by Liza Perrat
9
‘A meet up is a beaut idea,’ Uncle Blackie said. My hand gripping the phone shook, my gaze skittering about watching for Mum or Nanna Purvis to catch me. ‘Give me half an hour, Tanya.’
‘See you then,’ I whispered.
I hadn’t seen Uncle Blackie again, but his address and phone number were still firmly secreted in my mind. I’d gone back to our secret bush spot several times in the hope he’d be there, though he never was.
But walking home from school each day, I’d sensed my uncle close by. Amidst the dense gum and fig tree leaves, and all the flowers, I was certain I’d glimpsed the oily brown swirl of his Driza-Bone. Ghost-like, he was watching me, out of sight, just waiting for the right time when there was nobody around to leap from behind a bottlebrush bush and surprise me.
Over those two weeks I’d kept asking myself if I should go to his place. After all, he had given me his address, so it wouldn’t be like I was turning up uninvited.
As I’d trudged up the Figtree Avenue hill after school, the purple jacaranda and red flame blossoms were nodding in the warm breeze as if saying: ‘Phone him. Go on, don’t be scared. He looks so like your Dad; not a bit like a kidnapper or any other kind of thug. Of course you can phone your own uncle, you silly goon.’
I’d called Uncle Blackie as soon as I got home.
‘Who was that on the phone, Tanya?’ Nanna Purvis called from the kitchen as I jammed down the receiver. ‘Didn’t even know ya’d got in from school.’
‘None of your business. But if you really want to know, it was Angela,’ I lied. ‘I was calling her to check our homework.’
‘What’ve I told you about hanging around with that foreign girl?’ Nanna Purvis hobbled into the hallway. ‘Can’t ya find any Aussie mates?’
‘Why do my mates have to be Aussie?’ I said, stuffing Real Life Crime into the Indian bag. ‘Angela’s my best friend and I don’t need you to pick my mates for me.’
I scurried into my parents’ bedroom, leaned into the cot over the whining Shelley and planted a gentle kiss on her soft pink cheek. ‘See you later, little gumnut girl ... we’ll play with your teddy bear together.’
‘So where you off to now?’ Nanna Purvis said as I hurried back down the hallway and clipped Steely’s leash onto his collar.
‘Taking my cat for a walk, isn’t that obvious?’
‘Gawd, whatever,’ she said as I shut the front door behind me.
I had plenty of time but I wanted to get away from Gumtree Cottage –– to see my new and exciting friend –– as quickly as possible. So I hurried up the street, keeping to the wide shade of the Moreton Bay figs.
Once I reached the bush spot I slumped down onto my rock in the sparse shade and pulled out Real Life Crime.
Steely nosing around the sun-baked ground, I started reading a story about an eight-year-old boy who was murdered after his parents won the lottery and suddenly there was Uncle Blackie –– gangly and handsome and smiling down at me.
***
‘Hey, Tanya, great to see you,’ he said in the dreamy ocean voice. He sat beside me on my rock, scratched Steely’s head and handed me another bag of Redskins and Milk Bottles.
‘Yum. Thanks, Uncle Blackie.’
We sat in silence while I munched through the Milk Bottles.
‘Did you know he’s the best camouflaged lizard?’ I said, pointing to a frilled-neck lizard the same colour as the rock on which it was sunning itself.
‘Oh yes, a master chameleon,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘So, managing to keep your chin up at home, Tanya? I gather things’ve got pretty bad?’
I shrugged, my fingers flying to the cowlick. ‘Yeah, pretty bad what with ... with everything.’
‘I’m sorry you’re having a hard time. I’m guessing you’re a strong girl who can cope with a lot, but just know I’m here if you need to talk about things.’
Uncle Blackie swiped at a fly buzzing around my leg. A hand slid down onto my knee, rough fingers rubbing at the scar. ‘What happened here?’
‘Banged into Mum’s Hill’s Hoist.’
‘That must’ve hurt.’
I shrugged again, my leg jerking away from his touch. ‘A bit.’
He cupped a hand under my chin and lifted my face to meet his dark gaze. ‘Your mum could’ve been a model,’ he said. ‘Just like you could be, Tanya.’
