Losing Face, page 11
‘Of course you will see. You will travel the world, albi.’
‘Where in the world have you been, Tayta?’
‘Me? I been in the village, and I been in Sydney. That’s it.’
‘Did you ever want to travel?’
She didn’t want to burden him. ‘No, I’m happy here. I’m happy with my family.’
‘But we’re all grown up now. You should do what you want.’
‘You expect old lady like me to go Italy by myself?’
‘I didn’t say Italy, but you could go to, like, Tasmania or something. Plus, you’re not old.’
‘Why I’m gonna go Tasmania? It’s probably same as Sydney.’
‘I’m going to take you with me somewhere one day, Tayta.’
She kissed his hand again.
Amal returned with the drinks and Elaine had to stop herself from downing the scotch in one go.
‘Mum, you went to Europe when you were younger,’ Alex said.
‘I did. Me and Rita. We spent a month on buses and trains, and back then there weren’t smartphones or anything, so we literally had a paper map. Far out. Memories, man.’
Alex looked around. ‘Was Italy like this?’
‘You know what, it seriously wasn’t that far off. Except the people. And it’s the people that make the place, really.’
‘Are the Italians in Italy like the ones here?’
‘Nah, not quite. They’re less self-aware of what makes them Italian over there. Like here, the Italians – and not just the Italians, the Greeks, the Lebs – they’re too aware of what makes them wog, so they kind of try too hard to perform it. Overseas, they just are it. It’s hard to explain.’
Elaine interjected. ‘Yes, but it’s because when everyone come to Australia back in the day, they leave their culture behind. Here, it’s like blank stage. If you don’t perform, like you say, then it go away and you end up being same as everybody.’
‘Yeah, that’s kinda true, Ma, but sometimes it’s all a bit forced, you know? Like that Italian jersey right next to the Italian flag up there.’
‘You want them to put Australian flag?’
‘Not really.’
‘Amal, when we first come here, everything – the government, the people, the law – try to make us be like them. Imagine Australia if everyone stop their own culture. Maybe now, yes, stupid people give us bad name, but back then, we have to be Lebanese, Greek, Chinese.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Alex said.
‘You, Alex, Joey, you very lucky that you have two culture.’
‘I don’t know how you and Jiddo did it back then, Tayta. Came all the way here not knowing English or anything about the place.’
‘How I did it? I have no choice is how I did it.’
The pizza was heavenly. It soothed the weird feelings inside of Elaine as it went down.
The big family were packing themselves up to leave, and the man whose birthday it was walked over to their table carrying a hefty piece of cake on a napkin.
‘Hello, I was wondering if you’d like this last slice. I promise it’s good. My daughter made it and she’s a pastry chef,’ he said.
Amal replied for them. ‘That’s so nice of you, thanks. I’m sure Alex would love that. Is it your birthday?’
Elaine stared into the man’s kind eyes.
‘It is.’
‘Happy birthday,’ Amal said, and Elaine followed suit.
He thanked them and walked back to his family, who were huddled together smiling at him. Elaine couldn’t see a wife among them.
She stood up. ‘I’m going to toilet.’
The cashier for the payout was on the other side of the club. By the time she returned to the restaurant to pay, she was panting.
13
Joey was on his third piece of peanut-butter toast when two emblazoned police cars swept into the driveway. A paddy wagon and a Chrysler. At the sight of them through the lounge room window, his soul bolted out the back of the house.
There were three knocks at the door. Each one quaked his innards. Humans were just messes of meat, so easily reverberated. He wanted nothing more than for the boom of those knocks to vaporise him. He wanted to stand there until they turned away, hopped back into the cars and drove off, but he did what he had been conditioned to do by habit, by his mother, by something so terribly obedient inside him. He opened the door to four police officers, two in uniform and two in suits. The female officer wore heavy make-up, fake eyelashes, eyebrows bolstered by ink. She looked like she could reveal a tiny dress underneath her uniform, ready to go clubbing. The familiarity of her style cushioned Joey for a second.
The officer with the most badges on his chest asked if he was Joseph Harb, and when he replied, ‘Yes’, the officer told him to step out onto the porch. That is where he was arrested. Where he was told that he didn’t have to say anything and that anything he said could be used as evidence. The moment, the spotlight cast on him for his neighbours to see. It all floored him. There was something so prestigious and provincial about him in his tracksuit pants and Ivan’s jumper, Adidas slides, crumbs on his face from the toast, being directed, morphed, losing responsibility for his everyday, to these four well-made authoritarians. But they were people too. Who ate peanut-butter toast and slept and wanked and fucked up.
