The Sparrows of Edward Street

by Elizabeth Stead

  And it was during my first job that I discovered men thought breasts had ears. I thought it was a unique way to converse with a female. Men talked to my breasts as though they were a pair of intelligent human beings. They gave them orders, opinions, asked them to make the tea and even greeted them with some vague reference to the weather. I learned never to acknowledge these men until they looked at my face. At one stage I wondered if this phenomenon was because men miss their mothers.

  ‘They can’t speak, you know,’ I said one morning to an office clerk. ‘They’re deaf mutes.’

  Later, with more experience, I began to address myself to a man’s fly if the man had been conversing with my breasts.

  ‘I see it’s also dumb. But I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  I had become very wise very quickly. I’d learned to read minds. I’d learned to jump before being jumped upon. As sparrows go, I think I might have been held in high esteem by the rest of the species. It is possible I am wrong, of course.

  At that time the advertising studio had me ‘loving’ a bath tub cleaner. It had a French name, and made ‘old tubs sparkle like new’ – I knew all the stupid, inane blurbs. The agency liked me to show my figure, especially the split between my ‘currencies’, and sometimes as much of the ‘currencies’ as was decently possible. Goodness knows why they thought my breasts would persuade people to buy bath cleaner – especially women – but I have never questioned the motives of those whose crumbs I gathered into a pay packet at the end of the week.

  I have for a long time appeared older than my true age, and am quite able to pass as a housewife in a frilly apron ‘loving’ her cleaning powders and glass cleaners and jelly crystals and floor wax and cold cream, even once with my hair in giant curlers, and all the absolutely terrible rest of it. To think of it! It makes me vomit! Great balls of fire – I will never marry!

  I work with Leon, the photographer, who is very nice, and a female assistant who never says a word – the sort of woman who, once seen, immediately disappears from memory. I am not under contract and have no agent, so I have had to work very hard to keep my job.

  *

  The scrounge for a pot of tea took me two doors away from our own. From the roof of the hut a bent flue puffed like a pipe smoker.

  My knock was promptly answered, and I was ready with a smile, but the man at the door was apparently ready to out-smile a visitor, no matter who it was.

  ‘Name’s Sparkle – Kelly Sparkle.’ He was a short man of middle forties to fifty, I would have thought, with sparse red hair and a red nose that almost matched. ‘What can I do for you?’ He held a grimy hand out for a shake, but I pretended not to see it.

  I was surprised that a man of a certain age had opened the door. I just assumed that men would be at work during the day. I hoped it hadn’t shown in my eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr Sparkle,’ I said. ‘We’ve just moved in to 19B and we wondered if you could spare a pot of tea. Our furniture doesn’t arrive until tomorrow morning. We have cups.’

  ‘Now, that’s going to be a pleasure. I like to help out,’ beamed Mr Sparkle. ‘Always have the kettle going on the stove. Come in and I’ll chuck some tea in a pot for you. Do you have any sugar? No? I’ll chuck some of that in the pot too. I thought I heard you moving down there. Nice day for it, and the kids are at school so you’ll get a bit of peace and quiet for a couple of hours. Come on in.’

  ‘Are the children yours, Mr Sparkle?’

  ‘No, more’s the pity. Mine are up country, but that’s another story. Come on in out of the dust.’

  ‘You’re very kind, Mr Sparkle, but I’ll wait out here, if you don’t mind. I have a slight cold,’ I lied.

  ‘Whatever you like. Just bring the pot back when you’ve finished with it.’ I wasn’t sure, but I thought I detected the smell of alcohol when Mr Sparkle opened his mouth. Metho, Rosy? Yes, I’m pretty sure it was metho . . .

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re the Sparrows. I am Aria Sparrow.’

  ‘Aria, is it? Foreign are you?’

  ‘No, Mr Sparkle. Just different.’

