‘Do you want to ask something?’ Zi Don asks me.
‘I don’t know. More like too many answers.’ A pause. ‘John will die soon.’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he –’ and then I want to kick myself.
‘How did he get HIV?’
‘No, it doesn’t matter. Dumb question. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s right, Pina. It doesn’t matter. But I’ll tell you something.’ Zi Don strokes my hair, his voice almost a whisper, afraid that if he allows it to get too loud, he won’t be able to hold back the flow of all that pain. ‘Ten years ago, when John was seventeen, he was sitting in the mosque with his family, listening to his Amman. He told his people that homosexuality was a sin and led to eternal damnation, that AIDS was punishment from God. Just when John was wanting to tell his parents, and was trying to feel good about being gay … So he left the mosque that day thinking he was eternally damned, and he decided it was no use trying to make a life for himself. He did things, sexually, that he knew were dangerous. But what’s danger when you want to die physically because you believe you’re dead – or damned? He didn’t know there were Muslim leaders out there trying to teach people differently. And back then there weren’t support groups for gay men from Muslim backgrounds.
‘It was only when he got sick, found out he was HIV-positive and was put in touch with others that he decided he wanted to live. Then later he met Mick, who adored him, and so they created a life. Knowing that it would end one day, they lived it fully.’
Seventeen. I’ll be seventeen soon. What must that isolation have felt like? To have got to a point where all you’ve grown up with – the security blanket of family, community, religion – is suddenly stripped away from you. You’re left naked, alone, shivering. And you don’t understand why what feels so natural and beautiful inside seems such a travesty to everyone else.
Is that what my mum feels?
I’ve also had a taste of feeling lost. I’ve also had a taste of doing sex recklessly, hoping I could defiantly lose myself in it. I’ve had a taste of losing myself miserably in it. That taste has been enough to shake me up for the rest of my life. Yet, I’m still so loved, still so sheltered. Even now I’m curled up in the security blanket arms of an uncle who I know will never abandon me. My mum wraps herself up in the love of my dad and Nat, Leo and … yeah, maybe me again one day … once I do a little more processing.
John lost that exquisite feeling of knowing there’ll always be someone there for you, no matter what. He had to go out there alone, find shelter and love again. Somewhere along the way, traversing treacherous jungle and scorching desert, he picked up a travelling companion that was going to destroy him physically but test his strengthening spirit. I’m glad he found love with Mick.
Zi Don sighs. ‘So, Pina bella, do you still want to go visiting tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’ No matter the pain, no matter how brutal. I need these journeys into the worlds that have always been there just around the corner so I can understand my world. I need to grow up.
I manage to sleep for short bursts that night and twice I awake as if drowning. John’s faces – the one in the chair, the one on the tightrope, the one on the ID – swim around in the darkness.
The second time I wake, I reach for my mother’s book, find a pen in my bag on the floor and talk to my mother in the only way I’m able to right now, leaving my words on her page.
Dear Mum
I want to be able to love awesomely like Mick loves John, like Wei Lee loves Zi Don, like you love Dad and him too, Nat. Like I want so much to be loved one day. To be able to love my children the way you love us, Mum. Knowing you would never abandon us. I’ve realised how easy it is to miss out on that love, and what it costs some people to be able to love.
I see a lot now, Mum, and it hurts to see. I think it always will. But it sort of hurts good. Blindness seems comfortable and easy but now I know it hurts you bad.
I’m not going to abandon you Mum. I just haven’t figured out how to deal with everything.
I don’t hate you but I’m not sure how I’m going to love you.
It’s only then that I lie down again and can fall asleep.
16
Someone else’s nonno
WE’RE HAVING BRUNCH while Wei Lee packs some goodies for another visit later this afternoon. ‘Dennis is a dear old friend of Don’s. And you know what? He was a lawyer and a criminal at the same time.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask as I finish my coffee.
She laughs. ‘You see, he was gay when some people – and the law – still believed being gay meant you were a sick criminal. He gave Don his first job here in Melbourne, knowing that Don had his own so-called criminal record.’ She shakes her head. ‘At sixty years of age he came out. He’s eighty now, and not very well at all. Brain seizures.’
