by Liza Perrat
He pulled a paper bag from his coat pocket and pushed it into my hand. ‘I got you some Redskins and Milk Bottles, your favourite lollies.’
‘How do you know they’re my favourites? Anyway I’m not supposed to take lollies from strangers ... I’m not even supposed to talk to them.’
‘I told you, Tanya, I’m no stranger. I’m your dad’s brother.’
‘My father hasn’t got a brother,’ I said, even as I saw Dad’s same thick black eyebrows that joined into one long and furry caterpillar, same dark hair and eyes, boxy face and sideburns.
This Uncle Blackie might look like Dad, though a bit more handsome, but I remained vigilant (word learnt from Real Life Crime), wary he could be lying. Adults could be liars. My father lying about how many beers he was drinking lately, for example.
‘Dad’s only got an awful sister who Nanna Purvis calls “That Bitch Beryl”. Anyway, if you’re his brother we’d know you. We’d see you.’
‘Ah, your Nanna Purvis put a stop to that long ago.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘Put it this way, I’m sort of a secret that bossy Nanna Purvis doesn’t want people to know about.’
‘So you know my bossy grandmother too?’
‘She was just Mrs Pearl Purvis back then.’ He broke into the same chuckle as Dad’s. ‘But if you call her “my bossy grandmother” it sounds like she hasn’t changed.’
‘Yeah real bossy. Tells us what to do, all the time.’
Steely meowed, struggled against his leash as a paw swiped at a blowfly. ‘It’s all right, Steely,’ I said stroking him.
‘Why don’t you sit back down, Tanya?’ Uncle Blackie sat on my rock and patted the sun-baked spot next to him. ‘Yes, Steely, you too.’
So we sat, the three of us, in that hot and airless bushland cleft, Uncle Blackie’s long legs bent up before him in an awkward pyramid.
‘Steely’s a funny name for a cat,’ he said, staring at my tongue rolling around a Milk Bottle as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.
This brother of Dad’s is a bit weird.
‘Because he’s grey and brown like the Port Kembla Steelworks and fluffy. You know, same as the chimney smoke. I won him at the school fete when I was a kid. I really wanted to win him so I got Dad to buy all the tickets in the kitten lottery.’
‘He’s a good friend?’
I shrugged. ‘He’s just a cat. Not a real friend.’
‘I’d love to be your real friend.’ Uncle Blackie smiled, the eyebrows meeting above his nose.
I stroked Steely hard, as if I’d stroke the fur right off him, scratched at my cowlick. I finished the Milk Bottles and started sucking on a Redskin.
‘So if you’re my father’s brother, you’d know if I was adopted?’
‘I wasn’t around when you were born,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘But whatever makes you think you’re adopted?’
‘Stacey Mornon-the-moron reckons I am. That girl’s my number one enemy ... lives up at number twenty-five.’ I waved in the direction of Figtree Avenue. ‘The house at the end of the cul-de-sac with all the garden gnomes. That’s because her father’s a gnome-maker. They’ve even got a dog and cat gnome ... completely daggy.’
Uncle Blackie nodded. ‘Oh yes, the height of dagdom. But it sounds as if this Stacey might just be being spiteful, don’t you think?’
‘Another reason is this gene thing our teacher was talking about. You know, when kids inherit the dark genes because they’re dominant, over pale ones? Like my baby sister got Dad’s dark genes. Wouldn’t I’ve got them too?’
‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘Besides, I just told you how much you resemble your mother.’
‘I’m really like her?’
‘Exactly, Tanya. You even smell like her. What was that perfume she wore?’ He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. ‘That’s it, Cologne 4711.’ His elbow nudged my ribs. ‘Been nicking your mum’s perfume, eh?’
I jerked away and we fell silent as the sun slid down its westering arc, the orange light sliding through the tangle of bush and finding the bare parts of my body. The only sound in the still, afternoon heat was the rustle of a creature slithering into the scrub.
‘That could be a snake,’ I said. ‘Our teacher reckons that of the world’s ten most venomous snakes, over half are Australian.’
‘Goodness, you’d better hold my hand then.’
‘Your skin’s rough. Are you a brickie too, same as Dad?’
‘Nah, got these from too much gardening.’
‘What do you grow in your garden?’
