The Gulf

by Anna Spargo-Ryan

  It didn’t even matter, that night, that I was hundreds of kilometres from home with my face in a dirty pillow.

  I replayed it again. The waiting. The fear and excitement building in my guts. His face next to mine, his mouth on mine, his hands on mine.

  ‘Ben,’ I whispered. He was sleeping. And then I was sleeping.

  Raf was there by the gate when I got to school. Was he waiting for me? I tried to play it cool: ‘Hey.’ He took my hand and we walked in together. I imagined the people behind us watching our fingers swinging, noticing how close our bodies were, noticing how much we were enjoying each other’s company.

  We went to Maths and he led me to the back row to sit next to him, kicked Seb or Al out of his seat so I could be there. I was royalty, in my tiny square of the world. Worthwhile. Adored. At the front of the class, the girl whose name I’d never learned said, ‘Ugh, miss, my partner has absconded,’ and her hair flicked into the eyes of the kid behind her. We laughed, in the back row. All of us together. Raf reached for my hand under my desk; when we linked our fingers, we made a barrier for anyone who wanted to get between us.

  At recess we stood in the line at the tuckshop, me facing forwards and him with his arms draped around me. When I walked, he walked, awkward and bumbling, his body hot against my back. Sweat pooled where our clothes touched. The other kids in the line all looked at us, at how magic it was to have a guy who couldn’t stand to be away from you, even in the tuckshop line.

  Someone’s mum was working the till and she looked us both up and down and said, ‘Hands off, Rafferty. This is a schoolyard.’

  He laughed. ‘Iced coffee please, Mrs J. Two muffins.’ He kissed the side of my head. ‘Freddo for this one.’

  Overnight I had become part of him. An extension. I was almost certain I liked it. It was easy to forget what was happening at home. Easy until I had to catch the bus on my own, watch Murray from the kitchen table while I did my homework, wash Ben’s uniform and cook dinner all at once.

  That day, though, I intercepted Ben’s walking bus. ‘Hey mate,’ I said. ‘Got a surprise for you.’

  He picked up his bag, bounced alongside me. ‘Is it a snake?’

  ‘What? No! Why would it be a snake?’

  ‘Oh. I guess it wouldn’t be.’

  ‘Nah, I’m taking you to Raf’s footy training. Show you around my school, too, if you want.’

  ‘But football is boring.’

  ‘I’ll take you down to the back of the oval. I heard someone found a baby eagle there once. And Raf will be there. He likes you.’

  He kicked the footpath. ‘No he doesn’t.’

  ‘He told me he does.’ I grabbed him and pulled him under my arm. ‘You heard what he said yesterday. You’re just too awesome for the other kids. They’re too stupid to realise.’

  ‘Ydri and Hannah are pretty smart.’

  ‘Come on. We need to catch the bus back again.’

  He sat right at the front with his bag on his lap, looking straight ahead. The old woman with the cane was back and she thumped it against the floor until he turned to her and said, very politely, ‘Would you mind not doing that, please?’ She stared at him for a moment, then pulled out a tiny album from among her many bags. ‘This my daughter Cheryl,’ I heard. ‘This Sammy our dog. He died.’ Ben looked at all of the photos, nodded at each one, sympathised with the old lady when she explained that she was now all alone.

  At the school stop, Ben patted her hand and said, ‘Feel better soon, Mrs Nerington,’ and she said, ‘Thank you, Ben.’

  Footy training was already underway; we could hear the shouts from the street. Maybe twenty guys from my grade thumped the yellow balls into the sky. Across the oval, a group of girls did the same. We took a seat on the sidelines with our backs against the fence. I had a packet of chips I’d saved for the occasion; Ben scoffed half of them before I’d even opened them properly.

  ‘Hungry?’

  He didn’t make eye contact. ‘Someone took mine.’

  They were tough, the guys. Each time a ball came at them they grabbed it clean out of the air, or dived head-first into the dirt. It was a kind of ballet, or a circus. These guys all synchronised. Choreographed. Each one predicted the next one’s move. They ran ahead of the ball to where the ball would be, not where it was.

  I thought about being where the ball would be.

