The Mimosa Tree (3 page)

‘I
hate
pasta.'

I run out of the room, slamming every door I can, burying myself deeper in silence until I can't hear him muttering to himself, or Mum crying, or that damned TV. Lying on my bed I jam my head under the pillow and listen to the sound of anger pulsing through my ears.

Mum knocks on the door and begs me to come out but I am not leaving this room until that man is in bed. When I hear
the TV switch off I jump up and lean my ear against the door, knowing it's only a matter of minutes now before he's finally out of my way for another day. I slide down to the floor, ear pressed firmly against the cold wood, and I listen to his long grunting piss, the toilet flush and then his footsteps passing my bedroom door. There is the familiar creak of the bed as he collapses onto it and finally, the staggered, hiccuping snores of someone who can't keep his airways open. I let myself out.

In the kitchen Mum is dropping empty beer cans in the bin. When she hears me come in she reaches across the bench for the monster serving of pasta she has put aside for me. I take it and go sit at the kitchen table and she brings me a can of Coke. I pick up my fork; hold it above the plate as she waits expectantly for me to take my first bite.

‘Any cheese?' I say and she breaks into a smile, grabs both my cheeks in her palms and squeezes tight.

‘That's my girl.'

And I swear she does a little skip on the way to the fridge. She sits with me again, piles parmesan on top of my pasta and I start to eat. I'm starving.

For a long time we don't speak. She just sits there, watching me, occasionally stroking my cheek or brushing my fringe from my eyes and I am happy. Just happy to be here with her in the kitchen. I could just sit here all my life.

Hell, we've got enough pasta.

‘He loves us, Mira,' she says and the moment is ruined. I don't like it when she talks about him. Most of the time it's like she's talking about someone else; not that drunken snorer at the end of the hallway. ‘Everything he does, he does for us. We
are all he's got, do you understand? He is
hard,
but he loves us.'

This is such crap. He doesn't love us! The only thing he cares about is his beer and his TV, and she knows it as well as I do. I wriggle in my chair, drop my head so that my fringe falls forward, do everything to show her that she should just stop talking about him because I am not listening, but it doesn't work.

‘He's very proud of you,' she says, sweeping her finger lightly across the back of my hand.

‘Mum, stop making things up for him,' I say pushing my plate away. ‘I don't need you to.'

‘It's the truth. Mira, your father loves you very much.'

‘Oh really? So he told you this?'

‘He doesn't need to say it, Mira. He is your father. He loves you and he is proud of you. Of
course
he is.'

‘You know,' I say, and I am trying to be really casual here but when I get angry I can't help it, I start crying. I push up from the table and the ceramic fruit bowl centrepiece rocks back and forth. ‘I don't care anyway. I couldn't care less about it.'

Mum sighs. She gets a little curve in her shoulders and scratches unconsciously at the scar in her breast. For a minute, all I can do is visualise knives cutting through flesh and the more I try and shake the pictures the more vivid they get. I rub my eyes against the images, but Mum seems to take this as me being tired.

‘Finish your food and go to bed. You have school tomorrow.'

‘University.'

‘Of course, darling,' and she pulls me into a squishy, garlic smelling hug.

I sit down again, flick my pasta around the plate; make plough lines into the Parmesan. My stomach is still rumbling but I have lost my appetite. I kick the table, softly so no one can actually hear me, and go back to my room. It's getting late and I am tired, but I know that this is when all the best music is on and I am determined to stay awake, at least for a few songs. If you want to know what the good stuff is then you have to stay up. If you're only prepared to listen during the day, well, then you deserve to think Duran Duran or Genesis is the only music out there. When all the deadheads are sleeping, then you hear some wicked stuff. This is how I found Jonathan Richman and The Sisters of Mercy. I found The Triffids, and I found Joy Division. I found Bauhaus and I found The Smiths. You have to actually make an effort to get to the good stuff, they don't just hand it to you on a platter. If you don't take the time to look for it then you'll never know it's there. Imagine if you died never knowing anything other than Madonna? What a waste. Tonight it's Echo and the Bunnymen, ‘The Killing Moon'. This is a song you need to get comfortable for so I slip into my pyjamas and I lie down on the bed. Closing my eyes against the darkness, I let the music haunt me. The words are so sad they are comforting and it makes me strangely happy lying here in the dark, this sound filling the space around me like breathable smoke.

