.

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ How could I explain my thoughts about girls to Seren when I didn’t understand them myself? How could I explain it to anyone? Mum would freak out like a first-class drama queen. And Grandma … she was old school. ‘Hey,’ I said, to quickly change the subject, ‘I forgot to tell you … I saw my grandma this morning.’

  Her head snapped towards me and her hair fell over her face. ‘What! When? Did your mum make up—’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll ever make up. Not when Mum’s holding onto the past like it’s a bloody trophy or something.’ I took a chunk out of a half-melted Mars bar and wiped my sticky fingers on the bench.

  ‘Gross,’ Seren said and hunted around in her pocket. ‘Here.’ She squeezed hand sanitiser on my fingers.

  ‘You’ve got a sickness, you know that, right?’ I rubbed my hands together. ‘Happy, germaphobe?’

  ‘Shut up and tell me what happened? Where did you see her? What did she say? Tell me!’ She wriggled her eyebrows. They were perfectly shaped with a peak in the middle. Mine were like caterpillars.

  ‘Remember how I took a sickie yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Grandma came over.’

  Her eyes bulged like balloons.

  ‘She was holding a plastic bag …’ As I explained the story, her green eyes darkened. Seren had anime eyes, full of emotions.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I tell you everything!’

  ‘I’m not finished! This morning I went to her house to talk to her.’

  ‘Oh my god!’ She shook my shoulder. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance. I was going to, I mean, I was there in front of the house, but I don’t know … what if she doesn’t want to see me?’

  ‘But she did try to visit you all those years ago, remember? Your mum never let her in.’

  ‘Why hasn’t she ever come to see me at school? If my dad moved on, why wouldn’t Grandma?’

  ‘She won’t! I remember her. She was so nice. I’ll come with you. We’ll go this Saturday before the party. No, hang on, we need time to get ready—’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m coming to the party.’

  ‘What? Do you know how lucky we are to get an invite? She’s Jake’s cousin, otherwise we wouldn’t even be allowed in that street.’

  ‘I’ll have to sneak out. It’s too much effort.’

  ‘Not if you make up with your mum. There’ll be hot Year Twelve guys there.’

  I wasn’t in the mood for another war with Mum. She was at fault, and I didn’t plan on giving her new ammunition by sneaking out of the house.

  ‘Ada, you need your mum on your side. Okay, she’s a bit crazy but she’s the one who pays you. Unless you want to work at McDonald’s for ten dollars an hour, you have to make up with her.’

  ‘No way! I’m not that desperate.’ But the thought of having no money was like the dark cloud that covered the sun.

  The lunch song played and everyone ran out of class.

  Some girls danced and boys laughed and copied them. They waved their hands and it looked funny, like an elephant’s nose. I sat near the canteen and waited for Sicelo. Stones dug into my bum.

  My hand hurt from when I fell and I blew on it till it felt better. The blood was still drying. Sam sat under a tree and watched the ground the way Ubaba did when he read something really hard. I wanted to say hi but he never looked up. At the refugee camp there was a boy who lived in the compound with the biggest mango tree. He looked sad like Sam but when Sicelo asked him for a mango he hit him with a stick. Ubaba said that the boy was born in the camp, that we should be nice to him, not everyone was lucky like us to be born into freedom, but I still didn’
t like him. He had mean eyes. Sam’s eyes had light in them, ‘the light of kindness’ my ugogo talked about in her stories.

  The red cloth Sam gave me was wrinkled in my pocket. It was very soft and had blood on it. Sam said I could keep it and I hoped he wouldn’t change his mind like Houda who gave me her sharpener but then asked for it back.

  ‘Dreaming again, usisi.’ Sicelo sat next to me on the ground eating salt and vinegar chips. He leaned his back against the brick wall, stretching his legs.

  ‘Tsk. Chew properly or you’ll choke one day like Umama said.’

  Sicelo laughed and chips fell out of his mouth. ‘I like food,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t like it when my stomach grumbles.’

  ‘But that was before. Ubaba said we are safe now.’

  ‘The camp was meant to be safe, too.’

  My heart started running again.

  ‘No, don’t look like that, usisi. Of course we are okay, look at where we are. No one is chasing us. Here.’ He gave me a pink sherbet bomb.

  ‘Oh! Thank you!’ The sherbet bomb fizzed on my tongue and tickled my mouth. Kids walked past with brown paper bags, licked coloured ice cream that made their mouths orange. They looked like lizards. One boy dropped pie on his top and licked it off. I looked away quickly. I loved meat pie but it always burned my tongue. I ate a lot of it at the language school me and Sicelo went to to learn better English. I had friends there like Sharif. He was from Iraq and had a funny lip. Abyan was from Somalia. Her teeth were like shiny stars. Their English wasn’t as good as ours. Umama and Ubaba taught it to us when we were small. Abyan and Sharif were funny and we laughed a lot. Ugogo said laughter was the language of the world.