Free The Infernal Optimist by Linda Jaivin

that and the general mood and Clarence’s reappearance in me life and the fact that She Who wanted to talk, I knew it wasn’t gonna be an easy day.
    But me, I got a philosophy a life, what I had to remind meself about sometimes. And that is—when times are tough and you can do bugger-all about it, the First Rule a Survival is to kick back. So I took meself out into the Visiting Yard to do just that.

Fifteen
    I was shaking a Coke outta the machine when I looked up and saw this lady coming out the vault door from the office where they process the visitors. She was with Sue. Now, I reckoned she was a bit of all right. Classy style, nice eyes, dark wavy hair. Probably about forty. I love older women. I never had one in factuality, but the idea always appealed.
    The moment the guard let them through the gate to the Yard, Babak—he of the thirty-six thousand chickens—raced up. He tugged Sue off to one side like she be a barge, what he moored at his table. On the table was a stack a papers tall enough to kill a man. They’d barely sat down when he was shoving them in her direction.
    This left Sue’s friend on her lonesome. She was looking nervously at the fences and the razor wire, then round the Yard.
    I soiréed over to her. ‘G’day,’ I said, ‘how ya goin?’
    ‘Hello. Happy Christmas,’ she said. ‘I’m Sue’s cousin? April?’
    ‘April. That’s a pretty name. What is only suitable.’ I held out me hand. ‘Zeki.’
    Her eyes ran down me forearm. Them eyes was as blue as the sapphires I once found in this lady’s jewellery box. It was them sapphires what led to me first stint in the nick. April looked at both me arms. I clenched me fists so me muscles showed. I wasn’t that fit—in fact, I was getting a gut—but me arms were ripped. Didn’t mind showing off me arms at all.
    I noticed she be growing beads a sweat on her upper lip.
    ‘Hot as buggery, innit?’ I went, then added, ‘Pardon me French’, so she’d know I was a gentleman what don’t usually swear in front a ladies.
    She touched her own wrist and the snap-on band they put on visitors. She looked at me arms again. She hadn’t been admiring me muscles after all. She was trying to work out if I had a wristband. ‘You sound so…Australian.’
    ‘A happy li’l Vegemite, that’s me.’
    Thomas appeared just then, shaking her hand and looking at her like she was vanilla ice cream. ‘You must be April. I saw you come in with Sue. I’m Thomas.’
    ‘Ah, so you’re Thomas! Great. Nice to meet you. Happy Christmas.’ She held out a bag with some candy canes and gingerbread men. ‘You too…Zeki, was it?’
    ‘Still is. Thank you.’ I chose a gingerbread man and bit its head off. I always do that first cuz I don’t like it looking at me all accusing while I eat the rest of it. I got enough in the lifeto feel guilty about without worrying about the feelings a gingerbread man.
    ‘Happy Christmas to you too,’ Thomas said. He didn’t take nuffin from the bag. ‘Sue told me you were coming today. She said maybe you can help me.’
    ‘Oh, did she?…Uh, look, I…I’d like to help. But…This is my first visit. I’m still in a bit of shock.’
    A gulping sound from somewhere below our knees made us all look down. This little Iraqi girl, Noor, snot all over her face and one pigtail undone, was crying for her mum. Abeer, me little Palestinian mate, ran over. ‘Come,’ she said, pulling Noor over to her own mum, Najah, what put Noor in her lap and held her till she stopped crying.
    April’s eyes went very round. ‘Is that her mum?’
    ‘No. Her mum is in Woomera,’ Thomas said. Woomera was another detention centre what be thousands a kilometres away, in the desert. ‘They brought her here two days ago by herself.’
    ‘But separating a little girl from…that’s…outrageous,’ April said. ‘It’s too cruel.’
    Thomas shrugged. ‘We’re used to it,’ he goes, what wasn’t exactly true.
    April glanced over at Sue. She