  I thought about Ben on his own in the playground.

  I thought of Kirrily and the man in the tunnel with his legs chopped off.

  ‘Hey, Ben.’ It was hard to know if he was watching. His face pointed in the general direction, but he had his knees against his chest and he crumpled the chip packet in his fist, let it unfurl, crumpled it again. ‘After this, d’you want to get a pizza? We could go into town.’

  ‘Don’t have any money.’

  ‘My pay should be in now, I think. Weekly, they said.’

  ‘Okay, yeah!’ His voice came from all the way inside him.

  ‘What do you think of the football? Maybe you could play sometime? Raf said he would teach you.’

  ‘I would be horrible at it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  The chip packet crunched in his fist. ‘Yiannis says that you can tell if someone used to play football by all the bruises in their brain. He says they do scans when they retire and their brains are full of bits where their brain cells have been injured and died.’

  A shout went up from the guys. Two of them were on the ground with their fists in each other’s faces and the rest of them went between trying to pull them away and cheering them on.

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ take ya!’ That was Yardy, right in the middle. He threw a punch at the other guy, someone I didn’t know. ‘Say that again. I dare ya.’ The other one shot right back at him, shoved Yardy’s face in the dirt. Then Raf was shouting: ‘Stop it, you dickheads. You wanna get benched so close to the tour?’

  Yardy stood up and dusted himself off. Ben stared at them, frowning.

  ‘Want to go for a walk?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  We went around the back of the oval and found a eucalyptus with a nest in it. Huge, maybe a metre across and stretching between the two main branches of the tree.

  ‘You should climb up and have a look,’ I said.

  ‘Never do that!’ Ben put his hand over his mouth, dropped to a whisper. ‘Never do that. A mother bird with a nest that big could eat you in one bite.’

  ‘What kind of bird is it, do you think?’

  ‘I bet I can figure it out.’

  He ran to another tree a bit further along, swung his little monkey legs over the branches and pulled himself up. He was pretty high, five metres at least, crawling out on a thin branch to get a better look.

  ‘Be careful!’ I said.

  ‘Shhhh.’ He pointed to the nest, and then to the sky. Above us a huge silhouette went around and around. He beckoned me over. ‘It’s an eagle,’ he said. ‘I can see its baby. They have fluffy white babies. They look like huge baby chickens.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘You’ll have to climb up.’

  ‘But I’m wearing a dress.’

  ‘Then you’ll miss out.’

  I held the fabric between my legs, tried to hoist myself up to the lowest branch. Nothing doing. I scratched my arm on the way down.

  ‘No one’s looking,’ Ben said. ‘Just put your legs over.’

  I tried it, scaled the trunk and stood on the low branch. Went for the next, one leg after the other. Like monkey bars. Hooked my legs over the low branch and pulled my arms up. Failed. Swung from the branch with my legs still attached, dress over my face. Fresh air on my bum.

  ‘Ben!’

  He was laughing. I pulled my dress away and there was Raf, at the bottom of the tree, smiling with his entire face. ‘Nice undies,’ he said.

  ‘Kill me.’

  ‘Let me help you down.’ He took my hands and I jumped down to him, fell flat against his chest. He wrapped his arms
around me. Leaned close to my ear. ‘I want to kiss you,’ he whispered. The world sped up, my heart thundering.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  Ben came tumbling from the tree, one branch after another the way only ten-year-old boys can. He came to an abrupt stop at our feet. Looked up, waved. ‘Hi Raf!’

  ‘Hey, mate.’ Raf pulled away from me. ‘You enjoying the footy?’

  ‘To be honest,’ Ben said, ‘I have really liked this eagle nest much better.’

  Raf smiled. ‘Fair enough.’ And to me: ‘Training’s finished. And uh, my mum is here. Said she came to cheer us on.’

  ‘That’s so nice.’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, embarrassing but nice, I guess.’

  Claud was flushed red from cheering. ‘Rafferty, who’s this strapping lad?’

  Raf put his hand on Ben’s head. ‘This is Benjamin. Ben, this is my ma, Claud.’

  ‘Hi.’ He put out his hand and she shook it.

