by Moira Burke
Moira Burke is a Melbourne writer. Losing It is her first novel. It was highly commended in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award ahead of its first publication, in 1998.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For my whole family
And for Karen and Nadia, who have always walked beside me
chapter one
____________________
YOU GET to push the trolley little wheels clack-clacking over the footpath, it’s better pushing the trolley you hate folding and delivering, your fingers get all black and sometimes you can’t find the letterbox or there’s cobwebs all over the slot and you hate cobwebs, sticking and soft and on you. Some days it’s Lalor Thomastown Reservoir but it’s Fawkner today, where you live. There’s hundreds of streets to do, Wurruck Street Yungera Street Bruce and James and Percy Streets, Mutton Road Birdwood Avenue Lovely Street and Somerlayton Crescent. The old part of Fawkner where the cobwebs are, bushes overgrown and the distant sky seems wilder, and the newer part, where your house is, blond bricks red bricks balustrades concrete, giant river red gums and plane trees changing leaves. You get up nice and early fresh and sleepy the air crisp all the catalogues in the boot of the light blue Valiant in piles of 50, 100, 200, 500, one for every house in every street. K-mart Safeway Mitre-10 McEwans, Coles and Woolworths and Venture Stores, Brashs and Dick Smith Electronics, all these places make catalogues that show their specials, their summer sales their winter sales, you get to deliver them every Saturday morning, your mum and your sisters, Helen Rosie Maureen Theresa, and you. Mrs Schuhmann your mum’s best friend and all her family do it as well she’s got four kids together you make nine plus the two mums that’s eleven. Belinda’s the closest one to your age so you do all your streets together. The RACV catalogues are the worst, they’re not catalogues they’re full-colour glossy magazines, they’re really heavy and only special houses get them so sometimes you end up doing a long walk down a long street just for one delivery and then you have to backtrack, but you usually don’t do that. When you get the RACV magazines you usually go down the side streets to Merri Creek and sit there on the piles for a while and have a secret cigarette that Belinda pinched from her mum. Then you throw the magazines into the water slow and bubbled and low. One by one, ten by ten, stack by stack, you watch them float and sink and splash, Belinda laughing you laughing but never forgetting to keep an eye out just in case your mums come. You never get caught, you get good pocket money so you’re always careful. You always have a certain amount of streets to complete in a certain amount of time before meeting at a certain place, usually the milk bar sometimes the roundabout, what a relief. You pile into the car you’re all glad it’s finished it’s always too hot or too cold or too wet or too windy and some days it’s all of them.
You’re down at the new netball courts at Merri Creek for P.E. today, gusts of wind horizontal across the ground and high in the trees spinning leaves and bits of rubbish you have to hold your dress down so it doesn’t blow up and show your undies you’re having a break and everyone’s eating oranges. There’s a white van parked by the clubrooms a bit of a way away ever since you’ve been there but you can still make out the shape of the man sitting in it and you have another look just in case. It’s your dad, great! he must have come down to see you play, shit, you hope you’re not in trouble and so you go over. He mustn’t have seen you coming because he gets a bit of a surprise and quickly sticks his bottle under his newspaper. What are you doing here? he says, like you’re not supposed to be. Netball you say and he says I’ve just come down here for a bit of peace and quiet to get away from your mother for half an hour, now go on, go back to your game. You drop your orange you’re very far away all of a sudden and when you get there you look back the van starts and drives off swirling the dust up and around.
You make Glynnis Jones cry in Needlework. You’re doing smocking. You’re making a baby girl’s dress and Glynnis is too but yours is better you’re good at needlework because your mum’s a dressmaker. Glynnis says her dad is great. Her dad drives her to school every morning her dad picks her up her dad has a station wagon. They live in Campbellfield but she doesn’t have to catch the bus. Her dad takes her to netball. Her dad makes her lunch. Her dad this, her dad that. You tell her to shut up and who cares about your stupid dad. She opens her mouth looking at you all of a sudden staring her stupid eyes fill up with tears she looks down and puts her work down too, your best friend Linda Valero puts her arm around Glynnis and just looks at you so you run into the storeroom. Mrs McPherson your Needlework teacher comes in then Sharon Toohey comes in with Lisa Debono following and your teacher says Josie calm down Josie. You just keep throwing the material and the pattern paper around so then Sharon grabs you and puts her arms around you and makes you stop then Lisa puts her arms around you too but you don’t like her putting her arms around you so you tell her to go away so she does but so does Sharon. You want Sharon to keep hugging you but you’re not going to say anything. Mrs McPherson says Josie, Josie. Everybody’s crowding in the doorway looking in and you get to go into the sickbay for the rest of the afternoon.
