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  For my first job, I received twenty-five cents an hour. In a few weeks I had saved enough money to buy my first pair of Levi’s in pale blue corduroy. My older brothers, Paul and Tom, did early morning paper rounds for a few dollars a week from the age of nine or ten. When Andy was old enough he took over from Paul at an after-school job with Lindsay’s Butchers. At the back of the shop they washed down the flesh of the cows and sheep that hung in the cool room and scrubbed the blood and guts from the stainless-steel benches. Because the butcher’s shop was next to the milk bar I sometimes waited for them after work, grateful for my job. Even if my brother’s pay packet was more.

  The work ethic was alive and well in most families in our street and beyond. I remember walking to work with Maurice one day when had started his first full-time job at a Dallas electric light factory. At first I watched from the window as he walked past our house, walking alone with his cane. How handsome he looked in his work clothes, a slim black body shirt, denims and desert boots. I had missed him when he was away at boarding school and I tried to think of something grown up to say, something clever to show him I wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  ‘Maurice,’ I called. ‘Wait for me. It’s Cally.’

  ‘I know it’s you. I’d know your voice anywhere,’ he laughed.

  ‘Do you like your job?’ I asked as we walked.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s a bit boring.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Test light globes.’ He turned to me as he slowed down at the corner house to dodge a low branch as if he could see it.

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘I hold onto each of the globes, one at a time, until they get hot. If they don’t get hot, I throw them in the bin.’

  ‘Are you teasing me Maurice?’

  ‘No way, that’s how it works. I keep the ones that burn my fingers. It’s boring. I stand at a bench all day long with this terrible music playing, same songs over and over. Even Elvis Presley and “Jailhouse Rock” are boring after you’ve heard them all day.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound that bad to me.’

  ‘Well, it’s okay if my friend is there and sometimes we have a game of basketball with the light globes that don’t work.’

  ‘Basketball?’

  ‘Joe, my friend who can see a bit, well he can see better than me, sets up a bin at the end of the bench where we sit to test the globes. If you miss the bin, you miss a shot.’

  ‘Do you smash any?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Don’t you get into trouble?’

  ‘Sometimes, but Joe tries to hide the evidence. Once we got caught when everyone started cheering. The supervisor’s moved me now. I’m in a new section making the starters for the light globes.’

  ‘What are starters?’

  ‘You have to put two pins into a disc and clamp them down, one after the other. I try to do about two thousand before lunch, but I’m a bit slower in the afternoon. Especially when it’s hot. One of the ladies fainted, it’s like a sauna in that stupid shed.’

  ‘Wow. I thought my job was hard.’

  ‘Yeah, make sure you stay at school Cally. You know, it’s even worse in the factory in winter. We huddle around one tiny heater. The sick ones cough and splutter all over you but they won’t go home because they need the money. No work, no pay.’

  ‘What are the other people like?’

  ‘Nice, but only a few speak English. I get lonely when Joe isn’t there. Some days I think I might leave and try something else.’

  The carton of farm eggs for Damrina were tucked between the work folders and posters for what was to be our final lesson. We had made progress as I gradually came to understand that Damrina could learn more by doing than listening or watching. Language lessons were usually combined with cooking. There was always something simmering in a huge pot on her spotless stove. While most of the spices she used would be missing in my mum’s kitchen, there was something familiar about her standing at the stove. Stirring the dinner while her children hung around waiting for a treat.

  After a tearful goodbye, I drove to the Broadmeadows swimming pool, a constant in our summer childhoods. The hum of children’s voices and the loudspeaker calling unfamiliar Middle Eastern names engulfed me, as I imagined being on the other side of the cyclone fence, a child once more.

  On those searing summer days when the burning sun threatened to melt our fibro cement home, Mum would close the ‘sweatbox’, shut the venetian blinds tight and herd us to the local pool. Everyone called it the ‘Broady barz’ and Margie would correct us. ‘It’s Broadmeadows Baths,’ she said in her sophisticated voice, all grown up now she was twelve and ready to start at the Catholic Ladies College with me.

