My mother had been estranged from her family for years after my birth. It was only after my grandfather died that we were welcomed back into the fold.
I remember on one occasion playing hide-and-seek with my cousin Robert, who’s the same age as me. We were both huddled behind the laundry door when my grandmother’s cousin and her daughter walked into the room. They spat out my mother’s name in disgust repeatedly and all I remember hearing was “They don’t even know who he is” in Italian, over and over again.
I didn’t understand what it all meant at the time. Until a bully called Greg Sims, who lived next door to us when I was ten, called me a bastard. When I asked him what it meant, he told me that it was when you didn’t know who your father was. I remembered what I had heard in the laundry that day and how they had mentioned the word “bastarda.”
Illegitimacy isn’t a big deal anymore. But it was back then and I remember the lies my grandmother would tell me. That I did have a father who had died. My mother never lied to me that way. Maybe that’s what I dislike about Nonna. That she couldn’t accept things the way they were. That she probably would have been spitting out some girl’s name and saying “They don’t even know who he is” if it wasn’t her daughter.
Sometimes I feel really sorry for her. I think that my birth must have cut her like a knife and I feel as if she’s never forgiven Mama. But she loves us, even if it is in a suffocating way, and that makes me feel very guilty.
“What were you talking about with Giovanni Gilberti’s boy at the baptism the other night?” she asked, trying to pin back my hair with a comb.
“We were discussing his perm, Nonna. He was contemplating blond streaks and I was advising him against it.”
“Did I tell you that he was a mechanic and owned his own house?”
“About one million times,” I said, escaping her clutches.
“He asks me about you all the time, Jozzie. ‘How is Jozzie, Signora?’ he asks. ‘Is she good?’ ”
“ ‘No, she’s bad,’ you answer,” I said, eating some Nutella out of the jar.
“He is a very well-manner boy.”
“Mannered,” I corrected, knowing that it irritated her, although I’m pretty proud of the way she speaks English.
“He is like your cousin Roberto. He loves his nonna, Roberto does.”
“Meaning I don’t love you, right?”
“I did not say that, Jozzie,” she said angrily. “You always try to put the words into my mouth.”
“You mean it,” I sighed, throwing myself on the couch in front of her.
“You misintrepid everyting, Jozzie.”
“It’s ‘misinterpret everything,’” I corrected, rolling my eyes.
“You are without respect, Jozzie. Just like your mother. Always wit no respect.”
“Mama is good to you, Nonna,” I shouted angrily. “If she is ever rude to you, it’s because you pester her about every single thing possible.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that, Jozzie.”
“Why? You sit there and pick a fight deliberately and then you wonder why I argue back?”
“I did not pick a fight, Jozzie. I just said that you and Christina are rude and should treat me better. I am an old woman now and I deserve respect.”
“Yes, Nonna,” I muttered, bored.
“Now see if you can find my pills. I have a migraine now,” she said, touching her forehead dramatically.
She drives me crazy. Sometimes I have to grit my teeth to control myself. She wants to know why other Italian girls have Italian boyfriends and I don’t. If I want to go out with Australians, she objects. “What do they know about culture?” she asks. “Do they understand the way we live?”
The way we live?
You would think we had a totally different lifestyle, like the Amish or something.
Then she tells me about Eleanora Castano, who married Bob Jones and now they’re divorced.
Why? Because he’s Australian and she’s Italian, of course. Not because she’s a flibbertigibbet and he’s an idiot.
“No manners, Jozzie,” I heard her say. “That is Christina’s fault because if she was a good mother, you would be a good daughter and granddaughter and respect me. But there is no respect left wit the youth of today.”
I gave her a glass of water and pills and picked up my bag.
“It’s not the youth of today, Nonna,” I said angrily. “It’s you and people like you. Always worrying about what other people think. Always talking about other people. Well, we get spoken about as well, Nonna, and that’s your fault because you have no respect for other people’s privacy, including your daughter’s and granddaughter’s.”
“It is Christina’s fault that you are speaking to me like this. A daughter’s behavior always reflects on how good a mother is.”
“Well, I guess that means you did a pretty hopeless job as a mother because look at the life your daughter ended up with.”
We looked at each other coldly for a long time. I knew I had gone too far. Maybe, by the look on her face, she knew that I had hit the truth.
It scared me looking at her so close. I don’t do that too often and I realized that she was getting old. Because of her vanity and the fact that she constantly dyes her hair black she can get away with looking like a woman ten years younger. But today she looked like a woman in her sixties. She looked tired and I realized that I loved her as much as I disliked her.
“Go home, Jozzie,” she said icily. “I do not want you here.”
The doorbell rang and we both ignored it for a few seconds. I tried hard not to think of the trouble I would be in with my mother. Nonna went to answer it and I stayed in the TV room, wondering whether I should go home. I heard her call my name, so picking up my bag I walked into the corridor where she was standing with a man.
“This is my granddaughter Jozzie, Michael.”
