Love You Two

by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

  We chat on into the evening as the air gets cooler. Wei Lee and I tell him about our day, our trips to Chapel Street, the doctor’s and Acland Street.

  When we finally rise to go inside, Zi Don holds out his arms to me. ‘One thing I need to ask.’ I stop and look at him. ‘Now that we’ve been sprung, as you so aptly put it, and knowing you sprung your own parents, would you like to talk about your mother?’

  I feel the ache begin again and look away. ‘I know all this stuff about boxes and bats is about her too. But I’d like more time just to think it through.’ His arms enfold me. I lean into him. ‘Maybe Christmas at Narnia will help me get through Christmas at Nonna’s.’

  Zi Don holds me tight as if I’ve arrived back from some dangerous expedition. He whispers down into my hair. ‘Thank you, Pina, thank you.’

  I hug him back, but then pull away a little and look up at him. ‘It’s all weird, Zio, okay? I’m being honest. I’m not saying I feel perfectly fine about everything. But I reckon it’s mostly because it’s new and I’m pissed off that I’ve been kept out of stuff. I’m happy you’ve made a life here and done so much, and I think Wei Lee’s so cool, and … and, yeah, I love you heaps, anyway.’

  Wei Lee comes up to hug both of us. We crush in to help her reach.

  Later that night, on my way to bed, while Zi Don and Wei Lee are in the study checking their emails and doing some work, I walk through the house looking for the clues I’d missed earlier. There’s the figure of Sagittarius on a wall-hanging in the lounge area, the muscular upper half of the body is a man, the strong lower half is a horse. I think of the many-armed Hindu god on the sideboard in the corridor and go look at it again. Shiva. And the plaque next to it:

  Who, me confused? Ambivalent?

  Not so. Only your labels split me.

  (Gloria Anzaldúa)

  Back in my room, I pick up the book on my bedside table. Zi Don has highlighted whole pages that describe Mr Tumnus, the half-man, half-goat creature Lucy meets. They talk about all the different creatures – nymphs, dryads and fauns – all sharing life in the forest. Tiny Wei Lee, like Lucy, and my uncle, the tall, hairy mixed-creature faun. And there’ll be more nymphs, fauns and dryads to meet at Christmas here.

  Zi Don had asked if I wanted to talk about my mum. I do and I don’t. I’m less angry now but there’s such an aching sadness. I miss her. I miss the mum I thought she was. I miss the family I thought I had, and I miss the illusion that my parents’ lives were so perfectly, simply, happy. So, yeah, I ache for their sadness too, for their pain and silences, and for the way I know people out there would judge my parents if they knew.

  I open her writing book, skim through some pages, and find:

  Wei Lee’s so intelligent. When I first told her about Nat, she was so supportive and tried to explain something to me about the social prison system that keeps us afraid and silent. The panopticon. It reminded me of those Italian cakes at Easter and Christmas, panettone. So dry that it sticks in your throat unless you douse it with Strega liqueur. But it’s tradition, and everyone does the panettone recycling: receiving and giving them away rather than eating them. But you slice one up for your Easter and Christmas visitors so they can see you know the rules and rituals.

  Maybe if I’d been allowed to go to uni, maybe I could’ve been able to understand and analyse like Wei Lee. Maybe I could’ve studied literature and been a writer. I don’t mind that my parents spent heaps to get Donato through law school, but wasn’t there some money for me and Elena? I know there was enough money for us, but all the money in the world wouldn’t have changed the fact that we were girls. It was okay for Elena; she wanted nothing more than a great house, hubby and family. But what about me? Why did I have to wait for Ren to come along?

  But I guess my parents lived in their own prison when it came to their children. ‘What will people say? Che figura.’

  I think that ‘la figura’ is the Italian version of that prison watchtower. Maybe no one would bother to spread rumours about you at all but the very thought that someone could be waiting to spread some gossip that could destroy you stops everything. I don’t ever want Pina or Leo growing up with that stopping them.

  All my life I’ve been living with the community police watching me. Whatever I did as a child, as a girl, as a married woman, as a mother, I was being watched. And since Nat came along, I feel like my ‘sin of adultery’ is tattooed in neon lights on my forehead.

