Lisdalia Read online

  Stares sadly at her hands;

  The hands that held him, soothed the pains,

  Then let him drift away

  Beyond the range of whispers …

  Whispers that fade

  Beneath the crash of waves;

  The haunting, empty cries of bickering gulls …

  Breaking the surface, one brief hiss of foam.

  It rises;

  Shadow in the moon-path, huge, alone.

  The moon looks different hanging in the air,

  Half-round and shining-silver

  And up there —

  Not floating on the water,

  Green and shapeless

  And glowing like a beacon …

  Her name forms on his lips,

  A whisper tangled in the crash of waves;

  And still (again) he dreams …

  High up, above the Wall of Rock, it soars

  On outstretched wings

  And holds Creation like a poem in its claws,

  Turning it slowly, slowly.

  King of the day and Prince of night —

  He glories in its majesty of flight;

  Its mastery of creeping things.

  His heart leaps skywards

  As it stoops to Earth …

  Falling, he cries her name

  And feels it torn away;

  A whisper in the rushing wind of dreams …

  Creature of flame, through fire it stalks

  Without a thought;

  Without a fear of pain.

  Beneath his questing touch, black-scaled and taut,

  Its skin is cool; the waves of flame

  Break, huge — and harmlessly,

  Tamed by its Salamanda-magic

  And fading, fading…

  He feels her hand upon him,

  Cool in his dream,

  Catches her whisper; fades towards the sound …

  Towards the Light …

  She smiles,

  And speaks his name

  Aloud.

  For a moment, the world disappeared. The everyday sounds beyond the window, the sun on the quad, the hot and dusty classroom where Julie Vegas sat alone. Even her own breathing.

  Silently, she scanned the words on the paper before her. And wondered.

  Not yet twelve years old. A small face, framed in dark hair; huge eyes, alive with intelligence … Even now, there was such a power in her words. What would she be like when she was thirteen or fourteen? Or twenty?

  And yet, it was hard for her. Youngest in the school — only by a year, but at that age, a few months make such a difference. Cut off by her ability, by the fierce independence which had led to friction, not only with her classmates, but with a couple of her teachers. Not that she was hard to talk to; five or six interviews in eight weeks had proved that. In fact, she was sensitive and quite shy. She just refused to be pushed around, or to give in when she believed she was right — which she usually was. It didn’t win her many friends.

  Still, she was lucky in the two friends she did have. Tanja, two years older, and just one year ahead; the mouth with a heart of gold, who kept her in line and soothed some of the growing pains.

  And Michael, of course.

  The young teacher felt a smile tug at the comers of her mouth. It wasn’t often that two kids became “an item” quite so young, but those two were just that.

  “And I didn’t have my first boyfriend until I was fifteen!” Her smile grew to a nostalgic grin.

  Then the hooter screamed for the end of lunch, and she stood up to receive the stampede.

  4

  PRIDE AND PRINCIPLES

  “How did you get him to change his mind?” — Michael was standing with his towel draped around his neck, dripping all over the concrete. He’d just been in for his “warm-ups”, and we were waiting for the marshalling call.

  “Easy… I apologised.” Funny how easy it sounded when I said it quickly.

  “Apologised? You?” He was almost laughing, but he knew me well enough to control it.

  “It was Tanja’s idea.” I said it as if that somehow made a difference. “I could stay mad with him; stand on my pride and watch the grass grow at home, or …”

  “Apologise.”

  “Exactly.”

  We walked over and sat in the shade by the change-room wall. “What am I going to do with him? He doesn’t want a daughter, he wants a live-in slave. John and Tony got all the time they needed to do their homework — and most of the time they just played computer games and listened to Heavy Metal anyway. But me …”

  Michael took hold of my hand, even though Shane Thomas was looking across at him from the other side of the pool, where his mother had him sitting under her umbrella, talking his ear off — “psyching him up”. Things had never gone back to the bad old days of Year Six, when Shane, the school bully, had made Michael’s life miserable for a while, but I knew Michael would cop it from “the Pain” later on, and so did he — so I appreciated the gesture.

  “Look, you’ve got to try to ease off a bit. Your dad’s not a monster, you know. He just has different ideas to you. He’s from a different country and a different ….”

  “Planet,” I cut in. “I know what you’re trying to say, Michael, but it’s just so unfair.”

  Shane Thomas was making smart faces at us, and kissing the back of his hand passionately in our direction, until his mother caught on to what he was doing and slapped him viciously across the back of the head. I looked back at Michael and continued my whinge.

  “I really didn’t mind when he wouldn’t let me go to school at Hurlstone. I’m not really sure I would have liked going to a selective school, and he was right — for once — about the travelling.”

  “Maybe.” Michael slapped at a fly crawling up his leg, then continued. “But you’d have done great there. I know Stimpson was really disappointed. It’s not often she’s going to get one of her students topping the whole selection test.”

  I had almost forgotten. Mrs Stimpson, our Primary School principal. Just a few months ago; so much had changed. I recalled the interview with my father.

