Because of You

by Pip Harry

  Pip Harry is a freelance editor, copywriter and author. UQP published Pip’s debut novel, I’ll Tell You Mine, which won the 2013 Australian Family Therapists’ Award for Children’s Literature and Head of the River, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and longlisted for the State Library of Victoria Gold Inky award in 2015. She currently lives and writes in Singapore.

  www.pipharry.com

  #LoveOzYA

  Also by Pip Harry

  Head of the River

  I’ll Tell You Mine

  This one’s for you, Michael. Thank you for writing beside me and being my first and most trusted reader.

  ‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’

  William Wordsworth

  I know a slab of concrete doesn’t belong to me. Nothing belongs to me anymore. But still, when my little chunk of the city is snatched away, I feel like I’ve lost something precious. Gone forever. When I get back from begging in the mall, my feet and heart aching, there they are: steel spikes hammered into the flat ledge that, hours ago, I called home-sweet-home. The sign says they were installed by the residents of St James Place. Probably after a posh body corporate meeting with tea and scones.

  Agenda: What are we going to do about the skanky homeless people sleeping outside our nice apartment block?

  Motion: Get rid of them.

  A note says they’re part of a ‘campaign to stop smoking, littering and loitering’ around the building. Yeah, right. Nobody’s buying that. Not the newspaper reporters sniffing around for a story. Not us.

  No wonder they call it sleeping ‘rough’ out here. If it’s not homeless spikes making our life harder, it’s those mean metal armrests that stop you resting on park benches or the cold-water sprays that soak anyone who overstays their welcome. I’ll have to find a new place to sleep, and quick. I’m attached to this ledge, but I can’t roll out my swag onto a bed of metal thorns.

  ‘Cowards!’ says my mate Zak. He shoves his pillow into a garbage bag, furious. ‘If I had an angle grinder I would remove these instruments of oppression.’

  He runs a nicotine-stained hand over the gleaming spikes, scowling. I look at them and wonder where we’ll go next.

  I used to plan my life in advance. In Year Nine I saved up my kitchen hand money to go to Bali with my friend Mari and her family. Mum teased me because I’d go to the hotel website, imagining myself in a bikini by the pool. I booked my flights heaps early, printed out my itinerary and put it in a plastic folder with my new passport – not even one stamp in it.

  ‘You’re not going for six months,’ Mum said, laughing. Bali was okay. The beaches were dirty, I got sunburnt so bad I blistered and the water made me crook. It was the daydreaming all those months beforehand that was the best part.

  ‘We will endure this barbed cruelty,’ Zak declares, zipping up his suitcase. ‘And prosper in the face of adversity.’

  Zak’s way older than me. But whether he’s forty or sixty, it’s hard to tell. The street puts wrinkles on your face, grey in your hair and robs your teeth. If you stay too long it adds a limp to your walk. But Zak’s smart, used to be a uni lecturer, and he knows how to survive out here. If our paths hadn’t crossed, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me. Nothing good.

  Those first weeks in the wild I was on shaky, skinny legs, being eyed by a pride of lions. Fresh meat.

  Zak came up to me one day when I was hanging around Martin Place, watching skaters do tricks. Killing time. There’s nothing but time out here.

  ‘Excuse me, young lady,’ he said, smiling at me with his two stumpy yellow teeth. ‘I believe I could be of assistance as you acclimatise to life on the streets.’ That’s how Zak talks – real proper. You get used to it.

  Whatever common sense I had left told me I could trust him. He was a decent bloke. Kind.

  Zak took me to the best food vans and drop-in cafes, got me a free swag to sleep in and scared off any scumbag who wanted to keep me company for the night. He’s my street dad. My family. He doesn’t care what I did to get here. Doesn’t ask. We’re in this nightmare together.

  ‘We need to seek alternative accommodation and a shelter is our best option,’ Zak says. ‘The spikes are a sign. It’s time to spread our wings.’

  ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Don’t want to.’ The shelters try their best but most are crowded and stretched thin. I checked into a youth emergency centre for a few nights after my car was towed. While I was there the gold bracelet Mum gave me for my sixteenth vanished – stolen off me while I slept. Sometimes I still feel the chain on my skin.

