Read Online The Infernal Optimist by Linda Jaivin - Free Book Online Page B

off?’ I said, looking pointingly at the list.
    ‘All done. Happy Christmas, loser.’ He put his third finger on his forehead, what spells something else what is rude.
    I walked outta the office in a worser mood than before.
    Angel passed me on her way in. ‘Hey, Zek,’ she goes. Her voice was soft and gold and fluttery like the budgie what we used to keep before it got eaten by the neighbour’s cat. ‘Happy Christmas.’
    ‘You too, Angel.’
    She gave me one a them bright smiles. I smiled back and watched as she turned and went into the office, her long black hair swinging along the line a her hips.
    I could just make out Clarence’s oily tones as I walked away. ‘Well, well, well. What do we have here?’
    When I got back from Muster, I found Thomas sitting on a plastic chair outside our building, hunched over his drawing pad. He’d put in a Detainee Request Form to go to Christmas Mass at a real church, on the Outside. They’d just laughed. Now, he was drawing Christmas wreaths what were made a razor wire and a Jesus what was hanging from the fence instead a the Cross what he usually hangs from. Across the bottom a the pitcher a Jesus, Thomas wrote the words, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’.
    I read that out loud a few times and scratched me head. ‘What’s that when it’s at home, mate?’
    Thomas told me it was words from the Christian Bible. It was about how you’re sposed to look after people even if they be a stranger or locked up or both.
    I gave him the knuckles. ‘Respect,’ I said.
    ‘And they call this a Christian country,’ he said, like he didn’t believe it much. ‘Oh no, here comes Nadia.’ He pretended to be too absorbed in his drawings to see her. It didn’t work cuz Nadia, the Villawood psych, was a big lady what you could see pretty easy.
    ‘Hellooo, Zeki,’ she sang out. ‘Hellooo, Thomas. Happy Christmas.’
    ‘Happy Christmas, Nadia,’ I said for both of us, cuz Thomas wasn’t never gonna get round to it.
    ‘How are we today?’ She smiled and opened her mouth like she was getting ready to catch the answer with it.
    Thomas looked up. ‘We are fantastic, Nadia,’ Thomas said. ‘We are terrific. Today is the day when baby Jesus was born.He was a refugee. He was born in a manger. We are refugees. We were born in mangers too. But here, in Villawood, we have food and shelter and medical care. We never even knew what chairs were before coming here. Now we sit in them all the time. We never had it so good in our whole lives.’
    Nadia’s smile, what had slipped down her chin, struggled back up to her cheeks. ‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ she said. ‘It’s not very helpful.’ She said the words ‘very helpful’ like they be a song what had three notes up and one down.
    ‘Nice to see you, Nadia.’ Thomas bent over his drawing pad.
    ‘We’ll talk later, Thomas,’ she said and toodled off to find someone else to depress.
    After Nadia left, Azad walked over. ‘What’s happening?’ He looked at Thomas’s drawings and gave him the thumbs up. He was putting on a brave face but you could tell he was feeling down too. You didn’t have to be a Christian to be depressed about being Inside on Christmas, what everyone knew was a big holiday in Australia when everyone got with them families and had barbies and went to the beach. So everyone was feeling down that day. Moods on the Inside was like colds or flus. They got passed from person to person just the same, except with moods you saw the sickness in people’s eyes and the way they held themselves, what was not exactly in the direction of up.
    It didn’t help that bushfires was making the sky look like the dome a hell. The temperature had been up in the mid-to high-thirties for days. You could smell the burning gum trees, and the wind made it feel like you was baking in one a themfancy ovens like what She Who wants us to get one day. What with