What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (18 page)

T
HE VIEW FROM
her upstairs window used to change according to how much money she had. In the ole days before Mulla it was a set routine process of the fortnightly solo mutha’s (I even talk like a Hawk now) benefit as it ran out, her tobacco supply as it got down to skinnier and skinnier rolled smokes, how her mind turned
scavenger
as she went for long walks in the neighbourhood hoping to find some money on the ground even when — when she thought about it — all of Pine Block’d be like this in the days leading up to benefit payout, hundreds and hundreds of solo mums jus’ like her, the unemployed, the heaps on bullshit sickness benefits, they should call this place Benefit Block, if it could be called a benefit (fucken gov’mint, never give us enough, jus’ enough to keep us scrapin’ by the rest of our lives, fucken gov’mint cunts) of hundreds — no, thousands — dependent on government for their entire existences (though not as if we invite ’em, even our local MP — who the fuck’s he? What Party is in office? — to our parties, hahaha! Thassa only party we care about.)

Tha’s how it used t’ be before Mulla. Now, utha than a cupla bad weeks when Mulla didn’t get a cut from a drug deal, she felt almost rich in that she had spare cash instead of running completely out three, four days before the fortnightly ole cycle came around (again), and the kids hadn’t gone to school hungry in ages, plenty food in the cubbids (I’m rich), which meant they were easier to put up with, you know, bein’ a mother when a woman weren’t actually, like, born to this motherhood stuff (I wasn’t.) Rich, or enough to lift her sights and since it was usually out her upstairs bedroom window her sights more and more fell on the new
housing
subdivisions, as she imagined living in her own house, witha what-they-call-it, a mortgage (Social Security could take it outta my benefit, the fucken thieving gov’mint, give it to us with one han’, take it with the utha) but she’d settle for that if she could have her own house; she’d mow the lawn, not like half the bastards round here, waitin’ till someone, a mate, a rellie, got sick of the sight of it and did it for ’em, useless fucken bastards and bitches going: Oh, I was jus’ gonna do that, tomorrow. Like everything was tomorrow.

As she’d got to quite like walking from the ole broke days, Gloria Jones would walk (with my eyes up, not on the ground) down to the new subdivisions, slowing down so the experience lasted longer, near watering at the mouth at wanting to have one of these homes; why, they had carports and some had garages, she could make the garage a spare room (I know: I could rent it out, that’d pay half the, whatsit, mortgage, for starters. And if I could get Mulla to move in but not officially so I wouldn’t lose my solo mum’s benefit, well naturally he’d pay board — and then some — and before I knew it I’d have my cunning li’l arse covered with the whole benefit to myself, me and the kids. Shit, might be able to save up a deposit and buy a car. But as the (fucken) Social Security’d be deducting and I wouldn’t be telling ’em not to or they’d smell a rat, fuck me I’d end up owning the place in, what, ten years?) The thought(s) made her tremble.

Her hoping, wanting thoughts made her wet, too. For him, Mulla, who she never thought she’d get to like but not only did she — well, she was sure she loved him. (Yeah, reckon I do. Now I do.) Despite his facial tattoos, his gang membership, bein’ a
ex-con
, he was a decent man beneath it all, better’n any and all of the men she’d been with ovah the years put together. If he could pull off one good deal on his own, without having to share it with the uthas (shit, some of ’em don’t get outta bed till lunchtime) that would be the deposit they wanted on a new (our own) house. ’N fact, a cupla months back Mulla’s share of that ten kaygee dope deal was four and a bit grand. He gave Gloria a thousand dollars of it, the mos’ money she’d ever had in her whole life, and she went out and bought clothes, clothes, for herself — oh, forgot the kids — so she bought them a few things, ’bout two hundred’s worth, the rest she glad-ragged herself to the 9’s — no, the legs 11’s, hahaha-hehehe, liked so many things she even had to give some back when it came to more than the seven hundred she had to spend after buying two cartons of tailor-made smokes and a bitta food for the cubbid. She couldn’t believe it the cost, and how far it didn’t go, not really. But boy had it been good spending it. The rest of his thousands Mulla jus’ blew like they all do the
gangies
and the people around here, it’s how they are with money, kids, love: they blow it. On drinking. On buying up the large, big
noting, in the lowie bars they go to that open early (to dispense the medicine for their ailing hearts).

