The Mimosa Tree (2 page)

‘I would give you the world if I could, Via,' says my mother leaning over and taking Via's coffee cup in her loaded arms. ‘We will have whatever you want. Just write it down on the list. Benito will be pay for everything.' Then she turns on her heel, in a dainty kind of way, and disappears into the kitchen, the very picture of dignity with her pink nightie caught up her arse.

‘You coming or what?' says Via, and I can tell by the way she stares at the end of her burning cigarette rather than at me that she is hoping I won't. This alone tempts me to accept the offer, but luckily for her I have important things to do today.

‘Don't be silly,' says Mum answering for me. ‘Mira doesn't want to come shopping with us old ladies.' Well, she got that right. ‘Why don't you call one of your friends?' she says eyeing me hopefully. ‘I'll give you some money and you can go to the cinema.'

I smile. One of my friends, like I have so many to choose from! You'd think she would have noticed after all these years, that I am not exactly in great demand in the friendship department. I'm not a reject or anything, I'm not hated by anyone, but I'm not loved either. There are people I hung out with at school, talked about school stuff with, but that is the extent of our relationship. I don't get phone calls, I don't go out anywhere. So where has Mum imagined these ‘friends' have been hiding all these years?

‘I'm not calling anyone, Mum.'

‘But you haven't seen anyone since you finished school!'

‘Mum, there is no one to see.'

‘It's been three months. Don't you want to see how they are going?'

I sigh. ‘Who exactly are they, Mum?'

‘Your friends.'

‘I told you, I don't have any friends!'

Mum sucks on her thumbnail as she considers what I have
said. ‘Well, maybe if you
call
them once in a while...' she says, but I put my hand up to silence her.

‘Look, there is a reason people don't stay in touch, okay? Everyone at school was boring, and I don't care if I never see them again.'

‘And judging by the amount of times they have called you it looks like they feel the same,' says Via sliding open the flyscreen door and flicking her smoking cigarette butt into the garden. ‘Come on, Sofia,' she says with an impatient wave of her hand. ‘Just leave her. If she wants to be alone and miserable there is nothing we can do about it.'

‘I'm not miserable,' I say but she is already turning away from me, sliding her handbag up her arm until it gets jammed tight around her flesh. Mum looks like she is about to cry about my pathetic life. ‘I'm fine, Mum,' I say nodding encouragingly towards the door, and then because she looks so mournful I add: ‘I'll make some new friends, okay? At university.'

Mum doesn't look any happier, but she allows Via to drag her out the door. I lean back against the wall and wait until I hear the car leaving. Then, when I am sure they are gone and not coming back, I run into my room. I scan my tape collection nervously, eager not to waste this rare moment of alone time with the wrong choice of music. I finally settle on
Born Sandy Devotional
by The Triffids. I push the tape into the deck then flop face down onto my bed and wait for the music to emerge over the hiss of the tape. I am not disappointed. From the first song I am floating in deep water, far away from the shore with just seagulls keeping me company. I listen to it over and over, rising only when I need to turn the tape.

When they get back from their shopping a few hours later, Via notices creases on my face from lying on the pillow and asks me what I have been doing.

‘Nothing,' I say.

‘I can see that,' she says motioning to the stack of unwashed plates on the sink.

Mum hands me a fat salami and cheese roll and a can of Coke before starting to unload the bags of shopping. Before leaving, Via makes a final plea for me to fix up my hair.

‘What are the other children going to say when they see you?'

‘Students. And I don't care.'

Via shakes her head. ‘I'll be back in the morning,' she says leaning over to give Mum a kiss on the cheek. ‘To take your miserable daughter to school.'

‘Stop calling it school. It sounds like I'm three.'

‘Oh I'm being so sorry,'
says Via, wrinkling her nose, holding a little finger out like she's got a cup of tea in her hand.
‘I am meaning to say university.'
That she is speaking in English again is bad enough, but now she has to try and speak it with a posh English accent. She thinks she is funny, but really, she is just pathetic.

