A Girl in Three Parts Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  It’s a stinky-hot day at school. The milk bottles have been sitting in the sun by the incinerator since early morning so that by lunch the foil tops come off, releasing a stench that makes all the sixth graders’ stomachs somersault. Drinking the milk is compulsory; it’s provided by the government. Sister Josepha urges us to think of the starving children in India as we hold our noses and down it reluctantly. Patricia O’Brien whispers that the children in India wouldn’t go near it, starving or not. I look around to see who else she’d intended to hear her remark, but there’s no one else. I’m at the end of the row. Patricia O’Brien was talking to me. She has lively brown eyes, a fine milk mustache and hair that smells of green-apple shampoo. I snort a little giggle and the warm milk comes out my nose and onto my shoes. Patricia O’Brien is giggling too. We’re both giggling now. Sister Josepha is definitely not giggling; her eyebrows are meeting in the middle.

  Kimberly from the Popular Group gets hives from warm milk, so hers goes into the fridge that her father donated to the staff room after his business had a bumper year. It’s brought to her specially, and she makes a performance of cooling the back of her neck, behind her knees and then all of her pulse points with the chilled bottle before sipping the milk slowly and smugly.

  “She makes me feel like chucking, even more than this stinking, off milk,” says Patricia O’Brien. She’s funny, with glowing brown skin and great with a Hula-Hoop; after six tricky years I might be making a friend who is not under the spell of Kimberly from the Popular Group.

  Matilde doesn’t understand about the Popular Group, or Kimberly, or why anyone would care about whether they were in with—or out of—the Popular Group at school.

  “Just be your own person, Allegra. I’m telling you, hold an independent mind, forget about other people and forge your own way in the world. Kimberly Popular has no power over you.” But she does. She really does. She can suck the happiness out of me with a quick look or comment that she knows the whole class will respond to. She can ask sweetly what I have on my sandwich, as though she’s actually interested, then snigger, “Liverwurst…Could it be any worse than liverwurst?”

  She can give me a blazing nose-in-the-air glare that makes that part of my heart between my ribs burn with acid.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I don’t want to open my lunch box in front of everyone today.

  I’d rather go hungry than bring out Matilde’s Hungarian food on the bench behind Kimberly and the Popular Group as they eat their matching grated cheese and Vegemite sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

  “Hey, if you’re not going to eat your lunch, can I have it?” asks Patricia O’Brien, who’s already polished off her soggy jam sandwich wrapped up in a page torn from a magazine.

  “Yeah, but not here. I’ll give it to you once the second bell rings and we move off the benches,” I say quietly.

  Patricia happily downs Matilde’s liverwurst, pickled onion and chive sandwich in quick gulps and asks if I reckon I’d even know how to spell liverwurst.

  “Probably,” I say.

  “I’m hopeless at spelling,” she tells me while we’re upside down on the monkey bars. “At my old school I used to stick my fingers down my throat every morning on spelling-bee days. Then Mum would think I’d picked up a chunder bug and let me stay home.” Patricia is really smart.

  Sister Josepha comes in after lunch with a face like a fire truck. She’s been playing cricket with the boys during playground duty. Sister is a champ with the bat and can catch most balls and outrun every boy. With all that fabric on her body and around her head, she must be hotter than Hades. She looks like she could do with one of Kimberly’s cold milk bottles behind her knees…that’s if she has any knees.

  “Now, class, kindly settle down quickly. We have a lot to get through this afternoon. Yes indeed. Tomorrow morning we have a special visitor, Father Brennan, and he’s coming to talk to you about the sacrament of Confirmation that you’ll all be making next term. So we’re going to have to do tomorrow’s spelling bee right now. Could everyone please stand up.”

  I look over at Patricia. Her fingers are nowhere near her throat, but she suddenly looks really-truly sick. We stand, and the rows near the door and the rows near the windows turn to face each other. I’m looking straight across at Patricia at the end of the first row. Behind her is Kimberly, looking ready with Roslyn, the second-meanest girl in our class and firmly in the Popular Group.