Michael! My heart began to pound at one hundred miles per hour and I could feel the hairs at the back of my head standing on end.
“I will just go and get that address, Michael,” she said, walking up the stairs. “Jozzie, show Michael to the living room and turn on the air-conditioning. It is boiling hot.”
I looked at him and at that moment every image I had of my father flew out the window.
I had thought he’d be tall.
He wasn’t.
I thought he’d be good-looking.
He wasn’t.
I thought he’d look like a weakling.
He didn’t.
He had a sense of strength about him. A kind of tilt to his head when he looked at me. He looked like an intellectual and so sure of himself. Somehow I figured that women would really go for him. He was very solid, and when I looked into his eyes I saw an obvious resemblance.
“You’re Christina’s daughter?”
He had a deep articulate voice, which was cool and very impersonal.
“Yes.” I watched him tilt his head even more and I slowly began to enjoy his oncoming discomfort.
“I didn’t expect you to be so old.”
I picked up my schoolbag and walked past him, opening the door.
“My mother had me young,” I said, turning around to face him.
His face kind of fell. It went pale. I had never seen anything like it before. He looked at me in absolute shock, and if I had it in me I would have said more to make him feel even worse.
“Goodbye, Mr. Andretti.”
I walked down the steps of the house and along the pathway and only when I reached the road did I turn around. He was still watching.
Before I could even walk through the door, my grandmother had rung my mother recounting every single word of our conversation. I was ordered to apologize. Wouldn’t you love to receive an apology from someone because they were ordered to?
I was so stressed out about the whole affair. I couldn’t believe that I had stood so close to this man who I have spent all of my life slotting into the furthest part of my mind. I wanted
to go to Mama and tell her how I felt. I wanted to ring up Sera or Lee or Anna. Anyone. Just to tell them how I felt. Except I knew that if I walked into Mama’s room or rang up one of my friends I would open my mouth and nothing would come out. Nothing right, anyway.
I had a one-hour “hating Nonna” session. I hated her because she never had anything nice to say about Mama. I hated her because she’d never let my mother forget the past. I hated her because I had to go to her place in the afternoons. I hated her because she tried to act like my mother. I hated her because she was being friendly to Michael Andretti. I hated her because she rang up Mama to keep her up-to-date on everything I said and did wrong so she could say, “You’re a bad mother, Christina.”
I vowed like I do every time we have a fight that when I turn eighteen I’ll leave and never have anything to do with my family again. Not with my grandmother or meddling great-aunts or cousins or gossiping family friends. I want to run from all of them.
They stifle me with ridiculous rules and regulations they have brought with them from Europe, but they haven’t changed with the times like the Europeans have. There’s always something that shouldn’t be said or done. There are always jobs I have to learn because all good Italian girls know how to do them and one day I’ll need them to look after my chauvinistic husband. There’s always someone I have to respect.
I hate the word “respect.” It makes me sick to my stomach. I’ll run one day. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself. Not as an Australian and not as an Italian and not as an in-between. I’ll run to be emancipated.
If my society will let me.
Four
IT’S DEBATING TIME again. The only time when Poison Ivy and I are on the same side of life, agreeing on the same thing. It begins each year in March and this year the competition began for us at our school, against St. Anthony’s.
Have I ever told you about John “love of my life” Barton?
Picture this. School captain of St. Anthony’s. Son of a member of Parliament. Greatest debater who ever lived. Good-looking. Popular. Tell me, what more could I want out of life?
For him to be equally in love with me, that’s what.
St. Anthony’s beat us on Friday night. Due to the fact that it was an argument about politics, I feel that John Barton’s team had a certain advantage.
When it was over I rushed to the classroom where they were serving coffee and biscuits. I was hoping to salvage the last piece of cake or maybe a chocolate biscuit but discovered I was too late when I found a girl taking the last four.
“I bet she was the type who hogged the potato chips at parties when she was young,” I heard someone whisper in my ear.
I turned to face John Barton and laughed, nodding my head.
It had been three months since I last saw him and he was looking even better. Not that he’s a “pretty boy” or even bursting with sex appeal, come to think about it. It’s the honesty and realness about him that I love. It’s written on his face like a script.
If he was a woman he would never need to wear rouge. He has that natural redness on his cheekbones. Although he’s a bit on the thin side, it’s his height that I like and the way his hazel eyes smile and change so instantly with his moods.
“I’m left with the boring Scotch Finger biscuits as usual,” I told him.
He grinned mischievously and held out his hand, holding two Tim Tams.
“I was a fairy-bread hogger at parties,” he told me seriously, his eyes immediately changing. “I used to put them in my pockets or hide them wherever I could, until one day I was exposed when my host handed me my parka and four slices of fairy bread fell out. I was seven years old, and up till this day if I ever see fairy bread I palpitate and realize that psychologically I will never be cured.”
I laughed at his theatrics and took the Tim Tam he offered me.
