Chapter 13
LAWYER
Sunday evening in late February, the day before Ronnie was supposed to meet with the lawyer, she had Rainbow.
She listened for the lightning that would electrify Reg’s metal counters, vibrate the glass and shock the cousins through their chairs.
Aunts, uncles and cousins sat at the long table on the veranda eating boiled dinner when spatters of rain ping-ed off the roof and a wall of water fell between them and the grassy yard.
A waterfall from the heavens beat the grass, saturating the loam, filling it to overflowing.
Rainbow planted her fists on the table and howled.
She blew out a whooping banshee cry, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide in an "O" showing a perfectly round unchewed slice of salami.
Ripping off her shirt, she jumped up on the bench and ran across the table whipping it in circles above her head.
She stood in the grass grinning and catching rain on her tongue as more kids ran out tipping their heads back as the rain soaked their long hair and plastered it to their necks.
The little cousins jumped on each other's backs and galloped out of sight up the jungle path.
Her uncle looked up from his card game. “That was you. You were like that.”
The next dawn, riding childless again, lonely and relieved, she parked her motorcycle under the carport at Stone House and turned off the engine.
Nev wasn’t there, so Ronnie stood on the veranda under the eaves to wait.
The older woman walked up the hill towards the house with the dogs in the rain.
Nev looked like a shepherd in a waxed canvas barn coat, stick in one hand, other hand tucked in a pocket.
Ronnie watched the front door swing open at Nev’s touch and followed her inside. Nev hung her wet Akubra in the mudroom and flicked on the electric kettle in the kitchen before leading her to a table in the family room covered with books.
“Big day, meeting with a lawyer. How do you feel?”
Nev offered her a plate of raw vegetables before biting into a thin slice of white radish that looked like a full moon. Nev ate them mandolined every morning from August to March.
“Good.”
Ronnie picked one. It was wet with its own juice.
Sunlight from the window illuminated it from behind, revealing inner patterns like the cratered surface of the moon.
Rubbery, slimy, it had the surface texture of a carrot and mouth-feel of an apple.
It was delicious. Peppery and surprisingly sweet. She swallowed it, took another.
Soccer practice was cancelled, so after work she drove back to her donga in Tinaroo, fed the dogs, reached under the kitchen sink and grabbed the box of garbage bags.
She shook one out, then pulled it over the cast until her fingertips pressed against in the corner of the bag.
She pulled the plastic taut, pushed her fingers through the thin black plastic one by one.
She bit a rubber band, stretched it out with her free hand, pushed the cast hand through, then let it snap shut around the garbage bag at her elbow.
She admired her homemade cast-cover, opened and closed her hand. It would keep the cast dry for a while.
The two-lane paved road north to Mareeba was slick.
If this continued, there would be washouts soon.
News radio was all updates about the path of Cyclone Marcia.
She had been upgraded to a category five cyclone off the coast sometime last night.
She was making land now, near Shorewater Bay, north of Yeppoon, striking a relatively uninhabited area.
The State Emergency Service (SES) was helping people evacuate from the path of the storm.
The lawyer’s office was in a commercial building between a petrol station and an athletic field. Ronnie ran inside, head-down against a wall of water.
Inside the atrium of the office building she pushed down the hood of her sweatshirt. Indoor trees, some kind of ficus. The lawyer’s office was on the second floor. The building smelled like a doctors’ office. Soft jazz played in the elevator.
The secretary, older woman, handed Ronnie a clipboard with forms to fill out in the waiting room.
A middle-aged woman wearing a polyester dress that fit her like a glove, and high heels, came out and offered her hand. “You’re Reg Madonna’s daughter?”
“That’s me.”
“You work for the graziers? They’ll be flooded. The Barron’s about to jump her banks. All over the news. Gillies washed out yet?”
“Not yet. Thanks for taking my case.”
“Pleasure to meet you. Come on in. A petition for a hearing is an easy process if you file jointly with the custodial parent. Have you asked your daughter’s mother if she is willing to file jointly with you?”
The lawyer’s office had a desk, a chair for clients, and a floor-to-ceiling window that was currently a view of the inside of a waterfall.
Ronnie shook her head.
The lawyer sat down behind her desk, sliding glasses that had been in her hair down to the bridge of her nose.
She folded her hands on a manilla folder.
“You can ask her to come in and meet with me, or I can send her a letter. It will go better if you talk to her first. Then she and I can arrange a time for her to come in and sign the first round of documents.”
“Can you just call her?”
“I can if you prefer that, but I don’t recommend it.”
“Do that. Please.” She watched the woman scribble on the legal pad. “How many rounds of documents does she have to sign?” She had a sinking feeling.
“Two. One in my office to file the joint petition, and another in the courthouse on the day of the hearing. If she expresses reservations, there are things we can try to ease her into it. Don’t worry about that now. This meeting is for me to get to know you.”
After some housekeeping about sliding scale hourly rates and confidentiality, the woman closed her laptop, folded her legs and pulled a legal pad onto her lap. “You assaulted your partner in ’05. That’s on the public record.”
“Okay.”
“This is confidential. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you assault her?”
Ronnie sighed. There was no easy answer. “Self-defense?”
