A Girl in Three Parts Read online

  “I have no problem with being strong, Rutka. No problem at all,” Matilde replies. “But I also need to eat. I need to pay my mortgage and I need to care for my granddaughter. You saw the girl—she is still young. I cannot leave her alone for a job outside this house. She has no mother. What else can I do?”

  “It won’t be forever, Matilde. Just until we have won our rights. You have no idea what we have to put up with at that factory. There is also the crazy unfair bonus scheme. It is compulsory, but we do not know what are the rules. We do not even know how much extra work we need to do to qualify, and last month two of our girls got the sack because they didn’t meet it, but they didn’t know what it was.

  “And also, we all have to put in money from our own pay for the boss’s birthday. We have to put up with his terrible conditions, his abuse, and then—can you believe it?—buy him a big present and wish him many happy returns. I don’t see you doing that from the comfort of working in your home, Matilde.”

  “I am paying in other ways, Rutka. If there is no work, then I have no pay at all, not a red cent. And if I refuse the work now, I will never get the work again. This I cannot do. On my shoulders I carry everything here, everything. The child’s father makes little contribution; his focus is too much on the horse races. He too has the Játszik sickness. But my granddaughter, she is a clever girl…a very clever girl…just like her mother, so I must also save for her future studies at the university. I am sorry. I cannot help you.” I hear Matilde push her chair out from the table in a way that I know means the conversation is finished.

  I scurry back to my room just in time to hear Mrs. Kowalski leave through the front door.

  I wonder just how sick Rick is exactly.

  Did he catch this “Játszik sickness” from my dead mother?

  Sometimes when I get information from secretly listening in to the adults, it feels as though growing up is not so much about getter taller or smarter or stronger, but about the happy shell of being a kid being chipped away from around me one chink at a time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The man with the gray Plasticine face has brought bag after bag of blue fabric, and Matilde is working with it every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Her hands and her neck and her face are all turning blue. She’s barely washing, sleeping or eating.

  So for tonight I decide to take over the cooking. Rick reckons that’s an excellent idea and gives me five dollars to buy some ingredients.

  It would be nice to make Matilde her goulash or fisherman’s soup, but I’d like to keep my dinner a surprise, so I don’t want to disturb her for instructions or a recipe. I walk to Dave’s Mixed Business and Milk Bar one street away and am wondering what I should buy when Mrs. Lister breezes in through the plastic door streamers looking every bit as colorful as a packet of Fruit Tingles. She’s wearing a green crocheted pantsuit and orange platform heels, and her big blond hair is center-parted with flicks and wings. She’s curvy and tall and shares a joke with Dave on her way to the freezer. I hover by the magazine stand, holding an open TV Week, watching her closely for inspiration.

  “That’s dinner sorted, then,” she says, placing a box of fish fingers down on the counter with a bag of frozen mixed veg. “Oh, and Dave, a packet of Benson and Hedges, thanks, darl.”

  I can only see the back of Mrs. Lister’s head, but it’s not hard to imagine her giving Dave an open-mouthed wink.

  “Right you are, Tracy, love,” says Dave, looking like he’d give her the world if he could.

  I copy Tracy Love’s purchase exactly—except for the Benson and Hedges—and leave excited that for once we’ll be having the same tea as the Lucky Listers across the road.

  Back at home I follow the instructions on the box and the bag and take the tray in to Matilde early, before she’s even had a chance to think about dinner. She’s definitely surprised to see the meal I’ve prepared and shows no signs of noticing that the boiled-up frozen mixed veg has made the fish fingers slightly soggy, and their undersides are just a bit singed.

  “So now, Allegra, what are you bringing to me here on the tray? Well, this is certainly more than tea and honey toast.” Matilde’s pea-sized pleased is almost lost among the rolls of blue fabric, pincushions and pinking shears, the thimbles, tape measures and tracing paper.

