Money, Suburbia, and Criminality Theme Analysis

Mum’s love came hard. There was pain in it, there was blood and screams and fists against plasterboard walls, because the worst thing Lyle ever did was get my mum on drugs. I guess the best thing Lyle ever did was get her off drugs, but he knows I know that the latter could never make up for the former.

Bich is famous in my town as much for her selfless sponsorship of Darra community events […] as she is for the time she stabbed a Year 5 Darra State School girl, Cheryl Vardy, in the left eye with a steel ruler for teasing Karen Dang about having steamed rice every day for school lunch. Cheryl Vardy needed surgery after the incident. She nearly went blind and Bich Dang didn’t go to prison. That’s when I realized Darra had its own rules and laws and codes and maybe it was ‘Back Off’ Bich Dang who had selflessly drafted them into existence.

“What’s with you and men being good?”

“Never met a good one, that’s all,” he says. “Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don’t ever trust ‘em.”

“Who are we kidding?” I shout. “Watch my language? Watch my language? We’re fucking drug dealers. Drug dealers fucking swear. I’m sick of all these bullshit airs and graces you and Lyle go on with. Do your homework, Eli. Eat your fuckin’ broccoli, Eli. Tidy this kitchen, Eli. Study hard, Eli. Like we’re the fucking Brady Bunch or something’ and not just a dirty bunch of smack pushers. Give me a fucking bre—”

“When I was a kid these streets were clean as a whistle. People gave a shit about these streets. This place was just as pretty as your precious Gap. I tell ya, that’s how it starts, mums and dads in Darra start dropping used nappies in the street, next thing you know they’re lightin’ tyres up outside the Sydney Opera House. That’s how Australia turns to shit, with you just kicking that Solo can into the middle of the street.”

“I reckon widespread suburban heroin use might be a quicker road to ruin,” I suggest.

I don’t know what I expected from drug dealing. More romance, perhaps. A sense of danger and suspense. I realise now that the average street grunt suburban drug dealer is not too far removed from the common pizza delivery boy. Half these deals Lyle and Teddy are making I could make in half the time riding through the south-west Brisbane suburbs on my Mongoose BMX with the gear in my backpack. August could probably do it even faster because he rides faster than me and he’s got a ten-speed Malvern Star racer.

“You asked me that day in the hospital about the good and the bad, Eli,” he says. […] “I should have told you then that it’s nothing but a choice. There’s no past in it, there’s no mums and dads and no where you came froms. It’s just a choice. […]”

“But you didn’t always have a choice,” I say. “When you were a kid. You had no choice then. You had to do what you had to do and then you got on a road that gave you no choice.”

“I always had a choice,” he says.

I know, Slim. I know I haven’t asked Dad about the moon pool. I know this happiness depends on me and August and Mum forgetting the bad old days. We lie to ourselves, I know, but isn’t there a little white lie in all acts of forgiveness?

Maybe he didn’t mean to drive us into that dam that night. But maybe he did. Maybe you didn’t kill that taxi driver. But maybe you did.

You did your time for it. You did your time and then some. Maybe Dad has too.

I miss him. I gave up on him because I was scared. Because I was gutless. Because I was angry at him. Fuck him, right. His fault for hopping in bed with Tytus Broz. Not my fault. Cut him out of my mind along with the Lord of the Limbs. Cut them off like the ibis cut off its own leg because the fishing line was killing it.

“Bevan Penn,” I say. “They pixelated his face in all the photos but, I swear, Gus, he’s us. He’s you and me.”

“What do you mean, he’s you and me?”

“I mean, that coulda been us. I mean, his mum and dad look like Mum and Lyle looked when I was eight years old, you know. And I been thinkin’ how Slim used to talk about cycles and time and things always coming back around again.”

“Yeah, it’s dead,” I say.

“Stupid bird seemed so determined to kill itself,” he says.

Caitlyn slaps her hands.

“Wren!” she says. “I remember now! That’s a wren.”

And with that, the dead blue wren comes back. Like it was just waiting for Caitlyn Spies to recognise it, because, like all living things—like me, me, me—it lives and dies on her breath and her attention.

“I thought they’d look different, your mum and dad,” she says.

I laugh. “You did?”

“They’re so nice,” she says. “They just look like any normal mum and dad.”

“They’ve been working on normal for quite some time now.”