Shadowboxing

by Tony Birch

‘It’s not like that, mum. George is right. He heard his mum talking with Mrs Arnold, from the hardware, about her daughter. She got in trouble and had to go and see Wilma. And, well, I’ve seen lots of women going in there. Me and George and Emu, we saw a woman knock there today. She fixes them up, when they get pregnant. She fixes them up so they don’t have to have a baby.’

  My mother hit me so hard across the face that I fell from my chair. She jumped up from the table and pushed her chair towards the sink, before turning on me. I lay on the cold lino of the kitchen floor holding my burning cheek. I thought that she was about to hit me again and covered my face with my hands. But she didn’t. She crouched down over me and screamed at me while waving a finger in my face.

  ‘Get to bed! Get to bed now! All you do is hang around on that street all day listening to shit talk. Is that all you do, Michael? Listen to old men talk bullshit? Get to bed. Now! Stay away from Emu! Now go to bed!’

  If my mother had hit me when I was a kid I had no memory of it. And I could not remember seeing her as angry as she was now. I felt her hand shaking with rage against my shoulder as she dragged me to my feet and pushed me out of the kitchen towards the bedroom.

  I walked into the bedroom and slammed the door behind me. I jumped into bed without taking my clothes off and buried myself under the blanket. I could not understand why she had hit me.

  I knew that what George had said to me was right. As soon as he had told me about Mrs Arnold’s conversation with his mother, all the mystery around Wilma Carson made sense; the women knocking at her door, and the women who tried ignoring her in the street, it all made sense after what George had told me.

  I heard mum’s footsteps in the hallway. They stopped outside the bedroom door. She paused for a moment before opening it. I did not open my eyes or move, hoping to convince her that I was asleep. I could hear her breathing heavily as she stood over me. She shook me by the shoulder.

  ‘Get up, Michael.’ She had my dressing gown draped over one arm. ‘Come on, out into the kitchen. I’ve already put the kettle on.’

  I was not sure what time it was, but I knew that it was late. I followed her into the kitchen, expecting that she was about to start yelling at me again. The kitchen was freezing. She motioned for me to come to the table as I wrapped my dressing gown around me.

  ‘Sit down. I’ll make you a tea.’

  The photo albums that she had been working on were still sitting on the table. She made a pot of tea, grabbed two cups from the sideboard and brought everything over to the table on a tray, as if this was going to be a formal occasion. We sat at the table together watching the steaming draw of the tea. She then leaned across the table and took both of my hands in hers.

  ‘Emu’s got some stories, hasn’t he? Sometimes he’s right and, well, sometimes, he’s just a silly old bastard, isn’t he?’

  She squeezed my hands between hers until it hurt.

  ‘We’ve all got them, our stories, haven’t we? But they don’t all have to be told, do they, Michael? Mrs Arnold, from the hardware, she’s a good woman, Michael. She has to run that shop on her own while trying to bring up her kids the right way. She does the best she can. And just because her daughter got into trouble, it doesn’t mean that you, or George, or silly old Emu have the right to talk about that family all over the street.’

  She waved a finger back and forth in front of my face.

  ‘And any of those other women, knocking at Wilma’s door, they’re entitled to their privacy too. You have no idea who has had to knock at that door, Michael. It could be anyone from around here, any one of us. And you’re too young to know why they end up there.’

  She released my hand and stood up from the table.

  ‘I’m sorry for hitting you, I really am.’

  She motioned in the direction of the front room, her and dad’s room, with a nod of her head. ‘You get enough of that from him as it is. Whatever it is you want to know, I don’t care what it is, I want you to come to me instead of listening to some imbecile in the street. I’ve got my own story, Michael. I want you to listen to it. And then I don’t want you ever talking about Wilma Carson or the women who knock on her door again.’

  My mother ran her hands nervously through her hair before sitting down at the table once more. ‘When I was just a girl, living in the Canning Street house in Carlton, when I was about ten or eleven, there was this woman, Agnes Meagher, she was like Wilma Carson, she did abortions, for women who got pregnant and couldn’t have the baby. You know what I mean, Michael, an abortion? Do you know what I am talking about?’

  I nodded my head, although I was not entirely sure what she was talking about.

  ‘Agnes lived just up the street from us. If anyone on the street was sick, she would look after them, mostly powders and ointments for aches and pains. No one could afford a doctor in those days, not without getting grilled by some nosey social worker. Agnes laid out the dead too, right there in the house, so that the family could view anyone who died, pray with them before they were buried. It was better that way. Keep them in the house with the family until the funeral. She laid out my own dad. Got crushed in an accident at work, shunting a train. Mum had his body released from the morgue, and Agnes, she patched him up, so we could have a mass with him at home.’

  At the mention of her own father my mother became briefly distracted. She flipped through the pages of one of the albums until she found a photograph of him. She spun the album around on the table and pointed to an image of him in a military uniform.

  ‘There he is.’ She tapped on the image several times before going on with her story.

  ‘She wasn’t a bad woman, Agnes. Some kept a little distance from her, just like we do with Wilma, but they needed her, just like we need Wilma now, all of us.’

