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‘Yeah. I told her Mrs Egan’s got so many kids she won’t know I’m there.’

  Four

  My next visit to Damrina and Dallas looms and I feel unprepared: for both the English lesson and the angst each return seems to unleash. To help calm myself I cut out letters of the alphabet and paste them on a poster. I’m not a teacher – not yet, and I’m not sure if my efforts have been of any value to Damrina. But somehow we have communicated and shared life stories through photographs and a multicultural version of charades. Already she can pronounce the names of my three boys while I’m up-to-date with news of each of her seven children. They range in age from three to twenty-one. Layah is the youngest and often sits in on our lessons.

  Sometimes I caught the train from Geelong to Dallas and sometimes I took the car. One time when I was driving I took a detour to the Broadmeadows Mosque at Laura Douglas Reserve and walked around the oval where I used to run as a child.

  Running was something I loved to do. Perhaps it was the opportunity to escape the house, to find a feeling of freedom running in the semi-darkness at dawn. One of my younger brothers would run with me, usually Matthew, and we would be leaving just as Dad was arriving home from his night shift.

  Each evening, after Dad had changed his clothes for his city night job, we would line up for our goodbye hugs and kisses. I always fought to be first. Margie and I would then run to the corner and watch as Dad’s car disappeared. He was on his way to load copies of The Argus onto trucks for the early morning delivery.

  One night after we waved goodbye to Dad and walked back to the house, Uncle Ray drove past. But he didn’t pull over to chat. Nicky was in the backseat with his mum and I was upset when he wouldn’t wave to us.

  The next night we were getting the little ones ready for bed when Uncle Ray came to our house.

  ‘It was crazy, Jim,’ he told Dad. ‘I drove straight to the hospital. We got the same surgeon.’

  Dad poured the beer from the longneck bottle into each of their glasses. I was warming some milk for Johnny. Mum was in bed. She was sick again and the doctor gave her a needle to help with the stomach pains. I glanced over at the men and I could see Dad nodding his head. He played with the box of Redheads, flipping the box between this thumb and finger. His eyes moved from Uncle Ray to me but I knew he didn’t see me: he doesn’t see anyone when he has that look.

  Uncle Ray was talking faster, his words poured out like each one was more important, than the last.

  ‘He can’t see, Jim. Nicky can’t see.’

  I wanted to scream. It wasn’t true. Instead I closed my eyes and saw it all again. The car rushes past. Nicky’s in the back seat. His face hidden in Aunty Mary’s arms.

  What happened? I wanted to ask but I sensed it was better to be invisible.

  ‘Will Nicky be like Maurice?’ Margie said. She was listening and watching too. I wasn’t the only one crying. Maybe that was why Mum was in bed and wouldn’t come out.

  Uncle Ray swallowed the rest of his beer, turned to Margie and nodded. ‘Nicky had an accident, Margie love.’ His face was wet with tears.

  ‘It’s hard to believe, sure it is,’ Dad said. ‘Jesus, Lord. What are the chances? Two brothers. Freak accidents eighteen months apart. Both blind.’

  Dad blessed himself, the way he did when Mum climbed into the car for her driving lesson. ‘In the name of the Father,’ he whispered as he put his right hand to his forehead. ‘And of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,’ he said as he crossed himself and joined his hands together with a quiet, ‘Amen.’

  I thought about Nicky all night. The next day I refused to go to school. I liked school but I was worried about Mum and wanted to stay close to her and Margie. But she wanted none of my nonsense, she told me, when I faked a cough.

  ‘Just looking for an excuse to stay home,’ she said. ‘I didn’t come down in the last shower,’ her finger wagging at me like Suzie’s tail. ‘Used all the same tricks myself when I was a girl.’ Still, I kept the coughing up and she gave in.

  ‘Okay. You can stay home and help me. When your dad comes home for lunch you will have to hide. And not the cupboard this time,’ she winked at me.

  The last time I stayed home I was crouched up in the dark wardrobe I shared with my sister. My legs pulled up in front of me, my head hidden and buried behind my knees. It felt like a jail in there with all the clothes hanging like bars in front of me.

