The Infernal Optimist

by Linda Jaivin

  ‘But they didn’t, and you wasn’t,’ I pointed out, reasonably enough, I reckoned. ‘And how about the other stuff?’ I moved me fingers like I was rolling a joint.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Not gonna either.’

  ‘I swear, darl, it’s no sweat. How many times do I have to tell you? Wrap it up in cling wrap, stuff it down your bra and spray them sweet titties with perfume. The screws won’t find it in a million.’

  ‘It’s a federal offence, Zeki. You might like it Inside, but I don’t.’

  That pissed me off. ‘I like it Inside? I like it Inside?’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ she whispered.

  ‘What is this—church or something?’ She gave me a look then. I knew I’d stepped over the line. She’s a good girl, in factuality, and when I thought about that, I really didn’t know what she was doing with me. Still, a few ounces a maryjane down her bra wouldn’t a killed her. The Moroccan bloke Ali’s chick did it all the time. After he got released, the supply dried up. He said he’d be back to visit, said he’d come every week, but he hadn’t showed his face yet. I understood. When you’re Out, you’re Out. You don’t wanna know nuffin about the Inside. When you’re on the Inside, all you wanna know is Out. You think about it all the time. You think about it till your head hurts.

  That’s the great thing about dope. Dope keeps you from thinking too much, what be an occupational hazard on the Inside. When you’re locked up, your brain races like dogs after one a them mechanical rabbits, but it’s like someone’s got rid a the off switch on the rabbit. Dope gives them dogs in your head a rest.

  This was something Miss ‘The Law is the Law’ never seemed to understand.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘forget the ounces. Just one joint? For me personal usage.’

  ‘You know, Zeki,’ she goes in that tone what sounded like Miss O’Meary from Year Ten what learned us English, ‘sometimes I think my parents have a point.’

  By the time I sweet-talked She Who Must Be A-Pleased into giving me a smile, it was seven o’clock. I insured her there was nuffin to worry about except putting a slab in the fridge and polishing up me dancing shoes.

  The blues was clapping their hands at stragglers and the loudspeaker was blaring. ‘Visits are over. All visitors must leave the Visiting Yard. Throw your rubbish in the bin.’ Mate, that whole place was rubbish, but there wasn’t a bin big enough for it.

  Clarence, what was on gate duty, hustled Marlena outta the Yard. He sneered as he swung the gate shut between us. She shuffled up the slope to the vault door with that funny, cute gait a hers, more a waddle than a walk. Me sweet muffin wobbled on her heels as she waited for a second guard to come and open the vault door from the inside. She turned her head and gave me one a them looks. That was the moment I hated the most. I felt shamed a being Inside and didn’t want her to go. I never knew whether to stand and watch till she was all the way through or turn and go like a man, pretending to be cool. I scrounged around inside one a the plastic bags what she gave me and pulled out a stick a liquorice. It was twisted up like me heart.

  ‘What are ya, a big girl?’ Clarence said. ‘Or ya gonna say there was somefing in yer eye?’

  ‘If you don’t shut up, you’ll have somefing in your eye, mate,’ I replied, quick as snakes. ‘Me fist.’

  ‘Ooh,’ he goes, making a face and batting them spooky girl eyes at me, ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘You better be, muvvafucker.’

  ‘C’mon, Togan, you’re holding things up,’ Anna yelled at me from the other gate, the one to the compound. She pronounced me surname like it rhymed with ‘bogan’. I was used to it.

  ‘I mean it, arsehole,’ I said to Clarence. Then I turned on me heels and strolled to where Anna was waiting, not hurrying, taking me sweet time.

  ‘Watcha got there?’ Anna goes, pointing at the bags with her chin.

  If it were one a the other screws, I’d say, ‘None a your fucken business,’ even though technologically it was, but Anna was all right, so I didn’t give her no shit. I opened the bags. She looked inside. ‘Some of that chocolate for me?’

  ‘Take it.’ I held out a big fruit and nut bar.

  ‘Just kidding,’ she said, pushing me hand away.

  ‘Anyway,’ I go, ‘you know where to find it.’ I winked. ‘Shop’s open all night long.’

