by Liza Perrat
‘Is my father going to die?’
‘Your dad’s going to be fine,’ the nurse said with the kind of friendly smile you’d give a small kid. The kind of lie you’d tell someone so as not to upset them. ‘He’s had a nasty knock on the head but you see, he’ll be better soon.’
‘He’s confused, nurse,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Seeing things –– people –– who can’t be there. That normal?’
‘Oh yes, confusion and hallucinations can be concussion symptoms.’
‘Me hairdresser, Rita, said her neighbour’s brother had hallucinations,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Another one what wore the wobbly boot.’
‘Will he wake up properly?’ I said.
‘I don’t know ... er, yes of course,’ the nurse said. ‘And if ... when he does wake up, you should tell your dad to get seat belts fitted in his car.’
‘Right, it seems Dobson’s in good hands,’ Nanna Purvis said after ten more minutes of us watching Dad sleep. She bounced the crocheted bag on her lap again. ‘We’d best be getting home. Billie-Jean’ll be wanting his tucker and I haven’t even defrosted his meat yet.’
Shelley cried all the way back to Figtree Avenue. The taxi driver –– a different one –– kept glancing at us in his rear-vision mirror.
‘She’s got colic,’ I said.
‘My missus reckons a few drops of eucalyptus oil in a hot bath does the trick,’ he said, pulling up outside Gumtree Cottage. ‘Well, good luck.’
Mum hurried inside with Shelley, Nanna Purvis hobbling along behind her. As they disappeared down the hallway, I caught a rustling noise. It came from behind the wide trunk of the fig tree closest to our house. I held my breath, swivelled around, squinted into the twilight. I stood still, listened. But there was nothing. No people. No birds or dusk creatures. I was sure I felt it though. There was someone, or something, out there.
I wasn’t hanging around to find out what it was though, and I scurried inside, closed the door and locked it, Nanna Purvis’s ghost tales rattling through my head.
***
‘I dunno how long Dobson’s planning on staying in that hospital,’ Nanna Purvis said, spooning out Billie-Jean’s kangaroo meat. ‘But if it’s too much longer, the housekeeping money’ll never cover these taxi trips. We’ll have to save more grocery money, I’ll have a look at the Specials in the newspaper. Eleanor?’
My mother didn’t answer though I was sure she could hear Nanna Purvis because Shelley had quietened. They were so strange, those small bouts of silence sitting heavy on the hot air, that I couldn’t get used to them.
‘Need to give these old knees and very cow’s veins a rest,’ Nanna Purvis said, tugging off her shoes.
‘Varicose veins,’ I said.
‘You might stop ya cheek, young girl.’ She frowned as she slipped on her furry blue slippers. ‘And help me fix our tea since ya mum’s vanished again.’
She eased herself onto a chair at the kitchen table. One wrinkly hand flipped the pages of the Illawarra Mercury to the Specials page, the slipper on her crossed leg jerking up and down like a kid’s battery-powered toy –– bob-bob, bob-bob.
‘Coles’ve got Rolled Leg Ham for ninety-nine cents a pound,’ she said as I fed Bitta and Steely. ‘Now that’s a real bargain.’
Billie-Jean burped up his last meat morsel onto the floor and farted. The stink of mouldy cheese filled the kitchen.
‘Smelly beast.’ I kicked a foot at him. I hadn’t touched the dog but Billie-Jean yelped and skittered over to Nanna Purvis.
‘I’ve told ya, Tanya, leave me dog alone. Come here, yes. Come to Mummy, baby.’
She lifted the trembling Billie-Jean onto her lap, stroking him, and I was sure that dog smirked at me. ‘How’re we off for dunny paper, Eleanor?’ she hollered. ‘It’s on special for twenty-eight cents ... assorted colours.’
I padded into the bathroom. Mum was not checking the toilet paper stock, she was giving Shelley a warm and deep eucalyptus-scented bath.
‘She loves it,’ I said, watching my baby sister rock about over Mum’s arm, all pink and limp and relaxed.
‘Yes, let’s hope this is the answer,’ Mum said with the faintest flicker of a smile. She lifted the baby from the bath and wrapped her in our softest towel.
Shelley found just enough strength to drink her bottle, then I took her from Mum, burped her and laid her on the cot lambskin.
