Flesh & Blood

by A. E. Dooland

  In the end, I couldn’t figure it out because I couldn’t fucking think straight. “I’m sorry,” I forced out of my lips. “I’m just—money is a big problem for me right now, and I’m just—”

  “—Taking it out on someone who isn’t the problem, which is kind of the story of my life…” Bree finished quietly. She was shaking. “Look, if you’re starting to really regret buying me the tablet, and the necklace, and my phone and stuff, and that’s why you’re so angry, I’ll just sell them and give you the money. I’d rather get kicked out of school because I can’t do the homework than feel like I’m the reason you’re so stressed out.”

  I closed my eyes and let that sink in, my mouth firmly shut. That settled it: I wasn’t telling her anything until she’d graduated. Not now that she’d seen me like this.

  I let her lead me inside, and I had a long, hot shower because I was sore, exhausted, and my head was full of cotton wool.

  When I was done and I went back to the bedroom to put my pyjamas on, she was sitting tensely on the edge of the bed, holding her phone and waiting for me. Her top button was done up and her tie was straight. Even though that was exactly what I wanted, I felt kind of awful about seeing it. She looked so uncomfortable.

  “It’s not about what you wear,” I tried to quietly explain. “You could honestly walk around the house in a bikini if you—”

  “I know,” she said, and then turned those big blue eyes on me. “Just don’t ever yell at me when you’re stressed out, okay? Like, I can’t take any of it, not even you raising your voice for a second. It reminds me of home.”

  I sat down beside her, trying to smother a wave of self-hatred. Part of me could almost not believe she was still talking to me after how I'd yelled at her; I don't know if I'd talk to me. I nodded. “I’m sorry.” I put a warm hand on the cool skin of her knee, and squeezed it. “Are you okay?”

  She shrugged, seeming a bit distracted. She was turning her phone over in her hands a bit anxiously, I thought. “Min,” she began, “how desperate would you say you are to get a job?”

  Was this a trick question? “Very desperate.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I thought,” she said, and then looked really guilty. “So I did something.”

  I frowned. “’Something’?”

  She nodded. “I know somewhere that has jobs that they can never get people to stay in, so I just thought I’d call and check to see if they were still recruiting.”

  I glanced at my phone. “At 8pm at night?”

  She grimaced. “Yeah. Anyway, I don’t think you’re going to like working there, in fact, I think you’ll hate it, and so I was like, ‘why am I doing this to Min?’ and then I’m like, ‘well, it’s only for like a month or two until she starts uni’, and then I was like, ‘why would I want the person I love to be unhappy even for a couple of months?’ and then I was like, ‘Min’s really unhappy anyway, she’s going to be really unhappy without work, maybe this is the lesser of two unhappies.”

  I watched her suspiciously. “So you just found work for me, just like that?” She nodded. “Who’s it with?”

  She looked up at me, grimacing. “My mum.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Following the flow-on from Mum taking my fucking money, I would have been ready to start work anywhere the following day. According to Bree, though, her mum had to sell the idea of me working there to her boss and her husband, who seemed personally affronted by the fact I didn’t want to work on the factory floor with him.

  “He just thinks it’s stupid to take a $40k per year job when you could have a $55k one,” Bree told me as we sat in my car by Cloverfield early on Friday morning, passing a thermos of instant coffee between us.

  “I am willing to sacrifice $15k a year to not work with your dad,” I said, and then checked my phone again; I probably had another five or so minutes before I needed to leave for work.

  When I locked the screen afterwards, my phone was dark; that was still so disorienting. No flashing lights, no notifications. Nothing. It was only when Bree stopped sipping her coffee and frowned across at me that I realised I was doing ‘that teeth-grindy thing’ again.

  She nodded at my phone. “Isn’t that technically what you wanted? Her to stop hassling you?”

  Not like this, I thought, and then put my phone back in my breast pocket. Not with this feeling hanging over me that she was planning something. “Sure,” I said. “The silent treatment from my mother. Who doesn’t want that?”

