5 #2
When we were younger, I used to play with the other kids in the street too.
I was the only girl in a group of about seven and the moment I turned eleven, without a hint of approaching body changes, my grandmother began standing at the front gate watching us play.
Or more specifically, watching me, her eyes like red target lasers circling me, following my every move.
No amount of ducking or weaving could make her lose track.
Even with my back turned I felt her eyes drilled into me.
That was bad enough, but then, just to ramp up the mortification, she began calling me from the gate.
If I waved her away, or yelled, ‘five more minutes,’ she’d hit me with her most powerful weapon in her arsenal.
‘Catarina! Come away from the boys!’
As if Italian wasn’t her native tongue, her shrill voice would ring across the street, her English flawless.
Heads would turn, equating the panic of an elderly woman’s voice with a situation of grave danger: a wolf pack, an out-of-control car, the local creepy old man.
Nope, it was just my Nonna’s warnings about the dangers of a young girl hanging around the terrifying prepubescent boys of the neighbourhood.
Never mind the fact that most of them were my brothers’ ages, and that both she and I had known them all their lives.
No. According to my Nonna, at eleven I was on the cusp of the terrifying descent into womanhood, and as such I was a magnet for debauchery and depravity.
The boys wouldn’t be able to fight my subconscious bewitching siren calls nor their own willpower to hook up with me in the street.
According to Nonna, I’m in constant danger of being ravished.
As if reading my mind, she starts up again.
‘You’re a woman now, Catarina,’ she hisses at me. Her eyes narrow as she takes in my posture, sprawled in a deck chair, my feet resting against the balcony glass balustrade. ‘Sit like a lady. The whole town can see your underwear.’
‘It’s okay, Nonna,’ I say. ‘I’m not wearing any underwear.’
Nonna pins me with a glare as unforgiving and merciless as the stony mountain ranges of her ancestors. She opens her mouth to strike but Mum steps in.
‘Mama, enough. She’s just teasing you,’ she says. ‘At least, I hope she is.’ She reaches for the edge of my skirt, and I push her hand away. I sit up and wriggle my skirt back down over my hips.
‘There, Nonna, all sorted. Virtue intact.’
‘You go on and laugh. One day you’ll see that I’m right and you won’t be laughing then.’
‘Right about what, Nonna?’
‘Right about being proper. I never had the opportunities you have. I never had the opportunities your mother had. Don’t waste them by hanging around boys, being reckless.’
Mum and I exchange glances. Mum has told me many times that the only reason she was able to go to university was because her father suddenly died when she was in her final year of school, relinquishing any say in the matter.
According to Mum, he was a lovely man and she adored him, but he didn’t believe in educating girls, and he really didn’t believe in women being architects.
His early demise was Mum’s long-term good fortune in a bizarre, mournful way.
‘Don’t you two go pulling those faces,’ Nonna continues. Man, she could tell me off underwater. ‘Be smart. If you’re careless just once, just once, Catarina, that’s it. Your whole future ruined. Forget about boys. Concentrate on your books.’
‘Nonna, I don’t even have a boyfriend. If I even had the hint of a boy around here, you’d scare him off.’ I stand and hug Nonna, her face bright red, a mix of the heat, the champagne and her pure outrage.
As I turn to go inside, she slaps me lightly on my butt.
‘She’s a smart mouth. You watch that one.’
‘I don’t need to watch her, Mama,’ says Mum. ‘You’re here.’
I give up on waiting for Tommy to bring out the water. I slam the fridge door. ‘Seriously, Mum?’ I wave the empty water jug. ‘There’s no cold water. What is wrong with people?’
Mum comes inside. ‘Is it that big a deal, Cat?’ She reaches behind me to the freezer, shaking some ice into a glass. ‘Problem solved.’
‘It’s not even about the water, Mum,’ I say. ‘It’s everything. Freakin’ hell, is this my summer? Arguing with Nonna about my non-existent love life? Trying to study with no books and a house full of Neanderthals?’
‘It’s one kid, Cat.’ She puts her arm around me in one of her perfect mum hugs.
‘And you might want to pull your head in. It’s the first day of the year.
If I were superstitious, I’d be worried that this tone you’re throwing around is what you’ll be stuck with for the whole year.
Come on, darling girl, this isn’t you! What’s wrong? ’
Damn it, I feel my eyes burning. How does she always know how to get to me?
‘It’s just... everything.’ I tuck myself into her arms. ‘That one kid? It’s the whole Neanderthal world entering mine and I don’t want them
here. Not now. It’s too much, what with school and Nonna and everything.’
‘It’s a lot, I know,’ she says. ‘But believe me, we’ll all be okay. I promise.’