THREE LITTLE GIRLS

THREE LITTLE GIRLS
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With two little girls one either side of me we weave our way down, Hyde St Footscray towards our homes. Arms linked, mouths wide open, we excitedly shout over and over "We won the war in nineteen forty four! "

At two o'clock in the afternoon, our young teacher had lent her head towards a whisper, that was breathed into her left ear by another young teacher. The whisperer was gone as quickly as she came. "Go home " our teacher said " It was hard to understand her, she sounded as if she had a mouth full of water. "Go home" she said again, "the war is over". Yes, we won the war in 1944.


'Over The Horizon'   by  Trish



At home, my mother is in the lounge room, crying and laughing at the same time. "Your father is coming home, coming home for good!". Whenever something out of the ordinary happened, my mother's short, dyed, brown permed hair, stood up like a lot of small crinkled pieces of burnt wire, which she'd again and again run her outstretched fingers through. This distraught image makes no sense to me and was no fun at all. Not like the fun it was with us three little girls, with our arms linked singing our song about the end of the war.

I was one, when my father joined the army. He was stationed at Wogga, in New South Wales, for six years and worked in the postal unit. My father was constantly called home on "compassionate leave", due to my mother's poor health. The image of a tall slim soldier would appear for a couple of days, sit bent over my mother's limp little frame as it lay in a hospital bed covered by a stiff white sheet, then he would disappear until the next time he was needed.

My mother claimed, for the rest of her long life, that my father's life, was saved at her expense. I think she meant, by her ill health, which led to the compassionate leave. Even as a child I marveled at the term, 'compassionate leave'. The words seemed so loving, so gentle. Probably because the event was brought about, by my mother starting to die, the term had taken on a sacred meaning for me.

When my father came home for good, I felt a stranger had come amongst us. The soldier was gone and in the soldiers place was a tall, thin man, with curly blond hair and blue eyes. If one of us kids annoyed him, his blue eyes would suddenly blaze out a wild light.

After a couple of years I realized his appearance had changed again, I now saw, a big, hunched over, savage brown bear, that was always angry; all that was left of the tall thin stranger with the curly blond hair, were his blue eyes, which now blazed  a wild light all the time. This brooding bear, snapped and snarled at anyone who came near him; except for his sisters, and they didn't come to see us very often, In fact, they only came to visit us if my mother was dying. I think, maybe each time, she was, my father must have written to them, or phoned them with the bad news. He probably wrote to them, he loved writing letters.

Some of the letters he'd written to my mother while he was in the army were still in their envelopes in the top drawer of our kitchen cabinet. There was always only one page to each letter. Now and again I'd take one of the letters out of the drawer, where they lay amongst string, small keys, old reading glasses, crinkled paper bags and lots of other interesting things, I'd slip the page out of its envelope, place it on the kitchen table, smooth the page flat with the palm of my hand and then look into the writing. I always thought the same thing, my father's handwriting looked as if a spider with four long spindly legs had walked from one side of the page to the other, until there was barely enough room left at the bottom for my father to say goodbye.

Though the word army disappeared from our daily lives, the atmosphere of it stayed around for a long time. In the lounge room, propped up on the wonky dull- brown buffet was a picture of my father in uniform. The thin strap of his slouch hat rested proudly on his square jutting jaw. Sometimes, I'd take the framed picture in my hands and stare into the stern face. I would try to put together the image captured under the brittle plastic cover, with the stranger who came back to live with us, and who had then, turned into a wild dangerous bear that sat on his own, in the bulky arm chair in front of the lounge room wood fire. The fire would spit and crackle cheerfully, but none of us wanted to be near the  fierce bear, so to keep warm we huddled together in our kitchen, around the lighted gas oven.



THE OLD HOUSE
We are leaving the old house. I'm sitting on top of all our mattresses. They are piled high in the back of an old truck that has four wooden rails. With my legs crossed and my arms folded, I bounce up and down, up and down, and imagine that I am on top of the world. I breathe in the sun, the warm wind, the new sights, then I hug myself tight and laugh for joy.