  ‘Cheeky monkey.’ She grinned. ‘Happy Christmas anyway.’

  Back in me room I opened the box a Tiny Teddies and poured out a handful. I picked out Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Cheeky, Silly and Hungry. Anna called me Cheeky but I felt more Grumpy and Hungry. I popped the whole Teddy family into me gob.

  Even the best food tastes like cardboard when you’re on the Inside.

  Eighteen

  April came to visit again the next day, what was Boxing Day. Everyone was impressed with that. Almost everyone. ‘Where’s Thomas?’ she asked. It was clear she hadn’t seen him stomping off when she appeared at the vault door.

  ‘He here one minute ago,’ Angel told her. ‘Join us. He be back soon.’

  ‘Gee, this place is awful, isn’t it?’ April said, settling into one a the plastic seats. ‘All this razor wire! And the prison guards. And Sue told me that when they give you jobs, like cleaning, they pay you a dollar an hour, and in phone cards? I can’t believe it, the whole thing is so depressing.’ She went on like that until everyone was staring at them feet. Talking about how terrible Detention was wasn’t a great conversational gamble. The odds a getting a favourable response wasn’t too good. Lotsa new visitors did it. Maybe they needed to. But we didn’t need to hear it. We was living it. April made a face. ‘But I guess you know all that, don’t you?’

  ‘Mm,’ Hamid agreed.

  April looked around. ‘Oh, there he is.’ Thomas was talking to some visitors on the other side of the yard. She looked over at him nervously. ‘See, what I haven’t been able to say…to tell him…is that Josh, my husband, left me?’ Everyone looked up again with horrorfied expressions on them faces. ‘It happened after September Eleven. He said that seeing so many people die so suddenly made him think he should die without regrets? The thing he was going to regret the most, apparently’—April rolled her eyes—‘was not getting it on with his nurse. That really hurt me. Last week…well, he started calling again. The nurse dumped him and he wants me to take him back. I thought he had some nerve, and told him so.’

  ‘You should forgive him,’ Azad said.

  ‘Do you think?’ April looked at Azad and bit her lip. ‘I told him no way.’

  ‘That is not good,’ Azad said, like he be an authority.

  ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘I’d already smudged the bedroom with sage and mugwort to get rid of all the negative energy? And I was beginning to feel okay about it. Then, after visiting here yesterday, I lay awake all night thinking. I decided…well, I decided that I’d talk to Josh—for Thomas’s sake. I think that was part of Sue’s plan from the start. But I need to find out more about Thomas’s case first.’ She looked over at Thomas again and made a brave face. ‘I’d better go talk to him. Would you excuse me? I’ll be back.’ She strode off in Thomas’s direction.

  Hamid shook his head. ‘What she do to the bedroom?’

  They all looked at me. I shrugged. I never heard a no one smearing them bedrooms before. ‘Fucked if I know.’

  We all sank into our own thoughts like we was Sanna the bikini girl and our thoughts was the quicksand in that old movie When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. It’s one a me favourites on a count a having both dinosaurs and bikinis in, what doesn’t happen enough in movies. Hamid rubbed the palm a one hand up his other arm to the elbow a few times. Then he switched hands and did it to the other arm. Azad took out his lighter and flicked it on and off. Angel twirled a strand a hair round her finger. I was jiggling me feet, just like Farshid and Reza were doing over at the next table. I reckon if anyone worked out a way to harness the nervous energy in that place, it coulda powered all a Sydney.

  Finally Thomas and April c
ame walking back together. As they sat down, April reached into one a her bags. ‘I almost forgot!’ she said. She pulled out pressies for all of us—an art book for Thomas, a medical dictionary for Hamid and a manbracelet for Azad what was silver. I got a posh journal what was all blank pages for me to write me book in. She said the art book and the medical dictionary was from her own bookshelves at home and the bracelet and journal from her shop. She apologised that she couldn’t do proper shopping cuz a the holidays but we was all amazed by the gifts, what be fully thoughtful. She still seemed kinda nervous, like she was stepping on poached eggs, but the conversation went easier after Thomas came back.