Mulla’d been moaning his head off of late, ’bout Jimmy Bad Horse (oo, what a mean mongrel dog that is. Yet he’s got sumpthin’ about ’im) not respecting his senior status by sending him out with punk kid prospects to case robbery or burg jobs. Robbery, the firs’ preference, more dough in it. In an’ out. Gloria was anguishing over whether to put it to Mulla outright, why didn’t he turn this to his advantage, get the pros’s to do a job and pull out a hunk of the dough. She had the armed bank robberies well imagined in her mind, of the prospects running in doing their desperate thing, waving their shotties around, feeling terrified and like giants at the same time — givus the fucken dough bags! — out to the first getaway vehicle — which Mulla said Jimmy’s tried to say he should be driving but Mulla insulted enough by that to tell him fuck, a man his many years in the gang didn’t have to be frontline risk stuff, after all the time he’d done inside, too. No, Mulla would be driving the second vehicle; the pros’s’d just bundle in their bags of dough and frantic selves and want their young asses outta there. Mulla could have a plan to drop them off at her house, she could give ’em the big impression of harbouring dangerous criminals, make ’em feel good, hot stuff about ’emselves, whilst Mulla was elsewhere pulling big wads of cash (I want the slabs of fifties, not hundreds. Hundreds make people suspicious. Fifties but I’ll take twennies — take fifty cent pieces if I had a place to turn ’em into notes! hahaha) and then they’d have a deposit on a house.

She thought and thought about this and today she’d be putting it to Mulla, meaning it risked everything but then, what the hell, not as if life’d given a woman many utha options. (I’ll be aksing him hehehe) amused at how they said the word ask.

She’d rung Mulla at the HQ on the next-door’s phone, Shirley The Early Bird’s phone (fucken moaning bitch, asking me when’m I gonna get my own phone. How many times has she borrowed sumpthin’ from me and never paid it back? C’d start my own sugar factory with the ’mount a sugar she’s had off me. And what about the cupla bucks here, five bucks there, she’s borrowed and thought I’d forget it cos they’re only two-dollar coins. Nothin’
only
’bout two-dollar coins and cert’inly not a five-dollar note when you’re on
the DPB. So fucker. Get my own house an’ I’ll have phones in every room ’cept the kids’, case they make toll calls, hahaha. Though dunno who they’d know outside a Two Lakes.) Wanna come ovah, hon? Puttin’ that purr on, that fuck-me iner voice. (I feel like coming.) Givim a good one. Then get the talk on his resentment at his seniority being treated like it didn’t mean nothin’; maybe givim a blowjob, then put the question: Mulla, I been thinking …

T
HE LOVEMAKING WAS
better’n she’d hoped and even planned. Sumpthin’ on Mulla’s mind that he’d mostly let go (released) in the sack. An’ that was alright. (Fine by me, lover boy.) Afterward: Wha’s wrong, my honey? (Dammit. Forgot to tellim how good his fucking was.) Ooo, you had some energy today, baby. But, you know, I kinda sensed sumpthin’ … (Come on now, my tattooed, lovable galoot. Talk to Glor. Talk to me.)

As she expected, Mulla’s talk was about his lack of respect, about Jimmy Shirkey bein’ a cunt who used people, telling Gloria about the drug deals Jimmy put together onis cellphone (as if the cellphone in itself was important, as if it was part the complaint Mulla had) and how he was certain Jimmy was pocketing some of the profits ovah and above what he as a long-serving prez was ’ntitled to. Just what she wanted to hear. She almost rushed in there. But no, not yet. (Easy, girl. Easy.)

Mulla, from the firs’ day I set eyes on that Jimmy I knew he weren’t right. And then she touched Mulla’s tattooed cheeks, the fern-curl spirals from the Maori warrior days of old, and the nose crossmarks like a ladder going up the bridge. Around the nostrils the design curled in on itself to the finest li’l hole in the centre. Was like looking into his universe (tiny that it is). Up onis forehead the lines went out from centre like rainbow rings on a wide arc, but curled sharply jus’ past the eyebrows and went down under the eyes. They mighta looked alright if it wasn’t, like, near th’ end of the 20th century (hahaha). But she was used to them and so were her kids who really liked the man behind them, no denying he was generous to them (and me) and a good listener, too.

Let’s go for a drive, look at some a those nice new houses down the hill. An’ when we come back we c’n, you know. Flashing him a smile that came so easily cos he was good to love with; it was
his caring and yet his getting right into the act itself. (Mean to say: if we’re fuckin’ we’re fuckin’, hahaha.) They went out the door and down the stairs of this shit State dwelling holdin’ hands.

Making out she wasn’t watching his face too intently when she was. Whaddaya think, hon? Be good to live in one a them? as they sat lookin’ at one of the new houses. Or — she put on the
hesitation
— or maybe not, not with one a them, you know, mor’gages, eh? An’ forced herself to look out her window. Whassa mor’gage? is the firs’ thing he wanted to know. She turned: Thassa loan, hon. You get them from the banks, don’t aks me why they call it that, they jus’ do. You pay it back, thassa main thing. With interest, how they, the honky banks, make their money. Off the backs of us poor brown folk.

