‘Oh, you know. I dunno.’
She’s blushing. I heard she’s got a crush on a john, some older guy who cruises on Friday nights. He’s picked her up three weeks in a row. He drives a sporty Lexus and gives her an extra tip each time. I’ve seen her hiding the money in her tampon box, as if she thinks that will be safe from Joe.
Joe’s only known her a few weeks. He asked me to let her stay in my flat while she got on her feet.
‘She’s been abused,’ he said. ‘She needs a bit of kindness. I know you’ll be good to her.’
‘So name me one of the girls who hasn’t been abused. Big deal. You get her a flat. I don’t want to share, I’ve told you that a million times.’
Like I had a choice. She moved in the next day and I got a punch in the kidneys for my attitude. ‘You’re smart, Mandy, and you’re not out of control like some girls, but you’re gonna be a victim of your own attitude one day.’ That’s what he always says to me when he’s angry.
They used to tell me the same thing at school. ‘Young lady, mind your attitude. Why can’t you be more like your sister?’
Because I’m someone else, I wanted to answer. Because things happen differently for me. And because you have no idea who we are.
Next day at the needle-exchange van Maree stands in front of me in the queue.
‘How’s Cherie?’ I ask.
‘Gone,’ Maree answers through a mouthful of dim sim.
My heart lurches. Well, I think it’s my heart but it might be my liver or my stomach or my bowels. Anyway, something inside does a kind of hip hop because I think she means Cherie is dead.
‘When? How?’ I’m standing quite still, holding my needles. Someone shoves me in the back and tells me to get a move on.
‘Last night. She went quiet and I thought I’d better look at her and she was real pale, Casper, you know, and twitching? So I called the ambulance and they took her to the Alfred.’
‘And what did they say?’
‘I dunno. I had to get my videos back before twelve. I get home and I think, great, I can have my bed back now, I’m so sick of sleeping on that fucking couch, but the bed’s gross. She shat in it!’
‘Well she was sick, Maree. Get it? Sick? No one to look after her?’
Maree slumps off, stuffing another dim sim in her mouth. I pocket my syringes and walk around the corner to where Joe’s waiting.
‘I’m going to get off this stuff,’ I say as he hands me a deal.
‘Go for it,’ he says.
‘I mean it.’
‘Yeah well, I hear it’s been done, but I sure don’t know any of them. Unless you count the ones in the morgue.’
‘Very funny,’ I say, and I set off up the hill in Grey Street toward my corner on Burnett Street. There’s a lunchtime rush.
‘What’s your secret?’ a girl calls out from across the road. ‘I’m getting nothing.’
‘My charm and sophistication,’ I call back.
Joe’s not due back till three. I figure I’ve made enough money to take a short break.
The cool green park rolls by outside the tram window. Joggers sweat it out around the track and a couple of teenagers are pashing on the grass. I lean my head against the warm glass and relax until I remember I’m going to the movies with my sister tonight. She wants to have a drink afterwards and talk. After all these years she wants to talk. I know she’s a good person. Everyone likes Georgie. But it’s too late for talking.
I was happy this morning when I realised Cherie wasn’t dead. Now that’s gone pop and the good mood has shot out of me like air out of a balloon. I can’t believe I’m going to visit her in the hospital. She ripped me off on a deal once and I was sick for days thanks to whatever she’d cut it with. On the street these things happen all the time but you always hope the other girls won’t do you over. They do. You have to let it go.
Last summer Cherie and I caught the train to Sovereign Hill theme park. We panned for gold. In the first handful of gravel she found a speck of gold and got all fired up.
‘It’s a sign. My luck’s changing. I’m going to get clean and get out of this crap life.’
‘A sign? A sign from the management,’ I said. ‘They put gold in the creek every day.’
‘You didn’t get any,’ she pointed out.
The first thing we did when we got back to town was score. But maybe she is finally getting clean.
