Swallow the Air (7 page)

Railway lines like fragile taping rose and fell through the scarce green. I searched my fingers, sleepers of cracked wet flesh-folds like bleeding nectarine seeds. I checked myself in the reflection as we passed under tunnels, pressing the collars of my Cheapa Petrol polo shirt, looking down at my chemical hands cradling that big watermelon.

Charlie and I would take fruit every day for smoko, sometimes a bag of oranges, or a pineapple. Sometimes Charlie would even bring a punnet of strawberries and we'd sit in the sunshine at the entrance of the carwash and juice each red berry, staining our lips. And always after we'd finish our ritual he'd roll a thumb size of lime-soaked tobacco and line his gums for the rest of the day, vacuuming Mercedes and chewing down the copper muck. On the sunny days
Charlie would get out his piano and play it cross legged inside the perspex walls. ‘For good sound,' he'd say, stopping mid-tune and pointing to the roof. ‘Good sound, hey!'

I'd nod and be taken away again by the beautiful music. Charlie called it an
mbira
or a special thumb piano; it was a block of wood with shiny metal teeth that he flicked up and down with his long thumbnails. I'd close my eyes and see a velvet jewellery box with a pretty ballerina pirouetting against the mirror. The dinging tunes dancing her along.

‘Yes, sir, yes, boss, I'll do that boss, right away boss. Sorry boss.'

Mr Tzuilakis would seesaw between the carwash and the office. In the indecision he'd walk back into his cramped cardboard office, as Charlie would gather up the instrument, make some tobacco juice in his mouth and spit down onto the cement behind him. We'd watch Mr Tzuilakis waddle out at least twenty times during the day to check on how well we were cleaning the wheel caps or this or that. He'd sort of strut around, looking at you while he counted the sponges, two sponges per bucket. If a sponge went missing
he'd always yell at Charlie. Looking right down his finger pointing, into Charlie's glare.
‘You watch it hah! Just watch yourself, boy.'

But Charlie was hardly a boy; at fifty-four he still worked harder and faster than every employee at Cheapa Petrol – the console operators, Jan the office lady, me, and even Mr Tzuilakis himself. I imagined Charlie as a chief or a hunter and back in Africa I suppose he was.

He'd never tell you about Africa, and I never asked. It was his secret – his past, that someday, revisited, would become his home again. He never asked me where I was from either – it was an unspoken understanding. We just existed there in that carwash, carwashers, crouching with fruit nectar dripping off our chins. Spitting the sour blood onto the cement.

That day, I'd brought watermelon.

‘Hey, trouble! What you got there?'

‘Watermelon, ninety-nine cents a kilo.'

His smile poured out like curdled milk and brown theatre curtains. And it was then I thought Charlie could have been my father, or wished he was secretly, looking up for his approval, hoping he'd lean over against my forehead with his and
tell me softly, as if I'd known all along, that I was his child.

‘Hey, Chocolate,' yelled Mr Tzuilakis.

Time lay itself down over the acre of grey. Bowsers drank the air and all those shuffling, smoking cars just paused, with their owners, for however long forever is. A police officer walked over with Mr Tzuilakis, another lagging behind with hands on hips as if each of his strong index fingers and thumbs were lifting and placing mechanical legs. I noticed the legs of all three men's trousers, perfectly ironed, each mechanical leg. Then they leant over and without words stole Charlie's smile.

They waltzed him to a car like dance partners, lowering him under the doorframe to make sure he didn't bump his head. They took turns to shake Mr Tzuilakis' fat hand and then lowered their own selves into the car, and drove away past the stack of firelighters and the cage of gas bottles.

Chocolate rang in my ears; I thought it was funny that Mr Tzuilakis called Charlie by the name Chocolate or Boy, never Charlie.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Just like the movie. It was really funny. I thought about that until
Mr Tzuilakis walked over and said I ought to get to work, pack up the hand wash. ‘Can't hand wash just one of you.'

I thought about it while he explained what the word ‘deported' meant.

I thought about it until he waddled back in.

I thought about those blue suits taking away the people I love. The cops at Aunty's house that day and now Charlie. I hid back in the chemical room and got out Charlie's thumb piano, flicking its teeth a little, numb and confused. When I went back out to the auto washer a couple of fellas were hanging around the side, in the garden.

‘Hey, sista, nice shirt.'

