Only a few of us wait alone, eyeing each other curiously, wondering what we’re escaping from, or escaping to. Most are chatting with someone, loudly saying goodbye or muttering numbly, reminiscing over a time that’s been had or anticipating a time ahead.
The bus station reeks of meat pies and fatty fries as I find a phone box, scrounge around in my backpack and wallet for change, and call Zi Don. The phone rings, and rings. Suddenly Zi Don’s cheery voice is saying hello.
‘Hey Zio,’ I begin, trying to sound as if I call him every week.
There’s a pause. ‘Pina?’ is hesitantly asked as if he’s expecting to be wrong.
‘Yeah, surprise huh?’ I manage a laugh.
‘Hey, Principessa Pina! What a surprise for sure!’ Laughter, warm and gurgly, then a rushed question. ‘Hey, all okay on your side of the border?’
‘Yeah, yeah. But I got a bigger surprise for you. I was wondering if I could come and stay with you for a few days. Like you said in my birthday card.’ Even though that was months ago and I never even replied with a thank-you for the bracelets, I sneer to my inner bitch.
‘I’ve been waiting a long time, hoping you’d ring to tell me you’re heading over.’ He sounds genuinely delighted, although I detect a little tentativeness as well. ‘Hey Wei Lee, Pina my niece from Adelaide wants to come and stay for a while.’ I hear a woman’s happy voice from the distance but I can’t understand the words. ‘We’re really excited Pina. Good school holiday break, hey? We’ll take you shopping on Chapel Street if you’re loaded with Christmas money, or do the Queen Vic Markets if you’re not. We’re driving to Adelaide for Christmas. Wei Lee’s coming as well this year, so you could drive back to Melbourne with us, save you half the trip. When are you thinking of coming over? And is there any way of getting little Leo Leone and your hippy hipster parents over as well?’
‘I’d like to come by myself. End of school year time-out, you know? And,’ I pause and then blurt it out, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow morning.’
‘Tomorrow morning!’ Yeah, Zi Don’s shocked. The heavy breath and pause tells me he’s troubled, but he follows with, ‘I love your spontaneity! But it’s a hectic pre-Christmas time here for us; things already planned, work to finish up. We may not get much time for you.’ I can hear Wei Lee’s voice in the background, sort of whispered and gentle.
‘That’s cool, I can take care of myself. I just want to come to Melbourne. I won’t get in your way.’
‘Your parents haven’t rung me about it,’ he says slowly.
I hear the bus engine revving up. Passengers are queuing to get on board. ‘Look, I gotta go. I’m at the bus station and the bus is boarding. And my phone money’s running out. Can I stay with you?’
I hear Wei Lee again in the background, firm but gentle, and Zi Don’s deeper voice, muffled as if the receiver’s been covered by a hand. Then he’s talking to me again with a worried chuckle. ‘Well, Wei Lee’s certainly not going to forgive me if I try to stop you, but you’ll have to take us as you find us, Pina. We’ll pick you up at the bus station.’ I’m relieved, and nervous as well.
We exchange details about time and place before he says slowly, ‘Hey Pretty Pina, I’m not going to ask a lot of questions when you get here. You may have a lot of questions to ask us. But I gotta ask you this one now: your parents know?’
‘I left a note. They’re not home yet.’
There’s a pause. Then a gentle smiling voice. ‘Fair enough. But I’m going to call their mobiles right now so they know I’ll be waiting for you on this side.’
‘Can you wait about an hour before you phone them?’
He doesn’t reply straight away. I get the feeling he’s trying to figure out the ‘why’ behind this request. ‘Done, mystery woman. Now you get some sleep on that bus, ’cos when you wake up, you’ll be in Melbourne with us.’
Halfway through my thanks and goodbyes, the final coins clang to the bottom of the phone and the line goes dead. A crisp voice crackles something over the bus station loudspeaker about final boarding. I’ve always laughed at how we can develop so much communication technology, like internet and email and ICQ, but trying to get a bus or train station loudspeaker to be intelligible seems to be way beyond human ability.
