by Rebellious Daughters- True stories from Australia's finest female writers (retail) (epub)
One day, I left work early to surprise him with some pumpkin soup from the health food store – the only thing he could stomach after his sixth round of chemo. I found him in bed with my close friend. I packed my bags straight away and fled Sydney, leaving him behind, his lungs slowly filling up with death. And I left my father back in Melbourne as well – old and lonely, his frail body shrinking in unison with his memory.
I quit my job, dumped my white coat and stethoscope in the Salvation Army bin and flew to New York City, to embark on my childhood dream of becoming a writer. To hell with them both, I thought. I was young and sharp and filled with longing. No sick men were going to rain down on me anymore, wash away my dreams. I took poetry classes, started a Masters in Writing at New York University, had an affair with a biochemist who also ran a dance company, went to hear Doctorow and Sontag speak, ate lobster in the back of a Buick driving up the coast to Maine. I felt I had finally started drafting a brand new pattern for my life, instead of recycling the same frayed material. I was happy, even though fraught with guilt.
The call came in the middle of the night. My father was in hospital after a sudden stroke. I quit my studies and boarded the first flight home, intent on caring for him – which I did for a while, with home help and a nappy service, juggling my shifts back at the hospital. But the day I accidentally ran his wheelchair onto the road and he went hurtling out onto the tram tracks, was the day I realised I just couldn’t do it anymore and decided to put him in a nursing home. I was only 26 years old then and even though I decided to stay in Melbourne and pursue my writing there while working as a doctor, I still struggled with the burden of being a dutiful daughter.
Step 4: ‘Turning up the Hem’
In 1991, I kissed my father goodbye and left him sitting in his wheelchair as he watched Jeopardy in the communal lounge room of his nursing home. I had just turned 31 and once again found myself running away from him. Two days later, I stood beside my Israeli husband, waiting for the train to arrive at the Champ de Mars. We were on our honeymoon and had just been up the Eiffel Tower to view the lights of Paris by night, and were en route to Haifa, the city of his birth, where we would make our home for the next ten years. Was it a complete accident that I married a foreign man?
People crowded into the station, jostling each other as they escaped from the frosty evening air. Then an announcement over the PA system saw everyone disperse. Remnants of my high school French came back to me through the fracas: Attention! En arête tous les trains. Corps morts. A dead body on the tracks had us walking silently all the way back to our hotel. I left Paris with a sense of dread.
The following day we walked through the door of our apartment in Haifa ready to start a new life together. My husband, a tall and strong man, lifted me over the threshold. Just as he lowered me, the phone rang with the news that my father had died the night before. He was buried the next day, without me there to say goodbye.
Step 5: ‘Individualising Stock Patterns’
It is 1993, October 19th – my father’s birthday. Mine too. It is also the day I return to work, not long after my first child is born. I stab a curved needle through someone’s broken skin, pulling the edges of the wound together with blue, nylon thread, using delicate mattress sutures. I learned to sew like this in medical school. I reassure the patient that she is in good hands – after all, I am a tailor’s daughter.
*Section titles from Mason, Gertrude, 1935, Tailoring for Women, A&C Black, Ltd
THE GOOD GIRL
JAMILA RIZVI
I’ve always been a Good Girl. Not a pretty girl. Not a brave girl. Not a cool girl. Not a nice girl. But a Good Girl.
It’s a funny word, ‘good’. The adjective you were never allowed to use in high school English class because it was the lazy option. ‘Good’ lacked the requisite nuance or academic flair. Also syllables. Open a well-thumbed copy of the dictionary and the second listed definition for ‘good’ is exactly the one you’d expect. (I say dictionary because it sounds more highbrow but obviously you could just google it.)
2. Adjective. Having the required qualities; of a high standard. ‘A good restaurant’. Synonyms: fine, quality, superior, competent.
But when we speak of ‘good’ girls, the goodness at stake is often not one of excellence or ability. Rather, we tend to embody the first and original definition of ‘good’: 1. Adjective. To be desired or approved of.