‘Me, a model? Oh yeah, sure.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘And you know what? After I met you up the bush track that first time, I had this idea.’
‘What idea?’
‘Have you thought about entering Miss Beach Girl 1973, Tanya?’
‘What’s Miss Beach Girl 1973?’
‘A beauty quest,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘Early next year, the organisers will walk around Wollongong beaches picking out beautiful girls. The winner gets a trip to New York and a guaranteed six-month photographic modelling contract. So, the chance to become a famous model.’
‘Be cool to be a model but I’ve got Buckley’s Chance of that ever happening.’
‘Don’t be silly, you’ve got every chance in the world,’ Uncle Blackie said, and as he told me about the photographers who would photograph me in the latest-fashion clothes with jewellery and make-up that would make my eyes glitter like amber and emeralds, my cheeks grew hotter.
‘I could take some photos of you, Tanya, show you what it’s all about. If you want, that is, then you’d know exactly what it is to be a model. What do you say?’
‘Nah, everybody reckons I’ve got bat wings for ears. “Batgirl” they call me –– and I am fat. I know I am.’
‘You’ll slim down, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Besides, those models aren’t as beautiful as they’re made out, you know, Tanya. It’s all camera angles and make believe. They’re quite plain in real life in fact. And I already told you, just wear your hair a different way and nobody will notice your ears. The same as your mum did when she was young.’
‘You’re really a photographer, Uncle Blackie?’
‘Yeah, I’m pretty good with a camera. So what do you say? No pressure, only if you want.’
‘Okay, if you really think I’ve got a chance at this beauty quest, why not?’
10
It was morning recess and Angela and I sat in the shade of a fig tree forcing sips of our warm milk.
‘This is disgusting,’ I said, a hand shading my eyes from the sun’s glare as I threw the half-finished milk carton into the bin.
‘If it didn’t sit outside in those crates all morning before we got to drink it,’ Angela said, ‘it wouldn’t taste so awful.’
‘Or they could keep it in a fridge?’
‘You’d never find a fridge big enough for all the school milk,’ Angela said. ‘Oh well, only one more year of primary school, then we won’t have to drink disgusting warm milk anymore.’
‘I hope they won’t make us drink it in high school?’
‘No, my brother told me they don’t,’ Angela said. ‘I can’t wait for high school, primary’s so boring.’ She held up her hands enlaced with the cat’s cradle string. ‘Your turn.’ I hooked my thumbs and forefingers around the string.
Angela Moretti had started at my primary school in the middle of last year. She came from Cringila, a southern Wollongong migrant suburb right next to the Port Kembla Steelworks.
Dad told me that Cringila had started out as just a few shacks and tents for the steelworkers, and was originally called Steeltown.
The school often kept the foreign kids back a year, as if they were dumb and needed to catch up to the Aussie kids. But they weren’t dumb, especially not Angela, who always put her hand up first in class and answered every question correctly. So even though she was in my class, Angela was eight months older than me –– almost twelve years old –– and could’ve easily managed sixth grade this year.
I never understood why she’d wanted to be friends with me. Maybe because I was one of the few schoolkids who spoke to her, except to cal
l her a dirty Eyetie, even though she spoke exactly like an Aussie. Or perhaps because Angela was a bit tubby too.
‘Anyway, soon we’ll get a whole six weeks of no school and not having to listen to them,’ I said, nodding at Stacey Mornon and her moron friends, sunning their legs and blowing gum.
I stiffened, sensed the taunts hovering on their lips as Stacey and her friends got up and sauntered over to us.
‘That’s so sweet,’ Stacey said with a sneer. ‘Miss Adopted Batgirl Ten-ton and Miss Eyetie are best friends.’
‘How’s your dad’s drug business going, Angela?’ one of Stacey’s friends said, which made them all explode into giggles.
Angela leapt to her feet. ‘Drug business?’
I stood too, one hand on Angela’s arm, trying to urge her away. ‘Let’s go, we don’t need to listen to them.’
But the girls marched off into the sweltering air, laughing and holding onto each other as if it was so funny they might fall over.
