The Gulf

by Anna Spargo-Ryan

  Two weeks of these afternoons went by until something was different. Mum was home early, not even four o’clock, and Jason stood in the window and blew smoke through the crack in the glass.

  ‘Just stopped going outside to do that, huh?’ I said, without meaning to.

  ‘Shut up, Skye,’ Jason said.

  The table engulfed Mum, there in the middle of it with her head down. Her body stuttered as she breathed, a hiccup at the top and a shiver at the bottom. She’d been crying. Maybe she still was. I pulled a chair up next to her and put my face close to hers, took on her breath.

  Her voice came quiet from between her fingers: ‘They’ve sold the flat.’

  ‘I know, I was there. Remember?’

  She didn’t look up. ‘The flat. It’s sold. They want us to leave.’

  ‘But they said we could stay. They said people only buy these places as investments. To rent out.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  Jason pushed his cigarette butt through the crack. ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘They don’t like me.’

  ‘Can you blame them?’

  ‘Skye.’ Mum’s pinched voice. ‘Can you give it a rest for five seconds?’ She turned away, rode her body through the dips and crests.

  ‘Great,’ I said, threw my bag against the table. ‘Where are we going to live, then?’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Do you ever stop talking?’

  ‘Jase.’

  ‘I’m trying to run a business here.’

  I took twenty dollars from Mum’s purse and walked down to Westfield, sat on the bench at the top of the escalators. From there, the building stretched out to the new Kmart and the upstairs food court and the discount clothing store, where I’d tried and failed to get a job over the holidays. At the other end of the building, Myer and David Jones and the fancy supermarket with its own cheese shop inside. Kirrily said that was the rich end. T-shirts for fifty dollars. Chocolates imported from Europe.

  I fingered the note in my pocket. I would buy sausages, beans, potatoes. That could last us for two dinners and Ben liked to make castles out of his mash.

  A man and his daughter stood at the top of the escalator. She was little, not much taller than his knee, and she wore a pink dress with frills around the bottom. ‘Come on, Lily,’ he said, and his voice rolled around and out of his mouth. ‘It’s just the escalator. You’ve been on it lots of times.’ Her hand was white in his, clenched as tight as it would go.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘I’m too scared.’

  They stood there together and looked down the escalator together and he said, ‘Just one step at a time.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Okay, but just one,’ she said, and climbed onto the first step, and that step moved them all the way to the end.

  The supermarket hissed with people on their food missions. I picked the freshest-looking beans from their tub, used my fingernail to make sure the potatoes weren’t green under their skins. All the sausages had gone gluten free, and they’d got more expensive at the same time. We always had the ones with beef and honey (when I looked in the ingredients list, honey wasn’t there). I got a little tin of gravy powder. A chocolate koala, on special for seventy-five cents. I would say I’d lost the receipt. I would say it was my payment for making dinner when I still had to write an essay about King Duncan.

  Mum was up and about in the kitchen when I got home. Smiling, even.

  ‘Okay, what’s going on?’

  She nudged Jason. ‘You tell her.’

  ‘She’s your kid. You tell her.’

  ‘You’re freaking me out,’ I said.

  She clapped her hands. ‘Jason says we can move in with him!’

  ‘But Jason lives here.’

  ‘No, silly girl.’ She took the bags from me. ‘In Port Flinders.’

  Breath all jammed up in my throat. She wouldn’t do it. We’d been here before with the others but never seen it all the way to the end. Never actually got in the car and driven away, even when that South African guy had begged her to live in his castle. Her attention span was short. Jason would be gone in six months, the way they all were.

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘So generous of him, right? He reckons there’s a great pub there, and the air’s so clean. Good to get out of the city.’

  Ben had squirrelled his way under the chair in the corner. I kneeled next to him, put my face in the dust. He had his toy cars again, and he drove them into head-on collisions over and over.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘I don’t want to move.’ He’d been crying, just the hint of it when he spoke.

  ‘We’re not moving.’

  Mum called out: ‘We are moving.’

