The Whip Hand

by Nadine Browne

  First published 2016 by

  FREMANTLE PRESS

  25 Quarry Street, Fremantle WA 6160

  (PO Box 158, North Fremantle WA 6159)

  www.fremantlepress.com.au

  Copyright © Mihaela Nicolescu, 2016

  Copyright © Nadine Browne, 2016

  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Consultant editor Naama Amram

  Cover design Carolyn Brown, www.tendeersigh.com.au

  Cover photograph www.shutterstock.com: jujikrivne

  Printed by Everbest Printing Company, China

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Nicolescu, Mihaela, author.

  The whip hand: stories / Mihaela Nicolescu, Nadine Browne.

  ISBN: 9781925164183 (epub)

  Subjects: Short stories, Australian.

  Other creators/contributors: Browne, Nadine, author.

  Dewey Number: A823.01

  Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts.

  Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  Contents

  THE RETURNING

  MIHAELA NICOLESCU

  PLAYING DEAD

  NADINE BROWNE

  The Returning

  MIHAELA NICOLESCU

  Contents

  Gone, Baby, Gone

  866

  Frozen

  Love

  Returned

  The Impressionist

  Strays

  Fig

  Drop

  Gone, Baby, Gone

  They slowed down just outside Watford and pulled into an empty McDonald’s parking lot. Erika sat holding the steering wheel, the engine still running, her hands cold, until something tugged at her sleeve.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ the kid asked.

  ‘We’re resting,’ Erika said, grabbing her jacket and bag from the back seat. Erika got out of the car and waited, but the little girl did not budge, just watched Erika with mild cow eyes.

  ‘For fuck’s sake …’ Erika walked over to the passenger’s seat and pulled open the door. ‘Will you get out please,’ she said.

  ‘I want to go home,’ the little girl said. She sat staring dead ahead, her arms crossed tightly, her little round spectacles fogged up by her own breath. She was still wearing the pink Barbie-themed pyjamas.

  ‘You don’t want a Happy Meal, then?’ Erika said, and saw the girl’s gaze flash towards the restaurant, stopping for a moment on the playground outside.

  Erika followed her gaze.

  A merry-go-round, a couple of swings and a set of monkey bars. All in bright paints, all looking sad and abandoned, all looking garish and pointless.

  ‘You can play afterwards if you want,’ she offered.

  The girl gave a great sigh, and made to release her seatbelt. She struggled with the buckle, her clumsy hands not able to unfasten it, but when Erika tried to reach over to help, the brat swatted her aside and snapped:

  ‘I can do it myself!’

  Erika took a step back, then another, and turned away.

  ‘Forget you,’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘Wait! Wait! You can’t leave me …’ the voice rose to a shrill that seemed to cut into the base of Erika’s skull.

  She continued towards the entrance, ignoring the screaming, and stepped into the warm, bright McDonald’s embrace. At the counter she ordered two coffees, two cheeseburgers and a Happy Meal.

  As she was paying, she heard the door open and close, and little feet scuttle to her side.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ the girl said, loudly. She looked like she was going to cry.

  ‘Be quiet please,’ Erika said, without looking down.

  ‘You can’t just leave kids in cars … Don’t you know anything? Huh? You can’t just …’

  ‘Shut up. And if you start crying, I’m leaving your whiny arse here,’ Erika said, and was immediately sorry. She smiled apologetically to the boy who handed her the paper bags.

  ‘Here,’ she gave the kid the Happy Meal box, ‘go and sit down.’

  Erika took her change and smiled again at the boy.

  ‘My sister,’ she told him.

  He nodded. Erika thought she could see judgement in his eyes, under the brim of his cap.

  At a corner table, Erika kicked off her heels. The kid was unpacking her Happy Meal. She lined up the burger, chips and drink, her lips moving, her face animated. She mumbled, ‘So that’s what you have to do …’ pushed her glasses further up and bounced an ugly stuffed dinosaur up and down on the table.

  The kid unwrapped her burger and took a nibble. Erika watched. She took tiny, quick bites, then scrunched up her face.

  ‘I’m a hamster, look,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s great,’ Erika tried to smile.

  The kid looked up shyly between hamster nibbles.

  ‘You’re very pretty,’ she told Erika, and Erika felt herself harden to the compliment.

  ‘Just eat your food and let me think.’

  The girl blinked, wounded, and Erika tried to think of something kind to say, but she could not, and so she thought of other things instead.

  She was six or seven years old and out shopping with her mother.

  Erika had been a beautiful child. Big blue eyes, chestnut ringlets; a gorgeous little thing, a poppet, a doll. Her mother would look at her in disbelief and say to her friends, ‘Look at this child. Where did she come from? Where did all this luck come from?’

  And one day Erika was out shopping in Tesco with her mum. It was early in the morning and before either of them knew how it had happened, Erika was throwing a tantrum in the confectionery isle.

  An old lady stopped by the commotion and told Erika, very gently, to be a big girl and to listen to her mummy. No, chocolate wasn’t good for little girls, and wasn’t it a shame to cry when she’d be so pretty if she smiled.