  The teapot was dented metal with a black handle. As I carried it back to 19B I passed the only other human I’d seen since we’d arrived – a thin, sharp-boned woman who cut forward at a great pace with her head down, as though she’d battled all the ill winds of the world even though in the real world there was nothing but hot, still air. The dress she wore somehow made her look thinner. She wore plain, sharp spectacles and grey, stiff hair styled in the way of a cauliflower. I thought I could clearly see arrows and daggers pointing at her and from her in all directions. She glanced at me, closed her eyes, sniffed and looked away. She was a most sorrowful sight.

  ‘Good morning. We’ve just moved in to 19B Edward.’

  ‘It’s after lunchtime!’ she answered with her sharp tongue through old dentures. ‘And there’s been nothing good about the morning.’

  ‘Oh, well, perhaps the afternoon will be better for you. My name is Aria Sparrow.’ She looked at me briefly, up and down.

  ‘You’re too good-looking for my liking. I’m glad you’re not mine to worry about. I’ve got worries of my own, my girl!’

  I didn’t know whether to thank her or sympathise. It was a full-length mirror assault on the point of a dart.

  ‘Thank you anyway. Enjoy your lunch.’

  ‘I’m sick of corned beef and stale bread and never a pickle,’ she snapped.

  ‘Where are the nearest shops?’

  ‘Up that way.’ Pointing north. ‘And it’s no use asking for credit.’

  ‘I have no intention of asking for credit. Which part of the Camp do you live in?’

  ‘None of your business!’

  ‘Oh, well, I just thought you’d like a visit, that’s all,’ I called after her, but she’d battled on. She was sharp and angry and bitter and sad all at the same time. I have always thought there was a reason for people to be like that. She would have been a baby once, and babies aren’t born with hate in them. Something I’d learned from Hanora. It is possible we were mistaken. I didn’t think so.

  The tea had a bitter taste to it, and was far too strong, but it was hot and sweet and it revived Hanora and even stopped Rosy whining for a while. When we finished we poured the rest into our cups and let it stand. Cold tea would be better than nothing at all, and we could add water from the tap. I cleaned the pot and took it back to Mr Sparkle, but he did not answer the knock on the door. I left it on the top step. I would thank him in the morning.

  Later that afternoon a gang of after-school children paused on their way to their own cells to inspect the newcomers. Something was shouted. Dirt was kicked onto our steps and a stone was thrown against the wall, just missing a window.

  Hanora went outside and called to them: ‘Now, do you think that was a very nice thing to do on our first day?’

  They laughed at her and held their fingers under their noses. ‘Oooo, la-de-da!’

  I went outside and said: ‘You lot throw another stone or kick more dust and I’ll stuff it all down your bloody throats, so you’d better nick off!’ And they did.

  ‘Aria.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Rosy.

  ‘I’m not sorry.’

  *

  That evening we sat on the draughty floor, drank leftover cold tea and ate sandwiches dry as deserts.

  ‘Let’s pretend this meal is a welcome feast at the end of a long trek. A pit stop on a mountain climb.’

  ‘Shut up, Aria. We’re sick of your games, aren’t we, Mother? You’re like a “B” picture in the cheap seats! I’m sick of it.’

  Rose saw things exactly as they were, and was a misery because of it. I think I was more fortunate. I could put it all on a theatre stage and swap things around. I have always been grateful for that. If it’s cheating reality, as someone suggested, I’m not sorry. I couldn’t care less about the real world most of the time. I have only known a real worl
d of lies, sneaks and deceit – but having said that, don’t think for a moment that I have not learned the lessons of the real world, every inch of the way.

  ‘We can tell stories, Rose, if you’d like,’ Hanora said.

  ‘Or sing songs.’

  ‘Anything but a hymn, love.’

  ‘We don’t know any, do we?’ I said.

  ‘You do,’ said Rosy. ‘We both sang hymns in that Sunday school when we lived in the flat.’

  ‘Something about sunbeams, no doubt. How old were you when you decided never to sing a hymn, Hanora?’

  ‘Very young, love. Ten or eleven. Churches did strange things to people, telling them to love one another one minute then making them fight and kill each other the next. I was quite frightened by their philosophies. I thought it was an unbelievably cruel way to live. None of it made sense to me.’