  One morning, as the temperature climbed to ninety degrees, on its way to a hundred, Margie and I set off for the pool early. Donna and Gracie from across the road joined us. We marched across the big, open paddocks with sunburnt grass crunching under our thongs. Tall, dried-up thistles scratched our slender, suntanned legs. We went on foot to save the bus money so we could buy icy poles and liquorice blocks with the ten cents Mum had given us.

  It was late in January and I tried not to talk about the looming return to school, but secretly I couldn’t wait. School would be much better with Margie. Soon we would be catching the bus and train together to the college in Glenroy. No longer content to entertain just her family at home, she was now thinking about joining a choir or drama group at high school.

  Donna, who had just left Broadmeadows High School, was unusually quiet on our trek. Maybe she was sick from the heat? Or worried about starting work at the factory where she would be sewing clothes with her cousin?

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You seem quiet.’

  ‘It’s Whiskey. Whiskey’s sicklish.’

  ‘He’ll be okay.’

  I knew she loved her little dog and I tried to appear sympathetic. But our family had lost that many dogs (and cats) to death and disappearance over the years. We had learned pets could be fickle with their allegiance and were easily replaced.

  ‘Yeah, but we don’t know what it is. He won’t eat and he won’t even go for his walk.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just getting old.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what Dad said.’

  We walked on in silence, Margie looking out for snakes in the long grass.

  ‘Dad says he’ll get him stuffed when he dies.’

  I must have looked confused so Donna repeated the news. ‘He’s going to stuff Whiskey and put him on the mantelpiece, next to Nana’s ashes.’

  Margie grinned at me but I was dumbstruck. I threw my towel over my lobster-red shoulders and ran to catch up with Tom and Russell. I was in time to jump the fence with them and get in for free.

  I raced to sit with my girlfriends, leaving the others behind. They were all there, gathered in a circle, heads facing into the centre, chins propped in their hands. Baking their bodies in the unforgiving sun, yelling out to the boys showing off on the high diving board. We all giggled when Tracey’s bathers fell and one of her boobs popped out.

  ‘He’s watching you,’ Lynette called to me as I rolled over to tan my bare stomach.

  ‘Who?’ I snuck a look behind me.

  ‘That guy you like, the one with the blonde hair.’

  ‘He is not,’ I snapped, fixing my new blue crochet bikini top just in case I was wrong. I wanted so much to believe her. I wanted that boy who looked like David Essex to be watching me. Just looking, because I could never talk to him. I blushed from the tip of my head to the soles of my feet just thinking about it. Then my chest started to burn. Was it anxiety or the hot concrete under my wet body? They were all teasing me by then. Sweat dripped past my eyes and into my mouth.

  When Tracey returned from the pool and pranced around to the music on the loudspeaker the heat was off me. And that elusive boy in his white footy shorts and Golden Breed t-shirt disappeared forever.

>   ‘Who’s coming to my slumber party?’ Kaylene piped up. ‘You’re all invited.’

  Kaylene was the last of us to turn fourteen and her slumber party would become a fitting finale to the summer of seventy-five: one of the happiest summers in my young life. A time when record parties and movies, ten pin bowling at Southern Cross and Saturday ice-skating at St Moritz in St Kilda were the rewards of the increasing hours I spent at the milk bar. Usually negotiating endless arguments between the Greek owners, Mr and Mrs Abyad.

  ‘I’m coming to the party,’ Mandy shouted above the girlfriends’ chatter.

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for anything,’ Annette said.

  ‘Except David Cassidy, maybe,’ I laughed.

  I left the girls and made my way to find Mum and Margie who had set up camp on a corner of lawn by the pools where my younger brothers were safe.