Because my dad was a soldier, we have been given a brand new house to live in. Nobody has ever, slept in this house, our family will be the very first. The wind whips my hair across my face, I imagine I can hear the crack of a whip, the crack sounds just like the sharp slap of a grown-ups hand. My mother told me this house has five rooms inside and one room outside the laundry, or maybe it's just beside the lavatory. Only my mother knows what the house looks like.

We are at the new house. My mother struts-strides her busy way along the narrow concrete path, the key to the new home held in front of her at arms length. There's a lovely fresh paint smell greets my inquisitive nose. The key is thrust impatiently into the keyhole, but doesn't work. My heart starts its heavy thump-thump. Where will we go, what will we do if the new door doesn't open? With one plump shoulder my mother gives the new door a sharp shove, it shudders and then, to my relief, blasts wide open. Down the hall we go, in and out the light filled rooms we go. Into the light filled kitchen we go and there before me sits a beautiful silver sink. Our family have never had a sink before, just a little white enamel basin to wash the dishes and ourselves in. Above the sink sit two shiny silver taps. The sink rests there like a wonderful piece of jewellery. My mother doesn't seem to notice the silvery glint it gleams out and over us.

Bang! goes my father's hammer. Bang! Bang! I listen to the familiar sound that comes from the back, of our new house. I puzzle over how my father got there,  he hadn't come through the new front door with us. I had noted that. Even my ugly big brother Hilton said ,recently 'You certainly keep you eye's open.' Not that I care in the least what Hilton thinks of me. I hate Hilton. It's then I remember the high gate I'd seen as I worried and waited for our new front door to open. Then I understand, of course, that's how my dad got into the backyard my mum had her key to the new cream colored front door, and my dad had his key to the high, rust colored  wire gate. Now I'd worked it out I could stop thinking about it.

From the thin line of my mother's lips, I could tell, she also recognizes the bang of my father's hammer. She cocks her head to one side, then slowly closes her two small pretty hands, with their manicured finger nails, into tight little fists. "Him and his blasted chooks! He's more concerned that his bloody hens have a bed for the night than he is for us!

Hilton, Donald, me, my mother and the two younger boys pull, tug, push, shove and drag whatever we can, down from the old truck. The huffing from my mother worries me a lot. I pray that she won't go into one of her dying days. My prayer is answered.

My mother's thoughts and words have become my thoughts and words. So, I think to myself "God knows what's going to become of us all in the future". I have just finished this thought when my mother says those very words. As I listen, I get an uneasy feeling in my tummy . I don't know why we think the same, I just know that we do.I'm thinking so hard about the feeling in my tummy that I jump when close behind me, I hear Hilton say "Yep you're a smart kid and a pretty kid as well" I try to look, smaller, thinner and plainer.

Tushie
20/1/11

STORIES FROM THE STONE HOUSE



I AM FOUR ? (Stories From The Stone House)
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I am four or maybe I'm five. It's very early in the morning and our house is stinging cold. My sheets are cold,
the walls are cold, and  from head to toe, inside and outside, so am I. I can't read a clock yet and I think that's because I don't understand numbers, but I know it's very early because it's so dark.

It's time to get up, time for school. School frightens me. The other little children have pearly clean finger nails and small soft  pink and white hands. When I sit next to them I can smell their sweetness. I'm dirty, I smell sticky.

I huddle under the blanket and try hard to cough. It's not a good cough, it's more like a dog's bark. I'm hoping my mother will say "You're too ill to go to school ". But she's not in the mood to be a nurse today.

"Stop that noise at once young lady!",shouts my  mother from her bedroom. "I said stop it!" So I stop. I always do what my mother tells me.

I wonder about the loneliness I feel in our house. I've decided it's because there are no pictures on the walls. That is, apart from the small one  in our hallway with three men staring at a cow with a wooden leg. I don't know who the men are. And beside it there's a bigger one of my mother at sixteen, sitting on an enormous brown or black horse. She doesn't look frightened. In fact she looks rather happy. She's got on a smart riding outfit and she holds the horses reigns.

