Cassandra Behind Closed Doors. Linda Sorpreso

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СКАЧАТЬ They groomed themselves and besides Mum and I tried to wash Cilla frequently.

      Cilla finally relaxed, purring contently. Cilla and Dad’s relationship was similar to the one he and I shared. Cilla hated Dad because he was so rough with her. It wasn’t his fault. It was in his nature. He didn’t realise his own strength and he hurt her whenever he patted her. Well that is what Mum told me when he picked on me. Once Cilla bit him and he smacked her on the mouth. Since then, she avoided him. It was funny, considering Dad gave her to me for my birthday three years ago. My sisters teased me constantly, saying I brainwashed Cilla into hating him and I didn’t agree or disagree. The thing was, I didn’t hate Dad but I didn’t exactly like him either. I felt he was always picking on me. If it wasn’t about school or housework, it was always something. I just wanted him to treat me better and for his bitterness to disappear. He had always wanted a son but got stuck with four daughters instead.

      I considered myself lucky though. I may not have the perfect relationship with my father but I had a fantastic one with my mum. I would never ever love anyone the way I loved her. She was my mother, father and best friend all rolled into one. She was the only person I could really confide in and she would never judge me, no matter the situation. I knew she would always be there for me, would do anything for me, just as I would for her.

      I believed the way my parents treated me was a reflection on their own upbringing. Mum and Dad both had hard lives, yet they were raised with different values and lifestyles. My grandparents on both sides were strict; however, Mum’s parents showed her more love and affection, whereas Dad’s weren’t big on kisses and communication. They taught him to hide his true feelings with rules and regulations and Dad carried his knowledge over to me.

      Sometimes, I felt sorry for him. Dad was a hard worker, though things constantly went wrong for him. The major-ity of it was his fault, however part of his bad luck was caused by the acts of others. When Dad was eighteen, he had a terrible motorcycle accident. A car smacked right into him and he fell off his bike, breaking his leg. Though he was fortunate it didn’t end his life, he couldn’t work due to his injury, relying on his parents for support. Then he met my mum, got married and fell into an assortment of jobs just to support his family. I didn’t know if Dad had any dreams to be someone but after the collision, he never fully recovered and still to this day, he walked with a slight limp.

      I didn’t entirely believe money brought happiness but I was told that things were different before I was born. Dad had been different. He owned a café in Carlton and though he had always been strict, he stressed less and spent more time with my mum and sisters, taking them out or buying them whatever they wanted. Though Dad had a problem with gambling, my parents rarely worried about money.

      The café was doing extremely well until the police started hassling him over a new crowd and because Dad wanted to protect his family, he sold the café, losing more than half of what it was actually worth. After that, our misfortune began and who knew how our lives would have turned out if the cops had minded their own business.

      My parents were now both pensioners and though they both had jobs, they could only earn a certain amount before Social Security deducted them; therefore, we hardly had any spare cash lying around. Mum worked part-time as a machinist and Dad was a fisherman. He worked most days unless it was bad weather, then he stayed home. Those were the days I stayed away; it was when we fought the most. Most of the time, he came home tired, wet, smelling like fish and grumpy from the amount of pain he was in, due to his leg injury. Although I understood how difficult his job was, I didn’t appreciate him hitting me, kicking me or calling me into the kitchen while I was busy studying in my bedroom, just to get him a beer when he was already there. I wasn’t his slave nor was I his opponent in a boxing ring, I was his daughter and I only wished he would see me as one.

      My stomach rumbled again. I woke Cilla up, nudging her nose with the tip of my finger. “Come on Cilla, wake up. It’s time for me to go inside.”

      My family thought I was nuts when I spoke to Cilla. “She doesn’t understand you,” was a sentence I had heard over a million times. Well, I believed she did. I didn’t believe animals were stupid or incapable of communicating with their owners and I had this bizarre talent of being able to meow and sound exactly like a cat. When Cilla first arrived, she was afraid and hid behind our couch, refusing to eat or come near us. I shredded some salami and knelt beside her, meowing. When Cilla heard it, she came running to me and began eating from my hand. After that, we became inseparable. She knew how much I loved her and she loved me, though my sisters said her affection was only stemmed from hunger. That wasn’t true. When Mum fed her, Cilla still came to me, rubbed against my leg or jumped into my lap. My sisters were just jealous of our bond.

      Cilla yawned and stretched, digging her claws into my trackies. I cried out in pain. Each dig felt like someone poking me with a needle.

      “Naughty girl!” I muttered, pushing her gently off my lap. She looked at me with her bright yellow eyes. She tried to reclaim her spot but I stopped her and stood up.

      “I’m sorry Cilla, Mama has to go,” I patted her head softly and went inside the house.

      I walked past Mum who was at the bench, putting lasagna sheets into a large dish and opened the pantry, grabbing out the toaster. I squeezed across Abby who was at the sink, drying dishes and plugged the appliance into the power point, dropping two slices of bread into the slots.

      “Would you move?” Abby asked. “You’re in my way.”

      It was lucky I didn’t have the toaster in my hands anymore or else I would have slammed it on her head. I took a deep breath and said, “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

      “Why couldn’t you wait until I was finished?” she asked.

      “Because some idiot woke me up and it turns out I’m hungry now!”

      “Cassie?” Mum interrupted, picking up a couple of empty boxes of lasagna sheets. “Can you please put this in the rubbisha?”

      “Maaaa,” I wailed as she gave me the packets and I threw them in the bin. “How many times do I have to tell you not to use that word? Either say it in English or Italian.”

      “What’s the difference? You know what I mean,” she said.

      “That’s not the point. I don’t want to be like Cynthia when she went to Italy, ask where the rubbisha was and be snickered at because it is not even a word. You want me to learn Italian but how can I when I don’t even know what proper Italian is!”

      Though there were hundreds of dialects in the Italian language, my family made up their own. “Rubbish”, in Italian was really la spazzatura but because my sisters, cousins and I had heard the grownups use rubbisha, we naturally assumed it was the translation. We figured out much later, that they used English words and added an ‘a’ on the end. It was difficult enough to understand them when they spoke half-English and half-Italian or because of their accent, I thought sandwich was pronounced ‘sangwich’ until the age of four but when they developed their own words, it was a nightmare. Rubbisha and fridga, the accurate word being il frigorifero were some of the terms we picked up that were incorrect but who knew what else they adapted in their version and now I refused to be laughed out of Italy.

      “You’re worried about that? I’m more concerned with thirty people fitting in this house tonight,” Mum said.

      “It’s not going to be that bad Mum,” Abby began. “We’re putting the two tables into the lounge room, so we’ll have plenty of space.”

      “I wish we had a bigger house,” СКАЧАТЬ