  I noticed how relaxed Mum became when she was out of the house and surrounded by her family and water. Like now at the pool, or our occasional treks to Lake Nagambie. Stretched out on a beach towel, rubbing baby oil into her skin as she slowly cooked herself to the golden brown of a roast chicken.

  Mum was thirty-six and proud of her slim figure. Her flat stomach in her floral bikini the hard-earned result of a diet of grapefruit and boiled eggs. She combined the strict calorie counting with a fierce exercise regime. This included bouncing on her bottom up and down the hallway as if she was walking on it. I copied but it hurt too much and gave up.

  When I reached the group by the pool, Mum and her girlfriend, who was also called Val, were sharing a smoke and sipping low calorie cordial. They chatted and kept an eye on the younger ones playing in the shallower pools next to them.

  ‘Can I take Matthew to the big pool?’ I asked Mum, who rolled over and nodded. As I walked with him down the steps and into the deeper water he gripped my hand. We paddled out together and made whirlpools and I realised how much he had grown. The youngest of the family had just finished his first year at school. Now he wanted me to teach him how to dive.

  When we finally headed back to Mum our fingertips were pink and wrinkled and my nail polish had almost peeled off.

  ‘Time to pack up,’ Mum called. ‘Your father will be home by now. Hope he’s got dinner started.’

  ‘Just one more swim,’ I begged.

  ‘Okay, a quick one.’

  It seemed like a good idea at the time. I loved those last few minutes to myself, duck diving and searching the bottom of the pool for coins and other treasures. I loved the stillness and solitude of being under water, snorkelling or floating in silence. Keeping my head under water for as long as I could. Blocking out the world.

  This time, when I finally came up for air, I saw Margie waving and calling me so I swam to the edge of the pool. I heaved myself up and banged my knee hard against the concrete edge. As I swung my legs to the side I caught a glimpse of red. I looked down and saw a gaping hole, blood pouring from it. My right knee split open and pink fleshy bits were hanging out.

  ‘Are you okay?’ A pool attendant called to me. ‘I’ll get help.’

  Mr Milson, the boss of Broadmeadows Swimming Pool, was a big guy with huge arms and I remember he scooped me up and carried me to his office.

  ‘Looks nasty.’

  ‘It’s itchy.’ I thought I would faint from the pain and the smell of disinfectant in the sick bay.

  ‘Probably need stitches,’ Mr Milson said as he moved in for a closer inspection. ‘You’ll need to go to the hospital.’

  Stitches? I thought of Margie and how brave she was when she had her leg stitched after flying from our backyard swing. I would miss the inter-school sports. Again! The year before I was out of the high jump championships with a broken arm. I put my head back on the pillow. Sad. Pissed off. Afraid of hospital. But sometimes it’s not the thing you fear the most that will hurt you.

  Eight

  My time with Damrina finished once she had used her allotted quota of English tuition. Back then, under the federal government’s home tuition program, refugees received 500 hours. It didn’t take long for Broadmeadows Kangan Institute to find me a new student. Aalia was as delightful and challenging as Damrina. She also came from Iraq and had limited time for homework. Like Damrina, Aalia was a proud mother of several children who shared with me, mostly through non-verbal communication, her dreams for her family since arriving in Dallas and ‘paradise’. It was on my second or third visit that she took me to a bedroom to peek into the bassinet of her new granddaughter. Over time I realised I would not get to meet Aalia’s husband or sons, as they were Muslim. Damrina was Christian. While there were clear differences, the similarities between the women and my own Catholic mother never escaped me.

  Aalia’s busy house in Railway Crescent, Dallas, reminded me of Damrina’s warm and welcoming home not so far away, as well as my own childhood home where the motto was ‘expect the unexpected’ and visitors came and went all day – and night.

  There was a time when Mum worked as a nurse’s aide for geriatric patients and our house often filled up with patients from the nursing home. Men or women who had no relatives – or at least any that visited them – came home with Mum. Sometimes for the weekend and sometimes for much longer.