I suppose I should be thinking about university tomorrow. I suppose I should be worried about whether my bag is packed, or whether I will meet anyone interesting, or what I should be wearing, but I really just don't care. Uni was never my idea, but I don't get a choice in this stuff, it's all up to Mum and Via and
their crazy plans for my life. The only good thing about going to university is that I get to start all over again. I've decided already, I'm not going to get sucked into being friends with just anyone, just because they happen to sit next to me in the classroom. This time, I'm going to make sure I find people who think the same way as me so we can have meaningful conversations about important things. Leaving behind the deadheads, that's the bit I am looking forward to. The rest of it I couldn't care less about. To be truthful, if you asked me right now what I wanted to do with my life I couldn't give you a proper answer. If anyone actually cared enough to ask me, I would say I want to sit around, eat food, listen to good music and just think. And sleep. God, some days, I could just sleep forever. I can feel sleep's slippery tentacles pulling me down now actually, and the music getting softer like it's moving away from me, but really, it's me that's going somewhere. Suddenly, I'm not so determined to fight it.

It's early, the sun barely up, and the house smells of coffee and sweat – my father's breakfast legacy. The hallway is dark, hushed by thick carpet, but in my mother's bedroom, where she lies snoring and moulded under the covers, there is a faint blush of sunlight against the walls.

I make a show of getting into the bed; yawning loudly, sighing, bouncing the mattress, but Mum only catches her breath like she's swallowed a fly, twitches her hand, then goes quickly back to snoring and dreams. I lie down beside her, propped into a half sitting position by pillows that smell like my father. I stare across her lifting belly to the mimosa tree outside the window. In winter, those branches are heavy with blooms and the window is exploding with woolly yellow clusters of flowers, each bud a tiny, simmering sun. But now, the mimosa tree provides a cooling greyish green shade that makes the entire room feel sleepy and soft. A gust of wind lifts the branches and the room flits between shadow and light.

Mum wakes suddenly with a fart. I squeal and try to smother
myself with the pillow and she laughs. She tickles me under the arms so that I have to let the pillow go, then she pulls it off my face to suffer the air with her. I turn and bury my face into the mattress and wait for the smell to clear. Mum stops laughing, then thinks about it and starts laughing again. She tries to muster another but, thankfully, it can't be done.

I lie down into her shoulder and she pulls her hands together across my chest so that I am completely wrapped in her hug. My head wobbles as she speaks.

‘I had a dream,' she says.

‘Are we going to win the lotto?'

Everyone around here is obsessed with divining lotto numbers from dreams. Mum's dreams are considered the most prophetic, even though there have been plenty of numbers but only a few lousy dollars won.

She shakes her head.
‘Mamma,'
she says, meaning her mother, my
Nonna.
This is the second favourite dream subject. Dreams of Nonna are always sure to bring a tear to everyone's eye. Mum sees these dreams as a sort of loophole in the dead-people-can't-talk-to-you-anymore thing. According to her, apart from a means of getting lotto numbers, dreams are also the vehicle through which the dead can give us important messages. Given the frequency of her appearances in Mum's dreams, it seems Nonna has a lot to say.

‘Ah Nonna,' I say playing along. ‘So nice of her to call.'

Mum ignores my dig and I feel her hug tighten around me. Without looking at her I know the tears are starting to fall and I keep my face low, unwilling to risk a soppy eye-staring moment. It's been about fifteen years since Nonna died but
Mum still cries when she thinks about her. You'd think she'd be over it by now.

‘She gave me a branch of oleander, told me to eat it.'

‘The poisonous stuff?' I say, remembering the oleander bush that we had in our garden years ago. Dark green leaves and pink flowers. I knew I wasn't allowed to touch it, but that milky sap, the way it oozed when you twisted off a stem, so smooth and thick you could write with it, was irresistible. I remember how one day, Dad caught me playing with it. I had sap all over my hands and down the front of my dress. He pulled me into the bathroom, his big hands swallowing mine. I cried, but he held me under the hot water until my hands were raw and red from the heat. When he finally let me go I ran to Mum and she picked me up in her arms and dried my tears with a tea towel. As she held me, I could see Dad through the kitchen window, cursing and dripping in sweat as he hacked at the tree with his axe. I remember hating him then, just as I do now. I remember thinking why is he even here? Why can't it just be me and her?

‘See, now that's stupid,' I say, trying as always, to show her that dreams are just nonsense and not messages from the dead as she imagines. ‘Why would she want you to eat something poisonous?'

‘She said it would make you better.'

‘Me? Well what is that supposed to mean?'