  She stops for a few minutes while I watch her stand at her cutting table and eat almost all of the dinner I’ve made for her. She thanks me with a nod and gets back to her machine, dabbing the corners of her mouth with her hankie.

  I eat mine alone in the kitchen, thinking I should enjoy it more than I do.

  It’s my job to take Rick’s dinner up to him each night, and I feel proud that for the first time the dinner is one I’ve prepared. As I walk up the stairs to his flat, I can hear the radio; it’s always on. Rick does like to listen to those horse races. Maybe it takes his mind off his Játszik sickness. I’ve given him extra mixed veg to help keep up his strength and two more fish fingers than I gave to Matilde.

  I study Rick closely as he eats. He doesn’t look sick, not in the slightest, but then I remember Cathy McNally’s father, who traveled all over the state selling lawn-mower parts. He looked strong in an apron spinning the chocolate wheel hard at the school fete last September, and less than three weeks later he died in his sleep in a motel near Terrigal.

  And there’s nothing wrong with Rick’s appetite, either; he loves the fish fingers and mixed veg. “Gotta say that was a welcome change, Al Pal,” he says after downing the last bite. “Did you cook it all by yourself?”

  “Yep. It wasn’t really that hard—I just read the instructions on the packet and the box.”

  “You’re a champ, Al. Reckon Matilde would appreciate you taking care of the dinner when she’s so busy.” He hands his empty plate back to me. “I’m catching a few waves first thing tomorrow—want to come?”

  “Sure!” I’m deadset keen. I like it being just Rick and me, and that’s easier to pull off when Matilde’s distracted with her piecework. Besides, I want to keep an eye on my dad now that I know that he’s got the Játszik sickness.

  Whatever that is.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I wake in the half-light before sunrise to Rick tapping at my window: he’s here to take me on what he calls Dawn Patrol. After he polished off his fish fingers last night he went on to explain, wiping singed crumbs from his chin, that when the wind and the tide are right, he likes to get to the beach at dawn because that’s when the temperature of the water equals the temperature of the earth’s surface and the sun starts to wake up the waves.

  A few weeks ago when I first lay on Rick’s board, it was late in the day, and the sun was setting on our backs. But this morning as we paddle out to meet the beams of sunrise, I’m tucked in behind my dad and a shaft of light is streaming through the parting clouds, moving us toward a glistening target that keeps moving forward just in front of Rick’s head.

  “Can you see God’s rays, Al Pal? They’re coming from the point in the sky where the sun radiates.”

  I’ve never heard Rick mention God before. In fact, I’ve only ever seen him inside a church twice, once on my First Communion day and recently on my Confirmation day, and both times he looked like his collar was choking him. But Rick’s different out here in the vastness and the beauty and the waves, with the near-silence and cool-calm.

  I feel different too.

  Rick tells me that the dusk and the dawn bring smooth waters and offshore winds. Blowing from the beachside and out toward the ocean, the offshore winds help the waves keep their curved shape by blowing steadily up their face.

  We are the first to break through the unridden swell and to drop down onto the other side.

  We lie silently on the board.

  Rick tells me to swap places with him so that now it’s me at the front of the boa
rd and him at the back.

  We wait.

  Rick’s strong arms start to move through the water, turning us around to face the beach. Suddenly his arms pick up pace and rhythm, and he paddles with power.

  And then we are actually riding a wave: buoyed by the water but floating on air.

  I feel a shift of weight on the board behind me and turn around to see Rick standing up.

  “Kneel, Al! Kneel up!”

  I kneel.

  “Now stand. I’m right here behind you. Just pop up!”

  My heart pushes my thighs toward my toes, my knees to my chest, my shoulders forward and up, and my head toward the sky.

  I can’t believe it. I’m standing up.

  Rick is woohooing behind me, but I’m holding in all the salty air that’s filled my lungs and I don’t have anything extra to push out a sound.

