Riggs Crossing (19 page)

Chapter 46

The bushfires burn out, but Sydney stays hot and sticky through to March. It’s too hot to go outside much.

Easter comes late in April.

Even before the bunnies had been taken down at the stores, we got a huge box of leftover Easter candy from a grocery store – marshmallow rabbits and chocolate eggs. Lyyssa put the box on the kitchen table. I knew that Karen would scoff them all the first chance she had, so I took exactly my share and put them in my desk drawer. One chocolate a day won’t make me fat. I have only one every night, after I’ve finished my homework.

When the evenings finally turn cool, Lyyssa brings some stale-smelling doonas and blankets from the storage closet for everyone to put on their beds. I see Lyyssa opening the closet and I get in first before the other kids, so I have first pick. I pick a goosedown comforter inside a white cover, which is embroidered with white butterflies. It looks almost new, except for a faded brownish stain on one side that someone has tried and failed to bleach out. The stain doesn’t matter. I can put it on the bed with that side facing down. I also get an off-white waffle-weave cotton blanket.

Karen picks a vomity pink comforter with pictures of strawberries all over it. Then she finds a fluffy white chenille blanket, which I suppose to her represents the cream to go with the strawberries. She folds both of them and pulls them close to her chest, then realises that I’m blocking her way out of the storage closet. ‘Excuse me,’ she mumbles, and I step aside to let her pass. I feel guilty about bullying Karen that time, but at least she knows not to annoy me any more.

Allie is looking enviously at my white comforter, but then she finds one that is still wrapped in the thick plastic department store packaging. It has a price tag on it that shows $120, which has been crossed out and replaced with a series of lower prices, ending at $29.95. ‘I found a
new
one,’ she says triumphantly. I just smile and nod. Why bother telling her that a purple poly/cotton comforter cover with Asian writing all over it is tacky, which is why no one would buy it and the store gave it to us? Then she’d only be plotting how to get her hands on my beautiful embroidered pure white cotton.

I wonder what the writing says. Probably ‘Screw you, white trash’.

Shane wants the dark-green Paddy Palin sleeping bag. It has a hood that you can zip up over your head, with only a tiny hole for air to come inside. I can see why that would appeal to Shane. I got a look inside his room once. He’s put up a barricade around his bed with milk crates and cardboard boxes. He still wears three shirts at a time, even in summer. At least he doesn’t have to be forced to take a shower anymore.

The next day I take my doona outside to air. I throw it over the Hill’s Hoist, then pull an old banana lounge into a sunny spot and lie down. The smell of the air and the feeling of the autumn sun reminds me of another time and place.

Easter. It was Eastertime last year that I was in the accident.

Where Daddy and I lived, Easter always meant that money was just around the corner. Easter candy marked down to half-price meant it was just about time to harvest that crop and sell it in Sydney. But one Easter, something went wrong. There were no new clothes or new tyres for the truck. And we went on eating tinned soup like we had been coming up to harvest. I close my eyes and let myself remember.

‘They had a gun,’ Daddy says.

Ernie shakes his head and looks at Daddy like he should have known better. ‘Mate, you always gotta hold something back.’

‘You got any left?’ Ernie says, concerned.

‘Every other patch I had’s been ripped,’ Daddy says bitterly.

‘So who were these clowns?’

‘The blokes I normally deal with couldn’t take it. I had to offload it to someone new.’

‘Maybe you need a gun,’ Ernie says. ‘I got a mate in Sydney, over in Burwood. He can get you a revolver.’

‘What good’s that?’ Daddy retorts. ‘Then I’d either be dead, or I’d be doing twenty years.’

‘Listen,’ Ernie says quietly. ‘You better watch your back. Terry still has it in for you, and now he’s all palsy-walsy with old mate Drury down the road. You know Drury had a patch ripped? Terry’s been putting it about it that you did it.’

Daddy makes a disgusted noise. ‘The prick. He did it himself. And Drury believed that? Sounds like Drury’s been using a bit too much of his own product.’

‘Drury’s using that and just about anything else you can think of. He’s a freak. He’s got a houseful of firearms and the coppers in his pocket. And every day, his little mate Terry is whispering in his ear that you ripped him off. Now, are you sure about that revolver?’

‘Not interested.’

‘Let me know if you change your mind. Cost you six hundred bucks, but it’s got karma. Fifteen hundred for one that’s never done a job. You don’t want one that’s done a job. Ballistics.’

Daddy says he’ll think about it. Ernie finishes his beer and leaves. Daddy is quiet for a long time.