Joey had put himself in this position, to be handled by these people who were transformed by fabric and weapons. He had done what he had done and maybe whatever happened to him from here on in was viable. A sort of calm came over him. Maybe he would try to die as soon as he had the opportunity. No, that would make it worse for his mum, Alex, Tayta. He would exercise his right to not say anything. He would wait until he was at the police station. He would call his mum; she would know a lawyer or a relative of a lawyer.
The female officer shut the front door as he was led towards the cars. He was being shut out of his own home. The Greenacre folk, with their heightened ability to sense drama, were already out watching. The young dad from a few doors down filmed with his phone. The nonna from next door squinted from her verandah, and a black Jeep came to a stop in the middle of the road to watch as Joey was folded into the back seat of the police car. At least they didn’t use the paddy wagon.
They were in a cold interview room like the ones on TV.
The officer asked, ‘What’s your full name?’
‘Joseph Harb.’
‘Have you ever gone by any other names, Joseph?’
‘I was born Joseph Boyle.’
The coming together of two grandfathers. Joseph after Youssef, and Boyle from the grandfather he couldn’t remember.
‘And how old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Joseph, do you know why you are here?’
‘The other officer said something about sexual assault.’
‘Sexual assault. That’s correct. Do you know a girl named Lisa Morris?’
‘No.’
‘Lisa is the young woman you and your friends attacked in Bankstown. Does that ring a bell?’
‘I didn’t attack.’
‘Uh-huh. I wouldn’t say much more until your lawyer arrives.’
The officer left the room for a while. In that time, Joey, in all his numbness, thought about how his body wasn’t attached to anything. He could get up and walk out of this small room and keep walking until he died. That is, if he was ever allowed out of small rooms again.
Another officer came in and, as the door opened, Joey heard his mother from down the hall. Her deep exhalation laced with prayer. He pictured how hard she was holding Alex’s arm.
The officer swabbed the inside of Joey’s mouth and recorded his fingerprints on a device plugged into a laptop. He was left alone again. The prayers bashed into his head like moths into a light bulb. His mum had tried to believe in God once, but his earliest memory was of her standing on a chair in the lounge room taking down the crucifix that hung next to their baby photos. It was never seen again.
There was a knock on the door and a man in a well-tailored navy suit and baby-blue tie entered. He had grey hair on his temples, tanned skin, friendly eyes like his tie.
He shook Joey’s hand and introduced himself as Marco Mamone. ‘I’m a friend of your mother’s. And I’m your lawyer. What have you said to the officer so far?’
His mother had never mentioned Marco before. ‘Just my name and why I’m here.’
‘Okay, good. Now, first things first, I’m going to come straight out and ask you for the truth. You have to understand, Joseph, as your lawyer I will take your word as the truth, even if you are lying, and that’s what I will use to fight for you. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s my job. I can only go off what you say, and the evidence put forward against you. Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘Bravo. So, did you sexually assault the complainant?’
‘What? No! I mean, I was there, but—’
‘Okay, enough. That’s all I’m asking for now. Listen, Joey, the allegations put against you are very serious. If convicted, you could be looking at prison time.’
Joey flopped. His soul shrunk to a flicker. He thought it might extinguish at any moment, but then Marco’s hand was on his shoulder.
‘I’ve seen the police report filed by Lisa. She does not name you specifically as an assailant. In fact, she explicitly states that you and another male did not harm her, but the crown has charged you with aggravated sexual touching based on what she has told them. Either way, the fact that you did not intervene when the others were carrying out the rape does not look good for you.’
‘But was it rape?’
‘From how it has been described, yes.’
Joey thought about the other boys. Were they at Bankstown Police Station too? How many of them were already in a prison cell? Their lives, their futures – what were they now? He thought of Lisa. They had drugged her. They had lied to her on the train and messed her the fuck up. He needed to spew.
‘Joey, I know you are scared but you need to listen to me. I can probably get you bail but you need to let me help you. Even if it means that what you will say could harm your friends’ cases.’
What friends? They were not his friends. Kyri, yes, even though he hadn’t called Joey back – it had been three days now – but the others could hang for all he cared.
