Sissy

I was five when mum and dad said I could have a dog. I was a pretty clued up, and managed to convince my parents I had started school, and the next logical step was to become a pet owner. Wendy wanted a cat, but fortunately I was allergic to them (I would grow out of this later in life). And so my dad bought Sissy.

Sissy was a loyal, brown, short haired, standard size, roman nosed Dachsund. I have no idea why 'Sissy,' but there you have it. She was very sweet, and captured us with her smile. She dug holes, squeezed under the gate, and toilet trained the hard way, but she was perfect for us. I was experimenting with going to play down the creek, sometimes on my own, but mostly with my best friend, Janet, and Sissy made the perfect companion.

Down at the creek with Janet was surprisingly free of salacious overtones. Given my life at Valley View revolved around alcohol, abuse, pornography and secrecy, it was a relief to be relatively normal with pigtailed, guileless Janet. All through primary school she was my best friend. It wasn't until I was directly responsible for the death of a neighbour's Collie that we imploded. Only Janet and I knew it was my fault. I slept straight at night because I was about twelve, and by then the death of Lassie didn't feel like such a big deal. My life was like an onion, and I kept my inner layers to myself, knowing instinctively people would not know what to make of them. But she saw me kill that Collie and never forgave me. A little part of me died with the end of that friendship.

Back at five, though, with Sissy still kicking and the creek beckoning, Janet and I would tie lumps of red meat to strings and use nets to catch yabbies. We spent hours down at the stables, mucking out stalls for grateful horse owners, who would repay us with rides and lessons. We went everywhere by bike, and as she lived one street away this amounted to a fairly safe mode of transport. Living in backward suburbia, we were not exposed to much traffic, and although Janet's mum did worry, we were hardly riding more than two hundred metres at a time. It was a good time and place to be young, provided you were out of the house.

I loved going to Janet's house. Her mum was a large, white, floury, Scottish woman called Margaret. She had married an immigrant, a Roman Catholic (like herself) Italian called Giovanni, or 'John' to us Aussies. I never talked to him much. All the Porcaros spoke Italian to their dad, including Margaret, so I guess his English wasn't so good. He was a proud man who had a wonderful gift with gardens. Even today, you can drive past Janet's house and see her father's print all over the gorgeously produced vegetables and flowers, vines, hanging baskets, bulbs and trees. It is breathtaking.

Margaret, having seven children and only one income, was an astute home maker. Every day, she made her own pasta; not the fancy way, with a pressing machine and a handle, but with a rolling pin and a plastic shower curtain over her dining room table. She rolled the pasta as big as her table and then cut it with a sharp knife into long, elegant strips. Many people influenced me as a child, some positively, others perverted; she stood out as a shining foodie long before the phrase was coined. The tomatoes in her spaghetti sauce were grown in her backyard, the olives were stoned and set in buckets of brine with plates holding them heavy in the water, the onions were dug up that day, the wine they drank was pressed at Porcaro family Sundays from grapes she picked from every vine in the neighbourhood. She was a preserver and dryer of fruit, a pickler, a salter of olives and sardines, a smoker of fish, a canner of vegetables, a happy, fat woman, at ease with her choices. I loved her. And being invited for dinner was heaven. It didn't happen much, but I guess stretching herself to nine every day at meals was hard enough.

With Janet due any moment, I was engaged in teaching my sausage dog how to behave. Since Sissy, I have spent hours of reading time trying to learn how to train the perfect dog. In those days, I had read nothing, and relied for my information on an intelligent form of trial and error. Sissy, being a puppy, had begun to jump, colliding her soft paws with your shins in some kind of weird attempt to climb up and lick your face. Not knowing to knock her in the chest with my knee, I grabbed her by the collar, and held her up, talking directly to her bent and fuzzy nose, 'No more jumping Sissy!' I held her a little long, and, coughing, she tried to hack up something as she hit the ground.

My mother was out the door in an instant. 'What on earth are you doing to that poor dog? Have you been holding her by the collar? You don't do that, its cruel! What ARE you doing? Come over here! I'll show you how she feels!' Whipping Sissy's collar off, my mother dragged me inside and bid me stand still while she buckled the brown leather, with studs, around my neck. I thought this was strange behaviour, even for my mum. What happened next is difficult to remember, but she held my entire body weight by the collar for a period of time that actually resulted in me losing consciousness.

