Who Sings for Lu? Read online

  The house was assigned for demolition, he said. A sweltering day it was; thirty-seven degrees, the register down by the harbour read.

  ‘Come on. Take a look.’

  She sure he meant he was going take a look at her, at her private part down there, followed by take a look at this, as if a woman, a girl, is at every breathing moment waiting to receive another swollen cock forcing its way to where it was never invited — never.

  So she hesitated as he yanked off the boarding across the back door — seriously strong he was, anyone could see that, yet so kind, normally. Now about to show his true self. Lu steeling inside for the worst, and soon another male friend off her birthday invite list.

  ‘Don’t ya trust me?’ That smile again. Going in after him but waiting for the move, for his fingers, his tongue to start probing. For the snake to pop its hungry head out of his jeans and fuckin’ spoil everything.

  Instead he led her into the cool of an era and world long gone, of gathered grime and dark material that could be coal dust, piled up in corners of revealed wall framing where she could hear the voices from the past, of the original inhabitants who must have spoken with kind of classy English accents and had lots of money. In this room he said had been the kitchen because of the three chimney outlets of blackened brick, and those metal clips were for attaching, he said, pots along a steel rod.

  He took her to a far wall. ‘Take a look at this, Lu.’

  At old newspapers glued to boarding, with articles of events from 1897, 1903, ancient times, faded photographs of olden-day tractors with big steel wheels, ads for mustard in a tin, custard powder being good for baby, baking products featuring a granny or a real straight-looking housewife who looked like no woman Luana had ever seen. Wallpapering that told tales of floods and lives lost to drowning, a young man’s suicide — his name was Theodore Ball-something, part of the name gone forever, like him, aged nineteen, poor bugger. There was murder on record, court cases, from urinating in a public place to associating with known criminals, chopping off a wife’s head, rape; a lot of violence against women, she noticed.

  Into a smaller room next door. Rocky had figured out this was a later addition to the house, with newspapers showing the building of Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1930s. Looked so weird in the different stages of construction: something you thought had always been there, not built by mere worker men’s hands and overseers’ brains to some grand plan.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, and some of that relief because the inevitable was not coming. Rocky had no plans to touch her. She felt her distrust melting away in the reduced summer heat in there.

  ‘Pretty cool, eh?’ Like proudly showing her his school project. Faded black-and-white photographic history with smudges and stains and rips and tears but mostly in its original state, insects crawling over it and always the summer flies, debris scattered everywhere.

  ‘Look at these old ceilings.’

  She looked up, half expecting a hand to go there, up her skirt, just when she trusted him. But nothing happened. Just Rocky’s finger pointed at the ornate plastering, the fancy patterned ceilings, the whirls and spiral design round where the centre light had hung. Lu could picture the grand balls they had had in here, the women all dressed up, the men a bit stuffy and formal but it would have been some experience.

  Rocky’s finger pointed at parts where the wall lining was gone. ‘Hardwood framing like it’s put in recently. Been in an enclosed space, ya see. For over a hundred-fifty years.’

  A girl starting to wonder if she hadn’t been in her own enclosed space, the things she was learning from this dude. Not remotely like the Rocky of first impressions. Not once did he try anything and nor did he say mean things like retard, reject, or ask if she was a Molly no-mates. Just took her for what she was, a cheerful sort no matter the private shit going down, which must show, she was certain.

  Read the old newspaper wall coverings like a keen student back at Vaucluse High School — of all the places, because the law said it was the right of every kid to have a full education and exclusive Vaucluse was the nearest high school to inner-city Woolloomooloo. Back when she believed there might be a chance to change who and what she was, and if not put the shit behind her then at least have another focus; a positive one, not always having to be in self-protect mode, even with nothing left to protect.

  Being around kids who thought and behaved differently to your own rough and ready lot was never going to be a smooth ride. Every Woollo kid saw the hatred and contempt on the rich kids’ faces, the sneered comments they were housing estate kids, renters, the children of welfare bludgers, and for the first time the notion that it was shameful to be working class when she’d grown up understanding it was more shameful not to be working. Took a while for it to sink in. Who told them this shit?

