Josie Robs a Bank (and other stories) Read online

  Josie Robs a Bank

  ~ And Other Stories ~

  Gabrielle Reid

  Published by Impressum, NSW Australia

  www.impressum.com.au

  Gabrielle Reid ©2021

  ISBN 978-1-922588-13-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-922588-14-2 (epub)

  This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher.

  An Invitation first published in Every Day Fiction October 2020. Josie Robs a Bank first published in Riddled With Arrows issue 2.1, April 2018. Christmas Eve first published in Page & Spine, December 2017. Shatter first published in Tincture Journal issue 12, Summer 2015. Two Reflections first published in Slink Chunk Press, December 2015. Fruit Breakfasts first published in The Story Shack. Walking on Water and Passing Through Fire first published in Gravel Magazine.

  Some of these stories have been lightly edited since their first publications.

  Cover design by Impressum

  Text © Gabrielle Reid

  Production layout by Impressum

  Printed on demand by Ingram Group

  Contents

  An Invitation

  Josie Robs a Bank

  Grace & Sobriety

  Christmas Eve

  Bovine Larceny

  Shatter

  Two Reflections

  The View from Above

  Terezin

  Shadow

  Fruit Breakfasts

  Heart Disease

  Walking on Water & Passing Through Fire

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Content Warnings

  Please note: content warnings are available at the back of the book for readers who prefer them.

  An Invitation

  Music throbs through Alexis’s chest. Her hands are raised high amongst a mass of waving arms and the sickening sweetness of too many different brands of deodorant. The heat is overbearing, but Alexis doesn’t mind. She’s close enough to see each movement of Orlando’s lips as he belts out the lyrics the crowd knows so well. Alexis mouths along, her tongue touching the roof of her mouth to form the word ‘love’.

  Orlando has the looks to match the fame, and just enough arrogance to make him even more sexy. His cheek dimples as the song ends. The vibrations that were fizzing through Alexis’s body stop while Orlando takes a break to address the crowd. She catches the eye of her best friend, Belle, over the shoulders of another girl.

  “Having fun?” Belle mouths. Alexis nods. Her mum was wrong about concerts; this is worth every cent. Bodies of other fans hem the girls in and they press against the barrier, where a tattooed security guard eyes them warily. Alexis squeezes Belle’s wrist to get her attention and signs “water”. Belle frowns. But Alexis’s throat feels sticky, too dry, and her head is aching.

  “One more song,” Belle pleads. She turns back to the stage without waiting for an answer, shouting and waving at something Orlando has said. Alexis looks up at the stage, a shrine where the music gods are worshipped, and for a split second, Orlando looks right into her eyes. His finger points, then curls back to himself. An invitation for her to join him.

  It would be a dream. Sharing the same breathing space, touching his hand, close enough to see the lashes on his eyes and the sweat dampening his hair. The security guard opens a gate in the barrier for her, only her. She swallows and takes a step forward. She can hardly breathe for the nerves.

  Orlando would talk to her. Alexis’s lip-reading would be off. She’d reply to the wrong question in her thick, awkward accent. The crowd would rage at the injustice of a deaf girl being awarded this incredible moment with a singer she can’t hear.

  No. Screw them. She paid for her ticket; she loves the feel of his music in her bones and the sight of his beautiful face just as much as they do. Orlando chose her.

  Maybe it was a charity thing. Maybe he can tell just by looking at her somehow, or maybe her mother gave his PR team a well-meaning heads up that she would be there. She won’t just be the lucky fan who Orlando picked, she’ll be the disability porn for them, the tragic poster child for hearing fans to feel even more admiration for their hero.

  Alexis pushes Belle forward to take the invitation instead.

  All eyes are on Belle. Including Alexis’s. Belle bounces as she tells Orlando her name and where they’re from. He wraps an arm across her shoulders to sing the next ballad. Alexis gives Belle a thumbs-up and a grin; in that moment, she’s genuinely happy for her friend. But on the way home, when an exhilarated Belle signs so fast even Alexis can barely follow, something inside creeps up to constrict her throat.

  “I’m tired,” Alexis signs. She leans her head against the bus window. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at Belle. She closes her eyes to keep the tears firmly behind her lids. She closes her eyes and holds on to the moment Orlando’s gaze caught her own and his finger pointed in invitation.

  She imagines some other scenario, being offered a lift to school by his driver when she stands at the bus stop in the rain. He’ll ask her name and she’ll answer shyly, then he’ll write her love letters until he learns to sign. No one will be watching until later, when she holds his arm at a red carpet event. Then she’ll carry herself with pride and dare the magazines to write about her. When his fans cry out with jealousy or whisper words of pity, she won’t care. She won’t hear them anyway.

  Josie Robs a Bank

  The third time I robbed the bank, I was Asian. Now I’m blonde, ’cause Gabi worries too much. Diversity’s great and blondes are way more common than Asians ’round these parts, but Gabi was worried about accidental racism. Maybe people would think I robbed the bank because I was Asian and not, you know, just ’cause I was desperate for money. Who really gives a fuck about the colour of my hair or the shape of my eyes under the balaclava?