  Wally, a spritely eighty-year-old who stayed midweek, was Mum’s favourite and soon became one of mine. He was happy to share funny stories of his home in Hungary. Or read to the younger ones. There were also a few teenage runaways like my friend, Kaylene, and Tom’s mate we called ‘Pommy’. It suited me having all those extra people around. I was more likely to go under Mum’s radar. And so, years later, as an adult in my own home, I would struggle going into the empty house or staying overnight alone.

  Late one spring in 1975 Mum gave up her nursing job so she could look after her father. Grandad came to live with us. He had been in a terrible car accident. He’d lost control of his car and hit a pole not far from his home in Kingsbury, in the north of Melbourne. When he came to our house he had already spent six weeks in intensive care. Several more distressing weeks in a nursing home followed. Mum called it ‘God’s waiting room’. But Mum said Grandad wasn’t going anywhere but home with her. He was only fifty.

  After the accident, Mum’s insomnia was worse than ever. She mopped the floors every night and ran the washing machine around the clock, as if it were a comforting piece of music.

  ‘We have to get him out of there,’ she whispered to Dad the week before he came to live with us. ‘He’s lucky to be alive. But if we leave him there in that hellhole of a home, he’ll die.’

  ‘Where will you put him?’

  ‘We’ll shift Andy and Seamus into the bungalow with Paul and Tom, and Cally and Margie can go in the room with Johnny and Matthew.’

  It’s a Saturday morning and I’m not long home from work and the older boys are off somewhere playing football. Dad has left early for work at the races and has taken Seamus and Johnny with him.

  Mum stands on top of my dressing table, reaching up to wipe the windows in the end bedroom, the one I share with Margie. Squeezing a rag in a bucket of warm soapy water the strong bleach stings our eyes. Aunty Mary is helping out, dragging the sheets from the double bed that’s arrived from St Vincent de Paul.

  ‘It’s just for a little while,’ Mum says. ‘I need to have your grandad here with us.’

  Mum and Aunty Mary rearrange the room with Margie and I. Pouting like a princess, I empty my drawers to make room for Grandad’s things. Throw my school uniform, my treads and new striped ‘Dolly’ jumper into another box.

  ‘Why can’t I move into the bungalow?’ I ask.

  ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘I’m older than Seamus.’

  ‘Well it’s the boys’ room.’

  Desperate to move into the bungalow, I plead some more. I love the sanctuary of the room in the backyard, tucked away from the rest of the house. I often hide out there when my older brothers are out or at work. With the door and blinds closed, I play their
records, music blaring. It seems like there’s a new album every week, Slade and the Bee Gees and T-Rex. I turn the volume all the way up for ‘Darling Be Home Soon’.

  Aunty Mary takes my hand and looks at me, her breath rattling like when Tom has asthma. ‘Cally, love, right now your grandad needs your mum. He’s very sick. And your mum needs you to help. Your mum will be a great nurse, don’t you think?’ I’m not so sure but I nod my head just to please her.

  ‘Well, actually I was a nurse once,’ Mum grins as she stretch-es to thread the clean curtains onto the rod. Margie brings in the clean sheets, warm and stiff, straight from the clothesline. Always organised, she’s moved her things out already.

  ‘When were you a nurse?’ Margie asks. We’re not surprised when she says, ‘I think I’d like to be a nurse, or maybe a teacher.’

  ‘When I was first married.’

  ‘I thought you worked for a tobacconist in Bourke Street.’ I say. ‘And that’s why you started smoking.’

  ‘I did. When I was fourteen, your age. But I’m talking about later when I just had the three boys. You girls weren’t even born.’

  ‘Were you a nurse at the hospital where Maurice and Nicky went?’ Margie asks.

  ‘No. It was a different kind of hospital, a place for people who were very sick.’

  ‘Like Grandad?’ Margie says, as she pulls the sheet across the mattress, tucks the corners the way Mum has shown us.

  ‘No. It was a hospital for people who had other kinds of problems; things in their head.’