Caleb had asthma all through the night after the fight in the car. I could hear him coughing, and Mum’s voice trying to soothe him. She piled up pillows behind him so he could breathe better sitting up, rubbed Vicks VapoRub on his chest and thumped his back gently to try to get all the muck out of his lungs.
I sometimes wished I could invent a pump that we could put down his throat and into his lungs to hoover up all the bad stuff so he could breathe again. I once asked Dad why they didn’t invent such a thing. He said he didn’t know, but perhaps I would grow up to be an inventor and make one for all the asthmatics in the world, which seemed like a noble thing to do. I put it on my mental list of possible things to do as an adult.
I could tell from the sound of the cough this time that it was going to be quite a bad attack. It was a very loud barky cough, and it went on and on and on. Mum slept in his room but in the early hours of the morning I heard her call to Dad in an urgent voice, and I crept to the door to listen at the crack.
‘What is it, Dorcas?’ Ruthy asked from behind me. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, Ruthy. Just Caleb wheezing. Go back to sleep,’ I said, and she turned over and resumed her little poppy snoring noises.
I heard a lot of moving around, and I knew Mum must have dressed because I could hear her heels clattering on the kitchen floor. I heard her talking to Dad, and although I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I could tell from the sound of their voices they were worried about Caleb. I decided it would be best not to go outside my room, in case Mum pointed out that it was my fault Caleb had had another attack because of the car incident the day before. I was feeling worried about him because I had good radar for when he was a bit sick and when he was very sick, and I could tell he was quite unwell this time.
Then I heard the back door bang shut and the car pull out of the drive. I ran to the lounge room window and watched Mum and Dad and Caleb drive away. Mum was sitting in the back seat with Caleb. I couldn’t see him but I knew she would have him propped up with a pillow on her shoulder. I went into the kitchen and there was a note on the table from Dad that said we should make breakfast and stay in the house until he rang us from the hospital. At the end it said: DORCAS. Please don’t cause any trouble today. Just do as we ask and stay in the house and don’t make a mess.
Ruthy was still asleep, so I made some toast and marmalade, took it into the lounge room and switched on the TV. I felt a thrill as I turned on the tellie. It was Sunday morning and I had no idea what would be on the tube because we were not allowed to watch on Sundays.
This made me think of Aunty Maisie, who said we only had the tellie because Mum was too lenient and worldly. I asked her how come she had a television then, and she got very cross and said it was for Grandpa because he was a boxing fan, and had to have some small comforts at his age, but I know for a fact she watched tellie too because I heard her discussing a show called Bellbird with her best friend, Sister Thatchman.
When Ruthy got out of bed and I told her that Mum and Dad had taken Caleb to hospital, she followed me into the lounge and said, ‘Um, Dorcas. You’ll get into trouble for putting the tellie on.’
‘Not if you keep your big pooswiddle mouth shut I won’t,’ I said to her in my best threatening voice.
She stood in the doorway and looked at me for a minute, and then grinned and said, ‘What they don’t know won’t hurt them,’ and ran and jumped on to the sofa, which we are never allowed to do. We made more toast together and sat and watched a sports show. We weren’t really paying attention, but it was fun and we threw pillows at each other and played tag and then found a show with hymns on it and sang silly words to them and had rather a good time.
Then the phone rang and gave us a fright for a minute, until we remembered that meant Mum and Dad weren’t coming home yet, and we weren’t in trouble. Ruthy rushed to answer it. Dad said Caleb was still very sick and they would be a few more hours. He said we were NOT to leave the house for any reason or make a mess, but we could have as much toast as we wanted if we were hungry. Ruthy answered with her good girl voice to reassure him.
When we got off the phone, we played chasey right round the house, bounced up and down on Mum and Dad’s bed, and made necklaces out of fruit loops and Mum’s gardening string. Then I opened Mum’s wardrobe and we put on some of her shoes and blouses and looked at ourselves in the long mirror by her window. I decided to try some lipstick on. This made Ruthy scared for a minute, but then she tried some on too. When we finished, we rubbed it off with toilet paper that we flushed to make sure there was no evidence and checked there was none left on each other. I noticed a tiny bit of orange lipstick on Mum’s good white blouse, but I didn’t show Ruthy and decided to carefully hang it up and hope Mum thought she did it herself.
Then Ruthy said we’d better clean up or there’d be trouble, but I didn’t feel like it and we had an argument and I walked out the back door and slammed it to make the point that it would be up to her. This was a bit mean, but Ruthy was good at tidying up and would get all the praise anyway. I walked to the olive grove and climbed my tree with a piece of toast, which was a bit difficult because although my hand wasn’t swollen any more, it was still a bit weak and sore if I didn’t use it carefully.