  I lowered my voice. ‘Don’t worry. You know how this works. Mum’ll lose interest soon enough and we’ll find a new flat to live in. Closer to the river, even.’

  ‘Mum says we’re definitely going. In a month, she says.’ The Ford careened over a cliff he’d built from cardboard, exploded into flames below. I pulled down the chair skirt. Mum had turned on her fancy new grill and put on all the sausages.

  ‘That’s supposed to last two days,’ I said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘And my change?’ I handed it over. ‘Three sixty? Come on, Skye. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘That’s all there was. Sausages have gone up.’

  ‘Where’s the receipt?’

  ‘I lost it.’

  ‘You know the rules. Hand it over.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s lost.’

  ‘Oh well.’ She shrugged. ‘Then you can pay me back.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll do that. Right after I get a job in Port Flinders. Heaps of jobs there, right? We can all work in Jason’s business together.’ I cut the ends off a few beans. ‘Kirrily will let me stay with her. I’ll get a job, get my own place. I’ll be a high-school dropout like you. Family tradition.’

  ‘You’re too smart for that.’

  ‘I’d say you can’t stop me, but I know you won’t even try. Why would you? You can spend all your time in Port Flinders, sucking Jason’s dick.’

  Hot oil splashed onto my skin before I’d had a chance to register Mum’s new barbecue tongs being slammed down on the grill. ‘Shit!’ Pain like ant bites. And then sausages on the floor, their shiny skins picking up the dirt.

  ‘Don’t you speak to me like that again,’ she said.

  ‘Where does he keep going, anyway? Out on a job? That house on Dyson Road, right? With all the broken down cars out the front.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Right, I’m just a kid. I know.’ I touched the soft welts along my arm, took a bag of peas from the freezer without meeting her eye. ‘I’ve got an assignment to do.’

  ‘What about dinner?’ she said.

  ‘Looks like you have everything under control.’

  My room was hot. It had got dark outside, and in the car park downstairs two men were talking. An older one, bent around his body. And another one with his back to me, leaning against a car I hadn’t seen before, Victorian plates on it. Their voices were hushed but I caught the inflections on the air; they were arguing. The light above them flickered, reflected in the younger man’s shiny head.

  Jason.

  I leaned a little way out of my window, trying to catch a few words. The older guy stood to his full height, still a head shorter than Jason, and began to prod his chest. Jason’s arms were up. He took a step back. Each time the man shoved, he seemed to grow a little taller. The car’s lights went on and a third man appeared in the driver’s-side window but I couldn’t see his face, and the older man limped around to the other side and slammed the door, and the car tore into reverse and pulled out of the block with its tyres screaming.

  Then silence.

  Jason, in the middle of the car park with his hands in his pockets. He waited for a minute before throwing something to the ground – his wallet? – and shouting: ‘Fuck you!’ into the empty night.

&n
bsp; When I looked from my window along the balcony, all the doors were open, with faces peering out.

  We packed for Port Flinders almost immediately. Every day Mum seemed more frantic to get up there, and the month we’d had became three weeks and then two. We wouldn’t need our furniture, she said, so I should ask around the apartment block to see if anyone else could use it. See if anyone else wanted a cheap table with peeling lino and a TV cabinet we’d found in hard rubbish.

  ‘No one will want it,’ I said.

  ‘They’re all cheapskates. Someone will take it.’

  I went to Amir’s flat first, where the door was wide open. Ben was already inside. The two boys were covered from head to toe in dirt and his mother was laughing, round and glossy with her hands on her belly.

  ‘Nadira?’

  ‘Skye,’ she said, and she was smiling. ‘Please, come in.’ She poured tea from a blue pot. ‘We were just about to have a cup of tea.’

  Ben’s eyes widened. ‘Do you drink tea, Amir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’re eight!’

  Nadira laughed again. ‘Won’t you join us?’ she said.

  She seemed to be pregnant in her whole body, swollen and flushed. ‘No, thank you. Mum just wanted to see if you wanted any of our furniture.’

  ‘Don’t you need it?’

  ‘Nah, it won’t fit in the new house.’

  She sipped her tea. ‘I heard they had sold your apartment. Where will you go?’

