I see you by the fence with your little screw, Tammy said. What’re you giving up for the smokes?
Nothing, Li said. We just talk.
We just talk. Don’t you have any fucking self-respect?
Li shrugged. She was on her feet now and Tammy faced her across the cot, reeking of dump. Li kept her eyes down. She’d worked fourteen hours and she was lurching with tiredness but it was too soon to move away to an empty mattress. Tammy wanted to hit people, mostly that was what she wanted.
You’re wasting your time there, Trish said.
Tammy turned on Trish. You telling me what to do?
I’m just saying. What are you going to do that hasn’t already happened to her?
The box was quiet with listening. Then Tammy sat down heavily on the cot and settled onto her back with her arms folded behind her head. Looked up at Li with her jaw working. Yeah, she said. Too easy.
Sometimes there were fights in the food queue but mostly people were too tired. And mostly there was enough food. Sometimes when there were fights, Li lost hold of where she was and mixed this queue up with the queue at makecamp, but then one of the others would talk loudly in her ear or shove her forwards, and she would take her bowl and sit and raise and lower the spoon until the bowl was empty. She felt like a child then, and felt a tenderness that she didn’t know where to direct.
One day she was leaving the food shed as another women’s compound was waiting to go in. In the queue she saw a face she knew. She stopped walking and stared until the woman behind Angie nudged her and Angie looked up and saw her too. It was the strangest thing, like looking through time. She hadn’t seen Angie since she and Carl left Nerredin without saying goodbye, more than two years ago.
Angie had more grey in her hair now, and the face of an older woman, more than two years older. From the stain on her fingers, she worked ammo. She just looked at her, why didn’t she speak? The women around her shuffled or stood blankly or leaned into the cooking smell. Li wanted to tell her everything. She wanted to tell someone who’d known Frank since primary school how he had died and she wanted to ask about Carl – if he was alive, if he was here too. She wanted to say Matti’s name.
The woman behind Angie was watching Li, curious and hostile, protective. Li saw that this was Angie’s friend now, and felt the loss of Angie like she never had since Nerredin. She had let her go. She had turned away from the pain of Robbie and left them to carry it, as if two people could carry it. Angie looked away and then back again, like she couldn’t help it. Li saw what was in her eyes and she felt it too. That it was unbearable to show themselves to each other like this.
The queue moved and Angie’s friend shoved her and she went into the food shed. Li stayed where she was until all the things that had threatened to spill out of her were quiet again, and then she went back to the sleepbox and counted the grids from the outside in. She remembered how this had happened before, when Rich called her name at the Delta fence. But it was different now – she wasn’t poisoning herself with hope anymore.
In the sleepbox they talked about the children walking, what they’d heard and what might be true. The women who’d lost kids approached this idea like a cliff edge. But when it was too hard to speak the names of their own children, then they prayed for the children walking.
Susanna said, Why would God leave them out there alone?
Maybe we brought it on ourselves, Azzi said. We knew there was no future and we went and had them anyway.
Li tasted metal. Beside her, Camila made a small sound that wasn’t meant to be heard.
What about the kids? Tammy said. What are they being punished for?
A shudder ran through the room. But Trish said, The God I know is a merciful God. We’re never alone, God always offers a way back. Maybe the children are walking to find the way back.
Camila said, What kind of God would ask something like that from a child?
Li thought about how standing on concrete for twelve hours made Trish’s feet swell up, how slowly she climbed into the van at the end of a shift, and the painful way she breathed at night when her veins wouldn’t let her sleep. We think we’ve lost our children, Trish said, and it feels like a punishment, I know that. But what if they’re not lost? It’s too late for us, but what if there’s still a chance for them to be saved?
You believe that? Camila asked.
Trish said, I believe all children belong to God. Her voice shook and steadied. Our children are held in the hand of God. They walk under God’s hand and they shall come to no harm but shall be lifted.
The way back from Central compound took her past Family compound. No other way. The kids under twelve roamed the compound while their parents worked shift. Sometimes there was an adult with them, organising activities, portioning out gum. Just like makecamp.
In the beginning she’d stood by the fence through her breaks, searching the compound through the wire, but she’d given that up after Megan had called in a favour and ran Matti’s status number through the records.
Now she never looked. Except one time when she went past, there was a kid at the fence on his own, tying long strips of plastic onto the wire. She recognised the packaging. There were grey strips and white strips and Serkel green and the kid was weaving them into a pattern.
