Number 8

by Anna Fienberg

  Asim is trembling. Tears spill over his lids.

  I reach out and touch his arm. “It’s okay,” I say. I don’t know what to say, actually. Nothing seems right. When things like this happen I realize how different the two of us really are. On Trenches Road you got used to the sound of explosions. For us, they were harmless. Cars backfiring, kids lighting firecrackers in gutters. I made a kind of gun once by putting a firecracker inside a pen cap with a couple of pebbles on top. When I lit the firecracker, the pebble shot through eight pages of the Herald newspaper. I got a lot of respect for that in the neighborhood.

  But for Asim, the sound of gunshot means something else.

  He’s wiping his cheeks. I figure he’s only just realized the tears were there. “Happens when I get a fright,” he murmurs. “Can’t help it.”

  “It’s okay,” I say again. “Just bad old Badman.” I think the only thing to do is change the subject. Get back to something more normal. So I start to talk again about the possum house. The maple tree is probably the better choice, I tell him, because I think we’ll want to keep climbing the mango, and maybe the possums won’t want visitors all the time. Asim nods, and takes a few deep breaths. Mom showed him how to relax his shoulders when he does this, and keep the breath inside for five seconds. I told him to hold it for four or six, if he can. Works for me, I said.

  We’re just starting to climb down when something catches my eye. A blue Mustang, purring slowly up the road. I love the growl of a Mustang, like a lion with its teeth bared. Don’t you want the driver to just gun it, and roar? But the car creeps along, as if it’s looking for something. As it passes under our tree, I read the license plate.

  “Hey, Asim, check this out!”

  We both watch it glide past.

  “777,” I shiver. “It’s enough to give you the creeps.”

  Asim looks thoughtful. “I’ve seen that car before. Last week, I think. It was out front, going down Valerie Street. Slowly. Maybe there is something wrong with the engine. They are testing it out?”

  “Looks in pretty good condition to me. But what a crap license plate.”

  Asim grins. “Think of the heavenly spheres.”

  When we go inside, the front door clicks and Mom is home. She trudges down the corridor with plastic bags of groceries. I quickly clear a space on the kitchen table for her to dump the stuff.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Jackson honey.”

  She lets out her breath in a big sigh. Her face looks tired.

  I always know what kind of mood Mom’s in when she gets home. You just need one glance. Today she’s hot and fed up and wonders what the point of her life is. She’s probably had to serve paunchy businessmen who snap orders at her. Maybe the cook was rude to her. He is sometimes.

  “How was your day, Mom?”

  “Boring as meat without salt.” Mom smiles and ruffles my hair. “Do you know that play from Shakespeare? Where the king asks each of his three daughters to describe how much they love him? Well, two of them say things like we love you more than gold, or diamonds or whatever, not giving it much thought, but the last one ponders for ages and says, ‘I love you more than meat loves salt.’ This is the best answer—think of a plain steak without salt, especially in those days when the meat was off half the time. But her father is a stupid vain man and he banishes her. He doesn’t see the truth. Stupid question, anyway. Hi, Asim, how’s it going?”

  “Very well, thank you, Mrs. Ford.” He is hovering in the doorway. Sometimes my mother is like a gale-force wind and you feel like a blade of grass in her path. Even when she’s tired.

  “Have you boys had something to eat?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Mom nods and flops down on a chair at the kitchen table. Her shoulders spread across the back of the chair.

  “Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?” I say. “You can go and lie down for a bit.”

  Those nights Mom sang at the casino, she walked in the door a different way. She seemed to float, drifting around the kitchen lighting incense and humming to herself. If I was up, I’d stay a while and sit on the stool, soaking her up like a cat in the sun. We’d chat and she’d tell me the nice things people said about her voice. But the nights after Tony took over, she was like cement, her mouth set and heavy. So I’d make her hot milk with honey and tell all my best jokes. She’d try to smile but the cement got in the way.

