“So? I get to meet her finally.”
I shook my head against his shoulder. “Not now, Jacob. Another time.”
He looked angry, folding his arms stubbornly. “What’s the big deal?” he asked.
“There’s no big deal. I just haven’t told her about you and we’re beginning to get on. She’ll be angry with both Mama and me.”
“You haven’t told her about me?”
“She wouldn’t understand why Mama’s letting me out with someone she hardly knows.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, exasperated, throwing his hands up in the air.
“It’s not their way. I’m young as far as she’s concerned. Girls just don’t go out with anyone just for the sake of it.”
“You’re seventeen, Josephine, not five.”
“My grandmother wouldn’t understand, Jacob. Give it time. She was brought up in another time and place. I know it’s hard for you to understand. It’s hard enough for me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and pushing me back. “I understand what you’re saying, Josie. If I was an Italian there wouldn’t be a problem, would there? Or maybe if I was John Barton.”
“That’s not true,” I shouted. “Well, about John anyway. Of course she’d understand more if you were Italian. That’s the way older people think.”
“Let me meet her. You might be surprised.”
“Are you listening to me? It doesn’t matter whether I’m seven, seventeen or seventy. She won’t want me walking into the house saying, ‘Meet my boyfriend.’ Jacob, she’s been confiding in me so much lately. If I spring you on her she’ll wonder why I haven’t been confiding in her.”
“Why haven’t you been confiding in her about it? We’ve been going out every weekend for the last month or two, Josie. Do I mean that little to you?”
“Give me time. I’m so unsure of things, Jacob.”
He shook his head in disbelief, turning away.
“You know something? I had no hassles in my life before I met you. Now everywhere I turn I face a brick wall. I’m always giving you time. I can’t sleep with you because you need time. I can’t meet your grandmother because you need time. What the fuck are you waiting for?”
“I knew it,” I shouted angrily. “This is why it’ll never work between us, Jacob. We live two different lives and you can’t understand that. Why can’t you understand my life? Things aren’t as easy for me as they are for you. You can do whatever you please but I can’t because there are some things that could offend people I love. You live with such freedom, Jacob. You live without religion and culture. All you have to do is abide by the law.”
“You think you’re the first person to ever suffer. You think your life is so difficult. But it’s you who makes it difficult. Break away from those rules, Josie. Make your own.”
“That’s so easy for you to say and so difficult for me to do,” I told him quietly.
“I want to meet your grandmother,” he said stubbornly, looking up at the terrace.
“Why?” I said through clenched teeth. “I had to drag you to meet my mother. Are you doing this to spite me?”
“If you introduce me to her I’ll know you’re not ashamed of me. Your grandmother is one of the most influential people in your life. I want her to know that I’m another person in that same life.”
“Not today, Jacob.”
He looked at me, nodding with rage.
“Then I can go back to my normal happy life again. Thank you.”
I watched him walk away, hating him so much for not understanding, and yet when I thought about it again, I couldn’t understand it either. What was my hesitation? Maybe I was unsure about Jacob as much as I loved him? I knew Nonna would take one look at Jacob and be unimpressed with the way he dressed, the way he spoke and the way he didn’t fuss. To girls my age Jacob is impressive. To grandmothers he represents the downfall of their granddaughters. I didn’t want to go back to the way things were between Nonna and me, yet I didn’t want to lose Jacob.
The next afternoon I went to his place. It was the first time I had done this and I was nervous about someone else answering the door and nervous about him answering it. I had no speech prepared. No feelings to express to him. I just didn’t want us to be apart.
I had never walked through Redfern before. A lot of people looked at me because my uniform seemed out of place. They sat on their front porches watching me closely, and because I was ignorant about them I was scared. Until I saw some girls my age. They were dressed in a uniform too and were sitting on a front step. They could easily have been Lee, Anna, Sera and me. I smiled and they smiled back.
He answered the door, still in his school uniform and looking as unaccommodating as I thought he would.
“Let’s not be angry with each other, Jacob.”
“I’m angry with you, but I can’t understand why you could possibly be angry with me,” he said.
“Listen, be thankful that I swallowed my pride and I’m here,” I said angrily, taking the wrong approach.
“Thankful,” he spluttered. “Give me strength.”
“Can I at least come in?” I asked, trying to look past him.
“No. I’m not ready to introduce you to my father. I haven’t told him about you. He could be offended that I’m going out with a non-Australian.”
“Very funny.”
“But you understand, Josie. It’s his way.”
“How can you mock what I was trying to say yesterday, Jacob.”
“Oh, you were trying to say something constructive yesterday, Josephine? I thought you were babbling as usual.”
I stood looking at him with such anger.
“Forget it, Josephine. We’ll both be happier. I can associate with my kind and you won’t have to put up with some cultureless Aussie with no heart and soul.”
“Jacob, you have more heart and soul than anyone I know,” I told him.
“Eh, what’s going on out there,” I heard someone shout.
I looked past Jacob to see a tall lanky man walking down the hallway toward us.