  ‘Did Father talk to you about communism?’ Rosy asked. Rosy rarely spoke of our father, except, when she was younger, to tell people he’d died during the war and let them think he was shot to pieces draped over the top of a trench, then lapping up the sympathy. She surprised me.

  ‘I don’t think he was quite sure what it all meant, love. He knew they hated Jews, and he was sorry for that. But, and I know it’s disgusting, almost everybody hated Jews. Communists might just as well have a church: they’re all blinding hypocrites. It’s lovely to be an atheist and not have to hate anybody.’

  ‘But Father didn’t hate you, Mother.’

  ‘No, love. But then, when your father met me I was no longer a Jew. I had discarded all religions a long time before I’d met him. We never talked about it.’

  ‘But there’s still the mother-to-daughter thing. Rosy and I are still technically Jews, aren’t we?’

  ‘To strict Jews you are, I suppose, but I say not if you don’t want to be, love. I think the mother-to-daughter Jewish arrangement is like a chain letter with terrible consequences if the line is broken. It’s blackmail! Do you want to be Jews?’

  ‘I’m a bit confused,’ said Rosy, who never walked under ladders. ‘I think I’d like to be something.’

  ‘Well, I certainly don’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve always agreed with you, Hanora.’

  ‘Then I release you, Aria.’ And she gently rubber-stamped me on the top of my head with her fist. ‘And Rosy, you can be anything you like. I’ll still love you.’

  I had once quite easily pictured a Church of Communism. It was a sort of log cabin cathedral built by the peasant masses, and I wished I could have painted the image. The Communist Church had an altar of rough timber covered with the red flag and sheaves of wheat and a holy statue of Stalin holding a sickle in one hand and the bleeding heart of a Jew in the other. It gazed down on a communion in which the congregation grabbed a week-old crust and drank the blood of capitalists.

  I described the image to Hanora and Rosy.

  ‘They do all seem to be as bad as each other,’ I said.

  ‘I think so, too.’ There was a pause. ‘And I have to tell you, loves, that I still feel guilt about sending you both off to that Sunday school. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I just wanted you to make some friends.’

  ‘We didn’t mind. I liked the singing. It wasn’t bad for a while.’

  ‘Well, love, it’s hard to believe, but it seems our world must still prepare for anything. As if the last war hasn’t been enough, I’ve heard on the news that the Israelis and the Arabs are at it again. Another war has broken out, and don’t tell me it’s just about land. How can they stand it! And there was a news item about an Israeli tank that had deliberately rolled over a dead woman with her live toddler next to her. The baby was crying! It rolled over both of them! Unbelievable! They should have all laid down their arms right then and there. There should have been a ceasefire right at that terrible moment. A mother and her baby! Can you believe it?’

  She stuffed half a cigarette into the holder and smoked to steady her nerves. Hanora smoked as little as possible, because she could not afford it. A packet of 333s lasted for a long time, but became terribly stale. I tried one once and was sick.

  On the subject of violence and religions, Hanora became good enough to shout from a butter box in Sunday parks. It was worth buying a ticket for. Rosy had gone to the safety of the bathroom and shut the door.

  When we moved to the flat among the eucalypts we found ourselves in a different, almost sacred world. The room with the gas ring in the inner city belonged to a different planet. We found ourselves on an earth of different soil and rocks, and air that felt as though it had been washed. And there was always the perfume of the bush. Not far from the building’s back fence was a gully with a creek running through it where yabbies played amongst the ferns. There were church bells all over the place, and not just on Sundays. I swear there’d been a currawong singing psalms in the peppercorn tree. To be suddenly part of that world must have been difficult for the ex-Jewish, atheist widow of a communist. I didn’t think there would have been an atheist or a communist for miles.

  Not long after we’d unpacked, Hanora was visited by the local Anglican minister. He gave her a box of lamingtons his wife had made.

  ‘My wife is a very good cook,’ he said. ‘A little gift of welcome.’

  ‘Thank you. How kind of you.’

  ‘You are Protestant, I presume?’

  ‘No, indeed you should not presume. I do not believe in gods,’ Hanora said. ‘I am an atheist.’