True to that definition, I have desperately sought the approval of others for as long as I can remember. Who comprises this elusive group of ‘others’ has changed over time. Friends, colleagues, coaches, lecturers, bosses, employees, neighbours, the local barista, strangers on social media… But it began, of course, with my parents.
I’m a ferocious reader, a trait inherited from my mother. A primary school teacher and devoted lover of fiction, she dutifully read aloud to me before bed every evening when I was little.
‘The elephant and the bad baby went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta down the road’, read Mum, emphasising the same words she always did. By the time you read something aloud to a three-year-old for the 32nd time, there isn’t a lot of room for innovative eloquence.
The Elephant and the Bad Baby was a standout favourite of mine. It’s a tale of an elephant riding through town with a baby on its back, collecting delicious goodies from kind strangers. In a truly reprehensible act of rudeness, the baby demands more and more treats without ever saying ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. Ultimately baby gets his comeuppance, which is the resolution I would spend the whole story gleefully anticipating.
‘The bad baby is very naughty, isn’t he?’ I asked.
Mum replied in the affirmative, which was a fair but insufficient response for my purposes. Being a good girl, I needed personal approval, not mere factual confirmation.
‘I always say please…’ I said – not so much fishing for compliments as ramming that fishhook violently down my poor mother’s throat.
‘You have very nice manners,’ Mum assured me.
Satisfied, I returned my attention to the book and listened as the bad baby was sent home to bed, while the other characters enjoyed pancakes for breakfast. It was the prime childhood punishment of forced sleep coupled with sugar deprivation. Devastating.
Other-children-getting-into-trouble was my favourite genre, both in books and in life. Observing people depart from the well-behaved path provided a thrill. I was always disapproving of and yet fascinated by their rebellion. The concept of being naughty was deeply exhilarating particularly as it was something I never dared to try out for myself. I was too afraid of the judgement of others.
In my first few years of life, bad children whose behaviour I could feel superior about existed only in storybooks. Then, when I was four, my sister Mimi was born. She provided me with a living example of naughtiness.
Mimi arrived in our lives, red-faced and screaming. I was pleased to see her. Partly because I wanted a sibling to play with and partly because my dogged insistence that the baby growing in mum’s tummy was a girl had been proven correct.
My sister wasn’t a delicate newborn by any means. She clocked in at a good kilogram heavier than I had been at birth, then rapidly developed the kind of fat rolls that would make a sumo wrestler proud. The infinite folds of skin on her thighs, her Joan Kirner hairstyle and the bright red cheeks were both cute and absurd.
On the change table she was an unstoppable force, pushing herself up onto all fours and grasping the railings tightly with her chubby fists. Then she’d rock back and forwards. Rhythmically. Violently. The metal legs would sway and creak as she performed the baby version of riding a mechanical bull, cowboy hat (AKA rattle) in hand.
Mimi would sit in her high chair and slowly but deliberately shovel an entire banana into her mouth without swallowing. The brownish-yellow mush would ooze out the corners of her lips and drip down her chin. This fruit consumption was a daily feat. The family’s routine reaction was to shield our eyes and exclaim in mock horror: �
�Gross, Mimi!’ The gloriously fat baby would then grin at our response, triggering an expulsion of more banana goo from her mouth.
My naughty sister had a knack for comedy and entertaining her audience was always priority number one. Mimi’s own dignity or even basic hygiene (see Exhibit A: The mushed banana routine) would regularly fall by the wayside in eliciting a laugh. Her mop of black curls and permanently red cheeks suited her clownish nature.
But behaviour that is downright adorable in a baby tends not to translate that well once a child is out of nappies. Cheeky turns into annoying. Cute turns into disgusting. Silly turns into naughty. And oh, how I was looking forward to the day my sister’s antics would be more correctly classified as ‘bad’. The joy I got from seeing others in trouble would not so much pale as become entirely transparent, in comparison to seeing my sister in trouble. My only sibling had become both my companion and my competition when it came to the most precious prize of all, attention from our parents.