“What’s going on, eh? Are you shouting at this little girl, Jacob?”
“Dad, this is Josie,” Jacob introduced me reluctantly.
“Josie? The Josie? Come in, come in. You’re all he talks about,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me in.
Jacob has inherited his father’s eyes, but apart from that I didn’t see any resemblance until he smiled. That twitching smile that is always followed by a mischievous grin.
“He’s been dying for me to meet you,” he said with a wink.
I felt like such a bitch then, but I knew that I wasn’t ashamed of Jacob. I just needed time before I introduced him to Nonna. In a way my fascination with Marcus Sandford was because he reminded me of Jacob. They both took an interest in women whose backgrounds weren’t similar to theirs. They were both tolerant. I knew in my heart that Nonna would see that too.
I sat down in his kitchen while Mr. Coote made a cup of tea.
“And what are you going to do with your life, Josie?”
I looked at Jacob and then his father and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“She wants to do law,” Jacob snapped, eyeing me.
“Law? And you’re wasting your time with this airhead,” he laughed, tugging Jacob’s hair.
Jacob stood up and stormed out of the room, and I ended up having afternoon tea with Mr. Coote, who treated me like a queen.
“Moody little bugger,” he said, tilting his head in Jacob’s direction.
I smiled because I could imagine Jacob saying those words.
“No, it’s me who puts him in those moods.”
He looked amused at that and shook his head.
“Naw, Jacob is different to others. He’s aware of more around him. Of what he can and can’t do.”
I nodded and put my teacup in the sink, asking him where Jacob’s room was.
He was lying on the bed reading Popular Mechanics, f
licking the pages and ignoring me.
I walked to his mantelpiece and saw a photo of his mother.
“She was pretty.”
“She was the most beautiful woman in the world. If she was alive I’d probably be a better person.”
I sat on the floor next to his bed and leaned against it.
“You’re good enough, Jacob,” I whispered.
I lay there for a while and then I felt his hand on my hair. “I’ll take you home. It’ll get dark soon.”
I sat up on the bed and put my arms around him, kissing him slowly. I felt his hand come up across my cheek and I realized that was what I loved about him. He was a loving person. His need to touch my face or hair made me feel closer to him than if we were making love.
“You’ve never made the first move before,” he said. “I like that you did.”
“I wish I could make you happy and me happy,” I whispered against him.
We lay down holding on to each other, touching each other’s faces.
“I suppose your grandmother wouldn’t understand this?” He grinned.
“We’d have to take her to the hospital because she’d have a cardiac arrest,” I told him soberly.
We both burst out laughing, holding each other as tightly as we could, and I felt comfortable with the freedom he had. I would never have been able to do that in my home.
His hand came up under my school shirt and I felt callused flesh rub against me. I was embarrassed. Just say he felt a bit of flab and it turned him off. I wished my skin felt like silk, just like the heroines in the novels. I wondered what he thought about the size of my breasts. But he didn’t seem to care.
He pulled me on top of him and put an arm around my waist. I kissed his neck and it felt weird going over his Adam’s apple, because it bobbed up and down. I felt his leg push itself between my legs and flinched.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
“I just don’t trust people who have bodies that change with their moods,” I told him, feeling his hand on my breast and cursing myself for wearing my worst bra.
“Well, then you’ll never trust the opposite sex again.”
He unbuttoned his shirt and took my hand and I was surprised that he had hair on his chest. Jacob with his shirt off was white-skinned and bigger than I imagined, and I leaned forward and kissed a clear patch on his chest.
He shuddered and it fascinated me that I could do that to him. When I think of it now I can’t remember clearly what happened then, except that I was bolder than I ever imagined I would be and at one stage we kissed for so long that I felt my lip bleeding.
But then when his hands went up my uniform and I felt them between my thighs and I looked up to see a poster of a motorbike that said “Get something between your legs” on it, I realized that I could be losing my virginity in Jacob’s bedroom with his father in the other room, completely without thinking.
“No more, Jacob,” I said trying to catch my breath.
“Oh, come on, Josie. It’ll be okay.”
“I just think we should stop now before we go too far.”
“What’s wrong with going too far?” he asked, kissing my neck.
“A couple of things.”
He helped himself up on his elbows and looked down at me.
I felt his breath on my face.
“I’ve got something.”
“What?”
“Something to take care of things, dummy.”
I shook my head and pushed him away, trying to pull my skirt down.
“Look at me, Jacob. Look at us both. We’re in our school uniforms. Your father is in the other room. My mother expects me home in five minutes. How romantic can this be?”
“Josie, we’re going to sleep with each other eventually.”
I fixed up my blouse and sat up with my arms folded.
“Not today. Not now,” I said, not looking at him.
“Not ever. Is that what you’re saying?” he asked angrily.
“We’re going to have another fight, aren’t we? God, Jacob, that’s all we do.”
“Josie, I want to make love to you. I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone in my life.”
“Liking doesn’t give us grounds to have sex. I could get pregnant or catch AIDS or something.”
