Ghost Child

by Caroline Overington

  Oh, how men can pretend! And who can blame them? He probably did need, more than anything, to ejaculate, right there and then, with me or into the palm of his hand or the flesh of a watermelon; anything would do. How could I know that, though? Desperate not to disappoint, I put my hands over his penis. It was wet – I didn’t expect that – and there was a smell I didn’t recognise.

  ‘Pull on it, pull on it,’ he said. He leaned back against another of the sleeping bags. I got onto my knees, but in doing so, looked up and saw one of his mates at the zipped fly-screen door of the tent, grinning at me. I dropped back and pulled a sleeping bag toward my chest.

  ‘They’re looking!’ I said.

  Dicko had been trying to get his jeans off, but flat on his back with the material tight around his thighs he’d been unable to. He got awkwardly and angrily to his knees and punched the face through the mesh.

  ‘Piss off, will you?’ he said, zipping the tent shut.

  ‘They’re dickheads,’ he said. ‘They’re jealous. They wish they were here with you.’ His hands were tugging at my jeans, and suddenly, his fingers were inside me. I was startled by the wetness; had not known it was there. He was moaning, ‘Oh man, my balls, my balls.’ Then, in a different voice altogether, ‘You got a franger?’ I shook my head. ‘You on the pill?’ No.

  ‘Suck me off, then,’ he said. ‘Please, I’m in agony, man.’

  It occurred to me that he didn’t know my name. I put my mouth over him. I couldn’t see but could clearly hear the other guys outside the tent, simulating sex, grunting like pigs and falling against the mesh tent in hysterics.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Dicko, ignoring them. ‘Fuck, fuck.’

  I was frightened of what he was going to do in my mouth. I had learnt about semen in school: it was millions of little tadpoles floating in syrup. How would that feel? But it was fine. I gagged but did not vomit. I slipped my mouth off his sagging penis.

  Dicko rolled onto his back and stared at the roof of the tent. His friends were cackling outside. ‘Fucking morons,’ he said. After an age he added, ‘Don’tcha think you better go back to your place, in case, like, your mum comes to check on you?’

  One of his mates began fiddling at the zip of the tent, saying, ‘Hey, spunky, can you help me out with my blue balls?’ There was a cascade of laughter. ‘Fuck you,’ he said to them.

  I heard, ‘Cradle snatcher!’

  To me, Dicko said, ‘Get dressed. Come on, you gotta go.’ I didn’t understand his sudden change of mood. I was eager for another of his deep kisses, but when I leaned forward and tried to get one, he shoved me away. He was unzipping the tent, crawling out, not looking behind. I sat back for a minute, confused, then crawled out of the tent, but Dicko wasn’t with the guys still sitting around the fire, shoving each other. He was in the distance, his back to me.

  ‘You still up for some?’ one of the others said. I felt my face turn crimson. I went back to my demountable. There was a note from the social worker. It said, ‘Don’t wander off!’ I got into bed and spent some time feeling myself, to see what was different. Branches slapped against the tin roof. I heard what I believed to be peals of laughter, although it was probably wind, howling against the windows.

  In the morning, I put on my school uniform and some mascara I had squirrelled away from one of the homes where I’d lived, and walked slowly and deliberately by the site where Dicko and his mates had been camped, but they had shot through in the night, worried, I suppose, about the ramifications. I was jail bait, after all. Black coals smouldered in the half-keg. I picked up an empty beer can, one that had been crushed flat underfoot, and put it in my bag. For some years afterwards I kept it, because I thought that it might have Dicko’s saliva on it, and that was romantic to me.

  I didn’t tell anyone that I’d sort of lost my innocence. Who would I tell? The girls at school? No. There was a code at school regarding sex: the other girls had long ago decided that it was okay to have sex with somebody you were ‘going around with’ but not with some stranger. I’d be called a slut or a moll, and the only way to avoid it was to stay chaste, or find a boyfriend. And so began a pattern. I would meet a guy and become convinced that he could see something in me that others couldn’t. I believed – every time, despite the evidence – that he’d come to rescue me. We’d have sex, and I’d be hurt and surprised when I never saw him again or, if I did, he pretended not to know me.