  I waited for my dad to go back to work after his lunch, holding on so I didn’t wet my pants. Then just when I thought I would burst, he was there, pulling back the brown coat in front of my face and staring at me.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted. ‘Why aren’t you at school? What are you doing at home again?’ It wasn’t his normal voice and his accent was stronger in his anger. Mum stretched out her arms to me and I crawled out to her.

  ‘Valerie, it’s got to stop,’ he said. ‘I’ve had Sister Lucia from school on the phone at work,’ he says. ‘Her teacher was looking for her, it’s the sixth day she’s missed this term.’

  ‘Leave her be, she’s not well.’

  ‘How the hell will she ever get an education? How will any of them get out of this place without an education?’

  ‘School’s not everything, you know. Besides, what’s wrong with this place? You and your fancy ideas, filling their heads with rot.’ I buried my head in Mum’s hot neck. It was nice to have her on my side for once.

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ Mum would usually hiss at me. ‘You’re no better than anyone else.’ Her constant warning was that I should never get ahead of myself, not be ambitious or want more than I had. It was so well drummed into me I may have come to believe it but for the other voice in my head. Dad’s voice, always reassuring, telling me I was clever, especially if I answered a question on It’s Academic, the only TV show he watched. I dreamed that one day I would sit there in that box in a pressed school uniform and answer all the questions, just for Dad.

  This time, when Dad finished his bacon and cabbage soup he left for the short walk to his day job at the State Electricity Commission in nearby King William Street none the wiser. He was the paymaster there and always looked smart in his white shirt and colourful tie.

  Mum finally called me out from my new hiding spot, under the bed, behind the old suitcase. I helped Margie to roll the socks together and then we got a visitor and I escaped the piles of washing.

  Mrs Harvey was glamorous, Mum agreed with Aunty Mary, but Mum didn’t like the way she drank. I thought she was the prettiest lady in Dallas with her shiny red lipstick and pink cheeks. Her chocolate brown hair twisted into a bun and her tight dress the colour of the daisies we picked in our backyard. Mrs Harvey was the mother of one of Andy’s friends. She wore high heels, higher than any I had seen. Stilettos, Mum called them, and I dreamt of trying them on when she kicked them from under her feet and sat down at the head of our dining table.

  Mrs Harvey leant into the pram and settled her tiny baby with a dummy, then reached into the basket under the baby blanket and took out a brown paper bag. She was hiding three big beer bottles like the ones Dad and Uncle Ray drank. The baby, a little girl she called Jacinta, was wrapped in a white, crocheted blanket. When she cried Mum rocked the pram and Mrs Harvey drank her beer while I played with the little boy, Henry, who was about the same age as Seamus.

  ‘Any cold ones in the fridge, Val?’ she asked. ‘Run and get Aunty Vera a bottle, there’s a good girl,’ she looked at me, her big eyelashes all stuck up like they were painted on. Mum shook her head so I pretended not to hear.

  I wish I had given her the cold beer because soon she was singing, ‘Danny Boy, Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…’ over and over. I thought she would never go home. Margie giggled and sang with her. The cigarettes were all gone and the beer was finished but still she sat there while Mum tried to listen and tidy up around her. I prayed Mr Harvey would come soon and take her home, like last time.

  Mrs Harvey was only one of the regular visi
tors to our house. Mum and Dad always welcomed our friends and found spare beds for kids who didn’t want to go home. But when Mum was sick and didn’t want any visitors she would push me to the front door to send them away. I had a list of things to say: ‘Mum is at the shops’, or ‘Mum is at the school’, even ‘Mum is in the bath’. Mum said it was just a ‘white fib’ and nothing bad would happen because of it.

  Big Aunty Ruthie, who called on Fridays, never took ‘no’ for an answer. She just barged through the door. She was one of Mum’s friends from school in Fitzroy, where they both grew up. Ruthie was taller than Mum and Dad, but not bigger than Uncle Ray. She drank Victoria Bitter and she had a car and could drive herself home. She was the only lady I knew who had her own car. She smelt of cigarettes and beer and her makeup often ended up on my cheek when she slobbered over me. But it was Margie she wanted to take home with her. She said she loved her three boys but she always wanted a girl. Mum agreed anyone would want to take Margie home. But she was having none of it. She wanted her home by her side. Besides Margie wasn’t going anywhere without Mum.

