The Last Time We Spoke

by Fiona Sussman

  Carla was shaking as she climbed out and steadied herself against the hot, dusty car. Her surrounds came into focus. She was disorientated. Her breathing picked up. The pieces of a familiar jigsaw were all jumbled up.

  Surfaced roads. Missing trees. Absent fences. New homes sprawling over freshly turned earth. The dam now bordered by sandstone pavers. An ornamental boulder rising out of the water like the artificial whale at Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium. DOC-green benches dotted around the brackish water, lending the place a park-like feel. A large red sign warning off children unaccompanied by an adult – a far cry from Jack’s carefree afternoons spent catching eels and guppies, no adult in sight.

  She wandered down the road towards one of the new houses – a Spanish monolith, all turrets and arches and terracotta tiles. She could just imagine the real estate jargon: Hear the castanets as you sip sangria on the deck and watch the sun set behind majestic hills!

  A token willow tree had been left standing. The rest were now stumps poking through the land like amputated fingers. The house was obviously empty, save for a lone tradesman working on the guttering.

  Carla lifted her skirt and hoisted herself over the fence, the freshly painted creosote blackening her thighs. She made her way around the perimeter of the newly demarcated property to the foot of the hill on the other side. Overgrown gorse and wild blackberries left angry welts on her ankles as she scrambled up the rise, her city-idle legs tiring quickly.

  She’d forgotten about the summer screech of cicadas, the din now competing with the growl and whine of a distant digger, and the tap tap tap of a solitary hammer.

  Her heart started hammering in her throat and not just because she was unfit; she knew she should turn back and preserve the picture she held in her mind. But her legs kept moving, carrying her up to the top of the knoll. She had to see for herself. She had to.

  Even though Carla had prepared herself for the inevitable, it still came as a shock, and when she saw it, she crumpled to the ground.

  ‘I hate you!’ she screamed, curling up on the dry, prickly grass. ‘I hate you!’

  The farmhouse was gone. She knew it would be. In its place was a rectangle of rubble bordered by a band of fluorescent orange plastic, from which hung the sign Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.

  It was the only place in the apartment suitable; new homes weren’t built with the high studs of older buildings. The rail ran across the bathroom from the pockmarked mirror to the opposite wall. It was a structural support, but also handy for hanging wet washing. It would do.

  Carla removed her shoes and pulled herself up onto the slippery white rim, so that she was straddling the bathtub.

  The rope she’d found in her allotted cubicle of storage space in the basement of the building. It was one of the few things she had brought from the farm. Kevin used to always go on about how indispensable a good rope was. ‘Useful for myriad things from towing vehicles, to retrieving dead cows from ditches.’

  The knot slid smoothly along the rope, reducing the slack until the hairy fibres were prickling her neck. Being a former Scout mistress had paid off; the knot would hold.

  From her position she could see out of the sliver of open bathroom window. The evening light was a gentle mauve on teal. Beautiful. But just another trap. God was putting on one final show of splendour in a last-ditch effort to woo her back to this world. Well, it was too late.

  A spider hunkered in the crook of the window frame – two almond beads of body, a splash of white on brown, long legs splayed like the rays of sunshine in a child’s drawing. The outline of the creature was so distinct that Carla felt as if a net curtain had just been lifted on the world and she could see in focus for the very first time. The whisky might have had something to do with that, though she’d been careful to not overdo it, throwing back just enough to quash the voices inside her head. She still needed to be in control.

  The noose was now uncomfortably tight. She swallowed against its resistance, then closed her eyes and let her toes slip inward over the bath rim, her feet losing the firm reply of cold enamel.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  BEN

  ‘Lio Va’a to visits. Lio Va’a to visits,’ the PA system boomed across the exercise yard.

  They were playing Crash, a cross between rugby and bullrush. Lio wiped the sweat off his forehead, spat onto the ground, and headed for the gate.

  ‘Lucky. The bitch must be gagging for it,’ some guy cooed.

