“Fuck off, dickhead!” The shrill screech resounded up the street, its quiet summer afternoon cicada-hum and siesta-snore broken by the sound.
The white-haired man towards whom the banshee-call was directed, startled from his nap, woke with the grumbly bluster of the elderly bloke. Seeing who it was, he grumbled again, gathered his newspaper and creakingly stood and shuffled indoors to a more private peace.
The banshee, with mousy, greasy hair in long strands past her shoulders, gave a raucous, triumphant cry, and moved unreliably down the street again. The old bloke had done nothing more offensive than being in her line of vision and, feeling particularly cantankerous, that was provocation enough.
It was a Wednesday, but she had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. The kids – five of them, from 15 down to the three-year-old, were all stashed in the houso place she'd been in for the last five years. Blokes cycled in and out, most just happy with a bit of a root before going on their way. Every now and then one, with a streak of decency or something in him, would stay a while, looking after the kids, bringing in a bit of food, trying to get her off the grog. Every now and then she'd try to stop, but it was never long before the thirst got too strong for water and she'd somehow scare up some change for a $2.79 bottle of something from the Aldi down the road.
Sometimes someone would call to let the family know they'd found her somewhere, asleep in a doorway, or yelling insults at innocuous strangers for no particular reason beyond that they were there. One or other of the kids would answer the phone, and the caller would get a grunt before the phone was hung up. The banshee was always left where she was. No one would touch her, and she'd come home eventually. Nothing to worry about.
The kids would continue to grow, and would eventually get work of some kind, move on to places of their own, motherless children with a drunk-stone round their neck. They each had a bit of a soft spot for her, each spot a different size. She could be a real laugh when she wasn't sober, or off her chops, but just somewhere in the middle. She'd still cuff them more often than caress them, but the caresses, when they came, were so rough that there really wasn't much to choose between them.
In her way she was happy-ish. It wasn't often that they were so skint she couldn't find money for a drink when she needed it badly enough, and she didn't care about much else. Three sheets gone she didn't care about anyone or anything, sober she only cared about the next drink, and in between she was having a laugh. She didn't feel bowed down by responsibility. The kids took care of themselves.
All in all, there were worse ways to live.