  We are weightless. At one with the wave and the water and the movement of each other, Rick and me, father and daughter, powered by the ocean, in the middle of nature, with God’s rays on our backs and our goal straight ahead.

  And then—without warning—I am wet.

  I am shocked.

  Shocked that I stood, shocked that I fell, shocked to be left behind as Rick and the board move on toward the beach.

  Kicking my feet hard, my toes brushing the seaweed and sand beneath them, I break through the surface and I’m about to swim in when I see that Rick is now paddling back out to me.

  “You okay?” he calls.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I splutter, clearing the salty foam from my nose.

  “You stood, Al, what a champ. You stood up!”

  “But then I just fell off.”

  “You’ve got to expect to wipe out, Al Pal. You stand and you fall. Jump back on and we’ll do it again.”

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Dawn Patrol has become our special thing. Each morning I slip out quietly and meet Rick by the van. I wipe crusts of sleep from my eyes as we set off for the beach. Once past Dave’s Mixed Business and Milk Bar, Rick pumps up his Beach Boys Surfin’ Safari tape, and when I look across the bench seat at my dad’s face, I can see by the smile lines at the sides of his eyes that he likes having me there, singing out loud.

  Matilde is so busy with piece after piece that she doesn’t seem to notice that I’m gone before breakfast. I’ve taken to having showers in the mornings instead of baths at night, so maybe that’s why she doesn’t suspect anything when I eat my boiled eggs and cold cuts in the kitchen with wet hair.

  But then after eight days the rush job is done and Matilde’s attention returns suddenly and is once again fully focused on me.

  “Ah, bugger,” says Rick as we turn in to the driveway and see Matilde waiting at the end near the garage.

  “And where exactly have you been?” Matilde’s voice cuts sharp as her scissors as she approaches my side of the van.

  I slither out through the van door in my swimmers, still damp, barefooted, with my hair salty, sandy and knotted. That part of my heart that shifts gears releases the clutch abruptly on my floaty exercised-exhaustion and pedals up energy-sucking dread. Now Matilde will think that her only granddaughter is a Riffraff.

  Rick—head down—busies himself taking the towels out of the back of the van, then the board, and sets to hosing it down on the grass. Why doesn’t he tell Matilde where we’ve been, where he’s taken me? Why doesn’t he tell Matilde that he’s my dad and he can take me for a Dawn Patrol surf anytime he wants?

  Rick’s not sticking up for himself.

  He’s not sticking up for me.

  “Go inside, Allegra. Immediately! And get ready for school.” Matilde is livid. She’s not looking at Rick, not even for one-apple-pie.

  I don’t want Matilde to ignore Rick anymore. He’s my dad, and when Matilde ignores him, it feels like I shouldn’t like him one bit for her sake, but I should love him extra hard to make it up for his sake. Their unspoken words bounce off each of them but chisel deep into me.

  I come into the kitchen after my shower.

  “You are not to go to the beach, Allegra. Ever again! Do you hear my words and understand what I say to you?” Matilde is preparing my breakfast swiftly with bigger movements than usual.

  “But why, Matilde? It’s so much fun at the beach. I didn’t go there by myself, or even with other kids. I went there with Rick, my very own father. He looks after me and he’s teaching me how to ride the waves on his surfboard.”

  Matilde stops cutting the mortadella.

  “He took you on his surfboard! What sort of father is that? What sort of girl are you? Where will that lead you in your life? I will tell you, Allegra, I will tell you right now. It will lead you straight to trouble with the worst…of the worst…of the worst sort!”

  Matilde is holding the knife in front of her chest and the blade is shaking, directing shards of light from the kitchen window across my face. The knife looks as though it’s coming to life. Matilde’s voice is almost louder than when I dripped blood over her fabric, and her neck is a network of raised curtain cords. I just don’t understand why this anger is inside her, bursting into the room, and heading toward me. It makes my core tremble. And now I’ve caught the anger. But it changes shape inside me and shifts to bátor and propels my legs to run straight out the back door, down the side path, through the brown gate, past Simone de Beauvoir and into Joy’s kitchen.