  Ben stood up. ‘Come on, Amir, let’s go to your room.’

  ‘We’re moving to Port Flinders,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘North. On the Gulf.’

  ‘Oh, my girl. That’s a big move. And in the middle of Year 10?’ She pulled me into her hard belly. ‘You are smart. You will be just fine.’ I breathed her in, her baking, tea-leaf, baby-growing smell. The flat was so tiny around her. She filled all the spaces as she moved between them. When I pulled away I’d left a damp patch on her head scarf, but she pretended not to notice.

  ‘So, no furniture then?’

  ‘No furniture. No tea?’

  ‘No tea.’

  The Adelmanns didn’t answer their door, which was no surprise. They had two modes: arguing and screwing. I knocked a couple of times, reluctantly put my ear to the door and quickly tore it away. Those thin walls. It was amazing Nadira had ever wanted to get pregnant again.

  At the end of the main walkway was the largest flat, built into the corner. For most of the time that we’d been in the block, an old man had lived there with a fish in a bowl. He had the bowl on the windowsill and in the mornings around school time he’d drop a few pellets into it. Never smiled, not at me. Said things about ‘boat people’ and ‘our jobs’ and used words I’d never heard before. The only reason anyone noticed he’d died was that the fish was upside down.

  A couple lived there now, with her mother or his mother, or maybe even his grandmother. They had a stool out on the landing and now the husband sat there with a glass of brown liquid in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He had his legs crossed, one elbow on the opposite knee. It was pretty obvious he didn’t want to be disturbed, but I knew that was not an option.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said. He drank from his glass. ‘Hello?’

  He turned to look at me, sweaty under his eyes. When he spoke it was with a thick European accent. ‘Yes, little girl?’

  ‘Hi, I’m Skye.’ Again he sipped at his drink. ‘We’re moving house soon, and my mum wanted me to ask if anyone wanted our furniture.’

  ‘You think we don’t have our own furniture?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We work hard to buy good furniture. I got this dinner table made from oak. Handmade. Bought from antiques.’

  ‘That sounds very nice.’

  ‘I show it to you.’

  ‘Oh no, that’s okay. You’re busy.’

  ‘I am not busy.’ He leaned close to me, breath like Christmas cake. ‘I am hiding from my mother-in-law.’ Then he laughed like a cartoon, mouth wide open and slapping his leg. I laughed too, partly in shock. ‘But I am also hiding from the people who live there.’ He pointed to the Adelmanns’ door.

  ‘Everyone is always hiding from them,’ I said.

  ‘I thought someone put hit on them. On Monday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘These men arguing in the car park. I sat here on my chair like always because my mother-in-law has the dementia and I keep watch so she can’t get out and go make life hell for some other family.’ He laughed. ‘These men looked like criminals. You know, gangsters.’ He gestured with a flourish. ‘Mafioso.’

  I thought of Jason with his hands in his pockets. ‘I think they were just friends of my – my mum’s boyfriend.’

  He tipped the last of his drink into his throat. ‘My friends act like that, I cut them.’ I tried to read his face. He might have been joking behind his beard. ‘Maybe I should be glad you are leaving, if your dad is bringing home these hit men.’

  ‘He’s not my dad.’

  ‘So this not-dad is bringing around men in these cars with their tinted windows so we cannot see who is inside. Imagine, my mother-in-law gets in one of those cars. Because she has the dementia. And they drive off with her!’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Maybe that is a good thing.’

  I leaned over the walkway railing, saw one of the sisters from downstairs washing her tiny dog.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘We are leaving in two weeks. If you need a bed or a TV cabinet or this thing mum calls a sideboard, you let me know.’

  He nodded. ‘I will not be letting you know.’

  From inside the apartment, a high-pitched scream, a crash, then nothing.

  One evening late in June, with a week left in Adelaide, Jason said, ‘Ben, mate. My house is small. Can’t fit all those toys.’ Ben didn’t look up from the floor, where he’d trapped a spider under a glass. ‘You hear me? You can’t bring all this shit.’

  ‘I can,’ he said.

