The Last Time We Spoke

by Fiona Sussman

‘How come we only get half each?’ Anika complained.

  ‘Yeah, how come?’ Cody said, copying his sister.

  ‘’Cos someone ate most of the bread last night, didn’t they?’ their mum said, giving Ben an accusing glance.

  Ben dropped his head forward, letting his long black fringe fall over his eyes. Everyone was talking too loudly. It was doing his head in. He pulled at a piece of jagged thumbnail and ripped it off with his teeth. The exposed bulge of skin stung as it connected with the cold morning air.

  ‘What’s lungs?’ Cody asked, spraying Anika with crumbs.

  ‘Close your mouth when you eat!’ Anika growled, wiping her face with a dishcloth.

  ‘Lungs are like balloons of air in your chest,’ Lily piped up.

  Cody frowned. ‘I thought they was boobies.’

  A baby started to cry. Ben looked round. He hadn’t even realised that his newest sister, baby Dina, was in the room, propped up in her car seat beside the stove. His mother started rocking the seat with her foot.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell. Can I go back to bed?’ Ben said, pushing out his chair.

  ‘Cut your swearing, kid, and no, you cannot!’ His mother grabbed hold of his sleeve. ‘I’m the one been up working all night. I need you to look after the baby, and Brooke and Cody. The others are going to school.’

  ‘But it’s my birthday,’ Lily said, tears brewing.

  ‘And it’s a school day,’ their mother said, her eyes flashing. ‘I’m not having another run-in with the bloody truant officer!’

  ‘Since when does Cody need looking after?’ Ben complained, yanking his arm away. Cody had been retarded forever. It was nothing new. The doctors at the hospital had told his mum it was because she’d been on the booze when she was pregnant with him. Poor Cody. He had tiny piggy eyes and a flat face, like he’d run into a wall or something. He was clumsy too, always getting the bash for knocking things over and dropping stuff.

  Brooke and Baby weren’t a problem. Ben would be able to escape after giving Baby a bottle; she always slept after a feed. And Brooke could come with him to the gang pad. But not Cody. Cody would blab about everything.

  ‘Since I said so.’

  ‘Why do you bother going to work anyway?’ Ben snapped. ‘You’d get the same on the benefit.’

  He stumbled backwards as he felt the full force of his mother’s hand on the side of his head.

  ‘Cut your cheek,’ she said, coming up close so that he could smell her empty-stomach breath.

  He nearly hit her back, a reflex, but caught himself just in time.

  She glared at him. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you lately, but I’ve had my fill of it.’

  She moved behind Lily and gently swept up Lily’s long hair in her hands. Lily pulled away. Lily was different from the rest of them. She had their same caramel-coloured skin, but her head was a pop-up of fair curls, and she had turquoise eyes the colour of the ocean on a clear day. When she was born, Lil’s dad didn’t believe she was his kid.

  ‘You skank! You fuckin’ ho!’ he’d screamed as Ben’s mum had lain in the hospital bed, fending off his blows.

  He got nine months for assault. That was the last they saw of him. The unfair thing was that Lily probably was his kid. Her fairness didn’t come from some random Pākehā hook-up. Ben had once seen a picture of their grandparents; Lily was the spitting image of her grandmother.

  Ben’s mates were all desperate to get a piece of Lily, but she wasn’t interested in boys. She was weird that way. While the rest of the girls in the hood hung out at the skateboard pit after school, Lil was in her room doing crafty stuff or foraging in rubbish bins outside shops, looking for scraps of material, cork, string, sequins – anything she could turn into something beautiful. Her best creations so far were a pencil case in the shape of a sausage dog, and a purple felt Barney-cum-cute-weird-monster thing, which she slept with every night.

  ‘Maybe Debs can give us a lift to Spotlight after school and you can choose a piece of fabric from the discount bin.’

  ‘Really, Ma?’ Lily said, leaping up, her face beaming for the first time that morning.

  Ben kept picking at his fingernails. He knew he’d get home later to find Lil sobbing in her room. His mum never managed to keep her promises, even though she meant to. She tried to be a good mum.