  The old wool stores down behind The Rocks area, that strangely appealing smell Rocky told her was lanolin, being sheep wool scents; and odours of the countryside she’d never visited, of the bush meant to be part of every Australian, the farms she’d only seen photos of, television documentaries, showing grizzled farmers swatting away a constant attack of flies, with gum trees, dogs panting in the blinding heat. They called it the Big Dry. As if it had known anything else. In one doco a suggestion that this man, this type, and this parched, harsh land was in every Australian’s soul — even a girl grown up in inner-city Woollo getting fucked by her uncle. And it kind of felt like it really was part of her too. Like being told she belonged. The somewhat comforting notion that if all else failed then at least your country loved you.

  They would often hang out at Pyrmont fish market, Rocky and Lu, get fresh prawns and scoff them down by the old wooden bridge or watch the fishermen unload their boats, mend nets, away from where the tourists and employed people ate at tables, some with a bottle of wine, a beer. Rocky always had money enough, just he didn’t drink alcohol much, not like most men she knew. Lu not big on booze either, she guessed in reaction to her father making it his life.

  She was coming to see the tousle-haired young man as a brother, but even more because she didn’t feel any empathy with her born brothers, who her sister Monica said were going to be gangsters. Lu thought thugs more like it, too dumb and hopelessly disorganised to be gangsters. Rocky was like the ideal brother. Jay, a good mate, got the shits with Lu at forgetting about him, but once he met Rocky they became something of a regular trio.

  Jay could talk, ’cause when Dayshana came along and grabbed Jay’s heart in her hot little hand he didn’t want to know Lu. Fair enough, Daysh was a little live wire and soon became part of the tight group, but still a bitch as Lu had a crush on Jay.

  Rocky told Lu that Daysh was nowhere as nice looking as she was, but Jay sure thought so and Rocky was just being kind. Her nice looking let alone compared to Dayshana? No way.

  Then Daysh died, suddenly. Car crash. The driver lived and he admitted in court Dayshana had objected to his speeding. He got a suspended prison sentence, but only because the crash had him permanently confined to a wheelchair. Jay said he would have put him in one if the crash hadn’t. Man, was Jay shattered. Lu had mixed feelings.

  Months later and Lu accepting Jay unlikely to see how much she liked him, another big jolt. Rocky had ‘a matter to deal with, might take me out of circ for a bit. Just read the papers. Look for the name Brian O’Connor.’

  Same Brian O’Connor who got three years’ jail, Long Bay Prison they presumed, for raping a twelve-year-old boy. Same Brian O’Connor sexo who Rocky went and beat up. Judge had given him a lecture about no one with the right to take the law in his own hands. Rocky was written up in the paper as asking, ‘So why didn’t the law protect the kid? Why isn’t the bloke standing here in the dock with me?’ Judge said if he had ‘further emotive outburst’ he’d be held in contempt.

  ‘Men and their cocks,’ Lu lamented for their pal going down. ‘What is it with blokes the thing has to intrude and violate like it does? And what about what Rocky said to the judge — wher
e’s the real culprit?’

  Jay said, ‘Ain’t none of us tried it on with you.’

  ‘Didn’t mean you or any of my male mates. Just saying how unfair it all is.’

  ‘Boohoo. Look around you,’ Jay said, ‘then start telling me about real culprits and shit.’ A cynic at twenty.

  Jay, like Rocky, was a gentleman as far as his cock went. Least with Lu he was, though other issues had him go a bit wild at times: wouldn’t listen to no one but Rocky, would put a brick through a shop or house window for no reason, steal cash or anything that could be converted to cash, carried a knife to pull on anyone who threatened, lived free with no thought for the future, like kangaroos in the great outback on TV docos she liked to watch — if she happened to be channel cruising. And usually they stirred her up full of questions. Pity the answers were on the short side.

  Mostly over it though she was, Lu wouldn’t have minded if Jay had a crack at her; she thought him a most handsome boy, quite tall, hair like Brad Pitt’s, same sultry eyes almost as the star, if he only had the confidence in himself like Rocky did, except Rocky didn’t have the looks. Funny that, how life balanced sometimes.

