My Place (6 page)

It was early in Grade Three that I developed my infallible Look At The Lunch method for telling which part of Manning my classmates came from. I knew I came from the rough-and-tumble part, where there were teenage gangs called Bodgies and Widgies, and where hardly anyone looked after their garden. There was another part of Manning that, before I'd started school, I had been unaware of. The residents there preferred to call it Como. The houses were similar, only in better condition. The gardens were neat and tidy, and I'd heard there was carpet on the floors.

Children from Como always had totally different lunches to children from Manning. They had pieces of salad, chopped up
and sealed in plastic containers. Their cake was wrapped neatly in grease-proof paper, and they had real cordial in a proper flask. There was a kid in our class whose parents were so wealthy that they gave him bacon sandwiches for lunch.

By contrast, kids from Manning drank from the water fountain and carried sticky jam sandwiches in brown paper bags.

Nan normally made our sandwiches for school. She made them very neatly, and, sometimes, she even cut the crusts off. I was convinced that made our sandwiches special. There were occasions when Mum took over the sandwich making. Her lunches stand out in my mind as beacons of social embarrassment. With a few deft strokes, she could carve from an unsuspecting loaf the most unusual slabs of bread. These would then be glued together with thick chunks of hardened butter and globules of jam or Vegemite. Both, if she forgot to clean the knife between sandwiches. We always felt relieved when, once again, Nan assumed the sandwich-making role.

In April that year, my youngest sister, Helen, was born. I found myself taking an interest in her because at least she had the good sense not to be born on my birthday. There were five of us now; I wondered how many more kids Mum was going to try and squeeze into the house. Someone at school had told me that babies were found under cabbage leaves. I was glad we never grew cabbages.

Each year, our house seemed to get smaller. In my room, we had two single beds lashed together with a bit of rope and a big, double kapok mattress plonked on top. Jill, Billy and I slept in there, sometimes David too, and, more often than not, Nan as well. I loved that mattress. Whenever I lay on it, I imagined I was sinking into a bed of feathers, just like a fairy princess.

The kids at school were amazed to hear that I shared a bed with my brother and sister. I never told them about the times we'd squeezed five in that bed. All my classmates had their own beds, some of them even had their own rooms. I considered them
disadvantaged. I couldn't explain the happy feeling of warm security I felt when we all snuggled in together.

Also, I found some of their attitudes to their brothers and sisters hard to understand. They didn't seem to really like one another, and you never caught them together at school. We were just the opposite. Billy, Jill and I always spoke in the playground and we often walked home together, too. We felt our family was the most important thing in the world. One of the girls in my class said, accusingly, one day, ‘Aah, you lot stick like glue,' You're right, I thought, we do.

The kids at school had also begun asking us what country we came from. This puzzled me because, up until then, I'd thought we were the same as them. If we insisted that we came from Australia, they'd reply, ‘Yeah, but what about ya parents, bet they didn't come from Australia.'

One day, I tackled Mum about it as she washed the dishes.

‘What do you mean, “Where do we come from?”'

‘I mean, what country. The kids at school want to know what country we come from. They reckon we're not Aussies. Are we Aussies, Mum?'

Mum was silent. Nan grunted in a cross sort of way, then got up from the table and walked outside.

‘Come on, Mum, what are we?'

‘What do the kids at school say?'

‘Anything. Italian, Greek, Indian.'

‘Tell them you're Indian.'

I got really excited, then. ‘Are we really? Indian!' It sounded so exotic. ‘When did we come here?' I added.

‘A long time ago,' Mum replied. ‘Now, no more questions. You just tell them you're Indian.'

It was good to finally have an answer and it satisfied our playmates. They could quite believe we were Indian, they just didn't want us pretending we were Aussies when we weren't.

By the time I was eight-and-a-half, an ambulance parked out the front of our house was a neighbourhood tradition. It would come belting down our street with the siren blaring on and off and halt abruptly at our front gate. The ambulance officers knew just how to manage Dad, they were very firm, but gentle. Usually, Dad teetered out awkwardly by himself, with the officers on either side offering only token support. Other times, as when his left lung collapsed, he went out on a grey-blanketed stretcher.

