I didn’t need to be saved; I wasn’t waiting for a stupid hero.
But one came anyway, not in a costume, but wearing a purple t-shirt, and baring too-perfect false teeth.
‘Hey, moguls, ya little cunts, ya up there aren’t yas?’
I was awake already, lying on my side watching the branches dance. I propped myself on my elbows at the sound of her voice and dragged my belly to the fence to look over the edge. An old woman with white hair neatly combed and parted stood staring up at me.
‘Little sis, who are you?’
‘May Gibson.’
‘Any young fellas been round ere?’
‘Nah, haven’t seen any.’
‘Well whatcha doin up ere anyway, May Gibson? Get down ere and talk to ya aunty girl, what ya doin sleepin round ere, bloody moguls ere.’
I threw my leg over the metal stake and slid down backwards, wondering what a mogul was. ‘Just needed somewhere to stay,’ I said, looking at the ground.
‘Well don’t be shame now, everyone need somewhere to stay. Some people got it and some doesn’t. Come stay with the women and me. Beats being around bloody strangers, you got family in the city too girl, come have a feed.’
I nodded, remembering the shit pumpkin soup, and climbed back onto the ledge to pull down the blankets and my bag. The old woman was already walking across the park, I ran up beside her. We walked fast across to the station. The city seemed to become softer behind us, quiet, as if we were the only people in the place.
At Central I went to the toilet and washed my face, holding my head under the dryers, feeling the wetness swim to my hairline and disappear. I looked into the mirror. You got family in the city too girl, gunna show ya where ya don’t belong dumb black bitch, you don’t look like an Abo. The words swam in my ears. When I looked into the mirror I saw a girl, lost and hollow – the same as every other fifteen-year-old, I guessed. I didn’t see the colour that everyone else saw, some saw different shades – black, and brown, white. I saw me, May Gibson with one eye a little bigger than the other. I felt Aboriginal because Mum had made me proud to be, told me I got magic and courage from Gundyarri, the spirit man. It was then I felt Aboriginal, I felt like I belonged, but when Mum left, I stopped being Aboriginal. I stopped feeling like I belonged. Anywhere.
We got the train, only one stop. As we stepped onto the platform she told me I was to call her Joyce, if I needed to find her ask for old Joy. ‘Just stay with us women and ya be all right, little sissy.’
Joyce coiled her thin fingers over my wrist and walked me faster up the steps and across the bridge. The place was heaving with people, people walking with groceries and prams and kids, people boozing, people laughing, people being. The walls of the bridge were covered in massive paintings of black faces and flags painted to look as if they were flying high in the sky. We walked through another park, much smaller than Belmore, without trees, nothing except a couple of dead-looking cabbage palms in the middle of a circle of pavers. A wall followed the railway lines covered in more huge paintings. The houses were tall and narrow and as we swept down past a row of them I noticed they made a kind of square, like the walls of a box. People started to call out, yelling Joyce’s name and asking who I was. Joyce just kept walking, leading me by the wrist.
The door was opened; Joyce led me through and shut the door behind us, clamping the handle with a chair.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ she pulled out a cushioned crate from under the table.
The house was small. Paint flecked the cement walls crumbling around photo frames. So many faces. Joyce put the pot of water on the stove and looked back over her shoulder at me and then to the wall of people. ‘This is my family,’ she said admiringly and started to point at the smiles, ‘...my daughter Justine and my other daughter, she’s dead though and...’
She dissected the whole puzzle, taking a few frames off as she spoke and wiping the inside of her shirt on their glass covers, second cousins and great grand kids and aunties and mother’s brother’s uncles.
‘We’re all family here, all blacks, here, from different places, but we’re all one mob, this place here...’
She pulled back the dirty lace curtain; we looked out onto the cement and tar.
The terraces colliding into each other. Rubble edging fences. Rubbish clogging gutters. Mothers screaming fathers or brothers or cousins. Uncles drinking, thinking under bread and butter. People giving their whole dole to the bowl that is empty, that they turn right over as if they got plenty. Drug smuggling thugs the mothers. Baby cries for others. Fits uncrucify the losers. The grinning winners looking down from two towers. Metal rods flog moguls on the grog. And they’re spitting and spinning out. And some places don’t sleep, only drown.
