The Infernal Optimist by Linda Jaivin Page A

control. I followed Abeer to the building where she and her family had their rooms. They’d been in detention for two and a half years. She brung out a gecko, what she held in her hands.
    ‘What’s the little fella’s name?’ I asked.
    ‘Visa.’
    ‘Cute.’
    Later, I caught up with Azad and Hamid in Hamid’s room. They told me Angel was back in Lima Dorm. Lima was the female-only dorm, what was next to Shoalhaven and what got locked down. All single females got put in Lima. You could see them in the kitchen and the rec room and in Visits, but after five o’clock if you wasn’t in Visits and you wanted to talk to a Lima girl, you hadda do it through the fence. The officers said it was to protect them. But the detainees said it was so no babies got made and born in detention, cuz babies born in detention gave Immigration even bigger headaches than even the asylums did. But the detainees said it wouldn’t a been such a problem if they didn’t keep people here for long enough to make babies and then have them in the first place.
    ‘What’d they say at Medical?’ I asked.
    Azad rolled his eyes. ‘The usual. They gave her a Panadol and said she should to drink lots of water.’
    ‘Donkey doctors,’ Hamid said, and he sounded angry. But it was true. The Medical in Villawood was bullshit. I never seen anything so dodgy even in prison. A few weeks ago Hamdi, this old Lebanese bloke, broke his arm. They told him to rest and gave him a Panadol, no joke. They didn’t like taking people to hospital cuz they hadda pay for it. They only took Hamdi to hospital after his arm got infected and swollen and he was screaming with the pain. Another time, this Nigerian woman, Vanessa, had a miscarriage. The whole baby didn’t come out, what I don’t like thinking about. They didn’t let her go to hospital neither until she got toxic with it and nearly died. The point was, Medical wasn’t looking after much besides its own arse, what was tight. It made Hamid, what wanted to be a doctor himself, crazy to see it. He said that if he got to be a doctor, he’d come back to Detention and treat the detainees proper.
    ‘So what’s her story?’
    Hamid bit his lips. Azad frowned like I shouldn’t a been asking. I kinda guessed anyway. See, they was always bringing in girls from brothels what worked illegal. And I’d been keeping bad company long enough to recognise cold turkey, what was not a sandwich meat.
    I could see they wasn’t in a talkable mood. ‘Catch youse later, eh?’
    ‘Eh,’ said Azad.
    ‘Eh,’ said Hamid.
    I was feeling kinda unsettled and in need a some detraction. I looked at me watch. It was a long way to iftar. I went to see what Thomas was up to. He was with Abeer’s little brother, Bashir, teaching him how to draw. They was into it. I watched for a while but then I got bored. I was missing She Who pretty bad. I joined the queue at the payphones. It took forty minutes to get to the front a the queue, what was annoying but at least it killed time, what was good.
    Finally I got to the front. I wiped the mouthpiece on me trackies and dialled. It only rang twice when she picked up.
    ‘Hey, babydoll. Any chance of a visit?’
    ‘I dunno about today, Zeki. I have to work at four.’ Visits began at one-thirty but people had to start queueing by twelve-thirty if they wanted to be in by two, and even then they might not get in till two-thirty or later. They made people line up outside the fence in the sun, what was hot. They took so much time processing the visiting forms, She Who reckoned they was learning to read and write at the same time. We was just talking about this when she said something what took me heart by the balls.
    ‘Um, Zek. You know Peter?’
    ‘Peter Pink-nuts? Peter the poofter from church what your parents think you should go with?’ I knew I shouldn’t be talking like that when I be fasting, but I couldn’t help meself.
    ‘It’s Peter Pinknett. He’s not a poofter.’
    ‘Now