  ‘No one took any furniture. Look at it. It’s shit. We can’t take it. Gonna put it on the nature strip. Burn it maybe.’

  Ben moved the glass, watched the spider run with it. ‘Ooh,’ he said. ‘One of its legs came off.’

  ‘Maybe just a few toys,’ Mum said.

  Jason picked up her hand and kissed it. ‘Want to make sure there’s room for my girl.’ She blushed. My stomach turned over. ‘We got a big bed. King size.’

  ‘Can you not?’

  ‘Quiet, Skye. The adults are talking.’ He moved his fingertips along her arm to her neck. Her whole body shook.

  ‘What kind of house has room for a king-size bed but not a few Matchbox cars?’ I said. ‘Doesn’t sound like much of a place.’

  ‘It’s a fine place,’ he said. ‘Just not full of kid crap.’

  ‘Kid crap? Like, actual children?’

  ‘Like shitty toy cars.’

  I crossed my arms. ‘Just shitty actual adults.’

  Jason raised his flat hand. ‘You want to say that again?’

  ‘Jase,’ Mum purred next to him. ‘Jase, put your hand down.’

  ‘That little bitch better know. Once she’s eighteen, that’s it. Nothing. No more handouts.’ He slammed his hand on the table.

  ‘Oh no. My plans are ruined.’ I put my hand to my forehead. ‘Screw you.’

  In my peripheral vision, Ben slipped a piece of paper under his glass. He stood slowly, looked to me. Padded across the floor towards the table.

  Dumped the spider right in Jason’s lap.

  ‘Shit! Ben, what the fuck?’ He leapt to his feet, frantically brushed his jeans with his hands. ‘That thing poisonous?’

  ‘You mean “venomous”. Poisonous means if you bite it, you die. Venomous means if it bites you, you die. Probably not poisonous. Dunno. Not that many people eat spiders to check, I guess.’

  ‘Is it fucking venomous?’

  ‘That guy? Oh yeah. Me and Amir found him inside the letterb
ox. Funnel-web, probably.’

  And Jason – tall, bald, tattooed Jason – stripped from head to toe, shoes first, then jeans, Big W jocks, flannelette shirt, dirty old singlet. Chucked the whole lot across the room and into the kitchen and stood there in the middle of the apartment, stark naked except for his socks, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Ben exploded with laughter. And he kept laughing, his face bright, until Jason picked up the dining table and threw it into the TV cabinet.

  ‘One less thing to worry about,’ he said, and walked out.

  5

  ONE RAINY SATURDAY afternoon, my dad took me to the local footy. The tickets were a gold coin donation and for that you also got your choice of a pie or a can of drink. Dad chose the can of drink. By the time we got to the front of the pie queue, all they had left were rabbit pies. ‘You can still get a drink,’ Dad said, but some part of me wanted to eat the pie.

  We took our seats at the back of the grandstand and the players were dots running on a green tablecloth. At half-time, all the kids took out their tickets and one was drawn at random. A boy a couple of rows in front of us won a brand new bike. I took my pie from its bag. Bit into it. It was cold in the middle and it tasted like a bit of old fur that had been dunked in gravy.

  ‘How is it?’ Dad said.

  ‘It’s great,’ I said, and he let me wear his favourite scarf.

  The month we arrived in Port Flinders was the wettest on record. We drove up on a Saturday, along the highway, stopped at Port Wakefield and bought an orange juice and a sandwich to share from the service station.

  Near the intersection to the highway was a school marked by a rusted sign, and a caravan park with washing lines strung between faded cabins. Nappies and granny undies like sails were thrown about in the wind. The pub was two-storeys with a wide verandah painted both red and blue, like someone had forgotten to finish it off, and at the outside tables men sat with their tall glasses and their cigarettes and we could hear their laughter even with the windows up.

  When the Spencer Gulf reappeared, it had white peaks and it slammed over and over against the retaining wall. We passed a post office and a bank and a Centrelink office, a sign pointing to a lighthouse and a police station, where a couple of cops leaned against the only patrol car and their uniforms were untucked.