  Though she wondered, these close friends aside, where her life was going to balance. And with Daysh gone for ever, if Jay did make a move, what if she found it repulsive? What if some head shit came out from the years of abuse?

  This love thing was a confusing business, even in thinking about it. For she came to feel she loved Rocky too. And then again felt she didn’t deserve the love of anyone, soiled goods that she was at the hands of a family member. Member, hah. Sick joke, Lulu. You are sick.

  Chapter three

  ‘Strewth! For cryin’ out loud, if it ain’t the boy wonder, Jason, himself!’

  She hadn’t changed much, just greyer, uglier and fuckin’ fatter.

  ‘Gidday, Mum. How ya goin’?’ Jay said. He had the cemetery in his head, Daysh’s grave, the disbelief of her name below her short stated life: 1989–2008, and as — well, home, if a long time ago — happened to be out this way, on the train route, what the hell.

  ‘How’m I going it asks? How do you think I been goin’, you missin’ all these years? For cryin’ out loud, come here quick, everybody! It’s the ghost risen from the dead. It’s JAY-SON, everybody!’

  Out they came like apes really, grown up from little monkeys or just the same dumb arm-swingers but like Mum, a bit older and a few uglier, with her looks. A couple of chimp additions about three and five.

  Christ, was he really from this family?

  ‘Yeah, well. I sort of thought it about time I paid you a visit, like.’ He felt immediately he’d made a mistake. ‘Seeing you’re my own family.’ Thinking: of gorillas, chimps, monkeys and fuckin’ baboons. Taronga Zoo line-up. Is this really where I’m from?

  He could see the familiar everywhere, the mess over her lumpy shoulder. Smell the onion ends, the rubbish left too long in the bin under the sink, wet washing left overnight, cooked fat, burnt sugar. Her scraggly dirty hair was partly in his vision, same overturned kitchen chairs, seemed they’d never been picked up from when they were last knocked over after Dad chasing Mum round the kitchen to give her a bashing. How the bastard ever chased the same old chimpanzee round the bedroom a son would never know, not that the old man was a sun god, but wasn’t ugly neither, even a runaway son couldn’t deny the old prick that. Some would say Dobbsy was a ruggedly handsome man. Like this son. But still a fuckin’ brute, which Jason did not consider himself. Though had his moments if given no choice.

  Jason Dobbs had definitely made a mistake coming back.

  Same smell of boiled cabbage, fried meat, over-used cooking oil for frying chips, same unmown bit of front lawn he’d come past, down a concrete footpath with chunks missing — as if the old brute’d nutted off and ripped the concrete slabs up with his bare hands — high weeds in the empty places, growing up against the house walls. Car wreck by the warped and rotting timber wall, graffiti-covered, on their own fuckin’ fence, a coating of sun-hardened bird shit on the roof, the back passenger window busted, the missing radiator like a person’s nose ripped out, cobwebs spun in the place of empty windows.

  Up his mother’s hands went on wide hips.

  ‘We-ell? We-ell?’ she says. ‘It’s only been, what, six — or is it seven — long years since we saw you last. Of a mother worryin’ herself sick — sick I can tell you for nothing — of where you got to, how you were, if you’d been bloodywell murdered or what. As if you cared how I felt. Now you’re standing here, large as life, and what do you say, what do you do? Ask how I’m goin’?’

  ‘Dunno, Mum. I’m home, I guess.’ Then I’m out of here.

  ‘No bloody guess, mate — it’s fact. Standing right here front of my eyes like a — like a —’

  Like a son who hated being your son and Dad’s, was what Jason was thinking.

  ‘Yeah. I’m back.’

  ‘Yeah, we-ell.’ Her balled fists came off her hips and sank back again into the fat folds. Glad he hadn’t inherited her bad looks. Got thought of Dayshana who made him feel like a handsome prince. Poor Daysh, who was starting to clean him up, his act that is, till fate stole her. Miss you, Daysh. I made a mistake coming here expecting — expecting what?

  ‘You gonna give your mother a hug? We-ell, are ya?’