Her mouth is set and serene, but the swift and edgy movements of wrapping, packing and the fridge door slamming belie her calm.
I figure I’m in for another heartache of a day as my eyes get wrenched open even further. ‘I wrote in my mum’s book last night,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’
Zi Don smiles mysteriously. ‘Gianna rang this morning while you were still asleep. She said she woke up in the middle of the night having a nightmare about you. Apparently you were on a tightrope, not knowing how to move forward. She wanted to know if you were okay.’
‘I think Mum’s been on a tightrope all her life,’ I say quietly, staring into my empty coffee cup, thinking over that strega magic coincidence. ‘I just hate being pushed onto it ’cos of her. But I’m there now so …’
Zi Don nods. ‘There’s lots of us. We set off from a home where we felt homeless and go looking for a new one.’ His arms come up and sweep the air as if balancing.
‘You’ve done that for sure.’
Zi Don looks troubled. ‘Yeah, but I was also part of your mother’s prison, and Zi Elena’s, when we were growing up, Pina. And that I feel bad about. I could see them picking up after me, cooking for me, cleaning my room, washing and ironing my clothes, sitting at home being good Italian girls. Because I was a boy, I’d automatically been handed down privileges, and it’s so hard to give those up. Then I learned that with the privileges came prohibitions. Make sure you live out your parents’ dreams of a big house and lots of children, so they can keep their heads high and noses clean in the Italian community.’
He sighs and shakes his head. ‘What a shit. But you know, despite how much I’d been a part of your mother’s oppression, she was there for me when things got tough. So was Elena. They kept my secrets.
‘Later when your mum was working out what was happening to her, feeling like her heart was splitting over your dad and Nat, she confided in me. After all these years, I was finally there for her. When I got arrested and left Adelaide, she was there for me, fighting your nonni for me in a way she couldn’t fight for herself. When I begged your mum to get you all over to Melbourne so she could be free, she decided she’d stay behind. She’d shut up about her life so that the nonni could believe their daughters would care for them in their old age, and be the children they could hold up to the Italian community as having done the right thing. The nonni needed their girls to prove their capability as parents and justify the years of war, poverty, and migration and hardship in this country.’ Zi Don smiles but his hand’s rubbing his forehead in a way I’ve come to know. Wei Lee places a basket of goodies next to us, gently kissing that hairy hand on that furrowed forehead.
‘What does Zi Elena think of you and Mum?’
‘She couldn’t understand us ’cos she wanted what the nonni wanted for her anyway. But she loved us and stood by us. She could be visible and public with her life and her love ’cos she did it the “right” way. At least not being straight is known even by those who despise it. Gianna was the one who felt invisible. Like the way white invaders made themselves feel better by pretending there were no people already in this country, calling it
terra nullius. Yet she was there. People like her are there. They’re just not mapped or dotted with an “X marks the spot”.’
Zi Don’s hand now rests momentarily on his heart. Then his bear hug takes me in. ‘Your mother needs a Narnia. But she’s growing her freedom in the cracks of the wardrobe.’ He swings the basket over his hairy arm and we stroll out of the kitchen. ‘Many people do that before they go all the way through. Like Dennis did. Ready, Pina?’
We head out to the outer suburbs. Down long straight roads until we’re finally in a place called Glen Waverley, with the Dandenong Ranges a hazy blue-grey in the distance.
Dennis’s house is spacious, bright, beautiful.
But not as beautiful as the guy who greets us at the door. He’s about my height, around eighteen. He has short, blond-tipped hair and wears surfie shorts and a Mambo t-shirt. His name’s Andrew. I warm to him immediately. There’s actually nothing amazing about him. But he’s got this shy open smile, a smile that has no screen in front of it. He has a way of walking us into the house that has no strut or stuffiness. He’s not trying to hold himself together, he’s not trying to be something, he just is, and I like that. You don’t see that absence of staging in many guys my age.
