WHEN MY PARENTS’ MARRIAGE was breaking down, I hid it from my best friends. And when Mum and Dad officially announced their separation, I didn’t tell a soul for almost an entire year.
I was seventeen years old and in my final year of high school, so it wasn’t difficult to be wrapped up in my own self-absorbed teenage narrative. There were clear signs that my parents were growing apart, but it was relatively easy to brush them under the greyish blue carpet of our small villa.
Mum had discovered a new late-night activity: salsa dance classes. At first, it was one night a week. Then two, then three, and soon it became normal for Mum to go out several times during the week and on weekends. She’d go out alone, she’d come home late. Our family had cut down on dinners at Nonna’s house because my brother and I needed more time at home to study. I was feeling the pressure of my final high school exams and my brother had a steady stream of full-time university work.
Dad started sleeping in the lounge room sometimes, on the pull-out sofa bed. We were told it was because he got up early in the morning and Mum needed to sleep in. Mum normally rose at about 11 am, and had done so for years, so it didn’t seem too unusual when the couch was pulled out and made up neatly by Dad a couple of nights a week. Eventually it became almost every night. It seemed odd, but our parents had always been on different wavelengths in some ways so I accepted the change without thinking about it too deeply.
As the months went on, the arrangement became normalised. The permanently made-up sofa bed meant I could lie down comfortably and watch TV at night. On the odd occasion that Dad was sleeping in his and Mum’s bedroom on a Saturday night, I’d request to sleep in the lounge myself so I could watch Rage into the early hours of the morning. I’d turn the volume on the television almost the entire way down so I could only just make out the melodies of new hits, and fall in love a dozen times a night. I sat up on the sofa mesmerised by the way Julian Casablancas from The Strokes tousled his hair while staring doe-eyed into the camera. I lost myself in Britney’s perfect tanned abdomen and pierced belly button. I saw myself in Deftones’ singer Chino Moreno, who was also half Chinese, and I felt a familiarity in the way he sang with aggression and sadness simultaneously. With no social media, music was my window to the outside world. A glamorous array of misfits in which to find a community.
The sleeping scenario also made sense because Mum and Dad had been dividing up many parts of their lives, including their parenting duties, for as long as I could remember. Mum had always packed our school lunches the night before: mortadella bread rolls, salad sandwiches with grated carrot and lettuce, almonds and cheese as snacks. Dad had always been responsible for breakfasts. Every morning there would be a platter of fresh fruit, a glass of juice and then either toast or a bowl of cereal. Some rare mornings, the smell of raisin toast would waft down the hallway—I’d eat two slices only after plucking out small pieces of the heinous orange rind from the buttery toast and leaving them discarded on the plate.
My small, repetitive world remained stable while their relationship was falling apart. Whenever my friends came over and asked why the sofa bed was made up I’d smoothly explain the narrative of Dad getting up early and Mum relying on her sleep-ins. My friends never questioned it. Why would they? I knew I was omitting details but it was easier to float along with a semi-nonsensical narrative than dig deeper into the truth.
Before long, Dad started going out during the week as well. It was an odd living arrangement, like they were housemates. Their lives had begun to disentangle with just a central thread keeping them together: the kids. While it made me uneasy, for the most part I ignored it. I managed to separate my home life from my school life. But it was uncomfortable to accept that my parents didn’t get along the way my friends’ parents did. I took these feelings about my family’s inadequacy and buried them in scattered diary entries that I hid beneath my mattress, among stories of exam stress and an intense crush on a friend’s older brother.
I clashed more and more with my mother during those later years of high school, often due to my pleading to go somewhere with my friends and Mum responding with a blanket ‘no’. The guys I hung out with gave her a mean nickname, The Dragon, and it spread to some of the girls too. Even though the other kids were empathising with me having a strict mother, I was upset and offended by the slur. It’s okay to make fun of your own less-than-functioning family, but it’s not acceptable when others chime in.
Luckily, Mum’s newfound passion for the sweaty salsa scene meant that I could get away with a little more each night, whether it was staying on the phone chatting to one of my best friends, Miska, until late or going to a friend’s place. Dad was as easygoing as ever, although internally he was dealing with his own turmoil.