  ‘That’s the third fuckin’ visit this week,’ bleated another.

  Since Ben had been at ‘The Rock’, he’d had that command only twice – once for a lawyer’s visit, the other time when Simi and George had come to see him.

  They’d told him the DOAs had disintegrated, what with both him and Tate being inside. Matt was prospecting for another gang, and the rest were just cruising. They said Ben had earned props and had real cred in the hood. Said he would easily get into another crew when he got out.

  It was good seeing his mates, but also weird. Strangely, Ben felt more alone with them around. Even though the three kept up the act that their lives were still intertwined, he knew that at the end of the hour they would walk through the sliding metal gate and he’d be the one left behind. They also seemed quite immature – like kindergarten kids, when he’d graduated to big school.

  One good thing about their visit was that they’d brought him cigarettes and a phone card. He used it to give his mum a call. She promised to come visit, just as she’d promised a hundred times before. Said she was just waiting for Debs to get down from up north, then she’d catch a ride in with her. So Ben kept booking four visits a week, the maximum permitted, just in case. Visits had to be booked from the inside. If an upcoming visit wasn’t written in the book, it didn’t happen.

  When his mum did finally get her act together, she arrived at some random time and they wouldn’t allow her to see him. ‘No booking, no visit.’

  That’s when Ben levelled one of the screws and got five days in Secure. It was five days of hell – in a freezing cell with just a thin foam mattress on the floor and a putrid-smelling bucket in the corner. One hour a day to exercise alone in the yard; the other twenty-three in lockdown. And because of his assault on the guard, he was reclassified IDU-1, which meant any visitations for the next three months were permitted only from behind a wall of glass. Ben wasn’t overly concerned; it wasn’t as if he had visitors lining up to see him.

  Getting back to East Block was sweeter than a tinnie, and doubly sweet because Jocko had been moved on to Paremoremo, the maximum-security prison just outside of Albany. So Ben now had the whole cell to himself.

  The only bad thing about his cellmate moving out was that his TV went with him. Jocko had kept it switched on day and night, even when coverage was down and there was just static. But Ben had got used to the intrusion, the incessant din plugging the dark ditches in his mind. The new long hours of nothing nearly did his head in. Crazy thoughts kept sprouting like seedlings in a dark cupboard, till his head was a tangle of them. Often the thoughts came without proper words attached – Ben didn’t own many words. Thoughts that left him anxious and angry.

  ‘Toroa to visits. Toroa to visits.’

  Was he dreaming? Ben looked up at the bridge. It was Shirley.

  ‘You fooling with me, miss?’

  She smiled down at him. ‘Name’s in the book, Ben.’

  ‘Yeah, but I made them bookings just in case someone turned up, random-like.’

  ‘Cut your fussing and get your arse to the gate.’

  Ben’s pulse picked up. He didn’t know what it was about, but it was definitely better than another faded day of slow boredom.

  Shirley came down off the bridge and escorted him. He liked her, the only cool screw in the joint. She even knew his name, and whenever she saw him, she stopped to talk. ‘So how you doing, Ben? Keeping on the straight road?’ or ‘Your day going OK, Ben?’

  At Visits he stripped off in front of the guard and h
anded over his clothes. The guy shoved them into a numbered locker and handed him an orange overall, which he put on back to front. Ben knew the drill from the few visits he’d had. He slipped on the overall and turned around for it to be zipped up from behind. The zip was then secured with a plastic tie. It was the same procedure around his wrists, to ensure that no contraband could be stashed up his sleeves or inside the overall. Not that this was likely to happen, since he’d be separated from any visitor by an inch of glass.

  He sat down and waited, watching the second hand creep around the cracked white clock face. He could read digital, but he couldn’t tell the time off this ancient instrument. In fact, the whole building was practically prehistoric; the date it had been built, eighteen something-or-other, was inscribed on the arch over the entrance. Rumour had it the place even hosted a few hangings before executions were finally outlawed.

  ‘Is this visit going ahead or what?’ he asked, the suspense getting to him.

