Their house is beautiful, but it's small. My parents bought it when their shop was going well, for sixteen thousand dollars. My grandmother paid for it, for what she lacked in basic humanity she had always made up for with fiscal generosity. Besides, if she paid for the house, she could live in it with them, and they had no right to complain. My grandmother never considered anyone to have the right to complain.
It has three bedrooms, so my parents had one for themselves, and one for my grandmother, while the other one sat empty for the children it was just assumed everyone in those days would have. And have them they did, though I don't think my mother signed on for more than two.
First was my eldest brother Thomas, who came screaming into the world in October nineteen-fifty-four. You could set your watch by my parents and their reproductive habits, as every four years another baby arrived. In September fifty-eight, Samantha was born, a month early and small. In November of nineteen-sixty-two, I arrived, and in December of sixty-six the final one, Kane, landed in my mother's surprised lap.
My grandmother viewed all this acidly, with no intention of giving up her bedroom. Honestly, Eloise, she would hiss, haven't you figured out what's causing it yet?
They crammed us into that third bedroom. First Thomas enjoyed it on his own, until Samantha arrived, and the first set of bunk beds appeared. When I came along, they added a cot into the little room. Finally, pregnant with Kane, my mother burst into tears and yelled at my father that they needed to sell the house and buy a larger one. Stoically, my father gave his reply by buying a second set of bunk beds.
We did fit, though it was cramped. Under the window nestled a row of chests of drawers, and other than the flat space on top of your drawers, you just didn't expect anywhere to put things of your own. Thomas's drawers held model cars, Samantha's art supplies, mine books, and Kane's was always a jumble of stones and interesting leaves he'd found. Smoothed chunks of broken glass, pieces of charcoal, slingshots, a cat skull he'd found in the bush. We were kept in close quarters, bookended by the two boys twelve years apart in age. With our birthdays squashed together in the last four months of every year, Christmas was never a lavish affair. My parents often hosted, but all the visiting relatives had to bring a dish to share.
Nineteen-seventy-seven was the year my grandmother, who we called Nan, started to go downhill a little in her mental faculties. She was already thirty-seven when my mother was born. By the time seventy-seven rolled around, Nan was old. I had just turned fifteen the month before and in the grand tradition of fifteen year old girls I had less than zero self-esteem while also believing that I knew everything.
I liked Nan. I think I was the only one who did. I liked that she didn't cushion anything. She had no regard for consequences of speech and whatever was in her head came tumbling out of her face with very little consideration for what would come after. I liked sitting in the corner of a room with her, listening to her mutter her true feelings on everyone who passed through. That Christmas, I was sitting in the lounge room with her, pouring brandy whenever she wanted it from the little drinks cart that lived by the fireplace, and listening to her whisperings regarding the various relatives parading through. Our family, even our extended family, isn't overlarge, my mother being an only child. Though she can usually rustle up some cousins of her parents, and their children, when she wants to. She doesn't often want to. My father is one of only three. The eldest is his brother, Henry, who lives in Cracow, a ghost town in the middle of nowhere Queensland, where the entire local industry is built on 'come visit a ghost town'. He was always bending Kane's ear with stories of Fred Brophy's Boxing Troupe, an old-fashioned tent boxing set up that drew in young men with promises of becoming a prizefighting champion. Henry was tall and thin, like everyone in my father's family, with a somewhat murky profession that no one ever seemed to be able to define, beyond 'Uncle Henry works in business.' He had children, somewhere, that none of us had ever met, though he always spoke fondly of their mothers, in a great, booming voice. He made my mother uncomfortable, because of his room-filling laughter. My father always seemed to revert to being the younger brother, following Henry around as though determined to be given some kind of approval.