Fancy my mother sitting high up in the air like that , and looking happy about it. That must have been before her back got bad and before she was cursed by the devil. She says she doesn't know what she's done to deserve the heavy cross she has been forced to carry due to her poor health, and mine, and a fool of a husband to boot. And on top of it all, there are five of us kids, who she often tells me, have almost been the death of her. I guess that's why she doesn't smile any more.

I decide, before I get up, I'll visit my  precious secret for one second. It's like a little fire that warms me when I feel cold or alone. I slip my hand under my pillow and take out the holy picture that I look at each night when I click on the little torch I found tangled up in a ball of orange wool, in our kitchen drawer.

Sister Bernadette gave me the holy picture on one of the days I was at school. She said the holy picture was because I'd said the number eight so nicely. Sister's voice is soft and sweet, like the honey she brought to school  one day to show us children. She held a small jar high in the air for all to see. She told us lots of things about the busy bees and said there were many different flavoured honies and I asked her lots of questions. Sister Bernadette had said, "You know Tushie, you have a very enquiring mind, it's a pity so much illness keeps you away from school so often. Ask the Lord for guidance whenever you are in doubt, and you'll never come to any harm."

As my mother isn't interested in me or her being sick today, I put my feet on the cold lino, then slip the torch and holy picture under the mattress. I'm pretty sure my mother won't find it, she doesn't often make our beds.

I am in my classroom now, and wondering, why  I always want to go to sleep when I'm at school, which is not often, due to my mother's serious health problems and my own poor health. One day, I heard our neighbor say to her neighbor, as she pointed her thumb in the direction of our house "That woman thinks she knows more than the doctors, it's a damn disgrace!" I knew that my mother did know more than the doctors. If it wasn't for my mother, I wouldn't even know we were sick, and what would happen then?

I  hear Sister Bernadette asking me something, but I don't know what it is she asked. My head is so full of worries, so when I can't answer her I begin to cry. The little boys grunt in disgust at my tears. Sister says, "Tushie is upset because she was not paying attention."

On my way home I worry about all the questions I'd asked Sister. Grown ups never  hear my questions the right way round and so I get into trouble. But when I look  inside my head at Sister Bernadette's face, it's not the least bit angry, so I stop worrying.

That night when I'm in bed and just about to close my eyes, I think how it wouldn't have mattered if I had gone to sleep in class, even when I'm awake, it feels the same as asleep.That's the way I've always been . For a long time I think about the golden honey and how warm I felt in the sun shining through the school window, and soon , I'm fast asleep.

Tushie

FOUR YEARS OLD?

'My Cat Prurrr'  by  Trish

 FOUR YEARS OLD?    6/10/10
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I think I am four years old, and I am very excited because in the morning I will go to school for the first time. My black uniform is spread out on a chair, my new white blouse is hanging on the knob of the bedroom door, and on the floor at the end of my double bed are a pair of shiny new black shoes that look like little boats. I don't know then that the new shoes, new uniform, the white blouse and anything else that may be new was almost the last time it would be like that.

In the morning my mother walks me to the school gate. She turns me around and points to our house in the distance."When it's home time come out this gate and walk towards our house". I squint my eyes and nod my head as I look at our front gate which seems far away from where we stand. Someone puts their hand on my shoulder, turns me around and leads me away from my mother. I can feel they are displeased with me and my mother.

The hand on my shoulder leads me into a room and sits me down with other children. I'm still excited but starting to feel a bit lonely as I don't know any of the children. I don't know anyone in this big place. I try to chat with the little girl beside me but she just stares straight ahead. Before I can try again, I hear "You miss! You with the plaits! Sit next to the boy in front of you as punishment for talking". I don't move, I am scared of boys even though I have four brothers. Now the nun is beside me tugging at the sleeve of my new white blouse. "Out! out of the seat I say!" I fall to the floor and hold tight to the leg of the wooden desk. The floor too is wooden and it smells so nice. Now the nun has me by my ankle and drags me to the front of the class.

