The Silent Kookaburra

by Liza Perrat

  The wind scattered dust from the western plains across the escarpment. As it surged through that dent between mountain and sea, the air around me became tainted with it –– the stink a dead beast at the roadside. It strewed leaves across the road and the yards of houses, slid beneath my dress and grazed my skin. It chased me up the hill, blowing hair into my mouth, grit down my throat.

  ‘Run, Tanya, run,’ it hissed.

  I panted, every breath dustier than the last. The inside of my nose was caked with it, my throat rough as the road.

  The gales buffeted the yellow crests of cockatoos sitting high in the gum trees. Head cocked, eyes twinkling, the huge white birds peered down at me.

  ‘Got you now,’ they screeched.

  The sky was twilight-dark when I straggled into the front yard, Gumtree Cottage’s old-person’s face scowling at me. The gales severed branches from the eucalyptus tree and blew them, like witches’ brooms, across the corrugated iron roof. So there was some truth after all, in Nanna Purvis’s “widow-maker” stories of dangerous gum tree boughs.

  The waratah buds drooped pale pink instead of crimson, the jasmine creeper clinging to the fence like a kid trying to hide. But the gusts caught the fragile pink and white flowers, ripping them off. And from the Andersons’ fence across the street, came the harsh, almost human, ‘Ah-ah-ah,’ caw of a crow. That mournful cark had to be the ugliest noise of all the birds I knew and it chilled my soul with its ring of flies, stink and death.

  ***

  I banged on the front door, wondering why it was locked. We never locked doors. I knocked again. No answer from Mum, and Dad would be down the pub. No noise from Shelley either, but the dogs started barking. Nanna Purvis didn’t holler at Bitta and Billie-Jean to shut up, so she must be out at her hairdresser’s.

  I turned on the tap, let the hot water trapped in the hose coil run out. When it cooled, I drank and drank, moaning with the relief as it slaked my thirst, dulled the chiselling in my brain; washing that jumble of confusion from my mind.

  I held the nozzle over my head, the wind spraying water over me, all around me. Soaked and refreshed, I turned off the tap but the heat trapped in the dense clouds sneaked up on me like a thief. It stole my dampness in a flash, so that I was hot and dirty again, and stripped of my skin. I swayed about on the grass, powerless against the wind pushing me where it wanted.

  I was a mouse, the sky alive with crows.

  I hurried onto the front verandah, crouched down out of the worst of it. The worn floorboards groaned and creaked beneath me, the gusts swirling around Gumtree Cottage as if they wanted to pick up the house and take it away. A Wizard of Oz house.

  Still hunched over, I swivelled away from the road. I traced my forefinger around the animal-paw etching on one of the bricks –– a banker’s mark, my father had told me, identifying the convict mason who’d made the brick.

  ‘It’s a dingo’s paw,’ Dad had said, when he told me that his ancestors were amongst the first of Australia’s sandstone brick-makers.

  Ten minutes later Nanna Purvis hobbled out of a taxi, the wind twitching her tightly-permed blue curls. She limped up the verandah steps.

  ‘Why’re you soaking wet, Tanya?’

  ‘It’s hot, that’s why. And since nobody will ever take me for a swim, there’s only the hose. Why’s Mum locked the door? Why won’t she let me in?’

  ‘Ya mum decided it needs locking if she’s home alone. Maybe she’s having a nap while Shelley’s sleeping.’

  ‘A nap? When did Mum last have a nap? And when does Shelley sleep?’

  ‘Anyway, where’ve you been?’ my grandmother went on, sliding her key into the lock. ‘Skiving off without telling a soul where you’ve gone. My bet is you went to see the Eyetie girl?’

  I hesitated. The truth sat on the edge of my tongue but the words died in my mouth. With my mother so strange and miserable and Dad down the pub more than ever since his car accident, Uncle Blackie was the only person I could count on, the only one I trusted.

  I pushed past my grandmother, down the hallway and into my bedroom. No, I’d never tell her about my secret uncle. I’d never let her try and stop me seeing him like she kept trying to stop me seeing Angela Moretti.

  I dumped my sodden dress onto the bedspread, leaving it to make a wet patch over the rose pattern. I slipped into a dry frock thinking, with a smug smirk, that this gross bedspread would never give me any more of those silly kid’s nightmares.