  Debs lived down the road. She was their mother’s best friend and Ben’s godmother. He didn’t understand the whole godmother thing, especially since no one in his family believed in God. His mother’s take on it was that God had been made up by the government to get people to think there was more to this shitty life than there really was. Anyhow, his mother said Debs was like family. Ben wondered why his mother had to make up family when she didn’t even bother with her own.

  Debs was good value, though. She could make his mum laugh, and Ben liked it when his mother laughed. It thawed the cold, anxious bits inside of him. The only time he didn’t like her laughing was when she was pissed.

  A long day stretched ahead. The crew would think he was hiding out if he didn’t pitch. And he couldn’t miss the build-up to their clash with the GDBs. But he wouldn’t risk taking Cody along.

  There was a loud knocking on the kitchen window. Ben’s whole body jerked.

  ‘It’s Debs!’ cried Lily, running to the back door.

  Ben breathed out. His mother looked at him questioningly. He looked away, avoiding her all-seeing eyes. She could read minds if you gave her half a chance.

  Debs stepped into the room dressed in leopard-skin leggings and a mango-orange T-shirt that hugged the floppy folds of flesh around her midriff. Her morning hair had not yet been tamed and her lime-green fingernails needed a touch-up.

  ‘Well, well, well. So what’s the occasion?’

  ‘It’s Lily’s birthday,’ Cody blurted.

  ‘Lily’s birthday, eh?’ Debs said, wrapping Lily in a tight squeeze. ‘Just as well I popped round for a cup of sugar then, or I’d have missed the party.’

  Ben knocked over his chair and headed for the hallway.

  Debs raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s up with him?’

  His mother whispered something. He turned just in time to catch her rolling her eyes.

  Beyond

  You never met your tīpuna, Benjamin – your beautiful, gracious grandmother. You never experienced the weight of her presence and the wisdom of her words. Auē! For you were not raised within your culture’s kite, and have not known the comfort and constraint of its robust walls, walls that would have protected and held you, restrained and shaped you. You should have been …

  In the beginning, in the time of moa, that giant flightless bird, there was an order, a belonging. This land was marked out by the ridges of mountains and the belly of valleys into rohe – each region inhabited by those who shared a common ancestral tie – a tie which could be traced right back to one of the founding canoes that landed on these shores some eight hundred years ago. This ancestral strand has been woven through generations to form a giant basket holding all in its embrace – those from then and those of now. Months and years are arbitrary, the physical and the spiritual simply part of the same, for all of time is held within its clutch. And all of Māori. Connectedness is everything. Connection to our soil, our people, our past.

  Chapter Nine

  BEN

  ‘Got a problem?’ Tate shouted across the street.

  ‘Yeah, I got a problem. You tagged our turf, you motherfuckers.’

  ‘So what you gonna do about it?’ Tate said, his head tilted, his eyebrows nonchalantly raised. He looked so relaxed he could have been buying smokes at the corner store.

  Ben never felt calm when his gang was about to rumble. He was so pumped up his hands were trembling and his nostrils flaring like a horse waiting in the starting stalls.

  They were standing across the street from the GDBs, the potholed tarmac dividing the night into two. Blue versus red. Ben worshipped his blue bandanna. He could lose his name behind it and be
just eyes. When he tied on the cotton kerchief and his hot breath blew back on him, he knew he was for real, part of something bigger. The clutch of cloth was better than any school certificate. It was a lifetime membership to everything that mattered.

  Tools. Face. Gangsta-ready.

  ‘Gonna kick some arse,’ Simi said not even moving his lips, like some ventriloquist. Then he stepped off the pavement and pimp-rolled into the middle of the road. Halfway across he stopped, pulled the finger at the GDBs, then turned and swung back to his crew.

  ‘Chancer,’ Ben said with a snigger.

  Even though Simi was the youngest in the gang – a ‘noob’ – he had attitude. He came from a family of eleven, the youngest by five years, so he’d had to be a loudmouth to survive. But he was a rock in a bag of pebbles. All his brothers and sisters had done well at school – one was a sales manager at The Warehouse. Another, some celebrity chef in Australia. Then there was Simi. He’d been playing truant for as long as Ben could remember, hanging out at the dairy and earning his grades in dope smoking and tagging. People quickly forgot he was short and baby-faced, because his character filled any space, like the Michelin man.