  I never mentioned Jacob to any of the men who slept with me, but of course I knew, in the way you just do, that rumours about what had happened in the house on DeCastella Drive were rife on the Barrett Estate. Only once do I recall anybody raising the matter with me directly. The social workers didn’t talk about it and neither did the teachers. No, it came up after I’d left Barrett Primary and was in my first year at Barrett High, with many of the same kids who’d been at the primary school with me, but who had only then started to hear and understand the gossip their parents had been trading for years.

  I was in the girls’ toilet block. It was a classic of the time: there was a stainless-steel trough, six bubblers, one of which squirted water into your eye. The smell was typical, too: urine and diarrhoea, masked with antiseptic. The concrete floor had puddles from the morning hose-out. The ceiling would certainly have been marked by those wads of scrunched wet toilet paper we used to throw up there and leave to dry.

  A gaggle of girls was hanging by the troughs, sharing cigarettes. It was the custom in those days to keep your packet in your school bag and then, at recess, hand it around and hope you didn’t ‘drop’ too many, or give too many away. If there was only one or two in the packet, we’d share them between us, passing the butt from lip to lip, trying not to be the one who made it soggy. We talked non-stop and I can’t remember any of the things we said.

  On this day, one of the girls, a popular girl, Terri, who had already been kept down once and was a year away from her first pregnancy, announced that she had got a bra. She was the first to get one and we – me and the other, flatter girls – were keen to see it. I was still built like a boy, a small boy with nipples that had budded and chafed against my T-shirt. Sometimes there was a mysterious and embarrassing stain in my pants.

  Terri was proud of her boobs and her bra but she wasn’t going to show it off for nothing.

  ‘I’ll show it for a ciggie,’ she said. ‘You girls get me a ciggie, you can see.’

  Somebody had a spare cigarette; it was pulled from the packet and handed to Terri, who put it behind her ear. She was wearing the Barrett uniform – a chequered tunic with buttons down the front – and it had been some time since she could properly close her buttons. Her swelling breasts forced the front of the dress out, and brought up the hem. Make-up was banned but Terri wore it. We all did. Black eyeliner was popular then, drawn around the rim of the eye and along the lower lashes. The teachers would complain, especially when it rained.

  ‘Wipe that off. You look like raccoons,’ they’d say.

  We thought we looked as good as Prince, maybe better. In her too-short uniform with the gaping buttons and her painted face, Terri would have looked like a girl from a Prince music video.

  Terri made a production of her great Bra Reveal. First, she chose the girls who would be allowed to stay in the toilet block. ‘Larissa can stay, Lisa can stay, Sharon has to go, and I’m not doing anything while Rebecca is here.’

  I wasn’t among those supposed to stay and look, but nor was I banished. Terri told me to stand by the door and keep an eye out for teachers. We wouldn’t have much time: the girls who had been evicted from the toilets had run into the schoolyard, and were telling the boys, ‘Terri’s gonna show her bra!’ Those who weren’t grossed out had formed a group, and were grinning and jostling each other, daring themselves to come closer and get an eyeful.

  I kept one eye on the schoolyard. Terri said, ‘Is anyone coming?’ and I said, ‘Coast is clear.’

  Terri unbuttoned her tunic and, with one quick movement, pulled both si
des of her dress apart. I caught the briefest glimpse of a bra – an impossibly risqué lace bra with purple satin – and Terri’s breasts sitting proud and plump in the cups. It was so lovely, I gasped. What had I expected? A flesh-coloured cloth bra, probably. A bra like those I’d seen hanging on the clothes line at the Christians, with no fancy detail. I’m sure I wasn’t the only girl who was impressed, but the group turned to stare at me.

  ‘What are you, a lezzo or something?’ said Terri.

  I said, ‘Rack off.’

  She said, ‘You’re supposed to be watching the door.’

  I’d forgotten that. The boys were right outside now, in full holler. ‘Show us your tits, Terri! Show us your tits!’

  How it spiralled from there into an argument about Jake, I can’t tell you, but Terri, flanked by some other girls, started having a go.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ she said.

  I said, ‘Nothing. I was watching the door.’

  Terri said, ‘You were looking at me like a lezzo.’

  Another girl said, ‘She’s a weirdo,’ and another chimed in, ‘She’s one of those kids from DeCastella Drive.’