  Some musos came into the Yard with their instruments and set up under the shelter. They had a darabuka what is one a them Arabic drums, a Yamaha keyboard what they plugged into the socket for the Coke machine, a guitar and a violin. Nuffin like this never happened before. We went over to listen along with most everyone else in the Yard.

  We made a big circle round the musos. First they sang some folk songs and Irish ballads. Then they invited us to sing and play too, but at first no one did on a count a shyness. Then one a the Iraqis stood up to sing an Egyptian love song and a Palestinian took over on the darabuka and Reza, what got a nice voice even though it cracks sometimes on a count a his reaching pubalescence, sang a Persian love song. Azad sang a Kurdish one. Bhajan sang us one a him poems. Then this Albanian chick what was getting out soon with her family sang ‘Bombastic Love’ and ‘I am a Slave 4 U’, what was awesome. After that the musos played some dancing music and Farshid asked the Albanian chick to dance. They was just getting into it when one a the Iraqis cut his grass. Farshid didn’t look too happy, but then a uni chick what was visiting got him to dance with her, what cheered him up. I asked April to dance and was showing her some flash moves when she got shy and wanted to sit down again. Some a the kids danced too. Abeer tied a scarf round her little hips and did the belly dancing, while the ladies what cover with the veil sat to one side watching and clapping and doing that Uluru thing with them voices.

  When there was a break, I stood up. ‘For those a you what don’t know me, I’s the Zekster, and what I’s gonna perform for youse all is a one-hundred-fiddy per cent original number.’ Some a me mates whistled and hooted. I made these phat sounds with me mouth like I be scratching vinyl and doing some drum beats and performed me best B-boy moves as I rapped:

  It’s another day in Detention

  That be life in suspension

  For the Zekster

  What grow fat like a cat what grow mould what grow old

  The Zekster say, yo, look at yourself

  You be sitting on the shelf

  Gonna get on the pension

  Fore you’re outta Detention

  Bro it make me hypertense

  Yo, just looking at that fence

  Being in be too intense

  In Detention. In suspension.

  Can’t go without a mention

  A the refugees

  What the government owe apologies

  For keeping ’em years in Detention.

  Years in suspension.

  We all need release from da tension!

  Everyone laughed and whistled and applauded. I was one talented homey, if I have to say so meself.

  The party was just going off when the loudspeaker crackled. ‘Will visitors please make their way to the gate. Will visitors please make their way to the gate.’ They never put a question mark in them influctuations cuz they don’t mean it as a question. Visits was over. Clarence and the other blues walked round the Yard clapping them hands, but not like they was applauding.

  ‘Aw, c’mon, mate, giss a break,’ I go to this Maori bloke, Tip, what was a reasonable bloke for a blue. ‘Let us go to seven-thirty or eight for once. Live on the wild side.’

  ‘Sorry, bro, wush I could. But rules are rules.’ Tip says ‘wush’ instead a ‘wish’ on a count a being from New Zealand where everyone speaks funny. ‘Besides, our shuft ends at eight and we gotta tidy up the paperwork before we can get off.’

  Our shuft never fucken ended—pardon me French.

  After the visitors disappeared through the vault door, we cleaned up the Yard and divvied up the leftovers from the food what they brung. By quarter past, the place was quiet as a mouse, what wasn’t really that quiet on a count a the loudspeaker calling folks to the phone and Medical and some a the detainees arguing outside the laundry over the dryers, what was never enough. The end a Visits, specially on a day like that, was like when you’re coming down after an E, what sometimes makes you feel almost sadder after than you was happy before.

  Nineteen

  ‘Yeah, Zeki. Come in.’ Azad was sitting on his bed.

  ‘Watcha doin, mate?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s there to do?’ He looked around his room, what only got some books and clothes and a prayer rug and some stuffed animals on the bed what visitors brung him like he was a little kid. He collected feathers too. They were lined up on the shelf by his books—feathers from cockies and maggies and currawongs and even one or two from a kookaburra. He’d been spending more time by himself since Hamid and Angel got together. There was something in his hand.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Seashell.’ He showed me. Someone gave it to him for Christmas.

  ‘Oh, mate, I miss the beach,’ I go. ‘This country got the best beaches.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he goes.