The bus smells of toilet disinfectant and floor detergent doing a pitiful surface clean of years of sleepy breaths and farts. I make my way along the narrow aisle, peering at seat numbers as I go. I booked too late to get a window seat so I’m somewhere in the middle in an aisle seat. Looks like I’m going to be next to an old woman who I’d seen standing around by herself outside the bus, loaded down with enough blankets and pillows for me too. I’ll have to get friendly – maybe she’ll share.
As I shove my backpack into the rack above, she immediately turns to grin at me; powdered face creasing like a piano accordion, crooked little yellow teeth, perched specs glinting in the dim overhead light, purple-rinsed grey hair neatly flattened into 1920s flapper pin-curls. She’s wearing a floral chiffon frock with a ruffled neckline. It’s probably her first-date dress and she’s fossilised in that time like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. I wonder if this woman’s life met her expectations. Her smile seems satisfied enough. I wonder if I’m going to end up fossilising at this juncture in my life: forever zitted, flabby, and lank-haired, frozen at the point of losing my virginity and my naivety. If Mum was here, she’d be launching into a major conversation (read: interrogation) with this woman about her life, her met and unmet expectations.
I’ve caught myself thinking and smiling about Mum. The smile snakes into a grimace.
I fidget and shuffle, trying to find the best position for my oversized body in this cramped little space. My bum threatens to spill out into the aisle on one side and into Miss Havisham’s pointy bony hip on the other.
She seems to be aware of my tribulations and chuckles, ‘Lucky we’re both small enough to fit comfortably but big enough to stay warm and cosy. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking my window seat, love. I have to go to the toilet a few times a night and really don’t want to wake you.’
Okay, so I’m sitting next to a leaky little old lady who desperately needs new glasses and an update on the frock and hairdo. But at least I’ll get a window seat, complete with something solid to lean against and that extra couple of centimetres on the side to slot some of my bulk into. We squeeze past one another and I thank her.
I really don’t want to talk to anyone, let alone an old lady who’s hinting that she’ll probably be up all night pacing the aisle to and from the toilet. She’s so sugary and innocent, acting as if this bus trip is such a treat. Imagine if I told her what a dysfunctional family I’m from and what I’ve just been through today: ‘Hey Miss Havisham, you might not want to talk to me so much if I tell you my parentals were part of a threesome and that I lost my virginity today in sad sex.’
Was it only today? It was today, wasn’t it?
I want to sleep or at least lose myself in the darkness of the landscape, the neon lights of tiny towns, and the starlight of the bush. But no, Miss Havisham’s going to insist on chattering to me. ‘Are you going home for Christmas, love?’
No, I’m escaping home for Christmas. ‘No.’
‘Are you going on a holiday?’
‘I’m visiting my uncle for a while.’ I wish it was a permanent holiday.
‘That’s lovely, love. Family’s so important.’ BS statement number one. How many more am I in for tonight? I look away out the window. But she’s talking, and I presume she’s talking to me. ‘I’m deciding whether I want to move to Melbourne or stay here. I have nieces and nephews in both states. I never had my own children and my husband died a few months ago so I’m at a crossroad, wondering where to go from here without burdening anyone. I may just keep going backwards and forwards between the two.’ She chuckles. I give her a ‘whateva’ shrug. I don’t need another sob story. I’m in overload as it is.
But she’s talking. ‘Sort of in transit
between adventures. Do you know what I mean, love?’ I nod. She sounds like a page out of my mother’s diary. I had to end up next to the bus Buddhist. She’s so ancient but she’s talking like she’s got all these years ahead to have ‘adventures’, as she calls life’s bombs. She could die tomorrow. This bus could crash. She could find her niece’s diary and discover they’ve hated her all these years. She could find a yellowing love letter in her decaying husband’s mouldy old sock and discover he really loved someone else all those years.
She seems to be picking up on what I’m thinking, her thin soft fingers around my wrist. ‘You might think it shouldn’t be so important beginning new adventures at my age, love, but whether it’s a day or a decade, you’ve got to begin new journeys.’