Marco looked at his shiny watch. ‘The sergeant will be back in a minute to formally charge you and they will move you to a holding cell. You will most likely be here at least until tomorrow, provided I can get you bail and your mum can organise the assurance.’
The assurance – his mum had been saving for her boob job and now she was going to spend that money, and probably more, on getting him out of jail. He’d never be able to face her again. The door opened and the sergeant returned with paperwork and another officer. They sat around the table and Marco exchanged pleasantries with the newcomer. Joey was charged. Aggravated sexual touching. The words drilled through his ears and met in the middle of his head in an eruption of absolute emptiness. He marvelled that everything inside of him could be switched off with a few words.
He couldn’t feel the handcuffs around his wrists as he was led to the cell. He didn’t even hear the door shut behind him. He stood in the one spot, thoughtless, for what seemed like hours. Then he lay on the metal plate that was supposed to be a bed and drifted into a horizontal state of teeth-chattering, leg-quivering, decadent anxiety.
14
On the Turkish soap, the rich man’s illegitimate son was preparing to take his father to court and claim a share in the shipping business, which he was completely unaware was a front for human trafficking. The phone rang. Elaine’s eyes shot over to the clock. It was 10:06 pm. Her body prepared itself for grief. No-one calling this late had good news. She had to shake her legs out of their stupor to walk to the phone on the kitchen bench.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum, it’s me.’ Amal was sobbing.
‘What happened?’
‘It’s Joey. He’s been arrested.’
‘Why?’
‘He was with his mates, and they did … they did something bad to a girl.’
‘Not Joey! How?’
‘I don’t know the details.’
‘Okay, I’m coming.’
‘There’s no point now. Come over in the morning.’
She was damp with sweat underneath her nightie. She shouted, ‘Why you not call me earlier? What I’m supposed to do now, Amal? Allah y mowetni!’
‘God, taking you isn’t going to solve anything, Mum. Sorry, I shouldn’t have called so late. I just don’t know what the fuck to do.’
‘Where’s Alex?’
‘He’s here.’
‘Come here, come stay here.’
‘Ma, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Amal? Amal?’
She put the phone down and peered at the golden puddle on the floor. She had pissed herself. She placed her hand over her mouth and screamed. Some of the screaming was only sound but some was curses, hexes, profanities at herself and how her life turned out.
She undressed, mopped the puddle up with her nightie and plopped the sopping thing into the laundry sink. She scalded herself in the shower, leaning against the wall to stay upright. If Joey had really done something to this girl, if word got out, it would be enough to put her in the grave. Her tummy twisted. She retched, but nothing came up. She promised the devil her life right then and there if this all turned out to be a big mistake. But it wouldn’t be a mistake, because Joey was a fool.
She put the water pressure up to dilute the nasty thought about her own flesh and blood. It didn’t work. He was lazy and Amal had indulged him too much. He smoked. She was sure he took drugs. He worked in a supermarket. He’d flunked the HSC. Sins of the father. She cursed his father. And then she cursed her father and the men who came before him and all the men to come after him.
She realised she was red hot, partly from the shower and partly because a rage had started to fill her. She stepped out of the shower and dried herself. The only other time she had felt a similar rage was when she was halfway through menopause and had heaved the cabinet with the nice plates across the tiled floor. She had asked Youssef to move it for months so that she could dust behind it. Some of the plates and a bottle of arak had smashed, and she had left the debris as a trophy for Youssef to see.
She wanted to act on her rage in a similar way now, but she didn’t know how. She could break the ugly vase in the formal lounge that Michael and Sonia had given her one Mother’s Day, or strangle the yapping terrier from next door, even though it had been quiet all day.
She took a deep breath, popped two aspirins from the top drawer of the vanity into her mouth and swallowed them dry. She lay on her bed naked, her hair soaking the pillow. She shut her eyes and let the images play. First, she saw skinny Joey behind bars, crying, then Amal, haggard, reaching out for Simon. And then her blasted mind showed her something she hadn’t seen since it had happened. An uncle, a bristly chin, kisses on her tummy, kisses on her little thigh, kisses on her—
She jumped out of bed, put on her robe and charged into the kitchen.
She set about making sambousik. She did that when things had gone bad. And conveniently it meant she ended up with food that she could ferry to her children’s houses.