Two things to take from this incident: 1. My mum taught me my lesson inside. When you are a shit family trying to appear a model family, you hide your secrets. Mum loves to remind me what a brilliant liar I am, and how only she can see straight through me. Which is nonsense, because my husband can see also my soul. But more importantly, where did I learn to lie? From the master: my mother. That's why she hung the underwear on the inside row of the clothes line, so no-one else could see my father's taupe, greasy, alcoholic skid marks.

The second point, never seek medical help for someone who might incriminate you in their injury. Rape (check), induced coma (check), alcohol poisoning (check). All good reasons to keep someone in bed or bathroom, with a bucket and warm lemonade. No need to bother the police, or the doctor, who knows what questions they might ask? And Suzanne being such a good little liar...what if someone 'found out?' It was unthinkable.

And Janet went home thinking I felt sick from too many lollies.

Punishment

I think there must have been an element of guilt at play, and dad decided it was best if he tried to handle this situation himself. My father was not hands-on. In fact, I don't know why he ever had children, because at the first sign of guts and blood, anger, jealousy, or discontent, he would actually leave the house. He only liked children who weren't there. I wonder if this had anything to do with his sudden end of childhood at the mighty zip of Tom the butcher.

On this day, he and Robert, laughing (despite the congealing web of sick on their jeans and shoes), hoiked my by my arm out the back of the shed, and left me on the grass to 'sober up.' There were a few of Robert's more dodgy mates dropping acid and smoking weed (they weren't spliffs in those days) out here, and I landed fair amongst them. Not that they noticed, or cared. I puked a few whispery spits onto the lawn, and promptly fell asleep.

For the first time I experienced genuine memory lapse. This odd sensation would become a normal part of my life between 18 and 25, but at 8 it was a curious thing, to fall asleep on grass in the afternoon, and wake up at night (remembering it was summer, so no-one missed me for several hours), to Aunty Pauline pulling my arm. By now, given a few more hurls had happened since I lost consciousness, I was a car crash. My very long hair was stuck together with bits of food, my orange dress was iron brown, my mouth tasted burnt and dry. Aunty Pauline was well pissed, and, not knowing how to handle this, went and fetched my mother.

She went berserk. She shouted, she screamed, she smacked my bum, she slapped my face, she smacked my bum again, and she yelled over and over, 'How COULD you!? How COULD you?!! You dirty little BITCH!!' At that moment I saw my future, although I didn't know it then. When I came home dishevelled from the pub at 16 and claimed I was raped by a boy I knew, my mother shut me in my room and went on and on about the short pink dress I was wearing. She refused to take me to the police, or the hospital, because it 'was all my fault.' Here, at 8, she assumed I had set this situation up, and willing made myself drunk in order to...what? Embarrass her? Humiliate the family? How could a family like the Russells be further humiliated than they already were? Was she in denial? Years of therapy have passed, and all I feel for my mother is sadness. How sad she was to define her life so pointlessly on reputation and 'what other people think.' If only she had allowed us some failures, and herself some imperfections, then we could have perhaps bonded. Instead, we fractured, and when she stood up at my dad's funeral, to cry for a man she had left for another, I wanted to protest she was not part of those mourning, she had no place there, this was just more posturing for the sake of a family 'reputation' she clearly had no idea had never existed in the first place.

All of us were poured into the Toyota, which resembled more a butter box than a dim sim. Dad drove us home, stopping once to throw up his own party-sausage-roll-alcohol-mess. This disgusted my mother, who shouted and roared, unaware she was herself a violent and rather pathetic drunk. Having driven most of the way home, the distance from Pennington to Valley View being about 25 minutes, we were outside the Yatala prison when I said I felt sick. 'Mum, I think I'm going to be sick,' I said. She turned on me, alcohol fuelling her rage, 'Don't you DARE be sick YOUNG LADY! How DARE you? If you are sick I will make you clean the car when we get home!' Now, movement, espcially in a car with little windows and not enough air, will always make the inebriated feel much, much worse. Clearly, my father had suffered this sensation already. Now it was my turn. Mum was nuts thinking she could hold back the bile by bullying. At the top of the hill, I lost control of my stomach, adding noxious fumes and messy fluids to the already suffering little car. To say my mother went balastic would be understating it. She turned her shoulders as completely as she could, and begin to smack whatever parts of me she could reach; my head, my thigh, my arm, my shins. I cringed into the corner, but could not escape her probing arm, as she switched sides to reach me more effectively.

