Last time, they were Mormons, before that Baptists from Southern Africa, around Christmas time it’s always the Salvos. Poppy can’t get the ones who dress like it’s 1880 to talk to him but he likes the women’s little white caps. The rabbi with the red beard always says hello on his way down the street and so does the man in the white dress with the big wooden beads he says he keeps his worries in. Poppy says Parramatta is the home of God because we’ve got all types of godly people here.
They talk to Poppy because he doesn’t tell them to go away like everyone else does. He actually likes talking to them. Or, mostly, he just likes to ask them really hard questions they can never answer and then to watch them looking uncomfortable.
Today, I think the woman is from the Korean Catholic Church. When I get to the home they are sitting in the plastic chairs on the lawn and Poppy keeps interrupting whatever she’s saying with ‘But,’ and then he launches into some big long speech until this woman, she doesn’t even try anymore. She just sits there with her tight bun in her hair and her flower dress, her lips smacked together in a little heart. Poppy sips his beer and offers the woman one and she says no and plays with her hands in her lap.
‘Hi,’ I say. I want to get in that I’m there before Poppy starts up again. It takes Poppy a minute to register I’m there even though I’m right in front of him.
‘Aye’ he says, ‘sit down’ and I plop down on one of the chairs next to the woman, who is looking like she’s trying real hard to come up with the next thing to say.
‘Now this one,’ Poppy says, pointing at me, ‘he lost his brother, how do you explain that?’ and the word explain comes out all awkward sounding and I look at him and he’s got a look like Mum gets these days and I realise that he really wants the answer, like God has really made him angry and sad all at the same time and this makes my heart jump up in my chest.
I look at the woman and I ask her, ‘but how can someone be there one day and then not the next?’ Her eyebrows go up in her forehead and she plays with her hands in her lap.
Poppy takes a deep breath and stares into his beer can, ‘Everyone needs answers sometimes.’