The Gulf

by Anna Spargo-Ryan

  ‘You been to the zoo, Ben?’

  He twisted around to look at me. ‘What zoo?’

  ‘The Adelaide Zoo. You know, near the river.’

  He frowned. ‘Oh yeah, I went with school. Do you know they have pandas there? Do you know how much it costs to buy a panda for your zoo? When we were at the zoo, Yiannis asked the panda keeper how much, and she said it might be five hundred thousand dollars. Do you even know how much that is? You can buy an Aston Martin DB9 with that much money. Or two if you get second-hand ones. That’s the car James Bond has.’

  Mum squeezed his knee. ‘Not as good as this car though, right?’ She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and we surged forward, close to the truck full of pebbles. Our headlights reflected back from its metal belly. ‘Watch,’ she said. Took off around the outside of it, floored it down the wrong side of the road. It was so dark we could only see the metres in front of us. No streetlights. Not even any moon, only a sliver of it hanging lonely in the sky. My guts pushed back against the seat as the truck disappeared behind us. Mum slipped over to the left-hand side, let the car slot in, find its rhythm again.

  ‘That was awesome!’ Ben fiddled with the dashboard. ‘Not very fuel efficient though, see? We went from 397 kilometres left to only 382 kilometres.’

  ‘Helpful passenger, you are.’ Mum took her eyes off the road to admire him. The car filled up with the sound of her phone ringing. ‘Ooh!’ she said. ‘It comes through the stereo. Hands-free, you know, so we don’t crash.’ She pressed a button on the wheel. ‘Jase?’

  His voice was low and steady: ‘Where the fuck are you?’

  She looked at Ben, forced her face into a smile. ‘You’re on speaker, doll.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And the kids can hear you.’

  ‘So you did take the car. Who said you could do that?’

  She was nervous, gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. ‘I said.’ Her voice came out narrow, like it was squeezing through the hole in her face without permission.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I did.’ Even quieter. ‘I said I could take it.’ Jason’s breathing was heavy on the other end. Ben fiddled with the dials, turned Jason’s breath up and down. Mum slapped his hand away. ‘We’re going to Port Pirie to get sundaes. I thought I’d bring you back one. Strawberry, right? On the top and bottom?’ She was talking fast, trying to get it all out before the breathing stopped. Ben tapped all the buttons again. ‘Ben, stop it.’ Tap tap tap.

  ‘What’s he doing? Better not be mucking around with anything.’ The lights on the dashboard were blue and green and red and Ben touched them all, and Jason’s breathing went up and down and Mum turned around and shouted, ‘Just stop it!’ and Ben pressed the big one on the steering wheel and Jason’s breathing stopped. The radio came back on. Mum took a deep breath, put the indicator on and pulled over to the side of the road. The truck full of pebbles went past, roaring along until its light disappeared around the bend.

  Mum was quiet. She put her head on the steering wheel, wrapped her arms around it. Her back rose and fell but no sound came out. Ben looked at her. He looked at me. The car’s engine whirred and then shuddered into idleness. A man on the radio crackled something about a wind warning for coastal areas.

  Two more trucks went by. Right up close to the car, so we shook in their currents. Mum turned the key and the car sighed into silence.

  Ben squeaked, a funny noise from the back of his throat. I reached over to him and squeezed his hand; it was damp and shaking. ‘Mum?’ he said. She grunted. ‘Sorry I pressed the wrong button.’ She shook her head, shoulders moving up and down. Somewhere under her hair, she was crying.

  A whisper: ‘I told you to stop.’

  My heart caught a bit, skipped like it was stuck on repeat. I squeezed Ben’s hand again and smiled at him in a way I hoped was comforting but he probably couldn’t see me anyway, in the dark. I cleared my throat. ‘He didn’t mean to.’

  Mum sighed. ‘Shut up, Skye.’

  ‘And anyway, Jason was being a dick.’

  ‘I said, shut up.’

