White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  One of the girls, a plump brunette with her hair pulled back too tightly from her face, said, ‘Vell, let me see…I would like you to brrring me some vater and perrrhaps some coffee to drrrink.’

  Her imitation of my accent brought squeals of laughter from the other girls. The pimply girl slapped her hand on the table and said, ‘And I would like some coffee and a rhubarb crumble. Make sure you bring me rhubarb crumble now, and not rrrhubard crrrumble. I believe there’s a difference.’

  My hand moved to my throat. I clutched my notepad, trying to keep my dignity, but my face blushed. It shouldn’t have mattered. Part of me knew that they were only ignorant girls. But it was hard to stand there in my waitress’s uniform and not feel like a second-rate person. I was a migrant. A ‘reffo’. Someone the Australians didn’t want.

  ‘Speak E-n-g-l-i-s-h or go back to where you came from,’ one of the girls muttered under her breath.

  The hate in her voice took me by surprise. My heart started to pound. I looked over my shoulder but I couldn’t hear Vitaly or Irina in the kitchen. Maybe they were in the lane, putting out the garbage.

  ‘Yeah, go back,’ the plump brunette said. ‘We don’t want you.’

  ‘If you have a problem with her perfectly good English, you are welcome to get your coffee on King Street.’

  We all looked up to see Betty standing in the doorway. I wondered how long she had been watching. Judging by the tautness of her mouth it had been long enough to catch the gist of what was going on. ‘You’ll pay another shilling or two for your drinks there,’ she told them, ‘so that’s two shillings less for your diet pills and pimple cream.’

  A couple of the girls hung their heads in shame. The plump girl fingered her gloves and smiled. ‘Oh, we were just joking,’ she said, trying to dismiss Betty with a wave of her hand. But Betty was on top of her in a minute, her face right up to the girl’s, her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t seem to understand, young lady,’ she said, hovering over the girl in a manner that would have made anyone frightened of her. ‘I’m not making you an offer. I’m the proprietor of this place and I’m telling you to get out now.’

  The girl’s face turned red. Her lip quivered and I could see she was about to cry. It made her look uglier and, despite myself, I felt sorry for her. She stood up, knocking over the napkin dispenser in her hurry to get away. Her friends sheepishly got up and scuttled out after her. None of them looked sophisticated any more.

  Betty watched them leave and turned to me. ‘Don’t you ever let anyone speak to you like that, Anya. You hear?’ she said. ‘Never! I have some idea of what you’ve been through, and I’m telling you, you are worth twenty of them!’

  That night, after Irina had fallen asleep, I lay awake thinking about how Betty had come to my defence, like a lioness rushing in to save her cub. Only my mother would have been so fierce. I heard the tap in the kitchen and wondered if Betty was having trouble sleeping too.

  I found her sitting on the balcony, staring at the sky, with an inch of ash on the cigarette that glowed like a firefly in her fingers. The floorboards creaked under my feet. Betty’s shoulder twitched but she didn’t turn around to see who was behind her.

  ‘Looks like rain tomorrow,’ she muttered.

  ‘Betty?’ I slipped into the chair next to her. I’d interrupted her thoughts and it was too late to stop myself now. She glanced at me but said nothing. In the glimmer of the light from the kitchen her skin was pale and her eyes were small without makeup. The fan of wrinkles on her forehead and the grooves around her mouth glistened with cold cream. Her features were softer, less dramatic, without the mask of cosmetics.

  ‘Thank you for what you did today.’

  ‘Hush!’ she said, flicking her ash over the side of the balcony.

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come.’

  She squinted. ‘You would have told them to “piss off” yourself sooner or later,’ she said, fingering her hairnet. ‘There’s only so much a person can take before they start to fight back.’

  I smiled, although I doubted what she said was true. When those girls had called me a worthless refugee, I’d believed them.

  I leaned back into the chair. The air from the ocean was fresh but not cold. I breathed it in and filled my lungs with it. When I’d first met Betty her harsh manner had made me afraid of her. Suddenly, sitting next to her and seeing her in her nightdress with the ribbon laced around the neckline, I found the thought of that ludicrous. She reminded me of Ruselina. She emanated the same strength and fragility. But perhaps I only knew that she was fragile because I had seen her secret room.

