Trish stopped chewing for a second. Tammy says a lot of the rubbish is the same stuff we would have chucked out. Really munted stuff.
Not all of it, but, Susanna said.
Camila said, What d’you think, Li?
Li didn’t open her eyes. Company wouldn’t have the contract unless there was money in it.
I bet you can still get anything in there, Susanna said. Look at the trucks.
The buzzer went. Trish eased her legs down, making a huffing sound. Susanna helped her up. Li got up on her own but Camila waited, held her crutches ready.
In the shower block, Camila asked Li if she believed in the children walking.
I heard about them, Li said. People had stories. But nobody ever saw them.
It was the lightning storms that battered the camp. It was when the rain came in violent dumps that washed away topsoil, carving rivers through the mud and flooding containers. It was the burning cold in her hands and feet at night and the ice on the ground in the morning, it was the hail that smashed the van’s windscreen and killed half the dogs. It was the crying from Family compound because another child had coughed themselves to death. The signs kept accumulating until Li couldn’t turn away from them anymore, had to face the truth.
She stopped counting the days, then, counted the lost things instead. The baby she never wanted, who had stolen a year of her sleep, who Frank had rocked and she had shaken. The one who said Dadda first, the one she had wished away, who ran away and ran away but was always with them. Who bounced on the sofa naked, flexing her muscles, and ran wild with Robbie, who was stung by bees and loved a rag horse. Who swung on the high monkey bars, face shining, calling, Mum! I don’t need you! Who kissed the radio when the Mynas scored and wrestled with Frank and made herself sick laughing. The kid who made up the Best Place on the road to Valiant. Who cried because she missed walking. The one who said, I hate you and, Just can you stay? Who said, Mum, look!
Li held her close, rubbed her worn. Never told the others. Matti was dead now. She would never find the place where it happened, never know for certain, but she felt the truth of it in her body. Lightning and flood told her, freeze and hail and weeping. There was no way for a child to survive the cold season out there. And this, in here, this wasn’t life, it was something else, something that couldn’t be added up.
The Essos wore surgical masks now, when they came close. Gloves when they body-checked. Li submitted to the handling, opened her mouth obediently, keeping her tongue flat, but she could have told them it wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t going to kill herself. What she thought was that she would get one of the sicknesses, something you couldn’t be vaxxed for. Or eventually the lead would do it. She just had to wait.
Sometimes they prayed at night. Not all of them. They took turns to lead the prayer and they prayed in different ways and languages. Li never led but she liked the call and response, the murmur or drone, the silence. She felt closer to Matti and Frank at those times, closer to Nerredin. And something else that she thought she remembered when she listened to them praying with Saint Anthony in her fist. She thought maybe it was her mother.
Often Camila was beside her. Li had never had a friend before Angie, only Frank. Camila was nothing like Angie but there was a warmth in her, some quality that hadn’t been extinguished, that was good to be near.
Trish led the most. She still had a smoker’s voice and she was older than Li, too old, really, for the work. She’d been a minister once, and then, after her town was gone, an itinerant preacher. She lost her husband and her grandchild in a forced evacuation, didn’t know if they were together or dead. Trish could recite whole passages from the New Testament, if that’s what they wanted, or she could just talk. She asked them to think of someone who had wronged them, and forgive. Li thought about Jasmine’s warm hand at the side of the truck, heard her saying, We do this all the time. She thought about how they could have done her over on the road in Tarnackie but they’d strung her along instead, had waited until they knew what she had to lose so they could take it from her.
Something raw and violent opened up in her but she turned away from it.
That’s what I like about you, Megan said. We can just have a smoke and I don’t have to worry what you’re going to come out with.
They stood further apart at the fence now and they didn’t pass the cigarette back and forth anymore, but Megan still gave her the last few drags when she was done. She looked over at the sleepboxes. I don’t get some of them. Always going on about what’s out there for them. It’s just noise, you know? They know it’s not gunna happen.
Li said, Could you leave? If you wanted to?
Megan shrugged. This isn’t bad. I get food, I get smokes, I know where I’m sleeping, I know what I’m doing every day. And I can keep an eye on Benj. It’s just a job, you don’t want to think about it too hard. She passed the butt to Li. Nobody out there’s looking out for me, you know? And you and me, we’re not getting inside. So maybe this is as good as it gets.
Li finished the cigarette. She said, I’ve got no reason to be out there.
Get up, Tammy said. This one’s mine.
Li rolled over slowly to the edge of the cot and groped for her crutches. There were about a