Daddy was selling what was left of his crop to a dealer in Sydney, but the dealer pulled a gun on him and stole Daddy’s dope.

Daddy has a rifle, like everyone around here. But Ernie thinks Daddy needs a smaller gun. One you can hide in your jacket. Ernie also thinks Daddy should pay more money to get a gun that has never been used in a crime. That way, the cops can’t ever land him for crimes that someone else did with that gun.

I don’t know Drury. He’s new in town, he bought the old Fruin place only a couple of years ago. Daddy and I never stop at his place. Sometimes we see his four-wheel drive in town outside the Commercial Hotel, with two mean pig dogs sitting inside. Daddy told me never to touch a pig dog. A pig dog will rip you to pieces.

Something has changed in Riggs Crossing. It used to be that everybody’s cropping was an open secret, and nobody stole anybody else’s crop. As long as you didn’t advertise what you were up to, the locals didn’t care and the police would take money to turn a blind eye. Now we hear there are undercover police around. But nobody knows who they are. And we know that some locals are paid police informants. But which ones? And now, everybody who’s cropping is being stolen from. But who’s doing the ripping? The whole town has turned suspicious and nasty. I’m not sure Daddy trusts anybody but Ernie anymore.

I open my eyes and look at the sky.
Riggs Crossing.
Daddy and I lived in Riggs Crossing. Is anything of mine still in Riggs `Crossing? Do I still have a room there, with my own bed and a comforter that never belonged to anyone else? Or has everything I ever loved been taken to the tip?

I feel something in my chest, a sharp, twisting pain. I get up quickly and give the comforter a good fluffing, then carry it upstairs and make the bed. I grab a rag from the storage closet, get some spray cleanser from the kitchen, and wipe the skirting boards in my room until the pain in my chest goes away.

Chapter 47

‘Easter Eggs?’ Miss Dunn repeats, frowning.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Why do they sell chocolate eggs at Easter?’

Miss Dunn puts her pencil down on her desk and waits a few seconds before she says anything. ‘Len, we are in the middle of an English lesson. I am teaching you how to write an essay. This is the third time you have asked a question that is totally irrelevant to the task at hand. Now, would you like to tell me what the problem is?’

‘Sorry,’ I mumble, and look down.

Again, Miss Dunn looks at me for a moment before replying. I think she knows that I don’t really know what the problem is, and that I probably wouldn’t tell her even if I did. Finally, she sighs and closes the textbook.

‘Okay, let’s save the rest of that English lesson for next time. You’ve mastered the basics.’ Miss Dunn picks up her pencil again and taps it against the top of the desk. ‘Easter eggs. Do you know much about Christianity? Were you taken to church when you were a kid?’

After Daddy’s fight with Holly, we get up very early one morning and drive to a big church far away from Riggs Crossing. Daddy sits next to me on a long wooden bench. He teaches me how to cross myself, when to kneel. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .

‘No.’

‘Right. Well, Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God and arose from the dead after being crucified. Jesus rising from the dead is called the Resurrection. The Christian holiday that marks the Resurrection is now called Easter. But when Christianity started, most people were pagans and didn’t want to give up certain rituals that they liked. One of these rituals was a lunar festival called Easter. LEN, ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?’

‘Yes.’

Miss Dunn calms down. ‘Good. Now, this pagan festival Easter took place during the full moon. It celebrated fertility. That’s why we have Easter bunnies, because rabbits produce lots of offspring. And we have Easter eggs because eggs represented fertility to pagans. Pagans refused to stop being pagans and start being Christians because they didn’t want to stop having fertility celebrations. So, the early Christian fathers invented the story that Jesus was resurrected during Easter time, and told the pagans that it was okay to have a festival every year. But they had to say that the festival was to celebrate Christ being resurrected. Oh, and the word “Easter” has the same origin as the word “oestrus”. Female animals can fall pregnant when they’re in oestrus.’

Holly dancing naked under the full moon. Daddy watching her, standing to one side of the window so she can’t see him watching, smiling a little.

‘Does that make any sense to you?’

Daddy closes the curtains. ‘Off to bed, Poss.’

‘Not exactly. I mean, sort of.’

Miss Dunn sighs. ‘Well, I probably didn’t explain it very clearly, and what I said might not be entirely accurate. I’m not a walking encyclopaedia.’ Miss Dunn scribbles something on a piece of paper and hands it to me. ‘This is your English assignment for next week. Write a five hundred-word essay on the origins of Easter. Major Heath may be able to help you.’