  My mother stopped again. She looked over at me and then away to the window. She looked back at me with fear on her face.

  ‘Well, one day, when I was in the kitchen, me and mum — your grandmother — well, Agnes, she come banging and screaming at the back gate, calling out for mum to help her. As soon as mum opened the gate, Agnes ran past her into the laundry and threw something, it was wrapped in newspaper, into the trough. Agnes told mum that the police were on their way, and that she would give mum ten shillings to get rid of the parcel for her. And then Agnes warned her, “Don’t open it, and don’t put it in the bin, just flush it down the toilet.” And with that she left.

  ‘While mum was looking down into the trough I walked up behind her and looked over her shoulder, down at the parcel. I could see blood seeping through the newspaper. I could not take my eyes away from it. Mum moved to pick up the newspaper and then pulled her hand back and told me to get out of the room.

  ‘I wouldn’t move at first. But she screamed and yelled at me until I left. I knew there was something wrong. And I was scared. So I went up into my room and hid behind the door. I could hear her as she repeatedly flushed the toilet out the back.

  ‘I did not dare to come back down into the kitchen until it was near teatime. The whole house, the kitchen, the laundry and toilet, everything, it all smelled of bleach and disinfectant. Mum couldn’t get the house clean enough.’

  My mother put the teapot and empty cups back on the tray and walked over to the sink and turned on the tap and started washing her hands.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Wilma Carson, or the women who go to her. They’ve got to go somewhere. And she knows what she’s doing better than most. We would be in a lot more trouble if we didn’t have her help, Michael. We wouldn’t need her if it wasn’t for the men, don’t forget that, Michael, ever. You won’t hear that from old Emu, or any of the others around here.’

  She turned around from the sink to face me. ‘I don’t want us to talk about this again. Most can’t mind their business on the street, but I want you to. Leave the gossip to Emu, bec
ause the day will come when his mouth will get him in a lot of trouble. And that will be the end of old Emu. No one will see him again.’

  She wiped down the kitchen table, touched my shoulder with her hand and left me sitting there on my own. I searched through the albums, looking at the baby photographs of Katie and me. It was in one of the earliest albums that I found the blank spaces. I ran a finger around the border where a photograph had been removed.

  The Bulldozer

  In the year after the arrival of the bulldozers our street had managed to remain standing. Each day the crash of the machines grew louder as they moved in on us. Women could no longer hang clothing on the line during the day unless they were willing to come home from the factory to find the wash covered in plaster dust.

  Some of us came home from school or work to discover that a neighbouring house was suddenly gone. The air of the streets was full of the odour of plaster dust and ancient rising damp, and the smell of burning furniture and timber. Entire streets were being bulldozed, sifted and organised into three distinct mountains. One consisted of rubble waiting to be picked up by a bobcat and carted away. Another was a twist of scrap iron and copper waiting to be sold off (if it wasn’t stolen first), while the third was a bonfire of wooden furniture and bug-infested timber floorboards and framing. The funeral pyre burned day and night, and could be seen across the suburb.

  While most people either gave up on or lost almost everything they had when their homes were knocked over, some were happy to make money out of the destruction. Scavengers combed through an increasing number of empty houses, salvaging whatever they could before the dozers moved in. The competition for scrap metal was intense. The professional junk men ran a closed shop, coveting the scrap. They did not hesitate to threaten others away from a recently vacated house that they claimed as their own.

  The widespread demolition of the suburb presented the kids from the streets with a new adventure. As soon as a house was vacated, we would wander through it and inspect what had been left behind. In some houses the furniture remained in the rooms, as if a family continued to live there. Clothing was left hanging in wardrobes, and occasionally even family photographs were left nailed to a lounge-room wall.

  Other finds were more unusual, or even bizarre, such as a pickled snake that George Carter found in a cupboard at the back of a shop on Brunswick Street. George unscrewed the jar and took the snake out so that he could terrorise some of the younger children up and down the street for the afternoon.

  I would sometimes pick up small ornaments and take them home to my mother, although I suspect that she threw most of the stuff away, except for the odd cup or vase. I also asked her about the things that people left in the houses they were forced to abandon.

  ‘Why would they leave all that stuff behind, mum?’

  ‘Well, most of it is no good, I suppose. Some of these people are going into brand-new government places. They don’t want to take that junk with them. Clothes are the same. Moth-eaten and no good. The smell of this place, some don’t want to take it with them when they leave.’

  ‘And the photos, why would they leave the photos behind?’

  It took her some time to answer me. ‘I don’t know, love, I don’t know. But I would think that once people leave here, there will be a lot that some would rather forget. Some things are best left behind.’

  Each night, as I walked home from school, yet another cavity would reveal itself where a house had stood only the day before. I always walked home the same way, across Gertrude Street and Young Street. Each week more and more of Young Street disappeared from the landscape. And we knew that as soon as it was gone the bulldozers would move on to our street.

  The machines had worked one side of Young Street until everything was destroyed. They had now crossed the road and were making their way down the other side. Our date with the demolition teams was looming.