Five minutes later we were home. It now being very late, I wished for a nice bath and my bed. I was bruised, smelled like an old man's hostel, and was very, very tired. No such luck. Mum, putting the angelic and sleeping Wendy to bed, came out with a bucket of soapy water and a rag. 'Clean the car,' she spat, and I did. I was sick twice more, just because looking at sick makes you feel sick, but luckily reached the garden. Somewhere in my head I wondered if mum would make me clean that, too.

And dendrites were forming a pattern inside my hypothalamus - dad, wherever he was, wasn't helping.

Crown Port and Kaiser Stuhl

My first customer was my Aunty Pauline. Over the years, photos of her have been laid aside those of mum and me in a game called 'Guess who is the Mother?' Now, in my middle age, I realize I look more like Aunty Pauline than ever before in my life. She is still alive, amazingly having avoided the Russell gene-of-alcoholism, although she is a forty-smokes-a-day-spluttering-mess. Having received all her mother's love, she is unabashedly pro-Nanna, unlike her sons, who feel cheated by their loss. When she came into my cane corner that day, she was young and virile, and married to a musician who had recorded a real album, and had signed it 'Love Uncle John,' much to my kudos at school. She wore make-up thick and heavy, with the smoky black eyes of a Dusty Springfield, and cake foundation, with dense lipstick. She growled through cigarette smoke she wanted a little wine, 'can you pour one Suzie?'

Well, I lifted that lever back, as I had been shown, and gushed three quarters of the vegemite jar full with moselle. Happy, she trotted off to locate some orange juice to mix it with. I grabbed my jar and sloshed some for myself. Bringing it to my lips, I was surprised at the heady scent of sugar, and wondered if I shouldn't also put juice in it like Pauline did. I sipped the meniscus and almost threw up; the inside of my mouth jeered and shrank from the cheap wine. I learned about after-taste, but in this instance it was all sugar, and the foul tinniness of plonk. A little bit lower in the glass I learned about the warmth of wine; my father was genuinely correct when he said, 'Booze warms the cockles of your heart.'

The end of the glass flashed far too soon, and, encouraged by my experiment, I turned to examine the port. The shed was opened up, its sliding door gaping, the light dusted down by small particles of someone's life. Much later, my Uncle Robert, who appears to have a prediliction for living in the most uncomfortable places possible, would move into this shed with Angie, and live there for many years, even after their first child. I couldn't understand why he, of all the children, would remain in the family home; in short, my Nanna despised him. Poppa, whose real name was Lesley, but whom everyone called 'Jack,' had flooded Robert with every single nasty Russell gene he held in his loins; Robert was a slack carpenter, a grim alcoholic, a serial philanderer, an addicted tobacco consumer, and an all round bad egg.

The top of the 'goon was a knitted aluminium twist top that snapped halfway and cut my index finger. Sucking hard, I dipped my opposite digit into the neck and tried to scoop out some of the claret. Failing, I stopped sucking long enough to tip the flagon up and into my glass. A red raindrop lurched over the edge and into my lap, leaving a crimson stain stretching over the flowers and lace. Wiping quickly, casting furtive glances over the crowd, I placed the jar out of sight, behind the second flagon of port.

Between pouring and drinking, I attended to a couple of Robert's friends, who I had never met before and who shared his same joy of life. That is, they were drunk, loud, and one of them called me 'pet,' as he stroked my hair. Instinctively I purred at him, calling him 'gorgeous,' and asking how I could help him. It's funny how people learn so early to react to the opposite sex. It wasn't until I was well into my twenties before a great friend of mine pointed out my natural instinct with any male was to flirt. He was doing me a favour by pointing it out, he said, because 'it isn't going to work on me,' and he laughed. Standing back, I can see what he meant. Every guy I had a strong relationship with was based on sex, or the alluring promise of sex. Looking back on my first barmaid experience, I can see I knew even back then that to turn a bloke from heaving drunk into adoring pet required the use of one's eyes, one's boobs, but, most of all, one's brain. Convince them you want them and you are halfway home. Who said men think through their dick? Whoever she was, she was right.

