Nonna’s reactions fluctuate: wary nods of approval, resigned shrugs, unconvinced stares, uncomfortable frowns, blank blinks of the eyes when she doesn’t understand. You can almost hear her evaluation: Wei Lee’s as good as women get these days. Career-minded, not devoted to motherhood, obviously doesn’t do the cooking or cleaning either, judging by the way she lets Donato get up to fetch things for her. And look at that crumpled shirt Donato’s wearing to Christmas lunch. ‘But what can you do?’ I can hear her brain ticking, ‘this tiny woman who doesn’t even look like she could carry a pregnancy through to term is rescuing my son from a life of sin. She’s turned him back in the right direction. Now for the wedding ring and baby to finally cement things.’
Nonno’s shuffling leftover food around on his plate with his fork, listening to us but drifting away when it gets uncomfortable. I suddenly see that black-and-white photo, with the man who’s supposed to be my Nonno. But that man is vivacious, flirtatious, wide-smiling, alive.
I look at my mother. I can see the beginnings of the same erasures and scissorings that will make her mouth, her eyes and her shoulders gradually shrink into the silent, stifled, bitter Nonno when she’s older. This vision makes me panic. I don’t want that. My mum may laugh too much, may seem off the planet sometimes with her ‘natural highs’ and ‘blissing out’, but I so much prefer that kind of off the planet to my nonno’s total absence from the universe.
Nonna sees Zi Don get up again, this time to fetch some water for Wei Lee. ‘Well, I’m glad he with you. We been very scared about him. But I think bringing you here, bringing your gellafriend, hey Donato, you are telling us something?’ She raises her voice so Zi Don can hear her from the kitchen where he’s pouring a glass of iced water. She’s careful to say just enough so as not to let Leo, Stella and me know what it’s really about. ‘About maturity? About settling down to be a good husband and father.’
Zi Don comes back to the table, hands Wei Lee her glass with a heavy smile, exchanges wary glances with his sisters, and with me. ‘My life’s been settled for a long time, Ma. You didn’t want to see it.’
‘Well –’ Nonna’s hands sweep over her table, collecting breadcrumbs as she goes – ‘this is what I see as living a decent life. A gellafrienda, getting married, having children. Then your father and I have finished our jobs. Your father and I can rest in peace and hold our heads high because you have changed.’
The silence around us is so thick. Even Zi Elena seems lost in how to weave this sharp piece of wire back into the seams. Zi Rocco’s run out of one-liner rescuers. Even Stella’s Christmas elf’s cap is drooping along with her special smile for Nonna. The chooks outside have stopped their ruckus. The huge gold clock on the wall is like an overgrown bomboniera threatening to topple onto the table.
‘I haven’t changed much at all, Ma. Or as much as you wish I had. I always wanted a relationship, I always wanted children. I just happen to have found this wonderful person to share those dreams with and who knows me for everything I am.’ The irritation is frothing in his voice.
Nonna darts a look at her grandchildren. Frosty silence on her face despite the sweat on her upper lip. The dots of sweat that bubble in the dark wrinkled circles under her eyes. The room’s soaked in heat from the kitchen, heat of the food and the summer day, heat of anxiety and clenched lives around that table still weighted under piles of scraps. Half-filled glasses, smeared napkins and disarrayed cutlery announce the feast is over. I’m surprised Nonna’s let it all sit like that for so long. We must really have gotten way ahead of her schedule or she must’ve desperately wanted to be informed on where things are at with her son and hopefully future daughter-in-law. I wish we hadn’t got ahead of her schedule, for this ceasefire in the middle of the battle has revealed the real war insidiously raging all the time.
‘Well, best to leave the sins of the past behind,’ Nonna shrugs as if she’s oblivious to Zi Don’s frustration with her.
Zi Don’s look is ferocious. Nonna notices and lightens up, sort of, with a garish smile. ‘I wonder what your children will look like.’ So it goes, with talk of family resemblances, importance of family, the way family is always there for you, the way family needs to be honoured and respected.
Then she announces the visitors who are coming over to meet Donato and his fidanzata.
‘But we’re not engaged, Ma,’ Zi Don has recuperated enough calm to try to explain.