  Bree took a thoughtful sip from the thermos, her fingers peeking out from under the long sleeves of her jumper. “Well, I hope you don’t hate working with my mum, too,” she said. “Like, not that I’m nominating her for Mother of the Year or anything, but she got you a job, right? She can be okay. At least she’s not scary like Dad.”

  “She tried to T-bone my car at 60 kilometres an hour.”

  “She thought you were a debt collector,” Bree reminded me. “I mean, I don’t think you’re going to have, like, an amazing time or anything, but hopefully it won’t be awful working with her. At least not Frost-awful.”

  “Hopefully,” I said. At least I wouldn’t have to be out like I was with the construction guys; that job might have gone very differently if they’d continued to think I was a guy. “As long as no one guesses I’m female.”

  Bree gave me the once-over. “They won’t,” she said easily, like it was no big deal.

  “Some people do,” I reminded her, shifting nervously in my seat. “And it will be broad daylight, and there will be lots of people.”

  “Yeah, and you’re wearing your packer,” Bree told me, and nodded down at my crotch. “So all those people will literally just glance at you, see your short hair, your flat chest, and the lump in your pants and never even question it.” She passed me the thermos so I could have a mouthful. “Honestly, Min, you’re overestimating how much they know about gender. The people Mum works with are all old. It was this enormous scandal when their old boss came out because most of them had never met a gay person before, so I guarantee none of them have any idea what ‘transgender’ is. It’ll be fine. You look like a guy, they will literally never think to wonder if maybe you aren’t. I mean, seriously: Andrej was standing right there saying ‘Min is a girl!’ and Mum and Dad just thought he was insulting you.”

  That was a very good point. It was also very reassuring that there seemed to be no need to come out to them anymore; honestly, coming out to Mr Dejanovic was right up top on my list of things that I would sell my soul to avoid. I had a mouthful of coffee while I thought about that, and then passed the thermos back to Bree.

  She accepted it from me and tipped the last of the coffee down her throat. Putting the thermos back in the cup holder, she sighed. “I think that means I should probably go.” She peered resentfully down her body at her tucked-in, buttoned-up shirt and her straightened tie.

  I touched her thigh. “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  She sighed again. “He’s going to think he’s won when he sees me like this.”

  “Your Maths teacher?” She nodded. “Let him. Maybe he won’t bother you as much.”

  Bree turned around and gave me a really strange look. “Who are you?” she asked, and I was about to reply when she scrunched up her face and put a hand on my arm to silence me. “Sorry,” she said before I could speak. “Sorry, that was totally rude. I’m just—” She exhaled. “I have no idea about the Maths homework I’m supposed to have done, and he’s going to pick on me and be nasty about it. Part of me just wants to hide in the library...” At my expression, she added, “Don’t worry, I won’t. I just feel like it.”

  “It will be over in two months,” I promised her. “You just need to hold tight until then and try and get the best grades you can.”

  She watched me for a few seconds, her expression unreadable. “Yeah, okay,” she said a bit vaguely, and then opened the door and gave me a very chaste kiss in case anyone was looking.

  I stayed put unti
l I saw her disappear inside the grounds—without the usual spring in her step, I noticed—before pulling away from the kerb.

  The drive from Bellevue Hill out west to the factory was long, and it reminded me of all those times I’d spent ages in the car to get to Henry’s place in the suburbs. As I drove along the highway, I watched all the apartment buildings get smaller and the trees get bigger, and when my GPS told me to turn off into an industrial estate, I think I’d been driving for nearly 45 minutes.

  The area the factory was in was a complex with a dedicated secure car park. When I drove cautiously past the gatehouse, though, there was no one inside it and the gate was wide open. I felt like I was trespassing. I found a park and got out of my car, self-consciously smoothing down my shirt and walking towards what I thought was probably reception.

  The receptionist was a girl who was about Bree’s age and she made me wait for a couple of seconds while she finished texting someone. “Oh,” she said when she finally looked up, “You’re Briana Dejanovic’s boyfriend, right? Lee something?” I noticed she pronounced ‘Dejanovic’ the same way Bree did; she was probably Serbian, too.

