Chapter 3
Chapter Three
L ayla had always been braver and more adventurous than Evie. By the time they reached the end of year seven, her best friend had kissed more boys than Evie could count. The kissing always took place where no one would see; behind the groundsman’s shed near the oval, under the stairs in the double-storey year seven block, and even behind a tree on their way to school.
‘You just need to ask one of them to kiss you,’ Layla told Evie. ‘You’re missing out.’
She was horrified. ‘No way. My dad said not to let any boys kiss me. They’re only ever after one thing, and to stay away from them.’
‘He’s just telling you that because he doesn’t want you to have fun.’
The two girls sat away from prying eyes in their usual hideout, an old shed near the back fence of Evie’s property. It was musty and dim inside, and every so often a mouse scurried out from under the timber orange crates stored on the shelves. The tiny marsupial’s scampering movements and twitching nose sent the girls shrieking and jumping up onto the nearest chair. They persisted in using the shed though, as it was their own space, where no one bothered or nagged them about picking up their mess.
Today, Evie brought a few books her mother had recently given her. One was called Guide Through Teen Years – A Reliable Sex Education Booklet for Girls 12-14 .
‘That’s us,’ Layla said. The two girls giggled as they looked at the illustrations. Layla read some of the words out loud, thrusting her hips back and forth as she imitated the descriptions in the book.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Evie whispered. ‘Look at these pictures of a rooster and a hen doing it.’ She turned the pages, her eyes wide. ‘Where are the birds and the bees?’
Layla grabbed the book from her. ‘You idiot. That’s just what grownups say to us kids. It’s not real. Here, look at this one: Mothercraft. Check out the girl on the front cover. She’s so dressed up, like she’s going to church.’
Adorning the front was a black and white photo of an attractive young woman, beautifully dressed and wearing oven mittens, taking a cake out of the oven.
‘This book is so old fashioned,’ Layla said as she grabbed it off Evie and opened it at what she had decided was her favourite page. As she read the words, she changed her voice to sound like a very posh adult. ‘A young woman should ensure that her husband’s dinner is ready for him each evening.’ She paused and wiggled her chest, pretending to have large breasts, and then held her hand out as if she were holding a cigarette. Placing the pretend cigarette into her mouth, she drew back, pursing her lips to blow the invisible smoke into the air as she continued. ‘The good wife should ensure that she always greets her husband at the door when he returns from work and that she is looking her best. No man wants to come home to a wife who doesn’t look good.’ She rolled her eyes before closing them, fluttering her eyelashes when she eventually opened them again.
‘Stop being so dramatic,’ Evie said. ‘Hurry up, I want to know what happens next. Is there any sex stuff in there?’
‘Not likely. Listen to this. Always be punctual with dinners cooked and your husband’s slippers warmed by the fire or heater. When you open the door to greet him after his hard day at work, take his coat and help him remove his shoes, slipping his feet straight into his warm slippers.’
Layla put her finger down her throat and pretended to vomit. ‘No way. This is bullshit.’
Evie peered around, checking through the window to make sure no adults were making their way towards the shed. ‘Shh, don’t swear. You’ll get us in trouble.’
‘I’m not going to pander to any boy. I’m an equal and no one will tell me what to do,’ Layla said as she turned the page. ‘We think differently in my house, because we’re all girls. We talk a lot about the different paths our lives might take. We’re going to make our own choices.’
‘Do you miss your dad?’ Evie asked, a sad tone in her voice.
‘No. I don’t. Mum does though. I was only two when he died, so I don’t remember him. It was because of the war. He had things wrong with him from injuries he got in New Guinea. Mum said so. She’s been our mum and dad all in one. She says women can do anything if they put their minds to it.’ Evie stuffed the books back in her bag. ‘Does your dad boss your mum around?’
‘No way,’ Evie said, as she took the book back from her friend and tried to straighten the cover where Layla had bent it. ‘Dad’s the softie in our family.’ She thought hard. ‘They do their own thing. Dad lets Mum do what she wants and Mum’s the same, although she does get cranky when Dad goes to Sydney for work so much.’
‘Sounds like it’s fair in your house.’ Layla sighed and ran her hands over her legs. ‘Look at them. Beautiful and smooth.’
Evie pouted. ‘I’m not allowed to shave mine until I start high school next year. How embarrassing. Mine needs doing more than yours. At least your hair’s blonde. The hairs on my legs and eyebrows are darker than what’s on my head.’
‘You should just do it. Shave. Forget what your parents say.’
‘I only have to wait a bit longer. On the school holidays we’re going to Stradbroke Island, and Mum said I can shave them before we go. I can’t wait.’
‘I want that Adam boy from the high school to run his hand over my legs and then,’ Layla pulled a crazy face, ‘and then I want him to touch me here.’ She put her hand between her legs.
Evie was alarmed and sat up straight, her eyes wide. ‘Layla! Why would you let him do that?’
‘I read my sister’s diary. She writes all the stuff about what her boyfriend Matt does to her. She loves it. They have sex in all different places.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They do it in Grandma’s house when she goes away on holidays, they did it in the hay down in the stables behind the racetrack, and once last week, standing up in his bedroom when his parents were at church.’
Evie was intrigued. ‘Standing up? How does that work?’
Layla lifted her eyebrows up and down continually, her eyes wide. ‘I’m not sure and it didn’t show that in those books, but if I could get Adam to touch me, I reckon I could work it out.’