“So what deep, dark secret do you have to tell me about your party days?” he asked.
“Well, I was one of those ‘pass-the-parcel’ hoggers. I used to hold on to the parcel for five seconds more in case the music stopped. The same for musical chairs. I’d stand in front of the chair and not move. I was banned from parties after that.”
“Yeah,” he said, narrowing his eyes in mock suspicion. “You look the type.”
Mama came up and gave me a kiss and then made a bee-line for Sister Louise before I could stop her.
“She’s very natural. She looks more real than anyone else in this room,” he observed, his hazel eyes following her.
“I know,” I said, watching her talking to Sister. “I’m just worried about what Sister Louise is telling her. I’ve been in trouble lately.”
“You were very good at Martin Place the other day. I recognized your speech.”
I looked at him and frowned. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I was with Ivy and some others talking to the Premier.”
I nodded, thinking how perfectly suited his family was to Poison Ivy’s. I wished like crazy that he hadn’t mentioned her name. How could I compete with someone whose father was one of Sydney’s top heart surgeons and whose photo was in the Australian when she was elected school captain. I could picture her parents at dinner with his. They’d talk about politics, the arts and world affairs. Then I tried to picture them at dinner with Nonna and Mama. Not that I have ever been ashamed of them, by any means. But what would they talk about? The best way of making lasagna? Our families had nothing in common.
“That Cook High guy was pretty impressive. I mean, he wouldn’t make a great debater, but he was a surprise.”
“Jacob Coote,” I murmured as he grabbed some biscuits and we walked outside.
I tried to picture John Barton terrorizing girls in alleyways or Jacob Coote being able to converse with the Premier. It made me so much more aware of the social and cultural differences around me.
We ended up sitting on cane chairs on the veranda looking up at the sky. It was a beautiful, balmy night.
“Heard about the regional dance?”
I didn’t want to look at him because I would have seemed too eager. To walk into the regional dance with John Barton would make me the envy of every snob at St. Martha’s.
“It’s all we talk about. Can you imagine five different schools in one room? There’s either going to be heaps of fights or the beginning of mixed relationships.”
“I’m just glad St. Joan’s isn’t going to be there. We get stuck with them every time,” he complained. “We detest them.”
“We detest St. Francis’s guys. We were invited to their formal in Year Ten. They grouped together and sang rah-rah songs all night. For their football team and cricket team and basketball team and God knows what else.”
“All those guys know how to do is play sports,” he said. “The Marist Brothers are obsessed.”
“Slaughtered by them, right?”
“Embarrassing. The day after election day, actually. My father came to watch and said he was humiliated. The press were there, of course. I pointed out that academically the St. Francis guys were inept, but it still took me days to live it down.”
We sat alongside each other without speaking for a while. He’s the type of person you can do that with. It wasn’t an embarrassing silence, just a comfortable one. As if we both respected each other’s private thoughts.
“So what are you going to do next year?” he asked, offering me his last biscuit.
“I want to be a barrister.”
“If you couldn’t beat me back there with your clever conversation, you’ll never make it,” he teased.
I hit him and shrugged.
“Your father would have been humiliated if you’d lost the argument tonight so I allowed you to win.”
He gave me a sidelong look and we laughed.
“What about you?” I asked.
He looked at me in mock horror.
“Could you imagine me not going into law and then politics?”
“Yeah. I reckon you’d make a
great teacher. I watched the little debaters come up to you. You’re very patient with them.”
“My father would have a stroke.”
“You’re a snob.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m a realist. My father is a politician, my grandfather was a politician and my great-grandfather was a backer of the first Liberal prime minister. My father believes that we have the breeding to one day give this country the best prime minister it has ever had. It was something his father told him and something his father’s father told him. On my birthday, every year, he stands on a soap-box.”
John stood on the chair and pulled his fringe back, imitating his father’s receding hairline.
“One of my sons,” he began in a droning voice, “will one day lead this country back into the path of glory and I feel it can easily be John. Forget the incidents of the past. He did his stint at FBA and is now on the road to recovery.”
“FBA?”
“Fairy Bread Anonymous. My parents even went to the organization that helped the family members of addicts.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’ve slightly exaggerated the case, but how can you escape his type of thinking and tradition?”
“Easy.” I shrugged. “My great-grandmother dressed the dead in Sicily, my grandmother worked on a farm in Queensland and my mother is a medical secretary in Leichhardt. I’m not going to follow in their footsteps and I know more than you about escaping tradition. You kind of just pave your own path.”
“It’s different for you,” he sighed. “You haven’t got any pressures in life. I’ve always had to be the best because it’s been expected of me. Do you think they voted me school captain because they wanted me? Get real. They knew I was going to be school captain when I was in Year Seven because every other Barton has been one. It’s got nothing to do with popularity. The guys don’t even know me.”
I was surprised at his bitterness and tried to cut the mood. “I haven’t got any pressures?” I asked, grabbing his sleeves dramatically. “I could write a book about them.”