  Ben was grabbing my hand right back, turning his head from me to Mum and back again. ‘Are we still going to get sundaes?’ he said. ‘We should get sundaes. I think McDonald’s is open until ten o’clock.’ Voice rolling along, faster and faster. ‘Look, if you press this button the clock lights up even though the car is off. It’s only nine fifteen. We’ve got heaps of time. Maybe we can even do dine-in, if you want. You can come on the playground with me, Mum. Go down the slide? You love doing that.’ His whole body jittered. Floppy hair bounced with him, so he looked like he was dancing.

  Mum turned the key. The dashboard lit up again, one dial after another like a private jet. She pushed her hair back from her face and pulled down the sun visor. A light went on above it. She peered into the tiny mirror, patted her eyes where they were puffy from crying. Then she pulled out of the emergency lane and did a sweeping u-turn across the highway.

  ‘Aren’t-we-getting-a-sundae?’ Ben said, in one urgent breath.

  ‘No,’ she said. Stared straight ahead with her hands on the wheel. Ahead of us, a truck’s tail-lights disappeared into the blackness. Across the fields, the train let out its long moan.

  Jason was waiting at the door when we pulled in. We couldn’t see his face, with the light shining from behind him, but his arms were crossed and he had his legs wide apart. Blocking our way. Mum turned off the ignition and the three of us sat there for a bit, until the headlights turned off on their own.

  ‘Okay,’ Mum said. ‘Okay.’ Ben went to open his door. ‘Wait. Ben. Jason’s going to be pretty mad, okay? We shouldn’t have taken his car without asking.’

  ‘But it’s your car,’ I said. ‘You chose it.’

  She didn’t look at me. ‘Just wait here for a minute. Both of you.’ Her door clicked open. Jason shifted his weight, started pointing his finger right in Mum’s face. She bent around it, crooked and twisted to avoid being jabbed in the eye. Head down. Arms by her side. It was hard to tell if she was talking, but Jason’s voice came through. Not the words, but the sound of the words. Sharp. Like they were coming in at Mum from way up high, like he was throwing lightning at her. She kept standing there with her shoulders rolled forward.

  She came back to the car and clicked the door open. Ben was already climbing out. ‘Come inside.’ Voice straight and even.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not a suggestion.’

  I went in, closed the door behind me.

  Jason said, ‘Ben, go to your room.’ He protested, my brother, said he wasn’t going to his room and if Jason had something to say he could say it to all of us, but it didn’t matter. ‘I can stand here all night,’ he said, with his face scowling half onto the floor, and eventually Ben left. Pulled the door closed tight behind him, then pulled it again so it latched.

  The three of us stood in the hallway. Mum, shoulders down. Jason, face lit up with anger. Me, small and quiet inside my body, a much tinier version of myself right down by my knees, but upright on the outside. Ready for a fight, if that’s what he was offering. I wasn’t Mum. I wasn’t going to roll my shoulders forward.

  Jason looked to the spare room, maybe to check the door was really closed. He coughed. Mum rubbed his arm and he pulled it away like she was on fire.

  ‘You got something to tell us?’ he said to me. He talked fast, trying to make sense of the words as he spat them out.

  ‘Me? About what?’

  ‘Nothing you fucked around with while we were picking up the car?’

  We’d been so careful, putting everything back exactly where Ben found it. He had the diagram and everything.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  His feet fell heavy on the lino. ‘You’re a liar. Linda, she’s lying.’

  I looked at them, from one to the other. Mum couldn’t even lift her head, she was that scared of him. She slunk around in the dark part of
the hallway.

  ‘Lemme ask you again.’ He turned to face me. ‘What were you doing in my room?’

  Mum’s thin voice: ‘Our room.’ He ignored her.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I said.

  Mum made some involuntary sound with her throat. Jason hopped from foot to foot, ran his hand across his head a couple of times. ‘That’s my private shit. It’s mine. Jesus.’ He started pacing along the hallway. Stopped at the bathroom door, leaned against it with his head down. ‘What gives you the right? You think this is your house? Like I didn’t work my fucking arse off to –’ Mum grabbed at him. ‘You!’ He turned to her. ‘Might’ve mentioned your kids that first day. No? Like it might have been important? In hindsight?’