  Auntie Ruthie’s three boys were big like her and somehow they could all fit into her little green Mini Minor. The eldest of her boys was Little Bill, even though he was almost as tall as his mum. We called his dad Big Bill, and he was the smallest of the lot.

  Aunty Ruthie lived a long way from Broadmeadows, and Big Bill drove a new Mercedes and lived in a room off the back of their house – a sunroom off the veranda. I once heard my mum say that he had a girlfriend and lots of money. As if it was something to be ashamed of – the money more than the girlfriend.

  ‘He’s up to no good,’ Dad said.

  ‘Ruthie does his books for him,’ Mum said. ‘She wouldn’t be in on anything that was wrong.’

  ‘Still, could be dirty money. I’d say he’s got links to the IRA.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Trouble,’ Dad said. ‘With a capital T,’ he said. ‘Better if you forget you ever heard it.’

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Nicky. I hated it when Dad left to go to work. I had this bad feeling that wouldn’t go away.

  ‘Dad,’ I finally summoned the courage to ask him about the accident. ‘You know what happened to Maurice and then Nicky?’

  He nodded and buttoned up the old grey coat, stained with newspaper ink.

  ‘Will that happen to me, or Margie, or does it just happen to boys? Will it happen to Paul if he gets hit at boxing?’

  ‘No, Carly love, it won’t happen to any of you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, they were both freak accidents.’

  ‘How did it happen? Why?’

  ‘Bad luck. Fate. I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You already know that Maurice ran into the kid at school and Nicky’s was an accident too. He got hit by the door at the supermarket.’

  Dad found a pencil and paper in my school bag and drew a round circle that looked like an eye. Then he drew a thin chord attached to the eye. ‘It’s called an optic nerve. It sends messages to our brains and tells us what we can see. The retina is like the film in a camera.’

  I folded the paper and kept it in my pencil case.

  When Dad had gone to his night job at the newspaper building, Mum pushed the big, heavy cupboard in front of the back door, next to the laundry sink, like she always did.

  ‘Why don’t we just lock the door?’ I asked and moved the nappy bucket out of the way.

  ‘We don’t have a key,’ Mum laughed.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Lost it, a long time ago.’

  ‘Well, why doesn’t Dad just stay home?’

  ‘Because, Caroline, you know your dad has to work, like all dads.’

  ‘Yeah, but not all dads have lots of jobs like our dad.’

  ‘Well, we have a big family and lots of bills to pay. Besides, we will soon have another baby.’

  ‘I know, after our holiday, when I go into grade two and Margie comes to school with me.’

  ‘I hope it’s a girl,’ Margie said.

  ‘As long as the baby is healthy,’ Mum said. I held my head against her big stomach and listened for the baby inside.

  ‘Do you think she can hear us?’

  ‘I think babies hear and feel lots of things when they’re still inside. Here, put your hand out, the baby’s kicking.’

  ‘Do you want me to help get the bassinet ready?’ Margie said.

  ‘Not yet, sweetheart, plenty of time for all that. Go and get yourself an ice-cream and a small cone for Seamus and Johnny.’

  ‘One for you, too?’

  ‘Sure, strawberry and vanilla please.’

  I followed Margie so I didn’t miss out.

  Five

  I don’t know how many times I drove from the farm to Dallas during that year of home tutoring with Damrina, but that long drive gave me space to think about those years growing up in Dallas, Broadmeadows. What was it about the place that once caused me to cringe and feel shame? What made me lie rather than confess to growing up there? It wasn’t personal. We were just statistics in a social housing experiment subsidised by a lazy government. Henry Bolte and his Ministers saw Broadmeadows as an opportunity to spread Melbourne further north. Dallas and its neighbouring suburbs of Coolaroo and Upfield were created to provide workers for the thriving industrial development. Instead, low-paid immigrants and factory workers were lumped together without basic services. Schools were overcrowded and there were only a handful of good teachers. There was no library or hospital but a thriving police station.