‘That’s a good girl.’ I smoothed out the sheet around her as she fell asleep. ‘You’ll be all better soon, and when you’re a big girl, you won’t even remember how awful the colic was. You’ll see, we’ll have so much fun together when you’re grown up.’
Shelley slept on and I thought Mum would’ve gone and sat down with a cup of tea. But no, after her absence at the hospital, she prowled through the house from one room to the next, checking for untidiness, dust and grime. I could see her making a mental list of what needed to be done to get Gumtree Cottage shipshape again.
‘Aw crikey, it’s too late in the day to think about cleaning,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Come and sit down with us. Tanya’s made spaghetti on toast.’
That’s all it was, since Mum had stopped cooking: opening a can of spaghetti or baked beans and slapping it on toast. Spaghetti or baked beans. Baked beans or spaghetti. Or Spam if you wanted. Whatever came from a can.
My mother shook her head. ‘Not hungry.’
She looked starved. Reedy as a blade of grass, face pale as sour milk, the skin slouched in pockets beneath her dull eyes, the corners of her bloodless lips turned down. She’d begun to stoop too, like a bag of stones was sitting on her small shoulders.
‘I’ve said it before,’ Nanna Purvis said, Mum shuffling about the kitchen, her feet barely lifting from the lino as if she was afraid they’d rise and she’d fly off for good. ‘You’re no longer fit to look after anyone. And with me wonky knees and veins, neither am I. So if Dobson dies, I don’t know what’s to become of your daughters.’
‘Dad’s not going to die!’ The fear jangled like murdering hands around my neck. My fork clanged onto the plate which made my mother blink and jump.
‘Ya gotta be prepared for all eventualities in life, Tanya,’ Nanna Purvis said.
‘But that nurse said Dad’s going to be fine ... “soon he’ll be just fine” she said.’ I wanted so much to believe that but my chest pressed tighter, and I feared the seagull nurse had been lying.
My eyes burned with unshed tears, my appetite vanished for once, and for the rest of teatime I sat at the table, staring at the awful kitchen wallpaper. Once a bright yellow sunflower pattern, it had paled to a mustardy yellow –– the colour of a sick person’s skin. The only sound was Nanna Purvis cutting, chewing and swallowing, bellowing through my eardrums louder than a Steelworks’ explosion.
Once Nanna Purvis and I had cleared away the tea things, she settled herself for her television shows, Billie-Jean curled up beside her on the white sheet covering the sofa.
Hungry again, I took one of my grandmother’s Violet Crumble bars that she hid at the back of the pantry for “special occasions”, grabbed Real Life Crime and sat outside on the back verandah.
Cicadas beating away in the wattles, the stink of rotted jacaranda blossoms –– pretty purple gone dirty brown –– thick in my nostrils, I dangled my legs over the edge and flipped through the magazine, searching for the goriest story.
I stroked Steely, poking bits of chocolate-covered honeycomb between my lips, almost groaning with pleasure when it melted all through my mouth.
Soon, though, the honeycomb began to feel like paste on my palate. I no longer tasted anything. I tried to stop myself finishing the Violet Crumble but the whole lot ended up disappearing.
The flyscreen door creaked behind me –– slow and quiet. I didn’t look around but from the silence, and the smell of madness that clung to her like poison to the oleander, I knew it was my mother. I didn’t bother hiding Real Life Crime from her view.
She stood to my side, behind me, no
t too close. ‘The doctors are doing everything for your father, Tanya. Trying to make him better. I’ll feel better soon too ... as soon as your sister gets over her colic.’
Mum didn’t touch me, and her voice barely caught the words that slid from her tongue. As if she could be saying any old thing. I swivelled around to look at her properly. Her eyes reflected in the light coming from the kitchen were a brighter hazel, her breath sharp and hot as acid and she gave off the musty smell of old and damp clothes.
I wanted to ask her how she could spend so much time cleaning the house and hardly ever washing her own body, but my mother was beyond understanding the simplest question, let alone answering it.
13
I got off the bus and trudged up Figtree Avenue. It was another hot December afternoon, mushrooms of brown smoke swelling from the Port Kembla chimney stack. But as I thought back over my school day, at how Angela and I had laughed and swapped secrets, it didn’t seem so stifling, the hill not nearly as steep.