  ... you’re almost a grown woman now, not a silly kid anymore ...

  As I marched back down the hallway I felt strong. Proud and oozing power. I could do anything now I was grown up. Oh yes, I felt good. But at the same time a teensy bit bad.

  19

  Casuarina she-oaks lined the wide driveway curving up to the Morettis’ brick home which looked over all the other houses in Bottlebrush Crescent. Tall, white, palace-like columns enclosed the front verandah. Hydrangea shrubs, their flowers the same blue as our kookaburra’s wing tips, circled the base of each column, and lizards darted between the sun and shade of the dark leaves.

  ‘Hello,’ I said to a man mowing the lawn, and to another trimming the hedges.

  ‘G’day,’ they both said, then Angela was skipping down the steps, her mother following.

  Mrs Moretti kissed me on each cheek and I wished my mother still brushed her hair, wore rouge and lipstick and nice pantsuits like Angela’s mother.

  ‘Come inside,’ Mrs Moretti said. ‘You and Angelina are eating a biscuit before your swim.’

  I followed them into the cool, tidy and silent palace and we sat at a vast wooden kitchen table, shiny with polish. Far more sophisticated than our ugly black Formica table and equally ugly black and white chairs.

  ‘You are liking almond and chocolate biscotti, Tanya?’ Mrs Moretti placed a plate of biscuits in front of me.

  ‘I don’t know but they sure look good.’

  ‘They are divine,’ Angela said.

  The Moretti family had immigrated to Wollongong, along with so many other Italians and Europeans, because there were jobs going at the Port Kembla Steelworks.

  ‘World War II devastation left the country in ruins,’ our teacher had explained. ‘And when the Italian soldiers returned from the war fronts there weren’t enough jobs. Moving to Australia –– a beckoning, hospitable land with endless prospects –– was an enticing alternative to poverty, especially after the recruitment and assisted passage agreement between the Australian and Italian governments in 1952.’

  Angela told me that after a few years working at the Port Kembla Steelworks, her father had started up a carpet-laying business, which –– from the looks of his home –– was obviously successful.

  ‘Your mamma knows you here, Tanya ... yes?’ Mrs Moretti said, waving her arms about as I munched on the biscuits, so delicious I couldn’t stop scoffing them. ‘She is not worry for you?’

  I washed down a mouthful of biscotti with the sweet and tangy ginger beer, which Angela had told me her mamma made herself, aching for the mother who used to worry where I was. Even if that had annoyed me.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘she’s not worried.’

  Dad was already down the pub when I left the house so I’d only had to sneak past Nanna Purvis, swimmers and towel stuffed into my Indian bag. But that nosey, bossy grandmother must have seen me leave, as the phone rang a few moments later and Mrs Moretti hurried into the living-room to answer it.

  ‘Your nonna is wanting you speak to her, Tanya.’

  I dawdled into the living-room, decorated with religious-looking statues and fancy dolls perched on lace doilies on wooden shelves. I picked up the receiver.

  ‘What do you want, Nanna Purvis?’

  ‘What are you doing over there?’ Her voice was a sharp needle through my eardrum.

  ‘Angela’s my friend. She asked me over for a swim. I told you, remember?’

  ‘I can’t have any granddaughter of mine mixing with foreign drug-dealing mobs. As if
we haven’t already got the strain and worry of Shelley’s colic and your mum ... your mum the way she is. And Dobson wearing the wobbly boot. You understand I’m just looking out for ya, Tanya, since nobody else seems to be able to right now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you better get home before I can say, “Ain’t no more gold in Kalgoorlie”.’

  ‘Okay bye, Nanna Purvis.’

  ‘All is good?’ Mrs Moretti asked as I sat back down.

  ‘Yep. My grandmother says I can stay as long as I want.’

  Upstairs, in Angela’s bedroom, we changed into our swimmers. The whole room was white and frilly, every wall covered in posters of top models: Veruschka, Twiggy, Linda Morand, and other posters, of David Cassidy.

  I wished I had a nice bedroom. I wished my pale and pudgy skin was smooth and olive like Angela’s. Velvety as Golden Syrup.

