Riggs Crossing (5 page)

Chapter 14

Karen is up early the next morning, probably for a doctor’s appointment. I hear her whining when Lyyssa wakes her, then I hear her clomping to the bathroom, then I hear the front door bang shut and a car drive off. I don’t know where she’s going or care whether she comes back.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I dreamt of monkeys in cages, of me standing on a table at Hungry Jack’s singing while Cinnamon and Bindi jeered and ethnic boys yelled
Hose her down, hose her down.

My eyelids feel gummy. I don’t want to get up. I try to go back to sleep, but I just lie awake, miserable, and remember something else I don’t want to know.

The man in the flannelette shirt is cutting something into pieces on the kitchen table, which is why I can’t sit there to colour in my colouring books. There’s another man watching, and two yellow-haired women talking to each other and not paying any attention. I’m in the lounge room sitting on the couch being quiet. The man in the flannelette shirt puts the pieces onto a shiny scale the colour of pirate coins. That side falls down to the table. He puts a little brass thing onto the other side. Then that side falls down. He adds a smaller brass thing, and then takes the bigger one away. The two sides of the scale seesaw, then balance.

‘Never seen a scale like that before,’ says the man watching.

‘Belonged to my granddad,’ Daddy says. ‘He owned a corner store in Bankstown before the foreigners took over.’

The light in the kitchen makes the scale and the pieces of brass sparkle like the doubloons in the book about pirates, or the gold in the pot at the end of the rainbow.

‘Buried treasure!’ I yell, pointing to the scales with my Texta.

Everyone laughs, but Daddy folds his arms across his chest and says, ‘Possum, go outside and play.’

I throw the doona off, grab my notebook, and write down what I remembered about Daddy and the scales.

The shower’s free, so I take my toiletries and bathrobe. Music is blasting from Bindi’s room down the hall
.
It’s Saturday, so Lyyssa’s rule about no loud music on weekdays doesn’t apply.

Bindi and Cinnamon must have heard me going into the showers; one of them screams a couple of bars from, ‘I’m Still a Girl, Not Yet a Woman’ over the music, then they both laugh. They’ll probably rag me about that song for a week or two before they get tired of it.

When I come out of the shower, they’ve put on some gangsta rap. They yell along with whoever’s singing about bitches and ho’s.

Lyyssa will probably tell them to turn it down when she gets back, but I don’t think I can stand it that long. I’ve got to get out of the house. I cram a book, my bathing suit, towel and all the rest of my swimming stuff into my backpack. It’s warm enough to swim and read in the park afterwards.

I grab a couple of muesli bars from the kitchen and write, ‘Gone to the pool – back before curfew. Len’ on the whiteboard.

The only stroke I like is freestyle. My swim teacher made me learn backstroke and breast stroke to get my certificate of completion, but I never do them on my own.

Lyyssa asked me once how many laps I do. For once, it was a question of hers that I didn’t mind, but I couldn’t answer because I don’t know. I don’t see the point in counting. Scott, the physio, tried to get me to start counting my laps and work up gradually, or at least time myself so that I don’t strain anything. But I don’t. I just swim until I get tired.

Stroke, two, three, breathe. Stroke, two, three, breathe. Don’t lift your head out of the water and gasp for air. Turn your head to the side, let the water cushion your head like a pillow, inhale. Look straight at the bottom of the pool. Stroke, two, three, breathe.

If you’re lucky, there aren’t any screaming kids splashing around or grannies puttering along at a snail’s pace with their kickboards, afraid of getting their hair wet.

Once I’m warmed up, stroke-two-three-breathe becomes pull-pull-pull-breathe. I forget about everything except the blue of the water and the taste of chlorine. When my left shoulder starts to ache and my elbows feel funny and cold, I ease off, then pull myself out of the pool and run to the showers, where there are signs warning that inappropriate behaviour will not be tolerated.

I think I know why they’d put a sign like that in the men’s showers. But why in the ladies?

At three o’clock I’m in the park with my swimsuit and towel spread across the grass to dry, when a shadow falls across my book.

The sun has dropped behind a tree. I could just move, but I’m getting hungry and I’ve already eaten the two muesli bars I brought. Where could I get something to eat?

I walk to Town Hall Station and fifteen minutes later, I’m riding up a long escalator. I go across a concourse with a newsagent and shoe-repair shop, then up another escalator. On street level to the left of the escalator, there’s a shop selling all kinds of kinky shoes and boots.

Kings Cross. I’m not supposed to be here. I’ll just get something to eat, then leave.

I come off the escalator right into the middle of a fight between an Aboriginal girl and her boyfriend; she’s yelling at him about how he never does this and he never does that. I dodge them and come to the footpath in front of the station.

There’s an ambulance, and a small crowd. Everybody’s looking at a guy lying on the ground with his head in a pile of his own puke. He’s a young guy, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. His skin is pale and he’s out cold, but I guess he’ll live. The ambos don’t look too concerned as they lift him up and strap him to a gurney.