  And yet I was now happy to be returning ‘home’, albeit temporarily. Happy to recognise street signs and catch children’s voices wafting from the school grounds. Happy not to be coming back for a funeral.

  I was trying to respond to a longing, to find that something missing in my near-perfect life on the farm with a growing family of my own. Damrina was helping me do that through her simple gratitude and acceptance. She loved to cook. On one visit, we worked through the English names of common fruits and vegetables. All was going well until the arrival of her new grandson. Damrina, who was the same age as me and already a grandmother, was easily distracted from our lesson.

  As she bounced him on her knee, with lots of cute baby talk in her native language of Assyrian, I was reminded of my mother and her gentle way with babies. I guess she had plenty of practice.

  It was a stinking hot night in February almost at the end of summer. I was seven. Dad stood at the end of the bunk beds and told us we had a new baby brother. Baby number eight. ‘He’s a grand lad…to be sure,’ Dad said. ‘He’s got big blue eyes and fuzzy hair.’

  I couldn’t wait to tell my class about our new baby. Mum had been gone for so long and our Great Nana Miriam had come to stay and look after us. She was kind and moved about the house like one of the big nuns at school. Like them, she carried her rosary beads everywhere and splashed us with holy water as we darted out the front door to school.

  Our baby’s name was Matthew. Just Matthew and no middle name. I think it was because all the Catholic names for boys had already been taken by my brothers.

  ‘Does our baby look like you?’ I shouted above my siblings’ questions as I wiped the sticky yellow sleep from my eyes.

  ‘Aye, he does that, my love. Spitting image of his brothers, too.’

  As Dad leaned against the frame of our bunk beds, I thought how handsome he looked in his brown pants and check coat with the woollen collar turned up. ‘Mister Hollywood,’ Aunty Mary called him. ‘Those thick waves of jet-black hair, pale skin and those sexy blue eyes. It’s a sin it is.’ Aunty Shirley would join in, making Mum laugh. ‘And ooohh, that charm. Oh yes, James Egan didn’t just kiss that Blarney Stone he swallowed the bloody thing.’

  Margie called out from the bed below me. ‘What colour is baby Matthew’s hair?’ She stretched her short legs and kicked at me through the mattress.

  ‘Maggie, love, his hair’s as white as snow,�
� Dad said. Dad always called her Maggie and Mum said it was after an old girlfriend called Maggie May.

  ‘Our Maggie was at the front of the queue when God was giving out the looks,’ Dad liked to say. My brothers teased that I must have gone missing.

  Not long after our brother Matthew arrived I get another surprise. We are in the kitchen. Margie is rinsing the teacups under the tap, and I’m helping her look for ones with chips in them. Aunty Eileen the fusspot, Dad’s older sister and only relative in Australia, makes us throw the old cups in the bin whenever she visits. ‘Germs fester in the cracks,’ she warned as the cups shattered on impact.

  ‘You can keep the ones with small cracks,’ Mum said when I told her what Aunty had said. ‘A few germs never killed anyone. Bit of White King will get rid of them.’ A pragmatist my mum, the result of a working-class childhood.

  As she slides her wet, greasy dishwasher hands through her tight blonde curls, Mum turns to me, her eyes red and swollen. She leans into the bench, sweat on her forehead collecting like small bubbles. It’s stuffy and smelly in the kitchen where a large lump of mutton boils madly on the overworked gas stove. The burning afternoon sun thrusts it’s heat through the bare window above the small sink. Margie splashes us with the dishwater and we’re still giggling when Aunty Mary walks in.

  ‘Time for a cuppa,’ Mum says.

  ‘Always,’ Aunty Mary says, ‘but I’m off the sugar.’

  ‘Sweet enough,’ Mum smiles. She scrapes the hard coffee at the bottom of the Pablo jar for Aunty Mary’s cup, then mixes boiling water with what’s left for herself. She swallows it, black and hot, with a couple of pills.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Aunty Mary says as Mum lowers her bottom into a chair.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘I haven’t been,’ Mum says, her cheeks flushed like my little brother’s when his new teeth are coming through. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Mary. You of all people should understand.’

  ‘Valerie, why haven’t you been?’