She rolled out the dough with the rolling pin she’d bought from a charity shop in the eighties. The one she’d stormed after Amal and Michael with when they drove her up the wall as children. They’d cowered away from her fury like lambs from the slaughter. She’d have sooner hit herself with it, and they had realised that by the time they were in school. Amal had laughed and sauntered away to her bedroom when Elaine lunged for the kitchen drawer, hot from one of her teenage comebacks. In the end, the rolling pin had become a flag Elaine waved for a minute of peace.
She sprinkled flour on the grey benchtop. The one Youssef had installed with his bare hands all those years ago. The one Amal had perched on after school to tell her she wasn’t cut out for study, too practical to sit down and read. She’d fed her daughter dollops of kibbeh in between kneading the mince and burghul with her fists.
She pushed her anger into the dough as she cut circular portions with the rim of a scotch glass. The surviving one from an old set of six. She could have used any glass, but she had developed the belief that the sambousik wouldn’t turn out right if the dough wasn’t cut with that same scotch glass.
She stopped, rinsed the cup, glugged whisky into it and sculled. Her Joey. When he was a child he’d hidden from big men and loud noises, holding her hand or clenching Amal’s skirt for fear of getting lost.
She moved back to the round pieces of dough. She spooned the filling into the middle of one, flipped it over and rolled the edges shut. When she died, she wanted to be buried holding the rolling pin across her chest like a warrior with his sword.
The microwave clock ticked over to 12:00 am. Elaine had made four trays of sambousik. Two of them would need to go in the freezer in the laundry.
During the hour or so of sleep Elaine managed, she dreamt of an angelic baby girl crawling around the backyard. Baby girls in dreams were a good omen, a prize. At least, that’s what her grandmother used to say.
She thought to call Amal first thing in the morning but decided she would go straight to her house. She didn’t bother brushing her hair or teeth, just splashed some water on her face, put on the same dress she had worn the previous day and backed her old Corolla out of the driveway. It was barely 7:00 am. She should have let the engine warm up but there was a haste in her bones that was out of control.
Amal was in the driveway about to hop in her car when Elaine roughly parked on the road. They hugged and Amal cried into Elaine’s shoulder. Alex appeared in his shorts on the front porch, rubbing at his eyes.
‘Where in the world have you been, Tayta?’
‘Me? I been in the village, and I been in Sydney. That’s it.’
‘Did you ever want to travel?’
She didn’t want to burden him. ‘No, I’m happy here. I’m happy with my family.’
‘But we’re all grown up now. You should do what you want.’
‘You expect old lady like me to go Italy by myself?’
‘I didn’t say Italy, but you could go to, like, Tasmania or something. Plus, you’re not old.’
‘Why I’m gonna go Tasmania? It’s probably same as Sydney.’
‘I’m going to take you with me somewhere one day, Tayta.’
She kissed his hand again.
Amal returned with the drinks and Elaine had to stop herself from downing the scotch in one go.
‘Mum, you went to Europe when you were younger,’ Alex said.
‘I did. Me and Rita. We spent a month on buses and trains, and back then there weren’t smartphones or anything, so we literally had a paper map. Far out. Memories, man.’
Alex looked around. ‘Was Italy like this?’
‘You know what, it seriously wasn’t that far off. Except the people. And it’s the people that make the place, really.’
‘Are the Italians in Italy like the ones here?’
‘Nah, not quite. They’re less self-aware of what makes them Italian over there. Like here, the Italians – and not just the Italians, the Greeks, the Lebs – they’re too aware of what makes them wog, so they kind of try too hard to perform it. Overseas, they just are it. It’s hard to explain.’
Elaine interjected. ‘Yes, but it’s because when everyone come to Australia back in the day, they leave their culture behind. Here, it’s like blank stage. If you don’t perform, like you say, then it go away and you end up being same as everybody.’
‘Yeah, that’s kinda true, Ma, but sometimes it’s all a bit forced, you know? Like that Italian jersey right next to the Italian flag up there.’
‘You want them to put Australian flag?’
‘Not really.’
‘Amal, when we first come here, everything – the government, the people, the law – try to make us be like them. Imagine Australia if everyone stop their own culture. Maybe now, yes, stupid people give us bad name, but back then, we have to be Lebanese, Greek, Chinese.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Alex said.
‘You, Alex, Joey, you very lucky that you have two culture.’
