The Infernal Optimist

by Linda Jaivin

  I could see April’s spirit reeling outta her like fishing line what got tuna on.

  No one said nuffin for a while. We watched as a group a ladies came in with Christmas pressies for the kids. One a them put a pair a gauzy pink angel wings on Abeer. Abeer mumbled ‘Thank you’ and then just stood there like she didn’t have wings at all. Noor got a sparkly crown but she didn’t look like she be feeling like a princess. April’s eyes went all watery again.

  I could see she be feeling bad. Thinking to detract her, I asked, ‘What do you do in the life, April? Are you a doctor like your husband?’

  ‘Me? Oh. I have a little bookshop? Sometimes I edit books, too?’ April was always asking questions what weren’t questions in factuality.

  ‘What sort of books?’ Thomas asked, lifting the beak of his cap a millimetre or two.

  ‘Spiritual development, self-help, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Self-help?’ he goes.

  ‘Oh,’ she goes, ‘it’s like I was talking about before. It’s about finding the right path.’ Thomas looked at her like he still didn’t get it. ‘I suppose the classic self-help book is the sort that tells you how to make friends and influence people.’

  ‘People in Australia must be very stupid if they need a book to tell them how to make friends.’ Thomas the diplomat.

  She looked like she didn’t know what to say to that. ‘Well, there’s more to it…’ She rattled on for a while, using lots a big words like self-axleisation and vigilisation.

  ‘You believe in all that?’ he asked after a while.

  ‘I…I suppose. I mean, it’s pretty good advice, even if some of it’s kind of obvious.’ She fingered a crystal what was hanging from her neck on a silver chain and then let it go. It fell into her tits. I tried vigilising meself as that crystal.

  ‘Why did you come here, April?’ Thomas wasn’t mincing his words that day, that was for sure.

  April sighed. ‘I’ve been having…a hard time? Sue said it’d be good for me to get out of myself, to meet some people with real problems.’ She bit her bottom lip, like she knew she just said something dodgy.

  Thomas was onto it like a pelican on a water rat, what I actually saw one time in the harbour. ‘So…we’re supposed to help you.’

  April took his words like a slap. ‘I didn’t mean…’ Her voice wobbled and her eyes went shiny again.

  I figured I better infuse the situation. ‘That’s interesting what you been saying bout all them books.’

  They both turned and stared as if trying to remember who I was. ‘I’m not much of an innalectual meself,’ I continued. ‘I was never much chop at reading. The teachers said I was dyspeptic. But I write hip-hop songs sometimes. I reckon I could write a book.’

  April blinked. ‘Maybe you should then,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe I should read one first, eh?’

  That’s when I noticed her dimples. ‘That wouldn’t be a bad idea.’

  Thomas mumbled something and jiggled his leg like he wanted to shake it clear off.

  ‘Where’s this bookshop a yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Leichhardt?’

  She said the word like she didn’t think I’d know it. ‘I know Leichhardt,’ I said. ‘Norton Street. Spag bol. Eye-tie pastries. The best coffee after Turkish.’ I punctuated the last statement with one a them cool hip-hop moves where you punch down the air, second and little fingers expended, thumb out, elbow up.

  ‘How…?’ She looked puzzled.

  ‘I watch a lotta hip-hop videos. Not bad, eh?’ I thought she was talking about me moves.

  ‘No, I mean…I don’t get what you’re doing in an Immigration Detention Centre.’

  I felt the shame come flooding in. I was saved though cuz just at that moment Azad, Hamid and Angel walked up. April looked at Azad like he be a dessert she didn’t even know she’d ordered.

  Sixteen

  ‘Yo,’ I greeted them after they’d done the intros with April.

  After everyone sat down again there was what Mum calls an Auckland Silence. Me mum went to New Zealand once and said it’s pretty quiet over there.

  ‘Was there big queue to get in?’ Azad asked.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ April said. ‘It took two hours!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ goes Azad.

  Thomas stood up. ‘The wait to get out is even longer.’ He walked over to a table what had other Africans on.

  April’s eyes went like blue buttons. ‘Is he…?’

  ‘He’ll be right,’ I insured her.

  She turned to Azad. ‘I didn’t mean to complain about the queue. We were just hoping to get inside earlier.’