It was a beautiful Adelaide October day. The sky was very blue and very bright and made me squint when I looked up at it. Lots of fresh new weeds were growing up around the olive trees that had new leaves on them. Soursobs were waving up at me from big ponds of yellow. I had trouble stopping myself from eating soursobs, even though they gave me a stomach ache. Mrs Kerfoops’s cat Aristotle was stalking invisible mice. There was a mother magpie with babies that swooped on us lately, but she was in a happy mood today and left me quite alone. I had picked a pile of small stones and put them in my pocket to throw at things from up the tree, just in case.
Teddy Edwards turned up and climbed my tree without asking, but the sun made me warm and a bit floppy, and I didn’t complain or order him down. He asked how come I was out on a Sunday morning and not getting ready for church. I told him about Caleb being sick again and in the Royal Children’s Hospital with Mum and Dad, and he said he was sorry and he hoped he got well soon.
Sadly for Teddy, he is what my dad calls ‘badly put together’. His very short, thick legs were bowed, so we teased him that we could see between his knees on a regular basis. He had a barrel chest and thick square hands with nails that were always black. His grandma cut his hair, and it stuck out in all directions. He had a double chin and very small grey eyes that sat warily beneath a large bone across his eyebrows that looked like a ridge. Ruthy said it made him look like a Neanderthal, which means ancient stone age man or something like that. He smelled of unwashed clothes and sour milk.
Most kids wouldn’t go into his place because it looked abandoned and a bit scary. There were two old cars in the front yard that clearly didn’t work because they were rusty and had plants growing out of them, and plastic bags of rubbish on the seats. There wasn’t a garden really, just a track where the weeds were flattened by Teddy’s boots. The paint was peeling everywhere and there were nests in the drainpipes and even some small trees growing out of them. Inside was very dark and smelled of dust and old food and wee and garlic, which lots of New Australians liked to eat, but which is very stinky and tastes funny. There were old pieces of furniture everywhere, and piles and piles of books and papers. Teddy said his gran didn’t like to throw things out. I’d been there a couple of times and I thought it was good on the inside even if a bit rough on the outside.
He said what was good about living with his gran was that he never had to make his bed or change his sheets. She didn’t go into his room so he had plenty of privacy to do his own projects. And what the other kids didn’t know, because they would never visit him and he would never tell them, was that he made the most beautiful model planes you have ever seen. They hung from his ceiling on little hooks he put up himself with his gran’s old ladder. He spent hours and hours on them. His desk, if you could give the old trestle table that grand title, was covered in tiny pieces of models, small tins of paints and pots of brushes. Everywhere else in his house was filthy except this desk, which was organised into categories and very clean. He said you couldn’t afford to get dust in your work or it ruined the final product. I suggested he take some of his planes to school to show people how talented he was, but he just shrugged and said they would only claim someone else had made them.
He wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force when he grew up, unless I agreed to marry him, in which case he planned to work for Ansett Airlines so he could be home with me and the children most of the time. When he told me this, I reminded him of my Knights of the Round Table choice, but he just shrugged again and looked at me sideways and said he would wait. Sometimes when Mum says no one will have me when I grow up, I think of telling her about Teddy, but I have a feeling it won’t help my cause.
Teddy suggested that, given Mum and Dad weren’t going to church, I could go back to his place. He said his grandma had made lasagna, which is an Italian dish I had once in a restaurant and really loved. Teddy’s grandma is half Italian and half Polish, so the food he described always sounded rather delicious, although having walked past the kitchen I am not sure my mum would approve of how dirty it was. Still, lasagna was a temptation, and I was sick of toast. I wasn’t entirely sure that the lasagna thing was true. I knew Teddy remembered everything I said to him and stored it away to work out how to please me, but it was a beautiful day and I didn’t think Mum and Dad would be home for ages. For a minute I worried about Ruthy being alone in the house, but I knew she could always go to see Mr Driver if she was worried, so I dropped out of the tree and challenged him to a race to his place.
I won the race, although I had a feeling he let me, but still, it was a win and I made quite a point about it. When we got to his broken front gate, I hesitated for a minute. Was it really a good idea to be here when Caleb was sick in hospital? But whatever I was doing wasn’t going to make a difference to Caleb’s lungs, so I turned to Teddy and indicated I’d follow him in.
As soon as I walked into the house, I could smell delicious cooking. Teddy took me in to see his grandma in the kitchen.
‘Hello, Mrs Edwards,’ I said.
She turned and smiled at me, put her big stirring spoon down and gave me a huge hug.
‘Are you going to have lunch with us today, Dorcas?’ she asked. ‘Well that is wonderful. Teddy get another dish down for me, and both of you take a seat. It’s a little bit early but who cares about the rules, eh?’
