The Boy Under the Table (5 page)

Those were the actual words he used.
I’ve had enough of this whole family thing, Claire. Sorry.

And then he was gone. He never called, he never sent money. He just wiped them out of his life. It seemed impossible to Tina that someone could do that. After that they were no longer boring and predictable. She was taking care of Timmy and her mother was either working or crying. Tina felt like one of those soldiers returned from the war. Shell-shocked.

Jack had been the one who was going to make it all right again.

Please, Christina, give him a chance. I need someone in my life, Christina. You don’t know how hard it’s been.

Tina had laughed at that.
You’re right, Mum; I have fuck-all idea how hard it’s been.

They wanted her to go for counselling, especially after Tim, but it just wasn’t going to happen. No way was she going to change for some arsehole do-gooder. Tim had been eight and he would never be nine. No amount of talking would change that.

You can’t keep blaming me, Christina; it wasn’t my fault he got sick.

I’m not blaming you. I know it wasn’t your fault.

You’re lying, Christina. I see the way you look at me. You think I’m a bad mother. You think I should have noticed sooner. You don’t understand how hard it is to be a mother, a single mother. I’ve held it all together, Christina, and I can’t look at you when you judge me like that. I can’t even look at you.

So don’t look, Mum. Look somewhere else. Look where you have been looking all the time that he was sick. Look there.

Well, her mother didn’t have to look at her now.

There was nothing left for her afterwards. Her mother still worked, only now she came home to cook dinner for him, to talk to him, to fuck him. There was even talk of another child. Her mother was doing exactly what her father had done, wiping the slate clean and starting again. Just because she whined about wanting to be a family again didn’t make it any different.

There was nothing left for Tina. Her mother didn’t act like someone who had lost a kid. She just got on with it.

Everyone grieves in their own way,
said Jack.
Try to be patient and understanding, Christina. You have to pray, Christina. Only through prayer will you find the answer. Only through God will you see a purpose
.
Your mother is at peace with God’s purpose
.

Is she high on prayer then?
Tina had asked as her mother raced up and down the house cleaning and singing.

You have the devil in you, Christina,
said Jack.

I think the devil is too busy to bother with me,
said Tina.

And do you want to know something else, Christina? God knows of your disdain for Him. God knows that you have no faith in your heart. If you had faith you could have saved Tim. You could have saved him if you had prayed from your heart and if you had given your soul to God.

Tina had felt tears choke her.

I’m sorry, Christina. I did not mean . . . you can be a very difficult child, Christina.

You don’t have to worry about that, Jack, since I’m not your child.
She knew Jack’s words came from anger and frustration but they burned themselves into her very being.

Jack didn’t back off. He wouldn’t leave her alone. His desire to convert her took over their lives. He seemed incapable of having any conversation with her that did not involve God. Tina stayed out at friends’ houses or at school activities or she just wandered the local shopping centre. But she had to come home. And each time she came home Jack had more control over her mother.

Meal times became sermons after Tim died. She wasn’t allowed to eat in her room. She wasn’t allowed to watch television.

In this house we pray before we eat, Christina,
Jack said.

In this house we dress in appropriate clothes,
Jack said.

In this house we honour your mother and we accept the guidance of adults,
Jack told her.

It was my house before it was your house,
Tina said.

Jack had remained silent on that point but her mother darted around the table and slapped her hard. Her hand cut across Tina’s face so quickly that after the sting was gone Tina could not be sure it had even happened. It had never happened before, not even when her mother could not hide her despair at having to raise two children on her own. It had never happened until Jack came.

This is Jack’s house now, Christina,
her mother had yelled.
Jack’s house and my house. Do you understand me?

Tina had been stunned. Her mouth had opened and closed but there were no words available to her. Jack had bowed his head and refused to look at her but she could see the twitch of his mouth, hiding his smile.

She had known that she would not be able to stay, known it then and there but she had waited, holding on to Tim’s memory. Holding on to who he had been because her mother seemed so desperate to forget.

