Riggs Crossing (4 page)

Chapter 10

Today is my last regular visit with Scott, the physiotherapist. We’ve been doing exercises to help me extend my range of movement. After being inactive those weeks in hospital, I was pretty stiff and inflexible. Since I’m working with a tutor rather than going to school, we have to decide on a type of exercise for me since I won’t be doing sport as a class.

Scott is soft-spoken and gentle, not really the kind of person you’d think of as the ‘sporty’ type. He’s broad-shouldered and tall. You wouldn’t immediately guess how strong he is. I could feel the strength in his hands when he was working on my shoulders and lower back.

‘Can I take up racquetball?’ Clarissa Hobbs does racquetball.

‘Racquetball?’ Scott looks at me through his rimless glasses and blinks. ‘Well, I don’t see why not, but racquetball’s not that popular. It might be difficult for you to find a place to take lessons. Why don’t you try tennis?’

I figure tennis will do.

‘And can I start lifting weights?’

Scott frowns slightly. ‘You can do
light
weight training,’ he says. ‘Just dumbbells – no barbells and definitely no weight machines. Your bones and muscles are still developing – I don’t want you pumping iron and risking injury. And don’t even
think
of dieting,’ Scott cautions me further. ‘You’re a mesomorph – stocky and muscular. There’s no sense in starving yourself to make yourself look like Lila-Rose and LeeLee. You’re not built that way.’

I’d rather be dead than look plastic and phony like Lila-Rose and LeeLee, who probably started wearing thick makeup at age three, but I take his point. Scott says he’ll ask Lyyssa to order a tennis outfit for me, and arrange lessons at a gym twice a week.

‘Can you swim?’

Can I swim? I think about this. When I scan my brain for swimming, I come up blank, just like when I try to remember anything about my mother.

‘No.’

‘Everyone should learn how to swim,’ Scott says firmly. ‘We’ll sign you up for swimming lessons once a week.’ He makes a note for Lyyssa to get me a swimsuit as well. ‘That should be enough for the time being. If you decide you want to spend more time at the gym, speak to me or Lyyssa. We can look at getting you a pass so you can go as often as you like.’

Scott gives me some pamphlets about healthy eating and exercise, and tells me to call him if I have any problems.

It’s a short walk from the physio’s office to the Refuge. When I get back, I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of milk and spoon in some Milo. I’m planning on having a nice afternoon snack by myself, so naturally Bindi and Cinnamon have to ruin it by barging in.

‘Better not drink too much Milo, Len,’ Bindi snipes. ‘You’ll put on weight.’ Bindi is an ectomorph, tall and angular, with razor-sharp cheekbones. Her hair is naturally curly, but she irons it straight every morning and pulls it back into a skin-tight ballerina’s bun.

‘Yeah, you’ll get even fatter, as fat as Karen,’ stupid Cinnamon chimes in. Cinnamon shouldn’t talk – she’s a pear-shaped endomorph. But she probably thinks her big boobs make it okay to have a big arse.

‘I’m not
fat
,’ I say. ‘I’m a
mesomorph
.’ I say the word slowly and carefully, so they’ll understand. Bindi and Cinnamon have a vocabulary of about a hundred words between them, not counting the four-letter ones.

‘A MESOMORPH!’ Bindi screeches. She and Cinnamon start screaming with laughter. ‘Come on, Cin, let’s get some food and leave the
mesomorph
to pig out on her Milo.’ Bindi grabs a bag of Doritos from the cupboard and Cinnamon gets two Cokes from the fridge and they clatter out of the kitchen, hooting and saying ‘mesomorph’ over and over. They’ve left their school books from Ramsay on the kitchen table. Remedial English. Mathematics for Morons. History for Retards. Design for Delinquents.

I stare at my glass of Milo. I spoon out the chocolatey grains floating on the top and flick them into the garbage. Then I make myself drink the rest of it, even though I feel like dumping the whole glass down the sink.

Chapter 11

I’ve been here for a couple of months now. My life has settled into a routine. I have lessons with Miss Dunn. No matter what they tell me, I’m afraid they’re going to send me to Ramsay if I don’t learn enough, so I always do my homework. I read books from the library. I go to tennis lessons and swimming lessons. I avoid Bindi and Cinnamon, without making it obvious that I’m walking around them. You can’t let someone know you’re afraid of them.