You bend over and push your tits together so that you’ve got a cleavage you wish your tits were bigger. You can’t see your legs so you get a chair and stand on it now you can see the whole length of yourself. You look all right. You turn to the side and see yourself from there and take a deep breath holding your stomach in that’s better. You stand up and bend over backwards a little so that your hip-bones really stick out, you put your hands up over your head but it makes you look even fatter like that so instead you sit on the back of the chair feet on the seat open your knees really wide and stick your chest out with your hands on your bum. That looks all right too maybe you could be a model. You smile at yourself in the mirror from the chair and flip your hair. You can see the fat in your legs you can pinch the fat on your stomach when you’re sitting down god you’re horrible. You stand up and turn around. With the little hand mirror you look at yourself from behind you can see your bum it looks really big when you bend over but it makes your waist look smaller, when you stand up it’s just ugly you should have lost more weight by now you’re just fat, you’ll always be fat. You put on your Eastcoast jeans the really tight ones with the pockets down the side and the little key ring on the belt loop and your Crystal Cylinder T-shirt that’s a bit too small but it’s your favourite, you put on your surfie-bead choker too the one you flogged from K-mart ages ago when you were eleven and you shat yourself so much that you’ve never done it again. Lisa always shoplifts she’s really good at it, half the time you don’t even know she’s done it until you’re out of the shop she just gets make-up and sometimes jewellery, chewies magazines plus once she got a pair of leopard-print bikinis. You go to the bathroom do your hair put on eyeshadow then some lip-gloss and some blusher the one that Lisa gave you and then you take it off.
You go to the loungeroom you’ve got the house to yourself you don’t know what to do but it’s better than everybody being here. You look at all the ornaments on the double bookcase, the one that your dad built to go on either side of the Vulcan heater against the wall, the one wall in the room with wallpaper, cream with a golden shining fleurde-lys design. Your dad stained the bookcase this really ugly brown it’s a bit lop-sided. The bottom shelves are stuffed with Golden Hands magazines and English comics. On the middle shelf are all the old Enid Blyton books and all the Readers’ Digests and the Condensed Story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the Condensed Story of Moby Dick and the Illustrated Hans Christian Andersen and the thick book of Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales and all your sister’s HSC
books and the top shelf which is only as high as your waist has got glass sliding doors and is full of miniature dolls in national dress, England Ireland Scotland Wales, Malta Belgium Poland Greece, Turkey India the Netherlands and China. There’s the toby jugs, one with a green jacket one with a maroon jacket one with an eye patch one with a beard. There’s your mum’s Cinderella statue and all the little statues of dogs, cocker spaniel dalmatian golden retriever pomeranian and three poodles from small to big, there’s everybody’s Irish dancing medals and trophies and First and Second ribbons from Little Athletics, souvenir spoons from Anglesea Queenscliff Point Lonsdale and Perth, the dried-flower arrangement on a piece of cork a Zulu doll from Africa that your mum got when the boat stopped on the way to Australia and the salt and pepper shakers in the shape of a colleen and a paddy. There’s not much on the mantelpiece except the glass vase in the shape of a fish with its mouth open that your dad got for your mum once and a picture of Jesus with his heart burning that belongs to your dad and the statue of Mary with its head stuck back on after it got dropped that time, that’s your dad’s too and so are the whiskey bottles, there’s one in the shape of a duck sitting on water and another one of a log with a dog on it. That one’s got some whiskey in it. You open it wiping the neck so you don’t get his germs and take a drink hot in your throat hotly down through you, you shiver up your back, you better not have too much he’ll be able to tell so you just have another couple of sips and put the lid back on. He won the whiskey in a raffle, that’s how you got the colour telly too and the orange sheepskin rug in front of the heater, he won them up the pub he’s pretty lucky, he also wins meat trays and two years in a row he’s won the Easter basket.