Even though I wanted to be a social animal, I still prioritised study so I could excel in the final assessments and exams. My brother and my cousins had done exceptionally well in school, and I wanted a mark that my family would be proud of. When I found out my results, I shared a joyful moment with Mum, Dad and Sam on the verandah as I tore open the envelope and read my score aloud. It was one of the rare times growing up I ever saw my mother’s face rejoice with pure pride.
A couple of months later, on a Thursday night during the long, glorious summer break between the end of high school and the start of university, Dad called Sam and me into the lounge room. Mum had gone out dancing after we’d all had dinner together, and it seemed like an ordinary night at home—I had planned to spend hours watching whatever crap was on TV or rereading Looking For Alibrandi. My brother emerged from his room where he’d been blasting GZA’s Liquid Swords, an album I knew intimately from it seeping through our thin shared wall into my bedroom. I suspect that was where my love of rhythm and basslines came from: years of Wu-Tang and Snoop Dogg records vibrating from his stereo to my room, causing the little trinkets and perfume bottles on my shelves to jiggle and sometimes topple over in time with the bass patterns.
Sam and I wandered into the open-plan dining and living room. The sofa bed was laid out as usual, and so Sam sat on the other couch—sky blue with yellow and golden threads lining the cushions and arms; I took one of the wooden dining table chairs, and Dad was leaning back in his recliner chair, the soft worn black leather moulding into the shape of his pose.
‘Your mother is leaving us.’
His tone was righteous and aggressive; this was not the cuddly dad I was used to. My brother and I simply sat there, speechless.
He repeated himself. ‘Your mother is leaving the family. We h’are getting a divorce. She is the one who is totally to blame. She has made the decision. She has broken h’up the family.’
After a couple more seconds of disbelief, Sam and I exploded. We instantly sided with Dad. He was our heartbroken father, the keeper of the peace, who had been left to hold it together while our mum had run out on us. It was a black-and-white perspective that, at the time, felt like the only truth. Sam, who was twenty-one, let loose with a young masculine aggression that finally had a target to land on. He raised his voice and demanded to hear Mum’s side of the story immediately, or else. ‘Where is she? What is she doing?’ My calm and sensible brother was irate. I couldn’t get near him. He strode past me, grabbing his car keys on the way.
I burst into tears and grabbed the cordless home phone next to the dining table. I ran into the kitchen and dialled my mum’s mobile number. I was sobbing, facing into the pantry cupboard doors. I knew whose side I wanted to be on, but I was shattered by the thought. The woman I had held up on an unreachable pedestal, who it seemed I could never quite impress, was the one I now had to disapprove of and be disappointed by.
She answered after a couple of rings. I cried into the phone, ‘What’s going on, Mum, what’s happened, why are you leaving us?’ Mum was completely startled and upset by my words. She’d had no idea that Dad was going to announce their separation on this particular night. She cried immediately upon hearing my weeping accusations, apologising profusely and pleading with me, saying things like: ‘Please, Linda, please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You don’t understand.’ Her voice was shaking, stammering. My domineering mother had never sounded so lost for words or so powerless. My world had flipped horribly upside down. I was furious and upset and confused, but I also held the power for once. I kept pushing, driving the hurt she’d supposedly caused our father back towards her. She cried, phrases pouring like a waterfall from within: ‘Linda, please, I love you, I love you and Sam, but your father and I … we haven’t been happy for a very long time, I’ve been trying to talk to him about this for ten years, I am so sorry.’
She went on and on. Ten years. For ten years, she told me, she’d been keeping it in. Playing the role. Pleasing. Performing. Pretending. Lying to me.
The morning after the lounge room announcement, I wrote an entry about it in my diary.
Mum and Dad are getting divorced for real.
Dad called Sam and I into the lounge to tell us. Fucking hell. I suppose I knew that this had been coming for a very long time. But now it’s official. Sam stormed out for a drive. He’s fuming about everything.
My life is gonna change so much this year.
Mum came over today to pack some things and she keeps talking about how much she really loves me and I can’t help but believe her becos she’s my mum and I love her so much.