Nonna pretends not to hear as she explains the visitors to Wei Lee so that she knows she’ll be on inspection. They are Don’s godparents, aunts and uncles, and various family friends, some of whom haven’t seen Don since he left. Despite the fact that he’s been visiting Easters and Christmases, this will be the first time some have been allowed by Nonna to see him again. It’s amazing what a difference having a girlfriend can make. Wei Lee’s the proper prop for propriety, isn’t she, I want to spit out. You just want to display your redeemed reformed prodigal son to everyone, don’t you Nonna?
I’m so intent on yelling at Nonna inside my head that I almost miss Mum’s quiet earthquake. ‘I would’ve liked to invite Nathan for cake and coffee, Don. He would’ve liked to catch up with you both.’ She has only briefly glanced over at Nonna, and then sought strength in fixing her gaze on Zi Don and Wei Lee.
Nonna’s voice scrapes like cold steel, the sharp glance at Leo and me like a viper’s tongue. ‘He is not family.’ She stares at my mother.
I stare at Nonna, then turn back to her daughter. My mother turns her face away from her mother, fixes her gaze on me, anchoring herself to me.
I take those eyes and find I want to hold them, I want to keep her moored to me amid the storm as it begins to descend around us. It’s okay, Mum, I say to her silently. I’m sorry I don’t understand but I’m also sorry he’s not here. I’m sorry I wish Nat had never been part of your life but I’m also sorry you two have split up over all this.
‘Gianna, did you hear me? Non e famiglia.’ That earsplitting, heart-wrenching icy scraping again.
Nonna waits for the usual acquiescence. I don’t look at her. I’m too busy keeping my mother buoyant. But I can hear Nonna breathing heavily. She’s not so sure the submission will come. It’s not going to come, Nonna, I want to say. Mum has obeyed, self-sacrificed and done that martyr bullshit, for you and for me, but her heart will not collude and comply. I have her anchor in my heart now and I won’t let my mother drift helplessly ever again.
Nonna senses something has shifted in her daughter. Zi Elena attempts to negotiate one last peace settlement before nuclear wipe-out. ‘Mamma, Gianna, please –’
‘Gianna, look at me.’ Nonna’s voice cuts over Zi Elena’s, but it also falters. I suddenly get the feeling that Nonna knows about Nathan. My mother’s not looking at her. She takes her gaze from me with a steady smile and a slight nod, as if to say she’s okay, she’s still moored. She looks over to Leo who keeps gazing at her with that courageous adoration he’s always had. Then she looks over to Zi Don and Wei Lee with frightened confidence, then turns back to my dad with loving, resolute warmth. Dad smiles reassuringly, sadly.
‘Gianna!’ Nonna’s voice rises. It’s lost its cold control. It’s threatening to break into the hysterical frenzy that’s strategy number two to keep all of us down. If the cold won’t freeze them, turn up the heat so you fry them into obedience. ‘Gianna, what are you doing to me?’ Nonna’s turning on the waterworks, the shaking hands, the panicky wail.
I see my mother’s resolve begin to fracture under her mother’s manipulative pleas. She’s about to turn to Nonna. I wish she would look back at me. I can hold her gaze, I can hold her truths now. I feel a panicky rush inside me, like this moment is all we have left and if I don’t do something, my mum will be lost forever.
‘He is family, Nonna.’ I suddenly hear myself, voice rushed but light. ‘He’s like an uncle to me and Leo.’
Everyone turns to me, including my mother whose anchor now digs deeper into my heart, the relief and resolve
and sheer aching joy shining in her eyes as they lovingly, defiantly, lock with mine again.
I also turn to myself. This is the first time that I have ever acknowledged that Nathan is actually a big part of my life.
Nonna slams a hand onto the table, panic rising in her voice. ‘No, no, no! O Dio, no! I don’t want this in my family. Not on Christmas Day. My Christmas Day!’
Zi Elena places a hand on Nonna’s shoulder but it’s shaken off vehemently. My zia pleads to her sister. ‘Gianna, please, just let Mum have her Christmas Day.’