‘This here a meeting place for our people, always. Welcome to the Block, little sis.’
That was my first contact, the rest just got more confusing but easier, until I just became immune to it all. Growing up in the bloody Gong was nothing compared to a year living in the Block. I went in like a buttery cake and came out like a shotgun or a Monaro or a gaol sentence. Came out like a steel wall adorned in black tar.
I stayed with old Joyce most of the time, her and her daughter Justine and Justine’s boy Johnny. They were my family, and I loved them.
Most nights at Number 7 Caroline Street Joyce and the other aunties would stay up yarning and playing card games like jackpot and drinking sweet wine until all hours of the morning, around the same time when the bonfire in the park would start to whimper, and sirens would be sunk out with the silence. I loved staying up with the women and just listening, chain smoking and sipping hot sugar tea all night.
In the day Joyce and I would talk between us. She’d tell me all about growing up on the Block, about how her nanna had come and taken her back to Sydney when she was only little, a bit younger than me. She came here and worked in Wilson’s paper factory, making notebooks and writing pads. She laughs about it now, stretching back the loose skin over her porcelains and pointing across the street at the flat ground. ‘Just there,’ she says, as if she can still see it with her own eyes, as if she can still smell the watery bleach and warm, smokey fibre of the paper, ‘that’s the old factory.’
She told me about the history of Redfern, about the housing corporation stealing everyone’s money and homes, about how it used to be a real strong community. ‘And now,’ she says shaking her head, ‘it’s the young fellas taking our money as well and the drugs stealing our community.’
Joyce said the place was broken most of the time, but sometimes, mainly Sundays, it was beautiful.
I grew to love Sundays too, dry days when the flat ground turned into a churchyard and most people smiled big.
When you start to not feel the punch that lands on her face, when you begin to see someone’s broken heart instead of someone’s bruised veins, when you know that cuz needs a beating to sort him out, you begin to see love more than hate, that real sort of love, the sort that’s desperate and always fighting. Fighting to be heard and stay.
Joyce always made sure I was inside by dark, always made sure I had a feed. I wanted to buy food too so Joyce helped me get a job. Her cousin’s missus’ brother used to work at a carwash and he told Joyce that they’d give me a job. Shit money but it was cash in hand so it was good for the business see. I did end up getting the job, for a while anyway.
Things seemed to be going good, but sometimes Joyce would put the hard word on me, after she’d had a couple of sherries and all the aunties had gone home. And the bullet would always drop somewhere in the middle of my ribcage.
She was packing up the cards one night when she cornered me about my family. ‘So...’ she said with a caring prying tongue, ‘where’s all your family, girl?’
‘After Mum died, we went and stayed at Aunty’s and Billy, well he–’
She interrupted with a jabbing finger, her jet eyes bolting ya face. ‘I know all that, May, what about your nannas? You got old dobs in yer mob like
me?’ She straightened up against the table, making herself look taller and tipping back her head all prided. ‘Go on, what about ya old girl, her mob, where they?’
‘Dunno, she left us so long ago, I remember stories though and I know she’s Wiradjuri – from out west isn’t it, Joyce?’
‘Wiradjuri! You Wiradjuri blood girl? Well all ya mob’s probably out ere in the park drinkin.’
She bellowed laughter across the walls and glass-covered faces. They smiled back.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, forgetting where I was.
She caught me.
‘Ninganaa little one, have some respect.’
She was serious.
‘Now listen good,’ she said, pulling out a crate again. ‘I know ya like it ere, but it’s no good ere little one. You know what I’m talkin bout, no good young dobs growin up in this ere, and I’m gettin too old to be worryin all the time bout ya, specially after that carwash business the other day ... I know, I know you got ya young sissy girls ere and Johnny, but you, May, you got people that you gotta find, things you gotta learn. You will learn them ere, but I don’t want you to. Look at Justine, smack the only thing teachin her now! You gotta go, May, you got sumthin to find, fire in the belly that ya gotta know. See all the moguls now, they got the fire too, but people in the city always gunna try put it out, then it outta control. You know, like trying to put the fire out with petrol. It ain’t workin. Not while government puttin fear on us.’
