Back to Broady

by Caroline van de Pol

  First published in 2017

  by Ventura Press

  PO Box 780, Edgecliff NSW 2027 Australia

  www.venturapress.com.au

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  Copyright © Caroline van de Pol 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any other information storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Author: van de Pol, Caroline

  Title: Back to Broady / by Caroline van de Pol

  Category: Memoir

  ISBN: 978-1-925183-83-2 (print)

  ISBN: 978-1-925183-85-6 (ebook)

  Cover and internal design: bookdesignbysaso.com.au

  The paper in this book is FSC® certified. FSC® promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

  ABOUT PETER BISHOP BOOKS

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  Peter Bishop Books is a specialty imprint curated by Peter Bishop and published by Ventura Press that creates an environment where a national – and international – conversation of writers and readers can thrive. An environment that nurtures and celebrates the intimacy, curiosity and adventure that will always be fundamental to both writing and reading.

  Building on Peter's experience of 17 years as creative director of Varuna, the Writers’ House, and as a writing mentor to some of Australia's most individual and adventurous authors, this list reflects what Peter has come to see as his life’s work: creating and nurturing a national community of writers.

  Find out more at www.venturapress.com.au.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Caroline van de Pol is a writer and university lecturer in media and communication. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Wollongong and her articles and creative work have appeared in journals including Text and New Writing. Caroline has worked as a journalist and editor for newspapers and magazines including Melbourne’s Herald Sun. She has published two nonfiction health books on pregnancy and parenting.

  Caroline grew up in Broadmeadows, Melbourne, and she now lives in regional Victoria with her husband and lots of visitors, including her three adult sons and extended family. Back to Broady is her first memoir.

  For Mum and Dad and Margaret

  Some names have been changed in this book to protect identity and personal information. Where faithful memory has eluded me, I have filled the gaps with my version of what I think to be true or what I have been told to be true. I hope my readers will forgive me for any unintentional mistakes.

  Prologue

  ‘I’m going back to Broady,’ I told my husband one night as I drifted off to sleep. Before lunchtime the next day I was there.

  I steered my Jeep from Camp Road, a major thoroughfare of Broady, into Blair Street, toward Dallas, one of several small suburbs in the City of Broadmeadows. I parked at the Dallas Shopping Centre, near the Lebanese takeaway shop that used to be a milk bar where I got my first job. I was twelve years old and in the final year of primary school.

  Apart from more recent cultural influences at the shopping centre, with its blue and white Turkish tiles and the Foundation bookshop with posters raising money for a new mosque, little had changed in the neighbourhood. Teenagers working under car bonnets, elderly immigrants perched on threadbare armchairs watching life from their front verandas. An occasional bin tipped over and a few broken bottles in the gutters.

  Tentative, I drove on to McIvor Street and stopped at my old house, number four, with its overgrown pine trees and fake, brown-brick facade. The cladding came with a free colour TV, but only included the front and sides of the house. Some thirty years on, I imagine the back is still its original fibro cement, reminiscent of the other government housing commission homes surrounding ours.

  I marvelled at how neat our house and garden looked. No second-hand bikes on the front lawn or skipping ropes tied to the trees. The boxes of empty Carlton Draught longneck bottles had long gone. So too had the crates of Loy’s soft drink, donated courtesy of my uncle and godfather, who owned a delivery truck.

  The young Turkish family had maintained the garden well and even added fancy new gates at the side entrance to the backyard.

  I waited on the street for a curtain to open and prayed for a glimpse of my childhood and all that I’d lost.

  Then I heard my mother’s booming voice, yelling for me to come home. I pictured her there at the letterbox, waiting for a child endowment cheque. Her navy and white smock tight across her pregnant stomach and a baby brother on her hip.

  My little sister was by her side clinging to her bare, suntanned legs.

  ‘Give me a hand with dinner, luv,’ Mum called to me. I could smell the chow mein bubbling on the stove, taste the cabbage stuck in my throat.