  I held out me pack a smokes. He shook his head and sighed again.

  ‘Shit. Sorry, mate.’ I stuffed it back in me pocket. ‘Forgot you was giving up.’

  ‘Ensh’Allah.’

  There was a knock on the door. I looked at me watch. Eight o’clock. It was Anna. ‘Room service,’ she goes, what is a joke for when they come to your room for Muster instead a making you go to them. We showed her our IDs like she didn’t know who we be, and she ticked our names off the list. ‘Have a good one,’ she said and left.

  ‘She was giving you lusty eyes, mate, I swear.’

  ‘What means “lusty eyes”?’

  I showed him.

  ‘Stop it.’

  I gave him more lusty eyes. He threw plush toys at me till I stopped.

  There was another knock. It was Bilal, an Iraqi dude what lost the plot. Bilal had his coffee mug in his hand. ‘Salaam aleikum, Bilal,’ Azad greeted him.

  ‘W’aleikum salaam.’

  Azad reached onto the shelf for his jar a Nescafé and spooned out some brown crystals into the mug. Bilal nodded and left. Every night he got coffee from Azad, hot water from Thomas, four spoonfuls a sugar from this Liberian bloke, creamer from a Russian and a spoon to stir it with from an Iranian. Then he went to a Chinaman’s room to drink it. The sugar used to come from this Palestinian dude. When the Palestinian got released on a Temporary Protection Visa, Bilal went around talking to himself for hours, not wanting to drink his coffee without sugar but not wanting to take it from anyone else, either. The next evening they brung in the Liberian what was an asylum what came by plane. Bilal decided that the Liberian would be his sugar man. But the Liberian didn’t have any sugar. He didn’t have nuffin. He didn’t know what was going on. They’d taken him from the airport straight into Villawood. He was crying and scared cuz he didn’t know Australia locked up refugees and he didn’t have a clue what this Iraqi headcase was doing standing in his doorway with a mug a coffee. That was two months earlier. He just left the sugar on the shelf by the door now.

  ‘You know Abeer’s dad, Mohammed?’ Azad said a few minutes later. ‘He told me they knew Bilal two years ago, when they were all together in Woomera. He said he was perfectly normal then, like you and me.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what scares me the most about detention, you know,’ Azad said. ‘Losing my mind.’

  ‘Mate, I know what you mean,’ I go. ‘Of course, me mum says that if I lost my mind, no one would notice it be missing.’

  ‘Your mum says that?’ That made him smile for a s
econd. ‘Ha.’ The smile faded. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I lost my mind a long time ago, when my family was killed. It’s like I don’t feel much anymore, like I am cold inside. Maybe I’m crazy as Bilal but can’t see it. I think I’m okay. But how do I know? W’Allah, how do I know?’

  I shrugged. If he didn’t know, I sure as hell didn’t.

  ‘You know the Chinese guy, Fang, the one in Falun Gong?’ Azad asked.

  ‘The one what looks like he’s trying to push things what are made of air along shelves what are also made of air?’

  ‘That’s him,’ Azad said. ‘Fang told me an old Chinese story. This old man dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up he wasn’t sure if he was an old man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was an old man dreaming he was a butterfly.’

  ‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘That’s fully spinning me out.’ I thought about it. ‘Was he a butterfly then?’

  Azad laughed. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I reckon April’s got a bit a butterfly in her.’

  ‘April? In a way. Like she is flying around looking for a flower to land on.’

  That’s one a the things I liked about Azad. He could always take the conversationals to a deeper level, like one a them diving bells on the television what goes looking for ocean fish with lights on. Me, I was just talking crap about how pretty she was.

  ‘Fang told me another story,’ Azad said. ‘When Mao was the ruler of China, he decided to kill all the birds that were eating the farmers’ grain. So he got everyone in China to stand outside their houses and on their roofs and to bang their pots and pans together at the same time. All over China, birds were too scared to land. They flew and flew until they got so tired of flying they just dropped out of the sky and hit the ground dead. You know, that’s what it feels like sometimes, being a refugee, being without a home, a safe place to land. Like one of those birds.’