  “Thanks, Jackson. I’ve got some nice seafood pasta from work,” Mom says as she walks up the hall to her room. “You’ll stay for dinner, Asim? I’ve got enough for an army. You need some feeding up, sweetheart. I’m sure you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?”

  What, since yesterday? I roll my eyes at Asim, but he won’t look at me.

  “No, I haven’t, Mrs. Ford. But thank you, I would like to stay very much.”

  She grins at us and hesitates there in the hall. Then she sort of lunges back and hugs Asim. “We’ll have a lovely dinner,” she blurts, “made of jellyfish and sea snails and puppy dogs’ tails!” She makes a Frankenstein face, and disappears into her room.

  “Sorry about that,” I mumble.

  “It’s okay.” Asim smiles.

  Ever since Mom met Asim, she’s always trying to pat his hand or hug him or make him laugh. She can’t get over the fact that he’s lost his mother. Mom thinks she has to fix everything up all the time, she just doesn’t realize there are some things you can’t fix.

  Mom annoys me, often, but I worry—often—about losing her. I don’t know why. I mean, she’s always been there for me. Trying. But sometimes I imagine her just taking off somewhere or, oh, I don’t know, disappearing. And sometimes she’s there too much, like an octopus with all these arms and words and advice, like ten mothers at once. Well, at least I know Mom will never get lost at sea. That’s how Dad died—he was a fisherman and his boat went down in a freak storm. Mom suffers from seasickness; she can’t even go on a ferry without throwing up. Which maybe is a good thing, if you see what I mean.

  “Do you mind if I use your telephone?” asks Asim. “I’d better tell Dad that I’m staying at your place for dinner.”

  “Sure, will he be at work?”

  “Yes, he’s doing Thursday nights at Franklins. He tries to get any extra shifts he can.”

  Asim’s dad worked as an engineer in Iraq. His qualifications aren’t recognized here, and the government has only given him a temporary visa. Asim doesn’t know if they’ll be able to stay here when the visa expires. He says his dad thinks about this all the time and the two lines between his eyebrows have grown heavier. His frown lines are actually the first thing I noticed—so dark and creased they look like someone drew them on with pen. Mom says what she can’t understand is how Australia can go to war against a country, and then not help the people they were supposed to be fighting for. I don’t get it either.

  I listen as Asim slips into Kurdish with his dad. He looks so comfortable, standing there, his voice burbling along like a river. He must be describing something funny to his dad, because he’s starting to laugh and making wide swooping gestures with his hands. Funny how people do that on the phone, forgetting that the other person can’t see them.

  When he hangs up he turns to me and says, “Dad thinks the possum house is a great idea. And he says do we think the possums would like some curtains, too, for privacy, and what about a little table and chairs for them to sit at while they eat their mangoes?” He grins. “Just joking. He must be getting very bored at Franklins.”

  I take Mom in her cup of tea and we go outside again and sit out on the porch. The shade is good here—the afternoon seems to be getting hotter instead of cooling down before night. Cicadas boom and the air seems swollen, throbbing. I’m thinking how good it will be to make something with my own hands.

  “Did you build a lot of things with your dad, back in Iraq?”

  Asim nods. “Yes, Dad had to build again our house when we returned from Turkey. Some friends helped, and the kids did,
too—we used to have, how do you call them, working groups? I liked to bang in the nails. I got very strong! And afterwards, we’d cook up a big meal and eat it all together.”

  “I’d really like to learn how to use a saw and stuff. I think my dad used to do that kind of thing, when we lived up north. Mom says he was always either out sailing, hauling in bait, or tinkering around the house, fixing things.”

  When Mom talks about Dad she gets this faraway look, wistful, like when you smell next door’s dinner wafting on the breeze.

  “You boys got any homework?” Mom’s voice comes crashing in.

  “A bit,” I call back.

  We go and get our books. There’s just two pages of math—fractions into decimals, problems using percentages. We both do the problems in ten minutes, timing each other. We enjoy doing them, although neither of us would admit it to anyone else. Asim has always been good at math. I haven’t, and the feeling of success instead of failure is still a surprise. It’s still like an unexpected gift when my answer comes out right.