‘What drug business?’ Angela said with a frown. ‘What are they talking about?’
‘It’s nothing, just rubbish for sure,’ I said. Of course I wasn’t going to tell Angela that my grandmother reckoned her father, the carpet-layer, peddled drugs in his rolls of carpet. Nor that Nanna Purvis had forbidden me to be friends with “that foreign Eyetie girl”.
‘And anyway, why does Stacey keep saying you’re adopted?’ Angela said. ‘How does she know?’
‘Because her birthday’s the same day as mine, and Stacey’s mum told her my mother was not in Wollongong Hospital having me when she was having Stacey. But as if I’d believe anything that moron says.’
‘You could’ve been born in another hospital?’ Angela said.
‘What other hospital? There’s only Wollongong Hospital to have babies, isn’t there?’
‘Why don’t you just ask your mamma and papa?’
‘I have. All they say is: “why do you keep asking that, Tanya?” I thought Uncle Blackie would know the truth but he wasn’t around back then.’
‘Who’s Uncle Blackie?’
‘He’s Dad’s brother, but you can’t say anything about him because Uncle Blackie’s a kind of secret.’
‘Where was he then?’ Angela said. ‘And why’s he a secret?’
‘Dunno, probably just my grandmother’s usual bossiness, telling us who we can and can’t see. And I don’t know where he was ... somewhere he had to do lots of gardening, apparently. Anyway I think he’s some far-out photographer because he wants me to go over to his place to do a photo shoot. You know, like practise for the Miss Beach Girl 1973 quest.’
‘Wow, groovy,’ Angela said.
‘Yeah, he thinks I might have a chance of winning, but I completely doubt that. Anyway, Uncle Blackie reckons Stacey’s only being spiteful, which is probably due to her parents getting divorced.’
‘Why’re they getting divorced?’
‘Nanna Purvis says it’s because of Mrs Mornon’s totally uncool orange lipstick and her stiff hair, and that daggy net she wears to be sure the hair won’t move. Can you imagine, a net?’ My lip curled. ‘Anyway, her face is so misery guts and she’s always grumpy ... Mr Mornon couldn’t stand it so he ran off with his secretary.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘My grandmother’s hairdresser told her the whole story.’
‘Oh right,’ Angela said as the end of recess bell started ringing. ‘Hey, you’ll have to come over to my place in the holidays for a swim.’
‘You’ve got a swimming pool? Wow your dad must be rich.’
‘You should’ve seen the crummy little Cringila shack we lived in before Papa worked really hard,’ Angela said over the din of the clanging bell, ‘and could afford the house in Bottlebrush Crescent.’
We’d driven through Cringila once or twice, and I did recall the small and shabby-looking houses, many of them painted blue.
‘Steelworks’ paint,’ my father had said. ‘They get it cheap.’
‘Papa was a good swimmer when he was a boy,’ Angela said as we hurried to class beneath the sun’s blaze, and I thought longingly of the days my mother used to take me to the beach.
‘They were really poor when they left Naples and came to Australia, but he told Mamma he’d work a lot so one day he’d have a swimming pool in his own backyard, like successful Australians do. So would your mamma let you come to my place?’
‘My mother doesn’t care what I do anymore. She’s too busy cleaning the house. That’s all she ever does. I even threw out all her cleaning stuff but the very next day there were new cans of the same disinfectants in the cupboard. Oh I know she’s just trying to block out the noise –– and the problem –– of Shelley’s colic crying but ...’
‘Your sister’s still got the colic?’ Angela said. ‘Poor little baby.’
‘Yeah, poor Shelley. But when she’s not crying she’s the cutest baby. You’ll have to come over and see her sometime.’
‘One of my little cousins had colic,’ Angela said, as we walked into class. ‘And her mamma would mix olive oil with salt and rub it on the baby’s belly, back and legs. Maybe your mamma could try that?’
I nodded and realised, with a twang of guilt, that up to now, I hadn’t thought once about Shelley’s colic, or my mother’s frantic cleaning. I was too busy glowing with the warmth of my first best friend –– a friend who smelled nutty and exotic, and nothing like garlic or pizza as Nanna Purvis claimed.