  Betty blew a spiral of smoke into the air. ‘Words can kill you,’ she said. ‘I know. I was number six in a family of eight. The only girl. My father made no bones about telling me how worthless he thought I was, and that I wasn’t worth the food he put in my mouth.’

  I recoiled. I couldn’t imagine what kind of father would say such a thing to his daughter. ‘Betty!’ I cried.

  She shook her head. ‘When I was thirteen I knew that I had to get away or let him murder what was left inside of me.’

  ‘You were brave,’ I told her. ‘To make the choice to leave.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette and we both fell silent, listening to the sound of a car starting down the road and the thrum of late-night music from the strip.

  After a while Betty said, ‘I made my own family because the one I’d been given at birth was no good. Tom and I didn’t have much in the beginning, but God did we laugh. And then when the boys came…Well, we were happy.’

  Her voice faltered and she took another cigarette from the pack on the armrest. I thought about the room. How the things that had belonged to her sons had been so lovingly kept.

  ‘Rose told us that you lost your sons in the war,’ I said. I was surprised at myself. On Tubabao I would never have asked anybody about their past. But then I had been in so much pain, I couldn’t have borne anybody else’s. Suddenly I had an urge to let Betty know that I understood her anguish because I felt it too.

  Betty clenched her fist in her lap. ‘Charlie in Singapore and Jack a month later. It broke Tom’s heart, he didn’t laugh so much after that. And then he was gone too.’

  The same feeling of grief that had overcome me in the sons’ room gripped me again. I reached out and touched Betty’s shoulder. To my surprise she took my hand and held it in her own. Her grasp was bony but warm. Her eyes were dry but her mouth quivered.

  ‘You’re young, Anya, but you know what I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘Those girls in the lounge today, they’re young but they don’t know a bloody thing. I sacrificed my sons to save this country.’

  I slipped out of my chair and kneeled beside her. I did understand her sorrow. I imagined that, like me, she was afraid to close her eyes at night because of the dreams, and that even among friends she was in a world of her own. But I couldn’t imagine the magnitude of the loss of one child, let alone two. Betty was strong, I felt the foundations of her verve pulsing through her, but at the same time I knew that if she was pushed too far she would shatter.

  ‘I’m proud,’ she said. ‘Proud that because of young men like my sons, this country is still free and kids like you can come and make new lives here. I want to do all I can to help you. I won’t have people calling you names.’

  Tears stung my eyes. ‘Betty.’

  ‘You, Vitaly, Irina,’ she said, ‘you’re my children now.’

  FOURTEEN

  Society

  One evening in July, Betty was teaching me the secret of her beef and pineapple casserole when Irina rushed into the kitchen waving a letter. ‘Grandmother’s coming!’ she cried.

  I wiped my hands on my apron, took the letter from her and read the first few lines. The French doctors had declared Ruselina recovered and the consulate was preparing the papers for her to travel to Australia. So much had happened since I had last seen Ruselina, I couldn’t believe it when I read that she was e
xpecting to be in Sydney at the end of the month. The time seemed to have flown by.

  I translated the news for Betty. ‘Wait till she hears how well you’re speaking English now,’ she said to Irina. ‘She won’t recognise you.’

  ‘She won’t recognise me because you’ve been feeding me so well,’ replied Irina, smiling. ‘I’ve put on weight.’

  ‘Not me!’ protested Betty, slicing some bacon and batting her eyelids. ‘I think it’s Vitaly who’s been over-feeding you. Whenever the two of you are in the kitchen all I hear is giggling!’

  I thought Betty’s joke was funny but Irina blushed.

  ‘Vitaly should have his Austin fixed up by the time Ruselina arrives,’ I said. ‘We can take her for a trip to the Blue Mountains.’

  Betty rolled her eyes. ‘Vitaly’s been working on that Austin of his since I first employed him and it still hasn’t been out of his garage! I think we’d better count on the train.’