  It’s seven-forty-five and Joy isn’t up. Her blinds are drawn and her kettle is cold. I try to slow myself down in the corridor so I don’t startle her, but today I can’t wait until she wakes. I jump onto her warm bed, burrow under her eiderdown and nuzzle into my harbor. Joy pulls her silk sleep mask up to her hairline and says with surprise: “Ally! Oh, this is a good-morning surprise! Ally…pet…are you crying?”

  Even though Matilde has made me scared and angry and full of bátor, I don’t want to give Joy another reason to have eyes that don’t see Matilde and ears that don’t hear her and a mouth that never sends words her way. I want Joy to stick up for me, but I don’t want her to have a showdown with Matilde. I want Joy to tell Matilde that Rick was once her bonny bouncy baby boy and that he is my dad and he can take me to the beach and teach me to ride waves any time he wants. Matilde might love me with chicken paprikash and Oriental Blue dresses and piano lessons, weeding and mending, but she’s not the boss of the whole world and she should stop making that part of my heart that carries her heaviness throb so hard that it pounds and pains inside my rib cage.

  But then I realize something else. Joy, in a lavender mist with a switched-on happy face, kind of does that to my heart sometimes too.

  So I say nothing and just let Joy’s fingernails work their magic at the back of my neck.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  If Rick is still doing Dawn Patrol, he’s doing it alone, or at least without me.

  He might be my dad, but Matilde’s still in charge and things are stuck that way more than ever before.

  And now Matilde has a new and all-consuming focus.

  Sister Josepha has put me forward to sit the Selective High Schools’ exam. This came just in time, saving Matilde from thinking that I am a complete Riffraff headed for the worst of the worst of the worst. And now she’s more interested than ever in my education, telling me that “this is critical, Allegra, the very opportunity you need to become a doctor,” and she has drawn up a study schedule for before and after school, the weekends, and is testing me herself each night before bed.

  The exam is tomorrow, and tonight I can’t sleep. My mind is full of graphs and charts, dates and timelines and all sorts of rules for arithmetic and grammar. My neatly pressed uniform is hanging on my wardrobe door, with my shined shoes underneath and my bag packed ready for the morning. And now I am dreaming…awake dreaming not asleep dreaming….I’m dreaming that this is n
ot the work of Matilde but of my pretty-smiley mum, who tucks me in tight with a warm hug and tells me, Don’t worry about the selective schools’ exam, honey. Just do your best and all will be fine, whatever the result. I am already proud of you.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Today the sixth-grade class is saying goodbye to our time at St. Brigid’s School.

  For weeks after lunch we’ve been practicing the songs that Sister Josepha has selected and the just one song we were allowed to choose for ourselves, as our class farewell to the rest of the school. The choice of song was actually my idea and, amazingly, everyone agreed. Even Kimberly from the Popular Group didn’t object.

  The classroom is buzzing this afternoon in the lead-up to our performance tonight, the sausage sizzle afterward and the fact that we’ve all outgrown our just-making-it-to-the-end uniforms and will be going off in different directions to different high schools next year. That part of my heart that catches excitement from particles in the air is simmering. But some of the bubbles are popping and dropping and fizzing with the uncertainty of what lies on the other side of our long summer holiday.

  And now our big moment arrives.

  We file out one by one to the clapping crowd. Sister Claire is tapping fifth-grade boys with her pointer and telling them not to wolf-whistle as we assemble in our rows, forming a ready choir of thirty-four along the steps in the playground to the left of the tuckshop.

  Rick is the first one of my family I spot. He hasn’t come to anything much at St. Brigid’s before, but today he is leaning against the large gum tree and gives me a slow wave. I wave back at him from our step-stage, using just my eyebrows and a down-low gesture with my hand.