  I grudgingly think my mother might be right. So many would write her off as a sinner, even the same people who think she’s a saint. And there’s something else I’m realising. Whether I like it or not, whether I agree with what she does or not, my mother is special in so many ways. What I now know about her disgusts me and has destroyed me in some ways. And yet, in other ways, whether I like it or not, her sins have given her the sensitivity and wisdom about people and life that will ensure she’ll always be there for me in ways most of the world will never be there for her, in ways her own mother has never been there for her.

  14

  Christmas in Narnia

  IT’S JUST OVER A WEEK before we go back for Christmas in Adelaide. Zi Don races about sticking tinsel and garlands along the walls and across the ceiling of the kitchen-lounge. ‘It’s Christmas in Narnia,’ he declares in delight to friends on the phone, fellow Narnians no doubt, who I’ll meet at their annual festivity.

  In all that I now do with Zi Don and Wei Lee, I’m aware of their performances for public view. Because they’re a boy–girl couple, the straight world allows them to kiss in the cinema when we go to a movie, hold hands on the streets when gift-shopping and cuddle in supermarket aisles while debating the merits of different makes of prosciutto and cheese, noodles and curry.

  Now and again they get stared at, this burly wog-boy, and this tiny Asian-girl, but no one really cares. Yet I’m sure that if they were up-front about Zi Don, they’d soon be shown the exit out of straightworld. And then they tell me about the times they’ve been turned away from a gay venue because they ‘look like a straight couple’.

  I also find myself behaving, pathetically, like the guard in the watchtower. I catch myself scrutinising Zi Don and looking for signs – something I didn’t do when I assumed he was straight. The idiosyncrasies that I used to call ‘Italian’, I now annoyingly catch myself redefining as ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’. When he snores on the lounge, remote control still gripped in his right palm, is he being the straight man in him? As he animatedly chats with friends, are his flying hands and emphatic voice his gay side? What about the way he wiggles his bum as he vacuums, is that his girly side? But my dad does that too when he irons. What about when he dances around the house? Yeah, but Dad does that. Although not quite with Zi Don’s panache.

  What is he? Where does he belong? And in loving him, what’s Wei Lee? Where does she belong? I find myself scrutinising Wei Lee as well. Is there something about her that’s boyish, and so attracts Zi Don? I think of her small breasts and slim figure. Then I get angry with myself for behaving like some kind of zoologist. I hadn’t noticed anything ‘unusual’ in the two of them when I thought they fitted oh-so neatly and ‘normally’ into the straight world.

  The day for the party arrives. Wei Lee and Zi Don wake up excited. On goes the music, a techno tarantella, and out come the wok, pans and pots. Zi Don is chief chef while Wei Lee and I are designated kitchen assistants, helping in the concoction of Vietnamese dishes, a couple of huge pasta platters, some salads and tiramisu. More decorations go up; rainbow-coloured tinsel streamers and bunches of colourful balloons. Ribbons are tied to lamps and doorknobs, Christmas tree lights form threads of rainbows on the patio and around the verandah. There’s a Buddha decked out in rainbow sashes. Even the Shiva in the hallway gets little coloured feathers stuck onto each hand.

  I’m there, helping out, but it’s like looking on to a new culture, to a world I’m enjoying and learning. This is how you prepare for a party because you really want your loved ones o
ver – not because you have to, like so many of Nonna’s gatherings and lunches. This is how you enjoy the preparation, rather than fuss and fret over ‘too much needs to be done’, and ‘never again’, and ‘why bother’, and ‘what if they don’t appreciate it?’ that I’ve got used to hearing and blocking out at Nonna’s.

  This is how you talk affectionately about your guests. I’ve grown used to Nonna muttering to herself in total turmoil as she blusters about at Christmas and Easter, and the rostered dinners she gives for her church cronies. Shaky hands tap her sweaty forehead as she agitates over whether she should have this cake when Zia Giuseppa makes a better one, or so Zia Orlanda has told everyone. Her hand waves menacingly in the air as she remembers how she still hasn’t forgiven Commara Vincenza for her comments last year about her tablecloth, and she vows that this year when they all see the new embroidered tablecloth, ‘la Commara’ will have to eat her words.