  ‘Do you think we can find a flat for Grandmother close by?’ Irina asked Betty. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  Betty slipped the casserole dish into the oven and clicked on the timer. ‘I have another idea,’ she said. ‘There’s a room downstairs that belongs to me, I’ve been using it for storage. But it’s large and pleasant. I’ll clear it out if you like it.’

  She reached to a jar on top of the kitchen cupboard, pulled out a key and handed it to Irina. ‘You and Anya have a look and see what you think. Dinner won’t be ready for a while.’

  Irina and I raced down the stairs to the first floor. We met Johnny coming out of his front door. ‘Hello, you two,’ he said, pulling a cigarette packet from his jacket. ‘I’m off up the road though Mum says it might rain.’

  Irina and I greeted him in return and watched him lope down the path and through the gate. The previous Sunday, Vitaly had taken us to the zoo. When we reached the koala compound, Irina and I had looked at each other and said in unison, ‘Johnny!’ Our neighbour had the same half-closed eyes and languid mouth as the native animal.

  The room Betty had told us about was at the end of the hall, behind the stairs.

  ‘Do you think it will be noisy when Johnny practises?’ Irina asked me, pushing the key in the lock.

  ‘No, there are two rooms separating this room from Johnny’s piano. And no one complains when he practises anyway.’

  What I said was true. Whenever Irina and I heard Johnny play, we would turn off the wireless and listen to him instead. His version of ‘Moon River’ always managed to make us cry.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Irina. ‘Grandmother will probably love living next-door to a musician.’

  We opened the door and stepped inside, finding ourselves in a cramped space filled with cupboards, suitcases and a four-poster bed. The air smelled of dust and mothballs.

  ‘That bed must have been in our room once,’ I said. ‘It was probably Tom and Betty’s.’

  Irina pushed open a sliding door under the stairs and switched on the light. ‘There’s a basin and toilet in here,’ she said. ‘I guess Grandmother could take her baths upstairs.’

  I opened the doors of a carved armoire. It was packed with Bushell’s tea.

  ‘What do you think?’ Irina asked me.

  ‘I think you should take it,’ I said. ‘Betty needs to sell this stuff sooner or later, and if we clean up the room it will be nice.’

  Ruselina’s ship sailed into the harbour on a sublime Sydney morning. The humidity of summer had been familiar to me because Shanghai’s climate was similar, but I had never known winter days with bright sunshine glistening in the trees and the air so crisp it seemed you could bite it like a fresh apple. Unlike Harbin, there was none of the drawn-out descent into winter, followed by months of snow, ice and darkness. Sydney’s kind version of winter put a bounce in my step and roses in my cheeks. Irina and I decided to walk to the wharf to meet Ruselina. We practically skipped and couldn’t help secretly laughing at the Australians wrapped up in their jackets and coats and complaining of the ‘bitter cold’ and ‘chilblains’.

  ‘It must be fifty-five degrees above or more,’ I said to Irina.

  ‘Grandmother will think it’s summer,’ she laughed. ‘That kind of temperature was a heatwave when she lived in Russia.’

  We were relieved to see that the ship that brought Ruselina to Australia was not as crowded as the one we had seen on our first day in Sydney, although the wharf was full of people waiting for the passengers to disembark. There was a Salvation Army band playing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and some journalists and photographers taking pictures. A line of people were descending the gangway in an orderly fashion. A group of boy scouts rushed forward to hand out apples to the passengers as they came ashore.

  ‘Where did this ship come from?’ I asked Irina.

  ‘It started from England and picked up a few other passengers on the way.’

  I didn’t say anything but I did feel hurt that the Australians seemed more keen about British migrants than us.

  Irina and I searched the faces for Ruselina’s.

  ‘There she is!’ Irina cried, pointing towards the middle of the line.

  I blinked. The woman coming down the ship’s gangway wasn’t the Ruselina I had known on Tubabao. A healthy tan had replaced her ashen complexion and she was walking without the aid of a stick. Gone were the dark patches beneath her skin that had been familiar to me. She spotted us and called out. ‘Irina! Anya!’

  We both rushed forward to meet her. When I hugged her it was like squeezing a cushion instead of a twig.

  ‘Let me see you!’ she cried, taking a step back. ‘You both look so well. Mrs Nelson must be taking good care of you!’

