My father, he wakes up in the dark tired and gets up anyway. He combs his hair with water and goes to his electrical shop before everyone is out of bed. He is always on his way somewhere, always telling everyone that things will turn out all right.
Dad thinks it’s better now that I spend more time with him working in the shop. He says that we need to be strong, that we need to keep it together for Mum’s sake. I get up when I hear him walking into the kitchen and pull my jeans and shirt on. We don’t talk until we’re out of the house, walking down the street. He buys us sweet bread and takeaway coffees in styrofoam cups from the Persian store on the way. ‘How ya goin’ kiddo,’ he says as we’re walking down the street.
I say ‘Fine,’ bread crumbling out the sides of my mouth.
‘Big year for you,’ he says, ‘Almost Year Eleven, then you’ll be doing your HSC. Before you know it you’ll be going places.’
I nod. I’m not sure about all this, not sure I really care or that I know what places I want to be going. My dad goes all silent and I know he’s thinking about Dom.
When we get to the shop tucked up in its little alleyway off of Church Street, he pulls across the metal grate and I try to make sense of the graffiti someone’s written on the wall overnight.
Inside he hands me a jack-knife and I help him tear off the tops of boxes packed tight with their odd collections of electrical plugs and styrofoam.
We sit behind the counter together, me sorting the random bits and pieces into different boxes to be put on the shelf and sold. My father sits there putting together and taking apart the miniature electric arm he has been building for the last week. I stop what I’m doing and watch him for a while. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m making something that could reach into tight places and fix things, like perhaps the insides of machines, maybe in a factory.’
I keep on watching him, my father with his big strong hands, and his purple bashed-up knuckles, moving all these small objects into tight places, always inventing, always wanting to be hopeful.