Uncle Blackie dropped my hand as if a bee had stung him. He looked away, in the direction of the distant abattoir.
‘Not much ... nothing really. Therapeutic gardening they called it.’
‘Oh right,’ I said; didn’t ask him what therapeutic gardening actually was, and risk appearing an idiot.
‘What’s that about?’ He nodded at Real Life Crime, still lying on the ground.
‘My favourite magazine, about true crimes. Nanna Purvis reckons I’m obsessed with crime and that no kid of eleven should be reading such rubbish.’ I giggled, short and shrill. ‘So you can never tell them I read it.’
‘Don’t you worry, I’m the best secret-keeper.’ Uncle Blackie winked. ‘And speaking of secrets, I think you’re old enough to understand we have to keep this meeting a secret.’
‘Why, do Mum and Dad want to keep you a secret too?’
‘Probably best not to say anything. Besides, it’s pretty cool having secrets from your parents, not to mention bossy grandmothers, isn’t it? And it wouldn’t be fair to stop a girl seeing her own uncle, would it?’
‘My lips are sealed,’ I said and ran my pinched thumb and forefinger across my clamped mouth.
‘That’s my girl.’
We both fell quiet again. I didn’t really know what else to say to this new and mysterious uncle.
The last heat burned my arms and legs, the top of my head, the sky darkening to the colour of a new bruise. I slapped at a mosquito settling on my arm and glanced at my watch.
‘Gotta go. Nanna Purvis will be hopping mad if I’m late for tea because that’ll make her late for her telly shows.’ I leapt to my feet, smoothed down my school dress.
‘So soon, Tanya? Didn’t you enjoy it here, friends chatting together?’
‘Course I did.’
Uncle Blackie stood too, long and ropy as the gum tree shadows, and replaced his Akubra hat. The same fur-felt one as Dad’s –– the wide-brimmed hat worn by most men who worked outdoors.
‘What if I tell you where I live and give you my phone number?’ he said. ‘For if you ever want to come over to visit, as a friend, you know. That’s what friends do, visit each other. If it gets too tough at home like I know it has been ... your baby sister crying all the time. Your mum down in the doldrums. You could come over for a break whenever you wanted?’
‘Dunno, maybe ...’ I hesitated. ‘Well, since you’re Dad’s brother it should be okay.’
‘Can you remember this?’ Uncle Blackie said in the floaty voice, and recited his address and phone number. ‘Mightn’t be a good idea to write it down in case bossy boots Nanna Purvis finds it.’
‘Nanna Purvis would find it,’ I said with a nervous giggle. ‘She finds out everything.’
‘I bet she does,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘And you wouldn’t want her to stop you doing what you wanted, would you?
‘No way.’
‘And remember, Tanya, our secret, eh?’
I nodded, hurried off down the dirt track, clutching Steely against my heart pattering faster than my feet.
The last light seeped from the summer sky as I scurried down Figtree Avenue. The sun slunk behind Mount Kembla, which loomed like a dark and scruffy monster. Street and house lights flickered on.
I was breathless not only from hurrying, but with the shuddering inside me –– as if a can of Coca-Cola was being
shaken up in my belly, and like pins being stuck into me, though I felt no pain. Uncle Blackie’s sea-ripple voice –– saying nice things that made me feel good –– had driven from my mind Shelley’s colic and my mother’s refusal to take me to the beach. But as I reached Gumtree Cottage it all chilled me once more –– the first gust of a southerly buster after days of scalding heat. I put Steely down, rubbed my goose-pimpled arms.
If Uncle Blackie truly is my uncle, why hasn’t Dad ever said? He would’ve told me if he had a brother ... he doesn’t keep secrets from me. And why doesn’t Nanna Purvis want us to see him?
Maybe this Uncle Blackie wasn’t Dad’s brother, but some crazed kidnapper lying about knowing us just to get me to go off with him. My magazine was full of those kinds of stories.
Then I relaxed because if he did kidnap me I knew what to do –– same as that girl in Real Life Crime. I’d just make friends with my kidnapper so he wouldn’t murder me. Easy as that. No worries.
‘Where you been, Tanya?’ Nanna Purvis hollered from the living-room as I slipped inside. ‘Beyond the black stump? You know tea-time’s half past six, before me telly shows start.’