Jill, Billy and I accepted his comings and goings with the innocent selfishness of children. We never doubted he'd be back.

Dad hated being in hospital, he reckoned the head shrinkers didn't have a clue. He got sick of being sedated. It was supposed to help him, but it never did.

I heard him telling Mum about how he'd woken up in hospital one night, screaming. He thought he'd been captured again. There was dirt in his mouth and a rifle butt in his back. He tried to get up, but he couldn't move. Next thing he knew, the night sister was flicking a torch in his eyes and saying, ‘All tangled up again are we, Mr Milroy? It's only a dream, you know. No need to upset yourself.'

Dad laughed when he told Mum what the sister had said. Only a dream, I thought. I was just a kid, and I knew it wasn't a dream.

When Dad got really bad, and Mum and Nan feared the worst, our only way out was a midnight flit to Aunty Grace's house.
Other nights, the five of us were shut up in one room, and, sometimes, Mum put Helen and David, the babies of the family, to bed in the back of the van. I was so envious. I complained strongly to Mum, ‘It's not fair! They have all the adventures. Why can't I sleep in the van?'

‘Oh, don't be silly, Sally, you don't understand.' She was right. I never realised that if we had to leave the house suddenly, the babies would be the most difficult to wake up.

Aunty Grace was a civilian widow who lived at the back of us. Nan had knocked out six pickets in the back fence so we could easily run from our yard to hers.

It often puzzled me that we only needed a sanctuary at night. I associated Dad's bad fits with the darkness and never realised that, by dusk, he'd be so tanked up with booze and drugs as to be just about completely irrational.

Many times, we were quietly woken in the dark and bundled off to Grace's house.

‘Sally … wake up. Get out of bed, but be very quiet.'

‘Aw, not again, Nan.' It had been a bad two weeks.

‘Your mother's waiting in the yard, you go out there while I wake Billy and Jill.'

I walked quickly through the kitchen, scuttled across the verandah and into the shadows, where Mum was standing with the babies.

Mum was rocking Helen to stop her from crying and David was leaning against her legs, half asleep. I shook his shoulder. ‘Not yet, wake up, we'll be going soon.' Nan shuffled down the steps with Billy and Jill, and we were on our way.

‘No talking, you kids,' Mum said, ‘and stay close.'

We followed the line of shadows to the rear of our yard. Just as we neared the gap in the back picket fence, Dad flung open the door of his sleep out and staggered onto the verandah, yelling abuse.

Oh no, I thought, he knows we're leaving, he's gunna come and get us! We all crouched down and hid behind some bushes. ‘Stay
low and be very quiet,' Mum whispered. I prayed Helen wouldn't cry. I hardly breathed. I was sure Dad would hear me if I did. I would feel terrible if my breathing led him to where we were all hiding. I remembered all the stories Dad had told me about the camps he'd been in. Horse's Head Soup. They'd had Horse's Head Soup, fur and all. The men fought over the eye because it was the only bit of meat. I was shivering, I didn't know whether it was from nerves or cold. I remembered then that the Germans had stripped Dad naked and forced him to stand for hours in the snow. His feet were always cold, that must be why.

My heart was pounding. I suddenly understood what it had been like for Dad and his friends; they'd felt just the way I was feeling now. Alone, and very, very frightened.

For some reason, Dad stopped yelling and swearing; he peered out into the darkness of the yard, and then he turned and shuffled back to his room.

‘Now, kids,' Mum said. We didn't need to be told twice. With unusual speed, Billy, Jill and I darted through the gap to safety.

Within seconds, we were all grouped around Grace's wood stove, cooking toast and waiting for our cup of tea. I felt safe, now. Had I really been so terrified only a moment ago? It was a different world.

We never stayed at Aunty Grace's long, just until Dad was back on an even keel. Prior to our return, I would be sent to negotiate with him. ‘He'll listen to you,' they said. I don't think he ever did.

After my mother had bedded my brothers and sisters down on the floor of Grace's lounge, Nan walked me to the gap in the picket fence. After that, I was on my own. One night, I told Nan I didn't want to go, but she replied, ‘You must, there's no one else.'