The conversation continued for a long time, only stopping when Evie’s father called to them from the back veranda of the house. ‘Dinner time, my little bambinos. It's time for you to go home, Layla. It will be dark soon. Here, take these tomatoes and capsicums home for your mother. She’s a good woman. She works hard.’
‘Thank you, Mr Romano,’ Layla said, accepting the brown paper bag full of the fruit Carlo loved to grow. ‘She loves your tomatoes and the free vacuum cleaner you gave her.’
He waved his hands in the air, ‘It was nothing. Demo model. Make sure you are a good girl and help your mother.’
Evie stood on the veranda with Father, his arm around her shoulders as they waved goodbye to Layla.
‘She’s a good girl, your friend Layla,’ he said. ‘A very good girl.’
Evie went to say something else but then thought it better not to. If her parents knew what Layla was really like, they wouldn’t want her to be friends with her. There was a certain limit to what she told them, and the conversation she’d just had in the shed with her friend was not suitable to share, especially with her dad.
There had been a change in Layla’s attitude in the last couple of months, and Evie struggled to keep up with her knowledge and desire to do different things. Evie was also jealous because Layla had her periods. She was a woman. Well, that’s what Layla said. All the boys liked Layla, but Evie wasn’t sure that reading her sister’s diary and hoping to do similar things when she was still only in year seven was such a good idea. Most of the boys in their grade were noisy, silly, and not interested in girls. Some of them still even thought girls had germs. That’s why Layla liked the boys from the high school. She said they were more mature; one of them had asked her to go to the show in town the next week.
Evie washed her hands and face, ready for dinner. She ran her fingers over her eyebrows, the dark hairs much thicker than Layla’s. Her mother said she would pluck them for her once she started shaving her legs. A pimple on her chin stood out and she squeezed it between her fingers, rubbing her hand over her skin where the little whitehead had been. There were so many aspects of life that were changing—some good and some not so good.
She liked that sometimes on weekends, her father took her with him when he went to work. A desk had been allotted to her and she was given some alphabetical filing to do. Glenys, the lady he worked with, fussed over Evie and told her she was pretty and looked like someone called Sophia Loren. At morning tea, she sat and had a cup of tea with Glenys and her dad, listening to them talking about the newest vacuum cleaners that had arrived that week, and how everyone in town was putting in orders.
They treated her like a grown-up, and Glenys even asked her if she had a boyfriend. Shaking her head, she could feel her face burning. ‘No boys,’ her dad said, shaking his pointer finger back and forth in the air. ‘No boys until she is finished high school.’
Another day, her dad had taken her into the city. She wore her best dress with a yellow spotted bodice. It was tight and her mother said it showed off her slim waist. The skirt section came to above her knees and she was excited to wear a pair of knee-high white boots that laced up from the bottom to the top. They had been in a hand-me-down bag of clothes that Glenys had given her, and matched some of the other dresses that belonged to Glenys’s daughters. As she brushed her long brown hair, then smeared Vaseline on her lips to make them look shiny, she silently thanked her father for some of her features.
Although her legs weren’t that long, and it always felt like her backside was enormous compared to Layla’s, she thought other parts of her body were satisfactory. When she sat in the front seat of her father’s car on one of their trips into the city, she felt as though she was so grown up. She crossed her legs at her knees and made sure her dress didn’t get crushed. They parked alongside the Brisbane River, and her dad held her hand as they walked along the pathway. He pointed out buildings he knew the names of and the different places he had gone to hold vacuum demonstrations. ‘Lots of carpet in those offices,’ he remarked. ‘That means lots of vacuums for the cleaners.’
On one trip to Brisbane, her father needed to buy some new clothes. They went to a shop that sold suits and other formal clothes, and she sat in a plush leather chair, trying to look as grown up as she could as he tried on a variety of stiff-collared shirts and brightly coloured ties. His appearance was another thing she loved about him. His black hair was slicked back with Brylcreem, and he looked like a movie star to Evie. When he wore a dark suit and his moustache was newly trimmed, he resembled the man in the cigarette ad on television that said, ‘Blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere.’
Neither of her parents wanted to explain the meaning of that line, and she wondered why anyone would wish to have cigarette smoke blown in their face.
Her dad looked more glamorous than the man in the ad. He had darker skin and whiter teeth and wore a large gold ring with a black stone in the middle. Even her friends at school told her he was handsome. Now, as he led her to a café that was hidden away in an arcade that branched off Queen Street, she held tight to his hand, hoping he would sit for a long time and drink the tiny cups of coffee that he loved, as well as take her into more shops.
When he pulled her chair out for her to sit down, she could feel the eyes of those around her watching. A lady and a man at the table next to them smiled. The man leaned over and spoke to her father. ‘You’ll soon be chasing the boys away from your front door,’ he said.
Her father laughed and placed his hand on her shoulder. When he looked at her like that, she thought her heart would explode. She was lucky to have a loving father and mother, even though Mother was different and not so patient. Coming to the city with her was very different from what she was experiencing with Father today.
Trips with Mother involved a crowded bus ride to and from home, and usually not a window seat where she could watch the trams glide past or see the newspaperman on the corner of the street calling out for people to buy his papers. Instead of a café and coffee, it would be a pie, chips and gravy at the Coles cafeteria, the metal seats cold and hard, the lights bright, and the room filled with noisy people who pushed past, trying to find an empty table and chairs. Mother didn’t usually allow time to look in the shops afterwards either; instead, she headed straight for where she needed to go, only purchasing what she wanted before heading back to the bus for home. Those days were no comparison to the outings with her father. He was, quite simply, the best parent in the world.