My Place (7 page)

‘All right, Sally, which one of us do you love the most? Choose which one of us you want to live with, your mother or me.'

I was as shocked as Mum. I wanted to shout, ‘Don't do this to me, I'm only a kid!' but nothing came out. I had trouble getting my mouth to work in those days.

Dad stayed a few seconds longer, then, in a resigned tone, he muttered, ‘I knew you'd choose her,' and left as quickly as he'd come.

That night, I found myself feeling sorry for Dad. He was so lost. I blamed myself for being too young.

It was halfway through the second term of my fourth year at school that I suddenly discovered a friend. Our teacher began reading stories about Winnie the Pooh every Wednesday. From then on, I was never sick on Wednesdays. In a way, discovering Pooh was my salvation. He made me feel more normal. I suppose I saw something of myself in him.

Pooh lived in a world of his own and he believed in magic, the same as me. He wasn't particularly good at anything, but everyone loved him, anyway. I was fascinated by the way he could make an adventure out of anything, even tracks in the snow. And while Pooh was obsessed with honey, I was obsessed with drawing.

When I couldn't find any paper or pencils, I would fish small pieces of charcoal from the fire, and tear strips off the paperbark tree in our yard and draw on that. I drew in the sand, on the footpath, the road, even on the walls when Mum wasn't looking. One day, a neighbour gave me a batch of oil paints left over from a stint in prison. I felt like a real artist.

My drawings were very personal. I hated anyone watching me draw. I didn't even like people seeing my drawings when they were finished. I drew for myself, not anyone else. One day, Mum asked me why I always drew sad things. I hadn't realised until then that my drawings were sad. I was shocked to see my feelings glaring up at me from the page. I became even more secretive about anything I drew after that.

Dad never took any interest in my drawings, he was completely enveloped in his own world. He never went to the pub now, we were too poor to be able to afford the petrol. There was never any money for toys, clothes, furniture, barely enough for food, but always plenty for Dad's beer. Everything valuable had been hocked.

One day, Dad was so desperate that he raided our moneyboxes. I'll never forget our dismay when Jill and I found our little tin moneyboxes had been opened with a can-opener and all our hard-won threepenny bits removed. What was even more upsetting was that he'd opened them at the bottom, and then placed them back on the shelf as though they'd never been tampered with. We kept putting our money in and he kept taking it out. ‘Who knows how long we've been supplying him!' I complained to Mum. I felt really hurt: if Dad had asked me, I'd have given him the contents, willingly.

As usual, Mum saw the funny side of things.

‘How can you think it's funny?' I demanded. ‘It was a rotten trick!'

‘Can't you see the funny side? It was such a childish thing to do.'

I knew what she meant, but I didn't think it was funny. He was just like a child sometimes. He never mended anything around the house, or took any responsibility. I felt very disappointed in him.

Dad hated being poor, and I could forgive him for that, because I hated it myself. He loved the luxuries working-class people couldn't afford. If he had been able to, he would have given us anything. Instead, his craving for beer and his illness left us with nothing. I knew that Mum and Dad had had dreams once. It wasn't supposed to have turned out like this.

That year, Dad's love of luxuries really broke our budget, but it also gave us the status of being the first family in our street to have television.

As he carried it in, an awkward-looking square on four pointy
legs, and tried to manoeuvre it through the front door, we all rushed at him excitedly. ‘Get out the bloody way, you kids,' he yelled as he staggered into the hall. Televisions were heavy in those days. A few more lunges and the hallowed object was finally set down next to the power point in the lounge room.

We lined up in awe behind Dad, waiting for our first glimpse of this modern-day miracle. We were disappointed. All we saw was white flecks darting across a grey screen, all we heard was a buzzing noise. While Mum pressed the power point, Dad fiddled with the knob marked vertical hold. It was only after they'd both banged the set several times that Dad realised the rental people had forgotten to leave the aerial.

We all went racing out the front, hoping the ute that had delivered our television set was still parked in the drive. ‘Jesus Bloody Christ!' Dad swore as he gazed up the long length of empty road. I shrugged my shoulders in disappointment and went inside.