  ‘Life is about doing things we don’t want to do,’ says Zak. ‘Besides, you could do with sustenance. You’re positively emaciated.’

  Truth is – we’re both struggling. Zak’s been sick. Coughing and running a fever. I can’t keep my jeans up.

  ‘You coming, Tiny?’ he asks, holding out his arm.

  I let it slip I used to dance when I was a kid and Zak called me ‘Tiny Dancer’, after his favourite Elton John song. Then he shortened it to Tiny. It stuck. In primary school I did jazz and ballet. Even performed in an eisteddfod once. My hair hung in ringlets down my back, my skin brushed white with powder; my lashes silver and lips red. I twirled my little heart out in glitter and sequins, sweating under the hot stage lights. I smiled at the audience, took my bows and lapped up their applause.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, pulling my backpack onto the raw spot on my shoulder, taking a last look back at the ledge. I don’t want to go back to a shelter, but Zak’s right, I don’t have choices anymore. I have to suck it up and move on. ‘I’m coming.’

  Zak and I walk through Hyde Park, past the war monument and fountain, shaded by fig trees. It’s pretty out. Green and sunny. A food market is on – people in work clothes eating dumplings and slurping noodles from paper boxes. They try not to see us. In case we ask for money or we get too close and ruin their appetites with our stench.

  I haven’t had a wash since last Thursday when I snuck past the front desk at Fitness Now! on Market Street during the morning rush and took a long, hot shower in the ladies change rooms. I used two white, fluffy towels from the pile on the counter to dry myself and snatched a free muffin and bottle of water on my way out. Zak taught me how to do that. Like I said, he’s smart.

  We don’t have tickets for the bus, but it’s good to walk. We’re not in any hurry. Zak has a bung hip and he’s rolling his life behind him in a suitcase, a big garbage bag slung over one shoulder.

  ‘Where we going?’ I ask, after a while.

  ‘The Hilton,’ Zak says. ‘We’ll stay at the Presidential Suite. Egyptian cotton sheets, a spa bath, bottle of the finest French champagne. All the room service you can eat.’

  ‘Seriously. Where?’ I don’t want to go to Edward James on the Square, it’s mostly for boozers. Luke House is in The Cross, near the red-light strip and it’s full of junkies and prossies.

  ‘Hope Lane in Darlinghurst. It’s a temporary shelter,’ says Zak. ‘I was a resident there once. If they allow me back in, it’ll provide good respite.’ He studies my face, clocks the deep frown between my eyes. The light is getting soft, the sun losing heat. ‘Don’t worry. I have connections there. We’ll be welcome.’

  It’s tough to crack a bed any night, but particularly since the past few have been cloudless and single digits. Nobody wants to sleep rough in winter. Tents are coming up in parks around the edges of the city. People scrambling for a warm place to hibernate.

  Hope Lane is an old sandstone terrace. There’s an iron fence outside, and people are strung out across it like Christmas lights. Talking on phones, smoking, waiting
for the doors to open. The building is wedged between an Italian restaurant and a done-up pub. The smell of roasting garlic and onions drifting from the restaurant makes my mouth water. I’m starving and light-headed.

  Zak sits down on his suitcase, breathing hard, alcohol coming out of his pores like a rotten perfume.

  ‘Open up!’ someone shouts at the locked doors. ‘It’s freezing!’

  I pull my hood over my head and duck my face into my knees. I’ve become good at curling into my shell at the first sign of danger. There’s no telling what people will do when they’re tired or off their heads. Zak squeezes my shoulder gently. He seems to know, even before I do, that I’m getting wound up too tight and might unravel. I wish my mum had seen it in me. Before things spun out of control.

  Zak’s a dad and he misses his kids bad. He used to do supervised visits once a month, but he couldn’t stay straight and he hasn’t seen his two sons in years. He gets quiet sometimes and I know he’s thinking about them, wondering where they are. Do they think about him, too? I feel that yearning. It pulls me under when I’m not expecting it; drags me to a dark place.