At the hospital reception desk I realise how stupid I really am. I don’t know Cherie’s second name. I don’t even know if Cherie is her real name. Amanda isn’t mine. The woman behind the desk keeps putting her hands out in front of her like a mime, making a wall between her and me and saying ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you, but without that information...I’m sorry.’
By the time I’ve finished making a fool of myself there I’ve been gone for an hour already, so I hail a taxi. I offer the driver a couple of CDs as payment and he leaves the meter off and drives me back. As we pull up at Burnett Street I see Joe sitting on the fence, smoking a cigarette and chatting up the girls on the other corner. He smiles as I cross the road and I know I’m in trouble.
‘Been having a lunch break?’ he asks.
‘Look, I just wanted to see Cherie—’
‘What do you think this is? An office job?’
‘I didn’t...’ I can feel myself coming right down. My body is starting to ache, hungry for a fix.
‘Well?’ Joe says.
‘Joe, please. I just went to see Cherie, that’s all. I was only gone half an hour.’
‘But you didn’t get to see her, did you,’ he says.
I’m not surprised he knows. He knows everything about me. I sit down beside him and pull a cigarette from my bag. Joe lights it for me with his Zippo, the oily smoke curling up my nostril. At least he’s not going to make me pay for leaving my corner.
‘I am sorry about Cherie, all right?’ he says. ‘But life goes on. Anyway, what did I tell you about the ones who get clean being in the morgue? Was I right or was I right?’
Early that night after I get home and fixed up, Kareen runs in the door crying and trying to hide a bruise on her left cheek. I pull her hand away. The bruise is red, but tomorrow it will be purple and round and swollen, like passionfruit.
‘Was it Joe?’ I ask.
She shakes her head.
‘Who was it?’ I say. Kareen doesn’t answer. ‘Who was it?’ I shout.
‘Joe,’ she sobs. ‘It was Joe. He heard about my extra tips.’
Kareen goes for a shower and comes out of the bathroom in her pyjamas and with her hair in a towel. Warm soapy steam follows her into the lounge room. She flops on the couch and pulls on her slippers, great fluffy things with bunny faces on the toes.
‘I don’t want you in this flat anymore,’ I tell Kareen. ‘Go and get a job. Get a life. Get out.’
Spit bubbles to the corners of her pretty red lips as she blubbers.
‘Please, Mandy. I’ll clean up the flat. I won’t...’
‘I don’t want you here anymore. Go back to your family.’
My mobile rings. Georgie starts talking about which film we’ll see and I let her run on while I watch Kareen gingerly dab her face with a wet dishcloth. I think about what I should wear to the pictures. When Georgie arrived in Melbourne I went to her friend’s house wearing cargo pants and a woolly cardigan I’d bought at the op shop that morning, the kind of clothes she’d always worn and I never had. She hugged me and asked if I was eating properly.
‘You’re not anorexic, are you?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you hot in that cardigan?’
This was the kind of thing she’d always said to me. Full of judgement–without a clue about what was going on. I tugged at the sleeves, pulling them down over my knuckles, and shook my head.
&nb
sp; ‘You look tired,’ she said.
I knew what I looked like.
Georgie buys the movie tickets.
‘You must be doing it hard on a kitchen hand’s salary,’ she says. ‘Hey, how’s your friend, the one who was sick?’
‘Cherie? Oh, she’s all fixed up.’ Kitchen hand. I wonder if my sister is an idiot. Everyone else takes one look at me and knows–how can she miss it?
We sit in the dark cinema watching the heads on the screen nod and sway. Fleshy mouths open and shut too fast. I can’t listen to what they’re saying. The shooting starts and when the screen explodes with bullets and bombs and screaming I turn to my sister and say, ‘I’m a whore and a junkie, sis. I’m a whore and a junkie.’ I stare at her profile, saying it over and over, but she’s caught up in the world of the movie and she can’t hear. We stay until the last credit has faded and the house lights come up. Georgie looks around blinking as if she has just woken up. She laughs and says, ‘It’s only the film tragics like us who stay till the end.’
