Marly and the Goat

by Lucia Masciullo

  ‘Oi, youse!’ hollered one of the boys. He had blue hair, and safety pins in his ears. ‘Bringing your freeloading families into our country to steal our jobs! Why don’t you go home? Go back to where you belong!’

  Marly didn’t understand. She and Grandpa were going home.

  ‘Silly cowboys,’ muttered Grandpa as the car pulled away. ‘Who needs to play their music so loudly, anyway?’

  ‘Come on, let’s get Agnes home,’ Marly said.

  ‘Actually, I thought we could take Agnes to the park. She’s eaten most of the grass on the front garden already!’ Grandpa said.

  ‘Okay, Grandpa,’ Marly sighed. She didn’t want to go to the park, but she didn’t want to leave Agnes, either. Marly didn’t know what was wrong, but those boys in the car had filled her stomach with dread. She didn’t know how to explain that to Grandpa.

  And so they carried on walking, past their house. Marly was relieved to see that there was no one up or down the street.

  ‘Would you like to hold Agnes’s leash for a bit?’ Grandpa asked.

  ‘Sure,’ replied Marly, taking the rope from Grandpa. She was surprised how easy it was to walk a goat. Agnes stopped at times to eat things hanging over people’s fences, but Grandpa gently pulled her away.

  ‘That’s how to annoy the neighbours,’ he said. ‘They like to look at flowers, Agnes, not eat them.’

  When they arrived at the park, Grandpa took Agnes’s leash from Marly, and sat on a bench to get his breath back. Marly ran towards the high tunnel slide. As she whizzed down it, she heard someone holler, ‘Oh no! That goat’s got into the flowers!’

  Marly jumped up from the bottom of the slide and saw Grandpa pull at Agnes’s leash, but the damage had already been done. Agnes had trampled the plants and chewed the flowers.

  ‘That’s damage to public property!’ yelled an angry mum with a grey pram. ‘I could have you arrested!’ Her baby in the pram started crying because she was shouting. ‘Now look what you made me do!’ she accused Grandpa.

  Grandpa didn’t understand a word the lady said, and so he just smiled at her, which only made her even more furious.

  ‘I know you!’ she suddenly hollered. ‘You’re the ones who keep that goat in their front yard! Oh yes – you live down Nolene Fryer’s street. She’s been talking about calling the council on you. Someone will come and take that goat away soon. You mark my words.’

  Marly ran towards Grandpa, her heart beating faster. She wondered if this Nolene woman was the same Nolene as Kane’s aunt. Go figure, Marly thought. But why did she have it in for Agnes? Marly was feeling really worried now.

  ‘Let’s go home now, Grandpa.’

  As they walked out of the park and away from the lady, Grandpa wanted to know what the lady had said.

  ‘I think we’d better watch Agnes, Grandpa,’ Marly said. ‘She said someone might come and take her away.’

  ‘Wah!’ exclaimed Grandpa. ‘Who would do that? Why has a little goat caused such anger?’

  ‘I don’t know, Grandpa,’ Marly said, but as she walked past another trampled flowerbed, she could see why people were so angry. Agnes really did ruin a lot of things.

  When Grandpa and Marly arrived home, they took Agnes to the backyard and tied her to the lemon tree.

  ‘Sorry, sweet Agnes,’ Grandpa said. ‘But we can’t have you in the front yard for a little while. People are getting angry.’

  Marly followed Grandpa inside the house, but snuck back out with two apples from Grandma’s shrine. Marly knew Grandpa could not let Agnes run loose in the backyard, because she’d dig up his vegetables, but she felt sorry that Agnes had to be tied up.

  ‘You need to stop eating everything, Agnes,’ she told the goat.

  Agnes looked up at her, chomping on an apple core. Marly patted Agnes on the head, and went back inside to join Grandpa.

  Grandpa was sitting on the sofa watching David Attenborough’s ‘Life on Earth’. Marly slumped down next to him. She tried to watch TV and forget about everything that happened today, but she had a knot in her stomach that was making her feel sick.

  BANG BANG!

  Marly startled as somebody knocked, loud and hard, on their front door.