The port beckoned. It would be years before I would realize just how badly Robert had set me up that day, and part of me wonders if he used me as a tool to embarrass my mother. But that would require some thought, and planning, which I cannot give him credit for. I think he acted with street smarts. Drunk little girl equals humiliated mother. He must have known how my father would react, great gusts of laughter giving him side aches and making him spit. As I tipped the port into my mouth I rolled it around, and my senses were pleased with the sultana smoothness of the sweet wine. I drank the glass down, and stood, breathing hard, as my pulse raced and sweat pricked my forehead.

Actually, the physical sensation of swallowing so much alcohol was uncomfortable. I found my heart was out of control, the same speed as when I ran 1500 metres in fitness at school, but without the ability to stop running and recover. I couldn't recover. My blood felt thick, like it was lumbering, except I knew it wasn't, because there was a timpani in my temples. Suddenly, my face grew hot, and pins flew through my body, making it ultra sensitive and wet to touch. The port coursed through my appendages, until it came to rest in the pit of my stomach. This took hours; until I noticed nothing had changed, only me, and actually only a few minutes had passed.

Heroin addicts say the actual preparation of the drug - the burning, the tourniquet, the slap, the draw, the plunge - all of it contributes to the overall feeling of well being. I suddenly understood. In pouring my second glass I was impressed by the beauty of this liquid. I turned it over in the glass, looking at its legs and wondering about its scent. I was hooked. Even today a glass of port captures me. Like liquid red glue, it sticks and rolls, heady with the sugar of the late picked grape.

Just after my second glass, my father and Uncle Robert approached me from across the room. I was already more than half cut by this stage, and as I would learn there is a delightful inhibition and witty reparte brought on by the advent of alcohol. Robert and dad were past this stage. They were experiencing crooked eyelids, where you think you're being really funny and smart, but actually you are just sad. So in my youth, all of eight, I understood I had one up on these guys, and so aimed to take advantage of them, perhaps by scamming money.

Dad had other ideas. My dad might have been a witless alcoholic and an irrepresible pervert, but he didn't smoke, and despised this wicked habit. Robert, Bill and Pauline smoked most of their pay packets; at least, that part of it they weren't drowning in drink. But this afternoon my father had cooked up a little experiment which would ultimately tip my body over the edge - he had decided to convert me to a non-smoker, before I even knew what a smoker was. Thus, he presented me with Robert's burning cigarette and ordered me to 'suck hard, Suzie.'

Whilst the port had hit me hard and then crept back, the tobacco burned my throat, clamping my lungs with poison. The hit struck my heart, and the feelings I had nurtured before as being somewhat satisfying were now utterly dissatisfying, and I wanted off the ride. Flailing my arms toward my dad, I fell into an untidy orange dress heap, looked up, and projectile vomitted an interesting mess of moselle, port and party sausage rolls all over my Uncle Robert's denim wedding suit.

The wedding

The wedding began quite normally. Wendy and I were dressed in new clothes, which my mum had sewed together from old curtains. Mum was the master coin squeezer, and Wendy and I benefitted from her frugal fingers and coin jar for years. She collected one and two cent pieces, and when the jar was full she would count out every cent and spend it on something for her daughters. She never spent any money on herself. Even today, as a millionaire, she only wears clothes Wendy and I 'hand down' to her. I don't think she could spend money if she tried.

My dress was orange, and it had a square sailor's yoke edged with black lace. Little blue and yellow flowers burst open from my knees to my throat. Wendy looked my twin, apart from her height (much taller) and hair (mine was vivid red, hers white). Apart from our distinctive looks, I also had what mum referred to as 'attitude.' Knowing mum, she didn't mean that as a compliment. I was confident, sure on my feet and unafraid of adults. Wendy was shy, reserved, and very attached to mum. She stuck close, invisible behind legs, sticky hand sweating. She didn't open her mouth much, having nothing in particular to say. She stayed like this until she was fourteen. That is probably why she is mum's favourite. I was high maintenance.