  We’re packing up our books when I hear that low purr of the Mustang again. It’s out front this time, stalking up our street. Why ours? The skin on the back of my neck prickles. 777 snakes behind my eyes…

  Mom serves the pasta up in front of the television. The news is on. We sit in a row on the floor, cushions under our butts, bowls on the coffee table in front of us. The seafood is delicious—calamari and tender bits of fish all mixed in together. We’re relishing it in silence, spoons scraping away when the prime minister comes on.

  Quickly I go for the remote control but Mom snaps, “Leave it.”

  “You have not been listening,” the prime minister is saying patiently, as if the reporter is a naughty little kid. “I’ll restate it for you. Australia has a perfectly good immigration system, and people should use it. If they want to come to Australia they should make an application and proceed in an orderly way. We will not allow line jumping or any other illegality. That is the law of the land.”

  Mom chokes on her calamari. She’s spluttering something, banging her fork on the table and I’m just glad the seafood is muffling her vocal cords.

  “Bloody fool,” she gets out, “how do you stand in line in the middle of a war? Or a famine? You just have to run, don’t you? He thinks the world is like a sleepy little post office—“after you, oh no, after you!” Smug little man, wouldn’t know what hit him in the real world … Don’t you agree, Asim? God, what you and your father must think of this country!”

  She’s shouting now. I look at Asim. He’s glancing around nervously, patting the air near Mom, trying to calm her.

  “No, it is okay, this is all okay, I love Australia.” And he actually puts his hand on his heart.

  Asim once told me that after his father, he loves math and Australia more than anything. Or Australia and math would be the right order. He thinks everything about Australia is good, even the thorns in the grass and the lethal snakes. He says there’s nothing as lethal as chemical gas. Or racism. Or hate.

  Mom snorts. “Oh, right. You love Australia, with our stingy selfish policies, punishing refugees, locking them up in jails? Even their kids? As if it’s their fault they happened to be born in a country where they were hunted down and tortured!”

  “Mom, shut up!”

  Asim has tears in his eyes. Cry about it, says Badman.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” cries Mom, flinging her arm around Asim. “You don’t need to hear all this. I just get so riled up, with this f—”

  “Mom, don’t say it. You’re just making things worse. You know Asim and his dad are on a temporary visa.”

  “That is right,” whispers Asim. “We have three months more. We maybe need to be careful. What if the government hears bad things about us? But if we are good then maybe, maybe it comes true, and we will be Aussie citizens!”

  We all smile and Mom gives Asim an extra squeeze. I turn the TV down, and I can see Mom taking a deep breath. I know she wants to protest that the walls don’t have ears and in a democratic country we’re supposed to be able to say what we like. She wants to throw her shoes at the screen, the way she did when the Pakistani children were hauled back to the detention center in the desert after they’d escaped. But she controls herself. I smile encouragingly at her. There is a small silence while we all try to think of something harmless to say.

  “Well, you’ll be glad to know that Polly’s knees were better today and the cook was charming,” she begins, making a face. “Turns out he’s a Scorpio whose moon has been in Uranus for the last year—”

  I snort and look at Asim.

  “—making him cranky and now his moon has come out the other side or whatever it does and he’s a different person.” She laughs. “He even asked me out on a date, can you believe it?”

  “Why don’t you go, Mom?”

  Now she snorts. “Let’s clean up these plates. Chocolate ice cream for dessert?”

  “With sprinkles on top?” I say.

  Asim follows Mom out to the kitchen with his plate. I trail behind with the glasses and hear him talking quietly to her. “ … but deep down my heart is glad when you speak like that. Good to know Aussie people feel strong this way.”

  We’re finishing our ice cream and Mom’s taking in the washing when there’s a knock on the door and Ez comes flying down the hall. You can see she’s been crying—her eyes are scratchy red and there are smudgy tracks on her cheeks.

  “Two hours I’ve been doing this math, and I still don’t get it!” she cries, and flops down on a kitchen chair.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “What about the math genius?” Asim asks.