Miss Dunn doesn’t offer me tea at the end of the lesson.

Walking back to the Refuge, I turn down the street with the Nohant house. After all, the lady who owns that house has no right to intimidate me. I’m allowed to walk down that street, or any other street, if I want to. And why does she bother having a house and garden like you’d see in a magazine if she doesn’t want people to admire them?

I’m almost at Nohant when I realise a car is coming up behind me. I turn my head to look. It’s one of those cars that Westie boys like, with a V8 engine, blackened windows and a stereo you can hear in the next suburb. But this car is being driven very slowly and quietly, its engine pulsing at a low throb.

Then the car roars into high gear onto the footpath, hurtling straight toward me. I scramble over the picket fence and run across Nohant’s garden, tripping over stones and lanterns and clumps of black mondo grass. The car ploughs straight through the fence – I can hear the wood cracking and splintering as I sprint around the side of the house. The car stops a moment in the middle of the garden, then whoever’s driving guns the engine, demolishing what’s left of the garden and smashing the other side of the fence to get back on the street.

I’m shaking but I come out from where I was hiding and watch as the car races off and turns left onto Canterbury Road. That wasn’t an SUV, this isn’t the Hamptons, I’m not white trash, and that sure as hell wasn’t Lucy Grubb behind the wheel.

I’m standing there frozen when the second-floor window bangs open and the nasty bleached blonde woman pokes her head out, angry that someone’s making noise. She looks down and sees me in the middle of her wrecked garden.

‘YOU LITTLE BITCH!’ she shrieks, her face turning a blotchy purple. She thinks it was me who left her garden looking like Darwin after Cyclone Tracy. She jerks her head back inside and I run without thinking why I’m running.

I’m still shaking when I get back to the Refuge. I run straight up the stairs to my room without even marking the whiteboard to let Lyyssa know I’m home.

I sit at my desk and take one chocolate Easter egg from my supply in the top drawer. I let it dissolve slowly in my mouth as my heart pounds.

Terry saw me in Newtown a couple of weeks ago. Was it him in that car? Or somebody worse? He’s too stupid to know how to find me, but whoever he’s working for would know. Find a mug with a government job, they get paid bugger-all, even less than the coppers. A bit of money will get you any information you’re after.

My heart won’t slow down and I start crying. I take two more chocolate eggs out of the drawer. I think I’ve got more important things to worry about than my weight. Like where to go if I’m not safe here.

I’m just unwrapping my fourth chocolate egg when there’s a ruckus downstairs in the entryway that distracts me. Lyyssa’s talking with someone, trying to calm them down. The other voice doesn’t sound familiar. It’s a woman’s voice, harsh and loud.

‘I know she’s here, the Department told me!’ the voice shouts. ‘Why can’t I see her?’

Probably the mother of one of the newbies we got last week. I can’t make out what Lyyssa says, but I hear the front door close and the two of them walking toward Lyyssa’s office. I put it out of my mind. I should start on the algebra homework that I was supposed to have done for Lyyssa today, but instead I take my notebook out and start writing a new
Clarissa Hobbs
episode. I know some of the episodes I wrote were pretty crap, but I can do better this time.

I’ve just about finished the episode when Lyyssa comes running down the hall and pounds on my door.

‘Len! Len!’ Lyyssa opens my door without waiting for me to answer. She never does this. I’m so astonished that I forget to be angry with her.

‘Len, your grandmother’s here!’

Chapter 48

Over the next quarter of an hour, Lyyssa gives me the condensed history of my life. Apparently, the police have been talking to Lyyssa all along about leads they’d got on the case.

Daddy is dead.

But I have a grandmother.

‘Why didn’t anybody tell me?’ I hear myself ask.

Lyyssa looks uncomfortable. ‘Well, the police wanted to locate any family you had. And I thought it would be therapeutic if you remembered things in your own time.’

Therapeutic
. I want to slap her. Then she starts spouting some crap about how people at the hospital tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to know about it.
Nobody told me nobody told me nobody told me
I chant in my head, like holding your ears and singing
la la la
so you don’t hear what someone else is saying.

Lyyssa’s mouth is moving but I can’t hear the sound of her talking, only a roaring in my ears. That’s when I know either I’m crazy, or she’s telling the truth.

In the hospital, I screamed and threw something at a social worker and a nurse when they tried to tell me my father might be dead and called me Samantha. Shut up, go away, I screamed at them. My name’s Len!