I don’t really know how to act at the moment.
All I know is to put on a brave face at Sammi’s tonight. Miska and Sophie are all sleeping over too, but I don’t know whether I should tell the girls just yet. Mmmm. I dunno.
I don’t think I should.
Mum and Dad’s separation shattered our nuclear family. Mum moved out immediately. It felt cold but straightforward, a black-and-white decision of ‘us versus her’. My brother, father and I were an impenetrable force against a woman who had decided not only to leave our father but also to stop caring about my brother and me. We were wrong, but in the months and years directly after the lounge room confrontation, Mum was a defenceless scapegoat. It was easy to punish her. We simply refused to acknowledge or touch her.
While Mum had technically moved out, she still had a set of keys and she returned to the house every single day to perform her duties. She would park her car out on the street in the late afternoon. We didn’t greet her warmly as she arrived, dressed in her active home-wear of shorts, a singlet and, no matter what, a little makeup and lipstick. She would bring groceries, clean the house, cook dinner, wash up and then leave. I would step into the bathroom and ignore her while she was bent over scrubbing the shower in her long pink rubber gloves, a black butterfly clip pulling the hair out of her eyes. From our staunch Marigliano viewpoint, she had betrayed her vow of loyalty to the family. I refused to give in and acknowledge her, but it broke my heart a little to see her like this.
We watched her become a ghostly slave, slipping in and out of the house, lucky to even be allowed inside to serve us. She no longer ruled our household.
At six o’clock sharp, per our usual routine, we would sit at the dining table while Mum silently served us dinner. Her seat at the table opposite Dad remained empty; she was not invited to eat with us. We could finally watch The Simpsons at dinner, an activity she had never allowed us to indulge in. We ignored her unless absolutely necessary, tossing out only a curt acknowledgement here or there, with entire conversations purposely disregarding her presence as she cleaned and cleared the dishes after our meal. Duty, despite divorce.
After cleaning up the kitchen, she would put on her cardigan and her sandals, packing her house slippers, a pair of beige Maseurs, neatly into her large red shoulder bag. We never asked if she’d be eating dinner out or with a friend as she quietly slid open the glass doors leading to the backyard and exited via the garage. She would hitch the heavy garage door up just high enough to squeeze her way out. I would watch her figure disappear down the long driveway, past the neighbouring villas.
After years of being completely gripped by the task of meeting my mother’s high standards, at last I didn’t care about impressing her. Now she was the one fighting for approval. Approval that I refused to give to her. I was defiant and cold towards her, even though there were times when I wanted to offer her comfort or conversation. I’m sure if Mum were to describe my expression in the period immediately after my parents’ separation, she would have sketched a face identical to the judgemental concert face of hers that I had grown up watching. A disapproving scowl.
I should enjoy being angry with her, I don’t need to feel guilty, I told myself. But I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I should. For the most part, I was sad.
Not only was my mother cruelly shoved out by the three of us, but the entire family she had spent over two decades with also no longer wanted anything to do with her. She no longer had the Italian sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews, and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, she lost her connection with Nonna. Both of Mum’s parents had passed away by then, and with no close relatives in Australia, she suddenly found herself alone. I thought about the dinners we’d grown up having at Nonna and Nonno’s house; Mum would never set foot in those loud, welcoming dining rooms again. I would never see Mum pulling the champagne glasses down for a special occasion, I’d never see her take her assigned position in the washing-up line, rinsing the sauce-stained pots, pans and plates with scalding hot water. Instead, an eternal rift between my Chinese mother and her adopted Italian family was born.
My father was struggling immensely too. But unlike Mum, he had the full support of his relatives and, most significantly, his children.
The extended family were watching. The roles we slotted into at Nonna’s house each week were predetermined; everyone worked hard and everyone got married and stayed married. Husbands and wives knew their place, and then their children would grow up and do the same thing their parents had. Sometimes, judgement radiated from the walls of Nonna’s house when those boxes weren’t ticked.
My mother didn’t deserve to belong anymore.