  She was nothing. A bit of paper crumpled on the floor. Squeaked out at him: ‘You’re right.’ And I stood there with my heart pounding, waiting for Jason to do something, to come over, to lift his hand to me, to do something, anything.

  ‘Why’s it such a big deal?’ I said.

  He came closer. ‘You’re so smart. Why don’t you tell me? Smart girl. So smart.’ He laughed, coughed. Mum said nothing. Twisted herself around so she wasn’t facing either of us but still looked like she was. He came at me with his arms like cages. Pushed me against the wall, put his hands flat above me so I was inside the cave of him. His breath reeked, rings of sweat stained on his t-shirt.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ I said, and swallowed a couple of times, tried to get the spit to go back down.

  ‘Last chance.’ He drew up so close I felt the heat from his skin, the sweaty, slobbering anger.

  I took a deep breath. Watched the hallway slide away from me, pulled myself up as tall as I could. Sucked in all the courage I had, all the bravery I’d ever collected from watching Ben going around in the world exactly the way he wanted.

  ‘I already told you, I don’t know.’

  He raised his hand, curled it into a fist. Mum squeaked again, invisible in the corner behind the pot plant. He pounded against the wall, first, like he was having a practice run.

  ‘They’ll see that at school,’ I said. ‘Don’t want to hit me where they can see. People’ll ask questions.’

  He brought his face right up to mine, putrid breath pouring from his mouth. ‘Fine.’ My heart raced, watched him bring his balled-up hand like it was in slow motion. Pain shot from my ribs to my guts as he punched me, at the ugh! shooting out of him. I stopped myself from doubling over. Went rigid with the cannonball pain. Scooped up the vocal chords I’d dropped into my belly and said, ‘Piss-weak.’

  Jason turned, went to his bedroom and slammed the door. The floor danced beneath me.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said, but she was silent.

  ‘Skye?’

  Ben’s voice came soft and worried from his side of the room.

  ‘Just going to lie down for a sec,’ I said, and eased my body down. ‘Just for a sec. Then we’ll go to sleep, okay?’

  We spoke quietly, in the darkness. Like we were hideaways. Mum and Jason moved around in the kitchen, clanging plates together and arguing. I could never grab the words of their arguments. That was probably a good thing.

  Ben shifted under his sheets. ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Was Jason angry about me going into his room?’

  ‘No. Don’t worry about it.’ A dull ache stretched from my bellybutton around to my spine. It was hot, too. Radiating like a star. I let my hand rest flat on my belly, pushed my fingers into the worst of the pain. It helped a bit. Made it seem like I was the one doing the injury.

  ‘We’re gonna leave soon, right?’ He didn’t even speak, just exhaled the words. ‘I’ve already started packing.’

  The plan wasn’t finished. It was still just EARN MORE MONEY. I hadn’t been able to find out where Nonno lived, either. Somewhere in the hills, somewhere in Happy Valley, where Dad had sometimes stopped off at the tiny petrol station on the corner and got us a Frosty Fruit. That wasn’t much to go on. Couldn’t rock up to the train station in Adelaide and ask them for directions to a petrol station. But what would we do instead? Stay here, wait for Jason to corner one of us again? The pain in my guts flared.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Really soon. I’ve just gotta do a bit more work at the supermarket, then we’re out. Okay? All you have to do is go with the others in the walking bus and keep quiet.’

  ‘I’m not very good at keeping quiet,’ he said. ‘My new teacher says I talk too much. He says no one cares about my stupid stories. I told him, they’re not stories, they’re facts and information and it’s good to learn things.’ He sighed. ‘He sent me into the corridor.’

  ‘I like your facts and information.’

  He said nothing for a minute. Then: ‘Can I get in with you?’

  I pulled up my blanket. ‘Duh.’ He climbed in, nudged his small body against mine. His knees and elbows were cold but sweaty, fear creeping out of them. When he breathed, his ribs popped and cracked. I wrapped my arms around him and it was like hugging a Rubik’s cube, the sharpness of his bones.