Via finally folds and tucks herself into Bambi; her dirty-orange Datsun 120Y. Bambi strains under her weight, though the several tons of shopping bags in the passenger seat are doing a good job of balancing things out. She beeps the horn and waves as the car gurgles down the street, spluttering smoke and leaking oil like it's flatulent and incontinent.

‘Look at this mess,' says Mum, back in the kitchen and
shifting things around in the pantry to make room for the box of canned tomatoes she has bought.

I munch on my roll as I watch her. ‘Why'd you get so many?'

‘On special. Forty cents each.' She scratches her cheek while still holding a can. ‘You think I should have got more?'

‘I think you've got enough.' Enough to survive a twenty-year nuclear winter. ‘So what's for dinner anyway?' I say, looking forward to eating again even though I'm only halfway through my salami and cheese roll.

‘Pasta.'

‘All this food, how come we only ever eat pasta?'

‘You want meat pies and tomato sauce?' she says, shaking her head in sympathy for all the poor Australian kids that she is convinced are fed nothing else.

‘How about kangaroo tail soup?' I say, because there's nothing more amazing than my mother's face when surprised.

‘That's a
food?
They
eat
that?'

‘They're a weird mob,' I say and take the pasta pot from the dish rack. I turn on the tap and the water pipes groan and thump so loudly I'm afraid the walls will come down. Mum turns on the radio, slides the dial to the Italian station, and pretty soon the room is humming with one of the old tunes. She starts to get a bit of a sway in her step as she moves from the plastic bags to the fridge, to the bench, to the cupboard. It's only a matter of time before the mood gets her and she...

‘Hey!'

Mum sings as she dances me around. She has a firm grip around my waist, her feet move deftly, while my own drag and double shuffle to keep up. She holds my hand at cheek height
and uses my arm as a steering device, pushing, pulling and leaning on it to get me to go the right way.

‘Young people today do not understand what real dancing is,' she says as she swoops under my raised arm.

‘It's just not the same,' I agree.

‘I know when you're laughing at me. One day you'll be sorry you gave your mother such a hard time.' She pulls me close so that our stomachs are touching then she bends me back into a dip, which has me knees bent, bum down and hand groping desperately to the floor for balance. I slide out from her arms and land heavily on my arse. I start laughing. Mum just leaves me there and goes back to the sink in disgust. She slides a knife from the drawer and begins chopping onions.

‘Come on,' I say, sliding the radio back to its original station, and thankfully it's playing something decent. ‘Now you have to try it my way.' I wait to make sure she is watching, then I start jumping around the kitchen, spinning with my arms in the air and singing loudly to demonstrate how we do things these days.

‘You call that dancing?'

‘Sure.'

‘And where does the boy stand?'

‘What boy?' I stop and look around like I've lost something.

Mum checks that God is still hanging about the ceiling and watching all this.

‘Your generation understands nothing of romance.'

‘I didn't think I was allowed to understand romance.'

‘Shut up and set the table.'

I do what I am told, for a change, then hang around the
kitchen getting in her way until I hear Dad's car coming up the driveway. The car door slams, then after a moment I hear his boots clunking up the back steps. There's a tinny clink as he drops an empty beer can into the outside bin, the rattling sound of the sliding door opening, then the thud of his workbag on the tiled floor. Inside he shuffles in socked feet to the toilet and, as always, he grunts like it hurts before the house is ringing with the sound of his long, loud piss. These are my father's noises, I have listened to them my whole life and they have never changed. I sit down at the kitchen table and watch Mum playing with her pots and pans, filling the room with hungry smells.

‘Bloody hot,' says Dad appearing in the doorway. His blue work singlet is tight across his bulging belly and there are tufts of hair bristling from his armpits, like he's got a couple of kittens stashed in there. Other than the beer gut, he's lean, scrawny even, with rounded biceps that remind me of Popeye. His face is always set in a contemptuous snarl. He wipes his sweaty face with the shirt he's holding, then drops it on the floor before opening the fridge. ‘Where's the bloody beer?' he says, pushing around packages of food.

Mum shakes her hands dry then goes over and reaches in around him, instantly producing the can he's looking for. He takes it without comment and she goes back to the sink and starts on the parmesan cheese. Her arms jiggle as she grates.