I felt so sad for both of my parents. And I was frustrated, feeling like I was perpetually disappointing one parent by not pushing the other one away fiercely enough. I found it easier to embrace my newfound freedom than confront the way I was feeling, or confide truthfully in anyone. I kept my worlds separate. Inside, I was confused and upset, but on the outside, I was a normal, excitable teenager.
My three best friends and I were virtually inseparable. We’d met on the first day of high school and we’d been there for each other at every special moment. We cheered each other on through exams, and when we got our first periods within a few months of each other, we checked each other’s outfits for any awkward leaks while we were still working out how to use tampons. We each had our first kisses with the same group of wannabe-macho but foundationally nerdy teenage boys. Yet I was terrified of my friends’ disapproval. I wondered what they would think if I told them what was going on and how I was feeling.
The other three girls all seemed to have such secure and loving parents. Miska’s parents were a team, bringing fresh baklava for us to eat while we arranged posters on Miska’s bedroom walls. They let us order pizza, which we ate on the bed while drinking cans of Coke, forbidden in my house. Sophie’s parents were still affectionate and playful towards each other, and their two-storey house seemed like a mansion to me. They had a pool with fucking fountains at one end, and Sophie’s mum spoke to us with a warmth that implied she and Sophie had a genuine friendship outside of their mother–daughter relationship. There seemed to be a simplicity in the way they showed love—a constant care that was light and deep simultaneously. Samantha’s entire family also always welcomed me warmly into their home. Their pantry was stacked with endless snacks, a sea of chips and chocolate and canned corn that I would crack open when random cravings hit while we rewatched Clueless in her lounge room. No one else had parents as distant as mine; no one else would have fallen asleep listening to their parents arguing. I felt a burning shame at the prospect of not fitting in.
It was easy enough to hide my parents’ separation from my friends. I had stopped inviting them over to my house, since we were all eighteen and wanted to go out most nights anyway. We found our way into every bar and club we could get to, we would stumble out at three in the morning to get McDonald’s, then find our way back via a night bus that took a harrowingly long route home. I thought about confessing my secret while sharing headphones with Miska on the ride home one night. But I never knew how to bring it up. I didn’t like the idea of being a killjoy. It was an effortless omission to just not mention it. And what teenager would ever ask, ‘Hey, by the way, how are your parents going?’
Besides, it was liberating to not have my mother on my back. Whenever a few extra dollar coins were missing from my wallet, she used to question me in detail about how many coffees I had bought, did I get an extra train somewhere, how much did I spend on Sophie’s birthday present? I did not miss these regular interrogations as she went through my bag and belongings. The detective skills of a detail-focused mother are unmatched. Without her eyes on me constantly, I could fit in with my friends better. There was no way I would have been allowed to go to all of those gigs and outings with the girls if I’d still had to beg for permission each time. Before Mum moved out, I’d woven a gossamer web of little lies or made the most of Mum’s salsa schedule so I could maintain my social life. Now, I was free to do as I pleased. I wasn’t lying to Mum anymore: I didn’t need to.
Out of the three girls, I spent the most time with Samantha. We were both doing the same media degree at university, and because we were fucking nerds and music fans, we began volunteering at a Sydney community radio station that was yet to be launched. Every week we would head to the office space and help out by cataloguing music, listening to records and talking to the program manager about what sort of radio station we could all create. Samantha and I sat side by side on the floor for hours reading artists’ biographies, and at night we would go to their gigs. I would buy records, a pile as big as I could carry on the train all the way from the city back to the suburbs, and I would sit in my room at night and listen to every single album from start to finish. Music was like a series of delicacies I couldn’t wait to try for the first time, to experience new tastes and let my palate grow.
When the station eventually launched in August, I was thrilled to be offered a spot presenting on air. Every Thursday and Friday afternoon, from 3 pm until 6 pm, I hosted the brand new FBi Radio Arvos show. It felt unreal. Especially after I’d grown up recording my own voice through a shitty stereo in my bedroom, pretending to host shows and chattering away like a little dork to an invisible friend, about why I loved this song or that artist.
It became the highlight of my week. Samantha and I would go to university together and then walk from the campus to the radio studios. We were arm in arm all day.
At the same time as this community radio love affair was unfolding, my brother and I had softened our stance slightly and admitted that we needed to let Mum back into our lives. But only slowly, and on limited terms. We agreed to go to dinner at her new apartment but, as Dad was still incredibly tender and sick at the thought of us spending time with her, we did what any reasonable teenagers would do. We lied. We went to our mother’s new apartment and had dinner with her in secret. We were deceiving our father to protect his feelings, but we weren’t having a pleasant time in Mum’s one-bedroom apartment either.
I was deliberately awkward when we got there. When dinner finished, I stood up to help her in the kitchen. But I knew how much performing this small act of duty in my mother’s kitchen would have translated to ‘I still love you, I respect you’, so I made a big show of not knowing where things should go as it was her home, not ours. ‘I don’t know where this goes either,’ I said while holding up a bowl. I wanted her to feel my condescension; it was my way of acting on behalf of Dad. It was disrespectful and petty, and in the past, my mother would have annihilated me for such bitchiness. She would have raised her voice, her disciplinary wrath whipping through the kitchen. I would have been reprimanded for being so rude to her. But the old Mum had almost dissolved, and she just quietly pointed out the drawers and shelves where the bowls belonged.
At home that night, I told Dad I’d had dinner with Miska and that Sam had dropped me home before going to his girlfriend’s place. My brother really had driven me home so it wasn’t a total lie. But from then on, every time I got into bed after a dinner with Mum, I was overcome by guilt. I loathed lying to my dad. And although I loved my newfound freedom, I resented having shut Mum out of my life. I knew how much she loved my brother and me. I wanted her to be okay. She’d looked so hurt and dejected when she’d pointed out where the bowls needed to go.
Hiding all these feelings from my best friends was strange and difficult. Some nights, I desperately wanted to call Miska. I would recite her number in my head. I would type it into my phone. But I wouldn’t call. The community radio gig was teaching me what it was to be a presenter on the radio and in real life. You could feel shit, or sick, or both, but when that ON AIR light was on, you still had to perform.
As I neared the end of the first year of my media degree, I was in a lively routine of classes and study, community radio and going out with friends. My mother and father were now both dating new people. Dad’s new girlfriend, Sonja, had begun staying over at our villa. I arrived home through the garage late one night after a gig and found Sonja filling up a glass of water from the kitchen tap, wearing one of my dad’s old t-shirts and nothing else. We stared at each other. We’d barely had a conversation and now here I was seeing her with no pants on. After a quick, awkward hello, she shuffled back to the bedroom. I didn’t mean to, but I caught a glimpse of her bare bum.
To escape all the changes at home, I threw myself into my work at the community radio station. Samantha was my producer and she sat in a booth next to my studio while I was presenting, lining up content and giving me feedback. She would dance at me through the glass, her huge smile lighting up whenever she’d answer the phones. There we were, not even twenty years old and in charge of the music and words being broadcast around an entire city. To be fair, we probably had twenty people listening at that point, but it didn’t matter. Ours was a goofy green ecstasy. It felt dumb and wonderful that we were given this trust.
We wore matching jeans and Chuck Taylors and shirts from the vintage stores whose clothes we pored over on the weekends. We talked all day about every ounce of bullshit drama we could muster, yet I still couldn’t find the words to tell her what was going on at home. That same year, I had been there for Samantha when her mother passed away after battling cancer for several years. I had spent time with Samantha and her mum when she was back at the house after another round of chemotherapy, lying on a recliner in their lounge room, speaking rarely and softly, still smiling. Miska, Sophie and I all wept beside Samantha at the funeral as they lowered the casket down into the earth. We were, we still are, sisters.
After our show ended at 6 pm on a Friday afternoon in October, we packed up our things and got ready to leave. It was hot, and we were hungry. We were both planning to walk to the train station; Samantha was heading home and I was heading to Friday night dinner at Nonna’s house. Samantha was wearing a pair of her dad’s acid wash jeans that she had cut into shorts—they were loose and flattering; her slender brown legs seemed longer than my whole body. My dad texted me. He had finished work early and was close by. ‘Perfect timing,’ I said, ‘this heat is fucking stifling.’We grabbed our bags and stepped outside onto the busy, still sweltering street. The radio station was on a bustling corner, right at an intersection. It was peak-hour traffic, but if Dad managed to get a red light at the corner, he could scoop us up.
We stood on the pavement and waited. I looked to our left, where my dad’s car would be approaching from. A swift traffic light pick-up requires a sharp lookout. About a block away, curving towards us, I spied his gold Toyota Camry. The champagne bonnet glistened in the sun. He was driving in the lane closest to the kerb—perfect. I looked into the car, recognising his robust frame in the driver’s seat. But then I saw another person in the passenger seat beside him. Someone slightly shorter than him, with voluptuous, shoulder-length, light blonde hair that looked red carpet–ready, as if she’d just had it done at my dad’s hair salon. They edged closer. Yes, it was her. The t-shirt wearing girlfriend I’d frightened in the kitchen about a month back. I should have known. Sonja had recently begun coming along to Nonna’s dinners, replacing my mother in the line of daughters-in-law. Fuck.
I looked to my right, where Samantha was standing on the pavement inspecting her nails. To my left, Dad’s car was cruising down the busy one-way street—he would be pulling up in a matter of seconds. The traffic lights turned orange, then red.
‘Here comes my dad,’ I told Samantha. She looked up and we started walking away from the radio station’s doors towards the road.
‘Uhhh …’ I paused for a second, then raced through every single syllable of the next sentence. ‘So, my parents are getting a divorce, and that’s my dad’s new girlfriend in the car.’
I had literally left this news until the last fucking second as Dad’s car stopped beside us and I lunged for the back door. I couldn’t believe it. I had finally ripped the wax off the bikini line I’d been avoiding for almost a year. But this excruciating yet freeing moment for me was a confusing bomb of information for Samantha.
‘Wait, WHAT?’ she was asking.
I was halfway into the back seat by this point, so I didn’t answer her. Her mouth was wide open in shock. She climbed in after me and slammed the door shut. Silence. Green light.
‘’ello girls, ’ow was the show?’ Dad asked warmly.
‘It was good, thanks,’ I replied with false cheer.
‘Yeah, it was fun,’ Sam added, shooting me a look with narrowed eyes.
‘It’s very ’ot today, are you getting the h’air conditioning?’
‘Yeah, we can feel the air con. Thanks, Dad, it’s so hot outside.’
‘Samantha, this is Sonja,’ Dad said, putting a hand on his new girlfriend’s arm.
‘Oh hi, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Sam.’ Samantha sounded stunned.
‘Hi, Sam. Are you coming to dinner too?’
‘Oh no, I’m going home.’ Samantha turned her head to meet my dad’s eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Thank you for the lift.’
‘H’of course, you’re my h’other daughter.’ Dad laughed, turning up the radio.
At Nonna’s house later that night, Mum’s absence was louder than the hearty conversations flowing from the dining table. I stood in line for dish-drying duty next to Sonja, who was putting the leftovers in containers and wiping down the benches. Mum had been officially replaced by this tall blonde. Life was moving on; I could no longer pretend it wasn’t happening.
The next night I went out with the girls to a gig in the city. We met across the road from Central train station and walked uphill towards the venue, through the dark backstreets of the city. After a couple of minutes of mild puffing up the deceptively steep hill, I knew it was time. Samantha was strolling alongside me, her long legs poking out of a vintage skirt, as I rattled out my words.
‘I need to tell you about my parents, and how they’re getting a divorce.’
Sophie and Miska stopped. Sophie leaned in for a hug and asked me what had been happening. I told them everything, from the sofa bed to feeling torn between Mum and Dad, to how Samantha had already met my dad’s new girlfriend in a traffic light pick-up. They accepted everything with arms scooped through mine as we continued walking up the hill at a snail’s pace.
‘Why didn’t you tell us earlier, you fucking weirdo?’ Miska managed to mock, cry and laugh at me all at the same time. I shrugged, unable to formulate an articulate reason. Who had I been trying to impress? I wondered as Miska rubbed a comforting hand on my forearm.
These girls were my best friends. I had to remember they’d love me no matter what.