One night I don’t have anything better to do, so I look into the lounge room where Bindi and Cinnamon are sprawled on the lounge and Karen is in the brown chair. I survey the room before going in, working out that I can sit on the red two-seater couch, across the room from Bindi and Cinnamon. Karen doesn’t take her eyes from the TV. Even though there’s only some noisy fast-food commercial playing, you’d think it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. Cinnamon gives me a quick glance of mild dislike, and Bindi stares at me for a moment with her eyes narrowed. They don’t try to keep me from coming in, though. The lounge room is common property and they know it.

I settle myself into the sagging, musty-smelling red couch. The couch got here just a few days after I did. Some man showed up at the door and made a big deal about having a ‘donation’ for us, when all he really had was an old piece of furniture that he couldn’t sell at his garage sale and couldn’t be bothered taking to the tip. Lyyssa helped him unload it from his lime-green ute and carry it inside. He never took off his sunglasses the whole time.

For some reason, I decided the couch was female and gave her a name. I called her Clementine. I didn’t tell anyone this, of course, I just named the couch inside my own head.

Clementine the couch is
red.
Not burgundy, or maroon, but bright, screaming scarlet. And the fabric isn’t just plain velvet, it’s crushed velvet. New, Clementine probably looked fashionably outlandish, like something an artist would have in the house. Twenty or thirty years old, she just looks run-down and sad. But the lights in the lounge room are always turned down low, so Clementine’s shabbiness isn’t so obvious.

The noisy commercial ends and a Channel Eight News Bulletin with Dan Martin and Susan Simons comes on. After Dan Martin reads the national news, mostly boring stuff about the session of Parliament in Canberra, Susan starts on the world news. All female newsreaders are pretty, and Susan Simons is prettier than most. But she has a hard, determined edge that sets her apart. It makes you pay attention to what she says.

‘In New York, a well-known publicist has been arrested for allegedly driving her four-wheel drive vehicle into a crowd outside a nightclub,’ Susan says, looking straight into the camera. ‘Witnesses say that Lucy Grubb, publicist for several prominent actors and the daughter of an influential New York attorney, was angry at being told to move her car because it was blocking a fire hydrant.’

They cut to some news footage. ‘She just went postal!’ some guy in a polo shirt says in an American accent. ‘She yelled, “– you, white trash!” and just ploughed right into a whole crowd of people!’

They’ve bleeped out the dirty word, but you can tell it was ‘screw’.

‘Local authorities say that nine people were taken to hospital for injuries ranging from severe abrasions to a crushed pelvis,’ Susan continues. ‘Police have not yet disclosed whether Miss Grubb remains in custody, or whether bail has been set.’

Bindi and Cinnamon explode into a fit of laughter. They think the whole thing is hilarious. ‘Screw you, white trash!’ Bindi screams at Cinnamon.

‘No, screw
you
, white trash!’ Cinnamon screams back.

I just know they’re going to go around saying ‘Screw you, white trash’ for the rest of the week. They’re too stupid to realise that they really are white trash. They’re slutty and common. Bindi brags about her boyfriend who’s a dealer, and Cinnamon’s always going on about how much money she made as a stripper in Kings Cross.

They’re the sort of girls that toffs can get away with crushing under the tyres of their expensive cars. But if Bindi or Cinnamon got behind the wheel drunk or stoned and mowed someone down, they’d be sent straight to jail.

I burrow down further into Clementine and hope they shut up before the nine o’clock movie comes on.

‘What’s going on?’ Lyyssa is standing in the doorway. She must have heard Bindi and Cinnamon screaming ‘screw you’ at each other.

‘Nothing,’ Bindi says sullenly.

‘Bindi, I thought we had an agreement. We agreed that you wouldn’t watch TV after nine o’clock until you –’ Lyyssa catches herself in time, ever mindful of ‘breaking confidentiality’ or ‘betraying trust’. Lyyssa bites her lip. ‘You remember our agreement, don’t you?’

Bindi’s not exactly stupid, but she has trouble in school. Probably, Lyyssa wants her to stop watching so much TV until her marks improve.

‘Yeah, right.’ Bindi sighs and gets up from the couch, pushing past Lyyssa and stomping down the hall to her bedroom. Cinnamon follows her. ‘Screw you, white trash!’ ‘No, screw
you
, white trash!’ I hear them saying to each other, before going into their rooms.

Lyyssa looks confused. ‘What was that all about?’ she asks.

I tell Lyyssa I don’t know. Karen turns her eyes back to the TV.

Chapter 12

To get to my tutoring sessions with Miss Dunn, I walk to the main road and catch a bus.