  One

  I hear her calling me but ignore her, pretend she wants someone else this time, maybe one of the boys. She yells again but I stay right where I am, hanging upside down on our clothesline. The cold iron bar smooth against my legs and the blood rising in my cheeks.

  ‘Cally, Mum’s calling,’ my little sister says and stops counting when she gets to ten. She’s only three and still learning to count. I’m five and going to school after Santa comes. My real name is Caroline but my little sister can’t say it properly.

  ‘Come on, Cally.’

  ‘Don’t you want to have a turn?’

  ‘Nope.’ She shakes her head at me. Hands on hips, she turns to leave me hanging there.

  ‘Wait, Margie,’ I shout as my feet hit the ground. Her real name is Margaret but we all call her Margie. Our dad says Maggie and for me, it’s Carly. ‘Just his silly Irish accent,’ Mum laughs.

  I chase Margie around the wet sheets. She swirls through the clothes, dancing and giggling. Hiding from me. She pokes her head through the legs of our dad’s grey pants, a smile as wide and as pretty as Shirley Temple.

  Margie loves playing hide and seek but it scares me. Once I hid for so long my big brother Andy forgot to find me.

  Inside the house I grate the carrot and watch as Mum stirs the mincemeat. Bubbles thick with scum boil over the pot. Margie follows Mum from the kitchen to the bedroom and I try to sneak outside.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Outside.’

  ‘Not today little miss. I need you here. You can get a bottle ready for your brother.’

  I pour the milk into the bottle, stand it in the jug of hot water and wait for it to warm. I wish I was a boy and not stuck inside.

  Margie perches her bottom on Mum’s dressing table, watching while she lays out clothing on the bed. I smile as she paints her eyes with the same blue powder as Mum.

  ‘Can I brush your hair, Mum?’ she says, pulling the comb through the tight blonde curls around her forehead. When Mum steps into her high heels I wrap my arms around her legs, the silk of her dress soft on my cheek.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ I tell her.

  ‘I hope your hands are clean,’ she says, pushing me away.

  ‘Will you dance with Dad tonight?’

  ‘Of course I will. The Irish Ball is the only time I get to dance these days.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’ Margie says rubbing pink lipstick over her lips and cheeks. ‘I’m a good dancer.’

  ‘I know you are,’ Mum smiles. ‘Just like your mother. Your father and I were once the best dancers
in the whole of Fitzroy.’

  ‘Ready Valerie?’ Dad says as he stops by the mirror to fix his tie, a perfect match for his swimming pool blue eyes. I love how he says our mum’s name, Valerie Patricia, it sounds better than plain old Val. My friend’s cat is called Val. It scratches and stinks.

  ‘Can you do this necklace up, please Jim?’ Mum says, squirming as Dad kisses her neck. Mum sometimes calls him James and most of their Irish friends call him Seamus. I copy them and their accents. It makes my dad sound important.

  Mum swaps her plain earrings for the pearls Aunty Margaret has given her for the ball.

  ‘Quick, Caroline, find my handbag,’ Mum yells at me. I know she’s angry when she calls me Caroline.

  I search for Mum’s bag under the clean clothes scattered on her bed and behind the baby’s bassinet in the corner of her room. I check in the wardrobe, pulling out the shoes and bags on the bottom.

  ‘I can’t find it.’

  ‘Did you take it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I’m not lying. I didn’t take it.’

  ‘You’re always touching my things, snooping around. You had better find it and bring it to me.’

  ‘What’s all the shouting for?’ Dad says as he rubs the Brylcreem through his thick black hair.

  ‘I want my clutch bag. It’s all I have that’s mine.’

  Mum grabs me by the arm, ‘I know you took it. Where have you put it?’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ I cry and push her away.

  ‘I’m not going,’ Mum says as she undoes her dress.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Dad says. ‘Not this again.’

  ‘I’ve got a bag you can have, Mum,’ Margie says.

  Mum slumps onto the bed, her lips pulled tight. ‘I don’t feel well.’

