TREADING WATER

It’s raining hard and I’m angry. There’s a red, hot fury welling up inside me, squeezing tight my shoulders, clamping at my neck, making me draw in my fists ready to hit out. I can feel it there, surging up through my chest into my throat, wanting to leap out into the night air in a giant roar as he hands the money through the window. I want to kill him. Want to wipe the smirk off the bastard’s face forever. But what difference would it make? There are plenty more bastards where he comes from. I turn away quickly and kick hard at the gutter instead of his car, then I push my fists into pockets, clench tight my jaw and walk. Fast and loud, boots thudding against the pavement, moving like there’s a reason for it, because that’s the safest way in this city. But it’s all a lie. I’ve got no purpose. I believe in nothing. In my life there’s only speed and smack and hard-edged things that slice at my heart.

My mother believed in things. Bullshit stuff, like peace and love and everything being different from the way it is. Even when the dingy commune we lived in fell apart, and her men kept pissing off and people came and told her all the poxy news about what was going on outside. Even when Social Services barged in, all puffed up and self-righteous and warned her they would take us away and grandma left for ever because she reckoned she couldn’t do anything more. Even then she never gave up believing, just rolled another big fat joint and moved us on.

The rain’s dripping over my eyebrows and eyelashes, into my eyes. They’re red and sore and Katy will think I’ve been crying. I squeeze them tight shut and walk close to the wall, running the tips of my fingers over its rough surface, thinking what it must be like to be blind. But I can’t shut out the face of the bastard whose cock was shoved down my throat five minutes ago, or the frothy white spittle caught in the corners of his mouth. I shake my head, trying to clear it like one of those etch and sketch tracer toys I always wanted, but I can’t shut out the stink of him either, or the taste that sticks around no matter how often I swallow. I open my mouth and let the rain fall in, but it still tastes of chlorine and pepper and my tongue is numb.

The wall on this street is usually full. It’s only men who hang about waiting. They don’t seem to look, just climb into a car or stroll over to the park. But the signals are hard for me and I miss lots of cues, which is why I make stuff-all money. Katy says it’s just a matter of time and I’ll learn. I guess she’s right, but my heart’s not in it. I mean, tonight there’s hardly anyone here and I could make good money. Maybe I should go back for some more. Hang in there for as long as I can. I almost turn back ... but stuff it, Katy’s waiting and anyway I’ve had enough of fat arseholes in suits. I think about back home, how simple it was being a kid there, playing with no shoes in the long snakey grass and pulling leeches out from between my toes. Katy’s a city girl and she squeals when I tell her about the leeches, but they didn’t bother me, nothing much did back then. Katy doesn’t seem to get it, that these streets are a whole lot more dangerous than the place I grew up.

‘Whatchit.’

I open my eyes and pull back my hand real quick. A few feet away there’s a man sitting on the wall. He’s still and quiet with hard eyes. The men in this street wear trousers that hug their balls and pull their arses into tight curves. The men in the cars wear dull grey suits and sunglasses that hide everything. My hands sink into the soft flesh that hangs all limp outside their collars and belts. For like a micro-second I wonder about feeling this man’s body, which is tight and strong and proud. But fuckit, I don’t want to touch anyone. I hate this world of cocks and arseholes and cum and shit. I’m afraid I’ll get sick from it and the thought of this makes me walk faster, until I’m almost running, as if speed will keep me safe.

I keep walking fast and hard for a couple more blocks until my insides slow down and I can see again. The Cross is full of people and colour and bright lit shops, and it’s these things that sweep away the fear. The rain is hot and steamy and mingles with my sweat so that I’m wet everywhere. The footpath’s wet too, and the lights from the street and the cars and the shops make it shine like in the movies. I walk really slowly, looking up at the sky and the lights, then down at the ground. People bump into me but I don’t take any notice. My feet make a swishing noise in the puddles and the footpath is textured, like the muslin my mother used to squeeze yoghurt through. I forget to be angry. My guts twist and my heart is full with something bigger than it. I draw a long, deep breath. These are things I love about the city.

Katy is waiting for me. I’m older than her, but she’s been on the streets longer and knows about things. She can read a bit too, which helps. I don’t know much else about her, though. I wish I did. I wish she would let me ask, but she just goes all stiff and quiet and then changes the subject. Jesus, there must be some really bad things back there, because she’s hurting something rotten.