  Hearing this broke her mum’s paralysis. She plunged down next to them and took Erika by the arms. Looking straight at Erika, she said, ‘She’s a spoilt, ugly little thing on the inside, a little black lump on the inside.’

  Erika fell silent, her cheeks glazed with tears, snot running into her mouth. Her mother grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the supermarket, leaving their basket on the floor and the old lady staring after them.

  Erika now looked out of the walls of glass, and thought for a moment that she saw a flash of blue and white in the distance. She sat up straight. Quickly she shoved her feet back into her shoes.

  ‘Come on, you can eat that on the way.’

  She grabbed the kid by the arm and pulled her outside.

  The parking lot was still empty, but for her car, and as she was buckling the kid into the passenger’s seat, she remembered that she had promised her a turn in the playground. This is how it begins, Erika thought. This is the start of the lie that leads to all the hate.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but the kid wasn’t listening.

  Erika got into the car and took out her mobile. She had eighteen missed calls and five messages. She took out a spliff from the bottom of her bag and lit up. God knows how long it had been there. It tasted of dirt and perfume, and Erika coughed between drags.

  ‘Smoking is bad.’

  Erika jumped, banging her head against the window; she had forgotten the kid.

 
; Now she remembered.

  She pulled the car back out onto the road, turned on the radio and, while pretending to listen to the news update, tried to think up a plan.

  Maybe they could stay with Oli and his flatmates.

  Oh yes, there was bound to be a party at Oli’s and she needed a drink so badly right about now. She heard a rustle by her side and turned to see the kid fiddle with the radio.

  Oh right. The kid.

  Oh fuck.

  ‘Where we going, Erika?’ the girl asked.

  ‘On holiday.’

  ‘Are you crying, Erika?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here …’ the kid shoved her half-eaten hamburger in Erika’s face, ‘Nana says eating makes people happy.’

  ‘Your grandmother doesn’t know shit about making people happy.’

  Erika had left home at fifteen after getting in early one morning, still buzzing, stinking of cigarettes and booze.

  The usual hypotheticals followed: Have you no shame? What are you doing with your life? Where did I go wrong?

  Erika had stopped on her way up the stairs and had stood swaying, looking at her mother. She told her, in a slur, how she had never felt this joyless hole to be her home; had never felt anything but a blank where maternal affection should have slotted in.

  ‘You’re drunk, it’s disgusting. Go to bed,’ her mother had said and tried to walk away, but Erika had clung onto her, pulling at her flannel nightgown, screaming, ‘I fucking hate you, I fucking hate you.’

  She did not speak to her mother for two years.

  ‘Is she … nice to you?’ Erika asked the kid. She realised she was driving too fast and, pulling into the slow lane, asked again, ‘Is Grandma nice to you?’

  The kid drew a lopsided star in her breath on the window, and said, ‘Yeah …’

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Does she play with you?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘Does she tell you you’re pretty?’

  The kid frowned. ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Does she say that you’re a little doll, a little perfect doll? Does she look at you like she can’t bear to see you?’

  The kid stared blankly, her eyes huge and calm behind the pink wire frames, as if she knew more than she possibly could, as if she trusted in Erika more than she ever should. She wiped the star off the window, breathed and drew a heart instead.

  ‘You know hearts mean I love you?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Erika?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Erika did not remember much about those two years.

  She did remember the day she had crawled back to her mother’s house. She had nowhere else to go. She had not planned for this. Erika knew that she could easily solve the problem by a visit to the clinic, a procedure many of her friends said was quick and simple and really no big deal, but she was already fifteen weeks on, and she could cup her belly in her hands and imagine a life.

  So Erika went back home and, full of resentment, she named the baby Lilly, the name chosen by her mother. But to Erika it was never Lilly; it was It or The Kid or Sweetheart, but never Lilly.

  She held it like a sack of potatoes. Read it stories. Took her for walks, holding her tiny hand.

  Erika was always saying goodbye.

  She was always going, gone, baby, gone, only to return weeks, sometimes months, later, bringing presents and guilt wrapped up in bright paper and tied up with ribbons.

  For six years, Erika did not feel like anyone’s mother.

  For six years, Erika watched her own mother sprout affection in a place that had been barren. Erika watched her mother and her daughter play together in the garden of her childhood home, making memories that should have been hers.

  ‘It really is too bad this girl will grow up with no father,’ her mother had said once.

  ‘I grew up without a dad,’ Erika had replied.

  ‘That’s not true, you had a dad. He died, but you had one.’

  ‘Well, she had a father and he is dead too.’

  ‘He is …’

  ‘He is fucking dead to me and to her. He’s dead to us, right,’ Erika said, louder than she’d meant to.

  For six years, Erika was on her own, and then one day she thought about the way the kid would put up her arms to be picked up and fall into hysterical giggle fits when she was tired. She thought about the little frames around her eyes, and about eyes that were not spectacular but calm and mild.