The aerial arrived the following day, but it never made the difference I imagined it would. Grey, human-like figures became discernible and their conversations with one another audible, but they didn't impress me. I had the feeling they weren't quite sure of whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

In July, we had a surprise visit. We were all playing happily outside when Mum called us in. There was an urgency in her voice. What's going on, I thought. We don't do midnight flits during the day. I peeped into Dad's room on the way through. He was lying down, reading an old paper.

When we reached the hall, I stopped dead in my tracks. Mum grinned at me and said, ‘Well, say hello, these are your cousins.' As usual, my mouth had difficulty working. The small group of dark children stared at me. They seemed shy, too. I felt such an idiot.

Just then, a very tall, dark man walked down and patted me on the head. He had the biggest smile I'd ever seen. ‘This is Arthur,'
Mum said proudly, ‘he's Nanna's brother.' I stared at him in shock. I didn't know she had a brother.

Arthur returned to the lounge room and us kids all sat on the floor, giggling behind our hands and staring at one another. Mum slipped into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I glimpsed her going into Dad's room. Then she returned, finished off the tea and dug out some biscuits. I helped pass them around.

Mum said, very brightly, to Arthur, ‘He's asleep. Perhaps he'll wake up before you leave.' I knew she was lying, but I didn't understand why. Sleep never came easily to Dad.

After a while, they all left. I was surprised to hear Arthur speak English. I thought maybe he could speak English and Indian, whereas the kids probably only spoke Indian.

I don't remember ever seeing them again while I was a child, but the image of their smiling faces lodged deep in my memory. I often wondered about them. I wanted them to teach me Indian. I never said anything to Mum. I knew, instinctively, that if I asked about them, she wouldn't tell me anything.

Dad seemed to be getting sicker and sicker. By the time September came around, he had been in hospital more than he'd been home. At least he managed to return for Jill's birthday towards the end of September.

Mum asked a special favour of him that day. She wanted him to stay in his room while the party was on. It was the first party Jill had ever asked her friends to, and Mum didn't want Dad to spoil it by walking around, drunk. To my surprise, he actually agreed.

It was halfway through a round of Queenie, Queenie, Who's Got The Ball that Dad appeared, a bottle and glass in his right hand. I watched as he casually seated himself on the front porch and poured a glass of beer. After a couple of drinks, he began to call out and make comments about the game we were playing. Mum suddenly appeared behind him in the hall and began to whisper crossly, ‘Bill, come inside, you're making a fool of yourself, the neighbours will hear you.' As Mum's whispers
became more urgent, so Dad refilled his glass more often, he delighted in taking the mickey out of Mum.

One morning a few weeks later, Dad emerged from his room early, we were just finishing breakfast. All the previous week, he'd been in hospital, so we were surprised by the cheery look on his face. Nan hovered near the table, intent on hurrying us along. She knew we'd seize on any pretext to miss school.

‘Come on, you kids, you'll be late,' she grumbled when she noticed our eating had slowed to a halt.

‘Aw, let then stay home, Dais,' Dad said. ‘I'll look after them.' Had I heard right? I froze halfway through my last slice of toast and jam, it wasn't like Dad to interfere with anything to do with us. I'd heard him call Nan Dais before. It was his way of charming her.

Nan was as surprised as me. She flicked her dirty tea towel towards us and muttered in her grumpiest voice, ‘They have to go to school, Bill, they can't stay home.' I sensed that she was unsure of herself, and beneath her lowered lashes, she eyed Dad shrewdly.

‘Well, let little Billy stay then, Dais,' Dad coaxed. I smiled, he'd called her Dais again, how could she resist?

‘All right,' Nan relented, ‘just Billy. Now, off you girls go!'

Billy waved at us smugly. Jill and I grumbled as we dressed. Nan had always favoured the boys in our family, and now Dad was doing the same.

By lunchtime, we'd forgotten all about Billy. Jill and I had been taken off normal classwork to help paint curtains for the school's Parents' Night, which was held at the end of each year. We were halfway through drawing a black swan family when the headmaster came down and told us we could go home early. We were puzzled, but very pleased to be leaving before the other kids.

Nan wasn't happy when she saw us shuffling up the footpath.