  On the walls of the shelter are Christian posters, which I read to distract myself from the restless crowd around me, rattling the doors to get inside.

  Only God Can Turn a Mess into a Message. Try to fix my mess, God. Make sense of it. I can’t.

  A Victim into a Victory. I’m not a victim. I’m a villain.

  A Trial into a Triumph. All I can see is the trial. Long and exhausting.

  The doors open, and an unruly line forms. Inside the foyer there’s a glassed-in front desk. On the other side is a carpeted waiting room, lined with plastic chairs. It’s chilly and bare. The only decorations are flyers stuck on the noticeboard. Dozens of pamphlets about sexual health, rooms for rent, jobs, outings, groups. One catches my eye.

  Hope Lane Writing Group. 2pm Wednesdays. Level 6. Afternoon tea! See Aimee for details.

  When I was little I liked writing stories. Mum used to stick them up on our fridge.

  The residents sign in and push through the security doors. Past the front entrance is a hall with a pool table, TV and couches. Tables set for dinner.

  Zak and I fill in thick forms in the waiting room. They’re making my brain hurt and remind me of school. I was a hopeless student. Things didn’t line up in my classes. Not like a pile of carrots needing to be julienned into orange matchsticks. Or a shortcrust pastry I could mix and roll out in minutes. My last class at Dubbo High was two years ago. It feels so much longer.

  ‘Is that you, Zak?’ shouts a woman at the front desk, knocking on the glass that surrounds the booth. She comes out of a door at the side. ‘You grew your hair. Let me look at you.’

  She kisses his stubbled cheek, then holds his face in her hands for a moment as if she thought she’d never see him again.

  ‘Hello Aimee,’ he says. ‘Are you well, my dear?’

  ‘Good, good. Actually, I’m having a baby.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘My first. Five and a half months now.’

  She runs a hand over her small, swollen bump and I feel a pulse of regret. She has no idea the joy that’s about to come her way – and the heartache.

  ‘We missed you around the place, Zakkie. How you been? Keeping out of trouble?’

  Zak shrugs. He’s an alcoholic and a junkie so trouble tends to find him.

  ‘I’ve been mentoring this young lady,’ he says, gesturing to me. ‘We’ve been residing at St James Place, but then they put up those dreadful homeless spikes, so … here we are.’

  ‘I heard spikes were being installed around the city,’ says Aimee. ‘As if we don’t have enough to deal with. The Churchill is at capacity. The women’s shelters in Marrickville closed. There’s nowhere to put you all.’

  ‘You got beds?’ I say, anxious to be inside the doors.

  ‘We’ll get you in,’ says Aimee. ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’

  ‘This is Tiny,’ says Zak. ‘She’s one of the good ones.’

  I yank my hood over my head and stare at a stain on the opposite wall. I’m not good. I’m evil.

  ‘How old are you, Tiny?’ Aimee asks.

  ‘Eighteen.’ I would’ve missed my last birthday if Zak hadn’t found out and taken me down to Rough cafe for a free feed and made everyone sing. It’s not how I thought I’d turn eighteen. Before, I wanted a big party down at the RSL, using the money I earned working in the bistro kitchen. I would’ve had a cake. Mari was doing her apprenticeship as a cake decorator and she had plans. Many layers. A lot of cream. I had a dress picked out from a place in town. It was sexy, silky and the colour of a ripe mango.

  Aimee puts out her hand to shake mine and I’m shocked. Nobody nice and clean has wanted to touch me since I arrived in the city. Her smooth skin reminds me of putting my lips to the spot behind a perfect curled pink ear, velvet soft and all mine.

  I relax a little. Aimee’s okay. This place doesn’t seem too bad. At least I won’t wake up to street cleaners and garbage trucks. I won’t have a bat piss on my head in the middle of the night, and never feel completely warm. I’ll get breakfast in the morning and a coffee.

  ‘Welcome to Hope Lane, Tiny,’ says Zak grandly. ‘The next chapter in our journey.’

  My room is small with wood-panelled walls and a narrow bed. From the grimy window I can see two used syringes sticking out of the planter box outside. A lightly read bible sits on the bedside table.