If I was really worried, she stood in the gap and watched me until I reached the back verandah. She didn't have to stand there long, fear of the dark usually made my progress rapid.

My father's room was the sleep out, and his light burnt all hours. I think he disliked the dark as much as me.

Our house seemed particularly menacing. It was surrounded by
all kinds of eerie shadows, and I wondered if I'd find something horrible when I got there. I didn't, there was only Dad sitting on his hard, narrow bed, surrounded by empties. He always knew when I had come, quietly opening his bedroom door when he heard the creak on the back verandah.

I took up my usual position on the end of his bed and dangled my feet back and forth. The grey blanket I sat on was rough, and I plucked at it nervously.

Dad sat with his shoulders hunched. His hair, greased with Californian Poppy, curled forward, one persistent lock dropping over his brow and partly obscuring three deep parallel wrinkles. They weren't a sign of age, he had a clear sort of face apart from them. They reminded me of marks left in damp dirt after Nan had dug her spade in.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, who dug your wrinkles, Dad? I knew it would make him cry. When Dad smiled, his eyes crinkled at the corners. It was nice. He wasn't smiling now, just waiting.

‘Dad, we'll all come back if you'll be good,' I stated matter-offactly. I'd inherited none of Mum's natural diplomacy, but I sensed that Dad hated being alone, so I started from there. He responded with his usual brief, wry smile, and then gave me his usual answer, ‘I'll let you all come back as long as your grandmother doesn't.' He had a thing about Nanna.

‘You know we won't come back without her, Dad,' I said firmly. We both knew Mum would never agree. How would she cope with him on her own? And anyway, where would Nan go?

Dad ran his hand through his hair. It was a characteristic gesture; he was thinking. Reaching behind his back and down the side of his bed, he pulled out three unopened packets of potato chips. Slowly, he placed them one by one in my lap. I could feel the pointed corner of one pack sticking through the cotton of my thin summer dress and into my thigh. Suddenly my mouth was full of water.

‘You can have them all,' he said quietly, ‘if … you stay with me.'

Dad looked at me and I looked at the chips. They were a rare treat. I swallowed the water in my mouth and reluctantly handed them back. We both understood it was a bribe. I was surprised Dad was trying to bribe me, I knew that he knew it was wrong.

‘I always thought you liked your mother better than me.' He didn't really mean it, it was just another ploy to get me to stay. Deep down, he understood my decision. Reaching up, he opened the door and I walked out onto the verandah. Click! went the lock and I was alone.

I walked towards the outside door and stopped. Maybe if I waited for a while, he would call me back. Maybe he would say, ‘Here, Sally, have some chips, anyway.' There was no harm in waiting. I squatted on the bare verandah, time seemed to pass so slowly. I shuddered, the air was getting cooler and damper.

Some sixth sense must have told him I was still there because his bedroom door suddenly opened and light streamed out, illuminating my small hunched figure. Towering over me, Dad yelled, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you're doing here, GET GOING!' and he pointed in the direction of Aunty Grace's house.

I shot down the three back steps and sped along the track that cut through our grass. With unexpected nimbleness, I leapt through the gap in the back picket fence and, in no time at all, arrived panting at the door of Aunty Grace's laundry.

Mum and Nan always questioned me in detail about what Dad said. It was never any different, he always said the same thing. They'd nod their heads seriously, as though everything I said was of great importance.

Once I'd finished telling them what he'd said, they'd then ask me how he seemed. I found that a difficult question to answer, because Dad was more aggressive towards them than he was towards me.

Eventually, I'd go to bed, and the following day, we generally returned home. I guess Dad slept it off.

There was only one occasion when Dad intruded into our sanctuary. We were sitting in Grace's kitchen, eating chip sandwiches, when he appeared unexpectedly in the doorway. No one had heard him come, he could move quietly when he wanted to.

We were all stunned. No one was sure what was going to happen. For some reason. Dad didn't seem to know what to do either. He looked at all of us in a desperate kind of way, then he fixed his gaze on Mum. I heard him mumble something indistinct, but Mum didn't reply. She just stood there, holding the teapot. It was like she was frozen. I think it was her lack of response that forced him to turn to me.