‘What are you kids doing here? They were supposed to keep you late at school.'

We just shrugged our shoulders, neither Jill nor I had the faintest idea what she was talking about.

‘Go outside and play,' Nan ordered grumpily.

Jill immediately raced out the back to play with Billy, but I decided I'd like something to eat first. I was just coming out of the kitchen with a Vegemite sandwich half stuffed in my mouth when the familiar sound of an ambulance siren drew me to the front door. Nan stood impatiently on the porch, she had her hand over her mouth. When she saw me, she turned crossly and said, ‘I told you to go out the back and play!'

Two ambulance men hurried up the path. A stretcher case, I noted, as they walked briskly through. In a few minutes, they returned, and I watched as they carried Dad carefully, but quickly, down our faded red footpath. This time, I couldn't see his face.

Billy, Jill and David pushed up behind me, followed by Mrs Mainwaring, our neighbour. Before I knew it, she'd ushered us into the lounge room and told us to all sit down, as she had something important to say. It was then that I noticed Mum squashed in the old cane chair in the corner of the room. Nan hovered beside her, stuffing men's handkerchiefs into her hand. It occurred to me she already had more than enough.

‘What are ya crying for, Mum?' I asked, puzzled. Whenever he'd gone before, she hadn't cried. Dad was like a boomerang. Mum continued to sniffle. I tried to reassure her by saying confidently, ‘He always comes back,' at which, she broke down completely and hid her face in a striped grey handkerchief.

‘Please sit down, Sally,' said Mrs Mainwaring. ‘I have something to tell you all.' I obeyed instantly. She was a nice middle-aged lady and we were a little in awe of her. Her home was very neat.

‘Now …' she continued, ‘I have some bad news for you all.' She paused and took a deep breath.

‘He's dead, isn't he?' I was sure I said it out loud, but I couldn't have, because everyone ignored me.

‘He's dead, isn't he?' I repeated, but still no response. My heart was pounding. Mrs Mainwaring's lips were moving, but I
couldn't hear a word. He was dead, I knew it, Dad was gone.

‘Now children, I want you all to go to your rooms.' Somehow, this sentence managed to penetrate my numb brain. I looked around at my brothers and sisters, no one was moving. I craned my neck to look at Mum, she was avoiding my gaze. We all looked blank. What were we going to do in our rooms?

Mrs Mainwaring finally pulled each one of us up and ushered us out. As I closed the bedroom door, Jill said, ‘What are we s'posed to do?'

I was shocked, it wasn't like her not to know what the right thing was. With the superior confidence of a nine-year-old, I flung myself stomach-down on the bed and said, ‘I s'pose we'd better cry.'

We cried for what seemed a long time, when our bedroom door slowly opened and the freckled face of Billy peered around.

‘I'm going outside, who wants to come and play?'

‘You horrible boy,' I growled, ‘don't you know he's dead?!' After all, he'd been with Dad all day. Billy vanished.

‘He doesn't understand,' Jill defended him as usual. ‘He doesn't know what he's s'posed to do.'

We lay on our beds a few moments longer. I began to count the fly specks on the ceiling.

‘Sally … do ya think … we could … go outside and play now?' Jill asked, hesitantly.

‘You're as bad as Billy.'

‘Well at least I cried. That wasn't easy, you know.' Jill put her head under her arm. I watched her silently.

‘Oh, come on then,' I relented. And leaping up, we joined Billy in the yard.

I felt very strongly about families sticking together. So strongly, in fact, that I had a secret meeting with my brothers and sisters; for some reason, I was frightened we would be put in an orphanage. I'd read about things like that happening and I was determined it wouldn't happen to us. We all pledged to run away together if it looked like happening.

But we needn't have worried. A couple of weeks after Dad had died, Mum informed us all that Billy was now the man of the house. This came as a great surprise to me, because Billy was only six years old.

But Billy took Mum's Man Of The House thing very seriously. For example, whenever anything broke down, he insisted that it was his job to fix it. But, whenever Billy fixed anything, Mum ended up having to pay out money. So much so that when he accidentally locked himself in the toilet, she felt like leaving him there.