  Zi Elena, Stella, Mum and I got used to ignoring her as we tried to help her peel way more potatoes than she’d ever need, or stir the huge pots of tomato sauce bubbling away like a witch’s brew. But now and again, especially if we got harangued for not peeling the potatoes smoothly, or for over-or under-stirring the sauce, my mum would throw out what I thought was an obvious question. ‘So why bother inviting them over all the time if it causes you so much stress?’ To which we’d get a shocked sneer, then a blissful moment of silence before Nonna meticulously explained the intricacies of community connections and hierarchies; who could do what to who that could be disastrous or advantageous for the family, and the latest round of alliances, peace treaties, threats of war and actual outbreaks.

  Yes, Narnia is so different from Nonna’s. It was to be open house from midday onward, but by eleven o’clock people are already dropping in to finish off any preparations to the foods they’ve brought and to make their own decorative additions to the house.

  When I’m in my room getting changed in front of the mirror into a white summer frock Zi Don had bought me on Bridge Road, I glance at the reflection of the books on the bedside table. I see my mother’s book, which I haven’t finished reading. I suddenly wish my mother was here, and this wish catches me unawares with its intensity. Mum needs this space and place. She’d be in her element here.

  I catch my face in the mirror as I’m thinking this, and right there, around the vulnerable softness of my eyes and slightly open mouth, I can see my love and sadness for my mother. I can see that in some ways I look like my mother. I’d never seen that before – that I may actually bloom into some kind of prettiness like my mum said she did. Till now, I haven’t made it past the zits and the fat. Funny thing is, even though I’m peering really hard, I’m sure the zits have shrunk and my hips and tummy have flattened. Nah, I’m hallucinating. It’s this place. In Narnia, I look pretty. When I’m back in Adelaide, I’ll soon swell up with the hot air at Nonna’s.

  Serving drinks and food allows me to hover and mingle, listen and border the groups, and piece people together like a jigsaw. I talk a bit to everyone as I’m gushingly introduced by Zi Don and Wei Lee. When I’m introduced as the niece from Adelaide, I sort of feel childish, woggy and country bumpkin all at once. But I soon realise they’re interested in me for who I am and what I have to tell them about the Don they don’t know from Adelaide, about Don as an uncle.

  Their friends are all so different, even from one another – bats and seahorses, birds and bees, and other creatures. I admit it’s nice, almost a relief, to see some happy ‘mum, dad and two kids’ arrangements mixing and mingling with all the other permutations of family, gender and sexuality. Not as the standard but as part of the many variations. And yes, some of the permutations shock me. I come head on with my naivety and then feel so angry that the world on the other side of the wardrobe hasn’t let me see and be with these people. But on the street, at work, in school or at another Christmas party like my nonna’s, these facets of themselves would probably be hidden away. I would see them only as people who belong in Nonna’s world. There’s an expectation that in Wei Lee and Zi Don’s house, there is no guard, there is no policing.

  Here I meet women who look like your typical woggy chicks on the surface – short, dark, round women with accents. Slightly younger, less frazzled or less zombified versions of Nonna’s friends and foes Zia Orlanda, Zia Giuseppa and Commara Vincenza – except it turns out some of them are lesbians. It’s not obvious who, unless they mention their partners.

  There’s Wei Lee’s Sicilian-Italian friend, Rosa. She’s a doctor and runs a very successful practice with ethnic families in the heart of Darebin. She’s talking about her feminist women’s health group as I hover with a platter of falafels. This group goes out to factories and sweatshops to provide routine health checks for migrant and refugee women who otherwise would never get to a doctor.

