Page 43 of Fierce

So, yes, Hope had my interest. You could say that. She even had my sympathy. Because she’d never asked for either, which made her unique in my world.

Then I left her, and everybody asked for them. Oh, well.

My phone rang while I was still in the car. Still thinking about Hope, still aching for her, because once again, she’d lingered well past the time she should have been gone.

The phone rang again, and I looked at the screen, then didn’t allow myself to sigh before I picked it up. You did things, or you didn’t do them. Thinking about them beyond that served no purpose at all.

“Yeh, Ana.” I glanced at my watch. After three, which meant it was five in the morning in Brisbane.

“It’s Mum,” she said without preamble. “Rang me crying. Woke me, didn’t she. Well, of course she did. Been up all night, I’d say, and with a skinful in her, saying the landlord’s threatening to evict her. Why didn’t she ring you? Why’s it me every bloody time?”

“Why d’you think?”

“Because she’s afraid you’ll cut her off. But it’s me she rings, and it’s a bloody nuisance, and unfair, too.”

“Then don’t answer.”

“Easy for you to say.” Her voice was rising. “You aren’t here having to cope, are you.”

“Was there something you needed?” Other than the same old thing? “If she has to move, she’ll tell me where to send the rent, no worries.”

“You know what Jomo said when I said I’d ring you to ask your advice?” she asked. “He said, ‘Why? He won’t give a shit. He’ll tell you to get to the point, and you’ll end up raging at me about it, and I don’t need the agro.’ And I said, ‘He’s my bloody brother. He needs to know what’s happening. He’s going to care if his mum’s bloody homeless.”

“And you’ve told me,” I said. “And I’ve told you I’ll deal with it, if it even happens. Was there something else?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, there was,” came the answer. “I was going to tell you that I’m up the duff again, and it couldn’t have come at a worse moment, but I guess you don’t want to hear about that, either.”

“No,” I said. “I probably don’t.”

“You’re a cold bastard, you know that?” Her voice was rising, and I wasn’t going to care. I’d heard it all before. It wasn’t going to get to me again. “I just got my license sorted to go back to hairdressing, but you don’t care about that, either. Geoff and Alan need new school uniforms, and the new baby will need everything, because I chucked it all, but why am I telling you?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said. “I might care more, of course, if you hadn’t been getting that license sorted for the past five years. And if there weren’t such a thing as birth control. And if Jomo’d got off his arse and off the dole anytime these ten years. I’d care if any of you were making an effort. I’ll pay Mum’s rent. I won’t pay yours.”

I’d done it over and over, in the early years. Just until they ‘got back on their feet.’ Which, I’d learned, was never. I still wouldn’t see my nephews in the street, or even my sister and mum, no matter how I felt about them, and Ana knew it. Probably better if she didn’t, but the old obligations still tugged at me despite every logical argument. However much they deserved it, I couldn’t desert my whanau. Unfortunately, my sister knew that, and my mother did, too.

I realized that my phone had been silent for a while now. “Hello?” I said. But Ana had rung off.

I set it aside, because that was what I did. I didn’t think about it. I’d spent bloody years thinking about it, and years were enough. Indulging in emotion over things you couldn’t help was nothing but a waste of time and energy anyway, and I preferred to keep my time and energy focused where they could do me some good. On where I had the control. The moment you let yourself care, you gave the other person the power, and I didn’t give away my power. Not anymore. I knew too well what it felt like, how it weakened you.

Because when my mum had taken Ana with her and left me with my dad...I hadn’t just thought about it. I’d been gutted. I’d even, to my shame, cried. Although not when she’d told me. Then, I’d been numb.

“Because you’re twelve,” she’d said when I’d come home from school to find her packing. “Better off with your dad, aren’t you. And I’ll see you, summers.”

“S-summers?” It was September, and summer had been long months away.

“Christmas,” she’d promised. “You can come to Brisbane. And you’ll be better off with your dad, staying at your school. Hardly notice I’m gone, will you, as little time as you’re home, what with the school and the rugby and all.”

No,I’d wanted to shout. No. I’ll notice you’re gone. Please take me with you. Don’t leave me here with him. But I hadn’t said it. I hadn’t wanted to beg even then. Or maybe I’d known that it wouldn’t have made any difference. I’d have humiliated myself for nothing.

Now, I understood that it hadn’t been about me. It had been about Benji. The new fella. Benji hadn’t minded Ana, but a pretty eight-year-old girl was an entirely different prospect than a hostile, suspicious twelve-year-old boy. And my mum had chosen Benji, because what I’d told Hope was true. Mums left, too. Mums left, and didn’t care what they were leaving you with.

None of which I wanted to think about. So I set it all out of my mind along with Hope, went back home to get something done after wasting most of my day, and, at five, opened the door to Eugene for my workout.

“Little bit better today,” he grunted thirty minutes later as we took a break. “That campaign of yours working out, then?”

“What? Yeh,” I said with surprise. He never asked me about the job. “We’ll kick it off in Paris.”

“Nah, man. I didn’t mean that one. I meant Miss Little Bit.”

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