  Erika told a stranger at some party how she had a daughter, and when the stranger did not believe her, she wondered if it was really true, so she left the party and drove to her mother’s house to make sure.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ her mother had opened the door, bleary-eyed with sleep. ‘Are you drunk? Jesus Christ, Erika, you’re drunk.’

  She stepped inside, expecting Erika to follow, but Erika did not move.

  ‘I want her back,’ Erika said.

  Her mother turned to face her, looking brittle, the sleep now vanished from her eyes. She did not seem surprised, but told Erika to be serious. She told Erika to think about the child and be reasonable.

  ‘I want her back,’ Erika said again.

  Erika stepped inside and rushed up the stairs, her mother following behind, urging her to not be foolish, to not wake the baby in the middle of the night. Outside the kid’s bedroom, her anger shattered into desperation.

  ‘Please don’t do this … She needs me, she needs me. Oh God please … I’m phoning the police,’ and she stumbled off to her own bedroom.

  Erika crept into the kid’s room and gently woke her, smoothing her hair and saying ‘sweetheart’ again and again. The kid blinked a few times, confused and, on seeing Erika, smiled and touched her face. In moments she was wide awake and reaching for her glasses.

  ‘We’re going on a trip,’ Erika said and lifted her.

  And now she was driving in the slow lane with the kid asleep in the passenger’s seat, her mouth open and her glasses askew.

  What had she thought?

  Had she thought there’d be a place for them? That they’d wake up together in the mornings and Erika would make breakfast? Scrambled eggs and pancakes? That she’d lead the kid by the hand up pleasant hills to school, two little steps in black patent shoes for every one of Erika’s.

  The kid stirred in her sleep, and Erika remembered her own mother making pancakes and smiling, calling her ‘baby’.

  ‘Lilly …’ Erika whispered, ‘Lilly …’

  Lilly opened her eyes and looked at her, and Erika knew that another goodbye was coming, but this time not because she was nobody’s mother.

  866

  Mrs Copland say I must write journal to practise English. She say it good to write every day. She say it help us think more English. I ask if it help us think Australian and she smile. She smile only with her lips. Her eyes cold and far away like rocks on bottom of river.

  I live with Mr Omar and wife in Perth. Wife is maybe thirty-five. She only five year older but she talk to me like you talk to little child.

  I sleep in room with boxes. From my window I see neighbour house. Neighbour is Mr Cole. Every morning Mr Cole squeeze big belly into small car and drive to work. Mrs Cole try to make grass grow. All day she in garden with pink gloves looking after sand. Sometime when she see me she nod head. Mr Cole always shake head when he see me. He shake head and say ‘damn reffos’ or he shake head and stare at me with lips curled like angry dog.

  Mr and Mrs Cole have daughter. They call her Georgie and she fourteen or fifteen year old. She smoke cigarettes and tell mother to go to hell. Every night I see her jump out of bedroom window. She come back early morning and sometime a boy come back with her and they stand outside window and hug and kiss. They stand for long time and boy always say ‘stay a bit longer, you don’t have to go’ and she say that she have to go because her mum check on her in the mor
ning. Then boy help her jump up on plastic table and back into house.

  I ask Mrs Copland why kids talk bad and act bad and she tell me not to worry about that. She tell me I not understand English to know bad. I learn English when I little child, I say. I read poem and newspaper with my father. Mrs Copland smile and say ‘sweetheart, I am trying to help you people’.

  Mrs Copland call everyone ‘sweetheart’ but she not look at me when she say it and I feel like she telling lie. I talk with Somali lady in class and she say yes, yes, they do that here. They smile with cold eyes and they say ‘love’ and ‘darling’ with voice but not with heart. Lady hold my hand when she talk and she tell me about her baby back home. She ask me about my home and I tell her it here. She laugh and say no, no, this not your home, this home for Australian people or English people, people with white skin from cold countries, people who go to beach and listen to boom-boom-boom music, people who speak proper, and people who know other people who speak proper.

  Maybe I between homes. My mother home is dust. It used to be big house, with blue tiles in yard and many flowers. It used to be full of cousins and aunties and uncles and everyone laughing and eating and talking. People always come to my mother house and they drink tea with my father, and they pray together and talk this and that together. Mother tell father to be quiet with this and that. She say to him to whisper this and that. But he say it wrong to not speak. He say we great people and great people must know to speak and think. He not scared. He talk this and that until I wake up with little sister crying and shaking me and saying ‘komak, komak, someone break door’. And I take little sister in arms and run out into night and rocks hurt my feet like glass but I run and run to hills and stay there until morning time. And when morning come my mother home dust. It still there and garden still there, but my mother and father dead and my brothers arrested. My auntie not let me inside but her dress and hands and feet covered in blood and I get down on knees and kiss her feet and I not hear anything and not remember anything.

  I not want home that is dust. I not want home that blow away in wind and wash away in rain. I want strong home. I want Australian home. I want to speak proper so I can speak not proper. I want to listen to boom-boom-boom music and go to beach and burn meat.