Suddenly the bus engine grumbles awake and jerks into reverse. We haven’t even left the station yet and I’ve heard enough. I see people waving goodbye, chasing the bus, pulling funny faces and doing charades to get those final schmaltzy messages across. A few mobile phones go off on the bus as a few left behind dial in for the final farewell. Miss Havisham lets go of my wrist to hang onto the back of the seat in front of her for leverage so she can crane forward to look out the window next to me. That crooked, yellow-toothed smile in that piano accordion face is still unabashedly smiling at everyone as if they’re all her family.
Then she’s quiet, finally, and sits back as we head through the city, the streetlights streaking as we pick up speed. There’s a boom-boom-boom over the speakers. It’s the driver testing the microphone with what must be his fist. He roars into his spiel about chucking out anyone caught with alcohol or cigarettes or ‘anything worse’ at the next town, no matter how isolated it is. Women are advised not to stick their ‘sanitary wear’ down the toilet or it’ll clog the system and we won’t have a ‘loo’ all night. We’ll be making a meal stop in Bordertown at about midnight. We’re to make sure we’re back on the bus or he’ll just leave us behind. As if we’d venture far in the middle of nowhere, the loser. I shake my head. Then he wishes us a ‘comfy’ trip and asks us to come and say hi to him during the night. Yeah, like he’s advertised his friendly charm so well that we’ll be competing to be his best mate sitting on the sticky stinky floor next to him.
The bus goes quiet. I’m trying to recall why Bordertown sounds familiar when Miss Havisham starts up again. ‘Are you Italian, love?’
‘No.’ Where’s my mental tape that outlines the family ancestry?
‘You look Italian, love. Or Spanish. Or something like that.’
Dreading the twenty questions that might be about to begin, I find my tape and let it run: ‘My grandparents are Italian. My mother was born here, my dad came out here when he was young.’
‘Yes, your parents were called the Italo-Australians.’ She chuckles. ‘Quite historical now. As if you can get two cultures and glue them neatly together.’
I’m getting really annoyed now. I have enough in my head and heart about how it’s all come unglued. ‘Whatever,’ I retort rudely.
‘Yes, exactly, love, whatever. It doesn’t really matter. They’re all just labels. Why do you have to stick a tag on your chest saying this is who I am and only this? I never did. I was born on the ocean, love. They classified me, the baby that I was, a British citizen rather than Ukrainian or Australian because I happened to be born on some steel and wood contraption that was made in Britain and floating on an ocean. So I have a nationality on my passport that gets me through officialdom, but the real me cannot and will not be reduced to that label only.’
Is she senile? Delirious? Drunk? Or is this one of those strega magic thingos Mum goes on about, where a moment or meeting occurs that seems quite appropriate in some totally freaky way.
I turn to look at her more fully because her voice has started wavering. Her eyes, looking past me into the darkness of the Adelaide Hills, are shining full of tears even if her lips are still smiling.
I am curious. And yes, this is definitely a strega magic meeting. I almost raise my head to look around the bus, to see if my mum’s sneaked on board and planted Miss Havisham, a resident from her nursing home, next to me to tell me her story. Just like my mother would, I want to know her story. That creeps me out.
She seems to sense my agitation and shrugs shyly. ‘You’ll laugh of course, and say, is that all? But back then it was more than could be spoken in so-called decent company.’ She sighs, and her eyes shine and smile into my eyes. ‘I fell in love with an Aboriginal boy who came to work at the local market gardens. We would meet at night, in the rows of tomato plants and cabbages. During the day, as I walked to and from school and he sweated on that farm, we pretended we didn’t exist for each other. For a year, we had at night what didn’t – what couldn’t – exist in the daylight. We didn’t know what to do, for it was impossible, what we had together. It was illegal, immoral, sinful for blacks and whites to marry. But we had one thing in common.’
A bony finger comes up defiantly. I watch the way it slices the air in front of her as she speaks. ‘No definite citizenship. We both were not Australians. Two people, a migrant trying to be an Australian. And he, from the original Australians, being made non-Australian in his own land.’