My mother sips some wine in the silence that follows, but her fingers grip her glass to the point that I fear it’s going to shatter. She speaks as she lowers her glass, her voice as passionate, alive and luminous as the blood-red wine. ‘There are other loved ones who never get considered in Mum’s official Christmas.’ She stares at Nonna, steadies her glass slowly on the table. I can see the marks from her sweaty fingers on its sides. ‘Isn’t that so?’
There’s something boiling in my mother’s eyes, an anger left simmering for too long, a lava-like bitterness spilling over the volcanic mountainside. She turns to her father, slumped miserably into his chair. He’s looking down to the lifeless hands folded in his lap as he tries to stay out of the storm. My mother cracks the air with lightning.
‘Who would you like to see for one year, for just one year, at Christmas, Papa? Who?’ She’s relentless now, leaning forward over the table to him. ‘Who do you think about every Christmas, every Easter, every birthday, every day of the year?’
Nonna gasps and clutches her throat. Zi Rocco’s shocked and frantically stares at his wife, imploring her to rescue everyone. Stella’s getting teary with fear and confusion while Leo tries to get Nonno to look at him.
Zi Elena’s alarmed. ‘Gianna, please don’t go there.’
Nonno’s waxy face melts in the lava, the red eyes bubble over with salty tears, the mouth frothing with salty spittle. ‘No, Gianna,’ he whispers, his head shaky, the fingers clutching into his shirt as if to keep his heart from splitting apart. ‘I have been punished enough. Your mother deserves better now. Please.’
Nonna’s fingers are still digging into her throat, but she can’t hold back the scorching avalanche. ‘Stop! Stop! What are you trying to do? In front of the children. In front of your future sister-in-law.’
My mother turns to me, her fury replaced with grief. ‘I think they know more about this family than you want to know.’
Nonna screams and pushes her chair back. She sits with her legs sprawled apart as if bracing herself, slamming her fists on the table then twisting them in her apron, her wrinkled throbbing throat lined with red finger-marks. ‘What about me? What do I think about, hey Gianna? I’ve tried so hard to be a good mother, a good wife. Don’t you think I know what I married into?’
She weeps now, rocking back and forth, her hands wringing her apron. Zi Elena stands and tries to calm her but Nonna shrugs her off. Her finger points unsteadily to Nonno, who’s looking down again while Dad tries to take his hand.
‘I came to this country, promised to him by my father, prepared to give my life to him, through him to have my life at last. And I find him with her, a German woman, a blonde puttana, an enemy who I would have shot if I had met her during the war. But what choice did I have, huh? I could not go back, I would’ve dishonoured my family. I had no home there any more. Any home I would ever have would have to be what I could make out here. With him.’ She jabs her finger in the air, over and over, at Nonno. ‘I could not suddenly get on a bus like you did, Giuseppina, and start somewhere else. No money, no English, a woman alone, a dishonour whatever I did. So I stayed, and I put up with the gossip and the humiliation.’
Her rocking slows. Zi Elena strokes her shoulder and arm. Nonna begins to smooth out her apron, a bitter resigned smile smearing her tear-stained face. ‘I have worked hard to make this family and my husband’s name respectable, so I could get some respect!’
Suddenly I want to hug her. I hurt for her.
Nonna buries her face in her apron and rocks back and forth, weeping like the young girl she once was. Her right fist beats at her heart. She has her own heart of scars and scabs she’s spent her life plastering over, only to find the plaster of respectability crumbling and the stitches of regulation bursting as her children grew up to live their own cracked-wall realities.
Nonno slumps further, burrowing into the chair, holding his head in his hands. ‘It’s a long time ago. She, she dead now.’ His voice is a whimper of grief and love. Such pain in them both, these two old people.
I stand up and go to Nonna, placing a hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t shrug it off, but her rocking continues. Leo and Stella have gone over to Nonno, curled their arms into his and are trying to lift him, straighten him in the chair.
‘But her son? Your son, Papa?’ my mother persists, even as her hand rests on her mother’s arm. Dad looks at her, his eyes asking her to stop now.
And it seeps into me, up my spine: I have another uncle out there somewhere.
Nonno doesn’t look up but in a defeated voice says, ‘Elena, make everyone stop.’