Someone to laugh with, to swap stories and secrets. Like a mysterious uncle.
***
But after school, Shelley’s cries battered my eardrums as I thumped across the rickety verandah boards, and that king-tide swamping me once more.
The front of Gumtree Cottage reminded me of an old person’s face: a bit worn out and ragged. The corrugated iron roof was a hat sitting over a sandstone-brick face, sloping low across the verandah as if to hide half the face. The windows of my bedroom and my parents’ were boxy eyes staring out onto Figtree Avenue, watching everyone who went up and down the street, all those who’d ever come to the bungalow. The front door was a thin straight nose, the full-length verandah a wide mouth. Of the jasmine creeping along the side fences, and the bottlebrush lining it, I imagined bushy tufts of hair jutting from the old person’s ears. And each time my mother’s misery set in, the face took on a scowl, the house sinking lower into the sun-parched earth.
The day had not cooled off –– the temperature only soaring –– without the slightest whiff of sea breeze to shift the stifling air. And even if my mother had the time, without her real and imagined cleaning tasks, she’d never take me to the beach because she’d stopped driving altogether; had pretty much stopped leaving the house. As if Gumtree Cottage had taken her prisoner –– trapped her like all of its old ghosts.
‘Okay, that’s enough crying, Shelley,’ I said, taking my scarlet-cheeked sister from her cot. There was no sign of our mother, though I could hear her washing machine sloshing away down in the back-yard laundry shed.
I carried her into the bathroom and bathed her face, arms and neck with a cool washer. I held her, tummy down, over my forearm and swayed. ‘Shush, shush, you’ll be better soon.’
I made up a mixture of olive oil and salt, undressed her and rubbed it over her squirming little body. She quietened down and gurgled at me. I kept cradling Shelley as I sat at the kitchen table, glugged down some green cordial and chomped through four slices of bread and cheese. I was becoming a master of the one-handed task.
I laid Shelley on the small patch of living-room carpet my mother hadn’t covered with plastic, and took her favourite plastic ball from the toy box. I gave it a little push and the transparent ball rocked to and fro. Shelley’s eyes widened as the little creatures inside the ball –– a penguin, a duck, a pony –– moved. She grabbed at it, clumsy fingers not yet able to grasp the big ball. I moved it again, she cooed and dribbled and gave me a gummy smile.
Steely slunk up to us, a paw toyi
ng with the ball. The penguin, duck and pony wobbled faster and I giggled at Shelley shrieking in wonder.
‘Thank god Dad said he’d take me for a swim, eh Shelley? That’s if he ever gets home before dark.’ But Shelley wasn’t listening to me. She’d managed to grab Billie-Jean’s plastic bone, and was trying to ram it into her mouth.
‘Yuck, give me that.’ I took the slobbery bone, chucked it aside, and when Shelley smiled I saw the faintest white sliver of her first tooth.
I took her hand, stroked Steely with it. ‘And when you’re grown up, we’ll swim at the beach together. I’ll push you on the swings too and give you see-saw rides. It’ll be great when you’re old enough to really play.’
But Shelley had fallen asleep, there on the living-room floor. Mum would freak out if she saw the baby sleeping on her supposedly dirty carpet, though no way did I dare move her to the cot.
Steely and Shelley sleeping side by side, I opened the packet of Riviera Fags I’d bought at the corner shop. I took one of the musk-flavoured lollies, sucked on the end, frowning at the other red-tipped end. Same as Dad did with his real fags.
My father had promised to come straight home from work to take me to the beach. But he didn’t. When he finally arrived I could tell he’d stopped off at The Dead Dingo’s Donger because his breath stank of beer and his eyes were red, glassy and slightly crossed. I was still sitting on the carpet beside Shelley and Steely sleeping, the empty packet of Riviera Fags ripped to shreds beside me.
‘Ready to ride the waves, Princess?’ he slurred. He kissed Shelley’s brow, ran a hand through her liquorice twirls of hair. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Down in the laundry I think ... haven’t seen her since I got home.’
As if she’d heard Dad talking about her, my mother came trudging inside, clutching her washing basket overflowing with clothes fresh off the washing line.