  I feel the change in the room like a cold draft from under a door and I wait for it to come, for the whirlwind to hit. Inside my mum something is shifting. She drops her head and I wonder if it’s hurting her the way her stomach sometimes does. I wish she didn’t change. I want the good Mum back. Where did she go?

  Sometimes it feels like her brain is spinning around like our old washing machine and I can’t keep up.

  ‘Come on love,’ Dad says and touches Mum on the arm. ‘I’ll finish my beer and we’ll be off. Nellie and Dick, Peter and Brenda, they’ll all be there at the ball, waiting for us.’

  ‘For you, maybe, but not me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’ll be fun.’

  ‘Can we come home early?’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready, I promise.’

  ‘I feel sick I’m so nervous.’

  ‘Do you need to take something?’

  Mum tips a tablet from the small bottle into her mouth. They leave as our Aunty Margaret and Uncle Jack arrive to take care of us.

  I’m glad she’s gone, but Margie stays by the window, pulling the venetian blinds apart to watch them leave.

  I can still see my parents’ bedroom now. It was where I spent most of my afternoons, straight after school; a piece of toast with vegemite, a cup of Milo and I would head into the room to check on Mum. The bedroom was always cluttered. A bassinet and a cot in each corner, nappies drying on the sides and plastic laundry baskets of ironing pushed behind the door. Her room was a mess, like her mind. But we could always tidy her room and the house. Margie and me, when we were old enough, we could get that crazy house straightened in an afternoon. Fixing Mum’s head, with its seesawing highs and lows, was not so easy.

  Later that night of the ball, when I am in bed waiting for the sound of Dad’s car to bring them home, I look out my window into the dark night searching for the moon. I pray my dad doesn’t drink too much beer, and I whisper the words of the Our Father over and over so that nothing bad will happen. I ask God to make Mum happy again. I wish she was with Margie and me now, sitting on our bed and telling us all about the Irish Ball. I picture the beautiful dresses, the music, and Mum dancing all night. But I can’t get rid of that big butterfly that flaps and tumbles at the bottom of my stomach. Under my pillow I have the Novena Mum gave me. I whisper it so I don’t wake my sister beside me. ‘St Jude, relative of Jesus and Mary, pray for us. St Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, pray for us.’ I remember to pray to some of the saints who might help, St Paul, St Mark, even St Augustus. I promise to be good and hold tight on my rosary beads. I repeat the prayers over and over until I finally fall asleep. In my dream, I am pulling at Mum, dragging her away from Dad as she pounds her clenched fists into his chest. ‘You’re nothing but a bastard,’ Mum is shouting at him as he stumbles and hits his head on a table. ‘Leave Dad alone,’ I scream. I pull at her arms as they fly at Dad and then at me. I’m screaming but Mum doesn’t hear me.

  Margie shakes my arm. ‘Cally, wake up. Are you okay?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You were screaming. Do you want me to get Aunty Margaret for you?’

  I hear the soft breathing of Andy, who is six and old enough to sleep on the top bunk above us.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I tell Margie and put my hand out to feel for her. ‘I’m sorry if you were scared. It was just a dream.’

  I cuddle her close as I stare through the gap in the curtains and wait for sleep. I find a bright star and pretend it’s my Nana Joyce in Heaven. It makes Mum sad when I ask questions about her mother. I don’t ask anymore and just talk to my Nana at night when no-one can hear me.

  Even as a child, I knew Dad’s drinking was a problem. I was sometimes an accessory to Mum’s regular trick of pouring half-empty bottles of beer down the sink. Her solution to avoid the fighting that might follow a big drinking session, one that would end with her slipping into bed beside Margie or me.

  The morning after the Irish Ball I’m awake before everyone else, except our oldest brother Paul, who is ten and has a job delivering newspapers on his new bike. Tommy, who is nine, will start next year when I go to school; if his asthma gets better.