  The screw didn’t look up from his paperwork.

  After what felt like forever, the guy’s radio crackled, giving the go-ahead. He got up unhurriedly and scanned his clipboard. ‘You’re IDU-1,’ he said, stating the obvious.

  Ben was used to the overkill. In prison, protocol was everything. Words, rules, procedures, guidelines – they were uttered, repeated, ticked, checked, rechecked, confirmed, and reconfirmed. It could drive a dude crazy. But oddly, it was also reassuring. A shield against the unpredictability of what could go down inside.

  The guard led him down a narrow corridor into a shoebox of a room with a viewing window at one end. There was the shape of a person on the other side, but he couldn’t see who it was – the light was coming from behind his visitor, and the glass was smudged with greasy fingerprints.

  He stepped forward and the silhouette was at once familiar.

  Ben’s heart whooped and then crashed. ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Sit down and speak into the receiver,’ the screw ordered from behind him.

  Ben felt for the chair and sank down slowly, unable to take his eyes off the face peering back at him. The left side of her face was swollen like a fermented breadfruit. A purple-black cloud swung over her one eye. Her lip had been split in two, each half jutting out awkwardly to move independently of the other. Her long limp hair had been brushed over the top of her head in an attempt to hide the fresh clearing of bare scalp. And when she tried to smile, Ben saw that his mother’s front teeth were missing.

  He put his hand to the glass, almost glad for the barrier. She looked too fragile to touch, like she’d crumble on contact.

  She lifted her hand to meet his. Her knuckles were grazed and two fingers had been strapped together with grubby pink Elastoplast.

  They stayed like that for a while, mother and son, hands touching … glass. It reminded Ben of when, as a child, he’d measure his palm against hers, and she would laugh, telling him he was getting so big he’d soon be a man.

  He picked up the receiver with the same sense of helplessness he used to feel when one or other of his mother’s partners started knocking her about. This time, though, it was a pane of glass, not fear that kept him from her.

  ‘He do this to you, Ma?’ he finally managed, his anger climbing up over the horror in front of him. Ryan had outdone himself.

  Tears swam across her yellowed eyes. ‘Didn’t bring takeaways home quick enough,’ she said grimly. She pulled down the corner of her lower lip down and winced. ‘Fast food not fast enough.’

  She laughed hoarsely, then began to cough. ‘But nothing a bit of sticking plaster can’t fix, boy. So don’t you go worrying over your old ma, you hear me? I’m made of strong stuff.’ She shifted on her chair like an old person. ‘That’s not why I’m here. I wanted to tell you what I’m about to do.’

  Ben closed his eyes.

  ‘But first, tell me, how you doing, kiddo?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You lookin’ kinda scrawny. They feeding you enough?’ She rummaged through her bag. ‘I brought you some toffees.’

  Ben jumped up and thumped his fists down on the counter. ‘Fuck, I’ll kill him, Ma. I’ll fuckin’ kill him!’

  ‘No point getting all worked up, Benjamin. I got a plan. Sit down. Listen. I want you to be better than him. You can’t go around beating up the screws. They said that’s why you behind this glass.’

  Ben couldn’t hear her any more; he’d dropped the receiver. His head was all fire and anger and pain. He turned to the prefab wall divider and dropped a hole through it, right into the next booth.

  Two screws burst in. ‘That’s it, Toroa.’

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ kill the bastard!’ he shouted, dodging one screw and winding the other.

  ‘Ben, don’t!’ his mother shouted through the abandoned receiver.

  Two more guards rushed in. Ben thumped and kicked and bit and scratched. Then he was in a headlock and his mother’s frantic screams were part of a silent movie he never got to see.

  Days later, he learnt that when they found her body, a Women’s Refuge card was still hidden in the side of her shoe, and the money she’d squirrelled away for months in the toilet cistern, in her purse. They told him she never made it to the refuge. Ryan had tracked her down soon after she left the prison in Deb’s car with the kids all squashed in the back seat. He’d taken her out in front of them, in front of Lily and Cody and Anika. In front of Brooke and Dina.