  ‘Hi, Ben,’ she said.

  ‘And you know Skye.’ He was smiling with his one dimple flashing. He turned to me. ‘You coming to Yardy’s?’

  ‘I told Ben I’d take him for a pizza.’

  ‘Sounds pretty good.’

  ‘You can come, if you like.’

  He looked back to the pack of guys, stretching and punching on. Looked back to me. ‘I would really like to. We’ve just got . . . we’ve got something we need to do at Yardy’s first.’

  ‘Raf!’ Yardy waved his hands in the air. ‘Put your dick away and hurry up!’

  Claud coughed loudly.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?’ Raf said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ben and I walked up the main street into town to a pizza shop. It looked almost closed down, with boards across the windows, but when we pushed the front door it gave a little tinkle. We were the only people in the restaurant. I ordered an Aussie and we took a seat by a mock fireplace. Red gingham tablecloths. Paper napkins. Mismatched cutlery.

  The pizza was surprisingly good and we chewed on the bacon until it dissolved in our mouths. I wondered if the fireplace had ever been real, or if they had put it in with the full knowledge it was fake. I wondered if the blonde woman by the cash register had somewhere else to be. I wondered if she had someone else to be. I wondered what Mum was having back at Jason’s.

  ‘Thanks for taking me to see the football,’ Ben said finally, his mouth full of pizza.

  ‘Oh. That’s fine.’

  ‘Sorry Raf saw your undies.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  He stared at his plate. ‘It is my fault. There wasn’t even a baby bird in the nest. I just wanted to see you climb the tree.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I thought it would be funny because you had a dress on and girls aren’t very good at climbing trees anyway even if they have jeans on.’

  ‘Girls are good at climbing trees.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about girls.’ He looked sad about it, for a second, until he filled his mouth with pizza again.

  ‘You’re ten.’

  ‘I’m a mature ten.’

  The man who looked like the owner and the girl who looked like his granddaughter went behind the bar and poured themselves a couple of beers. I wondered what they saw when they looked at us. A red-headed girl who can’t climb trees without flashing her undies at a boy she thinks she likes but might not because maybe he’s just leading her on. I had spent so many hours trying to figure it out, the reason he had ever taken notice of me to begin with. His face on that first day in homeroom, squeezed out of hiding.

  ‘You going to finish that?’ I said to Ben.

  ‘If I don’t finish it, what do you think they’ll do with it? Do you think they give their food to the homeless? I saw a man when I was having lunch who looked like he was homeless. I couldn’t see him very well because I was in the school grounds and he was over the other side of the road but I’m pretty sure he was homeless. He didn’t have any shoes on. And like, his hair was all crazy and sticking out everywhere.’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘What if I just put this bit of pizza in your bag and we can give it to him if we see him on the way home?’

  ‘Okay. That’s a nice thought.’

  He looked to the bar as he did it, but the owner didn’t look back at us once.

  9

  I LOOKED FOR Dad. For ages, I looked for him. I would leave school and go the back way past the canal and catch a bus down to Marion shopping centre, wait at the bus terminal for the other buses to come and go, for the people to climb off them and find the people they were looking for.

  They all had different ways of finding. Some of them peered over all the other people, as though the person they needed might be inside the throng, like a kid hiding in a clothes rack. Some of them shouted with their arms in the air, as though it were volume that would reunite them.

  And some of them just knew exactly where to look. Walked over to a bench or a doorway without hesitating. Knowing who to expect when they got there.

  The next afternoon, Jeannie set me up on her register again. ‘Now, remember what I taught you.’ She adjusted her polo shirt. ‘Mr Gleeson. Fine afternoon, no? Saw you walking down with that little dog of yours before. What’s her name again? Candy, beautiful. She looks like a funny thing. Oh sorry, of course, your items. Just these? I’ve tried this myself, good choice.’ She paused. ‘Ooh, we haven’t taken cheques here since the nineties, Mr Gleeson. You got a card I can use? Don’t worry, I’ll keep your stuff here behind the counter while you go to the bank.’ He limped out. Jeannie stowed his bags on a shelf under the checkout.