  When I can’t wait any longer I wake Margie and beg her to come next door to the Gleesons’ house to play their piano. It’s the only place Margie will go without Mum even though Aunty Mary is not our real Aunty. We pretend Maurice and Russell and Nicky Gleeson are our cousins. And their big sister, Donna, lets us pretend she is our big sister, too. Once when our mum was sick Donna brought us a cake with strawberries.

  Margie pushes her feet up and down on the piano pedals as her tiny little fingers stretch out across the keys. The piano is at the end of the Gleesons’ living room. That’s what they call it, but it’s the same room as the one we call the lounge. And Aunty Mary has a sofa – which is the same thing as a couch, but the Gleesons’ one is new. At the Gleesons’ house I try saying things like sofa and living room and I say cutlery instead of knives and forks. I forget when I’m back home, but not Margie. She sounds like Aunty Mary, with her pretty, posh voice. ‘Our Maggie is a good little actress,’ Dad says. ‘Sure she’ll be on the stage one day with her long dark curls and those big, green eyes. Irish eyes.’

  In our house, almost everything is the same as the Gleesons’. We have the same doors and windows and the same bedrooms with bare floorboards. The tiny kitchen, where Aunty Mary is on her hands and knees scrubbing the black and white squares of the lino floor, is the same as ours. Beside the gas stove and low oven is the table with its steel frame and shiny yellow laminated top.

  I can smell the cupcakes cooking and dip my finger into the bowl of tangy icing sitting on the sink ready for spreading. I love our dainty Aunty Mary and her quiet house. She hums as she dips her rubber-gloved hands into the bucket. ‘Clean enough to eat from,’ she says, wiping the floor dry.

  ‘Keep that dog away,’ she shouts to Nicky as he runs through the kitchen, the dog holding tight with her sharp teeth around the rope.

  ‘Here, Tammy,’ Nicky calls to the dog. ‘Mum, Maurice is looking for you.’

  On cue, Maurice calls to her, ‘I made the spelling bee champi
onship at school.’

  ‘Clever boy,’ says Aunty Mary, standing on her toes to ruffle his hair. ‘All that reading must be doing some good.’

  Two

  I can’t be sure what it was that drew me back to Dallas but I do know returning was like an addiction, a nostalgic yearning that had to be drip-fed. It seemed to hit harder once I became a mother, when I desperately wanted to show my three boys to my parents.

  Once my boys were all at secondary school I enrolled in a home tutor program with a Broadmeadows refugee support group. I was soon matched with a woman who lived a few streets from my childhood home, in McIvor Street. I now had a good reason to stalk my childhood neighbourhood.

  Damrina, an Iraqi Christian and a mother of seven, made some small progress with her English under my tutelage. More importantly, she helped me to remember there were good things that happened here, that it wasn’t all bad, as I had come to believe. Damrina was a great cook. She loved to feed me delicious, sweet Arabic treats, especially my favourite, almond and honey slice. As we ate, she provided glimpses of her hometown in northern Iraq, close to the Syrian border. Most of the stories were non-verbal gestures, as she pointed to the television where the horrific slaughter by Saddam Hussein was being played out.

  ‘I used to live over there,’ I said one day while we were cooing over her new grandson. I pointed to a row of houses across the road. ‘Behind those paddocks.’

  ‘You live here?’ Damrina smiled.

  ‘Not any more. We moved.’

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why you leave? It’s so bewdifool.’

  Was I missing something? Outside, children of all nationalities were playing cricket and that familiar crack of the ball on bat rang in my ears. At that moment, I was tempted to join in.

  As a young girl, I always wanted to join in my brothers’ games whether it was cricket, football, marbles or rollerskating. Margie didn’t seem to care. She never whinged the way I did. She was happy on her own. Happy to cartwheel her way around the front lawn or make daisy chains from the weeds on the nature strip. One time, our brother Andy was teaching us a new trick he called the Fosbury Flop. He had set up an old mattress on the grass and tied a piece of rope from the fence to veranda. Then he took a long run up, threw his shoulders back and flipped his legs over the rope. ‘Too easy,’ he said, arms raised in the air.