know that she would ride down the long straight streets away from us.
Beth went and sat in the backyard of Nanna's council flat. The flat was in Memorial West, where all the houses were lemon-colored, in the last street, where the backyards faced into the desert. It was a good place for thinking. The backyard didn't finish in a straight line with a fence. There was no fence at all. The dry lawn was trying to grow out into the desert, which was patched with spinifex and pale hummock grasses that shimmered in the heat. And the desert was reaching back into the yard, spreading its red fingers and erecting small anthills and sucking the color from Nanna's garden beds.
Nanna's flat was like a long thin caravan put up on blocks. It had three front steps and a sliding frontdoor. We sometimes slept there for the weekends and Nanna told me secretly about the nine choirs of angels and the saints and taught me songs even though Mum said she wasn't allowed to be religious with us.
Mum packed me, Beth, and Danielle up with sleeping bags and pillows and inflatable mattresses with a bicycle pump to blow them up. I hated getting out of the car at Nanna's because there could be, for example, a nuclear war and then we would be separated from Mum and Dad forever.
“Don't worry, possum,” Mum said, reading my thoughts. “You worry too much.”
She held my face between her hands and kissed me. Her lips were painted in Frostiest Mauve and the purple kiss was left behind on my cheek.
Nanna always had her hands on her hips when we arrived. She shook her head when she saw all our bedding.
“You don't think I have beds?” she asked.
Nanna had two rickety camp stretchers with thin mattresses. Before the inflatable mattresses Beth and Danielle slept on the stretchers and, because I was the third, I got to sleep beside Nanna. She had a hard bed. Every time I moved it creaked. After each creak Nanna sighed and moved and the bed creaked again. All night we creaked backward and forward at each other without saying a word. During the day Nanna usually smelled like Yardley's lavender perfume but at nightshe smelled different. Up close to her in the bed in her threadbare rose-covered nightie she smelled like dust.
“Don't go on about the saints,” said Mum as she handed us over. “It scares Jenny.”
Nanna liked to tell me how the saints died, which was most often horribly and included being roasted on stakes, flayed alive, fed to the lions, or marched out into winter forests and shot once in the head.
Nanna only kept small traces of her old life before the ship that brought her fifteen thousand kilometers to here. The small traces included the way she stirred her giant stews and baked on Saturdays as though the world was about to end. She also sometimes said words back to front like “arse-tight” instead of “tight-arse” when she described her brother Uncle Paavo. When she said it she covered up her mouth and even though she was old her eyes shone like a young girl's.
She only had a little trace of her accent, where Uncle Paavo had kept nearly all of his. She said it was because she was only thirteen when she came to Australia and Uncle Paavo was nearly seventeen. Nanna had scrubbed herself clean of it.
Nanna sang songs with me at the kitchen table. She sang me old songs that her mother had sung to her in Finland and on the boat trip. The words in these songs felt old and well worn; they belonged to each other like threads in a patterned blanket.
We sang at her little kitchen table while we peeled potatoes. Beth and Danielle got up and went into the tiny living room and braided each other's hair.
“Don't worry about them,” said Nanna. “They do not have good voices.”
Sometimes after Nanna had taught me something she started to cry, which was perfectly ordinary. She put her head in her hands.
“God be merciful to us,” she said.
Beth, who was sitting in front of the television, rolled her eyes as she braided Danielle's
Beth went and sat in the backyard of Nanna's council flat. The flat was in Memorial West, where all the houses were lemon-colored, in the last street, where the backyards faced into the desert. It was a good place for thinking. The backyard didn't finish in a straight line with a fence. There was no fence at all. The dry lawn was trying to grow out into the desert, which was patched with spinifex and pale hummock grasses that shimmered in the heat. And the desert was reaching back into the yard, spreading its red fingers and erecting small anthills and sucking the color from Nanna's garden beds.
Nanna's flat was like a long thin caravan put up on blocks. It had three front steps and a sliding frontdoor. We sometimes slept there for the weekends and Nanna told me secretly about the nine choirs of angels and the saints and taught me songs even though Mum said she wasn't allowed to be religious with us.
Mum packed me, Beth, and Danielle up with sleeping bags and pillows and inflatable mattresses with a bicycle pump to blow them up. I hated getting out of the car at Nanna's because there could be, for example, a nuclear war and then we would be separated from Mum and Dad forever.
“Don't worry, possum,” Mum said, reading my thoughts. “You worry too much.”
She held my face between her hands and kissed me. Her lips were painted in Frostiest Mauve and the purple kiss was left behind on my cheek.
Nanna always had her hands on her hips when we arrived. She shook her head when she saw all our bedding.
“You don't think I have beds?” she asked.
Nanna had two rickety camp stretchers with thin mattresses. Before the inflatable mattresses Beth and Danielle slept on the stretchers and, because I was the third, I got to sleep beside Nanna. She had a hard bed. Every time I moved it creaked. After each creak Nanna sighed and moved and the bed creaked again. All night we creaked backward and forward at each other without saying a word. During the day Nanna usually smelled like Yardley's lavender perfume but at nightshe smelled different. Up close to her in the bed in her threadbare rose-covered nightie she smelled like dust.
“Don't go on about the saints,” said Mum as she handed us over. “It scares Jenny.”
Nanna liked to tell me how the saints died, which was most often horribly and included being roasted on stakes, flayed alive, fed to the lions, or marched out into winter forests and shot once in the head.
Nanna only kept small traces of her old life before the ship that brought her fifteen thousand kilometers to here. The small traces included the way she stirred her giant stews and baked on Saturdays as though the world was about to end. She also sometimes said words back to front like “arse-tight” instead of “tight-arse” when she described her brother Uncle Paavo. When she said it she covered up her mouth and even though she was old her eyes shone like a young girl's.
She only had a little trace of her accent, where Uncle Paavo had kept nearly all of his. She said it was because she was only thirteen when she came to Australia and Uncle Paavo was nearly seventeen. Nanna had scrubbed herself clean of it.
Nanna sang songs with me at the kitchen table. She sang me old songs that her mother had sung to her in Finland and on the boat trip. The words in these songs felt old and well worn; they belonged to each other like threads in a patterned blanket.
We sang at her little kitchen table while we peeled potatoes. Beth and Danielle got up and went into the tiny living room and braided each other's hair.
“Don't worry about them,” said Nanna. “They do not have good voices.”
Sometimes after Nanna had taught me something she started to cry, which was perfectly ordinary. She put her head in her hands.
“God be merciful to us,” she said.
Beth, who was sitting in front of the television, rolled her eyes as she braided Danielle's
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