  Tate cranked up the rap pounding at his feet.

  Don’t bring your bitches, just needles and riches; my place, not yours …

  A dog barked. Ben looked over his shoulder, his eyes fixing on a wrinkly old woman sitting outside on her porch. When she saw him eyeball her, she got out of her chair and scuttled inside like a little cockroach, dead-bolting her front door with a rattle and clunk.

  Ben sniggered. He wasn’t planning on hurting the old duck, but it felt good to have his power respected. Her house was a state house special: peeling, sherbet-green weatherboard box, two windows, one door. Next one along was identical, except mallow-pink. The one after that, Pineapple-Lump yellow.

  ‘This joint is messing with my brain,’ Ben said to no one in particular.

  ‘We gonna put you in the dirt, you cunts,’ Tate shouted across the road, hooking his forefingers into the waist of his jeans.

  ‘Totally,’ Simi said, shaking his short legs like a wrestler readying for a match.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ from across the street. ‘Big words for a pussy army. Go home, it’s past your bedtime.’

  An empty vodka bottle rocketed through the air and shattered, the taunt exploding at Tate’s feet. He didn’t budge. A bubble of blood sprang up on his shin. Slowly and deliberately, he bent down and wiped it off with his forefinger, then stuck the bloodied finger in his mouth and sucked.

  ‘Hey, bros,’ he said turning to the rest of the gang. ‘I taste blood. I say, red is straight dead.’

  ‘All words, no action,’ came the reply from the GDBs’ woolly-haired leader. ‘Trick and treating like some ho. Go to church if you scared of the bash.’

  Ben didn’t see Tate throw the piece of concrete. He just saw it strike the guy in the belly, dropping him instantly. One down. Tate was a smooth operator.

  While the enemy army gathered around their fallen man, the DOAs savoured the satisfaction of their first hit. Then like a pack of wild dogs, the GDBs slunk forward.

  Ben fingered the cold metal in his pocket.

  The flick of knives. The rush of rubber. Fence paling on skull. Wood on bone. War! Sneakers skidding on bitumen. Machetes carving up the night. Dogs barking. Voices roaring. Flesh exploding. Frightened eyes in lolly-coloured boxes peeping out from behind threadbare curtains while the bros ruled.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben spotted someone hoofing Danny. Rage exploded inside his head. Danny was family. No one messed with someone in his gang. Danny, Tate, Simi, Matt, George – they were his love and hate, his every day, his personality and purpose. They were his answer. Without them, he was nothing.

  ‘Cunt!’ he screamed, moving in on the guy with the evil smirk. Ben’s fist connected with his pockmarked face. It felt good. His anger, tonight at least, had found a home.

  His enemy stumbled and fell, before managing to scramble away. Ben picked up a broken bottle and gave chase, dodging and diving through the disorder until he’d caught up with his prey. Then he was bottling the guy, again and again and again. Suddenly a fishing knife came out of nowhere and sliced through Ben’s hoodie, his T-shirt, his skin. He didn’t feel anything at first – just saw his sleeve gaping. Black spots started dancing in front of his eyes, and he realised that the blood dripping into the pool of red was also his – blue mixing with red.

  Grit pressed into his cheek and his ear felt as if it was folded in two. He tried to lift his head to relieve the pain, but it was as heavy as a wheelbarrow full of rocks. The tarmac tilted. He opened his eyes wider, trying to stop the halo of blackness from seeping in.

  ‘It’s the pigs!’ someone shouted above the din. Instantly, the tangle of bodies and roar of hate evaporated, hazy shapes melting into the night, to leave only Ben and the bottled boy behind.

  Ben’s mind cleared as stills from the farmhouse night flashed in front of him. He had to get away.

  He hauled himself up. Spots crowded his vision.

  For a moment, he teetered there in the bubble of red and blue light; then his legs began to bend like plasticine softening in the sun, and he crumpled again to the kerb.

  It was a relief to give over to being caught. It had been hell the past six weeks, lurching between sweet oblivion and cold, sober fear. His nails were ragged stumps and his eyes racooned with tiredness. His abs were now so flat they were hollow, the meat sucked right up against his bones like heated plastic wrap, and his nerves were all frayed and worn. He thought about the time he and George had been out in the Manukau Harbour in George’s dinghy when a storm blew up. Being finally flung into the water had come as a relief after hours of trying to keep the boat afloat.