The heat still scorched and bubbled the road asphalt. The pale brown grass still screamed for water. The sun still burned the part in my hair and made me squint. The sweat still plastered my uniform to my body. But it didn’t bother me so much; the bullying taunts didn’t drag me down like they had before I met Angela Moretti.
I couldn’t face Gumtree Cottage –– a yelling baby and the mother who ignored her, and me, so I plonked down on the kerb in the shade of a fig tree, and kicked stones along the gutter.
I thought of Dad, who I’d been to see twice more at the hospital. His smile was still weak, his footsteps wobbly, but he wasn’t the least bit confused and he’d not mentioned seeing Uncle Blackie again.
When Nanna Purvis had started spouting her usual rubbish, Dad had winked at me. So I figured if my ally was well enough to joke about my grandmother with me, he’d be home soon. And things at Gumtree Cottage would get better.
‘You wanna bowl today, Tanya?’ Terry said, as the Anderson boys came charging out of number ten to play cricket.
‘Okay,’ I said as Wayne pounded the stumps into the grass with the bat.
I grabbed the ball and bowled it to Terry at his wicket-keeper spot, Wayne hitting it before it reached the stumps. Clack, clack went the ball, against the screeching chorus of the rainbow lorikeets on the gum tree boughs, the shrieking mob of sulphur-crested cockatoos.
‘Our mother reckons your mum might’ve gone crackers,’ Terry said. ‘On account of your baby sister still crying day and night.’
‘Has she gone loony?’ Wayne asked. ‘Like she was before ... even before Shelley’s colic started. Our mother reckons she went loony every time a baby died in her guts.’
My fist tightened around the cricket ball. ‘My mother’s not loony ... never has been. You’re the loonies!’ Snarling, I swung back and hurled the cricket ball right over the roof of their house, and into the bushland behind.
‘Whatcha do that for?’ Wayne said. ‘We’ll never find it now.’
‘Bloody Catholics,’ I hissed, stamping away from the cricket pitch.
I was so mad I almost walked straight into Stacey Mornon, riding her shiny blue bike down Figtree Avenue, rainbow-coloured streamers flying from the handlebars. Just the kind of bike I’d love to own.
‘Watch where you’re going, Ten-ton Tanya.’ Stacey stopped pedalling, planted her feet on the ground and perched on the edge of the flowered seat. ‘You almost barged right into me. With that weight you could’ve knocked me, and my bike, over.’
Bright green eyes stared at me from a suntanned face ringed in sea-foam white curls.
‘You’d better get out of my way then,’ I said, ‘or I will knock and your sissy bike over.’ I strode on, my elbow nudging the basket, which made the entire bike wobble.
‘Nasty, nasty,’ Stacey said, regaining her balance. ‘Not my fault your mother’s gone crazy and will soon be carted off to a mental asylum. No use blaming others.’
‘What would you know?’ I tried to stop my voice quaking, to shake off the fear uncoiling before me like that red-bellied black snake. ‘And if you believe everything you hear, you’re even more of a moron than you look.’
Stacey sighed and shrugged as if she was sorry for me. ‘And you’d better get your mum –– if she’s not too crazy, that is –– to get you a training bra. You bounce around more than that silly cricket ball.’ With a nasty little wave, curls bouncing around her shoulders, she rode off down Figtree Avenue, streamers waving from the handlebars like mad dancers.
A dented and rusty blue Kingswood rumbled up the hill, drove past Stacey and stopped beside me.
‘Uncle Blackie! What are you doing here?’
***
He wound down the window. ‘Haven’t seen you in a few weeks, Tanya ... been worried about you after your dad’s accident. You’re okay, aren’t you?’ He reached over and opened the passenger door, beckoning hand and breezy voice urging me into the Kingswood. ‘Come and sit with me for a minute?’
I jumped into the passenger seat. ‘I’m fine ... I just hope my father will be fine too.’
‘Aw, I’m sure he’ll recover, but in the meantime I’m here if you need anything.’ He smiled, pushed another bag of lollies into my hand.
‘Choo Choo bars for a change,’ he said. ‘I know you love those too.’
As I bit into the liquorice-flavoured lolly, he nodded down the road, where Stacey had disappeared. ‘Was that your number one enemy cycling off, this Stacey girl?’
