woman says. ‘She’s fuckin’ vacant, Bern. She’s just staring at the wall, like she’s dead to the world inside her head. She’s not there at all.’
The woman looks at me. ‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘Did you tell her he’s standing right here in the kitchen?’ Bernie asks.
‘Nah, I couldn’t,’ she says. ‘Lord Brian’s letting her keep the door closed. He’s worried she’ll ’ave another spac attack.’
Bernie drops her head, thinking. She raises her arm at the woman, her head still down. ‘Eli, this is Debbie,’ she says.
Debbie smiles at me again.
‘Merry Christmas, Eli,’ Debbie says.
‘Merry Christmas, Debbie,’ I say.
Bernie lifts her head, turns to me.
‘Look, kid, you want it straight or you want it with the chocolate sauce and the cherry on top?’ Bernie asks.
‘Straight,’ I say.
She sighs.
‘She doesn’t look good, Eli,’ she says. ‘She hasn’t been eatin’ nothin’. She won’t come out of her cell. I can’t remember the last time she went outside for 3 p.m. rec. She was doin’ cooking classes with me here for a bit but she stopped doin’ that. She’s in a dark place, Eli.’
‘I know she is,’ I say. ‘That’s why I asked Slim to get me in here.’
‘But she doesn’t want you seeing her that way, you understand me?’ she says.
‘I know she doesn’t want to see me,’ I say. ‘I know that. But the thing is, Bernie, she does want to see me even though she doesn’t want to see me and I need to go down there and tell her everything is gonna be all right because when I tell her that everything will be all right – that’s what always happens. It always turns out all right when I tell her it’s going to.’
‘So, let me get this straight, you just go out there and tell your mum it’s all gonna be peachy for her inside this shithole and,’ Bernie clicks her fingers, ‘voilà, everything is all right for Frankie Bell?’
I nod.
‘Just like that?’ she asks.
I nod.
‘Like magic?’
I nod.
‘You some kinda magic man, Eli?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
‘Nah, come on, little cuz, maybe you’re the new Houdini of Boggo Road?’ she says mockingly. ‘Maybe Slim sent us all the new Houdini to magically bust us all outta here. Can you do that, Eli? Maybe you could wave your wand and you could magic me right out to Dutton Park train station and I could go see one of my kids. I got five of ’em out there somewhere. I’d be happy to see just one of ’em. Me youngest maybe. Kim. How old would Kim be now, ya reckon, Deb?’
Debbie shakes her head.
‘C’mon, Bern,’ she says. ‘Poor kid’s come this far. Let’s just take him to see his mum. It’s Christmas, for fuck’s sake.’
Bernie turns to me.
‘She just needs to see me for a minute,’ I say.
‘I’m just looking out for your mum, kid,’ she says. ‘No mother in the world wants her kid to see her like she is right now. Why should I let you go down there and hurt her even more than she’s already hurtin’, you know, just to make your Christmas Day a little merrier?’
And I stare so deep and serious into her eyes I can see her steely soul. ‘Because I don’t know magic, Bernie,’ I say. ‘Because I don’t know anything about anything. But I know what my mum told you about my brother and me was right.’
‘What’s that?’ Bernie asks.
‘We’re special.’
*
The prisoners of B Block are performing a musical this Christmas Day on a makeshift stage in the recreation room, and the ladies from blocks C, D, E and the F Block temporary huts, where spillover newcomers go when the main cells are full, have all gathered for a joyous and well received post-lunch Christmas concert. The B Block Christmas performance is a fusion of the Nativity story and the musical Grease. The play features two female cons playing Mary and Joseph in the guise of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. The three wise men are all members of the Pink Ladies gang. Baby Jesus is a doll dressed in leathers, and instead of spending a night in a manger the future lord and saviour rests up in the boot of a cardboard Greased Lightning. The musical is called When a Child is Born to Hand Jive.
The play’s climactic showstopper, Mary singing ‘You’re the One That I Want For Christmas’, brings the house down and a thunderous cheer echoes through B Block. Even the screws, three heavyset men in green-brown uniforms standing