She took another mouthful of sherry. ‘Think about it, May Gibson. Who they Gibson mob anyway? They gotta be somewhere out there.’
I felt shamed, like she didn’t want me there anymore. I pulled a loose thread from the armchair’s doily, unravelling its sticky string shapes. I sat there silent until Joyce packed up the cards, took her sherry by the neck and went upstairs. The lights flicked off the staircase and the house was dark.
Sadness crept over my hands, over my body and for the first time in Sydney I cried. I cried floods that washed down to the city quay and filled that dirty harbour. I cried all the way to Waterloo, I cried the hoarding off old terraces. I cried with the rest of us.
Chocolate
Railway lines like fragile taping rose and fell through the scarce green. I searched my fingers, sleepers of cracked wet flesh-folds like bleeding nectarine seeds. I checked myself in the reflection as we passed under tunnels, pressing the collars of my Cheapa Petrol polo shirt, looking down at my chemical hands cradling that big watermelon.
Charlie and I would take fruit every day for smoko, sometimes a bag of oranges, or a pineapple. Sometimes Charlie would even bring a punnet of strawberries and we’d sit in the sunshine at the entrance of the carwash and juice each red berry, staining our lips. And always after we’d finish our ritual he’d roll a thumb size of lime-soaked tobacco and line his gums for the rest of the day, vacuuming Mercedes and chewing down the copper muck. On the sunny days Charlie would get out his piano and play it cross legged inside the perspex walls. ‘For good sound,’ he’d say, stopping mid-tune and pointing to the roof. ‘Good sound, hey!’
I’d nod and be taken away again by the beautiful music. Charlie called it an mbira or a special thumb piano; it was a block of wood with shiny metal teeth that he flicked up and down with his long thumbnails. I’d close my eyes and see a velvet jewellery box with a pretty ballerina pirouetting against the mirror. The dinging tunes dancing her along.
‘Yes, sir, yes, boss, I’ll do that boss, right away boss. Sorry boss.’
Mr Tzuilakis would seesaw between the carwash and the office. In the indecision he’d walk back into his cramped cardboard office, as Charlie would gather up the instrument, make some tobacco juice in his mouth and spit down onto the cement behind him. We’d watch Mr Tzuilakis waddle out at least twenty times during the day to check on how well we were cleaning the wheel caps or this or that. He’d sort of strut around, looking at you while he counted the sponges, two sponges per bucket. If a sponge went missing he’d always yell at Charlie. Looking right down his finger pointing, into Charlie’s glare. ‘You watch it hah! Just watch yourself, boy.’
But Charlie was hardly a boy; at fifty-four he still worked harder and faster than every employee at Cheapa Petrol – the console operators, Jan the office lady, me, and even Mr Tzuilakis himself. I imagined Charlie as a chief or a hunter and back in Africa I suppose he was.
He’d never tell you about Africa, and I never asked. It was his secret – his past, that someday, revisited, would become his home again. He never asked me where I was from either – it was an unspoken understanding. We just existed there in that carwash, carwashers, crouching with fruit nectar dripping off our chins. Spitting the sour blood onto the cement.
That day, I’d brought watermelon.
‘Hey, trouble! What you got there?’
‘Watermelon, ninety-nine cents a kilo.’
His smile poured out like curdled milk and brown theatre curtains. And it was then I thought Charlie could have been my father, or wished he was secretly, looking up for his approval, hoping he’d lean over against my forehead with his and tell me softly, as if I’d known all along, that I was his child.
‘Hey, Chocolate,’ yelled Mr Tzuilakis.
Time lay itself down over the acre of grey. Bowsers drank the air and all those shuffling, smoking cars just paused, with their owners, for however long forever is. A police officer walked over with Mr Tzuilakis, another lagging behind with hands on hips as if each of his strong index fingers and thumbs were lifting and placing mechanical legs. I noticed the legs of all three men’s trousers, perfectly ironed, each mechanical leg. Then they leant over and without words stole Charlie’s smile.
