The Mimosa Tree

by Antonella Preto

  ‘I’m getting crap all over me,’ I say, looking down at the flour line across my jeans where my thighs are rubbing against the table. Mum tries to fasten an apron around me, but I wiggle my hips away from her. After a while she gives up, throws the apron down on a nearby chair. I step back so that I have to lean over to reach the dough, and the excess flour falls soundlessly to the floor. Mum shakes her head like she can’t believe I’m her daughter. I grin back at her as I work.

  By the time Via arrives I have shaped the flour and eggs into a pliable mass that doesn’t stick to my fingers anymore. I cover it with a damp cloth; go over to where Mum is standing at the door shouting her good mornings across the steaming concrete driveway. Via exits Bambi like a spongy ball that’s been forced into a tight space. She leans on the car, shouts something into the open door, then stands back and waits a few seconds. When nothing happens she starts slamming her fist on the roof and cursing. On the fourth slam the Datsun expels its dallying occupants. It’s Via’s grandchildren, Marco and Sera.

  ‘Inside!’ she shouts, and they run obediently up the stairs towards us.

  Mum catches them both in a floury hug. They plaster her in sloppy, toothy kisses before running and catching me around my legs with such force I almost fall over. We enter the house as a tangled, tumbling mess.

  Via sits at the table with a farty flop. ‘Bloody kids,’ she moans wiping sweat from her forehead. ‘They never stop. Oh, make me a coffee, Mira.’ She leans back in her chair, holds her head like it’s going to fall apart, then without warning, she springs upright, eyes wide. ‘MARCO! WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES?’

  ‘In the car,’ Marco shouts back from the lounge room where he and Sera have started an intense game of Operation.

  ‘Mira, go get his shoes, would you?’ says Via, flopping back into her chair. ‘What is wrong with these children? Why can’t they keep their shoes on their bloody feet? On and off, on and off. Do YOU THINK IT’S A BLOODY HAT?’ she shouts over her shoulder. Marco and Sera play on, unperturbed. ‘Oh, Sofia, some cake? I feel myself fading.’ She pats her cheeks like she’s checking she’s still actually there, then her eyes flip open again and she starts screaming. ‘SERA PULL YOUR SKIRT DOWN, I CAN SEE YOUR UNDERPANTS! LEAVE IT MARCO SHE WILL DO IT HERSELF. I SAID LEAVE IT! DO I HAVE TO COME IN THERE?’ This last effort drains all her reserves and Via is red with sweat and heat. She begins fanning herself with her skirt, revealing dimpled thighs that meet comfortably even though her knees are quite far apart.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ says Mum looking longingly at Marco who is sandwiching Sera’s head between two sofa pillows. ‘I can’t wait to have grandchildren.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath, Sofia. You’ll probably be dead by the time Mira gets a boyfriend.’

  I curl my lip at her then go get her precious coffee. It’s clear her mood is not going to improve until we get some caffeine into her. Via smiles gratefully as I place the steaming cup of espresso in front of her, and I leave the two of them to discuss ravioli technicalities and go join my cousins in the lounge room. When they see me they immediately want to start a new game of wars. I’m the good guy, Marco is the bad guy and Sera is the war nurse. There are dramatic battles punctuated by lengthy forehead wiping and temperature taking on the couch. The long, soft pile carpet allows for dramatic falls and tumbles. At one stage my arm gets blown off, and Sera tourniquets my empty sleeve with one of her hair ties before sending me back to battle again.

  ‘You are a brave soldier,’ she explains as she wipes an imaginary tear from her cheek. She promises to marry my lonely husband and look after my orphaned children if I die in the next battle.

  ‘Enough salt?’ says Via, stepping onto the battlefield and plunging a coated finger into my mouth. Her apron has a yellow daisy print on the belly and the ends are tucked into her skirt waist because they aren’t long enough to tie around her.

  ‘Sure,’ I say automatically, like I always do, but then I notice something. ‘Not enough nutmeg.’

  I think I am as shocked as Via.

  She looks at me suspiciously, sucks on her other finger to taste the mixture herself. ‘You’re right. It needs more nutmeg.’ Then she grabs me by the shirt and drags me into the kitchen.