I remember now.

‘Len,’ Lyyssa says gently, ‘do you understand what I’m telling you?’

I nod.

‘Do you want me to tell you the rest?’

I nod again.

Lyyssa tells me that my father, Michael Patterson, was a reclusive marijuana grower who raised me by himself up in the North Coast ranges. Drug traffickers who thought he was encroaching on their territory murdered him. On the night of the accident, my father was trying to get me out of the area and away from the killers. A few weeks ago, police got a tipoff and made two arrests. Talking to the locals, they discovered that Michael Patterson had a daughter who disappeared when he did. They thought that daughter might be me.

Then someone remembered that I had a mother.

They told the police my mother’s name. The police looked in their computer databases or searched the internet or did whatever police do when they’re following a trail. The trail led to a Mrs Gibson of Campbelltown.

Campbelltown. Way past where my MyMulti pass will take me. Way past anywhere I want to go.

All the information they got from Mrs Gibson matched with what they knew about me. Then they did some DNA testing, matching up her blood with a sample of mine that the hospital still had. The DNA proved that she’s my blood relative.

‘So, where’s my mother?’ I say, already knowing. I’m trying to distract myself, trying not to think about my father, who I now know is dead and buried. Or maybe not even properly buried. Maybe the murderers just dumped his body somewhere.

‘Your mother’s been dead a long time, Len,’ Lyyssa says, as gently as possible. ‘Her name was Anita Gibson. It’s her mother who’s come to see you today. She’s waiting in my office.’ We sit quietly for a minute. ‘Are you ready?’ Lyyssa asks me.

I nod, and we start walking down the hall.

Lyyssa opens the door to her office, and I feel a stab of disappointment. The woman sitting at the table isn’t a tastefully dressed mature-age lady like Clarissa Hobbs. She is skinny and wrinkled, with her hair dyed a canary yellow.

‘Mrs Gibson, this is Len.’

My grandmother doesn’t get up. She sits there eyeballing me while I stand just inside the door, doing the same to her. Finally, my grandmother speaks. ‘Am I allowed to smoke in here?’ she says to Lyyssa, as if daring Lyyssa to say no.

‘Well, normally, no, but, um, let me go find an ashtray while you two get acquainted.’

Lyyssa hurries out, closing the door behind her. Mrs Gibson pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her purse even though Lyyssa hasn’t come back with an ashtray yet. I’m not even sure we have an ashtray at the Refuge.

‘Mrs Gibson –’ I start to say, but I can’t get the rest of the sentence out.

‘For Heaven’s sake,’ she says, fidgeting and lighting a cigarette. ‘You don’t have to “Mrs Gibson” me. Call me Gran.’

Gran and I go back to staring at each other. Finally, I take a seat across from her at the table.

‘You don’t look like Anita,’ she says finally. ‘Anita was slim, with dark curly hair.’

‘Maybe I take after my father.’

Mrs Gibson snorts. ‘Let’s hope not.’

I decide to let this pass. ‘What was my mother like?’ I say, changing the subject.

Gran takes a deep drag on her cigarette and exhales slowly. ‘Your mother was wild,’ she says. ‘Anita was a handful as a little girl. Not a bad kid, just always up to some mischief. When she got to a certain age, she started drinking, staying out all night, going off with boys on motorcycles. I tried to discipline her, but it always made things worse. If I took away her pocket money, she’d shoplift. If I grounded her, she’d run away. In the end, she just wore me down. I had four other kids to raise.’ Gran looks at the ash on the end of her cigarette, then looks around the room. She sees a Diet Coke can on Lyyssa’s desk. She scrapes back her chair, walks over to the desk, picks up the can and shakes it to make sure it’s empty, then flicks her ash into it and brings the can back to the table with her.

‘So what happened to her?’

‘I threw her out when she was sixteen,’ Gran says bitterly. ‘I told her she could either follow my rules or leave, so she left. She and a school friend hitched a ride to some hippie commune up the coast. Your Aunt Cheryl heard from one of the kids at school who had an older brother at the same place. Anita sent letters to Cheryl sometimes, but not to the rest of us. Anita wasn’t that close to her sister Phoebe, and Sean and Bradley were still small.’

Anita, Cheryl, Phoebe, Bradley, Sean. My mother, my two aunts, my two uncles . . . I can’t put a face to any of them.