  The reverend gentleman, having got off on the wrong foot, trembled and put a thin finger under his dog collar, as though Hanora had spilt black ink all over the pure white blotting paper of his soul.

  ‘Would you like to talk to me about it? Talk it over?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Well, I do hope I might persuade you to change your mind – but at least let your girls come to Sunday school. It can be difficult for children to be newcomers to an area. They will make friends. I know they will enjoy it.’ And we were not to know that the Reverend Thomas Paste was thinking, I’ll make jolly sure they enjoy it. Two out of three will be better than none at all.

  Hanora had consulted ‘Our Friend’, who thought it was a very good idea.

  So, off we went, Rosy and I, in Protestant bonnets, Puritan patches and holey shoes to Sunday school, singing ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’, to make friends with already established rays of sunshine.

  ‘Just have fun, loves. You don’t have to take too much notice of the rest of it.’

  I stayed longer than Hanora thought I would – longer than Rosy – because I liked to sing. I had a strong voice, and was offered a place in the church choir when I was older. I refused when I saw shadows crossing themselves over Christ’s sunbeams, and I had a vision of me, blue-veiled and grim, marching up an aisle, armed to the teeth with a hymnal and getting down to the serious, grown-up business of being a ‘Christian Soldier Marching as to War’. It was suddenly too dark and earnest, and I realised for the first time how firmly set were the jaws of the Reverend and Mrs Paste. My sparrow instincts made me fly off, never to return to that perch again. That experience persuaded me once and for all that the simple philosophies of my mother were absolutely right for me. There were no doubts after that.

  ‘What do you think about it all, Rosy?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Rosy said as she wandered back from the bathroom. ‘Jews are awfully rich.’

  ‘That’s it, is it? All you want is two kitchens and somebody else’s money? Jews never use their own, you know.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say, Aria.’

  ‘I’m not sorry.’

  *

  Later that night we curled up on the bare floor in our bed rolls, with their thin blankets and a rolled towel for a pillow. We were worn out for all sorts of reasons, and, despite the heat and the mosquitos, we fell asleep.

  I dreamed. It had been a dream stored and remembered in the morning. I dreamed of the gully behind the flat and soft ferns and creeks with ta
dpoles and yabbies and huge sheltering trees whose branches seemed to reach to the edge of the world. And I dreamed of sparrows and crumbs and the peppercorn tree we had left behind, and in my dream I wondered why Hanora had not packed it all.

  The following morning I felt reasonably fresh, a bit stiff in the neck, but more or less ready for the day. I imagined Hanora would have slept in the comforting arms of the pharmaceutical industry, but Rosy would have wallowed in a nightmare of some kind, or had one of her night terrors. No doubt we would hear all about it.

  And we did. It was agony.

  The truck with our furniture arrived promptly at nine.

  The skeletons of our furniture were delivered by the two men who owned the cheap and rickety truck. They unloaded with little care. They treated us with even less regard than when they’d loaded at the flat.

  I felt sorry for Hanora, but then I had to remind myself what we were – dirt-poor and homeless. The two men probably had houses of their own, and might have enjoyed the cruelty of dumping destitutes in a Housing Commission Camp. No care was taken. It was the cheapest of cheap jobs, and they lifted and chucked and took not one minute longer than was necessary. Maybe they were afraid our rough iron might somehow infect their precious fibros. If I sound like a bitch, I’m not sorry.

  They treated Hanora with ill-mannered familiarity. One of them cleared a nostril of disgusting gunk from the door, to the dust below the steps.

  ‘Can’t you afford a handkerchief?’ I said.

  ‘Listen to her!’

  ‘Aria Sparrow is my name.’

  ‘Aria! Please.’

  ‘I’m not sorry, Hanora.’

  Hanora’s wing-backed chair had a leg damaged when it was forced through the door. The chair was covered with a dark pink fabric with sprays of very large pink flowers. There was a chrome smoker’s stand, a ‘Turkish’ rug of questionable origin that looked as though it would cover most of the utility cell’s floor, a record player with a box of records. There were almost as many records as books. I don’t know how she’d been able to collect so many. Cheap cabbage and bean slops must have had a lot to do with it.