  ‘I want to play!’ I say looking longingly at my cousins who have already evolved the storyline to accommodate my sudden departure.

  ‘You’re too old for that,’ she says tying an apron around my waist. ‘Time you learnt something useful.’

  ‘Mum?’ I plead.

  ‘Via is right. You’re old enough to help now.’

  The table jiggles as Mum turns the handle of the pasta machine, flattening a fist-sized ball of pasta thinner and thinner until the sheet is as long as her arm.

  ‘Via, show her how to do the filling.’

  Via nods and thrusts her hands back into the mixture for a final stir. Mum lays a long sheet of pasta across the table and Via begins to lay down walnut-sized dollops of mixture, carefully explaining the desired distance, texture and shape. She does one entire sheet before another is ready and hands over to me.

  She licks her fingers as she watches me work. ‘Not bad,’ she says.

  ‘Good girl,’ says Mum, and she has her dreamy face on.

  ‘We learnt from our mother,’ says Via. ‘Just like you are now.’

  ‘Dear God, what ravioli she made!’ says Mum.

  ‘Yours are pretty good,’ I say but they both dismiss this instantly.

  ‘Hers were the best,’ says Via.

  ‘So this is the same recipe?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Mum.

  ‘Exactly the same,’ agrees Via.

  ‘You ever thought about making it different?’

  Mum stops turning the handle of the pasta machine. ‘You don’t like my ravioli?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m just wondering if you can make other types.’

  ‘Types?’ says Via, beginning on another sheet. ‘Ravioli is ravioli. What are you talking about?’

  ‘But surely there are other fillings you could try?’

  ‘Oh sure, but this is the best.’

  ‘Delicious,’ agrees Mum and tries to force more mixture into my mouth.

  ‘Don’t you want to try something different? Just to see what it’s like?’

  ‘I like spinach and ricotta,’ says Mum.

  ‘But you could be missing something really good.’

  ‘These are really good,’ says Via. ‘Now look, this is how we finish them.’

  She dips her finger in a glass of water and wets the spaces between the rows of filling. She picks up a fresh sheet of pasta, lays it carefully over the top, then she starts pressing it down firmly around the raised areas of filling so that they stick up like little pillows. ‘But don’t leave any air in there!’ she warns.

  Next she runs a cutter along the pressed bits, and it separates the rows of ravioli from each other with neat serrated edges.

  ‘Great,’ I say, actually happy to see the little pillows finally take shape before me. I go to take another sheet from Mum but Via slaps my hand away.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, that’s my job darling. This is your job,’ she says handing me a plate. ‘As I finish a sheet you pick each one up, one at a time. Don’t let them touch or they will stick and I will kill you, and you take them over there to dry.’ She motions to the flyscreens on stands. ‘I want nice, neat rows, understand? We have to count them.’

  ‘Oh come on! I want to make little pillows.’

  ‘Listen to your aunty,’ says Mum. ‘Making ravioli is not all fun and games you know. Now hurry up. I need more room.’

  ‘This sucks,’ I say, but I’m picking up ravioli already and they have started on a new conversation. There is never any point arguing with them. By the time I have the first plate on the drying rack, Via has another three sheets waiting for me.

  ‘You’re going too fast,’ I say.

  ‘You’re going too slow,’ says Via.

  ‘This is going
to take all day,’ I moan. ‘How many do we have to make?’

  ‘Three hundred,’ says Mum pinching my cheeks.

  ‘ Four hundred,’ says Via.

  And they both laugh like it’s the funniest thing they ever heard.

  ***

  Thankfully it doesn’t take all day. Within a few hours the flyscreen is covered in neat rows of fresh ravioli that will be left to dry for the afternoon before freezing them. I am washing my hands now, free to go watch TV with my cousins as Mum and Via finish up the cleaning. I take my Coke to the couch where Marco and Sera are putting the final touches on a cubbyhouse they have made with bedsheets. They peel open a doorway for me and I climb in happily with them. We take turns holding back the sheet so we can watch the cartoons together.

  Then the phone rings.

  ‘MIRA!’ shout Mum and Via even though they are standing right beside it.