‘Whata ya want?'

‘Just doin some shoppin ya know, sissy, got any stuff we can look at, ya know some cans there, sissy?'

Silver and pink paint flecked their upper lips, bottles hiding under their shirts. Chroming was common, second to drinking and yarndi but first choice to petrol. It was always easier to steal a few spray cans than fill a jerry of petty or risk getting chased out of a bottle shop by some meathead.

‘Nah, piss off I'll lose me job, everything's counted.'

‘Yeah all right, reckon you can give us a jerry then?'

‘Ya gunna pay or just do a runner?'

‘Nah we pay, sister.' He shows the end of a tendollar note from his pocket. ‘Ok, sister?'

‘All right,' and pushes the note back in.

I go into the service station. I walk the chip aisles checking the new jerries a couple of times; some new young guy working the console ignores me, slipping fingers through a magazine and gulping a Coke. I grab the jerry acting allcasual, and walk toward the automatic doors.

‘Hey, carwash girl – where are you going with that petrol can?'

‘Just a customer, out at the wash. Don't worry, once he fills it up I'll bring the money in.'

‘Yeah all right, don't forget.' He rolls his eyes blindly across the packed-out bowsers and back down at the mag.

I walk out to the bowsers and fill the can to the top. Screw the lid on tight and walk over behind the muddy perspex walls. The fellas aren't in the garden and the chemical room door is flung open,
I walk over and stick my head in on them.

‘Whata ya think ya doing?'

Before they have a chance to answer or run, Mr Tzuilakis is standing at the entrance of the carwash, his hands on his hips.

‘What are
you
doing miss?'

‘Mr Tzuilakis, oh um nothing just...'

The fellas step out of the doorway and run out the side, a big bottle of tyre cleaner in each of their arms. Mr Tzuilakis just yells out to them, too big to move. He looks over at the jerry can and me. ‘Your friends are they? Well it's not the first time I've had to call the police twice in one day.'

‘No – please, boss, can't you just sack me instead?'

‘Don't worry, May, I'll be doing that too.'

Mr Tzuilakis shakes his head down at me and strides back to the office. I move fast, grab Charlie's thumb piano and the watermelon and run to the traino, dodging the main road through warehouse yards.

I jump the train to Redfern and wait in the park for the police car to leave Joyce's house. They'd already come for me.

I sneak around the side and through the
window. Joyce catches me as I flop through onto the floor.

‘Joyce, please, you have to believe me – I didn't flog anything.'

‘I don't have to believe ya, May, I do though.' She widens her eyes at me. ‘They racists down there anyway, I've already called Tzuilakis on Shelly's phone, told him he could stick his fuckin three dollar award wage bullshit. May, May, May, don't know about all this trouble girl, we'll talk later.' She reaches out and presses the collar of my shirt with her thin fingers. ‘We could unpick that logo you know, not a bad shirt, May.'

‘Yeah,' I say.

She strains the murky white water from the pasta in the sink, talking out the back window to me.

‘Yep, I'll fix it up for ya girl. Go on then, clean up, lunch is almost ready.'

‘What is it?' I say, trying to round the edges.

‘A feed, May, it's a feed. Go wash up.'

Johnny takes me away, together we run the white-sanded beaches, and we eat mangoes and pick coconuts and wade through swamps to pull up lily roots and eat them as sugar rhubarb. Even if we're sitting there in Caroline Street or walking up Vine to the park, we've escaped with each other and the rest of it – the Block and the city rise up and drift away like vacant echoes.

We follow the train tracks to Central, we rake in the city and buy hot chip rolls with gravy, we go west and discover streets that even Johnny didn't know existed; there we play hockey games with wooden stakes and beer cans. Johnny says it's not the same as in Waiben but it's still fun. In Waiben he says they use tree branches and they carve their own balls from wood. He says Waiben is his real home, where his father lives.
We talk of the beaches and our old folk, them and something missing.

Johnny Smith was born four months before me; we worked it out, exactly to the day. He was born in Sydney though, not Waiben. He hasn't been to Waiben yet, but he knows that it is his home. Johnny said he was going to get initiated, but Justine was in lock up so she couldn't come to mourn the spirits. He reckons he's still going to go up and get cut. He says people call it Thursday Island, cos Thursday is pension day see, the best day of the week, and that's why they call it that, cos it's so good up there that everyday is just like pension day.