  ‘Her brother got killed.’

  ‘Her mum’s in prison.’

  ‘My mum says that everybody reckons she did it.’

  ‘Hey, freak, what happened to your brother? Why don’t you tell everyone what happened?’

  The girls had formed a hostile circle around me. I felt hot and uncertain and, again, I had that feeling: run, Lauren, run, but the boys were yowling like hyenas at the door.

  I needed a teacher. I could see from where I was standing that one was on the way, attracted by the noise. I waited for her to break into the circle, but she didn’t rush, she meandered, and even when she arrived, all she said was, ‘Okay, everybody, show’s over. Don’t hang around the toilets, it’s not clean, it’s not hygienic, why would you want to hang in here when it’s so lovely outside?’

  The boys split. The girls, with Terri out front, strode past me with chins skyward. One of them knocked me with her elbow as she passed.

  ‘You okay, Lauren?’ the teacher said.

  I was okay. I’ve always been okay … just not quite normal and not sure why.

  Harley Cashman

  Call me old-fashioned, but I’m the kind of guy who likes to read a newspaper. Mum says I started reading The Sun – the comics, anyway – when I was about six and I’ve kept up the habit ever since. Now I live in New South Wales I can’t get The Sun, so I have to get The Telegraph. I don’t get the Herald. My old man, Tony, tells me I ought to read the Herald, but in my opinion, a newspaper has gotta fit against the windscreen, so you can read it while you’re sitting in the car.

  Anyway, I’m on this job site, north of Sydney, way up north, actually, with the Telegraph in the cab of the ute. I always start from the back, since in my view sport is the main news of the day. I’m turning toward the front, when suddenly, there’s this picture of a very familiar lookin’ chick. At first I think, ‘Oh, maybe she’s one of the ex-girlfriends,’ but then I look underneath the picture and the name just jumps out at me: Lauren Cameron.

  Straightaway I think, ‘You can call her what you like, but that’s not Lauren Cameron. That’s Lauren Cashman and that, sir, is my sister.’ It had been a while since I’d seen her – twelve years, maybe more – but memory’s a powerful thing and I had no doubt: she could call herself Cameron or Kalamazoo, I’d still know it was her.

  In the picture, she’s walkin’ down the steps of Sydney’s Coroner’s Court, and the story says something like ‘Sound of Love’. I didn’t quite get what all that was about, but I think, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to catch up? Maybe I should give her a call.’ Then again, I didn’t have her number. You might think the Department would have kept me up-to-date with her contact details, but if you do think that, you’ve got a skewed view of how the Department works. They probably couldn’t tell me their own phone number. So, no, I didn’t have her number. But I think, ‘How hard can it be to find out? The reporter that wrote the story will surely have it.’ I call up Directory Assistance and ask them for the Telegraph’s number, and then I ring up and after I get through all the bullshit – ‘Do you want to place a classified? Do you want editorial?’ – I get to an operator and I say, ‘I want to speak to the bird who wrote this story,’ and when the reporter comes on the line, I say, ‘That photo you’ve got, Lauren Cameron, that’s not the right name, and I know, because that’s a picture of my sister. Her name’s Lauren Cashman, and I’m Harley Cashman, and I’m her brother, and I’ve actually lost touch with her and I didn’t realise she was in Sydney, because we’re from Melbourne, but I want to call her and have you got a number?’

  I can tell the reporter’s a bit surprised, but I’ve got a way with women and eventually she says, ‘All right, if you’re her brother, why don’t you turn up at the Coroner’s Court because that’s where she’s gonna be, all week, cos she’s givin’ evidence at some kind of inquest, and she’s gotta be there,’ and I think, ‘Yeah. Okay. All right. Why don’t I do that? Give Lauren the fright of her life.’

  So I say to my crew, ‘Can you guys finish up the job here? I gotta go to Sydney.’ And I’m thinking to myself, ‘No, this is gonna be too bloody funny, fronting up at court and saying, “Hi, sis.”’

  Strange thing is I don’t call Mum. I can’t say why.

  So I spend the rest of the day in the ute, driving down to Sydney and thinkin’, ‘On one hand, yeah, this is probably not such a good idea after all,’ and then, ‘Oh, actually, it’s a very cool idea,’ and, finally, six hours after I leave home, when I’m stuck in peak hour, I’m thinking, ‘No, I was right, this is a bad idea.’