“I told you I’ve got something,” he yelled, exasperated.
“A condom is not going to solve all our problems, Jacob.”
“Do you plan on being a virgin for the rest of your life?”
“No. Until . . . maybe until I’m engaged. Or maybe when I’m twenty or something.”
“I’m going to throw up,” he said, shaking his head. “Now I’ve heard it all.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“Welcome to the nineties, Josephine. Women don’t have to be virgins anymore.”
“No, you welcome to the nineties, Jacob! Women don’t have to be pushed into things anymore.”
“What is it? A prize or something?” he scoffed.
“No. It’s not a prize and I’m not a prize. But it’s mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once and I want to be so sure when it happens, Jacob. I don’t want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn’t mean a thing or that it was done in my school uniform.”
“But you’re almost eighteen. You’re old enough. Everyone else is doing it.”
“And next year someone is going to say to someone else, ‘But you’re only sixteen, everyone else is doing it.’ Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she’s only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don’t want to do it, Jacob, because everyone else is doing it.”
“How about let’s do it because we want to. I want to, anyway,” he said, grabbing my hands together.
“But I don’t know if I love you enough and I don’t even know if you love me enough. We don’t even love each other, Jacob.”
We lay there in silence until he nudged me.
“I do a bit, you know,” he said gruffly.
“You do what a bit?”
“You know. Like you . . . whatever . . . love you a bit.”
He seemed a bit flustered and I hugged him.
“I think I kind of love you too, Jacob.”
“I really missed you when you were in Adelaide that time, and sometimes when I don’t see you for a couple of days I think I’ll go crazy,” he said honestly, looking at me as if he needed for me to understand.
“I missed you too.”
“I won’t push for it anymore, okay,” he sighed. “We’ll stick to clever conversation.”
I laughed and hugged him hard.
“A bit of this and that won’t hurt.”
“Yeah, it won’t hurt you,” he said drily. “It’ll drive me bloody crazy.”
He drove me home later, but first we parked a few streets away, kissing each other so much my mouth felt bruised.
I think Mama realized what we had been up to, because she kept looking from one of us to the other, but she didn’t say a thing. She just gave Jacob some leftover lasagna to take to his father at nine-thirty, which meant she wanted him to go home then.
“Ring me,” I called to him from the top of the stairs.
“No, you ring me. I like you taking the initiative when it comes to us.” He grinned.
I nodded and sat at the top of the stairs. Every problem I felt I had blew out the window.
Twenty-Five
I’M SITTING HERE in my room confused, angry, and so disoriented. After spending a lifetime trying to fit in somewhere in life and almost getting there, I’m back at the beginning again. Today it was Mama’s birthday. She turned thirty-five and Nonna and I made a cake and we had a little party.
We invited Zia Patrizia and her family, and altogether there were about ten of us at Nonna’s place.
“October the first, conceived on New Year’s Day, eh, Zia Katia?” Robert said, kissing her from behind.
“That’s what I’ve always thought,” Mama l
aughed after she blew out the candles. “Exactly nine months, isn’t it?”
“Since when is a baby born exactly nine months later?” my cousin Louisa scoffed.
She’s studying science at university and thinks she knows everything on the subject.
“Okay, so she was conceived the week before, which was Christmas Day. Even kinkier. Merry Christmas, Katia, he would have said just before he . . .”
“Robert!” we all shouted together.
“Robert, I remember my father. I don’t think he was a romantic,” Mama said.
“Oh, he was romantic,” Zia Patrizia said. “Christina was born during their first year in Sydney and Francesco was working way up north from Ingham at Christmastime, so he would have had to come home a few times for Christina to be conceived.”
I laughed with them all and then suddenly stopped.
Laughter still rang around me. People stuffed themselves with cake. Louisa argued with Robert on how long a woman really carries a child, Mama danced around the room with my Zio Ricardo, who we all love and adore. Zia Patrizia broke up a fight between little Joseph and Kathy, who were pulling each other’s hair out. Everyone was doing something, except two people. Nonna Katia and myself. We were just watching it all. My mind was ticking. Her face was reflecting. At that very moment I knew something that could have changed our lives.
I stayed after everyone left. I told Mama I would walk home, so she went to her cousin’s place for dinner.
As I watched her leave I thought I would never see anyone so beautiful. Not traditionally beautiful, but beautiful from the inside. She glowed. All I could think of was that this woman deserved so much more than any other woman in the world.
Nonna Katia came from behind me and kissed my head, but I pulled away.
“You’re a liar,” I said to her, walking into the kitchen.
“What are you saying, Jozzie?” she asked, following me.
I turned around furiously. I wanted to hit her in rage.
“You-are-a-liar,” I whispered hoarsely. “All our lives you’ve told us what to do, when to do it. You trained us to be respectful so people would think we were perfect and nobody would comment about what Mama did. You wouldn’t let Michael in your house after you found out he was my father. You let your husband kick my mother out of the house when she was seventeen years old and pregnant. You’ve made her feel inferior all her life . . .”