She shakes her head. ‘So, when I found myself pregnant, I made a decision out of sheer desperation and fear, love. He grieved over it for years, even after we eventually got away. I hunted down an abortionist, illegal in those days. That abortionist was so thorough, I was never able to have children again. But I couldn’t report him. I’d done something illegal, love. Plus I was unmarried and the father was black.’
She passes a shaking hand over her eyes but smiles with the strength of one who’s gone through hell and kept going. ‘We lived a good life, on the borders of society. Slowly the children of our brothers and sisters began to shower us with the love our own families had denied us – ’cos we were an embarrassment to both communities, you see. We watched as black rights got out there. We watched as abortions became legal. We watched Ernie Dingo and his white wife on TV. We watched Cathy Freeman carrying the Aboriginal flag at the Olympics. We watched it all as we got on with our lives.’
She pauses, sighs and smiles. ‘So when my husband passed on a few months ago, all the kids wanted me to move in. Didya see my nieces and nephews and their kids at the bus station, love? They’re scared I might not come back.’
No, I hadn’t seen them. Well, actually, I had. I’d seen a bunch of Aboriginal people, and near them this fluffy, purple-rinsed little old lady with wrinkly talcum powder skin. But I hadn’t seen them as family because it’s not what I was used to looking out for.
She stands slowly, swaying as the bus winds its way along the freeway. ‘First loo trip, one of several tonight, love.’ She steadies herself and staggers off, grinning at everyone, delighted about something.
I’m left staring at the empty seat and thinking … it isn’t Miss Havisham who’s sitting next to me after all, why I didn’t see her family at the station, why I didn’t see my family all these years, am I pregnant, will I have to have an abortion … This whirlwind in my head while I turn to the window and try to get to sleep by losing myself in the silhouettes of trees. But the trees take on all sorts of scary shapes under the shifting light of moon and stars, flinging me back into the whirlwind again and again.
At some point, as I drift in and out of anxious sleep, the driver announces the meal stop at Bordertown. It must be midnight, near the border, between Adelaide and Melbourne. By now Mum and Dad will have my note. By now Zi Donato will have rung them. By now he and Wei Lee have set their alarm to wake them to come and get me in the morning. Are my parents asleep or are they worrying about me? Has Mum noticed her book’s missing? Is Leo asleep or are his bruised ribs keeping him awake? What has he told Mum and Dad?
I have no answers. I’m not contactable. I used to get stressy if I didn’t have my mobile phone in my reach but now I feel released.
The bus pulls up under the far-too-bright lights of a road
house. Passengers stretch and stumble out as if soggy pies with sauce, hot chocolates and caffeine fixes will make the trip so much more fun. I climb over So-Not-Miss-Havisham and wobble out too. The night is balmy, the roadhouse lit up like an oasis, minus the palm trees and moon-kissed lake of those desert romance movies. I pass a phone box, and my feet slow down before I rev them up and keep walking.
I sit down on a small brick wall and gaze at a road sign: ‘Bordertown Centre’.
And I suddenly remember.
We came to Bordertown once when Leo and I were kids. And in my mother’s book, I’d seen a title on a page that included the name Bordertown.
I scrounge around in my backpack and find my mother’s book. I position myself under a bright overhead light, the moths darting around me, making flickering shadows on the page.
Going Into Bordertown
I made the decision to cross into the borderland when Ren and I and the children visited Bordertown to see some friends. They’d known Ren and I since we started going out together. They’d always said we were the ‘most perfect’ couple they knew. I sat with Luigia in her garden, sipping her homegrown chamomile tea and munching her homemade taralli. Pina was darting around under the gum trees, picking flowers, digging holes into ant nests, making little Leo run away as the ants came scrambling out. Ren and Dario were strolling over the fields.
I watched Ren, and watched myself and Ren and my children with this couple from the past and our present who thought they knew us. I knew I was already on a threshold drifting in and out of the me they knew and the me I was possibly going to be if I followed my heart with Nat. Would they want to know? Old friends who held up our history like a mirror in front of us.
Love You Two Page 11