Nobody in the crowd looks too concerned, either. One blondish pimply flabby guy in a blue shirt is standing there eating KFC nuggets. A couple of tourists wearing sandals and bum bags are holding their cameras like they’re trying to decide whether to take a picture or not.

‘Hey, it’s something to watch,’ a dark-haired guy in an expensive-looking shirt says, with a shrug. The pretty, mini-skirted girl hanging onto his arm looks up at him and giggles. No matter what that guy said, she’d agree with it. Two Asian girls are speaking in Chinese or Korean or whatever, not taking any notice of the guy on the ground. Then the Aboriginal girl and her boyfriend come over, carrying on the same argument.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ the boyfriend says, annoyed. The girl only stops ragging on him when she hears the two Asian girls talking. She stares at them for a minute.

‘Foreigners,’ she mutters. ‘They come to my country, they can speak my language.’ Then she remembers that she’s mad at her boyfriend and starts in on him again about that thing he didn’t do, and they head off.

That Aboriginal girl was speaking English. Shouldn’t she be mad at the Asians for not speaking Aboriginal? Can
she
speak Aboriginal?

I’m getting confused about this when a guy who’s been hovering at the other side of the ambulance buzzes past me, circling the crowd. He’s old, maybe fifty, and is wearing an army helmet. He’s not normal. His clothes are dirty and his face, what you can see of it around his sunglasses, has that hard, crazy look. He’s carrying three library books in one hand and a tambourine in the other. He starts skipping, shaking his tambourine, doing some jerky little dance as the ambos load the sick boy into the ambulance. When they slam the door shut, the weird guy gives his tambourine a long shake, then an abrupt smack – rrrrp, BANG! As if to say, ‘That’s all, folks!’

The ambulance drives off and everyone in the crowd stands there a few seconds just blinking and looking stupid, trying to remember what they were doing before the guy OD’d and the ambulance came. The guy in the expensive shirt reaches for his ringing mobile and flips it open. ‘Hello? Yeah, we’re on our way, be there in five.’ His girlfriend squeezes his arm again, and they cross the street. A man outside a strip club says something to them, and the girlfriend squeals and does the arm-grab thing to Expensive Shirt. Does that girl ever talk? Does her arm work if it isn’t hooked to some guy’s arm?

The Asian girls move onto the footpath. The tourists amble off like a couple of confused cows. The flabby guy stuffs the rest of his chicken nuggets into his mouth and looks around for a rubbish container for the paper bag. I remember that I’m hungry.

I don’t really like the look of most places I see. There’s a KFC and a Hungry Jack’s. KFC? No thank you, not after seeing some fat guy eating KFC while he’s looking at some other guy lying in his own vomit. And I’ll probably never go to Hungry Jack’s again, after being embarrassed to death when Lyyssa took us there. There’s a Copenhagen Ice-cream and an Asian place with fish in the windows. I walk as far as Potts Point, where there are nice restaurants with outside tables, but I don’t want to blow all my pocket money on one meal. Anyway, they’d probably think I was weird if I walked in all by myself.

I walk back toward the station, passing a tattoo parlour with bikies hanging around outside. I don’t look at them. They might be harmless, but you never know. I don’t look too closely at the strip clubs, either. Normally, the men standing outside try to invite people inside, but when I walk past, they either pretend not to see me or else look a bit concerned.

‘You all right, there, miss?’ a big Samoan guy asks me quietly. Usually, when someone says that in an area like this, what they really mean is, I’ve got drugs to sell, if you want to buy any. But this guy really does seem to care if I’m all right. He probably thinks I’m a runaway or a street kid.

There are men who would pay to have sex with someone as young as me, or who’d force themselves on someone as young as me, even though I’m nothing special to look at. Half a block back, some skinny moll in a tube top, tight shorts, and thigh-high boots gave me the evil eye like I was a competitor. Yeah, right. I’m wearing no makeup, my hair smells like chlorine, and I’m carrying a backpack. Who’d think I was on the game?

I ignored the moll, but I smile at the Samoan. ‘I’m just getting some takeaway,’ I tell him. The Samoan guy seems nice; I wouldn’t mind talking to him some more. But I keep walking.

I’m almost back to the station and still haven’t found any place I want to eat. I end up standing in front of a pizza place I passed by earlier. I look at the pizzas in the glass case. They have sausage, peperoni, Hawaiian, and vegetarian. The vegetarian pizza is still round and perfect; nobody has taken a slice yet. Three-fifty a slice, the sign says. I pull a five-dollar note from my back pocket and look for a shop assistant. There are two young Asian girls and one young Asian guy behind the counter, but no one makes a move to ask what I want.