  I nodded. “Min.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. “Hang on, I’ll buzz Vera.” It took me a second to remember that that was how Mrs Dejanovic had introduced herself to me.

  I loitered uncomfortably in the small reception area while I waited for her to show up and collect me.

  Compared to the enormous and sleek atrium at Frost HQ, the reception area in—I glanced up at the sign—‘Radic Automotive Manufacturing’ was small, tired and dated. There was a single couch opposite the reception desk, and its faux-leather cushions were cracking and peeling. The carpet hadn’t fared much better; it had a couple of suspicious stains on it, and the fake flowers on the side table beside a stack of two-year-old magazines hadn’t been dusted in some time. The receptionist was on her mobile phone again, too.

  “Min?”

  I looked up, my heart pounding. Mrs Dejanovic came bustling into the reception area, looking right at me. She was wearing a floral shirt and a pair of slacks, and that made me feel really self-conscious; I was in a full suit again. I swallowed. I hoped it wouldn’t make her look too hard at me in all this daylight.

  She nodded in greeting, and then her eyes travelled up and down me—for a second I panicked that I might be readable as female—but that wasn’t her reaction. “Smart casual is okay,” she said about my suit and then gestured for me to follow her.

  To get to the office, she had to lead me along a walkway at the edge of the factory floor. The floor itself was huge and divided into separate areas with different machines, and there was a huge arched ceiling with enormous ventilation fans spinning above everyone. The machines formed some sort of complex assembly line and there were dozens of people working on it. Mr Dejanovic works out there somewhere, I thought, casting my eyes across the floor. I couldn’t see him, though. Maybe it wasn’t his shift.

  The offices were enclosed on the other side of the factory—thank god, because the air on the factory floor smelt positively carcinogenic—and there were windows on all sides. It was all open plan with about ten or fifteen mismatched desks and wobbly partitions, and about the same number of mismatched people working at them. All their faces looked up at me as we entered. I felt like a deer in headlights.

  “So this is Briana’s boyfriend at last?” someone asked, pronouncing Bree’s name with a trilled ‘r’. The woman speaking had dyed brown hair and grey roots peeking through, and when she stood up and walked around her desk to come and shake my hand, she had a bit of a hunch. “He looks very sharp, Vera! I like a man who can dress!” Despite the fact she was giving me a cheeky smile, she was probably about sixty and a grandmother, so I didn’t think she was genuinely flirting with me. She was just being nice, so I managed a polite smile at her as we shook hands.

  Mrs Dejanovic gestured at the lady who was speaking to me. “This is Ljiljana,” she told me, which explained her accent, “She does payroll and rosters.”

  I think Ljiljana noticed my expression. “Just ‘Lilly’ is fine,” she promised, and then went and sat back down. “Anyway, it’s lovely to meet you! We were all worried about Briana for a while. That girl has a bit of a wild streak.” She grinned at Mrs Dejanovic. “I wonder who she gets that from!”

  “Definitely from my husband,” Mrs Dejanovic told her flatly, and then led me over to an empty desk. Because I must have looked a bit puzzled about that exchange, Mrs Dejanovic gestured towards Lilly. “She’s my—how do you say?—my ‘aunt-in-law’? I don’t know the English word.”

  “I don’t think there is an English word for that,” I told her. Korean probably had a specific word, too, but I didn’t know it either.

  Lilly was still chatting away, and I think it was supposed to be to us. “Anyway, Briana’s always been rebellious, so if her idea of rebellion is dating an Asian boy, well, good. Let her think she’s doing something radical. Less chance of her actually doing something radical like heroin or getting her nose pierced, I say.” I wasn’t sure how to take that.

  After I’d hung my jacket over my chair, Mrs Dejanovic introduced me one by one to the dozen or so other people in the office. They were all women, every single one. A good chunk of them had what I supposed were Serbian names, too—I thought it was a bit rude to ask—but there were also a couple of Anglos and two Indian ladies who were sisters. Actually, there seemed to be a lot of family in this factory. As people were introducing themselves, they also added tidbits of extra information like, ‘My husband works on the floor’, and pointed out other people in the office that they were of some relation to. The only person who wasn’t related to anyone was their boss, the general manager, and he was elsewhere meeting with clients, apparently.