Tonight there are dark rings under Katy’s eyes and she looks tense, like if she stopped concentrating her body would fold up into nothing. She’s too thin, like a paper cut-out and her skin looks kind of see-through. Her eyes don’t seem to say anything, just look through everyone, even me, although I’m standing right in front of her. But when she sees me and smiles, her face is beautiful again. She’s holding a bottle of something and stands on tiptoes to reach my ear.

‘Look in my pocket,’ she whispers.

I rummage about and find the tiny bag of powder.

‘It’s Friday night,’ she says. ‘Let’s party.’ She kisses me, but my mouth still tastes shitty and I don’t want her to taste it, so I pull away. And then I feel bad because, when I look at her, she’s made her face all blank again.

We made a rule not to talk about these things. Katy’s says what’s the point of going over the shitty bits, it just makes them twice as shitty. But tonight the rules can go fuck themselves. We need to talk. I stand right in front of Katy and grab her shoulders. If I look at her hard enough maybe I’ll get through.

‘I want to kiss you Katy, really I do, but my mouth’s filthy rotten from a fat bastard’s cock.’

Katy winces away from me, but I can’t stop.

‘I want us to talk about this crap and make it not mean so much. I want to know what the arseholes have been doing to you ...’

‘Stop it,’ she hisses.

Her eyes are darting around me and it’s no use, I’m shouting and crying and making people notice, and worst of all, Katy’s looking at me with hurt in her eyes, like I’ve trodden all over her.

Katy is sick. Her eyes remind me of my mother’s before we lost her. Mum didn’t go away or anything, I mean we could still touch her and see her and if you put food in her mouth she would chew at it and sometimes swallow. Skye reckoned it was the mushrooms that had eaten up Mum’s brain. After a bit I couldn’t hang about any longer. Couldn’t bear it. I didn’t say goodbye or anything, just walked away and now I don’t feel so good about that. I guess she’s dead by now or maybe Skye’s still looking after her.

It’s a different world and different drugs, but it’s all the same in the end. Katy’s at the edge of something, just like Mum was. Any day now I might lose her and this scares the crap out of me. I want to hug her tight and make all the bad stuff go away, but she’d only wriggle and say I was stupid again. Instead I hold on to her arm and make a promise to the stars hiding up there behind the yellow city sky. I promise them that whatever happens I won’t leave Katy. Not like I did Mum. I’ll stay with her forever and make sure she’s all right.

Down at the harbour we sit on the shiny wet rocks right at the point and watch the lights wiggle about on the water and the rain plopping and making the surface rough. We eat greasy chicken legs and overripe tomatoes, taking bites from one and then the other, letting the tastes mingle in our mouths. Tonight for a treat we have mangoes too. The mangoes take me home again and wipe the poxy cum from my mouth.

‘Why are you called Thor?’

Even though I tell people my name is Tom, I once told Katy the truth and now she sometimes asks me this. It’s got to be a kind of a game, because I always think up different answers. I say things like: because I never cried, or I was born in a thunderstorm, or my father was a god. But really I think it’s because my father was a bikie. A real one in a gang, not a biker type, and he wanted this name and my mother loved him enough not to mind. Or maybe she was just plain scared. Anyway he left before I could walk. He left me with a stupid name and fuck all else. My sisters are lucky. They’re called Skye and Sun and Hope. I got Thor. But none of us got fathers.

Katy nudges me. I haven’t answered her yet.

‘Because I was eleven pounds when I was born and nearly Thor her apart.’

Katy doesn’t laugh. She hardly ever does. Instead she squirms in sympathy with my mother, but I can’t imagine coming out from that place between her legs.

‘She couldn’t have any more children after me. But I was number four so I reckon I did her a favour.’

Katy thinks about it for a bit.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Maybe.’

We hold hands and pass the whiskey bottle back and forth with our other hands. It’s still hot out here and the whiskey makes us hot inside too. When a ferry goes by the ripples are big and spread out a long way, until finally they slop against the rocks underneath where we sit. The rain brings the smells out really strong, so the diesel of the ferries mixes with the smell of hot earth and eucalyptus from the trees. I love these smells and could stay here all night, but Katy wants a hit so we need somewhere dry and private.

I hoist Katy in first because she’s lighter, then I climb in too and straight away I get the claustrophobia. Jesus, I hate sleeping in clothes bins. I’m always afraid of being buried under piles of clothes and I have nightmares in here, trapped tight in a metal box. But Katy feels safe inside the bin. It’s like a womb, she reckons and she likes to look through the clothes for something new. I’d rather stay out under the trees, even if it’s raining. We’re both wet through anyway so what does it matter. The clothes in here smell old and musty, they make my nose tickle and I sneeze over and over until my eyes sting and my chest hurts.