  The first time I robbed the bank, it was just an idea. All the world was darkness ’til God thought up light. Just an idea, the way everythin’ starts, big or small.

  “Josie robs a bank.”

  That’s it. That’s all we knew, and nobody thought about why, back then, not even Gabi. But it was enough and so I did it – I robbed the bank.

  Don’t ask me about it. Don’t ask me how much money I took, or if I heard the sirens outside, or if I held the knife steady or with sweaty fingers. Don’t ask if I saw the look of terror on the pregnant teller’s face. Don’t ask if I saw her body tense. It might have been a contraction, or maybe just a reaction. Pregnant women, they seem to be everywhere ’round here, too.

  But all that stuff came later. The first time, it was simple and I didn’t have to think. I just robbed the bank.

  We had this pattern down, me and Gabi. A routine, sorta. First, I’d rob the bank, then I’d count the money and try not to think about the other people. You know, the ones who were there that day. I’d always end up thinkin’ about them even when I was tryin’ not to. Gabi reckons that’s a good thing – means I have a conscience, means I’m human. Anyway, I’d rob, I’d feel guilty, then I’d buy somethin’ with the money.

  The first couple of times it was somethin’ I needed, you know, like rent and unpaid debts and a baby’s cot. I told you fuckin’ pregnant women. They’re everywhere. Sometimes I’d get cigarettes, ’cause that’s an addiction and who the hell are you to judge me? You’re probably addicted to somethin’ ‘socially acceptable’: TikTok or sugar or some shit like that.

  But last time it was useless stuff. Luxuries; stuff that won’t last. I wanted rooms full of floral bouquets and a thousand movie tickets and my name in one of them star registries. Josie Woods, in constellation Pyxis. Gabi had to research that. She didn’t know all that much about stars and constellations, but she does now. She sat outside with a telescope one night and looked at Pyxis, even though it’s freezing in her part of the world right now.

  Josie’s star. It was supposed to make you hate me. What kind of a bitch robs a bank and then buys flowers and a certificate from the fuckin’ international star registry? Holds a knife in the face of a pregnant woman, knocks an old guy to the ground? Blonde, or Asian, who gives a shit anymore ’cause it’s not about need, it’s about greed. Selfishness.

  Or it was meant to be.

  Then somehow, without even changing what I did, I wasn’t a bitch anymore. You weren’t meant to hate me. You were meant to love judge me and relate to me all at once. (Gabi wrote “love” there, but it was an accident. Subconsciously, her mind just went ahead and connected hate to love before her fingers stopped.) You were meant to think the robbery was fuckin’ awful, but wish you’d had the guts to do it all the same.

  Gabi reckons it was a statement. A statement about self-loathing and futility. About reachin’ for the sky and wealth that only lasts ‘til the flowers die. They say God loves everythin’ He ever made and I reckon I’d believe that, ’cause Gabi keeps trying to hate me but she can’t. We need each other and no matter what she does, she always ends up loving me instead. I’d just keep doin’ it, robbing that bloody bank over and over til we got it right, but she’d find a way to understand me anyway.

  A couple of times, they caught me. I punched a cop,
once. It was after I bought the flowers, you know, when you were still s’posed to hate me. They got me and took me down to the cop shop. They pressed my fingers into ink that didn’t feel like anythin’, ’cause Gabi just decided I don’t need to know what ink feels like.

  The cop asked me why I did it and shit, there’s been so many reasons I couldn’t remember if I wanted to feed my baby, or flood my brain with nicotine, or hold life in both hands. So I told him.

  “Gabi made me do it.”

  And that was it. Draft five. She tore it up and burned it, and wrote me this instead.

  She put me in this story ’cause she was worried about people not getting it. What if they didn’t know the star registry’s meant to be a statement on beauty and the meaning of life? Damn it, Gabi, it wasn’t a statement when you first made me buy the stupid thing. Let ’em think what they think.

  Let them hate me for pointing a shiny new knife in the face of that teller. Let them judge me for standin’ there and watchin’ her eyes get bigger as her bladder emptied down her leg. Piss just drippin’ on the carpet. (Or was that her waters breaking?)

  And now Gabi’s thinkin’ too much again, about all the questions everyone might ask. Did she really sit out with a telescope? Were there really five bank robberies before this one, or did it start here?

  Gabi can’t go meta, ’cause when you go meta the story folds in on itself, see. She don’t know whether I’m the same Josie she started with, or if I’ll still do what she says. She don’t know if she’s a new character herself now and not the Creator anymore. If she’s God, them readers are the church, ’cause she made me but they’re the ones who judge me.

  She’ll give me over to that writin’ group an’ when they’ve ’ad their way it’ll all change again an’ I’ll be thinkin’ ’bout somethin’ else or I’ll start speakin’ in more contractions, or not as many. It’ll get too complicated, ’cause Gabi thinks too much an’ she worries too much an’ she thinks about what other people think too much.

  I love Gabi, and I’d rob a hundred banks for her, but when God don’t know what else to do with someone He lets ’em die, even when He loves them.

