Chapter 1 #2
Reg glanced over at her between plays, beneath a framed picture of a man who looked Pacific Islander kneeling in Aussie military uniform on the deck of a battleship in World War Two.
A newspaper clipping from nine years ago taped to the picture read, “Lionheart’s Founding Family Bids Adieu to Beloved Patriarch”.
“All right, baby?” He muted the telly. “They did what now?”
She told him.
He swore. “Those bastards… I’d have got you, Brum.”
“Thanks, Da.”
He set the baby joey down next to him and lifted his arms without getting up.
“Come ‘ere.” Without fail, he made her feel like he was proud of her. When he hugged her, she felt like a kid who had won an award. She didn’t know why he was still proud of her now.
She hadn’t been that kid in a long time.
He put the wallaby back in its cage and patted the cushion. “Blaise will fix up the guest room.”
“Yeah, nah.” Ronnie had her own temporary modular home in a caravan park in Tinaroo, a working-class tourist town on the west bank of Lake Tinaroo. It was good enough for now—near cousins and safe enough for her daughter to ride a bike around the neighborhood on the odd weekend Ronnie had her.
“I insist.” Reg pressed the remote. The Matildas had won. Commentators reviewed the best plays. Ronnie loved that he was a super fan of women’s soccer. He was a girl dad. She leaned against his side. If anyone had seen her, she would have been embarrassed and denied it.
She hoped telling him wasn’t a mistake.
During the commercial Reg made a phone call, then put his arm around her again.
She wanted to say thank you but her tongue was lead.
She had won the dad lottery. Reg hadn’t even been a real stepdad, just one of her “van life” mum’s ex-boyfriends, but no one around here cared.
He had thrown a bigger party when she was born than he had two years earlier for his biological son, her half-brother.
Maybe that was why when their mum went walkabout, she had taken her dogs but left the kids. No one had batted an eye.
When afternoon rainclouds rolled in, darkening the lawn, Ronnie went outside to move her bike under the car port.
Rain pounded her stepmother Blaise’s flowering succulents, bromeliads and bottlebrush grevillea—the same rain that on the other side of town grew sweet young grass for hungry ewes and lambs.
Clouds parted, and the sun popped out again.
In the summer heat, anywhere rain had gathered on wet pavers and cement emitted a layer of white fog which swirled in low clouds.
As was usual over school holidays, Madonna relatives trickled in, gathering in the kitchen and around the firepit.
Reg was ablaze with the fire of civic protest, threatening to call elected officials to complain about police corruption.
Ronnie stayed quiet, tired of retelling the story.
The Madonnas—a dozen burly men and Ronnie, their messed-up baby cousin who wasn’t a baby anymore—ate takeaway pizza in front of the Wallabies men’s soccer match and drank two slabs of Victoria Bitter.
They cheered when a Wallaby with the ball got near the goal.
Reg pointed to the cages, reminding them to keep it down so as not to upset the joeys who might be sleeping.
The shot bounced wide off the goalpost. They all groaned.
Ronnie was the tallest on the couch, but a decade short of scoring one of the coveted ottomans. After the day she’d had, she felt bruised and a little numb, as if she had fallen, picked herself up and didn’t know yet how bad the damage was.
After dark, her dad knocked on the guest bedroom door. “Oi, Brum!” His fluffy hair was wet. In the kitchen Blaise blasted Abba’s “Slipping Through My Fingers.”
“Oi, Da…”
“How ya feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Brilliant. First rate. Listen. We’re going to file a complaint. If they call you in to talk about it, we’ll all go with you.”
“Oh?”
“Everyone’s invested. Opportunity to prove a point we’ve been making for years.”
“I don’t know, Da.”
“It’s intimidation, Brum. Pure and simple. They mess with you, they mess with me. They know who I am. Mess with me, they mess with our family. Madonnas won’t stand for it.”
“I’d rather not."
“Eh?”
“They let me go with nothing, not even a warning. What if we complain and it bounces back on us? What if they punish me for it later?” She swallowed. Too late, she said it.
“Bloody hell, Brum.”
She crossed her arms.
“You disagree?” he asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Even if it was random, they have no right to bully you like that. They knew you had a record when they pulled you up on their scanner. You give them a pass when it’s yourself, but you wouldn’t let them harass a gay kid because he’s gay or a woman because she’s a woman or a person with a record…”
“I got lucky.”
“It’s not lucky to be threatened by pigs who treat you like scum. What about next time?” Reg asked.
She’d wondered the same thing. “No worries. No harm done.”
“You would say that…” Reg swallowed. He cleared his throat, patted her arm.
Stomach rumbling, she went to the kitchen to stare at the contents of the fridge. He followed her. “No worries, princess. Clean living for a week, deal? Just chill with us and relax. Don’t get in your head.”
She nodded. It could have been so much worse. Nothing bad had happened.
“Should we call Rainbow?” he asked. “First week of school. Check in?”
She shook her head. “You can if you like.” Calls were tough for her. “I miss her too much to talk to her. Maude said she’ll let me pick her up Friday after school.”
Her dad frowned. “You better not have dropped in on them on your way home… Brum…”
She walked down the hall barefoot, finishing her lukewarm beer. Her childhood bedroom overlooked the pool; now it was her stepmother’s office.
The guest bedroom used to be Mattie’s. Dusty blinds looked out onto the front veranda.
Beyond Blaise’s potted hibiscus the neon-green lawn sloped down to a quiet paved road.
The room still smelled like weed, though Blaise had changed everything except the mattress.
Mattie, who played pro rugby for New Zealand, still slept here when he came home.
She logged into her account to see her balance. Her paycheck marked UPSEND DOWNS had come through on time, direct deposit. She transferred five hundred into the joint account she shared with Maude, then shot off a text.
paid feb early