  “So let’s start with our newest class member, Patricia. Now, dear, please spell…traffic.” Sister is looking at her list, the list we were given on Monday. Patricia’s face goes from white to pink to crimson, and she makes a little squeak that isn’t quite a person sound and certainly not a letter. It makes me feel long in that part of my heart that gets stretched by someone else’s feelings.

  “T-R-A-F-F…um…um…” Sixth grade is waiting. Sister looks up. Patricia looks sideways. Kimberly looks at Roslyn, who chortles, and Sister is distracted. It’s just enough time for me to catch Patricia’s eye and mouth, “I-C.”

  “I-C,” gasps Patricia.

  “Well done, Patricia. Keep standing, dear.” Sister is moving on around the room, announcing words for us each to spell. Patricia looks unsteady on her legs.

  SERVICE, DEFEATED, WHISTLE. We’re all still standing.

  OXYGEN, TRANSPORTATION, PECULIAR. A few sit down.

  MONSTROUS beats Damien White and WEALTHY trips up Scott Perkins. Kimberly, I bet, could have spelled that word backward.

  Then VACUUM sucks out Roslyn. “Bad luck, Roz,” whispers the Popular Group.

  MYSTERIOUS, SUSPICIOUS, MUSCLE. They’re dropping like flies.

  MYTH, DOUGH, FAHRENHEIT. And it’s back to Patricia. Apart from her there’s only Kimberly, Matthew and me left. By some stroke of luck Patricia gets RECEIVE.

  “R-E-C…” Patricia’s face is more rose-colored now, and I’m willing her to remember I before E except after C—and she does it!

  Matthew gets FOREIGN. That’s a cinch for Matthew. And then Kimberly is asked to spell EMBARRASS.

  “E-M-B-A-R-R-E-S-S,” she pushes out with a hoity-toity grin.

  “No, I’m afraid that’s not correct, Kimberly,” says Sister Josepha. “Sit down, dear. Allegra, please spell EMBARRASS.”

  Of all the words: “E-M-B-A-R-R-A-S-S.” It’s easy but it doesn’t feel good.

  “Good work, Allegra,” says Sister, “and because Matthew did so well this week, and it was Patricia’s first St. Brigid’s spelling bee, all three of you can come and choose a holy card.”

  Patricia looks simply relieved more than blessed to have a holy card. I sure don’t want to tell her that with her Hula-Hoop skills she could have been heading to the outer rim of the Popular Group. Lining up with me for a holy card has definitely put an end to that. Patricia chooses Jesus Lost in the Temple, and as I’m about to make my choice, Sister Josepha ever so slightly pushes forward Behold Thy Mother Mary from her splayed selection. It seems to be a message as well as a prize.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Matilde has asked me to pick a ripe cucumber for tonight’s sour-cream salad.

  I’m searching her vines to find the best one when from over the fence tinkles the tune “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”: Joy likes to play it from time to time on her mother’s old music box. After delivering the cucumber to Matilde, I slip through the brown gate and find Joy in her butterfly chair, catching a stream of tears falling from her cheek in a lemon-colored glass bottle she has labeled MOTHER’S ANNIVERSARY.

  Simone de Beauvoir is keeping her company in the crook of her arm.

  “Ally, my pet…,” she says with a switched-on happy face. “Would you believe that today it’s fifteen years exactly since my dear mother passed away? Oh, how she would have cherished you!”

 
“What was your mother’s name?” I ask, picking up Simone and settling into Joy’s lap.

  “Shelagh,” says Joy, corking the bottle and pulling me in close. “Shelagh Kathleen…She had skin like porcelain and the most beautiful crop of pure white hair.”

  I reach into my tunic pocket and bring out the Behold Thy Mother Mary holy card. Joy studies the card, running her fingers across Mary’s face.

  “Another holy card,” she says. “You’re building up quite a collection.”

  “I got it for spelling,” I tell her, but quickly move on to the best news of the week, “and I’ve made friends with the new girl, Patricia. She’s really nice and really funny.”

  “Nice and funny—now that’s an excellent combination,” says Joy, full of enthusiasm. “Friendship is so fortifying for we girls, darling. You must always treasure your female friends.”