I leave her outside the theatre.
‘Great to see you. Won’t have another chance before you leave. Take care, big sis.’
She frowns and tries to grab my hand but I pull away.
‘I thought we could go to a pub,’ she says. ‘I wanted to have a chat. About Dad. I never—’
‘Maybe next time,’ I call back over my shoulder. I have to force myself not to run.
I can’t give her what she wants. We always used to want what the other one had. She still doesn’t know any better.
When I get home I take a Valium and try to think about Cherie again. I can picture the flake of gold stuck to her fingertip. The man in old-time clothes put the gold in a glass vial for her to take home. Her lucky charm. I drink a few shots of whisky and have a cry in the bath.
At midnight I wake Kareen and show her where to hide money so Joe will never find it.
Women’s Trouble
‘This is a real problem,’ Mieko had whispered on the telephone that morning. ‘Difficult to explain. She wants a job, but no one will take her. She’s...she has done some peculiar things. She asked for money in the 7-Eleven. The man was so surprised he gave it to her. Then she went back the next day and asked for more. She gave my business card to him, said I’d pay him back!’ Mieko’s voice sounded breathy, close to tears.
‘Who is she? She sounds like a nutcase,’ I said.
‘She came to my school to ask for a job. Now she comes back every day. She says, “Is there a job yet?” I gave her some money, but she still comes back.’
‘She seems to be making quite a profit.’ I laughed.
‘Please help us, Shanti. Please talk to her.’
‘Mieko, I don’t need any staff.’
‘No, not a job–just talk to her. Maybe she’ll listen to you because you...tell her to go to Tokyo. Tell her there are jobs in Tokyo. She won’t stand out so much there.’
‘What do you mean, stand out?’ I asked.
‘You know, there are more foreigners than in Sendai. Please talk to her. Please, Shanti, this one favour.’
Now I had been waiting in the coffee shop for thirty minutes. On a television bolted to the wall a soap opera star wept and stirred her blue drink with a straw. The roar of a dishwashing machine issued from the kitchen. Flora was late, and the man at the next table was snoring and sliding further down his seat with each exhalation of foul air. His lit cigarette smouldered in an ashtray full of butts. I moved to a table in the corner and asked for another glass of water.
Years before, when my husband first brought me to live in Japan, I’d spent half my time in coffee shops. Business meetings, coffee with friends, introductions to business contacts–they all happened in coffee shops.
‘It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?’ I said to Shoichi. ‘They don’t want me in their houses.’
‘You’re not black, you’re a gorgeous latte. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with you. These people have cramped apartments and shabby offices. They don’t want to take guests there.’
Those coffee shops had brocade seats and fine china. A cup of coffee cost the same as a meal at a fast-food café. The coffee shop where I sat now was the kind where businessmen came to hide and read the paper or nap. Kids wagging school could buy one cup of coffee and sit here for hours. The room stank of urine and rotten fish, and the coffee was lukewarm and bitter. All I wanted to do was get into the fresh air but I had to wait a little longer. Mieko would be upset if I left and missed Flora.
In the to and fro of obligation, Mieko was way ahead of me. When I was setting up my school Mieko helped with the loan, found the premises, introduced me to everyone, gave me gifts, gave me more useless gifts for no obvious reason–I thought she must be the most generous person in the world.
‘How can I repay you?’ I asked, and Mieko laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, I don’t want anything from you.’
Soon I realised that little presents and kindnesses were the norm for everyone. The presents were becoming too much. I didn’t want another kabuki print cotton handkerchief, or a pack of six chocolate doughnuts, or an imitation lacquerware plate, or a free ticket to a calligraphy exhibition that was free anyway, or a kimono hand-sewn by someone’s grandmother, or a dinner at the city’s best steak restaurant, or a pair of skis. I wanted none of that. The weight of the presents was like wearing too many clothes, like being swathed in a tight kimono, a constriction that limited my movements and made me hot and sweaty in the presence of other people, afraid that I might say I liked something, afraid that they might give it to me. I decided that eventually these people would all want something in return.
