Lezbianka

In the kitchen my grandmother, Baba Dana, is shouting again. She’s talking with her hands over us kids, over our heads. She’s saying to my Auntie Sveta, “Well, well. Leni’s back.”

I didn’t even notice she was gone.

I don’t really notice Leni that much.

Leni’s just Nikki’s older sister, almost a big person. And if I ever go to their place, which is only two doors down, it’s to jump on the trampoline with Nikki. Or to run with Nikki’s dog. Or to bounce a ball on the brick wall outside and catch it while Nikki counts how many claps I can do in the space between the catch and the throw. It’s not to see Leni. Leni doesn’t play. She’s too busy studying to become a doctor and being a good girl. The kind I’m supposed to be when I grow up so I can make everybody—my grandmother especially—proud.

But today—it’s confusing—the stories have been switched around. Leni is not a good girl. My grandmother says so. She is a kuchka—a dog. And a kurva—a girl who takes off her clothes with men she doesn’t know in alleyways and dark parks. I know these words. And I know what they mean. But I don’t know what a lezbianka is.

“That good-for-nothing lezbianka.” My grandmother says it again.

“What? What?” I say.

My grandmother leans in close and says, “Yeah. Listen to me. Leni is the worst of the worst. You know what else? She had a baby in a gutter in Newtown and she sold it for a piece of bread.”

“Who to?”

“To a man in a black coat going past in a car. No shame. And now she’s come back to her family to hang her head.”

It’s like a cartoon, the picture that pops up in my head. The swap through the car window between Leni and the man in the black coat: a baby for a piece of bread, all floppy and thick and white and soft like the Tip-Top toasties we get from the corner shop.

But really, I don’t remember Leni being pregnant. Not like Auntie Sveta with her big watermelon belly stretched out to the limit so my little cousin Danny can have not only me, but a little brother or sister to play with. I would’ve noticed that. But maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. I try to think back to when I do remember Leni for sure, clear.

It was at her big twenty-first birthday party in her backyard, with a jukebox and everything, not that long ago, in the summertime. We went. And I remember looking at Leni, really looking at her because just then she looked so pretty and happy and free. She was playing ping-pong with a bald man with a tanned head and a beard. He was smiling at her and she was smiling at him, as if they knew a good secret. But anyway, that bald man didn’t matter so much. It was Leni, for me, who shone. She had no shoes on and was wearing big, wide jeans. Her long, soft, brown hair was out. It swayed with her pants, left to right, right to left, like a beautiful ballet, as she waited for the little white ball to come her way, right before she hit. And her eyes were bright. In them, they had little cut-out glints.

No. She didn’t look like she was having a baby.

Her stomach was flat.

Maybe my grandmother has got it wrong, I think.

Either way, I’m going to find out. I ask, “Is Leni home right now?”

My grandmother shrugs her shoulders. “Where else does she have to go? Nowhere.”

I say, “I’m going over.”

She says, “Go. See the devil for yourself.”

So I go. But at the door, of course, as I open it my little cousin Danny cries to come with me.

“Just stay,” I say. “I won’t be long.”

But, of course, he starts shrieking at the top of his lungs.

My grandmother says, “Take him. Please. He only wants you.”

So I take his hand. I hold it tight. I tell him, “It’s alright, it’s alright. Come on.”

And as we go out the door and down to the gate, I’m torn between feeling sorry that I don’t always want to be with him like he wants to be with me, and hoping that he’s not going to get in the way of my investigations.

Outside on the footpath, Danny and me, we’re still hand in hand. Like we’ve got super-glue sticking us together. Like it’s my arm that’s his, or his that’s mine. Like this, joined, we go past the house that’s in between Leni and us. And as we do, a cold shiver goes through me, so it must go through my little cousin too. That’s because he’s younger and nearer and closer to remembering how it is to be swimming inside his mum’s belly and dependent one hundred per cent. Not like me. I’m already wanting to stand alone. I’m separating out.

But that house between Leni and us, it makes me feel things I don’t have names for, words. It belongs to an old, old lady who’s tiny and shrunken and frail. She looks as if she’s got birds’ bones for bones, a sparrow’s that anyone could snap. As if at night she has to sleep in a box wrapped in tissue paper with mothballs and dead moths and dust. I don’t know, really, if she does. But she’s got a big wig of white hair and she lives alone. We hardly ever see her. But Leni’s mum and my grandmother sometimes stand out the front, with their hands on their hips, and talk about her business.

They say—but not in English—“Oh, what shame. What grief. Her kids never come and see her.”

They say, “Oh, but they’ll come when she’s dead to collect the money. That’s the way the Australians are.”

“They don’t care about family. One day the old lady will die and we’ll be the ones who smell her rotting away like vinegar cabbage.”

Things like that, they say.

Looking at the house, as me and Danny walk past it, I wonder what the old lady is doing inside now. If she is at the window, behind the blind, peering through a crack. Or if she died last night in her sleep and her ghost is already looming above us, over the roof, over the whole neighbourhood, bigger than she was in life. But with fiery eyes and pointed teeth, angry that no one cared.

I don’t say anything about it to Danny but I sniff the air. No trace of vinegar cabbage. We walk on, faster.

Up the three brick steps and then we are there, at Leni’s door. With my one free knuckle I knock. Still attached, Danny looks up at me with big eyes, I know. But I look straight ahead and knock again. I put my ear to wood.

From inside, I can hear loud noises like someone’s dropping boxes from a high place. And then stomping. Big booming footsteps. Suddenly, the door opens up in front of us. I jump back. It’s Leni standing right there. But she’s got no horns or anything. She hasn’t grown another eye like an ogre in the middle of her forehead. She looks just like her normal self, to me, at first glance.

She says, “Hello Tammy,” a little out of breath. “Nikki’s not home.”

I just stand there and stare.

“Nikki’s out with Mum and Dad at the shops. She’ll be back soon if you want to come back then.”

I don’t know what to say next so I don’t say anything. I bore holes with my eyes deep into hers, trying to detect the badness my grandmother was so excited about. But I can’t see any. It’s disappointing.

After a bit, Leni says, “Well, do you want to come in?”

I say, “Yeah.”

And then Leni moves aside and I pull Danny straight down the hall, the way I would normally go, in the direction of the back door. Leni stops us halfway.

She says, “Why don’t you take a seat? Why don’t you sit down here?”

She’s pointing at one of the velvet couches in the good lounge room that I’ve never sat on before. The good lounge next to the good glass coffee table and, next to it, the good telephone made of white-and-grey marble. It has a golden wheel with numbers behind it that you have to put your finger in and turn around, if you want to ring out somewhere. And the wheel goes brrr-brrr-brrr when you let it go. I know because we used to have a good phone like that too. No one was allowed to use it. I don’t think anyone uses it here either. Stiffly, we, me and Danny, sit on the good velvet couch where we have never sat before.

Leni says, “So, can I get you a drink? Some Coke?”

I look at Danny, read his eyes, nod my head.

“One for me and one for him,” I say. “Separate. Thanks.” In case she doesn’t realise that we are.

So Leni goes to get the drinks and comes back with them on a silver tray. They’re in fancy glass glasses, not plastic, that as kids we might break. Then she starts talking.

She says, “So how’s school, Tammy?”

“Good.”

“What class are you in now?”

“Fourth.”

I take a big gulp of fizzy drink but don’t take my eyes off her for a second.

“And what about you, Danny?” she says. “You must be going to start school soon?”

I speak for my little cousin. “Next year.” I know he doesn’t want to speak for himself.

I can feel him wriggle next to me. I squeeze his hand hard, tell him to stay put. I want to keep studying Leni. Because the more I look the more I see that there really is something different about her. Her cheeks are thin. It’s like you can see the cogs and spokes behind the mechanical clock of her face. She doesn’t look like she did at her party. Her hair isn’t swinging free. There are no cut-out glints in her eyes. They’re dead and grey. And her mouth. It looks like someone’s sewn the sides of it to her ears with invisible string. To keep it from drooping.

“You’ll be a big boy then, Danny,” Leni says, still smiling weirdly.