  ‘Go see who it is, Marly,’ Grandpa told her.

  Marly hated that she always had to answer the door because she was the only one in the house who could speak English while her dad was at work.

  BANG BANG! went the door again. Marly had a horrible feeling about this visitor already.

  She opened the heavy wooden door, but left the metal flyscreen door locked, just as her parents had taught her.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, peering into the bright outside.

  Through the mesh of the flyscreen, Marly could see a woman in a green velour tracksuit with enormous hair that was parted in the middle and permed like a cloud of fairy floss. Her fringe flicked out on either side of her face, like an open pair of curtains. She wore green eyeshadow from the top of her eyelids up to the bottom of her eyebrows, and blush the colour of a Barbie-doll box. As Marly looked at her, she realised it was the lady from the house of gnomes.

  ‘I’m from across the street,’ the woman said in a nasally voice, which made her sound like she’d had a cold for weeks. ‘And your goat is making a blasted racket! Also, keep that animal away from my plants!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marly apologised. ‘We didn’t think Agnes was so loud you could hear her from across the street. Sometimes we can’t even hear her. And she only eats the plants hanging over your fence onto the path.’

  Somehow, this seemed to make the angry woman even angrier. ‘This is trespass!’ she yelled. ‘Your goat is trespassing on my property and I demand to speak to an adult!’

  ‘Who is it?’ Grandpa asked Marly in Cantonese, coming out of the lounge and standing behind her.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ yelled the woman, seeing Grandpa. ‘Filthy old man with the goat! First youse fill the house with those noisy kids and endless relatives, and now you’re bringing in even more family members to make nuisances of themselves!’

  Marly knew that she was talking about the months when her cousins and aunty and uncle lived with her. She couldn’t understand why this woman was so angry. But she was making Marly angry, too – how dare she call her grandpa filthy!

  Now the woman was banging on the fly-screen door. Marly backed away.

  ‘This is the last straw! Tell your grandpa to get rid of the goat or I’m calling the council.’

  Marly was starting to feel scared. She mumbled, ‘I’ll let my grandpa know,’ before closing the wooden front door to stop the lady’s screeching.

  As she followed Grandpa back down the hall, Marly thought about what the woman had said about calling the council, and realised that this lady must have been the Nolene the lady in the park mentioned, and Kane’s aunt . . .

  ‘It’s about Agnes, isn’t it?’ sighed Grandpa.

  Marly nodded.

  ‘Where does the lady live?’

  Marly pointed across the street.

  ‘But she can’t even hear across the road! No idea why such the fuss,’ said Grandpa.

  A lot had happened today, and Marly felt anxious. She wondered what Yousra would make of all this. Yousra could find the funny side to most things, and Marly really wished she were here to make her laugh now. She was sitting on the stairs chewing her lip when her dad walked through the front door.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked Marly. ‘You look upset.’

  Marly didn’t know where to begin, but once she started speaking, it all came out. She told him about Nolene, about the woman in the park, and the car full of boys.

  They sat in silence for a while, and Marly looked at her dad. His face had crinkled into a deep frown.

  ‘Dad, what’s a freeloader?’ Marly asked.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ her dad asked.

  ‘Those boys who drove by yelled it at us.’

  Marly’s dad shook his head and sighed. ‘
A freeloader is someone who doesn’t work, but lives from other people’s hard work. Does that sound like us?’

  Marly thought about how Grandpa would be up at the break of dawn working in the garden, and Grandma would be cooking. They were there so Marly’s mum could work even longer hours sewing in their garage, and they took care of Marly. It seemed unfair that her family, who were so hardworking, were seen as lazy by people who didn’t know them.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But they also told us to stop stealing their jobs,’ Marly added.

  ‘Those boys are idiots. Try not to worry, Marly,’ her dad said.

  ‘But why did they say that?’ Marly insisted. She wanted to know why people were so angry with her family all the time.

  ‘Remember my friend, Peter, from work?’

  Marly nodded. She’d liked Peter. He’d given her a stick of Hubba Bubba when her parents weren’t watching.