‘Bossy old boots,’ I hissed to Steely as I spooned out his food and filled his water bowl. As if I’d tell Nanna Purvis where I’d been. Or about my new and exciting secret friend.
7
It was a scorching day in early December, almost the end of fifth grade –– and summer holidays! –– when I arrived home to the same racket since the peppermint colic mixture had stopped working: Shelley’s cries and my mother’s vacuum cleaner. And Billie-Jean and Bitta’s barks, louder, yappier, competing with the other noise.
Something had sucked all the air from the stifling house. From every ceiling hung long, spinning coils of sticky flypaper, black with bodies, but still my mother freaked out at the smallest speck of fly dirt on her scrubbed furniture.
The dogs on my heels, I went into Mum and Dad’s room. In her cot, my red-faced sister was writhing like a worm. After a month of crying I wondered if Shelley now did it out of habit; as if that was the only thing she’d learned to do. She turned her screwed-up stare to me that seemed to beg: ‘Do something.’
‘Poor little gumnut girl.’ I picked her up, cuddled her tight as if that could squeeze out the terrible pain from her belly.
‘Maybe she’s hungry, Mum?’ I called out.
‘She’s just had her bottle,’ she shouted back over the Hoover hum.
The bottle, yes, because my mother had abandoned the breastfeeding. She thought she didn’t have enough milk; that that’s what Shelley’s trouble was. Or there was something wrong with it. But whatever the problem, the Baby Health Clinic nurse had advised her to stop breastfeeding altogether.
‘Formula might help settle the colic,’ the nurse had said.
I cooled a flannel under the kitchen tap and wiped Shelley’s hot brow, face and neck.
‘There you go, that’s better, isn’t it?’
My sister cooed, her dark gaze following mine as I stole a packet of Nanna Purvis’s Iced VoVos from the pantry. Supporting the baby upright over my shoulder, I licked the strip of pink coconut-sprinkled fondant off four biscuits, then the raspberry jam, watching my mother run the Hoover across the same patch of living-room carpet. She was wearing her orange-flowered cleaning shift which was about the only thing she wore now.
Shelley gurgled, tried to grab the Iced VoVo. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Not yet, but soon you’ll be allowed bikkies. And I bet they won’t give you that nasty colic.’
I kept cramming the biscuits into my mouth, feeling better with each one. Until I felt sick.
Stop eating, piggy-girl. Why can’t you just stop? I hate you.
I wanted to vomit them all into the kitchen sink but down they stayed, sitting heavy in my belly.
Still holding the half-eaten biscuit packet in one hand, Shelley in the other, I marched into the living-room and stood before my mother.
‘You vacuumed yesterday, how can it be dirty again?’ Iced VoVo crumbs tumbled from my mouth.
‘The clinic nurse says the vacuum cleaner noise, or washing machine, can distract a baby from colic pain.’ Her gaze travelled from my face down to my feet, and to the biscuit crumbs sprinkled over her freshly-vacuumed carpet. She pushed the Hoover over the crumbs, back and forth, three times.
‘Anyway, no amount of walking or back-patting will help, Tanya,’ she said, shovelling the Hoover back into the linen cupboard. ‘Don’t you think I’ve tried that? Tried everything? Now can’t you go and do something –– surely you’ve got homework –– and let me get this house clean?’ She darted an arm at the dogs. ‘And take them with you; they’re just getting under my feet. All day, barking and in my way.’
‘Bitta, Billie-Jean, come boys.’ I clicked my fingers. The dogs trotted over, circled my ankles and wagged their tails as if this were all a game.
Mum almost knocked me over, lifting the plastic strips with which she’d covered the hallway carpet. Still holding Shelley, I followed her as she lugged the strips out the back, shook each one and draped it over the peeling paint on the verandah rail.
‘Let’s go to the beach,’ I said. ‘It’s so hot, and the clinic nurse said a moving car could help calm colic, remember?’
‘Not this beach thing again. I told you, Tanya, I’ve still got a hundred jobs to get through.’ Her voice had become raspy and light as if she was having trouble breathing.
‘But there’s no dirt left to clean, Mum! And anyway, why won’t you hold Shelley anymore?’ I tried to push my sister into my mother’s folded arms but she swivelled away and made shooing motions like I was some irritating blowfly. ‘Have you stopped loving your baby?’
