“Well, I’m busy too if you hadn’t noticed. I was asleep and it’s not my fault you guys have so much to do, it wasn’t my idea to have Christmas dinner here tonight.”
“Get up!”
Glaring at her, I picked up my pillow, fluffed it a couple of times and then buried my head underneath.
She laughed. “That’s fine, if you want to be that way.”
I didn’t say anything. Hopefully that would give her the hint and she would piss off.
It did. I heard the door creak open, listened as her footsteps stomped through and felt the anger increase when I overheard her telling Mum our conversation.
“Close the door!” I yelled. Silence greeted me as well as the aroma of Mum’s bolognese sauce, which floated through the door. My stomach rumbled, smelling the fried onions and mince.
“Stupid scrag,” I muttered, tossing the pillow aside, getting out of bed. I hated being woken up. Everybody knew that, including my sister. Abby must think she was so bloody clever, expecting I would just give in. Well, she assumed wrong. Two could play this game. I walked to the door, slamming it as hard as I could.
“Fifteen all,” I muttered, crawling under the covers. That should teach her to mind her own business when it came to my sleeping patterns. I squirmed and wriggled, trying to get comfortable. Once I did, my tummy grumbled again.
I groaned, aiming to ignore it. There was no way I would let my hunger lose this battle to Abby’s bitchiness. I closed my eyes, trying to fall back asleep.
Ten minutes later, I was still in bed, wide awake and fuming. The damage was already done and I couldn’t get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. Defeated, I got up and walked to the kitchen.
Abby was sweeping the floor while Mum was standing at the sink, compressing coffee beans in the small grinder. She unplugged the cord from the wall, took off the plastic lid, turned the grinder upside down and tapped the ground coffee into a brown storage container.
I used to love grinding the coffee. It sort of became an addiction. Whenever I heard Mum getting the grinder out of the pantry, I would race into the kitchen, push the chair against the sink, sit on my knees because I couldn’t reach and was mesmerized by the blade as it diced up beans into small particles. I loved the buzzing sound the machine made as soon as you flicked on the switch and though I had grown out of my fascination with it, I still loved opening the lid off the tub and releasing its fresh, enticing aroma. Despite its tempting smell, I couldn’t drink espresso; it was too strong and bitter for me and with sugar, it only enhanced the sour taste. I could only have it served cold, smeared on top of ice cream.
“Morning Mum,” I said, scrunching her face in both hands, planting a kiss on the side of face. She squirmed out of my grasp. “Lasciami in pace, eh?
“No! Why should I leave you alone?” I asked, laughing. She hated it when I kissed her like that; so I did it on purpose. I loved seeing her angry, she looked so cute.
She chose to ignore me and grabbed the aluminium cafettiera from the cupboard below, unscrewed the top off, filling the bottom with water up to the rim. Then she placed a couple of spoonfuls of coffee into it and fastened both pieces together, putting it on the stove.
“Good to see you aren’t still grumpy,” Abby said.
I just stared at her. I opened my mouth and then closed it quickly. After what she did to me, I wasn’t in the mood for her and truthfully I couldn’t be bothered fighting with her, especially on Christmas 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