Of course Tim had been more Tina’s kid than anything else. Tina lost a kid. She had actually felt her heart break in two inside her chest. It was a slicing pain that left you stunned. Half the time she couldn’t breathe properly. The constant lump in her throat made eating hard.

Too bad mothering couldn’t be a part-time job.

No one in the Cross knew about Tim. Why would they?

And if she saw his face every time she passed a boy about the same age what difference did it make?

Jack kept using the word ‘heal’.

Tina and her mother were in the process of healing; they had to heal and soon they would be healed. But Tina knew that was a load of shit. Tim’s death wasn’t some broken bone that could be fixed. Nothing could fix that. It pissed her right off the way everyone expected her to regenerate her heart the way she could regenerate skin on a cut.

She cleared the table and stubbed out her cigarette in the garbage bin. She raised her hand to Arik before she left but didn’t wait to see if he waved back.

Out in the street she pulled her coat tightly around her and played with the money in the pockets. It felt good to have a little in her pocket again. She had been stupid with the money she made last week. Books were too expensive, even when they were second-hand. Books were a place to go even on the harshest of days, but even though she restricted herself the same way she did with her cigarettes, they were still finished too soon. She read when she woke up in the afternoon. She read in the dying light of the day and escaped into other worlds where at least the author was in control. People did all sorts of things to escape the Cross. Tina hid in the pages of a book. It was the warmest place she could find. She had tried the library once, using an old student ID card to join. The librarian had shrugged her shoulders and accepted the address that was so far away from the Cross. When Tina brought the book home to her house, her residence, her dwelling, her current domicile, someone had trashed it while she was out. She hadn’t gone back after that. Afraid to be asked for the book or the money for the book. Tina felt an unpleasant twist in her stomach whenever she walked past the building now, upset at having betrayed the librarian’s trust.

The library used to be a sanctuary. Now it was just one more place she couldn’t go. Tina’s mother had taken her to the library every week, filled with pride at how quickly her daughter got through a book. She had taken her to the library
before.
Before everything.

Tim had loved the library as well. He liked books about monsters and when he got bigger he liked books about mysteries. He added ‘detective’ to the list of things he wanted to be when he grew up. What books did the boy under the table like to read? Did his mother take him to the library? Did he have a mother?

If the clean man was not the boy’s father and if he had taken him, Tina knew that someone must be looking for him. She wanted someone to be looking for him.

Tina made her way slowly through the freezing streets until she came to the building where she would spend the night. It was four weeks away from demolition. The notice got pinned up and torn down every week. The bloke from the council was one determined little fuck. Tina sighed at the thought of having to find somewhere else to live. When she first found her way to the Cross she had slept on a park bench for a few days. It was the height of summer and the park was always filled with people. She slept in fits and starts, terrified of anyone who came near her. Everyone was a threat then, and if she hadn’t met Ruby she would probably have tried to make her way back home. But she had met Ruby in McDonald’s over a dawn breakfast. Then she had stayed with Ruby for a while, until Ruby got jittery. If there was one thing Tina could pick up on, it was when she had worn out her welcome.

She climbed the stairs, not even noticing the smell anymore. She had never imagined that she would get used to the putrid smells in the Cross, but here she was, living among them and surviving. ‘Adapt or die, baby,’ Ruby had said.

In the unit on the second floor, four young boys were asleep on the floor. Young only described their chronological age. The boys had been in the Cross for longer than Tina had. They’d already lived a couple of lifetimes each.

‘You’re a bright girl, Tina,’ Arik always said. ‘You could be anything you wanted to be.’

‘We’re all pretty clever here in the Cross, Arik. Just surviving keeps you on your toes.’

Inside a few candles were almost at the end of their lives, sending flickering shadows onto the walls. There was an old crappy couch in the living room but not much else. Tina knew better than to start collecting stuff. She tried only to keep things she could carry when she moved. She would be leaving this building soon and who knew how long she would be in the next place, wherever that would be.

Mark lifted his head when he heard her come in.