  He’d forgotten how raw her way of speaking, not that he’d come home posh after being on his toes since age thirteen. Jeezuz, hardly that. But shit this was raw. She was raw. The house stank of raw. The faces crowded up behind her and the ones got out on to the doorstep to look at him in disbelief were all raw. Spotted with sores and scabs and scratches, cuts and bruises and talk about dirty clothes, matted sheenless hair and a blankness in the eyes even as they stood mouths agape.

  Had he really lived like this?

  He stepped forward and hugged his mother. She smelt the same: of sour sweat and stale sex. Like she’d had it, the bizzo, yesterday and hadn’t showered. Twice as disgusting for not cleaning up afterwards. Or it might’ve been her feet, buried permanently in them humungous fluffy slippers that used to be striped tiger cubs and now worn to scraggy, faded stripes and two faces a mother tiger would not recognise as her litter.

  ‘Jeezuz, Jay, you deserve a bloody good flogging for what you put your mother through. Wait’ll your old man comes home, he’ll thrash you to within an inch of your life, for what you did to us. Crikey, where in hell’ve you been?’

  Out of this hell to another, he had no intention of telling her. Living on the streets, in a world of weirdoes, freaks, psychos, sexos, thugs. The violence you thought you could deal with, growing up in this lot’s cave, fighting for every scrap of food and space and dumb pride, and getting flogged by your parents. Memories of growing up here coming back.

  Too many days of just bread, maybe a scraping of Marmite from the jar. The old man on a welfare benefit for a faked, chronically sore back. Old lady taking her growing tribe to the cheap-buy supermarket with the miserable amount he gave her to feed a family. Thong-sliders with angry expressions at a life that had treated them worse than badly. But Jason saw they didn’t exactly spill with something to give back, even in laughing defiance. Jeezuz, they could have at least tried, bunch of misery guts and moaners.

  Where had he been? He could hardly say, Mum, I fought off dirty old and young men and sometimes succumbed to one beating my meat while I sucked on his. I’ve been fighting other male predators out on Sydney’s streets, been living in a raging world right next to pleasant suburban living.

  Been learning how to keep myself alive, Ma, and though I often thought of home the idea of returning made me ill.

  He stood there on his home doorstep not knowing what to say.

  How could he tell of the drug pedlars trying to win him over with freebies of smack, crack, pills or just weed, of being so desperate for food he sold eccy and weed for them and of course tried the shit out. But when ice came along and turned people into super-violent crazies, he was
out of there. Didn’t run away from home just to become one of those. Much preferred the milder buzz of booze, a few cold beers, ready-to-drinks. The natural high of being free, shot of his family, the chaos and the anger.

  Strip clubs employing kids like him to walk the streets and pick a mark, give the mug word of special offer when it was all a lie, escort a mark to a cash machine for as much as they would part with, helped by a quick blowjob down an alley in semen-soaked, syringe-littered, bloodstained King’s Cross. Junkie hookers back to demand, Go find some more mug punters or else piss off and some other runaway kid will take your place.

  In abandoned buildings, parks, someone’s flat, where Jason was invited as if from goodwill, and he’d wake up to a cock trying to thrust into his mouth.

  Is that what he should tell a mother who he didn’t miss not for one hour of one day in over six years away? Didn’t even miss his siblings.

  How could he tell her of the past years? About losing the first real love of his life, Dayshana, to a punk turning into a Formula One hero in giving her a lift to go meet Jay? Of Rocky, arrived like a whirlwind, but as good a bloke as Jay had ever met in his whole life and starting to influence a guy and his thinking?

  ‘We-ell? We-ell?’ Saying it the same as she always did. ‘You coming inside or what?’

  When it was the last thing he wanted to do, step back inside that house. The memories waiting like a dam ready to burst. To engulf him.

  ‘Well, like, I don’t have much time, Mum. Next time I will. Just was on the train and thought, may as well as it has been a long time I agree. I —’

  ‘Oh, only six years. Or is only seven? What’s a year to a mother of a missing kid?’

  So why was she laying the big guilt trip on him? Six, seven years, learned how to handle a knife to keep himself safe. Long enough to make a few real good friends and lose one then another. Long enough to know he didn’t miss his mother and she didn’t really miss him.