Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

press of bodies on deck was crossing for the second time. He warned her to keep Matti’s clothes dry, unfastened his life jacket and pulled his T-shirt up to show her the scars of chemical burns from fuel mixed with saltwater. The first boat had capsized just outside the port. He made it to land and walked to the makecamp, but two weeks later it got shut down and he was sent back across the Gulf.

There’s a new makecamp now, he told Li, closer to Port Howell. From there you can try to buy a sponsor inside Sumud, or maybe jump a truck. He said most people off the boats ended up in the makecamp, unless they’d made an arrangement.

She knew about the new makecamp from Teresa and Navid. Teresa had told her she and Matti might have a better chance of getting their change-of-status claim processed now, without Frank. And then she went out of the room and they listened to her crying.

The man looked Li in the eye. You have to be careful in a place like that, he said. A woman and child alone.

Matti slept and slept across the Gulf. She slept like she’d been awake for years. She cried in her sleep and Li couldn’t reach her, could only sit holding her, in her own sickness and fear. The moon came out and showed the black horizon all around them. She thought how fragile their continent was, with the sacrifice zones encroaching from the north and the oceans rising around the edges, taking back its low places. Matti had never seen the sea before they came to Valiant. Navid took her down to the port one day when Frank’s shift was finishing.

She wanted to know why the water was just lying there, Frank told Li afterwards. Why no one was using it. So I showed her the desal plant, explained how it works.

You took her in there?

Not inside. Jesus. Anyway, she wanted to know once we use up the sea, what else will people drink? Navid told her beer. But then he starts explaining how the Gulf’s just one little bit of all the water and I showed her a couple of freighters on their way to the precincts. She’s nodding, like it’s all making sense. And then she says, So can we walk out to those boats?

The nausea passed and there was only the rocking that went on and on. Her head so heavy on her neck. Frank, she thought, it’s your turn. But she felt the weight of Matti, the bulk of her life jacket, felt her breathing, still breathing. Darkness everywhere, the deck slippery with vomit, Valiant behind them, West behind them. Frank. Waves lifted the boat and the man beside her started praying. She looked east, she thought it was east, searched for the lights of Port Howell.

The nearest Source Centre was about an hour’s walk from the factory, on the western edge of the industrial zone. Closer in, most of buildings had their lights on and their windows intact. There were vehicles moving in the loading bays, shiftworkers stacking and unloading and yelling to each other, security guards smoking in doorways. Early afternoon, a cold grey rain.

At the edge of the zone she saw the port. Gulls circled the freighters coming in from the Gulf and there were tankers queuing up outside the desal plant. Something bottomless opened inside her. The desire to fall was so strong that she had to step back. Closed her eyes to steady herself, and when she started walking again she only looked at what was right in front of her.

The Source Centre was crammed into a single shopfront between the hammam and the Dollarzone. It was the closest one to makecamp, so Li and Matti had come here once a week to check on their claim. Almost a forty-k round trip. They got up in the dark and came home in the dark. The walk was too much for Matti so they got a taxi back but the camp price was double local price and it could go higher depending on the driver’s mood and how desperate the passengers looked.

Back in Valiant, Frank had queued every weekend for two months to get them pre-registered under the skilled worker and food security categories. Now Li was waiting to be contacted about registration. Once you were registered, you waited for clearance, pending sponsorship. Then, if an XB precinct opened a quota, you looked for a sponsor inside that precinct and got your sponsor approved. Then you could apply for change of status under quota.

The queue was shorter than usual this time – it looked like clearing makecamp had been bad for business. There were wharfies and factory and plant workers, and a handful of other evictees like Li, trying to blend in with the legitimate unsheltered, the ones with a home and a job in a hometown that still existed. She used to bring the plastic sheet and the sleeping bag so Matti could rest while they queued. Sometimes they got onto a machine before closing and sometimes the signal didn’t drop out before Li finished punching in all the numbers. There was never any progress on their registration but she couldn’t know that for sure unless they queued.

She stood in this queue for two and a half hours. Every time she shuffled forward she reached down to drag Matti with her and Matti wasn’t there. She rocked on her heels, chewed her lip, tested the flex of her fingers, anything to stay in motion. Hours already since she talked to Arsalan. Almost four days since they’d cleared the camp. Maybe Matti was safe for now but Li couldn’t keep her safe. That depended on Agency and Agency had cracks you could drive a truck into. So easy to lose one skinny girl who couldn’t tell the time yet.

Acid rose in her stomach and her burns throbbed, in spite of