You go over to the couch and pull up the cushions to get the money that’s fallen out of his pockets there’s only two dollars and twenty cents, all coins, all sticky. You hate the couch. You never sit on it. You go into your mum and dad’s bedroom even though he doesn’t sleep in it very often, open the wardrobe and check through your dad’s pockets to see if there’s any money there, you find a few more dollars you push everything back the way it was and shut the door. You stand there looking around at the walls purple flowers on light yellow wallpaper built-in wardrobes and your mum’s perfumes then out of the blue you take a flying leap onto your parents’ bed, yelling a big yell as you do. You land in the middle bouncing on the mattress the white nylon quilted thing your legs flip over your head and down again you start punching the pillows and then, you get a fright. What if they come home what if they’re pulling up right now so you get off real quick. You fix the bedclothes fluff up the pillows, leave the bedroom and go into the bathroom to make it look like you’re not doing anything.
Everything’s nice at the dentist, it smells like Pine-O-Cleen there’s no spiders or webs in the corners everything’s painted blue you’re here to get some fillings and you have to get the nerve taken out of one of your teeth. When the needle goes in it hurts but you’re not scared you’re not afraid of needles or taking medicine or anything like that you feel like you’re being taken care of. You used to go to the Dental Hospital when you were little and you’d always get a present, the dentist would open a drawer for you and let you pick something from all the little toys, you’d choose a cartoon in a miniature frame you got four altogether, Donald Duck Goofy Astro Boy and Wonder Woman. Cartoons are stupid now but they’re good for kids, you can draw cartoons even though you’d rather draw other things but it’s hard to get the shading right, cartoons are easy you only have to do the outline. You like the chair the best at the dentist, the way it feels when you’re tilted back like you’re on a spaceship or something the big light shining on you warm, the ceiling all angles, close your eyes noises from inside your mouth reverberating inside your head. You can’t feel a thing even though you know it’s supposed to hurt.
Uncle Pat with the glass eye married to Aunty Bridie with the long red hair is at the kitchen table sitting down with his prison uniform on and so is Uncle Charlie Phelan. They work at Pentridge where your dad used to work before he retired even though he was only forty-two. Hi Uncle Charlie hi Uncle Pat and you kiss them on the cheek like it was normal like at a picnic like at a barbecue. You say mum, can I go rollerskating tonight? Please? It’s Wednesday, and she just looks at you. Everybody’s going mum you say, it’s a theme party. It was couples night you’re not in a couple but you know Fabio’s going to be there. Josie your mum says, your dad’s in the hospital and you open the fridge to see what’s in there. Can you drive me there tonight please mum? you say and your mum doesn’t say anything so you tell her that it finishes by ten and Linda’s going too you can get a lift home with her mum and your mum says your dad’s in the hospital you’re going in to see him. You shut the fridge door and everything goes quiet. Where? you say and your mum says Preston and everything’s quiet again. He’s very bad Josie love they said he’s only got a week and Aunty Bridie’s coming to pick us up. She looks at you. Can she drop me off at rollerskating? you say it’s on the way I told everybody I’d go I’ll go and see dad tomorrow, you have to go skating you have to. Mum? She cuts you short you’re going to see your dad in the hospital he’s got a week they say a week. You laugh so your mum slaps you she’s never done that before and Uncle Charlie gets out of his chair he’s really big and he goes to the front door because your Aunty Bridie’s just arrived.