Gran’s hands are shaking and her voice is harsh. ‘I was married at seventeen. Your granddad pissed off after Sean was born. I raised five kids on my own. Five. I made sure Anita and her sisters and brothers had a decent home. So why was it so damn hard for her to stay out of trouble? Why was it always so damn hard?’ Gran smacks the table to emphasise each word. Then she starts to cry.

I’m praying that Lyyssa doesn’t walk in. This is the sort of messy emotional outburst she’d love. Gran’s mascara is running down her face and her bleached hair looks like a bird’s nest. A horrible, sinking feeling comes over me: people who come from families like mine don’t end up living in Los Angeles and working for people like Clarissa Hobbs. In my mind’s eye, I see Clarissa tossing her ash-blonde hair, slipping into her Mercedes and driving away from me without so much as a glance in the rear-view mirror.

Gran pulls a crumpled tissue from her purse, blows her nose and wipes her eyes.

‘I never saw Anita again. We knew there was a baby girl born the first week of July two years after Anita left, but Anita never brought her to see us.’

I’m wondering why Gran is saying ‘her’ rather than ‘you’, then something else hits me. My birthday is the first week of July? That means I’m not a Leo, after all! I search my memory for astrological tables. First week of July is – Cancer! Placid, affectionate, home-loving, boring, boring, boring! I’m so stunned I barely notice that Gran has started talking again.

‘Then we heard she’d had a fight with Mick, left the baby with him and run off. Four years later, the police show up on the doorstep and say they’ve found a body in a nature reserve. They wouldn’t let me see it. Said there wasn’t anything left to see. Asked for her dental records. It was Anita. They said that backpacker murderer did it, like he did all those other girls who hitched a ride with him.’ Gran stares into the distance and takes another drag of her cigarette. ‘I always knew something bad happened to her. Even Anita wouldn’t have left a tiny baby with that loser.’

Somehow I don’t think Gran is connecting Anita’s tiny baby with me, the girl who is sitting there right in front of her.

After a minute Gran remembers that I exist. Her eyes focus on me and narrow a bit. ‘Anyway, what’s with this calling you “Len”? That’s a boy’s name.’

‘When they found me, I was wearing an old jumper with “Len” stitched on it.’

Gran looks unimpressed. ‘Yeah? Well, that’s not your name. Your name is Samantha.’

I let this sink in. ‘Any middle name?’

‘Rose,’ Gran says. ‘My name.’

Samantha Rose Patterson. It sounds elegant, yet sensible. There is a world of possibility in that name. I don’t have to be Len Russell for the rest of my life. Len Russell sounds like a grill cook or a petrol station attendant. But Samantha Rose Patterson could be a horse trainer, or a veterinary surgeon, or a fashion designer, or even a barrister at a top law firm.

Lyyssa opens the door without knocking. ‘Len? Mrs Gibson? How’s everything going?’

‘Everything’s going just fine,’ I say coldly. And my name’s not Len. It’s Samantha Rose. I don’t ever want to be called Len again in my whole life.’

Lyyssa smiles nervously, then speaks to me the way you would address a four-year-old who wants to be called Princess Leia. ‘Well,
Samantha
, would you mind leaving your grandmother and me alone to discuss a few things for a little while? We’ll come find you when we’re done.’

Gran narrows her eyes, and I realise that she doesn’t like Lyyssa any more than I do. ‘I gotta go,’ she said, shoving her cigarettes and lighter into her handbag. ‘If Samantha needs me, you know where I am.’ With that, Gran heaves her handbag over her shoulder and walks out.

Lyyssa watches in astonishment as Gran leaves without even hugging me or saying goodbye or asking when she can see me again. ‘Right. Okay,’ Lyyssa says, taking a moment to reassemble her social worker’s mask. ‘So Len, I mean,
Samantha
, what do you think of your grandmother?’

Just once, I decide to tell Lyyssa the truth. ‘I think she shouldn’t wear white socks with black leggings.’

For a moment, Lyyssa looks stunned. Then something changes in her eyes and I see myself in them. Someone mean and ugly. Someone who refuses to love her own grandmother.

‘Len,’ she says quietly, ‘you need to learn some compassion. You’re not the only person in the world who’s had it rough.’

I feel the blood rush to my face in a burst of humiliation. Lyyssa’s right and I don’t know what to say, so I turn away and run through the door that my grandmother just passed through, catching a whiff of her cheap perfume. But I go in the opposite direction she went, back towards my room. I go straight to my scarred wooden desk, pull out my algebra book, and study until dark. I concentrate on the equations, trying not to think about Gran and trying to forget that I’m not a Leo, after all.