Mum shrugs, but I can tell she's still thinking about it. It's pointless trying to talk to her. The more ridiculous the dream, the more important the message. That's how she sees things and no one is going to convince her otherwise.

‘Go on. Get the coffee on. Via will be here soon.' She's trying to push me out of bed, but I am holding my place and smiling smugly about the fact that she's not strong enough to move me. Then she lets out another fart and it's so bad I leap off the bed and into the hallway. I hear her laughing, complaining about her own smell, as I run away gagging into the kitchen.

Via arrives soon after the coffee pot starts bubbling. She is wearing her best navy dress and just a hint of shimmering pink lipstick, a rare sight usually reserved for her infrequent attendances at church or the doctor's. The dress is suffocatingly tight and it makes her look flat and firm except where she spills out of the arm and neck holes like toothpaste from a tube.

Mum and I are sitting at the table. I'm eating toast with Vegemite and she is sipping on her first brandied coffee for the morning.

‘You look very nice today, Via,' says Mum and Via pushes at her hair like she's moulding clay into shape.

‘Thank you, Sofia.' Then she looks at me for a compliment.

I take a bite out of my toast, munch loudly with my mouth open.

‘Disgusting,' she says, because a day cannot go by without one of them shrieking in horror at my taste for Vegemite. I munch louder; make ‘mmmmm' noises until she's so disgusted she's forgotten about fishing for compliments. She sits down and pours herself a coffee, lights up a cigarette. She looks at me over the rim of her coffee cup.

‘
That
what you're wearing?' she says, smoke lapping at her face.

I am wearing a skull print T-shirt and faded blue jeans tucked into my calf-high stomper boots. There is a rip on my
left knee, and I have pulled the seams on my collar so that it falls off my shoulder. I have wrapped a thick buckled belt loosely around my hips.

I don't bother answering her.

Mum, still in her nightie, wispy greying hair upright where she has slept on it, studies the front page of the newspaper. Not that she can read English. She thinks she can work everything out by looking at the pictures. As a result, she has her own version of world events. Years ago, after seeing his face in the papers every morning she said, ‘It must be a good film that Ronald Reagan has made.' She didn't realise he had just been elected president of the United States. I glance over to check out the headline, and see a picture of Reagan sitting at a table between two suited men and looking very worried. The headline reads ‘Tower Report: Reagan Policy Encouraged Hostage Taking'. Good, I think. Maybe they will finally get rid of him. I lean on the table beside Mum and start to read the article, but because it's killing her that something is more interesting than she is, Via drags it away from us. She makes a big show of it, looks at the paper a long time, traces her fingers down the page like she's reading, even turns her head to the side like she's thinking about it. And after all that, what does she have to say?

‘Ronald Reagan is still so
handsome
for his age, don't you think Sofia?'

‘I never liked him,' says Mum, shaking her head. ‘He's
ugly.
What do you think, Mira?'

I gape at them. ‘He's the antichrist. He's going to destroy this entire planet.'

Via ignores me, continues addressing my mother. ‘He's
better looking than that poor Russian fellow,
Gor-boo-giovy.
It looks like a bird shat on his head.' And her belly laugh rocks the table and causes coffee to evacuate the cups.

‘At least the Russian is a
real
man,' counters Mum. ‘That Reagan fellow looks like he spends a lot of time fixing up his hair. It's not attractive for a man to be so vain.'

‘Are you kidding me?' I squawk. ‘These two men are going to start World War Three, and all you can talk about is who is better looking?'

Via rolls her eyes. ‘What the hell did they teach you at that school, huh? These men aren't stupid enough to start a war. You think they let any idiot become a president?'

‘He's an
actor,
' I say but I know it's pointless. Via folds the newspaper and pushes it away to let me know she is done talking about it.

‘Via,' says Mum, getting up and taking the sugar bowl from the cupboard. ‘Let me give you some money for petrol.' She takes out a wad of notes, curling out at the corners like a flower starting to bloom. She slides one over to me, for lunch I suppose, the other she tries to give to Via.

‘Not necessary,' says Via and waves it away.

‘I insist,' says Mum pushing the note into her hand. ‘You drive us everywhere.' Via takes the money and puts it back into the bowl with the rest of the cash and returns it to the cupboard.

‘I don't need it because I am
not
taking her.' Mum looks anxiously at Via but I feel a sudden hope. Perhaps something terrible has happened which is going to prevent me from going to uni today. Could someone have died? Is Via dressed up for the funeral?