  Cole, one of the laggers on East Block, read Ben the newspaper article, filling in the gaps left by the sparser version relayed to Ben by the authorities. Cole said she’d been stabbed over ten times and that Ryan had cut Debs too when she’d tried to intervene, landing her in hospital with a collapsed lung.

  Ben never got to go to his mother’s tangi. The authorities refused him permission. He was too much of a risk to the community.

  Beyond

  Your mother’s tangihanga lasted five days, Benjamin. Even though she had turned her back on her whakapapa, it did not turn its back on her. Her family came to collect her and took her body home. On the marae her aged mother and her aunties and sisters washed down her bruised and battered body and prepared her for her final journey. Miriama looked beautiful lying there wrapped in a cloak of fine feathers, in the soft embrace of her whakapapa.

  Many came to pay their respects. They came to speak about her, and honour her and her ancestors, pressing noses with your mother for one last time. If you had been there, the aroha that swirled would have found its way into your heart, of that I am certain. You would have glimpsed something you have not known, boy – the ritual, the rites, the connection.

  On that day your mother was farewelled and welcomed. Such is death – an ending and a beginning. Ka kite ano. Haere mai, Miriama.

  Your mother’s body lies in the earth, son, but her soul soars. She is at one with the universe.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CARLA

  Voices.

  ‘Has a referral gone off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Next of kin notified?’

  ‘Not yet. Husband is mentally impaired following an attack earlier this year. Do you remember the home invasion on a farm out Albany way?’

  ‘The son was murdered, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Jeez, no wonder. Poor woman.’

  ‘The ward clerk is trying to get hold of the husband’s brother.’

  ‘Are drug and alcohol levels back yet?’

  Carla lifted her eyelids. Fuzzy black ripples spread out against a sea of light. She closed them again. Woolly white circles, a memory of the light, swirled and bled into the black.

  ‘She’s waking.’

  ‘Continue on with the round. I’ll catch up in a minute. Don’t forget to check Mr Levy’s digoxin levels.’

  Flattened vowels and rolling Rs. A foreign accent. The sound of hooks tracking along a runner. Curtains being drawn.

  Then she remembered. The rope. The bath … She was still alive.


  Carla opened one eye just enough to let in a slice of light, light now muted within a cocoon of green. Green curtains. A bed.

  She opened the eye wider. There was a man in a white coat at the foot of the bed.

  A smile. ‘I’m afraid you didn’t make it.’

  ‘What?’ Her voice sounded alien. Not hers. As if planted inside of her.

  ‘St Peter wasn’t quite ready for you.’

  Tears trickled down her cheeks, yet there was no emotion to accompany them. She felt nothing.

  A hand offered in greeting. ‘I am Nikola Jovovich.’

  Carla did not move. The hand touched her. It was warm.

  ‘Medical registrar, North Shore Hospital.’

  Of course! Hospital green.

  ‘You came in last night after being resuscitated by ambulance staff.’

  The tears kept coming, emotion now catching up.

  ‘The psychiatry ward upstairs is full, so you’ve been given a bed on the medical ward.’

  Carla opened both eyes. The man stood up and closed a small gap in the curtains, sealing them in to the surreal green space. ‘How are you feeling?’

  If she spoke again, she would surely be registering her membership to life.

  ‘May I listen to your chest?’ he asked, pulling a rainbow-coloured stethoscope from his pocket. ‘Excuse this,’ he added with a smile. ‘I’ve just finished a run in Paediatrics.’

  He had dark skin and dark eyes. A fine line threaded over his upper lip and disappeared into his left nostril, flattening the vermillion cupid of his lip. A repaired harelip. His nose was sphinx-like, standing acutely away from his face. Under his white coat he wore a blue shirt and a navy tie with silver diagonals. Curly dark hair burst up under his collar where pinpoint black dots took over, demarcating where he’d shaved.