  ‘Look straight at the camera.’

  Ben stood against the whitewashed wall, his jaw locked, his eyes staring down the lens.

  A flash of silver-white light.

  ‘This way.’

  Another flash.

  Ben stared at his ink-printed fingertips poking out from under the sling. He couldn’t feel three of his fingers.

  ‘I’ve booked ’em, Ray. All under age. Two from the Glenfield GDBs and one from the DOAs.’

  ‘DOAs?’ the old cop repeated, looking to Ben for more information.

  Ben sucked his teeth.

  ‘Dead On Arrival,’ the other cop translated, filling Ben’s silence. ‘New North Shore feeder gang.’

  ‘Bloody lucky he wasn’t dead on arrival.’

  They both snorted.

  ‘One’s gone on to Middlemore Hospital with facial injuries and a punctured lung. This one had a laceration to his forearm. It’s already been stitched.’

  The doctor had said the scar on Ben’s arm would be a significant one. Ben was pleased. He’d have something to show for it.

  The older cop sighed. ‘Take him down to the cells. He can sober up on the concrete.’

  Chapter Ten

  CARLA

  Carla went rigid as the cold metal slid into her vagina, the speculum forcing her open.

  ‘Just breathe deeply and try to relax.’

  Relax. Carla grimaced at the absurdity of this directive.

  ‘Hopefully this will be the last of these for a while,’ her GP, Naomi, said, peering down the beam of light into her.

  Carla stared at the perforated ceiling, following the pattern of dots to different dead ends.

  ‘The good news is that I can’t see any blisters,’ Naomi added, feeding the swab into a long plastic tube and sealing it. ‘But keep taking the Zovirax. It’ll reduce the frequency of further outbreaks.’

  Carla nodded and started to sit up.

  ‘Just a sec, Carla, while I have a quick feel of your abdomen.’ Naomi rubbed her hands to warm them. Carla gave an involuntary shiver.

  ‘Is the pelvic pain settling?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  After pulling on her slacks, Carla sat down in the chair beside t
he desk while Naomi typed up the consultation notes.

  Carla looked around. My husband wears the pants, but I choose which one’s he wears – the slogan on her doctor’s forgotten mug of cold tea. Naomi’s twin boys smiled down at Carla from a solid pine shelf, their faces positioned between An Atlas of Common Skin Conditions and Counselling the Grieving Patient. On the wall above these was a crayon drawing of a stick figure with a big speech bubble: Thank yoo docta abil for mayking me beta.

  Carla had been with Naomi for five years, ever since Linda Metcalf had retired. Naomi was refreshingly young and exceedingly competent. Even Jack had been happy to join her books; not that it was ever for much – a strained calf muscle, tennis elbow, a bout of glandular fever.

  The printer began to whirr. Naomi looked up and stretched out a hand to Carla. ‘How are things, Carla? Honestly?’

  Carla lowered her hands onto her lap. ‘Alright, I suppose. I haven’t been sleeping that well, though. Not since Kevin’s discharge. He wakes most nights with nightmares.’

  Naomi nodded.

  ‘We’re in a motel now, too. I couldn’t stand it at Geoff and Mildred’s any longer. The doctors at the head injury unit are letting Kevin attend rehab clinic as an outpatient, much to Geoff’s disapproval, of course. But I needed Kevin home with me. The motel is on a main road. It’s very noisy.’

  Naomi didn’t say anything. Carla liked that. Her GP was a good listener, unlike some doctors who talked more than they listened.

  ‘It’ll be better when we can get back to the farm,’ she added quickly, feeling suddenly guilty for complaining. The waiting room outside was packed full of sick people.

  ‘We could up his medication,’ Naomi suggested, checking Kevin’s discharge summary, then searching through the chaos on her desk for a prescription pad. ‘Perhaps we should also reconsider starting you on an antidepressant.’

  Carla clenched her teeth.

  ‘Your brain is in a state of chemical imbalance, Carla, after all the stress. Poor sleep, loss of appetite, feelings of hopelessness – these are symptoms that your body is not coping.’