  Hamid smiled. ‘We’re here twenty-four-seven. Welcome anytime.’ Everyone laughed. Hamid was in a great mood count a the Management deciding the day before that it be okay if Angel moved to Stage Two. They didn’t know her real age, what made her a minor what oughtta stay in Lima.

  April poured out juice for them and, like she just remembered it, reached into the bag what held the gingerbread men and other stuff like candy canes and Tim Tams and pistachios and spread them over the table. ‘Please,’ she goes, opening her hands over the food.

  We all said ‘Thank you’ but only I dug in. Another gingerbread man lost his head.

  ‘Where are you from?’ April asked Angel.

  ‘Kampuchea,’ Angel said. ‘You know it? Cambodia?’

  ‘Oh my God. We went there last year. On holiday? There and Vietnam. It was a two-week gourmet tour. The food! It was so yum. And Angkor Wat is fabulous. So amazing. It’s a very spiritual place. But here I am telling you about it!’

  ‘I never been to Angkor Wat,’ Angel said in that funny ding-dong way Orientals have a talking, like they was tapping them syllabuses out one at a time. It was cute on the girls.

  ‘Really? How come?’

  ‘I…I was working,’ she said.

  We all sat there real tense, hoping she wasn’t gonna ask Angel about her job. I reckoned I’d better break the ice cube.

  ‘I’m Turkish,’ I volunteered. ‘In originality.’

  ‘Oh, I was wondering. Huh.’

  ‘And I’m from Afghanistan,’ Hamid said.

  As she turned to Hamid, her eyebrows shot up and her mouth made like a cat’s bum. ‘Gee, that’s…’ She didn’t know if she should say that it be good or interesting or just plain terrible that he came from there. ‘Incredible.’

  ‘And I’m Kurdish,’ Azad said. ‘From Syria…how do you say it—via Iraq.’

  ‘“Via”, that’s a great word! Huh. Your English is so good. And the rest of your family…are they in Iraq?’

  Azad nodded.

  In me head I was jumping up and down and waving stop signs and red lights at April, but she didn’t see them. There were times when you don’t ask questions. In prison, you don’t ask what people got done for. A mate a mine what’s been to Darwin said that you don’t ask people why they moved to the Northern Territory neither. It was like that at Villawood, but not cuz people did something wrong like what made them go to prison or the NT, but cuz it be too fucked up to talk about, pardon me French.

  ‘Maybe someday they’ll be able to join you here,’ she said, chirpy like the budgie before the cat got it.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Azad said quietly. ‘They were all killed.’

  April’s hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘It’s okay. Not your fault.’

  We were back in New Zealand.

  ‘How do you,’ April started again, ‘how do you survive here, in this awful place?’

  ‘For me, faith,’ said Azad. ‘God is great. And poetry.’

  I reckoned Thomas survived on him wits and Hamid and Angel on love. As for me, She Who Knows Me Inside Out and Sideways and Even Upside Down always says I survive on me optimism. She calls me the Infernal Optimist cuz she says I could look on the bright side of hell if I had to.

  ‘Wow,’ said April to Azad. ‘That’s beautiful. Poetry and faith.’

  ‘
Did you celebrate Christmas today?’ Hamid asked.

  ‘Actually, I’m Jewish?’ April said like she was asking us if it be all right. Later she told me she was nervous that all Muslims might be like Osama bin Laden what blamed the Jewish for everything.

  ‘You are the People of the Book,’ Azad said. ‘We are cousins. We all believe in one God.’

  She was like a puppy what licked his face all over with relief. I remembered someone once told me Jews are like us other wogs what can never keep our expressions in check like Anglos do with their stiffed upper lips. ‘True. Though you might say I’m a typical post-Holocaust Jew. Sometimes I don’t know what I believe exactly.’

  ‘But you believe in God,’ Azad said, what wasn’t really a question.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, what wasn’t really an answer.

  Azad stared at April and she stared back and Hamid stared at his feet, what were in plastic sandals what were too big for them.

  Angel stared at me. She was the only one what noticed that I was choking on me gingerbread man. ‘You all right, Zeki?’ she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she gave me a whack between the shoulder blades. I coughed and a little leg with frosted boots on came shooting outta me mouth and landed in the middle of the table.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, scooping up the leg and popping it back in me gob. I washed it down with juice. ‘Whew.’