They waltzed him to a car like dance partners, lowering him under the doorframe to make sure he didn’t bump his head. They took turns to shake Mr Tzuilakis’ fat hand and then lowered their own selves into the car, and drove away past the stack of firelighters and the cage of gas bottles.
Chocolate rang in my ears; I thought it was funny that Mr Tzuilakis called Charlie by the name Chocolate or Boy, never Charlie. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Just like the movie. It was really funny. I thought about that until Mr Tzuilakis walked over and said I ought to get to work, pack up the hand wash. ‘Can’t hand wash just one of you.’
I thought about it while he explained what the word ‘deported’ meant.
I thought about it until he waddled back in.
I thought about those blue suits taking away the people I love. The cops at Aunty’s house that day and now Charlie. I hid back in the chemical room and got out Charlie’s thumb piano, flicking its teeth a little, numb and confused. When I went back out to the auto washer a couple of fellas were hanging around the side, in the garden.
‘Hey, sista, nice shirt.’
‘Whata ya want?’
‘Just doin some shoppin ya know, sissy, got any stuff we can look at, ya know some cans there, sissy?’
Silver and pink paint flecked their upper lips, bottles hiding under their shirts. Chroming was common, second to drinking and yarndi but first choice to petrol. It was always easier to steal a few spray cans than fill a jerry of petty or risk getting chased out of a bottle shop by some meathead.
‘Nah, piss off I’ll lose me job, everything’s counted.’
‘Yeah all right, reckon you can give us a jerry then?’
‘Ya gunna pay or just do a runner?’
‘Nah we pay, sister.’ He shows the end of a tendollar note from his pocket. ‘Ok, sister?’
‘All right,’ and pushes the note back in.
I go into the service station. I walk the chip aisles checking the new jerries a couple of times; some new young guy working the console ignores me, slipping fingers through a magazine and gulping a Coke. I grab the jerry acting allcasual, and walk toward the automatic doors.
‘Hey, carwash girl – where are you going with that petrol can?’
‘Just a customer, out at the wash. Don’t worry, once he fills it up I’ll b
ring the money in.’
‘Yeah all right, don’t forget.’ He rolls his eyes blindly across the packed-out bowsers and back down at the mag.
I walk out to the bowsers and fill the can to the top. Screw the lid on tight and walk over behind the muddy perspex walls. The fellas aren’t in the garden and the chemical room door is flung open, I walk over and stick my head in on them.
‘Whata ya think ya doing?’
Before they have a chance to answer or run, Mr Tzuilakis is standing at the entrance of the carwash, his hands on his hips.
‘What are you doing miss?’
‘Mr Tzuilakis, oh um nothing just...’
The fellas step out of the doorway and run out the side, a big bottle of tyre cleaner in each of their arms. Mr Tzuilakis just yells out to them, too big to move. He looks over at the jerry can and me. ‘Your friends are they? Well it’s not the first time I’ve had to call the police twice in one day.’
‘No – please, boss, can’t you just sack me instead?’
‘Don’t worry, May, I’ll be doing that too.’
Mr Tzuilakis shakes his head down at me and strides back to the office. I move fast, grab Charlie’s thumb piano and the watermelon and run to the traino, dodging the main road through warehouse yards.
I jump the train to Redfern and wait in the park for the police car to leave Joyce’s house. They’d already come for me.
I sneak around the side and through the window. Joyce catches me as I flop through onto the floor.
‘Joyce, please, you have to believe me – I didn’t flog anything.’
‘I don’t have to believe ya, May, I do though.’ She widens her eyes at me. ‘They racists down there anyway, I’ve already called Tzuilakis on Shelly’s phone, told him he could stick his fuckin three dollar award wage bullshit. May, May, May, don’t know about all this trouble girl, we’ll talk later.’ She reaches out and presses the collar of my shirt with her thin fingers. ‘We could unpick that logo you know, not a bad shirt, May.’
Swallow the Air Page 5