He’s sort of shy with me as he asks if I’d like a drink, before leading us out into the backyard where his grandpa Dennis is sitting. It looks like he’s actually checking me out now and again, and I feel a rare kind of glow and confidence as I take the orange juice from him.
Two cute guys in almost as many days who seem to think I’m okay-looking. I do a reality check: I’m over-weight and zitty. I’ve almost forgotten those facts these last few days. Anyway, maybe Andrew’s just curious about me and my relationship with my uncle, since I’m a kind of insider. I mean, how many of his mates at school know he’s got a gay grandfather? About as many as mine know I have a bisexual uncle, and a mother in love with two men? Look at what schoolboy heroes did to Leo. Look at Rosie and the way she hates Laura because her mum’s a lesbian, even though we were primary school Barbie doll lovers together while our perfect mums took turns to supervise our sleepovers!
Much of the visit with Dennis is experienced through this kind of half-conscious state. I’m constantly alert to where Andrew is and what he’s doing. I’m incredulous at my confident zinging with all this infatuation rush stuff. I find myself checking out his arms, the way the t-shirt moves over his chest, the flicks of blonde-tipped hair at his forehead. I’m such a loser – even his scuffed sneakers are cute!
Dennis has the attractive kind of old man’s face that makes you want to iron out the wrinkles, wipe off the age spots, add a few more tufts of hair, straighten his back and slow the agitated jerks of his arms, legs and neck. Why? Because you know you’d find he was once a very handsome man. It takes me a while to figure out that he once looked like Andrew. His voice is gravelly but gentle, his words chosen carefully. If that speech wasn’t broken up by jerks and jutting pauses, I could see him striding about a courtroom, magnificently defending his clients.
Every now and again, Dennis lets you know just how clued in he is. His gaze fixes on me with what once must’ve been a devastatingly irresistible smile.
‘I’ve heard so much about you, young lady. Lovely to meet you. Have you met my grandson?’
I nod.
‘Yes, Grandpa,’ Andrew says.
‘My grandson is hoping to get in to law school and follow in my footsteps, aren’t you, Andrew?’
That’s when I suddenly feel so stupid. It dawns on me, well, actually ‘dawn’ isn’t the right word here. It actually comes crashing down on me that Andrew might be gay. And here I am about to fall heavily again.
Just as I’m trying to wipe off any subtle interest messing up my face, Dennis says, ‘Andrew, why don’t you show Pina around? There must be a DVD or a computer game much more interesting than sitting here with me.’
Andrew’s hesitating. ‘But what if you need anything, Grandpa?’
I’m embarrassed. You don’t have to be gay not to be interested in me, Andrew. But now I hope you are gay because I’m feeling that familiar ugliness descend on me again. At least let me hear an excuse for why you’re not interested. Please, Andrew, please be gay so for a little while longer, at least before I get back to Adelaide and ferals like Scott, I can forget how feral I am.
‘Oh, I have my dear friends here. Off you go.’ Dennis’s right arm jerks up and around as if shooing flies away.
Andrew gets up, rubbing his hands on his shorts, and I follow him into what looks like his study next to his bedroom. There’s an awkward silence between us.
‘Would you like to watch a DVD or check your emails or Facebook or something?’
‘Not emails or Facebook,’ I say nervously. I’m not ready to re-enter the social orbit yet. I take a deep breath, sit down in the nearest chair and add, ‘Look, you don’t have to take care of me if you’d rather be doing something else. I’m happy to stay here and watch a DVD by myself, or read a book.’
Andrew’s eyes widen in anxiety as he sits on the carpet a little away from me. ‘Oh no, I hope I didn’t sound off or anything. I’m just a bit shy, that’s all. And my grandpa seems to be starting this matchmaking thing with me lately.’
I’m both relieved and awkward. I don’t mind his grandfather trying the matchmaking between us but I’ll die if Andrew figures that out! ‘My nonna does that all the time.’
Andrew laughs with relief now. ‘Yeah? So what would she think of me?’