Dad watches her with his eyebrow raised, then after a moment he says, ‘I don't understand why three people need so much food.'

‘It's for the party,' says Mum apologetically and defiantly, the way she does with him.

‘What party?'

‘My
birthday.
'

He opens the beer and it fizzes and splutters to life.

‘Don't you think I
deserve
a nice birthday?' she says and her grating picks up pace.

He throws his arms out wide and bows his head slightly, mockingly. ‘Nothing but the best, for my darling.' Then he sniggers to himself through a swig of beer.

‘Oh shut up,' says Mum, throwing the remaining hunk of cheese into its Tupperware tub. ‘Would it kill you to show you
care
for me every now and then?' With a grunt she picks up the pot of boiling pasta and carries it to the sink.

Dad puts down his beer and reaches into his back pocket. He leans forward to get his hand into the tight spot, his eyes narrowed and focused on Mum who is ignoring him as she pours the boiling water into the colander. He pulls out his wallet and slams it onto the kitchen counter. ‘You think I don't
care?
' he says prodding the wallet with his index finger. ‘This empty wallet says I am pretty bloody caring.'

Mum leans forward onto the sink, while steam from the draining pasta rises up and around her. ‘You see? That's why everyone thinks you're
cheap.
'

There's a flinch, but you have to be trained to see it.

‘You're mad,' he says.

‘You're
the mad one,' says Mum, and there is an unmistakeable bump in her voice, then sure enough, her shoulders start to bounce up and down as she lets out little sobs.

Dad curses silently and runs his fingers through his hair leaving trails of black where they wipe off the dust. ‘For
fuck's sake, Sofia!' he says shaking his can and sloshing beer everywhere. He's got foam dribbling down his fist. ‘I've been working all bloody day. What are you crying about?'

Mum spins round to look at him. ‘Don't you want me to be
happy?
' she pleads. ‘You love your money more than me!' Then she's back staring into the sink, marble-sized tears falling into the steaming pasta.

Dad makes a deep noise, like a rumbling fart under a blanket. His face looks constipated, and he is turning from side to side like he doesn't know which way to go. Finally, he takes two stomping steps towards her, and throws his hands up.

‘I give you
everything!
'

‘I'm just trying to keep everyone happy!'

‘I work like a slave for this family! All I ask for is a few lousy beers and some food on the table!'

‘You expect me to serve
sausages
at my party!'

‘What the hell is wrong with you? I haven't said anything about bloody
sausages!
Sofia! Why are you
crying?
'

‘Leave her alone!' I say and I lean up against Mum's back like a shield. Dad is looking like he could kill the both of us but I stay there, stare him in the eye even though my knees are melting.

‘Get out of the way, Mira,' he snarls.

‘No! You're being an arsehole.'

His eyes open wide and he raises his arm, his hand splayed like a baseball mitt. I watch it hang there, looming in my face, swelling as though someone is inflating it, but then he lets it drop back to his side and it returns to its normal size. I breathe an inaudible sigh of relief; hold onto my mother's skirt behind my back.

‘I don't understand anything,' says my father grimly. ‘Doesn't matter what I do, no one is ever bloody happy.' He waves his hand as he turns to walk away. ‘You're
both
bloody mad.' He curses all the way to the lounge room where he switches on the TV, and sinks with a thud into the deep armchair.

I turn around, give Mum a hug around the shoulders. ‘He's an idiot,' I say, but instead of a hug back, I get shaken off.

‘You shouldn't talk to your father that way,' she says, just like that, like now I'm the bad one! She uses a tea towel to wipe her face, and it leaves smudges of red sauce on her cheek. ‘Go sit down at the table. Dinner is ready.'

I want to cry and scream at once. I want to tell her that I don't understand. I want to ask her what the hell just happened, and why does it happen all the time. I want to say I hate him and I hate this and that I want more, different, better. I want her to explain why we are all just pretending like we will never die, and why we go around acting like the world is such a great place. And all of it comes welling up from my chest, bursting and burning at my throat, but this is what comes out: