Rebellious Daughters (22 page)

‘Go to your room or I'm going to get the
oklagija
,' Mum said, threatening to hit me with a long rolling pin that resembled a broom handle and was used to make pita.

I switched the channel and sat back down in front of the TV. When I was a child Mum would use a wooden spoon after three warnings, but she had phased that out when I was a pre-teen. Even though I doubted that she would hit me, I'd never been willing to test her and usually the threat alone would be enough for me to mend my ways, but on this night my lust for Richard Grieco overpowered my fear.

Mum hit me lightly on the head from behind with the
oklagija
. It was more like a tap, but that didn't matter to me.

‘You fucking hit me!' I shouted, crying. ‘How dare you hit me?'

I ran to my bedroom, slamming the door and crying furiously, messily. I felt rejected. The pain of that was ripping through me, the same pain I had felt while I missed her in Bosnia. She didn't love me. She had never loved me and what happened now proved it.

Mum knocked on the door: ‘Come back. We've changed the channel. You can watch your show.'

I wavered for a moment. Of course I wanted to perve on Richard Grieco, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. She hit me. She was going to pay for this.

‘No, I don't want anything to do with you!' I shouted. ‘I fucking hate you both.'

I heard Mum's footsteps retreat. I opened my window and jumped out. I wheeled my bicycle from the backyard and rode the five kilometres to Zehra's place. She had moved out of the share house and was living by herself in a bungalow behind a house in Sunshine.

There were no lights and when I knocked on the door she didn't answer. I didn't want to go home and settled on her front step to wait. An hour passed and I was flagging. Then I heard a car pull up at the front of the house. Zehra appeared through the side gate accompanied by a man. They stopped to kiss, while I shuffled my feet in embarrassment, not sure whether I should interrupt or not.

The boy saw me and pushed Zehra away. She looked at me over her shoulder: ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I ran away from home. Mum hit me on the head.' I was crying again.

She hesitated. ‘I guess you'd better come in then,' she said, unlocking the door. ‘This is Milan.' She introduced me as her friend and I felt a glow.

‘We've got to call your Mum,' Zehra said. She had no phone installed in her flat so she took me to the phone box around the corner.

I didn't want to call Mum. I wanted her, and my stepfather too, to suffer, but Zehra told me if Mum called the police to look for me she would get in trouble. Mum
agreed to let me stay the night and said they would come by tomorrow to pick me up.

Back at Zehra's I sat across from Milan, checking out his biceps peeking from his t-shirt, while Zehra made coffee. ‘So what happened?' she asked, blowing the steam on her mug.

I told her. ‘I hate her and I hate living there,' I muttered, picking at the laminate on the side of the table. ‘I can't wait to get out of there.'

‘I know,' Zehra said, squeezing my hand. ‘But you've still got another three years at least.'

I sighed. I felt like I was a prisoner and freedom was too far to reach.

The next morning Mum came by, her lips tightened in displeasure and anger. She kept her eyes away from me as if I didn't exist.

She and Zehra and my stepdad spoke in the bungalow while I waited outside. When they finished, Izet and Mum left without saying a word to me.

‘What happened?' I asked, feeling deflated. Out of all the reactions I'd expected, this wasn't it.

‘Your mum agreed to let you stay here for the weekend. Give everyone a chance to cool down,' Zehra said, as we went back inside.

It was as I suspected. They didn't want me around. ‘I'll have to call Milan,' Zehra said. ‘I need to tell him I can't go clubbing tonight.'

‘Why can't you go?' I asked.

‘Last time I checked, you're not 18.'

‘Oh.' I was disappointed that I wouldn't have the fun weekend I had hoped for.

‘Maybe there is something we can do. We can ask my friend Jules for her ID.' Zehra looked at me critically and sighed. ‘I don't know if it will work.'

‘Please, please, can we try?'

The photo on the laminated card looked nothing like me. Jules was an overweight girl with brown eyes and dyed blonde hair, her dark regrowth visible, while I was naturally blonde, blue eyed and thin.

‘Don't worry. It will work,' Zehra ruffled my hair. She leant me her clothes. We dressed identically in denim cut offs that had a dangling string, singlet tops with push up bras, frilly socks and high heels. We went to Hot Gossip, a nightclub in the industrial estates of Sunshine, which was the den of the Western suburbs' try-hards.

The bouncer looked me up and down and asked for ID. I handed over Jules's, looking away all the while. The bouncer looked suspiciously at the card, but eventually did jerk his head, indicating we could go in. Zehra had predicted this, speculating he would be too scared he'd be made a fool if he challenged me openly, because girls could drastically change their appearance.

Inside, my eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness. Once they did, and I began dancing, I noticed a hot
guy on the dance floor. He was tall and lithe, and was wearing all white. This was the time of MC Hammer and the harem pants, and this guy was a ‘would-be-MC'. Our eyes met and I felt a zing. We slowly moved toward each other. His hand was now on my back, my hand on his shoulder. I looked up at him and we locked lips. I don't know how long the kiss lasted, it felt like forever and it felt like a second. There was no awkwardness or bumping of noses I had experienced before. It was so easy, so perfect.

The would-be-MC asked me if I wanted to take a walk. I stared at him, overwhelmed with the whole experience. He repeated the question. Embarrassment overcame me and I ran to the toilet to hide in a cubicle.

Zehra, who thought I'd indeed gone for a ‘walk' with the boy, searched for me in the backseats of the cars in the car park. Milan told me later that she'd been crying all the while, saying that she didn't want me to lose my virginity in the back of a car. Eventually someone told Zehra where I was hiding.

She found me in the toilet. I wasn't alone there – a girl with brown bouffant hair was primping herself in the mirror. She'd taken off her bra and only wore a white t-shirt. I just wanted to go home, but, as we were about to leave, the toilet door slammed open and a man burst in. He walked up to the girl, clocked her in the face with his fist, and rushed off in a blur of fury.

Zehra helped the girl up. The force of the blow had knocked her into a cubicle; she'd fallen over the toilet bowl and lay dazed beside it.

‘Yeah, yeah, I'm fine,' Bouffant Girl shook her head like she was trying to shake off the dazed feeling. She stood and straightened her shoulders. ‘If that cunt thinks I'm not going to go out there, he can fuck himself!'

‘Who was he?' I asked.

‘My boyfriend,' she said, and strutted out, her jaw already swelling up.

We followed her to a makeshift stage, where she joined the four girls standing on it. ‘So what's your name?' a cheesy MC asked each one of them, engaging them in small talk before he got a water bottle and sprayed their t-shirts. The cold water plastered the cotton to their breasts and made their nipples bead up. The crowd of rowdy boys cheered. ‘Take it off, take it off,' they chanted.

Bouffant Girl smiled a sickly smile and took off the t-shirt, standing on stage bare breasted. We'd seen enough and left.

The next night we went to Hot Gossip again. This time the bouncer just waved us through. We were in the toilets when the door burst open. It was Bouffant Girl. There was a dark bruise on her face and murder in her eyes.

‘Hey, how are you doing?' Zehra smiled at her.

Bouffant Girl walked past her and up to me. She swung back her fist and sucker punched me in the face.
I went down like a ton of bricks.

‘What the fuck!' Zehra pushed Bouffant Girl away.

While she bent down to help me up, Bouffant Girl walked out of the toilet, a strut in her hips. Zehra and her mates went looking for Bouffant Girl, but she'd done a runner, knowing that payback would be coming. Later one of Zehra's friends told her that the bouncer had found out my age and hadn't taken kindly to being lied to. He'd wanted me to learn my lesson and not return again so he'd asked Bouffant Girl, who was his friend, to scare me off.

While being punched had been unpleasant, it wasn't a new experience. Growing up in the Western suburbs I'd had my head kicked in three times already and regaling my weekend adventures to my schoolmates had transformed me from a forgettable nobody to a cool somebody, but now I was beginning to question whether the price for being Zehra's shadow was too high. Maybe Zehra wasn't as cool as I thought she was?

Back at school on Monday I had an appointment with Miss Beattie, the school counselor. I had started seeing her a few months before at the Principal's request. Mum was having frequent breakdowns, on average every six months, and when she was sick I stayed home to look after her. She couldn't stand my stepfather when she was sick and would try and kick him out by throwing his
clothes on the front lawn. And she couldn't be left alone. On her own, she'd get in the car and drive off to the shopping centre, spending money we didn't have, or go visiting friends for hours, unaware of how intrusive and rude she was being by outstaying her welcome and by blurting out her every thought, even if it was insulting to her hosts.

Mum didn't have a good grasp of English and, when I had to care for her, I used to write notes to the teacher to explain my absences and get her to sign. Soon she was better, but I'd had a taste of the good life: being able to sleep in, watch daytime television and have no homework, and didn't want to return to school. I'd write more notes, faking Mum's signature, and spend the day in the library, reading to escape my life.

Eventually the Coordinators twigged and I was called into the Principal's office. Sitting beside me was my Year Nine Coordinator, Miss McGee.

‘We need to talk to you about your school attendance,' the Principal began and I gulped. I had clocked up 20 days off.

He pulled out a stack of notes. ‘If you see here, this signature looks different to this signature.' He held up a note from the beginning of the year and one at the end. I'd gotten sloppy with forging Mum's signature, my cursive handwriting bleeding into her fake signature.

‘My Mum is sick a lot,' I said. ‘The medication makes her hand shake, and these are from when she's better and
her hand isn't shaking.'

The Principal and Miss McGee exchanged a look. ‘What kind of illness does she have?' he asked.

I told him about Mum's nervous breakdowns and that I had to take care of her.

‘Thank you, Amra,' the Principal said when I finished. ‘We'll call your mother to confirm what you told us.'

I spent the rest of the day in a state of agitation, anxious to get home. ‘Has the Principal called you?' I asked Mum as I ran into the living room, gasping for breath.

She shook her head.

I told her about being called into the Principal's office: ‘You have to cover for me. You have to tell them that you signed all the notes.'

Mum's face had tightened as I spoke. I didn't have to explain to her what was at stake. If the school knew that I'd been wagging, we were both in strife. She would be the mentally ill mother who couldn't control her wayward daughter and the school might involve the Department of Human Services. I had been taken away already a few times in my childhood when she was ill and placed with foster carers. Either way, it was in both of our interests to keep scrutiny off us.

Sure enough, Mum backed me up when the Principal called, but as a result the school recommended that I begin seeing the school counselor. I didn't mind. I got to meet Miss Beattie who actually listened to what I had
to say and took me seriously. More importantly, I missed a period of schoolwork a week. I tried to time it so that I missed Maths, a subject that I struggled in. I usually spent those classes reading, or would transform myself into the class clown, disrupting the lesson.

‘What illness does your mum have?' Miss Beattie asked.

This was the first time that we'd gone into this territory. Usually I spent all my time bitching about my friends.

‘Mum has nervous breakdowns.'

‘But what is the actual name of the illness?'

‘What do you mean? That's the name.' That's what Mum and everyone I knew called it, and that's what I'd grown up telling people.

Miss Beattie asked me what happened when Mum got sick. I explained how she got insomnia and couldn't sleep, her glowing eyes and thick tongue, and the way she would share her every thought and feeling. Miss Beattie nodded as I spoke. I also told her about Mum's bizarre behavior in those times. I said that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to Mum getting sick. Sometimes she got sick when she was taking her medication, sometimes she got sick when she didn't. She got sick when there was lots of stress, and she got sick when there wasn't. But the one thing that was a constant was the complete shock that I felt every time. It seemed like her nervous breakdowns came out of nowhere and would only become obvious
when she was too far gone and all we could do was take her to hospital and wait for the doctors to smack it out of her.

Miss Beattie's questions made me think about Mum differently and I went home that night and asked her what her illness was called.

‘Nervous breakdown.'

‘Yes, but what causes it?'

‘The doctors told me that there's a chemical imbalance in my brain.'

When I returned the next time to talk to Miss Beattie, she had a surprise for me.