“Explain.”
Ronnie rubbed her knuckles along her lips. “She was selling drugs. She had me shaking people down, roughing up dealers who owed her money. I never got caught. Neither of us did. She was my business manager.”
“What sort of business manager?”
“Footy, music, other things. We thought we were entrepreneurs.”
“How did that start?”
“She got shagged at church camp, started going on dates with older men she met online. She did that when I met her. She retired from that, moved to back of house, started setting up other girls.”
The lawyer’s pen moved across the yellow legal pad. “Your partner was a pimp?”
“You could say that.”
“Was she your pimp?”
Ronnie hesitated. Wanted to laugh for some reason.
“How old were you when that started?”
“Fifteen. I only did it a handful of times.”
“Is that how you became pregnant?”
Ronnie shook her head.
“How do you know?”
“I was doing handies, mate. Hand jobs.”
“Did she make you do that whilst you were pregnant?”
“She didn’t make me do it.”
“How did Maude feel about the pregnancy?”
Ronnie shrugged.
“Bad for business?”
She nodded.
“Did she ask you to get an abortion?”
The nervous urge to laugh was gone. Ronnie nodded.
“Was she physically abusive?”
“She would say it was self-defense.”
“She hit you?”
Ronnie nodded. “We beat each other regularly. It wasn’t a one-sided situation. We went at it. Often it was foreplay.”
“Does she still manage working girls?”
“No.”
“Is she still selling drugs?”
“No. She tattoos tourists.”
“Was the fight you had ten years ago your last?”
This woman was sharp. Ronnie smiled. “Next question.”
The lawyer looked up from her legal pad, over her reading glasses, to study Ronnie. Awkward silence. Eventually the woman leaned back and sighed. “This isn’t going to work. No judge will give you custody if you’re beating this child’s mother.”
Ronnie flushed, angry. She scratched the cast. “I think you misunderstood.” Her wrist hurt. “Can I call someone?”
The woman blinked, surprised. “Sure. You can step outside. I’ll wait.”
Ronnie pulled out her phone and dialed her dad.
“Do you want me to step outside?” the lawyer asked.
She shook her head as the phone rang on her dad’s end. He could fix this. He was at work, but he answered.
“Hiya Brum.”
“Hiya. I’m here in Mareeba with the lawyer.”
“What’s up?”
“It isn’t going well.”
“What can I do?”
“Talk to her, please?”
“Sure thing, baby. Put her on.”
She handed the phone to the lawyer, who to her credit, rolled with it.
“Hello?”
Her dad talked the woman’s ear off for a while. She couldn’t hear what he said, but eventually the lawyer thanked him and returned the phone to her.
The lawyer scribbled in her legal pad, then looked up. “I’m sorry that this is still happening.”
“No worries.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed. I’ve worked on cases like this with Blaise, through the nonprofit she works for at the Community Centre in Lionheart. I’m happy to work with you on this.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“No worries. Now, where were we? The fight that proceeded your arrest. What was it about?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember. We were arguing about money. Things got out of control.”
“Did you try to leave?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Drugs? Alcohol?”
“I never did those things whilst pregnant.”
“After the police arrived, then what happened?”
Ronnie swallowed. She wasn’t comfortable talking about this, but owed it to herself to try.
“They arrested me because I look like this.” Ronnie gestured to her six-foot-three self, including the black T-shirt, men’s gym shorts and work boots.
“They always assume the unconscious person is the victim.” God, that sounded awful. She sounded like a dick.
Her eyes stung. She blinked. She wasn’t allowed to cry here. “I don’t think it was my fault.”
The room became a sauna. Ronnie broke out in a sweat. She shouldn’t have said it wasn’t her fault. Now the lawyer would think she hadn’t accepted responsibility or been reformed.
“She made it clear that she would, you know, nail everything we had done on me.”
She winced. She could have walked out of Maude’s house that night.
She saw that in hindsight. She should have accepted Nev’s offer to stay for chicken parmi.
The solution had been right in front of her, but she hadn’t been able to see it.
Her life would have gone in a better direction if she had eaten that parmi.
“Shit messes with your head when you’re a kid,” she said.
“Did you gather evidence against her?” the lawyer asked.
Ronnie shook her head. “She was always gathering evidence against me. It never occurred to me to do the same. She’s smarter than I am.”
“Don’t say that. We can’t move forward without her support. Since you don’t feel comfortable asking her, I’ll call her and explain the situation, and then I’ll be in touch to let you know what our next steps will be. Do you have a social worker on the case?”
Ronnie shook her head, palms sweaty.
“We’ll need them to write a report. Start building a paper trail showing how often you care for your daughter, what you pay for, etc. We’ll need a report from the social worker saying that you’re capable of providing equal custody. The state will do a home review where they visit your house.”
“No problem.” She swallowed, feeling lightheaded. It occurred to her that she might faint. “Is it going to be a problem that I live in a donga?”
“Shouldn’t be, if it passes inspection. The state will send their own person around to do that.”
Numb, she shook the lawyer’s hand, stood up, thanked her again, and left.
She got lost in the hallway, but eventually found the atrium with the indoor trees.