  Angel giggled. She put her hand over her mouth. She started to shake, and then she began laughing like she was gonna split her sides with it. Everyone started to laugh then, even me, though I was careful to swallow first. It was sweet seeing Angel laughing like that. Her brown eyes went like quarter-moons with them points on her cheeks.

  ‘Zeki always makes us laugh,’ Azad told April.

  Thomas chose that moment to return. He sat down, mumbled something, and reached for a candy cane. He’d calmed down. April looked at him, relief all over her face. ‘We have these in my country too, for Christmas,’ he told us, holding up a candy cane.

  ‘Really?’ April said, very enthusiastic, like that be extremely interesting. He nodded. No one could think of anything to say after that. April looked at me like she just remembered I was there. ‘So, Zeki, what’s your story?’

  Seventeen

  ‘Everyone makes one mistake in the life, right?’ I reached for a Tim Tam. As I told you, I eat when I’m stressed.

  She nodded and leaned forward. Her tits swole up over her shirt’s scoop-neck in a slow, milky wave. I caught a whiff a her sweat. It smelled nice, like honey yoghurt. ‘Yeah?’

  I struggled with this next bit. See, there are two types a women. Those who love an outlaw and those who don’t. I was hoping she be the first type, but I didn’t like me chances. ‘I suppose you could say it was a self-help kind a mistake.’

  ‘Sorry? A self-help mistake?’

  ‘Yeah. I helped meself to things I shouldn’ta.’ She still wasn’t with me. I spilled it out. ‘Break ’n’ enter.’

  Her eyes and mouth made three perfect Os and she straightened up. Despite the heat, the air round her chilled by about ten degrees. If this kept up, I was gonna have to go in for a jacket. ‘But how…why are you here in Villawood?’

  I told her about the day I was supposed to get me citizenship with me family. ‘I meant to go back, but never got round to it. I hate queues.’

  ‘You should jump them. Like us.’ Azad grinned.

  April turned to Azad. ‘But…I thought you didn’t jump any queues,’ she said. ‘There were no queues to jump where you came from. That’s what Sue said.’

  Thomas gave her a look like duh.

  April blushed. Her eyes grew watery again. I looked from her to Azad, what had gone completely blank, like an uncharged mobile. He was cracking pistachios with his teeth. The ground around his chair was littered with shells.

  April returned her attention to me. ‘You know,’ she goes, kinda smiling but kinda not, ‘we were broken into once and they took all our CDs. Hope that wasn’t you.’

  ‘I never pinched no one’s CDs, I swear.’

  ‘Really? Is that true?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I admitted. ‘See, there was this dude what had Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, the one with “Pump Pump” and “Serial Killa” what you can’t get in the shops no more. So I left some things I’d normally a taken, like the DVD player. You gotta give people a fair go, I reckon. Anyway, I’m here on a count a five-oh-one.’

  ‘Five-oh-one?’

  ‘It’s a kind a libel law. Any non-citizen what spends more than twelve months in prison is libel for deportation on the basis a character.’

  April took this in. ‘Well,’ she said after a pause, a smile tugging up her lips. ‘You certainly are a character.’ Her body relaxed some. The mercury rose.

  ‘Spose I shoulda waited in that queue. Now…oh shit.’

  Marlena was coming down from the gate. And the look on her face was one of total accusation.

  ‘Excusing me. I got a visitor. Nice meeting you, April. Uh, you mind?’ I took another Tim Tam for the road. I met She Who halfway between the gate and the table. Straight off, she gave me one a them looks what said I be in trouble. Oh maaan. What’d I do to deserve this? I knew if I asked she’d have an answer, so I only thought the question to meself.

  She was wearing her nice trousers and silver sandals with heels on. Seeing as there was no more tables or chairs available, we was gonna have to sit on the ground. ‘Want me to go in and get a blanket for us to sit on?’

  She shook her head. ‘I want us to talk.’

  We found a patch a grass what wasn’t dead yet, and what had some shade, and sat down.

  Some Koreans sitting in a circle a chairs behind us busted into a song about Jesus.