  But I’m stuck with it now so I park the ute near the Coroner’s Court and bunk down for the night. Then, in the morning, I wander on down there. I have to go through a metal detector. I have to ask where the right room is. There are press everywhere, and then I see this girl standing there, this slip of a thing with a mop of white hair, shaking and looking absolutely terrified, and I think, ‘Yep, that’s my sister.’ Couldn’t be anyone else. I mean, we’re like a couple of snowballs, and the only difference is our size. I’m a big bastard. I take up a lot of space, even in a conversation. I’m the kind of guy, when I’m there you know I’m there, if you know what I mean. And Lauren’s not like that. She shrinks back. She’s part of the furniture. She’s small. Now I know her better, I can tell you everything about her is small. She talks small. She cooks small. She leaves me hungry. She has this dish she makes, where she cuts pork into tiny squares. It’s like we’re in a recession. When she writes, the letters are all scrunched together. I’ve got this fantastic signature. People are always telling me: how do you get that on the back of a card? And the first time I saw Lauren sign a bill for something, it was all tight, dark writing and it took her like, forever, to get the thing out.

  Anyway, I bowled on up to her and said, ‘Mate, it’s me,’ and she looked at me blankly. That took me back a bit. I thought she’d recognise me. So I go, ‘It’s me, it’s Harley,’ and I can see she’s thinking, ‘Who is this lunatic?’

  And then she bursts into tears. And I think, ‘Oh man, what’s all this about?’ She just bursts into tears and kind of falls against me, and that kind of freaks me out. My idea had been, go down there, catch up with my sister – like, how cool is that? We’ll have a beer or whatever – and suddenly, she’s trying to get in under my jacket or something, and people are looking at us, and she’s saying, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I gotta go, I gotta get home.’ And she’s off, and out the door, and getting into a cab, and this guy, a reporter, is saying to me, ‘Where’s she going? She can’t go.’ But actually, she did just take off and disappear, and I was off my nut about it, thinking, ‘Shit, what did they do to her in there? Or, like, was it me that freaked her out?’ But then I saw what they were saying about her in the paper and I thought, ‘Jesus, I better go get this girl.’

 
I tracked her down easy enough. She was livin’ in a shed out the back of somebody else’s house, and when I walked in, I found her curled up like a baby on her bed and she wouldn’t move. She was in a panic about photographers. She kept saying she didn’t want to be in the paper any more and, given that I’d had time to catch up with what was going on, I thought, ‘That’s just about inevitable,’ but after a while I managed to talk her around. I threw a jumper over her head and we got into the car and then we just drove. I figured, ‘I’ll head to Mum’s.’ I mean, I had two choices: take Lauren back to my place, up near the Queensland border where I was sharing with a bunch of building guys, or take her straight to Mum’s. It was a no-brainer. We hit the freeway. At first, we didn’t talk much, we just listened to some music. I thought, ‘This is weird, she’s my sister and, like, we’ve got nothin’ to say to each other.’ It wasn’t really until we stopped at a petrol station, about an hour in, when Lauren got out of the car, with nobody around, that she started to loosen up. I remember this: she bought one of those plastic bags of mixed lollies, with some lolly teeth, and she put ’em over her own teeth and grinned at me with these fake teeth and that’s when I thought, ‘Well, she’s either completely lost it, or actually, it’s gonna be fine.’ And it was fine.

  We got back in the car and continued along, talking crap, mostly – look at that horse by the roadside, look at the kangaroos, and Lauren told me a whole long story about how she met our dad once, and how he was into women and motorbikes, which was kind of interesting – and by the time the night came on I’d even managed to make her laugh a bit. But she was worn out. I could see that, so I thought, best thing to do is get her some sleep, so I said, ‘We’ll pull in at Gundagai. No point trying to do it in one go.’ See, it takes at least twelve hours to drive from Sydney to Melbourne, and Gundagai is as good as halfway. I’d planned to go two-thirds of the way, maybe even as far as Kelly Country – where the bushranger, Ned Kelly, had his last stand before they hung the bastard – but Lauren was weary and I was, too.