Dad opened his first beer at noon. It was an afternoon wedding, but dad wanted a refreshing draught before the business began, it being his opinion weddings were good for only one thing; to get pissed at. (Actually, weddings, BBQs, people over to play cards, cricket, footy, calisthenic concerts at Her Majesty's, hot days, cold days, netball games...pretty much everything was an occasion to get pissed. He wasn't choked for choices.) My mum gave him her evil glare, but this was before the hatred set in and she lay off after a few minutes. Even her spirits were raised by the prospect of a wedding, although it wasn't a 'proper wedding,' which it wasn't, because it was a civil ceremony in my Nanna's back yard. 'They won't be really married,' my mum said. 'I don't think that'll bother them, Rae,' said my dad. There is a certain irony in that, because today Uncle Robert is living in the shed outside Angie's house, downing two dozen beers a day and waiting to die. He stayed married, but he has lived in that shed behind his second wife's house for ten years now. Maybe they really were never married. He thinks my dad got off lucky, dying young. But he doesn't realize, alcoholics reliant on beer as their poison of choice never die easily. They hang on, having to consume so much beer they can never get the instant hit of the tequila man. And dad's death wasn't pretty. Robert really has no idea.

After dad finished his third bottle, he proclaimed it a good time to get going and we piled into the Toyota. Japanese cars were a luxury my dad was prepared to fork out on, because 'they never lose value.' I know now that like much of the bullshit my dad spat out, Toyota cars depreciate just like every other. But it was interesting that in a time where Holdens and Fords divided working class Australia, my dad stuck his neck out and bought 'dim sims on wheels.' Mum was wearing a singlet top, as it was a hot day, and her breasts lay perky and deep, on show and loving it. Her and dad were in jeans, appalling bell bottoms, which made her bum look big and dad a midget. But they were happy. Even my mother's constant discontent was tucked away, much to my relief.

Arriving at Nanna's, we were greeted by raucous relatives and a bathroom full of ice and beer. Dad was in his element. A coldie in hand, he proceeded to produce one of his finest and wittiest renditions of Bennie Hill. Pressing alcohol on my rather conservative mother, his family attempted to thaw out her reserved manners in a time when drink driving was de rigeour. She, not having this straw she would later grasp onto to strengthen her Methodist mean streak, accepted what was thrust upon her, and even gave Wendy a little push to 'go and see her cousins.' Let the party begin.

As with all Russell parties, including weddings, funerals and friendly get togethers, the big star was alcohol. And as a good little Russell girl, I was about to get my first experience of this warm, generous drug. Robert took me aside and told me he had a 'very special job for me, one only I could do, because I was a GOOD girl.' These days he might be suspected of pedophilia for an introduction like that, but even pedophilia fell into the back seat of Russell vices when there was alcohol about.

And so Robert led me into the shed, where a cane bar sat in a dark corner. The staples used to construct this bar were coming loose, and I scratched my arm on a twig as I got close. I remember thinking such a shabby piece of furniture was at odds with a Russell construction, because Poppa, Uncle Bill and Robert were all carpenters. Now, I wonder how they avoided dying on the job, when each of them began their day with a half dozen long necks.

Behind the bar was a swivel chair, gorgeous in green and purple velour. It matched the rug and fluffy seat cover in the toilet. Its opulence was amazing, and I was hooked. Behind the chair was a shelf, and on this were perched two casks of Kaiser Stuhl Moselle, and three flagons of Crown Port. On the bar were a dozen or so empty vegemite jars; these were clearly the glasses. Uncle Robert said, 'Beer they can get for themselves. But I need you to pour the wine and port. What you do is lift this little plastic lever up, and hold the glass here...then...when it's full let it go. The port just pours out the top but be careful when the flagon is full, don't spill any.' He smiled. And delivered his coda. 'Every glass for them have one for yourself,' and he actually winked at me. I watched him leering off, already half cut, and felt more important then I had at any moment previously in my life. I was wanted.

My unfortunate father

At four he cut his middle finger off, and damaged the tendons on his index and ring finger. Nanna says he didn't scream much. He didn't have the temerity to find his finger though, and it lay on the lawn for days before anyone thought to retrieve it. By that time Nanna said it looked like a 'porridge sausage,' kind of white, and surprisingly soft. The magpies had pecked out the tasty stuff. So dad was left with a useless piece of his body, and being four he fed it to the dog across the road.