*
He’s really yellow. He’s going to die. You’ve never seen a dying person before especially not your own dad. His eyes are blue they’re sticking out of his yellow face he’s got a drip and a bandaid over it where it goes into his skinny arm. He’s got a plastic name tag on his wrist like they have on babies so they don’t get mixed up, if they didn’t have their name tags on you wouldn’t know which was which and you can’t have that. JOHN DESMOND CREGAN typed out and smudged a bit under the plastic. You thought his name was just John, or Bluey Uncle Charlie calls him because he’s got red hair, you never knew about the Desmond. Whenever it was their wedding anniversary on January 21 there’d be a card on the mantelpiece that said TO MY DARLING CURLY ALL MY LOVE BLUE and another one that would say something like DEAR JOHN GUESS WHO??? XXX. Every year that happened except last year when you all went on holidays except your dad because he and your mother weren’t talking at the time so you and your little sisters made one out of magazine pictures stuck with Clag onto cardboard from a packet of your mum’s stockings and sent it to him without her knowing, DEAR DAD HAPPY ANNIVERSARY LOVE FROM…??? You sit there on the hospital bed holding his hand then it’s your sister Maureen’s turn to sit up close so you move down a bit and pick a line of chenille out of the white hospital bedspread.
Skating round and round and round, fibreglass hard floor knees bruise easy on it but you don’t fall over no way. You’ve only got one pair of jeans and you can’t rip them tear them wear them out, if you did you’d have to wear your school pants and there’s no way you’re going to wear your school pants skating. Skating’s grouse. You’ve got lots of new friends even if they are boys they’re the West Street Boys and they’re grouse to hang around with. You go to Fabio’s mum’s wedding reception and drink vodka for the first time. You wag school and go to Meatloaf’s place and smoke dope and play Black Sabbath. You get pissed in the back alley behind skating on a Saturday night and get into your first ever punch-up. You get chased by the cops and shit yourself because you’d be in really big trouble if you got into trouble with the cops. You fall in love for the first time and lose your virginity on the back steps of Evan Evans flag factory in Albion Street. You’re thirteen now and rollerskating’s grouse.
You say to Linda do I look rough? she goes what? you say do I look rough in these overalls? Linda just looks at you and goes nuh. You say my mum said I look rough in them. She said that to you tonight as you were leaving the house, you don’t really care what she thinks you don’t even really know what she meant you don’t feel rough. You feel a bit uncomfortable because they’re so tight but you feel kind
of good too, everyone else has a pair of overalls, tight denim Eastcoast, you look kind of like everyone, you feel part of everybody else even though there’s a big part of you that doesn’t belong but that’s okay because no one can see that bit. You’re all drinking behind the railway station it’s just before Christmas you’re all sitting around on the grass, Fabio’s there he’s been sitting next to you all evening touching your leg sometimes and passing the Brandovino to you first, before anyone else, his eyes big and close and going right into you. Everybody’s leaning on everyone else now Kath and Meatloaf have disappeared Marty and Grace are pashing on and Linda’s gone back to the rink with Kerry and Macca, the night-time sky slowly settling gentle and blue. Fab puts his arm around your shoulder and says in your ear if I asked you for a Christmas present would you give me one? You would have given him anything. What? you ask and he sort of laughs a bit and says a fuck. You’re in love with him so you say yes and you’re very serious. You and Fab had pashed on together once at Meatloaf’s place and twice at the cemetery where you’d all go sometimes after getting off the train at Fawkner station breaking in through the hole in the fence and once he’d taken you around the rink when ‘Is This Love?’ by Bob Marley was playing and for you, it was. He’s got big browny-coloured eyes that are a bit poppy but not much and long curly black hair. He sticks out his chest when he’s talking and he’s so beautiful. He gives you a leg-up over the back wall of Evan Evans then he gets a leg-up from Marty who’s laughing saying go for it mate. You sit down on the concrete steps you’ve never done this before so Fab pulls down your straps undoes the buttons on the side of your overalls pulls them down then pulls down his own. You’ve never seen one before so you have a good look and then you get to it, it feels very nice but it doesn’t go on for that long and then he says suck me off. You don’t know what that means but then you find out and then it’s over. You’ve had a fuck. With Fab. You’ve given Fab a present. He stumbles round the corner pushing his straps back over his shoulder so you get yourself up off the step too and pull up your pants you feel very nice between your legs but you can’t walk very straight and everything’s double you’re that pissed. You catch up with Fabio and go onto the railway platform it’s dark now. You sit on the waiting bench Fab lies with his head on your lap. You try to kiss him but you can’t reach down that far and he’s passed out anyway. He’s wearing a star-shaped stud in his ear so you steal it and think maybe he’ll think he gave it to you.