Zi Elena’s eyes are filling with a rare fury. ‘Why me all the time? Who said I’m forever to be the peacemaker? Do you all know how exhausting it gets trying to understand you all, keep all your secrets, so I can keep you all together? Well, looks like I can’t do it any more.’
Nonna holds on to Zi Elena, and weeps quietly between imploring whimpers. ‘I allowed him to send them money. I did the decent thing, didn’t I? But no, I wouldn’t have him here to remind me. It is enough, isn’t it, what I had to cover up, the work I had to do to keep him from destroying his children’s chances at good marriages and a good name in this community. But what did I do it for?’ She screams out again to the ceiling. ‘O Dio, what for? What did I have to know about my own children? And now my grandchildren! She disappearing on a bus in the middle of the night after some boy – in her house. Ah, Maria Vergine, Mamma di Dio!’
So, word’s got around, I realise with a thud. Of course it would. The Italian gossip grapevine at school, probably Scott’s wog-boy mates, grandkids telling parents telling grandparents. I want to walk away from the table but Nonna won’t stop. As if it’s all unleashed, finally, today.
She whirls around to my mother and Zi Don, her hands gesturing out to Stella, Leo and me. ‘At least set an example for them! We failed you, your father and I? Is that what you think? But we were cursed, and have been cursed since then with what has become of you, Gianna and Donato. But save the children at least. Can you do that?’
Zi Don and Wei Lee have stayed seated, silent, their eyes sadly moving between the nonnis. My mum’s wiping her eyes. She speaks softly. ‘What example should we set for them, Ma? How to keep up illusions? How to use silence as protection even as it destroys you?’
The doorbell rings.
23
‘Dirty washing should stay in the family’
NONNA’S ROCKING STOPS.
Voices of rellies call from the front door.
The nonni and their three children prepare the tactics of a well-known silent strategy. An automatic hushing of the family shame when it’s time to smile for the visitors. Nonna wipes her sweaty forehead with the apron, and her face rises from it, tearless and set, a smile freezing back into place. ‘Okay, basta. We have guests. Please, behave yourselves. Facciamo una bella figura. I panni sporchi romanini nella famiglia. You know this: dirty washing stays in the family. Elena, open the door.’ The wetness of hysteria and hurt has gone. She’s dry again, arid in her resolve and resentment.
Funny how we put on our masks so swiftly, adjust, take up the charade. I can understand why some people never want to drop it. It’s safe – never mind the blinding pain of that safety.
The afternoon is round after round of rellies. Nonna carries us along with meaningless conversation. A few visitors have incisive questions and comments: ‘Giuseppina, where did you get to by you
rself? You had your nonna so worried. My grandson said it was because of your boyfriend. Ah, you too young to have boyfriend, especially kangaroni one. They no good. They no understand family. Leonardo, how are you? My son told me you had a fight with other boys. How many ribs you broke? You need to be tough, be a man, like your father, big and strong. No act sissy poofter or you always get whacked.’ But one thing we’ve learned from Nonna’s acting classes is how to politely sidestep with a smile and shrug.
We’re also saved somewhat by the enormous interest in my uncle, of course, and Wei Lee, who they seem to see as a strange creature, with a name way too hard to pronounce. I can guess what they’re thinking: well, what do you expect? After what he did years ago, and no matter how rich he is now, no good Italian girl would come close to him. Who knows what diseases he could be carrying.
Wei Lee smiles and chats, winning over a few set mouths with her own warmth and questions. You can almost hear their stereotypes clinging to crumbling cliff-edges. No, she doesn’t stink of curry. No, she doesn’t eat cat and dog meat, she eats no meat at all. No, her parents didn’t smuggle gold into Australia from Vietnam. In fact, her parents share very similar histories to their own, of war, migration, alienation, hard work.
I watch from a distance. I know these rellies – I know most of them perform their own charades, have their own secrets and masks. Here we are today, playing happy families. But some of the older ones don’t try any more. Those whose children and grandchildren don’t wait for them to die before they let their real lives slip out.
There’s Zi Caterina, whose daughter is living down the road from her ex, and is still good friends with him.
Love You Two Page 23