  ‘Just answer it!’ I shout back.

  ‘But I don’t know who it is!’ protests Mum.

  I hand my Coke to Marco and stomp angrily to the phone.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, when I answer it. ‘I don’t know who you are, but now that I have picked up the phone and I can hear your voice, I will probably be able to identify you.’ I look over at Mum and Via making sure they are getting my lesson on how a phone actually works.

  ‘Hello?’ says an uncertain voice at the other end.

  ‘Who is it?’ says Mum.

  ‘Tell them we don’t want any,’ says Via.

  ‘Hello?’ I say trying again to place the faintly familiar voice.

  ‘Is that you, Mira?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’ and then it clicks. ‘Siena?’

  ‘How are you Mira?’ says my aunt Siena, but before I can say any more Mum has snatched the phone from me.

  ‘Hello?’ she says nervously. Via moves closer, dishcloth slung over her shoulder. I’m not sure if she’s about to cry or get angry. Mum’s emotions on the other hand are clear – she speaks softly, words catching on tears, both hands clutching the phone as though Siena will disappear if she lets it go. When she’s done she puts the phone down.

  ‘I wanted to talk to her!’ I say, disappointed. Aunt Siena is nothing like my aunt Via. Aunt Siena is nice, and I haven’t spoken to her in ages. ‘Why did you hang up?’

  Mum ignores me, walks to the table and sits down.

  ‘Don’t tell me she remembered your birthday?’ says Via, pulling off her apron and sitting down at the table with Mum.

  Mum shakes her head. Via pulls a cigarette out from her pocket, looks at Mum with suspicion. This is obviously big news. Via steadies herself with a long drag. ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘She has left him, Via. Siena has left Robert.’

  ‘Is that all? I thought it was bad news.’

  ‘Your sister getting divorced is not bad news?’

  ‘She’s better off without him, Sofia. He is a bastard.’

  ‘Via!’ says Mum, indicating that she shouldn’t be saying these things in front of me.

  ‘He is a bastard,’ I say.

  ‘Mira!’ says Mum, indicating that I shouldn’t be swearing.

  ‘He took Aunt Siena away. He is a bastard and I’m glad she’s finally left him.’ I never liked Robert. Even in those early days, when they had just met and he was all sickly nice and trying to impress us. He would make this big show about how great he was, but it always came off like he thought he was better than us.

  ‘Smartest thing she’s ever done,’ agrees Via.

  But Mum does not look convinced. She cannot conceive of a grown woman being able to survive without a husband. From what I can tell, it doesn’t matter much about the quality of that husband, just that they are a man and that they are around.

  ‘But what will she do?’ she says.

  ‘Be happy?’ I suggest.

  ‘But how will she live?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sofia. Siena has no money problems.’

  It’s true. Siena is loaded. It wasn’t always that way. When they first married, Siena and Robert were often broke, and I remember how Mum would buy Siena’s groceries or shoes or whatever she desperately needed that week. Eventually, things settled down and they started getting ahead, and everyone relaxed. Then one day, Siena announced that Robert had invested their savings in a drive-in cinema. Everyone thought he was crazy; no one was going to the drive-ins any more, especially now that everyone could watch movies on VHS. There were tears and threats and late night phone calls and everyone expected things to end badly, but just the opposite happened – not only did the cinema do well, but a few years later property prices skyrocketed and he sold it for a huge amount of money. He invested that money in another business and made even more money. They’ve been loaded ever since. Robert stopped trying to hide that he thought he was better than us. And we saw less and less of Siena.

  ‘Money, big house and no husband,’ snorts Via. ‘Sounds to me like she’s won the lotto.’

  Mum puts a hand on Via’s smoking hand so that it’s trapped against the table. ‘Via, the money is gone.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Sofia?’

  ‘Robert!’ she says. ‘He lost a lot of money in a business investment.’

  ‘How much money?’

  Mum holds onto the table and leans in. ‘They have to sell the house.’

  ‘He lost the house?’ says Via, and now they are clutching each other across the table, joined in mutual despair. A woman without a husband is one thing, but a woman without a house?

