Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch

Author:Tara June Winch
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction/General
ISBN: 9780702250569
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

When you start to not feel the punch that lands on her face, when you begin to see someone’s broken heart instead of someone’s bruised veins, when you know that cuz needs a beating to sort him out, you begin to see love more than hate, that real sort of love, the sort that’s desperate and always fighting. Fighting to be heard and stay.

Joyce always made sure I was inside by dark, always made sure I had a feed. I wanted to buy food too so Joyce helped me get a job. Her cousin’s missus’ brother used to work at a carwash and he told Joyce that they’d give me a job. Shit money but it was cash in hand so it was good for the business see. I did end up getting the job, for a while anyway.

Things seemed to be going good, but sometimes Joyce would put the hard word on me, after she’d had a couple of sherries and all the aunties had gone home. And the bullet would always drop somewhere in the middle of my ribcage.

She was packing up the cards one night when she cornered me about my family. ‘So...’ she said with a caring prying tongue, ‘where’s all your family, girl?’

‘After Mum died, we went and stayed at Aunty’s and Billy, well he–’

She interrupted with a jabbing finger, her jet eyes bolting ya face. ‘I know all that, May, what about your nannas? You got old dobs in yer mob like me?’ She straightened up against the table, making herself look taller and tipping back her head all prided. ‘Go on, what about ya old girl, her mob, where they?’

‘Dunno, she left us so long ago, I remember stories though and I know she’s Wiradjuri – from out west isn’t it, Joyce?’

‘Wiradjuri! You Wiradjuri blood girl? Well all ya mob’s probably out ere in the park drinkin.’

She bellowed laughter across the walls and glass-covered faces. They smiled back.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, forgetting where I was.

She caught me.

‘Ninganaa little one, have some respect.’

She was serious.

‘Now listen good,’ she said, pulling out a crate again. ‘I know ya like it ere, but it’s no good ere little one. You know what I’m talkin bout, no good young dobs growin up in this ere, and I’m gettin too old to be worryin all the time bout ya, specially after that carwash business the other day ... I know, I know you got ya young sissy girls ere and Johnny, but you, May, you got people that you gotta find, things you gotta learn. You will learn them ere, but I don’t want you to. Look at Justine, smack the only thing teachin her now! You gotta go, May, you got sumthin to find, fire in the belly that ya gotta know. See all the moguls now, they got the fire too, but people in the city always gunna try put it out, then it outta control. You know, like trying to put the fire out with petrol.

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