I am screaming. The nun lets go of my ankle and grabs one of my plaits.This allows me to spin in circles at her feet. She tries to catch hold of my wrist. I continue to scream, kick and spin.

"Glory be to God! You child! quickly go and get Sister Bernadette to help me." In spite of my high pitched scream, my kicking and spinning,in spite of the nun's panting and puffing and saying "Glory be to God" over and over, I can still hear the mouse-like steps of a child as they scatter past on their way to get help.

Thrashing around all tangled up in the nun's long brown skirt, I see two tiny black boots. It is then I understand, this is not a big black eagle with brown beads and a big gold cross that reaches to the waist and somehow looks like a jailers key. It is then I understand that this is a person, a human being! I've never seen a nun before. So I stop crying and let the red faced angry nun and the white faced pudgy nun who has rushed to help ,walk me to the seat where the little boy is. They push me in beside him and he cringes as far away from me as possible. After a few minutes, out of the corner of my eye, I sneak a look at him. I feel very sorry for him because he looks so frightened of me.

I am walking towards our house. In the hot summer sun I smell the tar footpath and here and there I see bubbles bursting out of black pools and I begin to count the tar pools and then the bubbles. In front of me I see a fat fly crawling its way along, I pick it up. "So, you've broken your wings and can't fly" I say. I take the remains of a jam sandwich from my pocket, and place it beside the fly which is now crawling across the palm of my hand.

When I reach my mother she is too busy talking to our neighbor to listen to my story of the nun who looked like a black eagle, or to notice the poor sleepy fly with the broken wings that still zig-zags blindly back and forth across my palm. So, I raise my hand up as high as I can and say, "look! look! the poor fly's wings are broken". My mother screams and hits out at my raised hand. "It's a bee you stupid girl a blasted bee!" My mother's swipe launches the bee's heavy body into the air , it hangs there as if about to fall, but then I watch in delighted amazement as it whirrs up and away and out of sight.

From my bed I watch the night shadows, make strange shapes before my wide open eyes. In the darkness I hear my father's shuddering snores and my mother's horsey cigarette cough. My eyes want to go to sleep, but in the night shadows I see the big black eagle that appeared on my first day at school. I don't like that, so I shake my head and send it away.

As I drift and dream, I recall the nice woody smell of the school floor and the licorice smell of the syrupy tar, and the bee whose wings weren't broken after all. Slowly I push the fear I felt at the school gate when some one's bony fingers bit into my shoulder, I try to put a white square over the face of the frightened little boy. When my eyes are almost closed, a screeching black eagle,zooms down to take me away; slowly I push the memory of the awful black creature further and further to the back of my mind, and soon I am fast asleep.

Tushie

A CLICHE OF ROSE'S




 As a child, whenever I asked my mother a question she couldn't or didn't want to answer, and mostly because she didn't know the answer, she'd say, "It's a wigwam for a gooses bridal". If she talked too long over the back fence, or front fence, to our neighbor, she'd sigh "Well, this won't buy the child a frock or pay for the one she's got on".
One day as as my mother bustled, huffily around our kitchen, she said, "Someone is talking about me, my left ear 'lob' is burning". I corrected the word 'lob' to lobe. Now my mother didn't like being corrected by anyone, especially by me, her nine year old daughter. "Well it was lob when I went to school!", she snapped,  as she banged the lid down on the saucepan in which the corn beef bubbled fiercely. Now I knew that my mother could barely write her own name due to no schooling, and I'd often seen her sign her name with a cross, after explaining to whoever, that due to arthritic fingers she could no longer write. Knowing all this I decided my mother's words didn' hold much water                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                       