Mrs Edwards gave me a large white bowl full of the hot, cheesy, meaty dish, and it was heavenly. At first I didn’t think I could eat it all, particularly as I had already eaten so much toast, but I just couldn’t stop shovelling it in. As we ate, Mrs Edwards chatted away about lots of things, and I realised she wasn’t as old as I’d thought. I guess I think most people called Grandma are ancient. In our church once you’re a grandma you get fat, wear flowery dresses, let your hair go all grey and wiry, and wear black orthopaedic shoes.
Mrs Edwards had piles of very messy hair stuck up with lots of kirby grips, with bits escaping all over the place, but which looked quite fetching when you thought about it. Her skin was an olive colour and she had dark bags under her eyes, but her teeth were good and she had a big mouth with a warm smile. Her nails had chipped red polish on them, and even though Mum always said this was a sign of no self-respect, it sort of looked right on her. She had a jumper over a skirt that didn’t match but made her look a bit like a cheerful gypsy. I finished all my lasagna and she asked if I would like more, but I said no thank you I was full to the bosoms, which made her laugh. She made us both a strong, strong cup of black coffee that was too bitter for me, but I did feel a bit grown-up trying it. Teddy was clearly delighted I had enjoyed lunch. I asked if I could help to do the dishes but Mrs Edwards just shooed us out of the kitchen and told us to have some fun.
I asked Teddy how old his grandma was and he said forty-something, which was old, but not actually that much older than my mum, which I thought deserved some thinking about later. For the first time ever, I asked why he lived with his grandma, and he told me that his mum had him when she was very young and wasn’t married and didn’t cope very well. She went to Torrens House with him when he was born and left him there with the nurses. She ran away with his father to Sydney, and they didn’t know where she was now. I put my hand on his forearm and said I was very sorry because this sounded like one of the saddest things ever, but he did a Teddy shrug and said it was okay because his grandma was the best really and loved him, and as long as you have someone to love you the world wasn’t too bad.
He said that’s why he would wait for me to marry him, because that way when his grandma died, he would have the next person to love. That made me feel a bit like a convenience, but given it wasn’t going to happen anyway, I didn’t worry. He would probably find a girl fighter pilot in the air force and that would make him happy. I hoped so anyway. I decided he really was quite a nice boy and I would consider him a friend.
We played in his room for a while, and he let me paint a tiny red tip on one of his planes, which was pretty special. I’m not sure I did it as well as he would, so it was also kind. After a while, his grandma knocked on his door and asked if we would like a piece of warm cake and cream, and we both yelled out yes and ran into the kitchen after her.
It was truly delicious cake and again I was amazed I could fit it in. While we were eating, Mrs Edwards was chatting away again and asking lots of questions.
‘How come you not at church today, bella?’ she asked. Italiany people call girls Bella, just like my Scottish mum calls people ‘hen’ but doesn’t really think they are chickens.
‘Mum left in the car with Caleb early this morning and so we didn’t have to go,’ I said.
‘Oh no. I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘We all knew she wouldn’t stay but we were hopeful.’
I just looked at her, a bit confused. ‘Oh no, Mrs Edwards. She always takes Caleb,’ I said.
‘No! She has left you before? I did not know that. I just heard from Alice that she was planning to go soon. I’m sorry, Dorcas. It must be very sad for you and for your dad.’
‘Well …’ I said. ‘Not really. Dad is sort of used to it too, although she usually goes when he is at work, and he doesn’t usually drive her.’
‘He drove her away today? Well, I don’t know what to think about that,’ said Mrs Edwards, surprised.
We both stopped talking for a minute.
‘Mrs Edwards, Mum and Dad took Caleb to the hospital because of his asthma. That’s why I’m not at church. Why wouldn’t Dad drive them if he was home from work?’
‘Oh. Oh. I see,’ said Mrs Edwards. ‘I misunderstand you, bella. Don’t pay no attention to me. That’s good they go together. That’s good. I hope that little boy is fine. I will pray for him. I know your family doesn’t like the Catholic, but our prayers are just as good as yours, I’m sure of it. Now, eat more cake and go and play.’
But I thought it might be time to go home in case Mum and Dad beat me to it, so I thanked her. Teddy said he would walk me home but I told him not to because I had to think about what Mrs Edwards had just said.
I didn’t know Mum’s hair client Alice Johns knew Mrs Edwards, and a whole world of women in the area talking to each other had just opened up. And what had Alice been telling Mrs Edwards, and maybe telling other mothers too? I know I made Mum cross, but she would never go away. My heart started to jump up and down in my chest and I felt scared and worried.