If you’re over twelve at the Refuge, you get a MyMultil train, bus and ferry pass along with your pocket money. It’s cool that you can go pretty much any place in Sydney, but the rule is that you’re not supposed to go to a certain list of off-limits places, like Kings Cross and Redfern.

There are a couple of people I keep seeing on the bus. One is a dwarf man with dyed purple hair who always has headphones on. Another is an European-looking lady who always carries lots of shopping bags. Today, they’re both on the bus. It’s going to be the same bus ride as always, or so I think, until the woman sitting behind me starts talking.

‘I am not a loose woman!’ she says loudly.

I turn around in my seat and glance at her. She’s older, wearing a daggy sweater, with short hair and a face set in a permanent frown. Her eyes have that million-miles-away look.
Not the full quid
, Daddy would have said.

‘I said, I am
not a loose woman!’
she says, even louder. She’s not talking to anyone on the bus; she’s talking to someone who’s not there. Even so, everybody on the bus, except the dwarf who’s nodding to the music on his headphones, starts finding something else to do. The European lady pulls a letter from her purse and pretends to read it. A uni student pulls a textbook out of his backpack and opens it. Another student turns his head to the window.

‘Please stop casting as-per-sions upon my character!’ the woman says firmly. She has trouble pronouncing ‘aspersions’. Why bother using words you can’t pronounce?

The bus fills up gradually. A noisy group of teenage boys gets on, and their loud talk drowns out the woman who’s not the full quid. They’re also drowning out the dwarf’s music – I see him purse his mouth, look annoyed, and turn up the volume.

‘I do not sleep around,’ I hear the woman mumble, as I pile out of the bus with all the people getting off at the University bus stop.

Miss Dunn has me wait in her office while she takes care of some business upstairs. While I’m waiting, I look up ‘aspersion’ in the dictionary that I find on one of the bookshelves.
Slander, calumnious report or remark.
In other words, telling lies about someone. I kind of figured that was what it meant.

‘Sorry to keep you, Len,’ Miss Dunn says, coming back into the office. She notices me putting the dictionary back on the shelf. ‘Did you want to borrow one of my books?’

‘I was just looking up a word,’ I explain.

‘Yeah?’ Miss Dunn says. Today she looks tired, with dark circles under her eyes. ‘What word, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Aspersions. As in “casting aspersions upon my character”.’

Miss Dunn laughs a little. ‘
Casting aspersions upon my character
. How appropriate. There’s certainly plenty of that in the academic world.’ I get the feeling that the meeting that she just had upstairs didn’t go very well. ‘Anyway, let’s get to work.’

After we’ve finished, Miss Dunn apologises for not offering me tea, explaining that she has to finish an article she’s supposed to write. I’m disappointed, but not offended. I’m glad Miss Dunn thinks I’m mature enough that she can speak to me honestly.

Not staying for tea and a chat with Miss Dunn leaves a hole in my afternoon. I decide to walk back to the shelter instead of taking the bus.

Casting aspersions upon my character.
The phrase keeps twisting itself around in my mind, annoying me like the whine of a mozzie right next to my ear. Everyone else on the bus has probably forgotten about the woman who was talking to herself. So why do I keep thinking about that peculiar thing she said?

I’m at the top of University Road when it hits me.
Casting aspersions upon my character
was a line in that
Clarissa Hobbs, Attorney at Law
episode that aired a few weeks ago.

I’ve just about replayed the whole episode in my head by the time I make it back to the shelter. It pisses me off that the nutcase woman who says embarrassing things out loud on city buses is a
Clarissa Hobbs
fan, just like me. One of the things I’ve always liked about
Clarissa Hobbs
is that no one else at the Refuge watches it.

It takes me a whole week to stop being annoyed about that. Fortunately, I never see the woman on the bus again.

Chapter 13

It’s a
Clarissa Hobbs
:
Attorney at Law
night, so I’m lying on Clementine in the lounge room. Shane is already in bed. Bindi has been sent to her room for the evening because she called Karen a fat little pig at the dinner table and made her cry.

‘Yeah, like I really care about being sent to my room,’ Bindi sneered. ‘Youse all suck, anyway.’

She scraped back her chair, practically threw it against the table, and stomped out of the dining room without taking her plate to the kitchen. As soon as the dishes were washed, Cinnamon went to Bindi’s room. The two of them are up there listening to music and laughing loudly. Lyyssa is in her office typing. Karen is sitting in her favourite armchair. I don’t really like to be in the same room as Karen, but at least she’s keeping quiet, apart from the occasional snuffle.