  After introductions, Mrs Dejanovic sat me down at my desk and went through all the usual orientation stuff; where the evacuation points were, who the first aid officers were, and how to get to all of the toilets. Then she helped me log in and explained what I’d be doing. As far as I could ascertain, my position was a very ad-hoc one, bits and pieces of all the easy stuff other people didn’t have time to do, which was mostly data entry, filing and keeping various spreadsheets up to date. Nothing I was going to have any trouble doing at all, so by mid-morning she’d already finished teaching me what I needed to know.

  Satisfied she didn’t have to supervise me anymore, she rolled sideways to her own desk to get stuck into her own work. Around her desk, I caught a glimpse of colours and decorations, so I peeked over the partition to get a better look. Her desk was plastered in cheat-sheets and knick-knacks—the hallmark of someone who’d been in a job for a long time—and while I was waiting for the ridiculously slow internal database system to finally load, I found myself browsing everything she had there. Most of the walls were just codes and data sheets she needed to refer to, but she had a collection of little crystal animals underneath her monitor, and in a frame beside her desk, a brightly coloured photo full of people I recognised.

  It was a family photo taken in summer, with two laughing parents: Mr and Mrs Dejanovic looking a lot younger and thinner. Mrs Dejanovic’s hair fell over her shoulders in curls like Bree’s, and Mr Dejanovic was smiling broadly under his moustache. At their feet were two blond children—a boy, probably about seven or eight, with his curls cropped, and a little girl of about four or five with her curls wild about her face. She had one arm wrapped around Mrs Dejanovic’s leg, giving the camera a big smile and proudly displaying a gap from two missing front teeth. Bree, I thought. Even as a four-year-old, she was absolutely unmistakable. They were all standing barefoot on a lush green lawn in the bright sunlight, with white roses and red bricks behind them. It was one summer’s afternoon, frozen forever in time, with everyone laughing and hugging.

  I was so busy staring at it that I didn’t notice when Mrs Dejanovic looked up at me. Inhaling sharply, I looked away from it. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  I couldn�
�t read her expression, but she didn’t look angry. “Beautiful, wasn’t she?” she said quietly, maybe thinking I’d just been looking at Bree.

  I smiled faintly, wondering whether or not I should agree with my girlfriend’s mother on that; I did, anyway. “Nothing’s changed.”

  As soon as I’d said it, though, I realised what a terrible thing it was to say in the context of their family, and all the blood drained from my face.

  Mrs Dejanovic watched me for a moment, eyes veiled, and then went back to her spreadsheets. Cursing myself, I turned back to my own screen.

  It was a bit difficult to concentrate, to be honest. This office seemed to have a culture of constant talking—not an issue in itself, but I was trying to enter long strings of numbers—and at any one time there were several conversations taking place. Mrs Dejanovic was absent from most of them; unnaturally, I thought, her eyes glazed as she mechanically cross-checked purchase orders. She didn’t even smile at me when I put some documents I’d entered on her desk, and it was difficult not to take that personally.

  She hates me, I thought, watching her out of the corner of my eye and feeling terrible about the ‘nothing’s changed’ comment. I wasn’t sure if I really believed that she hated me, but the complete and total lack of warmth made me feel really insecure. I hoped I hadn’t blown it with her.

  Lilly was the opposite. “It’s so great having a man around,” she gushed after I’d helped her reach something that was on top of the four-drawer filing cabinets. “Would you like a mandarin? The tree in my yard is dropping them faster than we can eat them!”

  I took one to be polite, and then sat awkwardly and ate it while she fawned over me. It was harmless; in exactly the same way Sarah and I usually flirted. Nevertheless, everyone was entertained by it, and when Lilly said, “I wish my late husband had been as tall as this boy here!” I decided to take a risk.