  ‘Tries that every time,’ she said to me. ‘Cheque always bounces. Next customer?’

  After an hour another girl showed up. She didn’t say anything, just pinned her tag – ELLIE – to her shirt.

  ‘Ellie,’ Jeannie said to me. ‘Never says a word. You won’t even notice her.’ The break room wasn’t much more than a cleaner’s cupboard, so she took me out the back, where we could get the sea air on our faces. She took out a cigarette, blew the smoke through her nose like a dragon.

  ‘That’s pretty cool,’ I said.

  ‘Filthy habit,’ she said. ‘But it’s the only way you can get a decent break in your ten hours.’ She pointed the cigarette at me. ‘Never take it up.’ Then she lit a new cigarette with the end of the first one, drew it in as though she’d been ten years clean. ‘So, Skye,’ she said. ‘What’s your story?’

  ‘Don’t really have one.’

  ‘You’re new in town, right? Where from?’

  ‘Adelaide.’

  ‘Ah, the big smoke.’ She tapped her cigarette on the edge of her milk crate. ‘My first husband had family in Adelaide. Not much of a guy, but he took me to the . . . what’s that place? At the beach?’

  ‘Glenelg?’

  ‘Right, Glenelg. Took me there for a buffet breakfast. Sausages the size of your little finger. Ever wrapped one of those babies in a pancake? Nothing better.’

  ‘I’ve never been in that hotel. Just got out at the end of the tramline a few times. Kirrily likes going there for frozen yoghurt.’

  ‘Kirrily is your friend?’

  ‘Right, my friend. Kirrily is my friend.’ I tried to pull the sound of her voice, but it just came out as echoes of my own. ‘She still lives in Adelaide.’

  ‘What brings you up this way then? The call of the outback?’ She laughed, a wracking, phlegmy laugh.

  ‘My mum had to come here for business.’

  ‘Ah, business.’ She lit another cigarette with the dying embers of the last.

  ‘You’re really getting through those, huh?’

  ‘You’ll learn,’ she said, and pulled a can of energy drink from her handbag. ‘If you’re gonna front up to these people day in, day out, you’ll need some moral support.’

  The door to the break room flew open. ‘Jeannie?’ The bearded guy. What was his name? Darren? Wayne? He
pointed at me. ‘You brought her with you? Who’s on the registers?’

  ‘Ellie,’ Jeannie said.

  ‘Ellie’s back? I thought it was next week. Anyway, she’ – he pointed at me – ‘is here for three hours. No breaks. What am I even paying you two for? To sit around and get high on milk crates?’

  ‘You can’t get high on milk crates, Daryl,’ Jeannie said with a laugh.

  ‘Just get back to work.’

  She adjusted my TRAINEE badge. ‘Hop on the register next to mine,’ she said.

  ‘By myself?’

  ‘I’ll be right here. Remember, just press the buttons. Distract them by making them talk about themselves and they won’t even notice you’ve made a mistake. If you do, and you won’t.’ She squeezed my shoulder.

  My line moved, gradually, one customer at a time. A woman bought a box of cookies and a pink t-shirt. A couple bought a striped cat bed and a stick with a feather on the end, and they smiled at each other and at me until one of them shouted, ‘We’re getting a kitten!’ Jeannie showed me how to process a return, an older guy who’d changed his mind about a pair of shorts. The fluorescent lights bore down on me. I wondered what the weather was like. I thought about taking up chain-smoking.

  A familiar face appeared next in my line.

  ‘Skye,’ he said. ‘You got a job.’

  ‘I told you I did,’ I hissed. ‘The next bloody day I went out and applied.’

  Jeannie looked over, still scanning her customer’s crap.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said loudly. ‘Thank you for shopping at Foodplace. How’s your day?’

  Jason rolled his eyes.

  ‘Would you like a bag? They’re ten cents.’

  ‘Ten cents for a bag?’

  ‘We try to encourage reusing and recycling. So, a bag?’

  ‘No bloody bag.’

  I took note of each item in his basket: a couple of boxes of freezer bags; permanent marker; a couple of new baking trays. I piled them up on the counter, took his card. Shoved the receipt into his hand.