Along with school came new authority figures for me to impress. Naturally, my parents still occupied the top slot but the high opinion of second grade teacher Mrs Horton was now in my sights. Mrs Horton had whitegrey hair, a generous bosom and wore those pale purple plastic framed glasses that were briefly in fashion during the early 90s. Unlike my kindergarten teacher, Mrs Horton wasn’t besotted by the charms of softly spoken blonde girls with unbitten fingernails (i.e. not yours truly). And she didn’t favour the kids who got all their spelling words correct each week – a preference that left me zero chance of success with first grade teacher Mrs Madden. Mrs Horton liked two things: good behaviour and enthusiasm. I possessed both in abundance.
I sensed an opportunity before me. The sort of opportunity that only comes around once or twice in a schoolgirl career. This was going to be my year, my year to be the favourite, the teacher’s pet. Not just a good girl but also the undisputed best girl in the class. During lessons, my friends and I would sit on the floor with our legs crossed, hands on knees as instructed. I didn’t just sit up straight but grip my knees with vicious force and lean right backwards. Such was my effort to be noticed, my whole body would almost tip over from the strain.
My hand shot up straight whenever I knew the answer to a question, waving ferociously back and forwards. If Mrs Horton failed to call on me, I would start bouncing around on the floor, like I was busting for a wee and trying to keep it contained. She must not have noticed me, I’d tell myself, refusing to acknowledge that the poor teacher was probably just trying to give someone else a turn.
If sucking up were an Olympic sport, I would have won gold, silver and bronze that year. My colouring-in was fastidious, I completed logic puzzles at recess and practiced flute playing like a girl possessed. At lunchtime I would instruct my buddies to pick bouquets of wildflowers (read: weeds) and deliver them to the teacher on yard duty with a flourish. On one occasion, I re-enacted most of the dialogue and half the score of Phantom of the Opera as my show and tell. I sent contributions to nationwide competitions to design posters promoting recycling, co-opting innocent classmates who actually possessed artistic talent to help me produce something worthy.
My poster designing worked a charm. Mrs Horton lapped it up, championing me as a brilliant student and even telling mum and dad that I was ‘gifted’. My parents were confused. I was a smart little kid, to be sure. But they knew I wasn’t actually a passionate child environmentalist with a genius creative streak – I just owned a set of fancy Derwent pencils and really liked receiving praise. Nonetheless they nurtured the abilities I did have and encouraged me to keep working hard at school. With my teacher’s pet status established, a Polly Pocket pencil case and a burgeoning ego, life was pretty great. Except that on the home front, Mimi the toddler was proving a genuine threat to my worldview that ‘good’ always has the upper hand; that good always equals best.
As we grew up, I morphed from occasional revelling in Mimi’s ‘bad’ behaviour to anticipating it constantly. I loved my sister but I was jealous of the attention she received from my parents. I was also puzzled that the attention always seemed to be positive even when she misbehaved. No matter how naughty Mimi was, what I saw as the appropriate tickings-off never seemed to eventuate. And on the very rare occasion they did, her punishments never seemed to stick. Mimi was too damn cute and funny for my parents to even maintain their stern faces while explaining what she’d done wrong.
On one occasion, my parents were landscaping our back garden. That is to say, dad was mowing the lawn and pulling out weeds while mum made a half-hearted attempt at planting flowers that would require minimal ongoing care. (Gardening isn’t a key competency for anyone in my family). I was awarded a small flowerbed of my own in which I could plant whatever I chose.
Electing for aesthetics over function, I ignored vegetables and herbs in favour of magenta hued petunias. I was incredibly attached to the explosion of pink buds in my little garden and couldn’t wait to see them bloom. I named each of the fledgling plants after the heroines of my favourite fairy tales – Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White – and talked to them as if they were my dolls.
Then, in a never-seen-before local weather event, a hurricane happened; a hurricane named Toddler Mimi. She waddled into the kitchen that morning, calling for my mother’s attention. Clenched in her little fists were Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White and all the rest, bundled into bouquets. Mimi bestowed the mess on my mother with gusto. Roots and half-cut stems dangled down, clumps of dirt falling onto the tiled floor. No flower had been left behind. My garden bed was a scene of total desecration.