  ‘Well let me tell you what he told me,’ her dad continued. ‘He said that quite a few of the factories here in Sunshine have closed down. And there are no new jobs for the people who used to work in them. Because of that, young people who’ve left school early find it very hard to get work. Since they have a lot of spare time on their hands and nothing to do, they drive around the neighbourhood and get angry. When people are poor and feel powerless and angry, they like to find someone to blame. And, because we look different, they blame us. It’s bad news, Marly, and I’m sorry to say that there’s nothing we can do about it. You and Grandpa just ignore them, okay?’

  Marly thought about what her dad said. She nodded, but she didn’t know if she could ignore them. Not when they were shouting at her, anyway. Marly had always known that she was a little different, being the only Asian girl in her class, but she had no idea that adults could feel this way, too.

  A FEW days later, Marly noticed a folded piece of paper sticking out of the mail box when she got home from school. She unfolded it. It was a collage, with pictures of roast legs of lamb from the Safeway weekly ad. Underneath the pictures was scrawled a note: ‘We’re coming for you, Lambchops.’

  Grandma looked over Marly’s shoulder. ‘What does it say?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s go find Mum,’ Marly said, rushing around the back of the house to the garage where she knew her mum would be sewing.

  ‘Look, Mum! Look what somebody put in our mailbox,’ Marly said, and read the note to her. Grandma and Grandpa walked through the garage door as she translated the words.

  Marly saw her grandpa’s face crumple with concern.

  ‘We’ve never wanted to cause trouble in the neighbourhood,’ her mum said anxiously, looking at the lamb meat pictures. ‘What on earth should we do?’

  Her mum laid a hand on her tummy. She’d been doing that a lot lately, Marly thought. She could see the bump of the baby pushing against her mum’s dress.

  ‘When the new baby comes, we’ll roast that goat in celebration!’ said Grandma.

  Marly looked at her in horror.

  ‘What?’ asked Grandma. ‘You all don’t eat beef? Pork?’

  ‘But Agnes is a pet!’ protested Marly.

  ‘Back in Vietnam in our village, there was no such thing as pets,’ muttered Grandma. ‘And then we come here, and everything changes all of a sudden. You’d think that goat was a member of the family!’

  ‘We’ll discuss this with your dad when he gets home from work,’ Marly’s mum said to Marly. ‘But for now, make sure Agnes is tied up and kept around the back.’

  Marly’s dad had decided that the letter must be a stupid joke, and so Marly and her family tried to forget it. It had been two days since Marly had found the note, and there had been no new ones, but Marly still felt nervous when she took Agnes for a walk with Grandpa.

  At night in bed, scary scenes played out in Marly’s head where Agnes went missing, and Marly would creep downstairs in the dark to check on her through the kitchen window. Agnes was always fine, but Marly still worried. She wished she could have shared what was happening with Yousra. She was missing her now more than ever.

  It was raining this afternoon, and Marly was sitting in the lounge watching ‘Play School’ with Grandpa. She hadn’t watched it since she was little, but Grandpa seemed to be enjoying it. Suddenly, a loud whack came from behind the shower curtain, and then the tinkle of glass breaking.

  ‘Wah! What was that?’ Grandpa sat up, and Marly ran to her grandparents’ ‘room’ behind the curtain. She saw rain coming in through the window, and realised that all the glass was gone. There was a rock the size of a tennis ball on Grandma and Grandpa’s bed. Someone must have thrown it through their window!

  ‘Are you hurt, child?’ Grandpa asked as he stood next to her. Marly shook her head, but she was feeling shocked. Things were getting really scary now.

  Grandma came running from the kitchen. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ she kept saying, over and over, while Grandpa got the broom and swept up the glass from the bed and floor.

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ he warned Marly. ‘You don’t want to cut your feet.’

  Marly picked up the rock from the bed, and saw a piece of paper attached to it with an elastic band. She pulled out the paper and read the words: FIT IN OR BUGGER OFF.

  Marly turned and found her mum behind her. Marly tucked into her side and wrapped her arms around her.