‘Hey, Teen, good night?’

‘Nah, completely fucked. No one’s even on the street. You?’

‘Shit, but I did get a couple. Have you eaten?’

‘Yeah, thanks, but I have to make the money stretch. I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere tomorrow either.’

Mark wouldn’t let her starve but every dollar she took from him was a dollar he didn’t have. Mark had a habit. He needed the money or he went completely crazy. Wild, mad, lunatic, insane.

Ruby had introduced Tina to Mark.

‘This is my baby brother Mark,’ Ruby had said, and then she’d laughed because Mark’s dark skin couldn’t have come from the same family as Ruby’s tilted eyes.

‘Ruby likes to look out for the young ones,’ Mark said. ‘I was only eleven when I got here.’

‘That’s really young. Were you scared?’

Mark laughed. ‘Not as scared as I was at home.’

When she was moving around every night Mark always found her and told her where he would be. It was strictly a friendship. Neither could stand to be touched once they had finished working. Tina was never really sure which gender Mark would choose to be with if he could choose. As it was he had a habit to feed and a wall to stand against, waiting for men with money to feed it.

Then Mark and his posse, as he called them, found this place. Tina was amazed. She had no idea how these boys who did such terrible things to themselves could still believe in anything, let alone the concept of a group who could protect and care for each other. But they did and they liked having Tina around. Sometimes she forgot herself and told one of the boys to take a shower or another to eat something. They always looked at her like she was crazy but Tina could sense the momentary warmth it gave them—the idea of someone looking after them.

Mark had insisted that Tina be allowed to stay in the unit and then he insisted that she be given the bedroom. The boys hadn’t protested much. Patrick and Alex were too far gone most of the time to care anyway and Adam liked her. The unit had the advantage of being on the second floor. No leaking from above and no water from the streets. The kitchen had already been wrecked by some former tenant and the walls were covered in graffiti tags but it was a home of sorts.

Tina didn’t know who used the other units in the building. The residents didn’t exactly exchange information. Once she and the boys had moved in no one tried to get them out. Even among the people with nothing to their names and nowhere to go there was a kind of code. Once a squat had been claimed that was it.

Tina gave Mark a small, weary smile. One battle-scarred soldier to another. ‘Met a fucking psycho tonight,’ she said quietly. The words didn’t really express what she wanted to say but there was no point in pushing Mark into any sort of long discussion. His concentration was shot.

‘They’re all psychos,’ whispered Mark.

‘Yeah.’ And that was all Tina could say. Part of her wanted to tell Mark about the boy, about his blue eyes and his skinny blue fingers. The words hovered on the tip of her tongue and then she swallowed them along with her guilt over the boy and her fear for him and the loss and despair she had seen in his body. ‘Yeah,’ she repeated. ‘They’re all fucking psychos.’

When he was level Mark would offer Tina money, but when he needed a hit he would turn into a bit of a psycho himself and demand it back. Tina knew better than to trust him when he said it wouldn’t happen again. Boys or men, they were all the same.

‘Don’t believe one fucking thing they say,’ Ruby had warned her, but Tina had already learned that lesson for herself.

Mark’s last low had been a bit brutal. Her arm had only been bruised but it felt broken and there was all the crap of having to deal with the hospital. It was easier to let Mark keep his money. Mark was Mark and they all had their issues.

Mark pulled his sleeping bag up to his ears and closed his eyes. He was finished talking. The sleeping bag was warm. It was made for the coldest of winters. Tina blew him a kiss and went through to her bedroom. There was an old foam mattress on the floor with her sleeping bag.

The sleeping bags were the best job Mark and his friends had ever pulled. The bag had a hood and she could zip herself in completely. Some camping store in the city had thrown a massive sale and piled the footpaths with stuff to attract those with money to spend. Mark and the boys were just hanging around, waiting for the sun to set on a hot summer day. His friends told him he was full of shit to want the sleeping bags but Mark had been in the Cross long enough to know that summer would end.