  It wasn’t really the distance I would have to travel to Hurlstone. That was his excuse, the one he gave her — but it wasn’t the real reason. I was a girl. Quite simply, that was the reason. There was no point in going to so much trouble to educate a girl. Even if she did top the selection test.

  I remember Mrs S talked to Dad for almost an hour, pointing out all the advantages of a selective school education, but she couldn’t break him down. He held to his guns. And I ended up at Boundary Park High.

  In the end, it suited me, but it would have made no difference if it hadn’t. “The General” had spoken. I know Mum and he had a fight about it; I overheard them. But while she had more control over the everyday decisions than he would ever admit, she never stood a chance on matters of “principle”. My father was always really big on “principle” and “pride”. That’s what caused all the trouble between us. My father’s famous pride and principles.

  And mine.

  Michael won his race by half a centimetre, so I guess the backdown and the apology were worth it.

  5

  STRIKE

  I liked Maddie, but we’d never been what you might call close. I always found it hard to get close to people, but Maddie didn’t. Everyone liked her.

  Maddie wasn’t her real name, of course. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, and her mother had named her Mai Linh, but she moved to Sydney when she was less than a year old, and by the time she’d started kindy it had been changed to Madeleine. I guess her uncle (the one she and her brother came to live with) figured she’d get on better with a European name, and “Madeleine” at least sounded close to Mai Linh. Over the years it became Maddie and that was the version that stuck. It suited her, too. Casual, friendly, laid-back — just like she was.

  I guess I was jealous; of her popularity, of how she fitted in, apparently without trying — while I seem
ed to spend my life making a start then blowing it by saying something stupid.

  Well, not stupid: that was the trouble. I’d say something smart. Someone would make a comment and I’d know they were wrong, so instead of shutting my mouth and letting it pass, I’d correct them, or worse … and up went the wall again.

  Michael says I even froze him out the first time he talked to me, and I didn’t even realise I had. I remember thinking how terrible it must be starting a new school in a new city halfway through Year Six, but he says that the way I looked at him made him feel like something that had just slithered out from under a large rock. With him, I was lucky. I got a second chance.

  It was only later, when I got to know Maddie a lot better, that I realised she had problems of her own. I guess everyone does, but when yours are bashing you over the head, it’s hard sometimes to recognise that fact. And just at that time I was having enough trouble staying popular at home.

  Halfway through April, I went on strike.

  It began with nothing. Well, nothing compared to some of the things I’d been expected to do in the past. Mum asked me to make John’s bed. He’d gone out to work and left it in a complete mess as usual.

  I was in the process of telling her that it was about time he learned to make it himself and that he shouldn’t expect me to do his work for him, when my father walked past.

  “Your mother told you to do it,” he said. “Do it!” “The General” issuing an order.

  “It’s not my bed. He’s big enough to do it for himself.” He had spoken to me in Italian, but I answered in English. I knew it annoyed him. Perhaps that’s why I made a point of doing it. I was in my “rebellious stage”. “Besides, Mum didn’t tell me to do it, she asked me. There’s a big difference.”

  “Well, I’m telling you. Capisce?”

  I understood.

  I just stood there staring at him, seething. Running through in my mind all the possible things I could say. But he wasn’t finished.

  “Your brothers work.” As if I didn’t! “The money they give us helps your mother and me to pay for things …”

  “Good. Then you make John’s bed!” My mouth worked more quickly than my brain — as usual. I could see his face changing colour, but this time, I wasn’t finished. Now my brain had caught up with my words, and “the idea” hit me. “If they want a slave, they can pay for one. Ten dollars a week — each — and I’ll make their beds, pick up their mess and all of the things I do now. Otherwise, they can do it themselves.”

  He didn’t say a word. Suddenly, I felt a stinging blow as he slapped my cheek. And I heard my mother breathe in sharply behind me with shock.

  She wasn’t half as shocked as me.

  Tough as he was, and unfair as his attitudes had always been, my father just wasn’t the violent type. I watched the anger drain from his face as he looked down at the offending hand — as if it belonged to someone else. Then he turned and just walked away down the passage without another word being spoken.

  My mother simply reached out and touched my cheek, gently. What else could she do?

  I felt for her. She was stuck right in the middle and she didn’t know how to handle it.

  I listened to her sometimes, talking to herself in Spanish as she worked, taking a sort of comfort in her own language. With Dad, she spoke Italian almost all the time — with the occasional English phrase thrown in — and with me, though I sometimes gave in and tried out my primitive Spanish, it was almost always English. In some ways, she was like a prisoner; it was easy to forget that she had chosen the prison, that no matter how tense things got at times, she wouldn’t change things. Perhaps it would have been easier for her if she didn’t love him, but she did. No matter how many disagreements he had with me, no matter how often he made decisions without even talking to her about them, she worshipped the man.