  Putting the holy card back in my pocket, I wait, then I ask: “Joy…does Thy Mother mean My Mother?”

  “Well yes, of sorts, in an old-fashioned way of speaking,” she responds.

  “So Mary is sort of my mother…,” I say, looking down and wishing that I could behold my real mother. But I know that if I dared to share that thought with either of my grandmothers, it would only clamp up Matilde and crush Joy. They might think I’m feeling that with my real mother in heaven, their love is not enough down here on earth.

  “How about we give Simone’s pond a little freshen-up,” says Joy. “With all this hot weather it could do with a few ice cubes to cool things down.” She propels herself up and out of the chair, gathers up the music box and brings down the shutters on any more talk of her mother, thy mother or my mother.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Friday afternoons are my favorite time of the week. Once piano practice is done, Matilde lets me go outside and join—well, mostly watch—the neighborhood kids on the street. I can’t go past the stop sign on the corner or over the peak of the hill, but sometimes I get to follow the gang into the Lucky Listers’ rumpus room, and I feel like I’m almost part of something.

  Lucinda Lister had a birthday party last week. She said she would have invited me but she was only allowed eighteen people. Anyway, it was mixed, which means boys and girls together, and sometimes things get sexy, so she thought I’d only feel awkward hanging around with nothing to do. I had a hunch that it would definitely be awkward to let on that I have no idea what happens when things get sexy. Lucinda is pretty mature. She just turned thirteen and wears denim hot pants and over-the-knee socks. The Lucky Listers have a swimming pool—of course—so Lucinda’s blond ponytail is slightly green-tinged. Her dad is dedicated to good pool maintenance, she tells me proudly, so he adds plenty of chlorine every night. She has green eyes to match, and I’m pretty sure she wears a bra.

  And just when I thought it was impossible for Lucinda to get any luckier, she and her over-the-knee socks pedal out of the Listers’ driveway on a brand-new purple dragster: white streamers flying from the handlebars, a yellow basket on the front, and a sissy bar on the back. She looks astonishing. A mixed party, a swimming pool, a birthday dragster and a green ponytail—Lucinda Lister has everything.

  “Jump on, Ally. I’ll give you a dinky double.”

  I don’t let my shock at the offer hold her up in any way, and I’m on the back of that bike in a flash. Lucinda takes off at such a rate that her green ponytail swipes my forehead. From behind her back I can see her white-socked knees angling out, driving down, powering up and propelling us forward. It feels like flight…like freedom…and now past the stop sign…almost like danger. If Matilde knew about this, she’d be what she calls livid.

  But wouldn’t Joy find this feeling thrilling!

  Lucinda makes a sharp left-hand turn, and we’re gliding toward the horizon. Between blocks of flats, the ocean is shimmering in answer to the brilliant blue sky, and the ceiling of possibility seems lifted. Lucinda is in full control and I’m her tingling passenger. The beach is now in view and we’re so out of bounds that I may as well be in another country. I never go to the beach. Matilde doesn’t allow it. Apparently the Riffraff hang around there, just causing trouble. I don’t want trouble, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a riff, or a raff, just so I know what they look like.

  But when we get to the promenade I see something totally unexpected. I can’t believe it. It’s Rick! Here at the beach. Could it be possible that my dad, Rick, is a Riffraff in disguise? Maybe that’s why Matilde doesn’t speak to him. We’ve stopped now and Lucinda is keeping the bike upright, with both of us on it, by holding on to a pole. She’s looking across the beach and I’m looking down, hiding behind her green ponytail and praying to Jesus, Mary and Joseph that Rick doesn’t see me and that I don’t have to see him causing any trouble.

  “Hey, Ally, look, there’s your dad. I didn’t know he was a surfie,” says Lucinda, sounding pretty impressed.

  “Oh yeah,” I say, trying to sound cool but thinking, I didn’t know either.

  Rick is carrying a surfboard on his head and an expression on his face that I’ve never seen before. Connected but calm. He puts the surfboard into the back of his van, which has ELSOM’S CARPENTRY written on the side in letters that look like pieces of wood, peels off a wetsuit and towels himself dry.