Took him a while to say more. Do white poor people have them mor’gage things, too? Yeah, spose they do. Yeah, they mus’ do. They live in houses same as we do. So how come the honky banks’re makin’ money off their backs, too? Gloria had no answer for that nor cared that she didn’t. All I know, Mulla, is they’re makin’ money from people wantin’ (badly now) to live in their own houses. Mow their lawns ev’ry Sat’day morning, eh hon? Coaxing him back to the suburban dream. Would ya like that — nahh, you wouldn’t, eh? Not you mowing lawns, though I’d do them. You wouldn’t have t’ be seen mowing fucken lawns, I’d unnerstan’ that. Only thing is, ya need a deposit. Know what a deposit is, Mulls? Yeah, course I know. It’s what ya put down on sumpthin’ and never go back to pickit up cos you can’t afford the rest of the payments, HAHAHA!

Oh, you a funny man alright, Mulls. You are (you fucken jerk. Can’t you see I want a house so bad I’d near do anything for it?) You always make me laugh, Mulls, even when I’m, y’ know, down in the dumps.

That brought him ovah. Or his hand, that is. What about, hon? But she shook her head. No, nothin’. Glor, c’mon, we c’n talk to each utha. Dumps about what? But she shook her head and played it to her manipulative max. Nah, i’s alright, honey, only a stupid dream. Letting out a most expressively long sigh. Spreading it on with jam: Jussa a stupid dream, Mulls. ’Nutha sigh. (Now tha’s enough jam, Gloria baby. Or he’ll be spittin’ it out.)

His tattooed arm came across her vision, pointing. What, tha’ the dream? That what you want? Again she shook her head, and this time closed her eyes. Just briefly, enough to have him ask again, You talking one a them houses? And she nodded. Jus’ the once. How much the deposit? Five, it came out a li’l too quick (have to watch that). Five what — grand? Or hundred? She looked at him with a sweet li’l smile: Oh, hon, if only it was jus’ five hundred. Couldn’t bear to look at that drop in his face but saw it anyway. (So that’s it then.)

So it’s five grand? That gets y’ in? She turned again. Gets us in, I w’s thinking. He started the car. She wasn’t pushing it any further, the rest was up to him, since the deposit was never, but never, gonna come from her. (Even if God walked into my place and said here’s your five grand to put on the house, I wouldn’t make it to where you pay it. I’d have some of it spent before I got there. I’d go round to friends and ask where the Housie was, find a card school, a fucken pardy still raging in the morning from the night before, I would I would. It’s how I am. How everyone I know is: we jus’ don’t unnerstan’ how money works and to be, you know,
responsible
— fuck responsible. Yet we got the same wantings as everyone else.)

They drove over to the next new subdivision that still had houses being built. And though it was the same as what they’d a few streets away been looking at, it seemed to Gloria Jones that these were even more desirable. And look, she pointed at the sale signs, they’re the same price! And happy that Mulla was nodding at that, with a frown on th’t said he was thinking. Really thinking. Five g’s eh? he said again in quite a different tone, like it was
reachable
(oh, please let it be!) Yeah. Lotta money, eh? Giving her faraway look like at a rainbow that didn’t really have a potta gold at the bottom (which end anyrate?)

They drove to the end of the cul-de-sac of the street where it was fenced farmland. A high old red-brick wall and a grey-slate roof behind the walls ahead of them ’bout a football field distant. (I could be his, fucken richman Trambert’s, neighbour.) How much t’ buy that place, Glor? Mulla grinning, mussa read her mind. Five hundred, she said — grand. He looked at her and with genuine astonishment. How do you know? Well, she didn’t. But it was easy
to figure from them giveaway real-estate booklets she’d been
picking
up from the stands of late, that houses that size were a half million. A mind-boggling sum. Then she saw Mulla come forward on the steering wheel of this, one of the gang cars, frowning. What’s up, hon? Took him a few moments to answer.

Tha’s the house Jake’s girl hung herself. Startled Gloria. She looked. Saw the top of a big spread of tree jus’ starting to get new leaves. (Oh yeah, tha’s right. How could anyone in Pine Block forget that? But I thought Mulla was inside then, doin’ one of his sentences.) Jake, Nig Heke’s ole man? Who else Jake, and when he turned, his face was with a kinda awe. Jake The Muss, his kid. Yeah, Gloria nodded. Grace wasser name. Bit of a li’l stuck-up. But that was a mistake: Mulla gave her a filthy look. Glor, she’s dead. Killed ’erself. Now puzzling ater. (I made a mistake. This cunt’s even more, you know, sensitive than I thought.) I never meant she was a
stuck-up
, not my words, only what people said about her. You know how they are in Pine Block, can’t say nothin’ nice ’bout no one.