  ‘Christ,’ I joked, ‘not a minute’s peace in here.’ We turned to look. The Koreans all looked to be around twelve, even the old ones, with them smooth skin and boxy faces. The chicks was wearing blouses what were buttoned up to the collar spite a the heat. A few metres behind them, a pair a Tongan sheilas was getting it on, or close to it, on a reed mat laid out by the fence. One a them moaned. The Koreans turned to see what was happening. They gasped like the sight made their brains need a lot more oxygen than what they had.

  Clarence stormed over, shouting ‘Cool off! Cool off!’ at the Tongans, what they didn’t do for long.

  ‘Hard-core lesbian action,’ I whispered, winking.

  ‘Zeki.’

  I took another tack. ‘Nice toenails,’ I said. What they were in factuality, being painted red with green decals for Christmas on.

  She gave me a little smile. ‘I did ’em myself.’

  ‘You’re the best.’ I meant it.

  ‘Zeki.’

  ‘Babydoll.’ I held out me arms what was for her to fall into.

  She didn’t fall. ‘I told my parents you’re here. They think I should dump you. They said this five-oh-one thing is the last straw.’

  ‘I didn’t do nuffin! Did ya tell ’em that? It’s not like I’m in prison.’

  She looked up and stared pointingly at the fence and the razor wire and the guards, and then at her wrist band and then back at me. ‘No, not at all,’ she said, rolling her eyes, what are the prettiest.

  ‘This place is bullshit, darl. It’s total bullshit. You know I don’t belong here. I’m as Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi as the next bloke. I drink VB. I follow the footy. I don’t know nuffin but this country. Anyway, I’m virtuosically outta here.’

  ‘Well, that’s what Gubba says.’ She shook her head. Her hair fell in front a her face and she pushed it back behind her ears what had the gold earrings in what I gave her two Christmases ago. She loved them earrings. She never knew I didn’t exactly buy them from the shop. ‘I don’t trust Gubba, Zeki.’

  ‘What d’ya mean?’

  ‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘Something about him. The other day I was in there for fifteen minutes. He charged seventy-five dollars. More important than the money, though—what if he’s wrong, Zek? W
hat’re we gonna do if that Tribunal thing decides against you, if they decide to deport you?’

  ‘Darl, listen to me. No one’s gonna deport me. And babe, just fix him up, will ya? You know them lawyers. They shake your hand, pat you on the back and still manage to come up with a third hand for lifting your wallet.’

  ‘My wallet,’ she goes, like she be correcting me.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ I joked. ‘Your wallet.’

  She gave me a bailful look, what is a look what says you gonna have to pay to get outta the situation it be putting you in.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you later, I promise. Speaking a which…’

  I glanced round to make sure there was no blues in the vicinity. I dug into me pocket for what I owed her for the vids and smokes and stuff what I sold to the other detainees, and pressed a wad a bills into her hand. She was a natural-born businesswoman, I swear. But she always laughed when I said she should go into business. It was true, though—she was ace at managing supply. When I told her that, she replied that she had to be, cuz I always came up with plenty a demands. Anyway, she did a quick count and stuffed the cash into the waist of her trousers what was, in factuality, round her hips and not her waist. Being a little plump, her tummy spilled out over the waistband a the trousers like the top of a muffin. She was one beautiful woman.

  I leaned in and whispered. ‘Did you smuggle in the mobile?’

  ‘Zeki, you know I hate it when you ask me to do this sort of thing. It really stresses me out. It’s contraband.’ She said the word like it meant something bad. She brushed some dirt off her trousers like she was angry with the cloth they was made of. Then she sighed and pulled a big Christmas pudding outta one a the bags. ‘It’s in here. In the pud.’

  ‘That’s me girl! And the charger?’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘You little bewdy.’ I wanted to get me business affairs in order before I got out, and to do that I needed to make a few phone calls in the privacy a me own room. I went to give her a kiss but she wasn’t real happy with me. She turned her cheek. I got worried. ‘You’re not really gonna dump me, are you?’

  She gave me a look what said I was on probation, what is something I have been on a lot in me life. ‘The woman in front of me in the queue,’ she goes in that accusing tone, ‘she had a roast chicken and the guard swung it through the metal detector. If they’d have done that to the pudding I’d have been caught for sure.’ She sounded like she was gonna bust into tears.