‘Shut up.’ Katy’s elbow bangs hard into my ribs.

She’s angry because she needs a hit and because she thinks someone will hear me sneeze and then we’ll get moved on or get busted. I pinch my nose and kind of stifle the sneezes, but I can’t stop them just like that.

There’s no air in here. There’s no light either, just a line shaped like a square U around the edge of the lid. I can’t bear it. I can’t breathe. So I prop the lid open with a bag of clothes. Now the rain drips in but we can dodge that and there’s air and light from the street. I take my shoes off and scratch my feet. There’s fungus growing between my toes.

Katy’s got some smack and a needle. It’s good stuff and I’m used to it now, so I’m not sick. I laugh out loud as it surges through me, then lean over and kiss Katy, getting lost in the silky wetness of her lips. I rub my tongue against the sharp edges of her teeth and then pull her close to me so I can feel the smoothness of her neck. Katy rubs my cock but I don’t want sex. I just want to hold her, so I lean back against the cool metal wall of the bin. Katy lies down and puts her head in my lap and I stroke her hair the way Mum used to stroke mine sometimes.

The rain’s loud, beating on the metal bin and it reminds me of up north.

‘We had a tin roof,’ I say, ‘corrugated, but it didn’t have gutters or proper drains so the rain would swish off onto the ground at the front and the back.’

I stop because Katy might just want to be quiet, but she makes the little clicking noise that means it’s okay. So I go on. She likes me to talk about home.

‘In the wet season the rain was so loud on our roof we had to shout above it. Grandma used to tell us stories from the Bible and when it rained like that, on and on, I would think about the Noah’s Ark one. Then I’d get really scared because Grandma always said Mum was evil, so I reckoned if there was a flood we’d all be washed away.’

Katy’s almost asleep. She’s not really interested, but I want to talk.

‘I miss them, Katy.’

‘Why don’t you go back?’ she says. When she yawns her mouth is a big black hole.

‘I will ... I guess. When I’ve saved some money ... ‘

I think about running barefoot on the ground. I think about it so hard I can almost feel it burning the skin under my toes. Sometimes the ground back home was so hot and dry it got all cracked and we played that skipping the cracks game. But it was always bad news when the ground was hard like that and the wets started, because the rain couldn’t find a way in and just poured over the surface.

‘We had plenty of floods,’ I tell Katy, ‘but we never got washed away ... So maybe Mum wasn’t that bad after all.’

The rain has stopped now and I can hear street noises again. It’s busy out there. People walking back and forth, little pieces of conversations. Sometimes they stop outside the clothes bin and I’m afraid they’ll get in with us or fill the bin up with clothes and we’ll suffocate. That happened once but we didn’t suffocate. Instead Katy started laughing and then she couldn’t stop. It was like she had too much in her, all banked up, and out it came in one big rush. Katy doesn’t laugh much usually and it was nice. I can see her in the rain forest with my sisters and me. She’d laugh more there, I know it. And finally I remember to say what I always mean to say, but never do.

‘You can come with me if you like.’

Katy doesn’t answer. She doesn’t look so sick when she’s asleep. Her face relaxes and she looks even younger than she is. Just a kid really. I wonder if she’s dreaming, because a smile flicks at the edges of her mouth and her eyeballs are shifting about under the lids

Mum used to have a sticker on the back of our car that she reckoned said: ‘Magic Happens’. When I was little I believed in it. But then I got older and the magic went out of things and I wanted her to hurt because of it. I used to shout at her: ‘Shit happens, Mum. That’s all, just shit.’ But maybe magic does happen after all. Maybe you have to look for it in the little things. Like this. Like Katy asleep in my lap and the hard stuff going out of her face, and her nose making little sniffling noises every time she breathes in, and the thumb that’s slowly sneaking up to her mouth.

I stroke her hair some more and she twitches a bit but doesn’t wake. A tiny kitten, curled up in a ball on my lap, trusting, but aware too and so easy to hurt. It’s the trust that makes me feel tight inside and heavy, like my bones are made of rocks, pulling me down and it’s all I can do to keep my head up. My legs have gone numb, my back’s hurting and I need a piss, but even so, I don’t move. I’m not going anywhere.

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ROSIE WAITT’s fiction and travel writing have been widely published in anthologies, major newspapers, travel guides and magazines, in both Australia and the UK. After ten years in Britain, she now lives in Tasmania, where she works as a writer, manuscript assessor and teacher.