  ‘She said she was going to a hotel,’ says Mum. ‘A hotel!’ And now she really starts crying. Mum has never been to a hotel in her life, but has watched enough movies to know that only criminals and adulterers stay at hotels.

  ‘Dear God!’ says Via to the god in our ceiling. ‘Has it come to this? My sister in a hotel?’ It seems Via has similar concerns about women in hotel rooms.

  ‘She could live here?’ I say, hopefully. I can easily imagine Siena and me in my bedroom, eating Tim Tams and listening to the radio all night.

  ‘Yes, you could put her in the roof,’ says Via.

  ‘We have no room,’ agrees Mum.

  ‘I could move out, then she could have my room,’ I suggest and I start to imagine what this would be like. A big house all to myself, pizza and two-minute noodles for every meal, my stereo screaming beautiful music all day long and not a single broom, vacuum cleaner, sponge or dust buster to bother me.

  ‘All right,’ says Via dropping her cigarette into her cup and it sizzles in the remaining slurp of coffee. ‘I will get her old room ready at my house.’

  ‘Oh Via, do you mean it?’

  ‘It’s not forever, Sofia,’ she says, walking to the sink and scrubbing furiously. ‘Siena must learn to look after herself. We can’t keep saving her.’

  ‘Thank you, Via. Thank you.’

  ‘She can stay for a month. But that’s it! Three months, Sofia. Understand? No more! No more than a year, okay?’

  ‘Thank you, Via,’ says Mum. ‘ Thank you.’

  The three of us are quiet for a long time. Via leans back against the sink and pulls out another cigarette. At the table, Mum pleats the apron on her lap. I bite at my fingernails and look over at a photo frame of the three of them together, back in the village in Italy where they grew up in. Siena is a little girl, and her older sisters closer to young women. In the photo she is cradled between them, looking straight at the camera and smiling wildly while her sisters look down and smile at her. Mum has a hand held ready as if she thinks Siena might fall over. Via has a firm grasp on Siena’s shoulder, pulling her up and back towards her. I look at Mum, realise she is watching me. She smiles, and I smile with her.

  ‘My family,’ she says reaching over and pulling me up into a hug. ‘Together again.’ And she grips me firmly with one arm while the other reaches out towards Via. Sighing, Via drops the dishcloth and comes over to join us at the table and then I’m caught in the middle of them, squeezed between c
onverging sobs, tears spiralling like rivers across my face. ‘My sisters,’ says Mum, and the two of them cry until the ravioli are dry and the flyscreens have been returned to their windows.

  ***

  The day my grandmother died, Siena took me by the hand and led me out to the garden. I was two, and my memories of that day are like a half formed puzzle. Siena later filled in the gaps for me, and the fragments sit in my memory like black and white pieces amongst colour. So now the memory looks like this: Mum and Via are inside my grandmother’s house and they are making noises so grisly that I am frightened. I tug at Mum’s skirt, and I cry in my baby way for her to stop it, to stop making that noise, but my mum does not see me. She howls and she beats her fists and she holds her head in her hands, and every time I see her eyes they are a sightless smudge of red and water. Then a hand, assured and gentle, takes mine and I let that hand lead me outside to where the howling gets dimmer and the light brighter. When I look up, it is my aunt Siena holding me. She sits me on her lap and she holds me gently while she cries in her lovely quiet way; in a way that does not frighten me.

  Before Robert came along I saw Siena almost every day, when she shared her life with her sisters and they dragged me along with them everywhere they went. We were all so close and it’s strange to realise that in the past year I have only seen her about three times and each of those times was a hurried, hushed affair that left me feeling unsatisfied. Via and Mum warn me not to get my hopes up; that we don’t know the whole story and that she may not stay for long. I know what they are saying, but I can’t help it. I’ve got my hopes right up and I am looking forward to seeing her again. Maybe Via is too, because she arrives early to pick us up, and thankfully, even with the prohibitively tiny capacity of the Datsun, they do not reject my requests to go with them. Mum’s mood is nervous, and Via’s agitated. She taps at the table while Mum hurries to get Dad’s coffee.

  ‘Forty years old,’ says Dad heaping teaspoons of sugar into his steaming cup. ‘Does she think she can find another husband?’