I want to ask Leni about the baby and the man and the piece of bread. I’m going to. But then the doorbell rings.

From the velvet couch where I still stiffly sit, I strain to hear the voices at the door. I don’t know who they belong to but I can hear what they are saying and how, a woman and a man.

They’re saying, “I hope we’re not intruding.” “We were just driving by.” “We thought we’d come and see how you are.” “You’re looking really well.” “You’re looking really, really good, Leni. Really great.”

And Leni’s saying, “Thanks. I’m better now. Come in.”

“No, no. We don’t want to disturb you.”

“Please.”

“Well, we won’t stay long. Just for a minute.”

The voices are coming down the hall. And then the voices are here with us, with me and Danny in the good lounge room, with the bodies that belong to them. They are a woman who has a round, kind face and a man wearing a brown jacket with his hands in his pockets. All of them—Leni, the woman, the man—they stand on their legs as if they are uneasy that they have them. They shift from foot to foot.

Then the woman steps forward and gives Leni a giant-sized card in an envelope and some chocolates in a box.

She says, “These are from everyone at the hospital. The doctors and nurses and your fellow students. We all want you to know that we send our love.”

Leni mouths the words “thank you” but no sound comes out.

She takes the card and the box of chocolates but doesn’t open them, not even the chocolates. I would have. Instead she holds the things to her chest, hugging them hard, like she wants to crush them, the card, the box, the chocolates. To make their runny, gooey caramel insides ooze out of their shells like blood, like she’s just been stabbed. But that doesn’t happen. There’s a silence.

Then Leni does a thing that I don’t expect. She turns to me and Danny. She introduces us. Like she thinks we are big people. She says to the kind lady and the man with his hands in his pockets, “Linda, Brad. This is Tammy and Danny. Tammy, Danny, this is Linda, my supervisor from the hospital where I was doing my medical training. And her husband Brad.”

“Hi,” I say from my seat. I give a wave. Danny says nothing.

Then the kind woman and man turn to look at Leni again.

Leni keeps smiling the same weird smile with the help of invisible strings. And I’m wondering if the strings will snap. Eventually, I think they will. Especially if Leni and the woman and the man keep talking like they’re talking, saying things that on the surface are calm and flat but underneath go up and down, quickly, like zig-zag mountains. I wish that they would just say it, whatever they really want to say, let it all out like my grandmother would. But they don’t. And the invisible strings get tighter and tighter. This makes me nervous for Leni, like I want to bite my nails right down to their quicks.

And if that’s what I feel then Danny must feel it too. His little hand taps me on the shoulder. He says, “I want to go.”

I whisper, “Wait.”

He says, “No! I want to go home now.”

And his face starts to break. And then he starts to cry. And then he starts to scream like his head is a siren going around and around.

So we go. We rush to the door.

As we do, Leni calls, “Come any time,” which is strange, too, because, anyway, we do. She also says, “Give my very, very best to your grandmother.”

I say, “I will.”

But I don’t. Because I know that Leni’s very, very best won’t be good enough any more now that my Baba has made up her mind that Leni is bad.

That night in bed I try hard to stay awake. I’m waiting for my mum to come home from the ham factory where she has to go to work, and the college where she goes after that to try to make a better life for us. It’s hard—to stop falling into sleep. And just when I think I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, the door to the bedroom that we share with the two single beds and the dressing table between us, opens up. Not moving one muscle, I wait for her to tip-toe in, pull down her sheets and get underneath before I say, “Mum?”

“Aren’t you asleep yet? What is it?” she says like she’s a piece of paper that’s been crumpled up and thrown in the bin and I’m asking her to flatten out and be new and fresh again. Well, she just can’t.

“Mum,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’ll go to sleep soon. But can I just ask you one thing? Mum? What’s a lezbianka?”

I say the word carefully, because I’ve been dragged out by my ear to the laundry and had my mouth washed out with soap for repeating words my grandmother has said before. (And my grandmother has just looked on, while my teeth have grated the hard cake and my mouth has foamed up with suds. She’s shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “What? What’s the problem?”)

My mum’s voice now is sharp. She asks, “And who said that?”

“Baba,” I say. “About Leni. Baba said that Leni had a baby and sold it to a man in a car.”

I hear my mother sigh in exasperation in the dark. She says, “Leni isn’t a lezbianka. And she didn’t have a baby. I don’t know why your grandmother says these things.” She sighs again, longer this time. “Leni got mixed up with the wrong people at the hospital. Someone there gave her drugs. She had to go to a special place so that she could get better again.”

“What do you mean?”

“She couldn’t stop taking drugs and she had to get help.”

“Why couldn’t she stop taking them?”

“Because that’s what happens. You become a slave. You become addicted. Leni was under a lot of pressure. It was her last year.”

“But why did they have drugs at the hospital?” I’m confused. “I thought you went to jail if you had drugs. Like people on the news.”

My mum says, “Well, yes. But sometimes drugs can help people. In hospitals.”

“Don’t they get addicted too?”

“Maybe. But at the hospital they keep their drugs in a cabinet, locked up. Only the doctors have a key. The patients can’t just go and get them. Okay?” she says in her just-about-running-out-of-patience voice.

“But Mum, who gave Leni the drugs?”

“I don’t know, darling.”

“Was it the bald man she was playing ping-pong with at her party?”

“Who?”

I’ll bet it was him. I don’t know how, I just know. I can imagine how he would’ve, dressed in a white coat, led Leni into a lonely, dark, hospital room. He would’ve turned behind, after every step, to see if she was still coming. She was, I’ll bet. And his eyes would’ve gleamed at her; they twirled, they hypnotised. A perfect fit, he must’ve put in the key, that only he keeps on a chain in his pocket, into the lock of the cabinet. And the cabinet doors would’ve opened up in slow-motion, like in a dream. Inside, inside the cabinet—I can see it—there were rows and rows of triangular-shaped, little glass bottles full of drugs that turn people into slaves. They bubbled and smoked and frothed. They glowed green and dangerous, like kryptonite. And the bald man with the gleaming eyes offered one to Leni. She couldn’t resist, though she wanted to. She took a sip and her eyes rolled backwards. She fell to the ground. Addicted.

That’s how it must’ve happened.

And this is how it must’ve felt. Like how when my Uncle Dimmie twirls me around and around in the park; and how when he stops I drop. I’m dizzy, I lose my legs. But still, all I can do is beg, “Again, again. One more time.”

I want to ask my mum if I’m right.

But before I can, she yawns loudly and says, “Okay. Enough. It’s time to sleep.”

“Okay, Mum,” I say. “There’s just one more thing. I promise. Then I’ll go to sleep. Mum? Please. What’s a lezbianka?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Mum, please. You’ll forget.”

My mum starts to tell me. But with every word her voice fades away. “It’s when …”

“What, Mum?”

“Sometimes two ladies love each other like …”

“Like what?”

“Like a husband and a wife. And they want to …”

“Mum. What? What do they want to do?”

“They just love each other, alright? We’ll talk about it again another time. Now, good—”

“—night.”

I hear my mum roll over on her springy mattress. She starts to snore softly straight away, purring like a cat. But I can’t sleep. Not now. I lie there on my back thinking about Leni—Leni before and Leni now. And about ladies who love each other. Girls.

I don’t exactly understand. But maybe it’s a bit like me and my best friend, Naomi, at school. Sometimes we play mummies-and-daddies and getting-married at lunch-time behind the fig tree in the quadrangle. Sometimes. We lift each other’s pretend veils—our cardigans tied around our heads—and kiss each other and say, “I do, I do”.

I think about Baba Dana, too. Why would she say Leni is a lezbianka, if she isn’t? Maybe she doesn’t even know, properly, what a lezbianka is. She doesn’t know everything. That’s why in the morning, first thing, I’m going to tell her. When she gives me my egg on toast and shouts at me and calls me a krasta—a measles-infected girl—which is bad, it isn’t good, there’s no in-between. Even though I don’t have measles; I never have. She’ll just be making up stories again, while I want to tell her something true. She’ll be yelling, telling me to eat faster, faster, or I’ll be late for school where she wants me to go to learn and be smart. So I can become a doctor and make her proud.