  The next time I head towards her with a bowl of kalamata olives, trying to hang around a little longer, she’s kneading her husband’s thigh and telling everyone how she loves cooking him plates of pasta as part of his therapy. He’s from Sudan originally, and HIV-positive. I’ve never met anyone tackling that before. Rosa’s other home-therapy handed down from her mother – who has no idea what she applies it to – is Southern Italian women’s peasant witchcraft, including the removal of the mal’occhio – the ‘evil eye’, the malevolent gaze of others. This is something my Nonna does too. She’s never visited a newborn baby without pointing her forefinger and little finger of her right hand at it – all the while chanting Catholic prayers to Mary, mother of Christ, and the Rosary. Then she wonders why babies cry with her. Has she ever considered that her own staring eyes and those prodding fingers must seem pretty evil to these babies?

  Mal’occhio, panopticon. There’s always been a thing about the gaze of others regulating you. Nonna’s whole life has been influenced by it. When Zi Don tells Rosa his mother gets rid of the mal’occhio, he looks at me for verification.

  Rosa turns to me with avid interest. ‘Does she now? How does your nonna do it, Pina?’

  We manage to keep a few people in hushed awe or hysterics as we compare Neapolitan and Sicilian mal’occhio witchcraft technicalities – me with the prayers and signs of the cross over the oil in the water trick, Rosa with chants and salt; and then our display of the differences in how fingers ‘must’ be positioned.

  Every now and again, as we brush by or end up sitting together for a moment, Wei Lee and Zi Don ask me how I’m doing. I say ‘it’s cool’ and realise that I mean it. If I manage to get a moment alone with either of them, I find they’re really useful when I’ve got a question. Although sometimes their answers just make me want to ask more questions.

  ‘If Rosa’s married to Abdel, why does she still call herself a lesbian?’

  I’m waiting for Wei Lee to top up my bowls of corn chips and dips. She does so as she speaks matter-of-factly. ‘Rosa’s dedicated to women’s politics, had relationships with women all the time before Abdel, and then out of the blue fell in love with him.’ She glances up at me. I must still look vacant. ‘So all that she’s been and still is doesn’t automatically get erased just because she’s fallen in love with one man.’

  She dips a corn chip into the guacamole, reaches up and sticks it into my mouth as I open it to ask another question. I crunch and gulp. ‘Do her parents know? I mean, what version of her life do they know?’

  Wei Lee wipes nonchalantly at a piece of corn chip I’ve spat onto her slinky black top. ‘That she’s too feminist, that she’s embarrassing because she’s married to a black man. So they curse the day she went to Africa for a medical conference on AIDS. Of course, they’d forgive all the above if she had children. But they’re also proud of the work she does, taking care of migrant and refugee women who speak little English, get little money and are too frightened to visit white male doctors, or are too frightened of their husbands to ask for what they need.’ I keep crunching and thinking.

  Wei Lee smiles at me, takes my elbow and walks w
ith me towards the guests. ‘She’s quite well known in the ethnic communities. Or should I say, what she wants them to know is well known. Maybe that’s all they need to know, all they can relate to for now.’

  Just then Zi Don whisks me away to meet one of his close friends, who’s teaching him Spanish. Alba is passing around photos of the latest addition to her troop of godchildren. ‘Alba’s a childcare worker and loves kids. I hope she gets to have her own one day.’

  I can’t help wondering how many parents at that childcare centre would keel over in the sandpit if they knew their precious kids were in the hands of a dyke!

  There’s a lot of talk of family, children and love at this Christmas party. But not like a Christmas party at Nonna’s, where it’s all one kind of family, one kind of love, no matter if it works or not. Here the traditions and innovations meet, mingle and mesh. Wog-chicks are also dyke-chicks are also mother-chick-material.

  The afternoon’s going so fast. It’s getting dusk when I open the front door, for what seems like the hundredth time, to an Italian woman about my mum’s age and a guy who she introduces as her son Ralph.

  I forget to breathe. He gives me this great white-toothed grin from a sexy full-lipped mouth in a very tanned face. His hair is shoulder-length, jet black and wavy. Then I find myself blushing and race off, not wanting to be swept up by another bastard-boy who knows all too easily how to do the hot grin in the hot face on the hot body.

  By the time I make my way into the kitchen-lounge, Ralph’s chatting to various people, looking comfortable with everyone. For a stupid, frustrating reason, I’d made a detour to my bedroom: I went to the mirror. I wiped away that embarrassing smear of mascara under my left eye and reapplied my lipstick.