‘Excuse me,’ I say. A girl standing next to the cash register looks at me and blinks. The other girl walks into the back room, then walks back out again. The boy is sitting at the table doing nothing. All of them have a kind of glazed look in their eyes.

‘Ex
-cuse
me,’ I say a little louder. ‘Could I get a slice of vegetarian, please?’

The girl who came out of the back room says something to the boy in Vietnamese or whatever, and he says something back. She says something to the girl standing next to the cash register, who looks over her shoulder, then slowly turns her head back to me and tries to get her eyes to focus.

I put the five-dollar note on the counter. ‘Veg-e-tar-i-an,’ I say, loudly. ‘
One
slice.’

The girl has no idea what I want. She makes a squeaking noise that means, ‘What?’

I point at the pizza and make a ‘one’ sign with my index finger.

The girl finally gets it and picks up a pair of tongs. She grabs a piece of pizza, drops it on the floor, and shrieks. The boy at the table gabbles at her in Vietnamese, then gabbles something at the girl who keeps going in and out of the back room. She grabs the tongs and puts another slice of pizza in a paper bag for me. The first girl just stands there looking at the floor where she dropped the first piece. I’m annoyed that the slice I got was the second slice from the pizza, not the first slice. I push the five dollar note to the second girl, who has to think a minute before she can work out how much change to give me. I pull some serviettes from a dispenser and leave in disgust.

Chapter 15

I get back to the Refuge just five minutes before eight. Lyyssa is in the kitchen with Cinnamon, drying the dishes from dinner. ‘Just in time, Len,’ she says to me, looking at the clock.

‘I’m never late, am I?’ I say.

‘No, you’re not,’ Lyyssa says. ‘But we missed you at dinner.’ Cinnamon gives me a nasty look meaning
she
didn’t miss me, and neither did Bindi. Bindi is up in her room. Lyyssa has learned not to put Cinnamon and Bindi on kitchen duty at the same time.

‘I got some takeaway,’ I say. ‘Here, I’ll help with the rest of the drying. Cinnamon can leave if she wants.’ I put down my backpack and grab a tea towel. Cinnamon throws down her tea towel and practically runs out of the kitchen and up the stairs to where Bindi is. If I didn’t know better, I’d say those two were lezzo lovers.

There are only a few things left to dry, so I got some brownie points with practically no effort. Normally, I would watch some TV, but I feel tired. I try to read the ending of my book before I go to bed, but I can’t concentrate.

It must be about eleven when I wake up. I feel dizzy. I’m going to be sick. I run to the bathroom and vomit into the toilet, but that’s not the end of it. I keep heaving and heaving even though there’s nothing left in my stomach. Then I start to cry. I’ve never felt so bad in my whole life. I want Daddy, but I don’t know where he is. I hear Cinnamon stomp downstairs and pound on Lyyssa’s door. ‘Len’s puking her guts out,’ she yells, sounding annoyed. Then she stomps back to her room and closes the door.

‘Len!’ Lyyssa’s in her bathrobe. She kneels beside me and rubs my back. I’m embarrassed about the vomit smell but Lyyssa doesn’t seem to mind. She helps me rinse my mouth out. ‘Here, let’s get you back into bed.’ I stagger back to my room, hanging onto Lyyssa for support. Lyyssa brings me some cherry-flavoured medicine and two cans of Coke.

‘You poor thing. It must be the flu. I hope the rest of the kids don’t come down with it.’ Lyyssa puts the wastepaper basket next to the bed in case I have to be sick again.

‘It’s not the flu.’ I’ve taken a few sips of Coke and I’m starting to feel a little better. ‘It was the pizza.’ Even though I know I should just keep my mouth shut, I tell Lyyssa about the pizza place and the Vietnamese kids and the guy lying in his own puke until the ambulance took him away.

‘Well, it wasn’t pizza that made him sick,’ Lyyssa says, with a hardness in her voice I’ve never heard before.

‘I know. It was heroin. I know all about that.’

Lyyssa is quiet for a good few seconds. ‘Len, you’ve gone to a place specifically off limits. If the Foundation or DOCS hears about that, they might say I breached my duty of care. They might want to move you to another home. A place where you’d have less freedom.’

I start to feel sick again. They could send me to Ramsay. Or some foster home. I can imagine what happens to kids in foster homes.

‘I know you didn’t go to Kings Cross to get into any trouble. But in a place like Kings Cross, trouble can find you.’ For once, one of Lyyssa’s bumper-sticker sayings is right on the mark.

‘I won’t go back there,’ I promise, and I mean it.

Lyyssa relaxes a bit. ‘Good. I’ll have to tell Renate Dunn to explain why you won’t be at your lesson tomorrow. But I think our secret is safe with her.’

I don’t know what Lyyssa tells the other kids about me being sick. She insists that I stay in bed on Monday. I read and she brings me my meals on a tray. And for some reason, Bindi and Cinnamon never tease me about the LeeLee Nelson song again.