You know what’s really stupid? Karen’s crying because Bindi called her a fat little pig for taking all the mashed potatoes from the bowl before it had been around the table. If you’re going to get upset if people call you a fat pig, the sensible thing to do would be, maybe, go on a diet? Or at least not get any fatter. So what does Karen do? After she’s already eaten a huge dinner, she gets a bag of miniature candy bars from her room and starts eating them in front of the TV. I bet you she finishes the whole bag before the show is over.

After some stupid ad for a discount bedding warehouse, the opening sequence comes on, with Clarissa driving her BMW through sunny LA, Clarissa addressing a jury, Clarissa playing racquetball, Clarissa passionately kissing a handsome, grey-haired man. I block Karen out of my mind and concentrate on the story.

Sure enough, Clarissa Hobbs is defending Trell again, just like she said she would.

Last time, Clarissa got Trell acquitted when he was wrongfully accused of arson and manslaughter. This time, Trell has been accused of shooting dead a rival gang member outside a Burger King restaurant, and Clarissa knows that he’s guilty.

Even so, Trell won’t admit his guilt to Clarissa. He keeps crapping on about how he was with his girlfriend that night, but Clarissa isn’t fooled. When Clarissa threatens not to represent him, Trell finally comes clean.

‘So I did it. So what?’ Trell looks sullen and angry.

‘So what
?!’ Clarissa shouts. ‘So you’re going to be on Death Row right next to your old man if you don’t take this seriously!’

Trell starts to look afraid. ‘You the best lawyer in LA,’ he whispers. ‘You gotta get me off.’

‘I can’t do that without your help,’ Clarissa says, her voice calmer.

They work out a strategy. Trell is going to admit to the shooting, but will plead self-defence. She’ll also try to stack the jury with people likely to be sympathetic to someone like Trell. ‘And we’ve got to get you a suit,’ she concludes.

‘I got one at home,’ Trell says in a low voice. ‘My mama can bring it.’

‘By the way, Trell,’ Clarissa adds, ‘you said I was the best lawyer in LA. Actually, I’m the best lawyer in the state of California.’

Trell manages a wry smile as he is led away, cuffed and shackled.

As the closing credits roll, it’s late at night and Clarissa is back at her office working on Trell’s case with a bunch of junior lawyers. They’re sitting around a huge table reading thick law books and eating takeaway food from Burger King.

Are there Burger King restaurants in Australia? If there are, they’re probably about the same as McDonald’s.

‘Is there a Burger King any place around here?’ I ask Lyyssa during our weekly counselling session.

Lyyssa is both thrilled that I’ve said something and flustered about what to say.

‘Burger King? Well! Um . . . let’s see. Burger King is an American fast-food chain, but we have a restaurant called Hungry Jack’s that’s the same thing. Why? Do you want to go there?’

So that’s how the whole damn Refuge got to go to Hungry Jack’s for dinner. Well, everyone except Jo and Sky Morningstar, who are boycotting Hungry Jack’s because breeding cattle to make hamburgers causes soil erosion and greenhouse gases. Honestly, I don’t know which is more embarrassing – being seen with the other Refuge kids at the Westgardens Metro, or being seen with them at Hungry Jack’s. Karen, instead of whizzing her pants, spills her thick shake down her front. Bindi, instead of being mean to Karen about whizzing her pants, is mean to Karen about spilling her thick shake. Cinnamon, instead of flirting with some store clerk, starts making eyes at some teenage ethnic guys at the next table who are all wearing Lonsdale tracksuits and baseball caps on backwards. They’re good-looking, but I wouldn’t trust them for a minute. They’re grinning at Cinnamon and saying stuff to each other in Arabic. Probably they’re saying, ‘Look at that slut’s boobs’.

Cinnamon’s so damn stupid. It’s boys like them who got arrested some years back because they pack-raped some girl and hosed her down afterward. They think every girl who doesn’t wear a headscarf is a moll.

I’m still safe from things like that. The guys don’t even notice me, because I’m still a girl, not even close to being a woman.

As if things weren’t bad enough, now that stupid LeeLee Nelson song, ‘I’m Still a Girl, Not Yet a Woman’ is running through my head. How do you get rid of a song going through your head?

‘Karen, stop crying, it’s okay, I’ll get you another thick shake,’ Lyyssa is saying, on their way back from the ladies’ room, where they’ve been cleaning up Karen’s shirt as best they can. There’s still a big wet spot and the trace of a chocolate stain across Karen’s chest. Her face is as red as her hair and her eyes are nearly swollen shut from crying. As soon as she sits down, she starts chowing on the super-size fries that she left, even though they must be cold by now.

