The Knowhere Girl

Once: Who's the Hunk?

When I next sat on the couch at my grandmother's place I succumbed to the urge. The urge of asking her to show me her photos. I regretted it the moment I saw the look of glee on her face. Because of the way Nonna makes my mother feel, I hate making that woman happy.

"My first house," she said, pointing to a shack. "No matter how much I would clean it, it would always be dirty."

Don't believe that. My grandmother, like most Europeans, has this obsession about dirt. She cleans her house at least five times a week.

"Sometimes the snakes would come in, Gita. Oh, Gita, Gita, Gita, do you know what it is like to have a snake in your house?"

"All the time. We usually get a shovel though."

She closed her eyes and put her hands together as if she was praying. "You do not know how much I hated Australia for the first year. No friends. It was like I was at the end of the word. No people who spoke the same language as me. Your nonno worked cutting the cane in another town, and sometimes I was on my own for many nights."

"Why didn't you go with him?"

"My job was to make a home for us. His was to make the money."

I turned the page, looking at photos of my grandfather.

He never smiled. He was always standing straight and haughty. He was extremely tall for an Italian and very dark. Nonna was the opposite. She was smiling in the photo and her skin was white and clear. She's right, although very vain. She had been a beautiful girl.

I turned the page and looked at her, pointing to a photo.

"Who's the hunk?"

She looked pensive and reached over to touch it. The person in the photo was of medium height with golden-brown hair. He was smiling broadly, leaning against a shovel, with no shirt on. "His name was Marcus Sandford."

"An Australian?" I screeched. "You knew an Australian hunk?"

"He was my friend."

I looked at her curiously. "Who was he?"

"My first Australian friend," she sighed. "I had gone into the town one day. Straight to the post office. Oh, Gita, to get a letter from my family was like going to heaven. I would stand there in the middle of the post office and I would laugh at what my sister would tell me about my young brothers and family. "But this day, Gita, this day she wrote to me to tell me that my mama and papa were dead."

"The Mafia?"

"Oh, Gita, of course not. It was the influenza. So in the middle of the post office I become hysterical. These poor Australians who are not used to the Italians do not know what to do. We Italians cry out loud, Gita. The Australians do not. So nobody moved. There I am on the floor pulling my hair out and suddenly a man picks me up off the floor and carries me out to the back."

"Oh my God. How romantic." It was funny watching her talk about this man. Her face softened and I wondered what he'd really meant to her.

"He spoke to me. I spoke to him. Neither of us understood each other, but he was a comfort to me at the worst time of my life and I will remember him for the rest of my life. Nonno was away at the time, so Marcus took me home. He visited me a lot after that. He would bring me stuff from the town when I couldn't go myself.

"Nuting wrong with that, Gita."

"Did I say there was?"

"He would help me wit the garden and then he would help me wit my English. Oh, but when your nonno came home it stopped, Gita. He was a very jealous man. He said it was wrong that this man would come to visit a married woman. He even trampled the garden," she whispered to me.

I realized then that my grandmother was still a bit scared of Nonno Francesco even though he'd been dead for most of my life.

"It was his garden, he insisted, and only he would tend to it. Anyway, over the next year a few more Italians moved in around the place and I began to have company. Sometimes the company was good. Sometimes bad. But I began to accept the fact that I was never going to go home to Sicily and this country was now my home, so I worked in my garden and I made my house into a home. Sometimes I would have people over and we would speak in Sicilian and I would feel as if I was back home again, Gita." She closed her eyes and smiled.

"I was happy, except people would talk because I wasn't having babies. Why? they would ask. What is wrong with you, Angela Raldini? What are you waiting for? That December, Francesco and I came home after the canecutter's Christmas party and sitting on my doorstep was my sister Patrizia, six months pregnant. My little Patrizia with a husband. I was in shock.

"They had managed to get to Australia even though there was still conflict the war and they were going to live in Australia forever. Oh, Gita, your Zio Ricardo was so handsome. Just like Roberto. He was such a good husband. Still is. My sister was so lucky."

"I know. I always wondered what Zio Ricardo would have been like when he was young. I mean, he's so strong and so good. Men like him just don't seem to be around these days."

"Those times," she sighed. "They were not the good old days, Gita. Not the nineteen-thirties and forties. There was war and there was ignorance. People died in childbirth. If you were sick you could not just go to the doctor and ask him for pills. Sometimes there was no doctor, and if there was, he did not understand what was wrong wit you. Your Zia Patrizia had a terrible pregnancy and sometimes there we were, two young women, alone in the bush."

She shook her head in distress and turned the page, beginning a story on the Russo-Saleno wedding feud.

I didn't listen to it. I just sat there glad that I live in these times. I get depressed hearing Nonna talk. She remembers a lot in fondness, but just the feeling that nobody seemed to be around most of the time is frightening. Living just outside the city means that there are people constantly surrounding me. I don't think I could ever handle the quiet world she lived in. I don't think I could ever handle the silence of the bush in North Queensland. Or of the country. Especially the silence of the people.

I hope I never have to live in a country where I can't communicate with my neighbour.

Meme of the day