The Knowhere Girl

Once: I Find Out the Truth, Of Sorts

After spending a lifetime trying to fit in somewhere in life and almost getting there, I'm back at the beginning again. Today it was Mama's birthday. She turned thirty-six and Nonna and I made a cake and we had a little party.

We invited Zia Patrizia and her family, and altogether there were about ten of us at Nonna's place.

"October the first, conceived on New Year's Day, eh, Zia Angela?" Robert said, kissing her from behind.

"That's what I've always thought," Mama laughed after she blew out the candles. "Exactly nine months, isn't it?"

"Since when is a baby born exactly nine months later?" my cousin Louisa scoffed. She's studying science at university and thinks she knows everything on the subject.

"Okay, so she was conceived the week before, which was Christmas Day. Even kinkier. Merry Christmas, Angela, he would have said just before he . . ."

"Robert!" we all shouted together.

"Robert, I remember my father. I don't think he was a romantic," Mama said.

"Oh, he was romantic," Zia Patrizia said. "Christina was born during their first year in Perth and Francesco was working way up north from Ingham at Christmastime, so he would have had to come home a few times for Christina to be conceived."

I laughed with them all and then suddenly stopped.

Laughter still rang around me. People stuffed themselves with cake. Louisa argued with Robert on how long a woman really carries a child, Mama danced around the room with my Zio Ricardo, who we all love and adore. Zia Patrizia broke up a fight between little Joseph and Kathy, who were pulling each other's hair out. Everyone was doing something, except two people. Nonna Angela and myself. We were just watching it all. My mind was ticking. Her face was reflecting. At that very moment I knew something that could have changed our lives.

I stayed after everyone left. I told Mama I would walk home, so she went to her cousin's place for dinner.

As I watched her leave I thought I would never see anyone so beautiful. Not traditionally beautiful, but beautiful from the inside. She glowed. All I could think of was that this woman deserved so much more than any other woman in the world.

Nonna Angela came from behind me and kissed my head, but I pulled away.

"You're a liar," I said to her, walking into the kitchen.

"What are you saying, Gita?" she asked, following me.

I turned around furiously. I wanted to hit her in rage.

"Sei un bugiardo. You-are-a-liar," I whispered hoarsely. "All our lives you've told us what to do, when to do it. You trained us to be respectful so people would think we were perfect and nobody would comment about what Mama did. You wouldn't let Mathew in your house after you found out he was my father. You let your husband kick my mother out of the house when she was seventeen years old and pregnant. You've made her feel inferior all her life . . ."

"Why are you saying this, Gita?" she shouted in distress.

"Hai dormito con lui. You slept with Marcus Sandford."

She whitened and stepped back, putting a hand to her throat. "Gita, what are you saying?"

"Oh God, Nonna, don't be even more of a hypocrite. You were the one who told me about the four months you had to spend on your own. Four months in summer, from November to February. When you told me I felt so sorry that you had to spend Christmas and the festive season away from people you loved. But then today when everyone was joking about Mama being conceived on New Year's Day, I thought it was impossible. How could Mama possibly be conceived on New Year's Day when Nonno was up down South?"

"She was premature," she sobbed.

"She was not. She always tells me what a fat baby she was. Nine and a half pounds when she was born. Premature babies don't weigh that much."

"Gita, stop . . ."

"No. You slept with him. You had the nerve nineteen years ago to treat Mama the way you did when all the time you had done worse. You were married. You slept with Marcus Sandford while you were a married woman. You've gone on about Australians all our lives. Don't get involved with them, Gita, they don't understand the way we live, you'd say. What about you, Nonna? Did he understand the way you lived? Did he understand what marriage was?"

I was shouting and she was crying, but I was too shocked to care. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my grandfather had come home for a weekend during that time. I wanted her to tell me that. I wanted her to say that my grandfather came home for one weekend and they made love and conceived my mother. But she didn't. She just cried.

"I hate you," I shouted. "Not because of my life. But because of my mother's. I'm never going to come and visit you again unless Mama is here. If you complain to her and she forces me to come here, I'll tell her everything."

"No," she shouted. "Don't ever tell Christina."

I pushed past her and felt her trying to grab my hand, but I shrugged free and ran to the door. I'm not quite sure why I hate Marcus Sandford and Nonna Angela for what they did. I had thought their story was romantic. I had thought that nothing had happened. It was like he was a myth I could always dream about.

My mother, though, is the reality. Her reality was living in a house until she was the a few year younger than me. Living with a man who detested her for something her mother did. Living with indifference, if not hate.

I wonder about life if Nonna had married Marcus Sandford. If Mama had been Christina Sandford, daughter of Marcus Sandford, and not Christina Raldini, daughter of an Italian immigrant. Would life have been different for her? Would she have depended on Mathew so much and would she have slept with him like she did, which was more out of loneliness caused by her parents than pressured sex?

Why can't it seem romantic anymore?

Why does it feel like the end of the world because of what they did?

Now it seems that my mother isn't married is child's play compared to all of this. Marcus Sandford, a policeman and army officer, had an affair with a married immigrant in the 1960s. They had a baby and that baby had twins.

People would have a field day. Our lives would be ruined.

I think I've always dreamt of being someone really impressive and famous. Someone people could sit back and envy. Growing up the granddaughter of Marcus Sandford, whoever he is today, could have brought me that feeling. It could have brought me a completely different way of life.

But now all I want to be is an insignificant Italian in a normal Italian family where there is a father and a mother and grandparents who have all stayed married to one person because it's the thing to do. I want a boring life where there is no excitement or scandal. No illegitimacy, no scandalizing affairs. Nothing. Just normality. But we're not normal.

Angela Raldini, Christina Raldini, Gisela Kelly. Our whole lives, just like our names, are lies.

Meme of the day