‘Just one meeting with her, please,’ Mieko said.
‘Will you be there?’
‘No, no. I cannot do anything. It is up to you now.’
As soon as I agreed, Mieko told me where I was to meet Flora–she had been so sure of me that she had made the arrangements already. This coffee shop was the only one Flora liked, and it must have been the seediest place in the city.
Flora was now forty minutes late. I went to the counter and paid my money to the ancient, hairless, toothless man who sat by the cash register watching baseball on a miniature television. When I turned to face the door, Flora walked in and I understood everything.
Flora was a man. Flora was a six-foot, stocky man with thick make-up, a dowdy pastel skirt and blouse, white shoes, a cheap black wig, and the biggest hands I had ever seen.
She half-ran toward me, her arms outstretched as if she wanted to embrace. I stepped back and thrust out my arm to shake hands. She was gasping, as if she had run to get there, and the momentum of her bulk propelled us backward to the nearest table. She sat down opposite me, arranged her handbag on the seat next to her, called the waiter and ordered two coffees and a sandwich, powdered her nose, gasped several more times, then leaned forward and looked into my eyes.
‘You must help me,’ she said, in a deep voice. I couldn’t place her accent.
‘Oh,’ I said, thinking, yes, Mieko was right, she doesn’t know how to behave.
‘I need money. I cannot live like this. Please help me. Mieko, she says you help me. These people, this city, they don’t like foreigners. They telling me to go away. I cannot go. I have no money. I’m trying for the job. Every day, trying.’
There was a famous man in that city who used to dress up as a woman. Every Sunday he would take the train to the central railway station before midday, when the centre of the city was most crowded. He climbed the steps to the public park where families came for a break from their shopping, put down his portable karaoke
system and his large sports bag, straightened his suit and sat down for a relaxed cigarette before he began his performance. He had been doing this for years.
When the town hall clock struck twelve he would st
art the show. First he stripped off down to his underpants. No matter how cold the weather, and in that city it snowed heavily in winter, he would do his face make-up while standing there in his underpants. The snow-white skin on his sagging belly used to quiver sometimes from the cold. You could see goosebumps all over his body. The make-up was high drag–sequins on the eyelids, pancaked skin, false eyelashes. Once the face was done, he chose his outfit for the show from his bag, which seemed to hold an endless number of costumes. He favoured dresses just below knee-length, with flowing skirts, and he always wore a petticoat.
When he had dressed, he fired up the karaoke machine, warbled for twenty minutes, usually Elvis Presley and pop songs from the 70s, then undressed, cleaned his face, put the suit back on, and caught the train home.
People said he worked an ordinary salaryman’s job during the week, and that he had a wife and children. The first time people saw his improbable drag show they usually laughed. But the way he came back week after week gave him a kind of dignity, and now even the police nodded at him as they walked past him standing in his underpants with a scarlet lipstick in his hand.
I saw him one day when I was eating lunch in the park. He set up opposite my bench. As he rummaged among the rainbow of tulle and shantung and satin spilling from his sports bag, he kept glancing at me. I smiled at him and he looked away. I was used to people staring at my dark skin. People wanted to touch me too but didn’t dare. Still, it seemed odd that someone as strange as him would stare at anyone. Afterwards I realised that, of course, he didn’t think he was different. Apart from one hour a week, he was like everybody else.
Flora bolted her sandwich as I watched.
‘I have no food for two days,’ she said. I ordered her a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay,’ I assured her. ‘Where are you from?’
‘My father is Russian. My mother is Italian. I came here before, and I was working. Now I have no job, no money.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
She had drunk her coffee with three sugars. I ordered another. Flora was huge. If she really had been without food for two days, she must have been starving.
The End of the World Page 9