‘Look at you two,' she says patting each of us on the head. ‘So much worry. But I have a
surprise.
' She checks her wristwatch, a move that involves squinting her eyes and holding the watch as far away from her face as her arm will let her. ‘She will be here in fifteen minutes.'

‘She?' say Mum and I together.

‘Felicia Ricardo,' says Via, relishing the way the ‘r' sound quivers across her tongue.

‘That rich lady you clean for?' I say, not really understanding where this is going.

‘No, stupid. Her
daughter.
She goes to the same university as you. Isn't that nice? She has a
licence.
'

Mum gets up suddenly, driving the table forward. ‘She is coming here?
Now?
' She picks up plates, puts them down to wipe crumbs and picks up plates again. ‘But the house! My clothes!'

‘Oh don't be silly, Sofia. You shouldn't care what other people think.' She licks a finger then uses it to push back a stray hair then takes the coffee cups Mum is holding and puts them back on the table. ‘She will take us as she finds us!'

Then, like a scene from
The Shining,
I look up and there
she
is. She is standing on the other side of our sliding door: curvy, olive-skinned, a sweep of golden hair secured at the side with a ruffled peach scrunchie matched perfectly to her tailored peach suit. Her arm is bent up to her shoulder, a pair of large dark sunglasses held beside her cheek, and a cerise leather handbag slung over her elbow. Behind her, the rising sun illuminates her blond, cascading river of hair and she seems on fire with light. Via pulls open the door and ushers her in.

‘Good morning, Mrs Grassi,' says the stranger in perfect Italian, kissing the air next to Via's ears. ‘You look so elegant this morning.'

‘Oh, I do what I can,' says Via tilting her head to her shoulder and laughing lightly. She steps aside, waves her in like she's flipping a letter on
Wheel of Fortune.
I look at Mum whose complexion is now the same colour as her pink nightgown. Her eyes blink nervously.

‘Felicia Ricardo,' says Via. ‘Let me present my sister, Sofia.'

At the sight of my mother, Felicia's expression changes like someone who's been put in front of a starving child in Africa. This tells me immediately that Via has given her the whole breast cancer sob-story. I groan out loud, but as usual, no one is paying any attention to me. Felicia steps around the table, heels clicking across the floor, and attempts to greet my mum with a kiss, which, due to my mother's nervousness, ends up being wiped from her nose to her ear.

‘It's a pleasure to meet you Mrs Verdi.'

Mum bows to her like she is royalty. ‘Sorry,' she says gesturing to her body, her clothes, the room, our life. Then she seems to sink lower into her nightgown, like she is trying to disappear. Felicia pats Mum on the shoulder, the way you might try and reassure a three-year-old who has wet their pants.

‘You look beautiful,' says Princess bloody Felicia.

Mum looks anxiously at Via like she isn't sure she's understood her properly.

‘And this,' says Via apologetically, ‘is Mirabella.' She keeps gesturing at me, like Felicia might have trouble locating me in the room. There's an awkward moment when everyone is staring
at me, expecting me to say something I guess. When it's clear this isn't going to happen, Felicia coughs nervously then walks over to me, her high heels clicking delicately against the floorboards. I have never met this girl before but I am almost certain she is going to try and hug me so I thrust my arm out for a handshake.

‘Great to meet you finally!' she says, taking my hand as I'd hoped, but then walking straight through it and grabbing me in a flowery-smelling hug. It takes all my control not to shove her away. ‘No need to be so formal. I want us to be friends.'

‘Mira is very grateful,' says Via, fishing in her handbag for her cigarettes. ‘She has no friends. She is sad and mean, like her father.'

‘Via!' says Mum horrified.

I put my hands on my hips. ‘My sadness and meanness has nothing to do with him. I developed it all by myself.'

Via shakes her head, slips a cigarette between her lips. ‘Ignore her,' she says to Felicia then slides a chair out from the table. ‘Sit and have a coffee. We'll put on a fresh pot for you.'

‘Oh don't go to any trouble for me.'

‘No trouble. Mira will make it.'

Don't even think about saying yes, I think, glaring at Felicia with an eyebrow crunching scowl.

‘Umm, thank you, but we really need to get going.'

Maybe she's smarter than she looks.

‘Yes!' says Mum. ‘Look at the time. You're going to be late!'

‘Don't worry, Mrs Verdi,' says Felicia beaming, as she hooks a thick set of keys from her fashionable purse. ‘I have the Celica.'