Riggs Crossing (18 page)

Mesomorph!

My head has dropped so that I’m staring at my thunder thighs. ‘Two girls called me fat.’ It comes out almost as a whisper. ‘But I’m not fat. I’m a mesomorph.’

Ruby’s mother gives a sad chuckle. ‘Pleased to meet you, mesomorph. I’d introduce myself according to my body type, but I think I’ve morphed right off the scale. I believe the clinical term is obese.’ Ruby’s mother is quiet for a few seconds. ‘But that really isn’t the point, is it?’

‘I guess not.’ My head has dropped a bit lower.

Ruby’s mother clears her throat. ‘The point is that it is wrong to judge people on their appearance. It is also rude to tell someone that they ought to lose weight, and that’s what you did when you put that flyer in my letterbox.’

‘Mummy!’ a voice wails from upstairs. ‘Can I watch TV now?’

Ruby’s mother looks up. ‘I sent Ruby to her room because she threw a tantrum.’ She struggles to her feet. ‘I don’t know what your parents are like, but I should think they’d be a bit worried about you. It will be getting dark soon.’ Ruby’s mother lumbers to the front door and goes inside.

I sit there for a while, listening. Ruby says she’s sorry, then runs down the stairs. Someone turns the TV on. Pots and pans are clattering – probably Ruby’s mother is making dinner. Then the phone rings and Ruby’s mother calls out, ‘Ruby, it’s Vanessa!’ Then Ruby is chattering away on the phone. I get up and walk slowly down the street.

It’s another ten minutes before I reach University Road, and another twenty before I get back to the Refuge. There was probably a quicker way to get home if I took some shortcuts, but I didn’t want to risk getting lost.

I look up and down the street before going back into the Refuge. No sign of Terry, so I pull open the front door. A blast of warm air and the smell of roasting lamb washes over me.

Lyyssa’s in the kitchen preparing dinner for us. ‘Hello Len,’ Lyyssa says. I’m surprised to see Lyyssa back at the Refuge so soon; then I remember that she has a car and the drive from Leichhardt wouldn’t have taken her ten minutes. She’s changed out of her purple blazer, released her hair from that silly chignon, and washed off her makeup. ‘What have you been up to?’

Enough to fill up a month of therapy sessions, and nothing I can tell to Lyyssa. I push Terry’s mean face out of my thoughts, along with Ruby and her mother.

‘I went up to University Road and got an ice-cream,’ I reply, trying to sound casual. ‘What about you?’

Lyyssa’s smile wobbles a fraction. ‘Oh, I had coffee in Leichhardt with a friend,’ she says brightly, and goes back to peeling the potatoes.

Not exactly a lie. In fact, much less of a lie than what I said.

Chapter 44

It’s a week before I realise that ‘season finale’ means there aren’t going to be any more episodes of
Clarissa Hobbs
for three months. I watch the repeats, but watching repeats is sort of like drinking Diet Coke instead of regular Coke. It’s a diluted pleasure.

January has blurred into February. Country New South Wales is having a drought. Sydney is hot and dry. The outer suburbs burn in bush fires, and the smoke turns the late afternoon sky a neon pink.

The stables are full of bratty rich Pony Club bitches that don’t have anything else to do during school holidays. They hang around the club rooms at the different riding schools, bragging about the ski holidays they’re going to take in the winter and making nasty comments about other girls. One of them said ‘povvo’ in a loud voice when I walked past one day. I wanted to rub her face in a big pile of manure, but then I’d be banned from the stables and she’d have the last laugh.

All the riding instructors are out of patience and short-tempered. I pity the horses, being worked in this heat. Ray looks tired all the time. He says even less than usual.

I lie awake at night, afraid to go to sleep because I might have a dream about my father.

Why should I be afraid of finding out what happened to Daddy? I might as well find out the truth and get it over with. But that’s not how I feel. At night, I feel my past catching up to me, spiralling out of control, mutating into something horrible. I want to escape it.

That’s why I liked
Clarissa Hobbs, Attorney at Law
so much. There are problems in every episode, the show would be boring without problems, but Clarissa always manages to solve them, or at least deal with them.

The thing that I’m trying not to fall asleep and dream about is the end of my past life’s episode. Something really bad happened to me, and to Daddy, and to my dog Reggie. There isn’t going to be any bright, upbeat ending to the story of my life before the Refuge. Whatever happened to us would make people want to turn off the TV and forget they ever saw the Len Russell show.

I’m the sort of person that people want to forget about. They might feel sorry for me, but there’s nothing they can really to do help me, either. So they may as well just pretend I don’t exist. They’d rather watch a show about someone like Clarissa Hobbs, whose problems can all be solved.

One afternoon, it’s so hot I can barely stay awake. I’m lying on my bed smelling bushfire smoke, listening to the sounds of traffic on Canterbury Road. Then I have an idea. I pull my notebook out from under the mattress, and start writing:

Clarissa Hobbs: The Next Generation

In the
Next Generation
episodes, I’m one of the junior lawyers working at Clarissa’s firm, helping her with the most important cases. In a later episode, it will be revealed that I’m really Clarissa’s long-lost daughter that she gave up for adoption.

After a while, I look at what I’ve written. It’s not bad, but I can’t just write
Clarissa Hobbs
episodes all day during vacation. I look at the clock and realise that three hours have passed since I started writing that episode. I need some exercise.

I go down the stairs intending to take a walk, then something occurs to me. Bindi didn’t take her skateboard with her, so Lyyssa put it in the storage closet with all her other things just in case she comes back. Yeah, right. Like Miss Junior High Class Hooker who’s probably making five hundred dollars an hour on her back would come back here just to get a skateboard.

The storage closet isn’t locked. I don’t have to look very hard before I find the skateboard, propped next to a cardboard box with ‘Bindi’s things’ written on it in black Texta.
You touch my skateboard and I’ll kill you.
Is that right, you stupid moll? This skateboard’s mine now.

I close the front door behind me, set the skateboard on the footpath, and push off.

I’ve never skateboarded before in my life, but it’s not that hard. You just have to watch out for uneven pavement. I’m whizzing along, feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, just like I used to when Daddy would take me for a ride on his motorbike.

‘Hey! Watch –’

Before I realise what’s happening, I crash into some guy and fall flat on my face. I’m so embarrassed I want to die. The guy helps me to my feet. ‘Are you all right?’

I nod, and make myself look up. What I see makes me want to cry. Not only have I done something completely stupid in public, but I’ve done it in front of an utterly gorgeous guy. He’s about sixteen, with short blond hair, blue eyes and a deep tan. He’s wearing a Ripcurl T-shirt and board shorts, like a surfie. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ he says, looking really concerned.

‘I’m okay,’ I croak. ‘I’m sorry I ran into you.’

He grins and pats me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just be careful, eh?’ Then he walks off.

I carry the skateboard back to the Refuge, throw it back in the storage closet, and write, ‘In my room – Do not disturb!’ on the whiteboard, then run up the stairs. I manage to get back to my room before I start to cry. Maybe I’d just better stay in my room and write
Clarissa Hobbs
episodes for the rest of my vacation.

Chapter 45

I calm down after a while and pull my notebook out. I put a line through each page of the
Clarissa Hobbs
episode I wrote. Only a little kid would fantasise about being a character on TV – I’m embarrassed that I penned it.

I turn to a fresh page and start writing.

It’s just before Easter. Daddy has an old flyscreen door hanging in front of the fireplace. It’s hanging horizontally, like a table. From each corner, a wire runs up to one central hook drilled into the ceiling. Dope is spread out on the fly screen door, drying.

Daddy is stripping the flowers away from the marijuana plant and putting them on the screen door to be dried. The leaf gets discarded. This is kind of funny. Most city dope smokers, the ones who want everyone to know that they use dope, adopt the marijuana leaf as their symbol. They have marijuana leaf T-shirts and wear silver marijuana leaf pendants strung on leather string necklaces. But it’s not the leaf that really gets you high, it’s the flower.

When I was little, I used to help Daddy dry the crop, and Daddy thought that was cute. Then all of a sudden he didn’t want me to help, because he realised I was old enough to figure out what was going on. But I’d already figured out what he was doing, so banning me from the lounge room while he was stripping and drying didn’t change anything.

‘Why are you throwing the leaf away?’

Daddy pretends he didn’t hear me. He runs his hand up the stalk, and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, the flowers come off in his hand.

‘Some people smoke leaf,’ I persist. ‘Kevvie’s dad sells it.’ Daddy looks up with his ‘Don’t ask’ look.

‘Dad, I’m not exactly a kid anymore.’

Daddy drops his eyes back to the stalks and works a little faster than he was before. Daddy knows I’m not a kid anymore – I got my first period a fortnight ago. I think Daddy was more shaken up about it than I was. He got all flustered, jumped in the truck and came back an hour later with a huge bag full of tampons, sanitary pads, and panty liners.

‘People who buy leaf are the kind of people who buy retreads instead of new tyres,’ Daddy says, at last. ‘They’re cheapskates. If they don’t want to pay for the good stuff, then I don’t wanna deal with ’em.’

I’m starting to notice a certain evasiveness in Daddy’s explanations. What he just said would make sense if he were proud of growing dope and liked the people he sells it to. But he doesn’t even smoke dope, and he doesn’t have a lot of respect for people who do.

‘Daddy, why are you a cropper?’

That word has never been said before in our house. Daddy looks up at me, hurt and disappointed. He thinks a while before he answers. ‘Remember that Neil Young song? The one that goes “The Devil fools with the best-laid plans”?’

Daddy and I don’t have history lessons very often, but he used that song to teach me about the civil rights movement in America.

Daddy sighs. ‘I left school at fifteen. Was an apprentice on the railway. Left home at sixteen ’cause I didn’t get along with my old man. Then the Vietnam War happened, and I joined up with the Merchant Navy so I wouldn’t have to fight. Came back after a few years and got a job as a sheet metal worker. It was good money, but I spent most of it on motorbikes and girls. At least I had enough sense to save enough to buy some property.’ Dad picks up another stalk and resumes working.

‘Then your mother caught my eye.’ Daddy smiles a little. ‘Before I knew it, I was a father. Your mother stayed up here and looked after you, and I worked in Sydney and came home on the weekends.’Daddy tosses aside a handful of leaf.

‘Then the arse fell out of the economy. The company I worked for went broke. Nobody could get a job. At least I owned the property outright, lots of people with mortgages lost their homes. But the dole didn’t pay enough to keep you in nappies and the car in petrol.’ Another stalk is stripped and tossed aside.

‘So when your mother said, “Hey, we’ve got prime, high-altitude land, what’s the sense of letting it go to waste?” I went along with it. Anita used to knock around with croppers, she knew what to do. I told myself it was only going to be for one season.’ Another handful of flowers is spread on the flyscreen door.

‘Then two seasons went by, and there still wasn’t much work around. Then your mother died, and I couldn’t be bothered looking for a proper job. Then five seasons had gone by, and any job agent I rang wanted to know why I hadn’t worked in five years.’ Daddy throws another stripped stalk on the pile to his left.

‘So you see, Poss? The Devil fools with the best-laid plans.’ Daddy suddenly gets up and leaves the room. I hear the back door bang shut.

I go to my room and lie on my bed. The Devil fools with the best-laid plans? I didn’t think Daddy believed in the Devil. He always laughed at Holly because she’d freak if the Devil card came up when she was playing with her deck of tarot cards.

I think I’ve earned a nap after writing that down. I put my notebook away.

I wake up with my heart pounding. For a second I think I can smell the dope that Daddy’s drying. Then I realise that the smell is coming from down the hall.

The clock next to my bed says 8 pm. I hear the TV downstairs and Lyyssa talking to a couple of new kids in the kitchen.

I hear giggles coming from Bindi’s old room. For a minute I freeze, thinking that Bindi has come back. But the voices don’t belong to Bindi, or Cinnamon. It’s a sharp, bossy, nasal voice, and a duller, dumber, younger voice. It’s Karen and Allie. Allie has got hold of some dope and is sharing it with Karen. I think Allie wants to be caught, otherwise she wouldn’t be smoking it so early in the evening, with Lyyssa still up and about.

Holly used tarot cards to read the future. I don’t reckon you need a deck of tarot cards in a place like the Inner West Youth Refuge.

Allie’s future is obvious. At best, she’ll end up working as a barmaid in some grotty pub in Westieville. At worst, she’ll end up being the moll of some guy in a bikie gang. Or maybe the moll for all the guys in the bikie gang. And Karen? She’ll wait till she’s about eighteen or nineteen, then sleep with someone who’s too drunk or stoned to notice how fat and ugly she is. She’ll fall pregnant on purpose, so she can get the single parent’s pension and a Housing Commission flat. Then she’ll eat all the wrong things and neglect her health so that when the kid grows up, she can get the disability pension.

What’s going to happen to me? At best? At worst? Which tarot card would come up for me? I don’t even have any best-laid plans for the Devil to fool with.

I wish I could get the
smell
of Karen out of my nose. The smell of her urine, her dirtiness, and now, her drugs. I get out of bed and light one of my peppermint-scented candles. In a minute, my room smells pure and beautiful. Someday, I promise myself, I will own a house where all the ceilings are painted gold, where nobody smokes dope, and I will light candles every night.

Allie and Karen have gone quiet. I turn off the overhead light and look at the glow of the candle. For the first time in months, I’m not afraid to go to sleep.