We’re getting ready to change over to Dad. He’s supposed to leave the house for the first time in a long time tomorrow and take us to Yamma Yamma for a few days. Mum isn’t coming because she has to see Auntie Connie in Sydney. It’s her first time there, so she’s excited.
I hoist my backpack on and leave my room. I pass Mum in the kitchen and hand her the ladies-cut-and-style gift voucher for Kandice’s Hollywood Hair Salon. I bought it with the money I got off Jimmy.
‘Wow. How’d you get this?’
‘They had a raffle at school. I won third prize.’
‘Oh, aren’t we lucky!’
No, we’re not. We’re pretty unlucky, actually. Have been for the last couple of years.
I dump my stuff in the car boot and get in the front. I slump down in the seat and massage my temples.
‘What’s wong, widdle buddy?’ Trav asks. I ignore him. I’m not taking the bait.
I’ve still got a bad headache. It feels like someone stabbed the back of my head with a chopstick and is twisting it around inside. Pain is shit but I think the saddest thing about it is you can’t feel it when it’s not there. You don’t feel a warm buzz about not having a headache, about not having a cold, not having a sprained ankle—you don’t celebrate the feeling of a functional body. Plenty of people have chronic pain, but no one has chronic pleasure.
Maybe this headache is serious, though. Maybe I’ve got a brain tumour. And maybe that would be a good thing. Then I could tell everyone and see how they reacted. Mum would cry a lot, maybe Dad would too. I doubt Trav would care at all.
When we walk back into our real, original home, Dad’s asleep on his recliner, his head lolling on his shoulder. The recliner is coffee-coloured, with fat armrests. ‘The finest pleather money can buy,’ Dad announced when he pulled it through the front door a lifetime ago. It was an exciting day because he’d done all the woodwork on the chair himself in the shed. Back then he only read the Sports section of the newspaper and used the Business and News parts to start bonfires in the backyard.
There’s a small half-eaten muffin on the armrest and a book on Dad’s lap. This one is called Trapped On the Treadmill: How to Break the Shackles of Tedium. He reads a lot of books like that these days. Mum calls them self-help books, but Dad calls them ‘transcendence books’. I think he’s right, because if they’re self-help books, they’re not helping.
He’s wearing his Bintang singlet and boxer shorts under a grey dressing-gown. His home uniform. That singlet used to stretch tight over his balloon of a belly, but now it hangs loose. His only purchases for the week while we’re away are flavoured vape oil and TV dinners, both of which he gets delivered, and maybe a drive-through trip to McDonald’s. When it’s our week with him, he just adds a few extra microwave meals for Trav and a bunch of small boxes of Corn Flakes for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he manages to save money on the dole.
I go into the kitchen and take Dad’s discarded microwave meal boxes to the recycling bin. It looks like he’s eaten Thai basil and chilli chicken stir-fry a few times this week. That used to be my favourite dish from my Aunt Malai and Uncle Dan’s restaurant. All of Banarang misses that place. Dad won’t even walk down Pudding Lane anymore. Once, last year, I went there and regretted it. It’s been boarded up with wood but there’s a spot where you can see inside. The walls were charred black and there was a metal chair melted to the carpet. I couldn’t sleep that night.
Trav dumps his footy bag on the floor and clomps into the kitchen. He rummages through the fridge but finds nothing resembling food, so he heads to our bedroom. His sneakers tack onto the carpet and unstick with each step. I swear I can see dirt particles crumbling off his soles, compounding the stains on the grey carpet. My slipper system exists in principle here too, but it’s not respected. Our home isn’t what it used to be since Mum moved away, temporarily.
I collapse into the couch. Elvis claws his way up the fabric and settles beside me. He knows not to come too close to me anymore, but he still likes my company. On the day Mum packed up the house to move to her temporary accommodation, I sat on the couch for six hours straight, just patting him. I didn’t talk to anyone. His purrs were all I wanted to hear.
Elvis is old. He has a fuzz of moulted grey-blue hair that sits loose on his fur like dandelion spores because no one brushes him anymore. He’s rarely awake, and when he is he sits in a dark corner—kind of like Dad.
Dad believes Elvis is ‘a thinker, a contemplator’. That’s why he’s started calling him ‘Elvistotle’.