Lyyssa goes to the counter to get another thick shake for Karen and chocolate sundaes for Shane and me. I’m still drinking my Coke, watching Cinnamon flirting with the boys.

Bindi is staring at me. Why is she staring at me when she’s got Karen to make fun of ? I realise, with a flush of shame rising to my cheeks, that I’ve been humming ‘I’m Still a Girl, Not Yet a Woman’.

‘Hey, look!’ Bindi screams, grabbing Cinnamon’s arm. ‘Len thinks she’s LeeLee Nelson!’ They start shrieking, and then do a piss-take of ‘I’m Still a Girl, Not Yet a Woman’ for the boys, who whistle and cheer.

I’m so humiliated I can barely eat my ice-cream when Lyyssa brings it back. All the way home, Bindi, who’s sitting behind me in the van, hums that stupid song in my ear.

I go straight to my room when we get back to the Refuge. I don’t even care what Lyyssa and the rest of these morons are up to.

The best way to calm down and forget about something unpleasant is to read a book you don’t care anything about. You don’t even have to read the book; just skimming your eyes over the text and looking at the pictures is enough. There’s a book called
Japanese Prints
that’s really good for that. It was in another box that came from the Salvation Army. The book is only a little one, only ten centimetres square. I snapped it up because it had a picture of a huge wave on the front, but the pictures inside aren’t as good. They’re drawings of old-fashioned Japanese ladies with small, squinty eyes who carry parasols and wear chopsticks in their hair, and Japanese men with really weird haircuts. When I’m in a certain mood, I like to flick through the pictures until I feel nice and bored and ready to sleep.

A Woman Strolling. Woman Holding a Comb. Surimono: Stretching Cloth. Young Woman with a Caged Monkey.

That one makes me look more closely. Animals in cages make me sad, even though the monkey is in a wooden cage, not a cruel metal cage. He’s reached out with one arm and grabbed the edge of the lady’s kimono, and she’s looking down at him. You can’t tell from her expression whether she thinks the monkey is being cute, or whether she’s annoyed that he’s got hold of her dress. I wonder if it’s her pet monkey, and whether she takes him out of his cage and plays with him when she’s not so dressed up.

This book isn’t working anymore. I’m getting interested in the pictures.

I turn off the light and try to sleep, even though Bindi and Cinnamon are still making noise in their rooms. I can’t stop thinking about those ethnic boys we saw at Hungry Jack’s. It’s because they make me think of something else, something I don’t want to think about.

I push it back for a while, trying to hear what Bindi and Cinnamon are up to, trying to think about the Japanese pictures. I finally give up, and the memory rises to the surface.

‘Can’t stand dealing with foreigners,’ says Ernie. I’m lying on the floor. I was colouring in my new colouring books, but now I’m just lying on my stomach, half-asleep. Reggie is asleep in front of the fire, as close as he can get without being burned. Daddy keeps having to pull him back so he doesn’t catch on fire, but Reggie’s fur is so hot to the touch that Daddy has to put on gloves each time he does it. Then Ernie laughs at Daddy. Then Daddy says ‘STAY!’ to Reggie. Then Reggie inches back toward the fire a little bit at a time when Daddy isn’t looking, then Daddy has to put his gloves on and do the whole thing over, and Ernie laughs at Daddy again.

Ernie spits into the fire and there’s a hiss. ‘Send ’em all back where they come from, as far as I’m concerned.’

Reggie creeps a couple of inches toward the fire. ‘Reggie!’ Daddy says sharply. Reggie pretends not to hear, settles his head on his front paws, and closes his eyes.

‘That is one spoiled dog,’ says Ernie. ‘One boot up the arse would teach him to do as he’s told.’

‘He’s not a working dog, he’s a pet,’ says Daddy. ‘It doesn’t hurt to spoil a pet.’ Daddy picks me up and sits me on his lap. I’m tired so I rest my head on his chest. He’s wearing a flannie. There’s something in the pocket that presses against my cheek.

Daddy ruffles my hair. ‘Two things it doesn’t hurt to spoil: your pet dog, and your daughter. With a son, you’ve got to make him into a man. But a daughter, you can spoil her and there’s no harm done.’

I’m tired because we just got back from Coffs. Daddy bought me two My Little Ponys, one pink and one purple.