Cassandra Behind Closed Doors. Linda Sorpreso

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СКАЧАТЬ Day. I turned my back on Abby, walking outside.

      “Cilla,” I called out.

      Dad turned around. He was sitting on our wooden table, smoking a cigarette and watering the garden. He was wearing navy blue shorts and a white singlet. I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing at him. He hadn’t brushed his hair yet and it was almost as high as the smoke surrounding him.

      “Morning,” I said.

      He raised his head, grunting something that I believed was supposed to be a “hello” but sounded more like “humph!” He seemed troubled just by saying the word and really, it wasn’t that hard. All you had to do was open your mouth and the phrase immediately rolled off your tongue without really much effort but with my father, it was his daily ritual to mumble instead of greeting like normal people. It used to worry me but now I wondered why I even bothered. It was probably easier to communicate with animals than with him. Although I did read somewhere that scientists have said chimps were smarter than most humans and there in front of me was living proof.

      He took a long drag of his cigarette and breathed out, the smoke exhaling from his nose. I had always wondered how he did that. My aunties and uncles were also smokers but I had never seen smoke coming out of Zia Sarina’s or Zia Manuela’s nostrils. Maybe it was just a guy thing, like burping, farting and scratching one’s private areas in public.

      “The cucumbers are almost ripe,” he said, his eyes gleam-ing. “I’ll pick them out of the garden for you as soon as they are ready.”

      “Thanks,” I said. Dad was very proud of his garden. He had probably shown more love and tenderness towards his fruit and vegetables than his own daughters. He spent hours with it, planting, pruning, watering and checking to see if they had matured and trust me, he needed to. It was a mini fruit and veggie shop. Everywhere I turned, there was a patch somewhere, growing tomatoes, beans, eggplant, lettuce, zucchini, capsicum, basil, oregano, cucumbers and of course, the lemon and fig trees. Dad recently planted an apricot tree, right in the middle of where my netball ring hung. I was so pissed off, I told him to dig it up or else I would ‘accidentally’ break his precious branches. He removed it after he saw me casually hanging around the tree with my ball.

      “Have you seen Cilla?” I asked.

      “Cilla?”

      “Yeah you know my cat,” I said. I tried very hard not to be sarcastic with people, especially with my family, but sometimes people could be so dumb!

      “Ancora Cassandra,” he said, shaking his head.

      I just walked away. I wasn’t in the mood for one of his lectures either. Besides, I was too worried about Cilla. I found it odd I hadn’t seen her yet. She always came to me the instant she heard my voice. Most of the time she was in the garage or somewhere around the house, sleeping, but sometimes she went over to Maria’s house next door. I walked towards the fence and climbed onto the wood, peering over once I had reached the second step.

      “Cilla?” I called out. I couldn’t see her but was busted by Maria in the process. She was taking the clothes off the line, clipping the brightly coloured pegs on her apron. I waved, moving quickly back down and headed into the garage, hoping to find Cilla in there, though it wouldn’t be easy searching for her in that mess.

      Our driveway was really long and curvy. We could fit three cars parked on it and still have another two on either side of our lawn, which allowed our garage to be free and kept as storage. However, it was more like a garbage dump, without the disgusting smell but definitely piled high with junk. My parents never threw anything out. In there we had two tables used for whenever we had guests, Dad’s barrels for his homemade wine, a sewing machine, another fridge, a couple of suitcases, a battery charger and other equipment for the car, rusted tools and a second tool kit that we bought Dad for his birthday, a chipped dinner set that had never been used in recent history, dry herbs hanging from the ceiling and an old antique, burgundy record player that was left for us in Dad’s mum’s will. My sisters and I had a huge fight with Mum and Dad over it. It may have been an antique; however, it was hideous and didn’t even work. They wanted it in the lounge room, while we thought it belonged in the tip. In the end, we compro-mised and put it in the garage.

      Then we had the collection of recycled beer bottles arranged on one of the tables, kept for the next batch of homemade sauce, even though we didn’t make it from scratch anymore. Thank God. My parents kept them for Zia Sarina and Zia Manuela while we stopped about two years ago after my parents realised they couldn’t be bothered cooking it and was probably cheaper buying the sauce from the store. Not to mention, we avoided killing ourselves from making it. The process took the entire day. It began by washing ten boxes of tomatoes, cutting the rotten bits off, squeezing all the gunk out, placing them in the machine and grinding them. Meanwhile, you had to get the bottles ready, filling each one with a twig of basil and a couple of drops of oil, then you poured the liquid in and put a new crown on. After that, you discovered you still had two litres of sauce left and no bottles, so you had to go to the liquor shop, buy more beer, watch in amazement as your father skulled them all down, claiming it was a sin to waste, wash them, tip the rest of the sauce in and then put the bottles, one by one, carefully into a big barrel that was filled with water, wait for it to boil, which usually took a couple of hours and tried not to die from suffoca-tion as the stench swarmed the whole backyard and crept into the house. Well, Italian families may frown at us for buying Leggo’s pasta sauce; but we didn’t care. I thought they were crazy to keep with that tradition. Life was too short to spend an entire day with your elbows covered by the grime of a tomato.

      And when I read Looking for Alibrandi, I was so annoyed with Melina Marchetta. I wanted to write my life story someday and had always wanted to include this little Italian tradition. I thought if I included it in my novel, everyone would think it would be a replica of that book and I didn’t want it to be labelled as the try-hard Looking for Cassandra. I would want my book to be original and unique but just because it was an Italian-based family with Nonnas and rules, it might be compared to it. However, mine would be entirely different. First, Josephine was illegitimate and her father wanted nothing to do with her, whereas with me I had the opposite. I was born with parents who were married and I wished my father had nothing to do with me.

      I lifted the garage door up, stepping inside. “Cilla?” I called. I paused, waiting to hear any movement. She wasn’t even wearing a bell on her collar. I put one on once, and then took it off within five minutes. It annoyed me more than frightened the birds. How I wished she had one now.

      There was nothing. Panic filled me. I paced back and forth, calling her name. Dad just sat there, looking at me with a tiny smirk on his face.

      “Cilla!” I yelled again.

      I heard a faint pitter-patter across the concrete. I turned around, seeing her tiny black and white figure strolling towards me. She stopped suddenly, her body tensed, her tail swaying from left to right. Her eyes were glued in the one direction. She was looking ahead at Dad. He moved slightly, reaching for his stubby of VB. Cilla ran as fast as she could, towards the front yard, hiding underneath Dad’s cream Falcon. I followed her, crouching to the ground, beckoning her forward. She stared at me, her eyes wide with fear.

      “It’s okay, he’s not doing anything. He’s in the back,” I said as I stroked her gently under her chin. She came out slowly. I grabbed one of her front paws and dragged her to me. I sat down on the ground, crossed my legs, putting Cilla in my lap.

      “Merry Christmas, Cilla,” I said. I checked to see if Dad was watching me. He wasn’t, so I quickly kissed her head. Dad had caught me kissing Cilla once and told me off, saying it was disgusting. We had a big argument that night, resulting in a bruise on my head СКАЧАТЬ