  It took me a long time to realise just how much I was dumping my own feelings onto her. But Michael was right; they came from a different world. My mother didn’t see herself as “a slave”, she didn’t resent it like I did. She had the life she wanted; it just wasn’t the life I wanted. Her sons might leave her — and me! — with all their mess, but they respected her; their father had always made sure of it! What was the use of pointing out to her that it didn’t show much respect to expect someone to follow you around like a … slave. The whole argument went in circles.

  Tony and John. Even their names told the story. She had done her duty; given him his boys. And he had named them. Antonino and Giovanni. Good Italian names; strong names.

  It hadn’t taken the boys long to translate them into English once they got to school — Tony had spent half a year as “Nino”, before the pressure got to him, but John was “John” from day one. Dad didn’t mind. He didn’t mind much whatever they ever did.

  It’s not that I don’t like my name. I do, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. But when I came along a few years later — a girl — he was happy to let Mum choose my name, especially after she stood up to him and rejected his only suggestion: Maria, after my grandmother. So, Lisdalia I was. A good, unusual Spanish name. The rebel of the family. The one who wouldn’t fit into his nice, neat view of the world.

  The one with the sore cheek and the injured pride.

  The one on strike.

  6

  TANJA’S STORY

  Lisdalia’s main problem was that she was never really a kid. All that trouble she had with her dad; it wasn’t the sort of hassle you’d expect from a kid that young. Nor was the “thing” she had going with Mike.

  When I met her, she was eleven years old. She was the youngest kid in school, but from the way she talked, you’d swear she was one of the Year Twelves. I mean, she was smarter than any of the Year Twelves — any of the teachers in the school could tell you that — but it wasn’t her “smarts” that caused her the problems. Not on their own. She was just too damned honest. She always said exactly what she thought … and she was always thinking. And people don’t really like that. They feel threatened.

  Here she was, dark hair, big eyes; a really cute-looking kid — beautiful, in fact — who didn’t behave the way a “cute little girl” is supposed to behave.

  I tell you, she may have had problems dealing with her father’s attitudes — and some of those were pretty choice— but in some ways they weren’t a whole lot different from what she faced at school or anywhere else.

  People like you to act the way they think you’re supposed to act. It makes them feel secure. And they have very strict opinions about how eleven-year-old kids should act. Eleven-year-old kids shouldn’t give you sensible advice, they shouldn’t explain things to you as if you’re retarded, they shouldn’t correct teachers on technical points and show them up in front of the class — and they shouldn’t (if they also happen to be girls) have serious friendships with boys.

  Don’t ask anybody why. It’s just the way things should be. They don’t know why; it just is.

  I first met Lisdalia in the library at school.

  “Nine-ninety-four,” she said, without lifting her gaze from the science-fiction novel she was reading. We were lined up at the borrowing desk; she was waiting to borrow the three or four books that she was holding under her arm — as well as the one she was already a quarter of the way through reading — while I was asking Mr Parnell, the librarian, where I’d find books on the Australian gold rushes.

  I turned and looked at her, but she was so absorbed in her book that she didn’t even realise it.

  “What?” I said. My dad isn’t one of those types who picks you up in public if you don’t say “I beg your pardon” or “Excuse me”, so “What?” is my usual response if someone takes me by surprise. And this kid had.

  After half a second, she looked up at me and sort of smiled. “Nine-ninety-four.” She repeated the information patiently, as though she was talking to a slightly retarded pet dog, who couldn’t quite get the hang of “Sit!”. “It’s the general number for Australian h
istory. Unless you’re looking for more detailed information on the gold rushes, like the social and economic effects. Then you might try nine-ninety-four point zero-three, but it’s a little harder sometimes to find the relevant information in those …”

  Suddenly, she trailed off and went back to her book, as if she was embarrassed.

  Parnell was impressed. He was impressed if you could find the encyclopaedias without a road-map, and they were right in front of the entry doors. He had a point, too; after all, he was the one who had to answer all the stupid questions that kids like me asked every day. But this kid knew the actual numbers.

  “How did you know that?” He looked straight past me and asked her the question. She looked up again — without the smile.

  “I was a library monitor in Primary. I learned some of the numbers. The more common ones …”

  He studied her for a moment. “What’s your name?”

  I don’t think Parnell meant it to sound like one side of an interrogation on a cop-show. I think it was just his way of trying to be friendly — something he really wasn’t very good at. He was far more comfortable bawling you out at the top of his voice for leaving the library in a mess, then telling everyone to be quiet, didn’t they know there were people in here trying to work?

  She looked up at him like a cornered rabbit. She’d only been in the school a couple of weeks, and she was still settling in. Anyone with half a brain could see that she was uncomfortable at being singled out. Anyone except Parnell. Other kids were beginning to look at her.

  “Lisdalia …” she whispered, “Petrantonio.”

  “So, you’re Lisdalia.” Parnell leaned across the desk, as if he needed to get a closer look at her eye-balls. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  After two weeks?

  Most Year Sevens managed to stay anonymous for at least a couple of months. Even Shane Thomas took four or five weeks to gain a real “rep” in the school. She blushed and looked nervously out of the window. I could see Parnell winding up to carry on the third degree.

  Time to act.