When afternoon rainclouds rolled in, darkening the lawn, Ronnie went outside to move her bike under the car port. Rain pounded her stepmother Blaise’s flowering succulents, bromeliads and bottlebrush grevillea—the same rain that on the other side of town grew sweet young grass for hungry ewes and lambs.
Clouds parted, and the sun popped out again. In the summer heat, anywhere rain had gathered on wet pavers and cement emitted a layer of white fog which swirled in low clouds. As was usual over school holidays, Madonna relatives trickled in, gathering in the kitchen and around the firepit. Reg was ablaze with the fire of civic protest, threatening to call elected officials to complain about police corruption.
Ronnie stayed quiet, tired of retelling the story.
The Madonnas—a dozen burly men and Ronnie, their messed-up baby cousin who wasn’t a baby anymore—ate takeaway pizza in front of the Wallabies men’s soccer match and drank two slabs of Victoria Bitter. They cheered when a Wallaby with the ball got near the goal. Reg pointed to the cages, reminding them to keep it down so as not to upset the joeys who might be sleeping. The shot bounced wide off the goalpost. They all groaned.
Ronnie was the tallest on the couch, but a decade short of scoring one of the coveted ottomans. After the day she’d had, she felt bruised and a little numb, as if she had fallen, picked herself up and didn’t know yet how bad the damage was.
After dark, her dad knocked on the guest bedroom door. “Oi, Brum!” His fluffy hair was wet. In the kitchen Blaise blasted Abba’s “Slipping Through My Fingers.”
“Oi, Da…”
“How ya feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Brilliant. First rate. Listen. We’re going to file a complaint. If they call you in to talk about it, we’ll all go with you.”
“Oh?”
“Everyone’s invested. Opportunity to prove a point we’ve been making for years.”
“I don’t know, Da.”
“It’s intimidation, Brum. Pure and simple. They mess with you, they mess with me. They know who I am. Mess with me, they mess with our family. Madonnas won’t stand for it.”
“I’d rather not."
“Eh?”
“They let me go with nothing, not even a warning. What if we complain and it bounces back on us? What if they punish me for it later?” She swallowed. Too late, she said it.
“Bloody hell, Brum.”
She crossed her arms.
“You disagree?” he asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Even if it was random, they have no right to bully you like that. They knew you had a record when they pulled you up on their scanner. You give them a pass when it’s yourself, but you wouldn’t let them harass a gay kid because he’s gay or a woman because she’s a woman or a person with a record…”
“I got lucky.”
“It’s not lucky to be threatened by pigs who treat you like scum. What about next time?” Reg asked.
She’d wondered the same thing. “No worries. No harm done.”
“You would say that…” Reg swallowed. He cleared his throat, patted her arm.
Stomach rumbling, she went to the kitchen to stare at the contents of the fridge. He followed her. “No worries, princess. Clean living for a week, deal? Just chill with us and relax. Don’t get in your head.”
She nodded. It could have been so much worse. Nothing bad had happened.
“Should we call Rainbow?” he asked. “First week of school. Check in?”
She shook her head. “You can if you like.” Calls were tough for her. “I miss her too much to talk to her. Maude said she’ll let me pick her up Friday after school.”