  ‘She is,’ said Irina, wiping away a tear. ‘But what about you, Grandmother? How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better than I ever imagined,’ she replied. Seeing the sparkle in her eye and her glowing skin up close, I could believe it.

  We asked her about her sea voyage and about France and for some reason she answered us only in English although we were speaking to her in Russian.

  We followed the other passengers to the southern end of the wharf, where the luggage was being unloaded. Irina and I asked Ruselina about the passengers on the ship and she lowered her voice and said, ‘Irina and Anya, we must speak only English now that we are in Australia.’

  ‘Not when we are speaking to each other!’ laughed Irina.

  ‘Especially when we are speaking to each other,’ said Ruselina, pulling out a brochure from her handbag. It was the IRO introduction to Australia booklet. ‘Read that,’ she said, opening it to an earmarked page and passing it to me.

  I read from the paragraph marked with an asterisk.

  Perhaps the most important thing is to learn to speak the language of the Australians. Australians are not used to hearing foreign languages. They are inclined to stare at people whose speech is different. Speaking in your own language in public will make you conspicuous and make Australians regard you as a stranger…Also, try to avoid using your hands when speaking because if you do, this will make you conspicuous.

  ‘It seems very important to them that we are in no way “conspicuous”,’ said Irina.

  ‘That would explain the strange looks we’ve been getting,’ I said.

  Ruselina took the booklet back from me. ‘There’s more. When I applied for my entry into Australia they sent an official to the hospital to inquire whether I had any Communist sympathies.’

  ‘Was that a joke?’ asked Irina. ‘We of all people. After all we’ve lost. As if we would be Reds!’

  ‘That’s what I told him,’ said Ruselina. ‘“Young man, do you seriously believe I could support the regime that put my parents before the firing squad?”’

  ‘It’s the tensions in Korea,’ I said. ‘They think every Russian is a spy for the enemy.’

  ‘It’s worse if you are Asian,’ said Irina. ‘Vitaly says they don’t even let people with dark skin into the country.’

  A cran
e roared and we looked up to see a bundle of luggage in a net being unloaded onto the wharf.

  ‘There’s my suitcase,’ said Ruselina, pointing to a blue bag with a white trim. When the official told us we could go and pick it up, we lined up with the other passengers.

  ‘Anya, that black case over there is also mine,’ said Ruselina. ‘Can you manage it? It’s heavy. Irina can take the suitcase.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, although I knew as soon as I felt the weight and smelled the machine oil.

  ‘It’s a sewing machine I bought in France,’ said Ruselina. ‘I’m going to take in some dressmaking so that I can help you two.’

  Irina and I glanced at each other. ‘It’s not necessary, Grandmother,’ said Irina. ‘We have a room for you. The rent is low and we can pay it until our contracts are up.’

  ‘You can’t possibly afford to do that,’ said Ruselina.

  ‘Yes, we can,’ I told her. But I didn’t tell her that I had sold the jewels I had brought with me from Shanghai and opened a bank account. I didn’t get as much money as I had hoped for the stones because, as the jeweller explained, there was something of a glut of migrants selling jewels in Australia. But I did have enough to pay for Ruselina’s room until our contracts were up.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Ruselina. ‘You must save as much money as you can.’

  ‘Grandmother,’ said Irina, rubbing her hand down her side. ‘You’ve been so sick. Anya and I want you to take it easy.’

  ‘Bah! I’ve had it with easy,’ said Ruselina. ‘Now I want to help you.’

  We insisted that we take a taxi home, while Ruselina wanted to take the sewing machine on the tram to save us money. We could only convince her by telling her that she would see more from a taxi, and after a few attempts we managed to flag one down.

  Ruselina’s enthusiasm for her new city put Irina and myself to shame. She opened the window and pointed out landmarks as if she had lived in the city all her life. Even the driver was impressed.

  ‘That’s the AWA Tower,’ she said, indicating a brown building with something that looked like a mini Eiffel Tower on its roof. ‘It’s the tallest building in the city. It’s above regulation height, but because they classified it as a communications tower rather than a building, they got away with it.’