Weekend Reading

Lucy wonders if her sister Deb's departure was influenced by the adventures of their exotic Aunt Betty.

20 July 1980

Berlin! It came to me when I was looking at Betty’s bear. Is that where you are now? Checking out the clubs and cafés she told us about? But who would you know there? Not that bastard who didn’t even come to her funeral, only sent her back in a box, like an unopened letter.

  Betty was so glam, with her long legs and short skirts and her shiny bob. And the way she danced! Even at the age of nine I could tell it was sexy, the way she pulled the music inside herself and made it her own. It’s like we were a different family back then, living with Betty and Nanna above the salon. And we’re different now too, not really a family at all since you left. We’re like those figures in snow globes, each of us inside separate glass domes, looking out at one another, each shivering in our own private storm of grief.

Photo by Mateo Krossler on Unsplash

  The funny bit is that I can’t really see Ma and Da from those years. They were mostly out, Ma working in the salon, Da in the newspaper office at night, then during the day trying to get his own business going. I still have those kids’ books he printed. Remember how he called me his Reader-in-Chief? I felt very important. And then I tried my hand at writing a story (Rabbits on Mars !!!) and he made a little book out of it. He’s not reading much of anything these days. I can see how, even with the paper, his eyes drift over the page, not taking anything in. Ma sometimes picks up her old Mills & Boons but I don’t think she finishes any of them.

  Maybe why I don’t see them in my memories of those years is that Betty filled our sky. We had fun when she was minding us. She was more like a big sister than an aunt. Now I seem to have no sisters . . . She was always on the go, dancing, singing, playing wild games in the park or taking us into town. She wasn’t like the other adults all serious about their jobs and cooking and doing laundry. Her restlessness came from the salt of Granda’s seafaring blood itching her, she said, and she’d be gone for a few weeks or months. Then she’d turn up again in the middle of the night or land in just when we were having tea. She was all exuberance then, twirling us in the air, crushing us to her chest, kissing us, her eyes bright, saying she had missed us and she was ‘done roving’. This old hippy is home for good, she’d say but we learnt soon enough not to take that too seriously.

 Is that what happened to you? Did you get the same seasalty itch? Is that why you took off without a by your leave? And will you reappear, like Betty, out of the blue, with stories of new places and sights? I need to believe that could happen.

  She never knew what she wanted, Ma said about her, as if that was the cause of her death. One day it was a family, the next it was to see the world.

  In my memory Betty stands, one foot raised like a stalky bird poised for flight. I’m sorry we never got to travel with her to all those places she promised to bring us to. Although Ma would have nixed the trip.

 Living in hostels and communes and squats, she’d say. That’s not suitable for children.

 Don’t be so square, Denise, Betty would roll her eyes. There’s lots of kids there and they’re happy as the day is long.

 If you say so, Ma would pinch her lips to avoid having a row. She loved Betty and maybe envied her free spirit a bit.  

 Betty would ream off the names of cities and beaches where we would eat strange foods and dance under the stars. I even remember some of the foreign words she taught us, in preparation. Sometimes she made fancy meals for us with rice and spices and nuts. I’ll never use those words now or taste food like that again. How could the real places match the dreams she wove for us? She had a gift for making people happy and I used to wish she was our ma. Even the women in the salon doted on her, especially the older ones, advising and praising her as if she was a favourite daughter.

The waft of perfumed heat and the buzzing of dryers from a hair salon carries me right back to our Saturdays spent sweeping up the split ends and shorn curls, stacking the magazines and changing the towels, then darting out with our tips to buy fizzy cola bottles and crisps. Jasus! Listen to me! I’m starting to sound like an auld one. Those were the days and all that . . . trouble is they were good days especially compared with these days.

  I haven’t had a cola bottle since the day I nearly choked on one and you bent me over and shook it out. I was your devoted slave for weeks afterwards, certain you had saved my life. But then I always did follow your orders didn’t I? Always the server, never the priest at our animal funerals. I liked tending the cemetery we kept in the corner of Nanna’s yard, making crosses out of lollipop sticks for the graves, writing on them, Here Lies a Ladybird . . . mouse, sparrow, and the half-formed chick in its shell. There was one poor little hedgehog. They’re probably all now being studied as Viking remains. Do you remember the day we found the runover cat? Betty had a caniption when she caught us trying to bury that! We’d never seen her lose the rag before. She was scary!! Going puce and shouting at us to put it back exactly where we found it.

  It probably belongs to someone. They’ll be looking for it, she said.

  They won’t want to see it like that, you said. It’d be better if they didn’t find it.

  That’s enough, Betty said, sounding like Sister Benedict. Do as I say. NOW.

  There was no arguing with that.

  When we came home she made us wash our hands and scrub our nails and change our clothes and rinse out our mouths with disinfectant.

  Lord knows what kind of disease you could pick up from that, she scolded wrinkling her nose and looking like she was about to puke.

In the end it was Betty caught the disease. When she died I remembered about the cat and wondered. Everyone else blamed the foreign cigarettes she liked. At first when she died I couldn’t cry. I wasn’t prepared to believe that she was gone for good. I kept expecting her to waltz in one day full of stories, the way I’m waiting for you now. It was only when I saw Nanna again that I knew all our lives had changed, not just because we had moved out here to the ’burbs but because of how small Nanna looked. Her eyes were dim and her face was all lined. She shut the salon soon after that. Said she’d lost the heart for it. Poor Nanna. All of a sudden she looked very old. Remember she here for a while, to live with us but she couldn’t stand it. Nothing to do, she complained, only watch the birds lining up on the telephone wires.

  Bit by bit after Betty was gone I began to remember other things about her. Most of all the days when she got into her glooms. The way she stopped talking, just sat around drinking black coffee, chain smoking and mooching at the window. Everyone tiptoed around her letting on to be normal. A week later she’d bounce back and we’d all feel light again as if a shadow had passed over the house. It was like she’d taken a holiday from herself because once she was out of the glooms she’d be all over the place, flitting from one of us to the other, talking a mile a minute, rushing out to see her friends and buy new clothes or a record.

One Saturday, shortly before she returned to Berlin that last time she turned up here in a whirl of excitement to say she was taking us to the flicks. She brought us to Funny Lady although Ma and Da thought she was bringing us to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I’d have preferred Snow White. You pretended to love Funny Lady, even though it wasn’t funny and Betty had tears in her eyes at the end. Afterwards Betty let us try her cigarettes and on the bus home she showed us how to make smoke rings. I nearly choked. Now I can make perfect ones. Mostly what I remember from that day is that she still had tears in her eyes when she was saying good bye to us and she hugged us very tight. I think she knew then that she wouldn’t see us again.

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