When I first came to Joyce's he'd tried to crack onto me. I remember us sitting in his room at Joyce's, him blowing bong smoke through the gap of the window. The way he looked at me, it was nice, a gentle look, but I told him to piss off, told him all men are bastards.

‘You're my girlfriend, hey? Me and you?'

‘Piss off. All men are bastards. Don't reckon you're any exception!'

‘Nah, girl, you've just heard that from TV and stuff, magazines've brainwashed ya. That ain't true. Look at me – I'm no bastard!'

‘I
know
all men are bastards. Even if you're not, even if you're just too young to be a bastard – don't worry you will be one day.'

We stir each other up, joking. We know we are just best friends.

He always tells me about when his uncles have travelled through the Block, come and stayed with Joyce even. She'd make them a big pasta feed and they'd tell him all about the Torres Strait. He told me the same stories.

He says in the islands lots of people live in houses on high stilts, perched up in the leaves of pawpaw trees and towering black palms. He says that you can reach out from your window and pick off a ripe mango. Just like that.

He takes my hand like always and we scramble up the palms and hack down coconuts with a machete, we run down to the rocky beaches and cast off our canoe, we fish all day, following the reefs and tides and winds. We read the ocean looking for dugong, we beachcomb for turtle. We visit the other islands and trade food and sing songs. We dance with palm branches and deri flowers, like we are spirit people. We rest in the houses as warm tropical storms light up the
bruised sky. We lie out on the high balconies and watch the ocean turn to ink. Osprey hawks soar in from the deep, they plummet feet first into the stirring water, when they hit it they fold their wings downward and lift up into the air, a fish slipping in their claws. They return home, like us, to nests. Their nests are like houses, stacked high above the water line atop rock outcrops in the hot billowing wind. We rest.

In the late evening when we wake, I take
his
hand and lead him to my mum's country, to the lake. We wade through the delicate water, the moon spilling on our colourless bodies. Brolgas ruffling their wings against water ribbons, making the muddy bath flinch in coiling waves. We dig hollows in the wet sand and become snakes, silting though the swampy streams, creating mouths and rivers. We make fires, hunt red kangaroo and wrap ourselves in the warm skin and sand. We sleep.

We run back to Joyce's house, and hang out on the little veranda. Johnny's cousins come round and we listen to music under the sunshine. Daylight blanching our dreamings, the gritty air fuming back to our noses, engines starting back
in our listening, and we remember what we're all really seeing. Beach lines of gutters, trunks of layered windows, metal wings fleeing the sky, and dinner on the stove. We don't mind, because anytime we can leave in our minds.

It isn't bad when we come back; we notice little similarities to our dreaming places. The cabbage palms, the fire pit, the family.

I suppose that's what makes it, family, and I suppose we don't see the faces in our dreams yet. We promise each other to find them, the faces, to go to our homelands for our people, for ourselves. We are best friends. Johnny says I am his
wantok,
his black girl ally. I tell him that he reminds me of my brother. And he says he is my brother, always.

Staleness oozed from the pores of plasterboard, yellow, blue and fluorescent green spilling along the symbols, words, along identity. I went and hung out with some of the streeties. The old Waterloo terrace had been our canvas, our outlet. Etching ownership out of aerosol. The falling of colour cured us. It wasn't the existing but the enduring that I needed. All of us did.

One-step forward, two-steps back, no home again. Fifth time that fortnight that the pigs came to clear us out. Living, making camp, was no right of ours. From one chipboard door to another, inviting themselves in as if enacting a progressive dinner, searching for signs of surviving. Some of us leapt out of windows like high jump horses; spray cans spun on their sides like break-dancers. They shot paint into the officer's face, his eyes bleeding his blindness. Savages. The
paddy wagon cage let in the city air, thick and stifling and real.

We submitted names and far away homes. Undressed. They gave us tracksuits; the brown fleece caressed my limbs. The watch-house roof fell on me like a marble domino. Small chrome sink in the corner: toilet and washbasin. Two metal bunk beds stuck out of render like forklift trays. Symmetrical bars framed the dark place where train tracks met. I drew the government-issue, cactus blanket over my face and dreamt of places, away from winter and walls.