  ‘Aiyoh!’ hollered Grandma. ‘What are you doing here, Diep? You’ll slip on the glass and fall over and hurt the baby! Go sit down!’

  Marly’s mum untangled herself from Marly and sat on the couch with a sigh. It’s all about the baby now, as always, thought Marly angrily.

  ‘This is getting serious,’ said Marly’s mum. ‘That goat is just an excuse for them to try and get rid of us.’

  ‘What are we going to do, Mum?’ asked Marly. She was feeling afraid.

  ‘Marly, help your grandpa move the shower curtain over the window. That will stop the rain coming in and will have to do for now until your father gets home,’ her mum said.

  Marly did as she was told. She kept looking out the window as Grandpa tied the shower curtain to the curtain rails, wondering who had done this. It had seemed to be okay when it was just the three of them, Marly thought, with her dad always at work and her mother hidden away sewing in the garage. But whenever new members of her family arrived from Vietnam, the neighbours seemed angrier.

  Marly’s dad had arranged for the window to be fixed and for metal shutters to be put on all the windows, too, just in case someone else decided to throw rocks at their house. The shutters made the house dark, so a light always had to be on, even in the middle of the day. But it made Marly feel a little bit safer.

  Two weeks later, Marly found an official-looking letter in the mail box. It looked like an electricity bill.

  ‘Open it, Marly, and tell us what it says,’ her mother said. ‘It must be a mistake. I paid the last bill on time.’

  It wasn’t a bill, but a letter from Sunshine City Council. It said that a neighbour had complained about their noisy pets.

  ‘Please remedy this situation,’ Marly read slowly. ‘Or further action may be taken.’

  Marly’s dad walked through the kitchen door after doing an early shift at the factory.

  ‘What’s going on? Not another note?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a letter from the council, Dad. But I don’t know what it means,’ Marly said, passing the letter to him.

  ‘Now, let me see. To remedy means to fix,’ explained Marly’s father. ‘And further action means that they might take us to court.’

  Marly understood her dad’s explanation, but she wasn’t sure she understood what they needed to do about the letter. What were they supposed to fix? Apart from the window, nothing was broken, as far as Marly knew.

  ‘Marly, you are a big girl,’ her dad said. ‘When I am at work tomorrow, could you ring the phone number on this letter and ask how they would like us to fix this situation?’

  Marly had hoped her dad would know what to do,
and she really didn’t want to call the council. She hated doing these adult jobs. It wasn’t fair!

  ‘Aww, Dad, can’t you do it?’

  ‘I’ll be at the factory,’ he told her. ‘Besides, you are the smartest girl I know.’

  Marly dreaded making these sorts of phone calls – whether it was calling the electricity company because her mum felt the bill was wrong, or calling the doctor to confirm an appointment. The people on the other end could always tell that she was a kid, and Marly would have to explain that she was the only person in her house who spoke English.

  The next day, Marly carried the dread of making the phone call around with her all day. Now she was home from school, Marly sat by the phone with a list of questions her dad had left for her. Her mum, Grandpa and Grandma stood behind her. Marly was feeling jittery, and she tapped her foot. She was just about to pick up the phone when she decided to set some rules.

  ‘No yelling in my ear telling me what to say,’ Marly said. ‘It makes it hard to hear the person on the other end!’

  Her mum, Grandma and Grandpa nodded their heads, urging her to hurry up. And so Marly dialled the number on the letter.

  ‘Good afternoon. Sunshine Council. How may I help you?’ a man’s voice said.

  ‘Hello. Do you know if there are any laws about keeping pets?’ Marly asked, reading the first question on her dad’s list.

  ‘Let me pass you to Animal Registration. They deal with these matters.’

  ‘What did they say?’ asked Grandma.

  ‘Shh, Grandma. They’ve put me on hold,’ said Marly. It seemed like forever until an older woman finally came on the line.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘Animal Registration. How may I help you?’

  Marly cleared her throat. ‘What kind of pets can a person keep?’ she asked.

  ‘What kind of pet do you have?’

  ‘Grandpa has a goat.’

  Marly held her breath, waiting for the woman to speak again.

  ‘So, can we keep it?’ Marly prompted.