I notice there are only three chairs at the dining table, not four. There’s not one in Mum’s spot. Maybe Dad spilled something on it and had to put it out to dry. Or maybe he thought three chairs is a better number for me.
I heave myself up. The loss of weight on the couch’s springs vaults Elvis off and onto the ground. He lands on his side and scrambles to his paws—he’s the only cat I’ve ever seen who never lands on his feet.
‘Sorry, Elvis.’ He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s on crazy painkillers for his arthritis anyway, so he probably didn’t feel a thing. Being numb is good. I wish I could know if I was about to get hurt, so I could jab some anaesthetic in before I fell. That’s a superpower I’d take.
I walk out to the back verandah but can’t see Mum’s chair. The sunlight is fading. I go down the steps and peer under the deck. I spot my skateboard. I haven’t used that filthy thing all year.
I find Mum’s chair a few metres away from my board. I pull it out and take it back inside to the table.
I sink into the gym ball seat at the computer and spray the keyboard with my high-pressure sanitiser mist. Then I get to work. I finished my custom Google map of Sydney for Mum yesterday, but it could still do with some finessing. On the map, I’ve pinpointed the top twelve landmarks that are potential terrorist targets, and highlighted six general districts Mum should steer clear of during peak hours.
I put pictures of explosions on the places where there could be suicide bombers and vans where there are likely to be hit-and-run massacres. I email Mum the link. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the effort—she always does.
Ding. It’s a Messenger notification. I switch tabs.
James Du Toit: The spot
Now
I have to babysit American girl
I got the reefer 
Tyson Grayson: fuk yeh
Comin!!
Leon Djaru: Comfy
There in 5
Bones Carter: I’ll come down too I guess.
I pour a glass of water from the tap, plop three ice blocks in and place it on the coffee table in front of Dad. The smack of glass on wood makes his head jerk up. His eyes twitch open and he shakes himself still.
‘Oh. Hey, mate.’ He scratches his stubble. ‘Sorry, how long was I out for?’
‘It’s okay. I’m going to get us some food.’
‘Oh yeah, good idea.’ He stretches towards the table and grasps the water. ‘Was going to do a little shop run before you got here. Sorry. Just grab the change off the dresser.’
He hasn’t done a ‘shop run’ all year. It’s fine, though. He’s a great dad. He’s had some bad luck. He just needs Mum back, that’s all.
The days are getting longer now, and the twilight sky is another little victory worth living for. Right now as I walk to the spot, the ceiling of the world looks like neapolitan ice cream. Swirls of strawberry sit pretty on the horizon, enveloping the fading spoonfuls of vanilla lightness. The smoky blue light of day is scattering to make way for that dark-cocoa night sky to come.
I spot a plane cutting through the middle of all that sweetness. It’ll be full of misguided folk who think they’re about to experience a culture wildly different from the place they departed. They’re about to be very disappointed.
I enter Banarang Memorial Park. It used to be Banarang Cemetery, back when this was a farm town. But about forty years ago the councillors realised it was creepy to have all that death sunk right in the middle of a town now that people were living nearby. So these days no one is buried here, except the unfortunate families that have lived in Banarang for generations and have ancestors in plots already.
I get deeper into the park and can smell weed. The crew is close by. Describing the smell of weed is a waste of time. It doesn’t smell like anything else, so why bother comparing it? It smells like weed. And even if you’ve never smelled it before, you’ll know it the first time you do.
The guys are sitting in a circle on the grass under our big Illawarra flame tree. Soft pink streaks of light peek through its leaves onto Leon’s lap as he sucks down the dregs of a mushed-up joint.
Our tree is starting to sprout more red bulbs among the green leaves. It barely survives the winter—every June, I wonder when we’re going to lose it for good—but it keeps hanging in there. The bulbs remind me of cranberries, and cranberries remind me of Dad’s sweet- and-sour cranberry sauce. He hasn’t made it for two years. I can even smell the sauce sometimes when I’m near that tree. And if I can smell it, I can taste it. That’s another reason I like coming down to the spot.
‘Bonesy, my boy!’ Jimmy claps his hands when he spots me. ‘A v-rare almost-night-time appearance!’
I sit down and cross my legs. He unfolds his tongue and runs it across a fresh joint.