‘I don’t know how you and Jiddo did it back then, Tayta. Came all the way here not knowing English or anything about the place.’
‘How I did it? I have no choice is how I did it.’
The pizza was heavenly. It soothed the weird feelings inside of Elaine as it went down.
The big family were packing themselves up to leave, and the man whose birthday it was walked over to their table carrying a hefty piece of cake on a napkin.
‘Hello, I was wondering if you’d like this last slice. I promise it’s good. My daughter made it and she’s a pastry chef,’ he said.
Amal replied for them. ‘That’s so nice of you, thanks. I’m sure Alex would love that. Is it your birthday?’
Elaine stared into the man’s kind eyes.
‘It is.’
‘Happy birthday,’ Amal said, and Elaine followed suit.
He thanked them and walked back to his family, who were huddled together smiling at him. Elaine couldn’t see a wife among them.
She stood up. ‘I’m going to toilet.’
The cashier for the payout was on the other side of the club. By the time she returned to the restaurant to pay, she was panting.
13
Joey was on his third piece of peanut-butter toast when two emblazoned police cars swept into the driveway. A paddy wagon and a Chrysler. At the sight of them through the lounge room window, his soul bolted out the back of the house.
There were three knocks at the door. Each one quaked his innards. Humans were just messes of meat, so easily reverberated. He wanted nothing more than for the boom of those knocks to vaporise him. He wanted to stand there until they turned away, hopped back into the cars and drove off, but he did what he had been conditioned to do by habit, by his mother, by something so terribly obedient inside him. He opened the door to four police officers, two in uniform and two in suits. The female officer wore heavy make-up, fake eyelashes, eyebrows bolstered by ink. She looked like she could reveal a tiny dress underneath her uniform, ready to go clubbing. The familiarity of her style cushioned Joey for a second.
The officer with the most badges on his chest asked if he was Joseph Harb, and when he replied, ‘Yes’, the officer told him to step out onto the porch. That is where he was arrested. Where he was told that he didn’t have to say anything and that anything he said could be used as evidence. The moment, the spotlight cast on him for his neighbours to see. It all floored him. There was something so prestigious and provincial about him in his tracksuit pants and Ivan’s jumper, Adidas slides, crumbs on his face from the toast, being directed, morphed, losing responsibility for his everyday, to these four well-made authoritarians. But they were people too. Who ate peanut-butter toast and slept and wanked and fucked up.
Joey had put himself in this position, to be handled by these people who were transformed by fabric and weapons. He had done what he had done and maybe whatever happened to him from here on in was viable. A sort of calm came over him. Maybe he would try to die as soon as he had the opportunity. No, that would make it worse for his mum, Alex, Tayta. He would exercise his right to not say anything. He would wait until he was at the police station. He would call his mum; she would know a lawyer or a relative of a lawyer.
The female officer shut the front door as he was led towards the cars. He was being shut out of his own home. The Greenacre folk, with their heightened ability to sense drama, were already out watching. The young dad from a few doors down filmed with his phone. The nonna from next door squinted from her verandah, and a black Jeep came to a stop in the middle of the road to watch as Joey was folded into the back seat of the police car. At least they didn’t use the paddy wagon.
They were in a cold interview room like the ones on TV.
The officer asked, ‘What’s your full name?’
‘Joseph Harb.’
‘Have you ever gone by any other names, Joseph?’
‘I was born Joseph Boyle.’
The coming together of two grandfathers. Joseph after Youssef, and Boyle from the grandfather he couldn’t remember.
‘And how old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Joseph, do you know why you are here?’
‘The other officer said something about sexual assault.’
‘Sexual assault. That’s correct. Do you know a girl named Lisa Morris?’
‘No.’
‘Lisa is the young woman you and your friends attacked in Bankstown. Does that ring a bell?’
‘I didn’t attack.’
‘Uh-huh. I wouldn’t say much more until your lawyer arrives.’
The officer left the room for a while. In that time, Joey, in all his numbness, thought about how his body wasn’t attached to anything. He could get up and walk out of this small room and keep walking until he died. That is, if he was ever allowed out of small rooms again.
Another officer came in and, as the door opened, Joey heard his mother from down the hall. Her deep exhalation laced with prayer. He pictured how hard she was holding Alex’s arm.