‘That’s her. But blue bikes are so ordinary. If I could have a bike I’d want a red one ... I love red.’
Uncle Blackie reached into a bag on the floor beside me and pulled out the latest issue of Real Life Crime. His hand grazed my shin, sending shivers right up my leg. ‘It’s not a red bicycle but I thought you deserved a treat what with your dad in the hospital.’
‘How do you know about Dad? How do you know nearly everything about us?’
‘Not everything, Tanya.’ The eyebrows joined above his nose as he grinned.
‘Well, thanks for the magazine,’ I said, flipping through the pages, chewing on the Choo Choo bar and trying to ignore Nanna Purvis’s words jabbering at my brain.
... that bad egg’s still locked up. At least I hope he is, and the key flushed down the dunny for what he did to that Carter girl.
‘Who’s that Carter girl, Uncle Blackie?’
‘Carter girl?’ The smile slid from Uncle Blackie’s face and he looked away, out the window, up and down Figtree Avenue. ‘Whatever made you ask me that?’
‘Oh nothing ... probably just my grandmother’s stupid gossip. She’s always prattling on with some kind of rubbish.’
‘Never mind, grandmothers can be a bit funny, kind of old-fashioned, sometimes,’ he said. ‘Hey, I wondered, with the accident and all, if you’d forgotten about our photo shoot?’
He glanced up and down the street again but there was nobody out in this heat except the Anderson boys, who must have found another cricket ball. Uncle Blackie swatted at a fly, and, in the same movement, stretched his arm across my shoulders.
‘You’d make the best model,’ he said.
He must have felt my shoulders fluttering like a sparrow trapped in a hot verandah because his arm slid back to the steering wheel, gripping it far too tightly for someone who wasn’t actually driving. ‘Are you sure you’re still keen on these photos?’
I didn’t answer straightaway; didn’t truly know if I was that keen.
‘Course I am,’ I said. ‘I’ll come soon ...’
‘Soon?’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
‘You will? That’s great,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘I’ll look forward to it. Now you’d better run off home before that bossy grandmother catches you in my car, eh?’
‘Yeah sure.’ With a nervous giggle I leapt from the Kingswood, a rush of heat swelling from my belly up to my chest as the car did a U-turn and my secret friend zoomed off down the street like he wa
s in a tearing hurry.
I lumbered up the front verandah steps, the kookaburra cackling his happy, ‘Garooagarooagarooga,’ into the afternoon heat as if he was grinning along with me.
‘Almost human they are, those kookas,’ Nanna Purvis would say. ‘Ain’t got an ounce of fear in them either, peering from the trees with their clever eyes, imitating any kind of sound.’
She also reckoned that when our Mr Kooka laughed he was sending a message that it would rain soon, or a storm or something else, was brewing.
I shook my head at my grandmother’s ridiculous stories. For someone who talked almost nonstop, she didn’t know much about anything.
14
The next morning –– the big photo shoot day –– I leapt from my bed. Outside my window, a magpie’s ‘Quardle, oodle, ardle, wardle, doodle,’ and the ‘Waarrk, waarrk,’ reply of a koel filled the morning air.
‘I’ll walk with you to the bus stop,’ my mother said as I buttered my Vegemite sandwich. ‘We’ll take Shelley. Do her, both of us, good.’
She smiled a quick, silly grin, but it was not a real smile, rather one cut from a magazine and pasted onto her face.
‘Oh, okay,’ I said, surprised but pleased she was making an effort to be the jolly mum.
While my mother brought the pram around to the front, I packed my sandwich and an apple into my schoolbag. Not that I’d need my lunch. Uncle Blackie would give me something far more interesting to eat at his place before the photo shoot.
I fed Steely and Bitta, stole back into my parents’ bedroom, and squirted Mum’s Cologne 4711 onto my neck and wrists. My body wasn’t crash hot but at least I should smell nice for the photos.
Mum was waiting for me out the front, Shelley’s pillow propping her upright, a position we’d found was less painful than lying flat. The dawn chill was long gone but there was no sting to the sun as yet, and the damp-dew smell hung in my nostrils.
Shelley looked up at me, her chocolate-brown eyes reminding me, as always, of our father’s. And Uncle Blackie’s. I swore she smiled at me again, her stretched lips the same blood-red as the bottlebrush and flame tree flowers in springtime.