Mum swung back, snatched Shelley from me. She marched over to the gum tree and laid Shelley beneath the pram netting. ‘Fresh air might settle her,’ she mumbled.
But the air was not fresh. It was hot, still and thick –– walking into an oven.
My mother removed the pillow she used to prop up Shelley when she was sitting in the pram, and stored it on the lower shelf. She’d heard that pillows and sleeping babies are a dangerous combination; that a baby could pull it over its head and suffocate.
I wished she’d stop all this housework and sit down with me for a cool lemonade, but she loped back inside. Along with the dust and crumbs, she’d hoovered away all her happiness. Sunk to that seabed again and we were back to the misery. The same gloom that came with each lost baby.
I dawdled back to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of green cordial. From the cupboard under the kitchen sink, I plucked her cans of disinfectant and threw them into the bin, deep beneath the other rubbish.
I gave Bitta some of Billie-Jean’s Pooch Snax. Billie-Jean skittered over and nipped my ankle. ‘Nasty little beast.’ I kicked a foot at Nanna Purvis’s dog.
‘You giving that mongrel Billie-Jean’s expensive Pooch Snax again?’ Nanna Purvis called from her banana lounge on the back verandah.
‘Why should Billie-Jean get them and not Bitta?’ I said, pulling Bitta onto my lap, named because he was a bit ’a this and a bit ’o that.
Nanna Purvis’s dog was an Australian Terrier she’d named after her favourite tennis star, Billie-Jean King, because my grandmother loved tennis before she got the crippled knees and varicose veins. Now she could barely walk, let alone wield a tennis racquet.
I’d pointed out that Billie-Jean was a boy dog, but my grandmother said Billie-Jean King was so fabulous she’d name her dog after her, boy or girl.
I went back outside and rocked the pram but Shelley still wouldn’t settle. The neighbour, Old Lenny, turned up the sound on his television set.
Lenny Longbottom over at number eleven next door kept a tatty sofa and a television on his back verandah and most days he sat out watching telly all afternoon. We’d hear him blathering on to his son and daughter-in-law, who he lived with, the chack-chack of beer bottles opening and, of course, whatever show they were wa
tching.
Nanna Purvis kept her gaze on her magazine. Shelley cried harder. The Longbottoms’ television grew louder.
My grandmother snapped shut Only for Sheilas and staggered from her banana lounge. ‘Gonna give that Lenny Longbum a gobful.’
‘Turn that thing down, you telly-head,’ she hollered. ‘Ain’t you heard about respect for neighbours?’
Old Lenny’s craggy face appeared over the fence. Bald on top, a ratty grey plait trailed halfway down his back.
‘You shut that kid up, Pearl, and I won’t have to turn up me telly so loud. Weeks now, we’ve been putting up with her racket. What with this heat it’s sending us mad as cut snakes. Youse need to shut her up.’
‘You shut up,’ I shouted at Lenny Longbottom.
‘Mind your manners, Tanya,’ Nanna Purvis said.
‘You ever think it might be that house of yours?’ Lenny said, with a flick of the plait and a swig of beer. ‘The Gumtree Cottage curse? Been bringing bad luck to youse Randalls for years, ain’t it? I’ve said it before, Pearl, move away, that’s your best bet. I know a good builder ... might be able to get youse a cheap deal on a new place.’
‘Bad luck for years, you say?’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘What would you know of years, Lenny Longbum? You’ve been away for the last twenty-odd.’
Every Figtree Avenue resident knew the story of Lenny Longbottom and how he’d been away for years, though I’d quickly worked out “away” had meant gaol.
Everyone also knew about the curse lurking over Gumtree Cottage, the bungalow my father told me his convict ancestors –– freed after seven years hard labour –– built with hand-carved sandstone bricks, honest sweat and a great deal of pride. He said there were whispers of gold rush too, of stolen nuggets, a bushrangers’ lair. A bungalow built on blood money, whatever that was. Dad didn’t know the details but said there’d been tragedies too.
‘Calamities that made Gumtree Cottage an ill-starred place,’ Nanna Purvis had said. ‘Not to mention all their ghosts still hanging around.’
Old Lenny lumbered away. The television blared across both yards.