The officer swabbed the inside of Joey’s mouth and recorded his fingerprints on a device plugged into a laptop. He was left alone again. The prayers bashed into his head like moths into a light bulb. His mum had tried to believe in God once, but his earliest memory was of her standing on a chair in the lounge room taking down the crucifix that hung next to their baby photos. It was never seen again.
There was a knock on the door and a man in a well-tailored navy suit and baby-blue tie entered. He had grey hair on his temples, tanned skin, friendly eyes like his tie.
He shook Joey’s hand and introduced himself as Marco Mamone. ‘I’m a friend of your mother’s. And I’m your lawyer. What have you said to the officer so far?’
His mother had never mentioned Marco before. ‘Just my name and why I’m here.’
‘Okay, good. Now, first things first, I’m going to come straight out and ask you for the truth. You have to understand, Joseph, as your lawyer I will take your word as the truth, even if you are lying, and that’s what I will use to fight for you. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s my job. I can only go off what you say, and the evidence put forward against you. Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘Bravo. So, did you sexually assault the complainant?’
‘What? No! I mean, I was there, but—’
‘Okay, enough. That’s all I’m asking for now. Listen, Joey, the allegations put against you are very serious. If convicted, you could be looking at prison time.’
Joey flopped. His soul shrunk to a flicker. He thought it might extinguish at any moment, but then Marco’s hand was on his shoulder.
‘I’ve seen the police report filed by Lisa. She does not name you specifically as an assailant. In fact, she explicitly states that you and another male did not harm her, but the crown has charged you with aggravated sexual touching based on what she has told them. Either way, the fact that you did not intervene when the others were carrying out the rape does not look good for you.’
‘But was it rape?’
‘From how it has been described, yes.’
Joey thought about the other boys. Were they at Bankstown Police Station too? How many of them were already in a prison cell? Their lives, their futures – what were they now? He thought of Lisa. They had drugged her. They had lied to her on the train and messed her the fuck up. He needed to spew.
‘Joey, I know you are scared but you need to listen to me. I can probably get you bail but you need to let me help you. Even if it means that what you will say could harm your friends’ cases.’
What friends? They were not his friends. Kyri, yes, even though he hadn’t called Joey back – it had been three days now – but the others could hang for all he cared.
Marco looked at his shiny watch. ‘The sergeant will be back in a minute to formally charge you and they will move you to a holding cell. You will most likely be here at least until tomorrow, provided I can get you bail and your mum can organise the assurance.’
The assurance – his mum had been saving for her boob job and now she was going to spend that money, and probably more, on getting him out of jail. He’d never be able to face her again. The door opened and the sergeant returned with paperwork and another officer. They sat around the table and Marco exchanged pleasantries with the newcomer. Joey was charged. Aggravated sexual touching. The words drilled through his ears and met in the middle of his head in an eruption of absolute emptiness. He marvelled that everything inside of him could be switched off with a few words.
He couldn’t feel the handcuffs around his wrists as he was led to the cell. He didn’t even hear the door shut behind him. He stood in the one spot, thoughtless, for what seemed like hours. Then he lay on the metal plate that was supposed to be a bed and drifted into a horizontal state of teeth-chattering, leg-quivering, decadent anxiety.
14
On the Turkish soap, the rich man’s illegitimate son was preparing to take his father to court and claim a share in the shipping business, which he was completely unaware was a front for human trafficking. The phone rang. Elaine’s eyes shot over to the clock. It was 10:06 pm. Her body prepared itself for grief. No-one calling this late had good news. She had to shake her legs out of their stupor to walk to the phone on the kitchen bench.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum, it’s me.’ Amal was sobbing.
‘What happened?’
‘It’s Joey. He’s been arrested.’
‘Why?’
‘He was with his mates, and they did … they did something bad to a girl.’
‘Not Joey! How?’
‘I don’t know the details.’
‘Okay, I’m coming.’
‘There’s no point now. Come over in the morning.’
She was damp with sweat underneath her nightie. She shouted, ‘Why you not call me earlier? What I’m supposed to do now, Amal? Allah y mowetni!’
‘God, taking you isn’t going to solve anything, Mum. Sorry, I shouldn’t have called so late. I just don’t know what the fuck to do.’
‘Where’s Alex?’
‘He’s here.’
‘Come here, come stay here.’
‘Ma, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Amal? Amal?’