  “He only stayed half an hour—had some super important conference to go to. I didn’t understand a thing he said, anyway. There was this wart on his chin sprouting hairs and it was too distracting.” Suddenly she throws her head into her hands and we hear a wet sob. “I am never, ever going to get any better. I’m just stupid and all my life I’ll be spending useless hours pretending I’m not.”

  When Mom comes in with the washing basket, she takes one look at Esmerelda and tells her to calm down, girlfriend. “You’ve got to take a deep breath and hold it for five—”

  “Six!”

  “Seconds. Feel all the tension run out of you. Then look at your problem.” She puts her washing basket down and pulls up a chair next to Esmerelda. “You know a secret? Whenever I feel like you do, I listen to Aretha Franklin. Full volume. And I sing along at the top of my lungs.”

  I roll my eyes. Here we go. Each time Esmerelda’s come over, Mom has been home. I hardly ever get five minutes alone with her. It’s this singer or that singer—“Have you heard this one, Ez, listen to the driving bass line, can you hear it? Guitar played like drums. Needs a deep, soulful tone.”

  Mom goes to put Aretha on the stereo. Aretha Franklin, her hero. Aretha, in my mother’s opinion, is the best soul singer the world has ever seen. She was right behind Dr. King, fighting for black rights in life and music. It doesn’t matter that she was singing forty years ago, she’s like a classic, Mom raves, she’ll be around forever.

  I try to pull Asim into my room, but he wants to listen, too. Plus he’s looking at Esmerelda in her black jeans as she slides out of the kitchen after my mother. We hear the first bar of “Respect” starting up. Reluctantly, I follow Asim into the living room where the stereo is booming.

  Esmerelda is smiling now. She doesn’t notice us come in. She’s just watching Mom turn on the amp and switch on the mike.

  She practically claps her hands with joy. Mom puts the mike to Ez’s mouth and straightaway Ez starts to sing—made-up words and sounds that seem to float out of her throat without her checking. I know she hasn’t heard the song before, but she dives in without looking, singing away as if all the rest of her life—math, teachers, cousins, school—was just a silly pause, a glitch in the main melody.

  Asim and I glance at each other; his mouth is open in amazement and he’s s
tamping his foot in time with the rhythm. You can’t help moving if you’re in that room. He nods at me, and looks back at Ez and Mom, a huge wide open grin on his face.

  Esmerelda is working up to the climax, layer by layer, like an artist putting on color until, now, listen to her, she’s pumping her heart out with Aretha, asking for more respect, dammit, just come on and give it to her.

  I have to say, Esmerelda is really something. Her voice throbs, gravelly, deep, and her notes don’t have just one color, they sort of burble like water over rocks and now she’s shooting upstream in a spurt of high sound that sends goosebumps springing out on my arms. Who would have thought a girl so young could sing so deep, make you shake?

  Mom and Ez start the next song, “I Never Loved a Man,” a slow spiritual, falling into a harmony together. Mom has that shiny look on her face, as if she’s blaring out over the night sky. They’ve both flown to another world, far from ours.

  Mom puts “Respect” on again, and turns it up louder. She calls to Asim, “Congas!” pointing to the drums standing against the wall. “Come on, try it!”

  Asim shakes his head and hops from one foot to another. But then the hopping becomes stamping, and to my surprise he’s suddenly over at those congas and beating them for all he’s worth. He uses his palm and fingertips, with complicated little rhythms in between the main beat. He’s such a surprise of a person—he must have played before and I never knew.

  When the song finishes, Mom puts the track right back on, and they go again. I wander over to the piano. I hack out the melody. I know it firstly because I’ve heard the song probably 2,650,000,000 times and secondly because Mom insisted long ago on accompaniment. I must say, feeling the rhythm pounding through my fingers, the voices stitching the whole evening together, Asim’s backbone of a beat, well, it’s not a bad song. It makes you feel strong. Like nothing could possibly get you. At least while the music is playing.