Windradyne was angry. There was betrayal. There was war. Sharp spears through thick skin. He rose from the rivers; he was a warrior, a fighter. I felt his rage. Windradyne fought in the stories of backlash and of lore and of horror. Whispering their importance.
He bled for all of us mob.

I saw Windradyne that night; he visited the polished cement freezer box where I lay. Together we looked out past the grey glue melancholy and into the diamonds in the canvas of night. He pointed up to the clustering stars and back at me. His eyes were black deep-sea pearls; he tried to say something with them. I couldn't understand
and bent my neck back up at the cradling dome. The stars scattered free and became sea birds, their wings brushing through the sky, long necks pointed upward, carving lines and unzipping the wet universe. Under its blanket was water, flowing, and blue shimmering. The water did not fall, instead it suspended.

Windradyne faded from my side and I stood lost in my thoughts as they swam through the shifting sea.

Maybe it was too much paint or too much goon. Whatever it was, Windradyne had shown me, letting me in on something important. I didn't know what it all meant. The sky showing the journey the waters make, the tracks, the beds balancing liquid from cloud to crevasse.
Follow the leatherback turtle through tide, the waterbirds fly between currents.
I knew I had to get out of the city, get out of the boxes they put you in.

The cell was silent and crying. Far off there were only hollow echoes. Morning's blue-grey light defined corners and captivity. Footsteps stalked the ‘safe space' between salvation and the street.

‘Wake up, on your feet, May Gibson. You
straight yet?' The uniform stood strong in the narrow corridor.

I sat upright on the metal tray and rolled the barbed blanket in my lap, bug-eyeing the sullen shadow.

‘No charges this time, your four hours are up.' She passed my clothes through the metal grate. ‘Get changed, get out.'

Outside the turf lapped at my feet. Suits and handbags began to fill the emptiness of morning. I could see Joyce's rooftop from the grass; I knew I needed to see Johnny. I knew I had to leave this place. We both did. Leave the people grieving through sleepy eyes, those only faintly dreaming. I needed to go to the water where it drew up on the riverbank and sand. I needed to listen to the dreams.

The front door is open; I walk inside the empty house and up the stairs. I know Johnny will be there. I know he will be waiting. Joyce is out this morning, morning tea in the elders' room at the community centre. I climb the last stairs and push open the door. Johnny sits on the edge of his bed, packing a bong.

‘Hey, Wantok, thought I'd never see you again, you got caught?' He laughs his head off. ‘You one of us now, May, you're a fuckin criminal like the rest of us.'

‘No I'm not!'

‘Yep, you are, a no-good streetie criminal!' He laughs more. ‘You need to be controlled, Wantok.'

He puts the bong down and wrestles me to the bed. We're laughing.

‘So whatcha doin? You going back to the squat, I don't reckon you should. Too many pigs go round there, I reckon Joyce will let ya back.' He picks the bong back up, nurses it in his hands.

‘Nah, I'm leaving, I'm doing what we said we would. I'm goin to country, I'm goin to find family.'

‘Yeah?' He lights the cone piece, pulls a bong.

‘Yeah! Yes.
How exciting, May, that's great
– you could be at least half pissing your pants!'

‘It's good, May, just miss ya, ya know.'

‘Well come with me, that's why I came here, to get you, we can go the Cape and hitch in a boat or something. We can go to Waiben, find your old man. Go there first if you want and then out west or whatever. Let's just go – together. You coming?'

He licks his lips, stares at the bong and then inspects around the room full circle and back at my face. We meet eyes that know.

‘I can't, Wantok. I can't go, May, they were just dreams, they still are. I got stuff to do here.'

‘Like what? Get ripped?'

‘Fuck off. You don't get it, you don't get that we stuck here!'

‘I get that you got two legs and somewhere you want to be!'

‘Nah you don't get it, that we fucking prisoners of our own prison. Gangsters Paradise, this all it is. We don't go nowhere. Just go, May.'

Near the doorway I turn around to him, pink eyed. ‘You know what, Johnny; I get that you just gunna stay nobody. You ain't gunna move to change anything, not for nobody else and not even for yourself. Ever thought about it? Johnny Smith – John Smith, that's a nobody's name, you're a fuckin nobody like everyone else!'

‘Yeah? That's all right with me – nobodies don't need no one either! See ya, Wantok, see ya later!'

And I leave, with our dreams spilling at our feet.