And Mum said thank you. THANK YOU. My day’s work had been annihilated and my own mother was exchanging pleasantries with the destroyer. I demanded justice. If I was going to have to live on in this cruel flowerless world, then I at least wanted to enjoy watching Mimi get in trouble. I pleaded my case to someone who hadn’t been swayed with floral bribes – my dad. But he also denied my right to retribution.
‘She’s just little, Jamila. She doesn’t know that she’s done the wrong thing,’ Dad explained. I gaped at him, flabbergasted. I know she doesn’t know she’s done the wrong thing, which is why you have to TELL HER... I thought.
‘I’m sorry your garden was spoiled. We can get you some new flowers next weekend.’
New flowers. Sorry, Dad, but civil damages aren’t going to cut it for a crime of this scale. Lives have been lost and no amount of reimbursement will bring Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White back. The criminal must be punished.
But it wasn’t to be. Mimi was free to destroy another day.
It was a major childhood transition, the day I decided at age seven that I had grown too mature for frivolous activities like playing with dolls. Upon coming to this realisation, I gifted my toy suitcase full of Barbies to Mimi. It was a serious transfer of assets. I owned more than a dozen Barbies but two Kens only (polygamy was the norm in my doll community). All were in pristine condition. ‘Shave n’ Fun Ken’ still had his foam razor blade and each Barbie retained her original outfit, including both her shoes. As everyone knows, Barbie shoe retention is the true test of personal responsibility.
The smugness gained from my magnanimous doll gifting sustained me for over a week. Good Girl status: High. And Mimi was appropriately grateful. She played with the Barbies near-constantly for almost a month. Transported around in luxury, insulated vehicles (Dad’s slippers) and taken on frequent excursions to the waterpark (the shower), the Barbies were treated well by their new owner. Or rather, they were treated well right up until the day they weren’t.
It was a standard afternoon when, after demolishing my snack allocation of three biscuits (including one with chocolate), I claimed the television to watch Captain Planet. The episode focused on Planeteers, Linka from Sweden and Wheeler from New York City. I was desperate for the pair to become an item and the last few episodes had begun hinting at a potential romance between them. After the show finished, it struck me that Mimi was wo
rryingly quiet. Normally she’d be bugging me to borrow a toy or do her hair, but today she hadn’t entered the living room.
I asked Mum where Mimi had gone. Also smelling a curly haired rat, Mum accompanied me up the hall and into Mimi’s room. There sat my sister in the middle of the floor, with a single-legged hairless Barbie in one hand, bouncing her along the border of the rug. Around my sister were all the other Barbies, sporting bald heads and missing limbs. Strands of doll hair had been trodden into the carpet along with Mimi’s half eaten biscuits. She had gone full-scale Jack the Ripper on my Barbies.
I swallowed my anger. Hard. At least this event also meant trouble for Mimi – a whole heap of it. Maybe she’d be sent to her room for the rest of the afternoon, or worse still, the bathroom. Maybe she’d even get a smack. I steeled myself for what was to come, trying not to let my anticipation show. After all, Good Girls shouldn’t take (visible) pleasure in other people’s pain.
‘What are you doing, Mimi?’ my mother inquired. The smiley little face, complete with rosy cheeks and just a hint of dimple, looked innocently back at her.
‘I like them to hop,’ Mimi replied.
Mum stared back at her youngest daughter with a strange expression, as if part of her wanted to burst out laughing, while the other part was concerned that she and my father were raising a serial killer and should perhaps get a child psychologist on the phone post haste. Eventually, the first part prevailed. Fighting back a grin, Mum ushered me out of the room so that she could clean up the mess.
An hour later, the three of us were sitting together at the dining table. Mum told me to get out my reader, then asked Mimi what painting she had done at preschool that day. It was as if nothing had happened. My sister had not only gotten away with another crime but her sadistic Barbie mutilation would become a popular family story, told and retold at dinner parties for years to come.