‘Bruz, you can’t roll for shit,’ Leon says.
Jimmy slots the cigarette between his lips and grates his thumb over the lighter six times before finding fire. He lights the lumpy white stick and sucks on it for a second. Soon enough he’s clutching his chest in a coughing fit. He passes the soggy blunt to Tyse.
‘You call yourself Jimmy the OG,’ Leon snickers, ‘and you can’t even handle the Ocean Grown kush.’
‘Shut up, Leona. Coughing makes the…high better…gets more into the lung sacs.’ Jimmy slaps at his chest and clears his throat. Smoke fizzles from his mouth and nose, drifting away towards the stone statue near our tree.
‘How’s it going with Naya at the house?’ I ask. I pick at clovers on the ground, because I’m not that interested.
‘Oh man,’ he moans. ‘Okay, so y’all think it’s nice that we gave her a place to stay, yeah? Free of charge for six months, right?’
We nod.
‘Well, she thinks she runs the fuckin’ joint now. The rents have been away on business the last couple of days, and the Yank is already telling me to put my plates in the dishwasher. Can you believe that shit? That’s what we’ve got a cleaner for. She comes four times a damn week!’ Jimmy grabs the joint back off Tyson and takes a long, stressed-out drag. ‘Plus her Instagram is real corny lately, too.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I say. ‘I’ve never seen it.’
‘Yeah, cos your celly’s old as fuck.’ Jimmy tosses his phone at me.
I scroll through Naya’s feed. Most of her recent posts are single-sentence quotes set on bright clouds. I think she’s typed out the words herself, but they’re still variations of the crap you’ve seen online thousands of times.
Potential is pointless if not activated
Behind every strong man…is a stronger woman who should be paid the same as him.
Progress is a process, but we won’t settle for less than absolute equality. #Metoo
Your fate is to make your own fate
They’re mostly totally asinine. You don’t need sweet-sounding aphorisms to survive. You need endurance and a high pain threshold, that’s it. Quotes are for dreamers, and dreamers are sleeping.
Interspersed between the quote pics are #throwback photos. In them, Naya is either hugging little black babies and spooning some sort of gelatine into their mouths or taking selfies in sparkling dresses that shine as bright as her eyes. If she’s not in Africa with emaciated infants or at a charity dinner, she’s having sweat-less taekwondo fights in a white gown tied with a blue belt. This, of course, isn’t actually her life. It’s the life she wants people to think she has. Because her real life is boring. Like everyone else’s.
I read once that we deal with a hundred and fifty people as repeat characters in our lives, and that only fifty of them matter to us. Naya has 42,564 followers. That’s a lot of people who don’t mean anything.
‘I thought you said you were babysitting her,’ I say. ‘Where is she?’
‘Yerp. Ho wanted to go to the library. She’s a nerd, man. What a letdown. For all of us. Plus she don’t listen to real rap bangers and she don’t twerk. She’s like the most un-black American girl ever.’
Leon blows out and looks at me blankly, like he’s run out of energy to be surprised by the shit Jimmy says.
‘She didn’t want me to go there with her either,’ Jimmy says, ‘but Mum made me walk her into town.’
‘Ah, okay. Anyway, I better go. Gotta get tea for Dad and Trav.’
‘Nah, G, you just got here!’
‘Wait, Bones,’ Leon says as I get up. ‘How’d you go on your report? We all got ours today.’
‘He doesn’t care,’ Jimmy laughs. ‘Right, Bonesy?’
I say he’s right. There’s no reason to get good results anymore. I didn’t even check the mailbox for it, and I know Dad won’t.
‘This school shit don’t matter cos we all in a good position,’ Jimmy says. ‘I got whatever I do after school bankrolled, Tyse’s dad has already sorted his job as a garbo, and it don’t matter what grades you two post up cos you’ll both get into uni on that special needs form.’
‘Think you mean special circumstances,’ Leon says.
‘Yeah, that one. Leon, cos you’re Aboriginal. And Bones, cos your uncle died and the stuff that’s been happening with your folks.’
‘Yeah, I’m not worried,’ I say. ‘I gotta go.’ I power-walk out of there. As I cross the bridge, I spot the lights from the library. I should read more. I haven’t read a book in ages. I should borrow a book right now. I’m in the area. May as well.