‘Well, you’re an Aussie, that’s strike one. And you’re from bad blood with your grandpa being gay. Strike two. And anyway, you might be gay …’
‘Okay, strike one, I’m an Aussie. And, yeah, I’m from a bad family in some people’s eyes. And even though I don’t think it’s a strike, I’m not gay.’
Relief! And then I’m scared it’s written all over my face so I bluster around for something to say. ‘Are you living here? Your bedroom and this room look pretty lived in.’ Loser again! Now he knows I checked out his bedroom.
‘Yeah, my parents live in Swan Hill. It’s a small town near the border of New South Wales. I’m down here to take care of Grandpa and if I get in to law school, I’m moving in.’
‘Are your parents okay with Dennis?’
‘Yeah. My mum’s his daughter. They used to say “illegitimate daughter”, I think, in those days of “unmarried mothers”. Way before our time, hey?’
I smile but I have a sinking feeling that if I was pregnant, my nonni would’ve caught the first time-travel one-way flight back to that time of figuras and vergognas over me as an unmarried mother!
Andrew’s relaxing a little more now. ‘I think she was the product of my grandpa’s one and only hetero fling. She wasn’t too cool about it while I was a kid. You know, Swan Hill folks all knew that Grandpa was in the city and in and out of psych hospitals, getting “cured”.’
‘Cured?’
‘It sounds like weird science fiction now, the cruel stuff they did. Aversion therapy. Electro-shock therapy. Imagine doctors injecting you with poisons to make you throw up when they flash a photo of a good-looking man on a screen! Or passing electric volts through you when that picture went up. Or cutting out the bits of your brain that supposedly made you gay. All in the name of science.’
So there was much more to Dennis’s story. I didn’t know what he’d suffered. Andrew’s getting worked up and it’s making him forget about being shy. I want to soothe him, distract him.
‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry. It sounds like some Hammer Horror movie.’ Now he’ll think I’m a nerd. If I’d said something like that to a guy like Scott, I’d get a sneer and a condescending pat on my head.
But Andrew smiles. He even knows what I’m talking about. ‘Yeah, one of those 1960s Christopher Lee, Vincent Price flicks! Wish it was that unreal. Now he’s got the shakes, and his brain does these little glitches. He’s also got stomach cancer, probably from the poison crap they got him to swallow so he
’d throw up.’
‘How would you handle having all that happen to you? Wouldn’t you just get all bitter and twisted?’
Andrew shrugs. ‘Sometimes I hear him cry at night. Like he’s reliving something. Sometimes when he used to go back to Swan Hill and see folks staring at him he’d get angry. Or when he’d hear that kids at school had been hassling me ’cos their grandparents had told them about my insane perverted grandpa. But he was a good lawyer, and I think he put his anger into stopping injustices happening to others. I can’t begin to figure what it must’ve been like trying to come out back then. He told me how Oscar Wilde called it “the love that dare not speak its name”.’
He sighs, crosses his legs at the ankles and hugs his knees. Meanwhile, I’m thinking I didn’t know straight guys who could quote Oscar Wilde actually existed. He looks at me. ‘Do your friends at school know about your uncle?’
‘No way. But then I didn’t know about my uncle till I got here.’
‘He’s real cool. So’s Wei Lee.’
‘Yeah, I think so. One of my best friends at school has a lesbian mum.’
‘That must be hell. Not having a lesbian mum but …’
I laugh. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘I know that some guys think I must be gay, that “it’s in my genes” sort of thing. Or ’cos I like reading and I’m not into the footy or anything much like that.’
‘So what if you were gay? Shouldn’t matter,’ I say coolly, while in my head I’m on my knees saying thanks to the heavens for making Andrew straight.
We talk about school and what they don’t teach you, about friends and what you can’t tell them, about plans for the future and how life kind of springs up on you anyway. Soon an hour’s passed, we’re still chatting and there’s been no need for a DVD. Then out of the blue comes the question. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
I’ve almost been lulled into thinking Andrew has no interest in me apart from someone to share family deviations with. ‘Umm, no. Well, I did till about a week ago. But that ended in disaster.’
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