  Coming home from the street one Saturday morning, I saw two workers unloading a bulldozer from the back of a truck. It slid off the back and crashed onto the roadway. A large bucket was attached to its front end and was equipped with a large set of metal teeth. A furniture van was parked nearby, a little way down the street from the house. Two removalists were coming out of a house, dragging a heavy wardrobe along the footpath.

  I knew that house. My father had lived there when he was a boy. As the removalists lifted the wardrobe into their van, two young children, a girl and a boy, stood on the street corner holding hands while watching them closely. A woman, who looked about the same age as my mother, stood behind them. She was holding a framed hand-painted photograph.

  I stopped to watch what was happening. One of the demolition workers looked over at me and smiled. He had a shining gold tooth set right in the middle of a mouth of rotten brown pegs.

  ‘What do you want, son. You live here?’ He pointed to the house.

  ‘No, not me. But my father did, a long time ago. He lived there when he was a boy.’

  He smiled again, a little wider this time, showing me his blackened back teeth also.

  ‘A long time ago, hey. A long time.’

  He looked over his shoulder at his workmate, who was leaning against the bulldozer and reading the paper. ‘Well it won’t be here for much longer. As soon as this lot get going with their stuff,’ he spoke a little louder so that the woman holding the photograph could hear him, ‘as soon as they’re out this will be gone too, the fucken lot of it.’

  He looked up and down the street and then across to the piles of rubbish and the pyre of burning furniture. He again turned to his workmate, raising his voice even more.

  ‘The sooner the whole place is gone the better. It’s full of no-hopers, dagoes, and fucken Abos. They’ve even got Indians here, fucken Indians. You seen that temple down the road, or whatever it is? Should knock it down. Should knock the whole fucken place over.’

  He looked back at me. ‘What about you, kid? An Abo, an Indian, or a no-hoper? What are you? A bit of each, maybe?’ He called over his shoulder to his workmate. ‘What do you reckon, Andy? This kid? Do you reckon he’s one of us, or one of them? Hard to tell, hey? Maybe he just needs a good tubbing.’

  I was about to leave when the woman on the corner let go of the girl’s hand, leaned the picture frame against a streetlight, and walked over towards the demolition workers. She stopped in front of them and stood with her legs slightly apart as she waved a fist at them. The removalists, who were now carrying a dressing table towards the van, stopped to watch the action.

  ‘How old are the two of you?’ she asked the demolition workers.

  Neither of them offered a response, so she provided them with one.

  ‘Eighteen, nineteen, maybe? You think this is funny, do you? Are you two happy to be putting people out of their homes? Proud of yourselves? Well, you shouldn’t be. You should be ashamed.’

  The worker who had been reading the paper, began folding it up while attempting to defend himself to the woman.

  ‘Take it easy, will you, missus. We’re just doing our job here. The places round here, they’ve all had it anyway. Take a look at them, love. If we don’t knock them over, they’ll end up falling over all by themselves. We’re just here to help them on their way, lady.’

  The woman pointed in the direction of the house that she had just been evicted from.

  ‘This place, it hasn’t had it. This is my home. My home. This is our place, my kids and me. This is our street. People live on this street. It’s not yours to knock over.’ She waved her finger at both of them. ‘Just a job? It’s not a job worth having. Would you stand by and see your own people put out on the street like this? And have their house wrecked by a pair of skinny runts like you two? I hope not. I hope not.’

  As she walked back to the street corner the removalists provided her with a spontaneous round of applause, which caused the wom
an to simultaneously smile and blush. She picked up her picture frame and took the girl by the hand again, before heading off towards Brunswick Street and the next tram out of the suburb.

  The worker with the gold tooth caught me smiling in appreciation of the woman’s courage.

  ‘What are you laughing at? Fuck off, you little smart arse!’

  I did not move. He walked from the roadway onto the footpath.

  ‘I said fuck off! Get going! Get on your way!’

  It was not until he ran at me that I turned around and sprinted up Young Street. I did not stop until I was sure that he had given up on chasing me. As I passed another gaping hole in a row of terraces that now resembled a set of broken teeth, I noticed a cast-iron bath stuck high and dry on a wasteland where a house had stood until recently. An old wino was lying in the tub, under an overcoat. He was fast asleep.

  Saturday was father’s day, and most particularly Saturday night. Dad had not come home from the pub and it was well after closing time. The Exhibition Hotel was his watering hole. Although the publicans on Gertrude Street shut the doors at six o’clock, most of them allowed the regulars to stay back and drink behind closed doors for as long as they managed to behave themselves. And the police didn’t mind, as they got their grog, along with a weekly handout, from the same pubs. The only difference between them and other patrons was that the police didn’t have to pay for their drink, and always collected it quietly, at a side door.

  My mother had had his tea ready on the table for some time. She decided to send me up the street to look for him. He was not at his hotel, although some of his drinking mates were. I passed others on the streets, who were only just now wandering home for the night.

  I looked in through the front windows of a couple of other pubs before giving up the search. Even though mum wanted him home for his tea, I was relieved that I had not found him. I decided to go home without bothering to look for him in any of the pubs further along the street.