  I drop my shoulders and breathe out slowly. It’s a hole, but it’s mine. I’ve had a shower in the women’s communal bathroom and even though I’m still in filthy clothes, my skin is washed and sweet. I bring my arm to my nose and sniff hard. That’s what I smell like. I’d forgotten.

  Aimee calls out behind the door and I let her in.

  ‘Settling in okay?’ she asks.

  She puts clean linen and clothes on the foot of my bed and a small plastic bag full of tampons and pads.

  ‘You might need these,’ she says.

  I start to cry. It’s not the cruelty of people that’ll pull the threads of you until you come undone. It’s the small, kind things they do when you least expect it.

  I’d just started sleeping rough when my period came back. Soaking my undies and staining the crotch of my jeans. My body was ready to return to normal programming. It had no idea nothing would ever be the same again.

  Zak hadn’t found me yet, and I didn’t have anything to stop the blood. I had no money left. A few gold coins and nothing left to sell. I’d dumped my car and it’d been smashed and vandalised. Wheel-locked and then towed. That crappy Hyundai had been my hotel room for weeks, but then I couldn’t afford the petrol to move it. A couple of drunk guys had knocked on the window one night and tried to convince me to let them in. They said they’d come back another time. I was too scared to stay. It wasn’t safe.

  It was a problem, this blood coming out of me. I couldn’t afford to wash my jeans at a laundromat. I didn’t want to walk into a supermarket and spend my last few dollars on a pack of tampons. What was I supposed to do? Hold up a sign begging for feminine hygiene products?

  The first day I used balled-up toilet paper from Maccas, stuffed into my undies. Then newspaper. I retreated to Hyde Park and lay in the shade. Bent double from cramps. No painkillers to pop. I changed the sodden paper in a public dunny with music and a robotic voice instructing me to flush and wash. I pressed my hands on my back and bent forward trying to relieve the pain.

  When the flow got heavier on the second day, and I’d bled through the business, real estate and sports sections, I went into an underground chemist in Chinatown. The store was big enough that I could get lost in the shiny, white aisles with row after row of shampoos, toothpastes and deodorants. I mixed in okay with the grungy uni students stocking up for the semester.

  I’d never stol
en before. Never had to and never wanted to. Mari did sometimes. The odd chocolate bar and pack of chips. She called me chicken and clucked with her arms at her sides. But I refused. I didn’t want that black mark on my soul. Not when I had plenty of good food at home in our pantry. Why would I want stale mixed lollies when I could make buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup and slices of banana?

  In the tampon aisle, I pretended to be considering my purchasing options. Anti-fluff was important because ‘fluffy is only cute on kittens’, according to the pack. Non-bleached cotton. Applicators, wings and tapered edges. Mini, regular and super. Designer series and collector tins. I turned my back to the counter and slid a box of regulars into the waistband of my jeans. There was plenty of space, I was getting thinner every day. Soon, I wouldn’t get my period anymore. Wouldn’t have to feel so desperate.

  I hated myself for having to do it. For not thinking ahead and leaving with my head so messed up. As I left the store a girl stopped me. She was my age and seemed nervous. I guess I looked scary to someone in a pencil skirt and cream blouse. Probably this was her part-time job. I bet she studied hard at school. I tried to hide my bloodstained fingernails in my pockets.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss. Can I check your bag?’ she said.

  I pulled my backpack off my shoulders, sweating bullets.

  She took a quick glance in my bag, smelly and stuffed with clothes and a small pillow. Her eyes flickered over the bulge at my waist. She knew I’d taken the tampons. I could see the pity in her blue, innocent eyes. I felt like a criminal in the floodlights. Caught. I waited for the most humiliating moment of my life to get even worse.

  Then something passed between us. I understood she didn’t want to get me arrested, not over something as pathetic as a box of tampons. Maybe she had her period, too. Maybe she was like Mari – loose about stealing things from big chain stores. In that moment she decided it wasn’t worth it. Not for the minimum wage she was getting. Not for the scene I’d have to make.