  ‘Mum is coming with us, right? Back to Adelaide?’ I lost my nerve for a second, thinking about her hiding behind the pot plant. ‘Skye?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why hasn’t she talked about it?’

  I thought of her standing quiet in the corner. ‘She’s just keeping it secret so Jason doesn’t find out.’

  ‘Oh. That’s smart.’

  ‘Yep.’

  He fell asleep quickly. The arm I had underneath his head had gone numb but I used it to move the curtains aside. Looked at the moon, its thin crescent above the fence. Thought about the plan again, about getting to Nonno’s and finishing school. Wondered what it might be like, five years from now, to look at the moon again. And then I was asleep, too.

  14

  A FEW MONTHS after Dad left, I went on an excursion down at the docks. There was a Greenpeace ship there and we went with school to tour around it. We were allowed to go right into the belly of it, down where you could only see water through the portholes. Everyone said it was a big deal, Greenpeace being there. It was the last place they were docking before they went to save whales in Antarctica, so there were journos all over the place.

  In the morning Mum had the newspaper and there was a photo of the ship on the third page. I looked and looked for myself, looked through all those people climbing on every part of it for the hat I’d been wearing.

  And there at the edge, next to the painted rainbow, was my dad. He had his back to the camera, staring up at the sails, but he had that band t-shirt on and I could tell it was him by the way he was slouching.

  In the morning the sky was orange, opaque, and Ben was gone. I was on the phone to Raf in seconds, barking at him around the panic in my throat.

  ‘We’ll find him,’ he said. ‘He can’t have gone far.’

  ‘Who knows how long he’s been gone? He’s smart. He could be anywhere. What if he hitchhiked? What if he’s stowed away on the train? He could be in Alice Springs. He could be in Adelaide. He could be anywhere but here.’

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes. I’ll run. Stay where you are.’

  ‘And do nothing? Are you joking? I have to look for him.’ Pulling on my runners. ‘I don’t know where to start.’ Dragging my hair into a ponytail. ‘At the beach? Would he be at the beach? What was the name of that pizza place I took him to? Should we call the police? Do you think Mum knows he’s missing?’

  ‘Skye!’

  ‘What day is it? Monday? Will you get in trouble if you’re not at school?’

  ‘Probably. Will you get in trouble if you’re not at work?’

  A small panic grabbed me. ‘What? Why would I be at work?’

  ‘Work experience? They’ll wonder where you are.’

  ‘Oh! Yeah. No? Who cares?’

  ‘Okay, just let me get my shoes on, yeah? We’ll start at the start.’

  I tried to think of every single place he had been,
made a list that started with him pissing on the foreshore and ended with him curled up in my bed. He might be at the spinifex block, or at the jetty, or in the chicken shop. He might be in Wallaroo. He might be at the train station. The tip, the post office, the supermarket. The hospital.

  ‘Do we call the police?’ I said. ‘Is he a missing person?’

  Raf peered into his phone. ‘Nah, let’s not call the police yet. We’ll probably still find him on our own and then we would have wasted their time. You know what the police do when you waste their time?’

  ‘No? The only time I’ve ever met the police was when they visited my school.’

  ‘Well.’ He tapped the screen a few times. ‘You don’t want to waste their time.’

  We went south, first, along Raf’s street and across the creek. I didn’t know what we were looking for. Clues? Ben’s red jumper hanging from a tree? Was he the kind of kid who would leave clues? Notes, maybe. I looked for them, for his jangled handwriting to lead us to him. Raf tapped his phone a few more times. The creek was full of water and he frowned at it, didn’t make eye contact with me.

  ‘He’s not in the water,’ I said.

  ‘No, yeah, he definitely isn’t.’

  ‘He wouldn’t even come this way. We always go down the main road.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you would, from your place. This is nowhere near you.’

  I grabbed his hand, pulled him along with the current, which slammed along the withered beds on its way to the ocean. We reached the main road and climbed up onto the bridge. People had started their days, flipping their signs over to OPEN, standing out on the street with mugs in their hands.