I thought my mother was very clever and beautiful to boot. I was ten before I understood that my mother had a turn in her right eye. It was Neville the ten year old next door who brought the reality to my attention. We were arguing, and as he searched around for words to wound, he shouted, not in his usual squeaky voice, but in a sort of man's rough shout, just like his dad's, "And your old girl's a cross eyed monkey- face". I didn't feel hurt that he called my mother a monkey -face, I knew it wasn't true, but I cared very much at the swipe of truth he dealt me about my mother's turned eye. I knew instantly that was true. I did not want my mother to be marred in the eyes of others in anyway, anyway at all, and I was not going to be put off the track of my mother's qualities, by the skinny boy whose freckled, red, brown and white face was now shoved  close to mine. As no words would come to my aide, I reached out, and gave a sharp twist to his  freckled pug nose, then ran for my life towards our open front door.

3/ MOTHER'S QUALITIES 17/10/10
Of the many things I admired about my mother, the main thing was her voice, both her speaking, and especially, her singing voice. I was shocked to hear one of my father's many sisters say on a visit "You know Harold, your wife does have a poor grasp of the English language and I think that's sad". I suspected that the word lob or something like that had been noticed by my aunt. I felt very sorry for my mother and from then on I decided I didn't like that aunt. I also decided to ask our neighbour, what she thought, of my mother's speaking voice, and when she replied, "I think she sounds real common", I decided not to ask anyone else. I just knew my mother and her voice were out of the ordinary.

MY MOTHER AND HER PRESIDENCY

My mother joined a senior citizen's club and she very quickly saw the possibility of becoming president. President of "The Whoop-Whoop Club". My mother didn't approve of the name, but as she was a new member she had no say. Well not until a little later that is, and by then she had accepted the name.  My mother would half  close her good eye  and say "You can't teach an old dog new tricks, a new broom sweeps clean, and not always for the best at that, he who laughs first laughs last" , then she would rub her thumb and middle finger together, hold them close to her half closed good eye and with pursed lips say, "Little fishies are sweet." There must have been some point she was making along with the dog, the broom, the laughing and the little fishies, but it hasn't stayed in my mind.

I struggled constantly to make connections between the cliches, and the words of wisdom, my mother smugly  inferred were contained in them. As time passed a growing suspicion took hold of me that there was not, and never would be, any connection to be found .

My father refused to call the club by its name and said, whoever had chosen the name must have been a damned fool! He'd mutter "It's a lot of bloody rubbish". He might be referring to the "Whoop Whoop Club" or to my mother's recent push to become president, or both. The group had been running for ten years with the same president, who my mother described as 'tough as old iron'. She'd say, " she's a real old biddy, a real old warhorse, but she's met her match this time", again my mother would start  rubbing her fishy thumb and middle finger together. " What our dear president doesn't know is, I've got a few tricks of my own up my sleeve". And she had.

Whenever my mother spoke of her plans to become president, my father would clench his teeth, thrust forward his gritted jaw, and grind out words of frustration "What the bloody hell do you want with that rubbish. That insane daughter of hers is already driving us mad with phone calls". My mother would let her eyelids droop a little and then she'd whisper dangerously, "Let's get to the truth of this, Dotty's phone calls don't drive me mad, but they drive you mad and why? because you're jealous! And while we're on the subject, the name of our club is meant to be a fun name, but you wouldn't know anything about fun, would you!" My father would grind out the words "Christ Almighty" he'd then raise his hands high in the air, let them drop! and say, "A bloody man would be better off dead!" then he'd slam the front door behind him and go for a walk.  It  often happened, I would arrive at the end of this familiar scene and hear my mother's voice, ring out triumphantly "and don't forget what that solicitor told me forty years ago, I've got grounds for a divorce any time I feel like it!".

Although those all too familiar words, seemed to go in one of my ears and out the other, deep inside, I knew that they  melted into a place, far at the back of my mind. That mysterious place where the endless cliches ,the never answered questions, all the cloud like shapes that fluttered and floated before my eyes when I lay on the grass and stared up into the blue sky ,would one day, come together for me, like a completed giant jigsaw-puzzle, and at last the picture would make sense.

Tushie