The story of the missing finger was imaginative and very funny. Dad was the brave fire fighter, and his sister, Pauline, was trapped in the wooden crate. She was two at the time, and her presence there was not necessarily her choice. Having three brothers, she could be relied upon to play the victim, and given Nanna spent most of her time looking after Poppa, Pauline had to develop the skill of sneak in order to escape children's games. She was about five when she worked out she should hide behind the workbench in the shed. In the meantime, she suffered. And on this day, she ruined her dress, sprayed as it was by my father's arterial blood.

But she was a fabulous victim, with an eery scream that could be heard down the street. Cheryl-next-door sat in the kitchen, door open, enjoying her Southwark Draught, until she heard Pauline, when she would run up to the fence and yell, 'Ida! I-DAH! Get those mogrel boys off your girl!' And Nanna, mortified, would shrink inside her home, and refuse to come out, in case she was held accountable for the actions of these boys who were her sons, and yet for whom she felt no emotion.

And so Pauline was chopped out of the crate with an axe. A lovely red axe, used by Poppa to trim the almond and peach trees in the winter. It was heavy, and swung so nicely through the air my dad swore he heard it sing before it took from him his left middle finger and created a mutant. Big brother Billy, worried Poppa would tan his behind, took off, while Pauline yelled to be let out from under the splintered and staining box, and my father wrapped his little hanky around his hand, not knowing what had happened, and leaving aforementioned appendix on the grass.

Later on in his life he would use the healed stump to shock children by pretending his finger had been inserted to the knuckle up his hairy, and quite considerable, nose. It was joked often in the Russell family that there was 'abo' blood leaking through the generations. This had manifested itself on my father's face in the form of something flat and wide. It was curious because my Nanna certainly had nothing in her apart from Caucasian Kiwi, as if that wasn't bad enough, but she certainly had no abo blood, nor Maori either. And if you ever accused Poppa of having abo blood, especially in the afternoon when he had sunk a dozen or so of his beloved long necks, you were asking for a hiding, and Poppa had a fair punch on him, having been brought up in Moonta mines, where men were men and women were slaves.

The loss of dad's finger, being quite phallic in its shape, was an irony of events for a man who would complain years and years later of impotence. And before the impotence came the reliance on pornographic material for a quick buzz and a little spray. And before the reliance on pornography, (which he believed was his dirty little secret, but actually I had figured out they existed when I was about 5 years old, and had been selling them at school from grade 3), dad had been a peeping tom, and had written letters to prostitutes, and attended late night screenings of R rated movies in Hindley Street. He lost his finger but became obsessed with his dick.

The butcher probably didn't help. I mean, ten year old boys are pretty impressionable. So when Tom the butcher asked dad to help him out at the shop on Saturday mornings, sweeping up the shavings and wrapping the meat in paper, (coincidence or irony? you be the judge), it was probably fair to say dad had no idea his sexuality was about to blossom. It turned out Tom was rather fond of dad. On his first day, Tom took him out the back and showed him the broom. Then he took his apron off, unzipped his fly, and took out a monstrous member, which my dad was at once fascinated and horrified by. When Tom stroked his hair and put the giant throbber in my dad's hands he created a monster. From that point on, dad's sexuality was confused. He was utterly unable to place himself on a continuum ranging from homo to hetro. He bought books on boys with boobs, and married a woman with enormous knockers who could not understand why he always wanted to take her from behind, hands kneading her breasts.

If sexuality defines who you are, even just a little bit, then dad was royally screwed. Interestingly, so were his siblings, and, later in life, his daughters. It was his youngest brother Robert who introduced me to schooners of port at the tender age of eight. By this time Poppa had shuffled off his mortal coil in a fantastic display of alcoholic-edged-emphysemia. Whilst dying he had been a catherine wheel of colours and fluids, frequently smoking through his sliced trachea, and sticking a straw direct into his stomach for a quick hit of gin. Robert must have picked up some hints about how to be a real man, because he directed me in a technicolour virtuoso after plying me with port and giving me cigarettes at his second wedding. (The first wedding ended when he forgot he was married and brought home the second wife to meet the first).