I dump the washing in the washing machine and look around for Ma.

Ivy shoves a smelly plastic bag of rubbish at me and says, ‘Take this out to the bins at the back.’

I screw up my face and take the bag and hold it away on a straight arm as I let myself out the back door and skip across the grass to dump it in the bin as fast as I can.

‘No, not tonight.’ Ma’s voice leaks over the wall from the laneway. ‘I’m tired.’

‘We’ll just go for a little while,’ the Ape says.

I kick my shoes off and climb a tree beside the wall, then leap for the top of the wall. I land on my chest and elbows and cling on, digging my toes into the cracks between the bricks to keep me there.

The Ape has Ma’s arm and is nudging her up the street. She’s hanging back, trying to lean on the wall.

‘People are expecting us,’ he says.

‘You go on without me,’ Ma says. ‘I’m going to check on Peony and go straight to bed.’

‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ the Ape barks, and twists Ma’s arm so she struggles to pull it away. ‘I knew as soon as she got here, it’d be all about her and you’d have no time for me!’

‘It’s not like that. I told you, I’m tired!’ Ma says.

‘Let her go, Slug Face!’ I yell down from the wall.

The Ape lets her go and spins around.

‘Peony!’ Ma says.

‘She can’t go dizzing me like that all the time!’ the Ape yells at Ma. ‘You need to teach her some respect!’ He takes a couple of steps towards the wall like he can jump up and slap me. But I’ll be long gone before then.

‘Respect this!’ I say and hoik a big spit at him. It falls short coz I never been good at spitting.

He looks at the gob on the footpath and his fists ball up. ‘You!’ he says real low.

‘Danny, honey sweet,’ Ma says. ‘She’s just a little girl, she don’t mean it.’ Ma reaches out to take the Ape’s arm but he pulls it away from her so hard it sets her stumbling into the wall.

‘You can’t treat her like that. I’ll tell my Gramps and he’ll knock you into next winter!’

‘Peony!’ Ma says and stomps back towards the gate.

The Ape eyeballs me and side-eyes Ma, and when she gets to the gate and is distracted by the number machine, he jumps up and slaps at my head. I drop into the garden just as his fingers graze my forehead. ‘Ha!’ I yell as I slide into the skin-scratching bushes.

Ma runs over and hauls me out and squeezes my arm so hard it hurts. She shakes me. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she yells.

‘Stupid females!’ the Ape yells over the wall and his footsteps stomp away.

‘Now look what you done!’ Ma says.

‘I’m glad he’s gone!’ I say. ‘We’re better off without him.’

Ma shakes me again and digs her fingers into my arm. ‘How’re we s’posed to make a family if you keep making him mad?’ she says.

I rip my arm away. ‘I don’t want to be in a family with him. I want to be in a family with Gramps who has hugs and kind words, and I wanna be in a family with Mags who is strong and always knows how to make me feel good.’

‘Well, they ain’t here!’ Ma says and latches onto me again and drags me back towards the house.

‘Why would they want to be?’ I say.

She pushes me into our washing-machine room and tells me to get in the sink for a wash. She dumps my clothes into the washing machine as I peel them off, and turns it on then gives me one of her T-shirts to wear to bed. After I’m washed and dried, she drags it over my head not caring if it pulls my wet hair.

‘How come you’re nice to Esmeralda but not me?’ I ask.

‘Caring for Esmeralda is a job,’ Ma says and shrugs.

‘Then what am I?’ I ask.

She stops and looks at me. ‘You know I love you, Peony, but you push my buttons.’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know about your buttons,’ I say.

‘It’s just something we say. It means you do the opposite of what I want,’ Ma says.

‘Me!’ I say and lift my eyebrows way up. ‘You dragged me away here!’

‘Well, now you’ll earn money and we’ll be able to rent our own little house and stop living like dogs in the dirt,’ she says.

This makes me burn. ‘Our shed does us fine!’ I shout. ‘You wanna live in a house like this? All these empty rooms. All this useless stuff! Putting knives and forks the right way on a table?’

‘Shh!’ Ma says. ‘This pays your wage.’

I flop on the bed and pull the cover over my head. There’s no point arguing. I’ll be home soon and Ma can carry on her plan without me.

Ma sits down and she strokes the back of my head still sticking out of the cover. ‘Bloss, please understand. I just want more for all of us. This is a tough old world to be poor in.’

‘We’re not poor, Ma. We’re not raggy people in the street. We’ve got enough.’ I push the blanket off my face and look at her. ‘But we’ve got more if we’re all together, taking care of each other.’

Ma sighs like she thinks I don’t understand. But it’s her that don’t understand. ‘When you’re older, you’ll see,’ she says. ‘And you’ll be glad you know how to clean a house and earn some cash.’

‘When I’m older I will be foreman on the farm,’ I whisper, but I may as well be whispering it to the wall, coz Ma has gone to move the clothes from the machine that washes to the machine that dries.