  ‘Why does your mum call you Angelina?’ I hitched my Indian bag up over my shoulder as we hurried outside into the warm afternoon, across the shiny verandah tiles –– so much neater than Gumtree Cottage’s wobbly boards –– and beneath the shade of thick grapevines, rather than our hot-as-hell corrugated iron eaves.

  ‘Because that’s my name, silly. But I prefer Angela, sounds more Aussie.’

  ‘Angelina’s a groovy name,’ I said, following my friend down the backyard, alongside squawking chickens fluttering their feathers, and a row of silvery-leaved olive trees, down to a vegetable patch bright with tomatoes, capsicum and zucchini, and herbs which Angela said were basil and parsley.

  ‘Why would you want to be more Aussie?’ I said. ‘I’d rather come from some far-off ancient place like Naples ... so much more exciting than boring old English convict ancestors.’

  Angela shrugged. ‘Aussie kids don’t get called “wog”, “dago” or “Eyetie”.’

  Beside the pool at the end of the yard a boy with hair as dark as Angela’s lay sunbathing on a towel. Roberta Flack’s hit single, The First Time I Saw Your Face blared from a radio beside him.

  ‘This is my brother, Marco,’ Angela said.

  Marco glanced up at us. ‘Hi, you must be Tanya?’ His bronzed body rippling with muscles and his smile, full of straight white teeth, melted any words right off my lips. I couldn’t even nod; could only stare at him in amazement.

  Angela giggled and nudged me. ‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’

  ‘Oh ... oh yes. Hi, Marco.’ I was aware of the silly grin spreading across my face, right to my bat-wing ears.

  ‘Have fun, you two.’ Marco picked up his radio, slung his towel over one shoulder, and I couldn’t keep my gaze off him as he swaggered back to the house.

  ‘All the girls think Marco’s a total spunk,’ Angela said with a laugh. ‘And I can see you’re no different.’

  ‘Don’t be a goon,’ I said as we slid into the clear water. ‘He’s just your brother. Anyway he wouldn’t have got up and left if ... if he wanted to talk to me or anything.’

  We slid along the bottom, eel-like, the silky water parting then closing behind us without a sound, sweeping back arcs of hair from our faces as we surfaced.

  ‘Is Naples nice?’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know. We came to Australia the year before I was born. I guess I’ll go there when I’m older but you could ask Mamma and Papa. They just love going on and on about Italy.’

  Gripping the pool edge, our faces turned up to the sun, our legs bicycled underwater. ‘Maybe they miss it?’ I said.

  ‘They do, but their lives are in Australia now. They’ll never move back to Italy, especially because Papa’s brother, Zio Ricci, and my aunt, Zia Valentina, are here too. Papa and his brother would never live apart.’

  We had breath-holding contests, we shrieked with laughter gossiping about Stacey Mornon and her moron friends. I lifted my arms above my head, floated on my back and gazed at the bleached-out blue sky, bright orange and pink stripes hanging low, signalling the start of sunset.

  And in those moments it all vanished: my blubbery body, my mother’s miserable cleaning, Shelley’s colic, my father leaving for Mount Isa, Nanna Purvis’s bossiness. And my jitterbugs about Uncle Blackie’s photos.

  ‘Wish I could stay here forever,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, it’d be fun if you could come over every day,’ Angela said.

  ‘At least you’ve got a brother. I can’t wait till Shelley grows up so I can play with her. Then Gumtree Cottage might be less boring.’

  ‘But Marco never hangs around with me,’ Angela said. ‘He’s always off driving around with his friends. He just got his licence and Dad got him a groovy purple car.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll come over every chance I can get away from Gumtree Cottage. But I might have to go back to my uncle’s soon, for another photo shoot.’

  ‘He already took the photos? You didn’t show them to me.’

  ‘I’ve only seen one of them ... the one he gave me.’ From my Indian bag, I pulled out Uncle Blackie’s shot of me on the red bike.

  ‘Groovy,’ Angela said. ‘Whose bike is that?’

  ‘Mine. Uncle Blackie’s always giving me stuff, but this is the best present by far. It’s even got handlebar streamers and a flowered seat.’

  ‘Wow,’ Angela said. ‘Why didn’t you ride the bike over here to show me?’

  ‘I told you, I have to keep Uncle Blackie a secret otherwise my bossy grandmother will stop me seeing him. So the bike has to stay at his place.’

  ‘That sounds weird,’ Angela said.