  Or maybe He reincarnates them. Go back to the start.

  The third time I robbed the bank, I was Asian.

  No, not there. The plan.

  Josie robs a bank.

  Thinks about tellers while counting money.

  Buys something with the money.

  Then what?

  Grace & Sobriety

  Sobriety arrived on my doorstep as I was pouring my second glass of wine. In one hand, she gripped a laundry basket that rested on her hip. In the other, she held a Bible.

  I almost slammed the door in her face.

  My therapist’s words rang in my ears. Just because someone is family, doesn’t mean you have to give them permission to hurt you. But there was something about the expression on my sister’s face that stopped me.

  “Did someone die?” I asked. That would make sense - our parents using a tragic death to try to get me back into the fold. I hadn’t been to a funeral in years, but I could guess what it would be like: do you know where you’re going when you die? And of course they would rather send their fourteen-year-old daughter to deliver the news, than face me themselves.

  Our parents called themselves Christian, but I had since learned that word encompassed a wide range of people who didn’t think or act like them. They were part of an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church, best known for their belief that birth control is a sin. Not just in the way my Catholic friends talk about it either, relying on the rhythm method or avoiding the conversation and pretending none of them are on the pill. The girls I had grown up with were married off at 18-20 and began “building God’s army” nine months later. My parents and other members of their church intentionally conceived as many babies as they possibly could. They also home-schooled, went to church three times a week, and objected to everything from Halloween to women wearing pants.

  Sobriety’s lip quivered. “No, nobody died. Can I come in?”

  I hesitated. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Sobie. Nine years younger than me, she was the first of my mother’s children that I had really raised. I was the second eldest, but being the first daughter, it had been my duty to “help” with childcare, housework, and cooking. IFBs are aggressively patriarchal.

  Our brother, Justice, had been born eleven months after Sobriety, and from that point it wasn’t only “can you change the baby’s nappy” or “clip Sobie into her car seat please, Grace”. It was everything - the night feeds, the baths, carrying her around while our mother cooed over the latest addition. Even the “biblical chastisement” when our father wasn’t around to mete it out. I had not carried her in my womb, but in many ways, she was mine.

  So when I left, she was the one whose words of rejection had hurt the most.

  My sister had grown so much in the years I’d been gone. I hardly recognised her. The last time we had seen each other had been at our brother’s wedding, a year and a half ago, where I sat awkwardly to the side pretending I didn’t notice people praying for my eternal soul. Like most girls her age, Sobie had changed a lot in that short space of time, developing breasts and pimples and a deep sense of self-loathing.

  Sobriety held the washing basket in front of her like a shield. It contained all her clothes, a few journals and a hairbrush. Our parents’ laundry had four machines, a dozen baskets - probably nowhere in their house was a suitcase.

  Her eyes still held the question – can I come in? – but I didn’t know how to answer.

  Sobie’s words at the wedding came back to me in a rush. Satan has led you astray, but it’s not too late to repent! At the time, I’d been relieved she wasn’t calling me a reprobate again.

  “No,” I said.

  #

  Grace lived in a weathered brick building farther into the city than I’d ever been before. It’s only by His grace that I made it there at all, praying in the back seat of the taxi as the driver kept looking at me in the rear view mirror. It was the first time I’d travelled anywhere alone with a man who wasn’t my father, and I had no reason to trust him. Thankfully, God protected me, and I arrived at Grace’s street without trouble. There were labels all over the taxi, words repeated in languages I didn’t recognise but wished I knew. The fare exhausted all my savings - cash I had earned from teaching piano to younger children at the church. I had other money, somewhere, from the families who paid into a bank account, but I had no idea how to access it. I’d never needed to. What did a fourteen year old need money for?

  Inside Grace’s building there were dozens of doors - apartment 11, apartment 12, apartment 13... She lived so close to others that they shared a wall. I wondered if she knew any of them, whether they spoke other languages or studied science… or committed unspeakable acts right next door. How she could live like that, I had no idea.

  And yet, I might have to live like that too. I hadn’t come for lunch. On my hip, I carried everything I owned, and I had just spent my last dollar on the taxi. There were only two options - go in to see Grace, or go home. The thought of our parents, discovering my empty bed and missing things, made my stomach churn. I dreaded to think what I might face if I went back.

  But then Grace opened the door; she’d cut her hair to her ears, wore shorts that revealed her knees, and drank wine. I swallowed. This was not the sister I remembered, who brushed my hair when I was little and taught me to add and subtract. She had changed.

  “Can we talk?” I asked her. “Please?”

  Grace considered me, her lips twisting into a cruel smile. “Depends. What do you want to talk about?”

  My breath felt cold within my chest. This had been a mistake. Father, forgive me.

  I couldn’t meet her eyes. I daren’t see the anger and spite in them again. I looked past Grace, into the space behind where bookshelves lined the walls, a grey sofa amongst them.

  “Is... is this whole place yours?” I asked. A sofa of her own. She may share the walls with the devil knows who, but she had more space than any unmarried woman I’d ever known.