  “Aren’t you going to say hi to your dad?” says Lucinda.

  “Nah, he’s probably got Riffraff stuff to do,” I say with a vibration in that part of my heart that pulses in warning of danger.

  “Cool. Let’s follow him, then,” announces Lucinda.

  I’m thinking this is not such a good idea, but Lucinda Lister has the power of being two years older than me, the power of bike ownership under me and the power of certainty all over me.

  Rick drives off and we pedal after him. On our way to the beach we rode on the footpath, but now Lucinda and her hot pants stand up on the pedals, steer onto the road and weave through traffic, doing a remarkable job of keeping up with Rick. She’s fanging it and my heart is speeding up too, revving my thoughts to full throttle.

  If Matilde knew I was here, on a bike, on the road, I wouldn’t be allowed out of the house ever, ever again; only perhaps to go to her funeral. That would be such a sad day. I’ll probably have a crushed dress because people are very sick before they die, and Matilde will have fallen behind with the ironing. Maybe I could borrow one of Joy’s felt hats and a squirt of her lavender water in case I’ve forgotten to have a bath. Would Joy even come to Matilde’s funeral? Who’s going to cook the food when everyone comes back to the house? That’s a thing, apparently. I heard Matilde’s sister telling her that when her neighbor Moira Austin died, the house was full of people after the funeral and the family were such vulgarians that they only served frozen potato gems. Matilde was disgusted. I’d better not disgust Matilde.

  “I think I’ve lost him,” pants Lucinda. “He might have gone left at the petrol station. I’ll take a shortcut through the park.”

  “No, no. Not now. Just let him go,” I insist with a sudden burst of authority. “I need to get home. I need to learn how to cook.”

  Lucinda sits down in her seat, puffing. She turns around, still blond, a bit green and very red, and says, “Ally, you really are mental.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It’s Saturday morning and I’m with Matilde at Joe’s, the local greengrocer. Matilde is always particularly tongue-ticky at Joe’s. She’d prefer just to grow everything herself, but occasionally her cabbages let her down or she needs a ripe rockmelon, so she has no choice but to stand in line, waiting to be served. She likes the quality of Joe’s fruit and vegetables, but she doesn’t like the prices and she sure doesn’t like Joe, not one bit. Matilde always takes me along with her, to help carry everything home, but mostly so I get to practice selecting the best produce, adding up the total and working out the change. It’s also my job to keep a close eye on Joe.
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  “That Joe,” says Matilde. “What a crook. He overweighs his produce and shortchanges his customers.”

  We get to the front of the queue, and Joe—with a lead pencil behind his enormous ear and a big yellow smile—says: “So how can I help you two beautiful young ladies today?” He has the teeth of a horse and more hair on the backs of his fingers than on the top of his head, but his charm worked a treat with Mrs. Beaumont before us, who, leaning lopsidedly on her walking stick, replied, “Oh, Joe, flattery will get you everywhere.” And it worked on Mrs. Tonkin, who chortled out her order through a mouthful of grapes. But it doesn’t work on Matilde, not now, not ever. With a straight back and clipped voice she gives her order every time as though she’s reading the news.

  “Watch closely that the crook doesn’t push down the scales while he’s weighing our fruit,” Matilde instructs me in a loud whisper when she’s about to be served. Thank goodness I’ve never seen Joe push down the scales and boy, I hope I never do—I hate to think how Matilde would react. I like Joe; he often gives me free apples.

  Today, though, after quickly adding up everything, I do work out that while he owed Matilde eighty-five cents change, he’s only put seventy-five cents into her waiting hand.

  “Excuse me, Joe—Mr. Bastoni—I think you’ve made a mistake.” I’m trying to use my manners for Joe’s sake while being firm in front of Matilde. “I think you probably meant to give my grandmother eighty-five cents change.”

  Joe adds it up again, down the side of the newspaper laid out on the counter, his lips moving in the shape of numbers. He passes me a banana and says, “You, young lady, are one thousand percent correct. You are a very clever girl. When your grandmother says you are old enough, I will give you a job here, as my assistant, in my shop.”