  ‘Nanna Purvis is weird.’

  ‘No, I meant the secret business is weird,’ Angela said with a frown.

  ‘Not really. You don’t know my grandmother.’

  ‘Anyway, don’t worry,’ Angela said. ‘You’ll probably look just as groovy in all the other photos.’

  ‘Oh, I bet I’ll look fat in them,’ I said. ‘Especially in the ... in the naked ones.’

  ***

  ‘Naked ones?’ Angela’s eyes widened, like large brown chestnuts. ‘He took photos of you without your clothes on?’

  ‘Oh, only some. I had my clothes on –– my underwear at least –– for most of them ... about half-half.’

  ‘But he shouldn’t do that, Tanya! It’s ... it’s wrong. Men who do that are filthy pervs.’

  ‘Don’t freak out,’ I said as we scrambled from the water and lay on our towels. ‘Uncle Blackie reckons it’s fine, that photographers are used to it. That they don’t even see the naked bodies.’

  Even as I spoke, the doubt, guilt and fear knotted inside me again. But I couldn’t tell Angela about that. What if she thought I was stupid and didn’t want to be friends with me anymore?

  ‘It sounds suss to me,’ she said. ‘Real dodgy.’

  ‘He’s my uncle. He’s kind and nice. No way can he be a filthy perv.’

  ‘Why won’t you believe me, Tanya?’ she went on. ‘Men like him are bad news. Anyway, did you tell your parents about the photos?’

  ‘As if ...’ I breathed deeply. ‘My father spends his life at The Dead Dingo’s Donger and Mum’s become this misery-guts, housework-crazed person. If only my sister would get better, then my mother would stop being miserable, and my father would stop guzzling beer. Then we could be happy again, I just know we could.’

  ‘So did your uncle tell you where he was, when he was away all those years?’ Angela said.

  ‘Not exactly, but Nanna Purvis reckons he was locked up somewhere for doing something to some girl. But you can’t take any notice of what she says, since my grandmother talks pure rubbish.’

  ‘Doing something to some girl?’ Angela said, her voice gone all screechy. ‘This uncle sounds like a very bad person!’

  ‘Uncle Blackie’s not a bad person,’ I shouted back. ‘He really cares about me ... look at this flashy bike.’ I shoved the photo under her nose again. ‘If he didn’t, why would he buy me something like this?’

  Angela fell quiet, looked away into the dense bushland behind the pool. ‘Sorry I shouted a
t you,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry I shouted too.’

  ‘This Uncle Blackie stuff just sounds all wrong,’ she said.

  Angela was older and smarter than me, and seemed to know more about everything. But as I let the sun lick the water from my body, I realised she couldn’t know Uncle Blackie like I did, and I flicked her doubts from my thoughts.

  ‘You can’t tell anybody this,’ Angela said after a few moments, ‘but Marco reckons my father and my Zio Ricci can make bad people go away.’

  ‘What bad people? And away where ... from Wollongong?’

  ‘I don’t know where exactly, but yeah, probably away from Wollongong. Marco told me about one of Papa’s carpet workers whose daughter was attacked by some creep. He sent the creep away and nobody, including the girl, ever saw him again.’

  ‘I don’t want Uncle Blackie to go away. He’s the only one in my family I can count on, especially since my father’s going away.’

  ‘Where’s your papa going?’

  ‘Up to Mount Isa ... for work. Says he’s going to earn us lots of money. But I know it’s just to get away from Nanna Purvis who he’s always hated, and because he can’t stand my misery-face mother anymore, or Shelley’s crying. He even shook my sister the other day, to try and get her to shut up. Dad’s never rough like that.’

  ‘People do things they wouldn’t normally do when they’re fed up or exhausted,’ Angela said. ‘Maybe your papa won’t be away for long. And your sister will surely stop the crying soon and then your mamma will feel better.’

  ‘Yeah, probably,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you won’t tell your brother or your parents –– anybody –– about Uncle Blackie, will you? We swore to keep each other’s secrets, remember, so promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ Angela said, as sunlight flashed from the chrome fittings on Mr Moretti’s black Valiant pulling into the driveway.

  Angela’s parents came out onto the verandah and Mr Moretti raised an arm in a wave. We waved back, then, arms linked, they disappeared back into the big house.