She put the phone down and peered at the golden puddle on the floor. She had pissed herself. She placed her hand over her mouth and screamed. Some of the screaming was only sound but some was curses, hexes, profanities at herself and how her life turned out.
She undressed, mopped the puddle up with her nightie and plopped the sopping thing into the laundry sink. She scalded herself in the shower, leaning against the wall to stay upright. If Joey had really done something to this girl, if word got out, it would be enough to put her in the grave. Her tummy twisted. She retched, but nothing came up. She promised the devil her life right then and there if this all turned out to be a big mistake. But it wouldn’t be a mistake, because Joey was a fool.
She put the water pressure up to dilute the nasty thought about her own flesh and blood. It didn’t work. He was lazy and Amal had indulged him too much. He smoked. She was sure he took drugs. He worked in a supermarket. He’d flunked the HSC. Sins of the father. She cursed his father. And then she cursed her father and the men who came before him and all the men to come after him.
She realised she was red hot, partly from the shower and partly because a rage had started to fill her. She stepped out of the shower and dried herself. The only other time she had felt a similar rage was when she was halfway through menopause and had heaved the cabinet with the nice plates across the tiled floor. She had asked Youssef to move it for months so that she could dust behind it. Some of the plates and a bottle of arak had smashed, and she had left the debris as a trophy for Youssef to see.
She wanted to act on her rage in a similar way now, but she didn’t know how. She could break the ugly vase in the formal lounge that Michael and Sonia had given her one Mother’s Day, or strangle the yapping terrier from next door, even though it had been quiet all day.
She took a deep breath, popped two aspirins from the top drawer of the vanity into her mouth and swallowed them dry. She lay on her bed naked, her hair soaking the pillow. She shut her eyes and let the images play. First, she saw skinny Joey behind bars, crying, then Amal, haggard, reaching out for Simon. And then her blasted mind showed her something she hadn’t seen since it had happened. An uncle, a bristly chin, kisses on her tummy, kisses on her little thigh, kisses on her—
She jumped out of bed, put on her robe and charged into the kitchen.
She set about making sambousik. She did that when things had gone bad. And conveniently it meant she ended up with food that she could ferry to her children’s houses.
She rolled out the dough with the rolling pin she’d bought from a charity shop in the eighties. The one she’d stormed after Amal and Michael with when they drove her up the wall as children. They’d cowered away from her fury like lambs from the slaughter. She’d have sooner hit herself with it, and they had realised that by the time they were in school. Amal had laughed and sauntered away to her bedroom when Elaine lunged for the kitchen drawer, hot from one of her teenage comebacks. In the end, the rolling pin had become a flag Elaine waved for a minute of peace.
She sprinkled flour on the grey benchtop. The one Youssef had installed with his bare hands all those years ago. The one Amal had perched on after school to tell her she wasn’t cut out for study, too practical to sit down and read. She’d fed her daughter dollops of kibbeh in between kneading the mince and burghul with her fists.
She pushed her anger into the dough as she cut circular portions with the rim of a scotch glass. The surviving one from an old set of six. She could have used any glass, but she had developed the belief that the sambousik wouldn’t turn out right if the dough wasn’t cut with that same scotch glass.
She stopped, rinsed the cup, glugged whisky into it and sculled. Her Joey. When he was a child he’d hidden from big men and loud noises, holding her hand or clenching Amal’s skirt for fear of getting lost.
She moved back to the round pieces of dough. She spooned the filling into the middle of one, flipped it over and rolled the edges shut. When she died, she wanted to be buried holding the rolling pin across her chest like a warrior with his sword.
The microwave clock ticked over to 12:00 am. Elaine had made four trays of sambousik. Two of them would need to go in the freezer in the laundry.
During the hour or so of sleep Elaine managed, she dreamt of an angelic baby girl crawling around the backyard. Baby girls in dreams were a good omen, a prize. At least, that’s what her grandmother used to say.
She thought to call Amal first thing in the morning but decided she would go straight to her house. She didn’t bother brushing her hair or teeth, just splashed some water on her face, put on the same dress she had worn the previous day and backed her old Corolla out of the driveway. It was barely 7:00 am. She should have let the engine warm up but there was a haste in her bones that was out of control.
Amal was in the driveway about to hop in her car when Elaine roughly parked on the road. They hugged and Amal cried into Elaine’s shoulder. Alex appeared in his shorts on the front porch, rubbing at his eyes.
