BRA & PANTS
My dad has a sky-blue Studebaker Lark. I wanted him to get the red XR Falcon, because, I say, it looks like a Coke bottle, which makes the car salesman laugh.
“Well, I guess it does,” he drawls.
Coco Cola arrived in Australia the year before we moved from Canada to Melbourne (1962). In Toronto, Coca-Cola has been on the market for 120 years.
The Studebaker is also a North American addition to Australia's marketplace, described as a compact car, which was sent completely knocked down (CKD) kits, then assembled at a local factory.
We often drive out of 144 Hunter Road and suburbia into the burnt yellow horizon. Our pretty blue car turns a dusty deep red and my dad checks for snakes on the license plates every time we stop.
Snakes in the strawberry patch, a snake in the saucepan in the kitchen cupboard of our old Colonial house, and storms at night that crackle and spit, leaving the petals of bold purples, pinks and yellows of flowering trees and shrubs looking like chalk smudges on the pavement. Possums wake me up playing chase on the roof. Spiders are the size of ping pong balls, big enough to have a full-on conversation with, although eventually, I learned the best talkers are the lizards, who sit on my window sill and eat the insects that seem keen to come in for tea.
The land is in complete contrast to the snow and sleet of Toronto, where we have come from. I wonder if it’s possible to make snow angels in the dust. I do not notice the green ants. I don’t even know that ants can come in green and red. Before I’ve even waved my wings on the dusty ground I’m screaming for my life, which I fear is now over. I’m wiping off the things biting my legs, with my hand, only to make it worse. Now my hands and arms are victims of the multiple pincer attacks so that everywhere I am now burning; burning up like the Australian sun, burning like a boiling billabong on a campfire.
My screams can be heard at the end of the street and as I run towards my Dad he leaps out of the way shouting “Help help, someone help us!” His beloved transistor radio falls out of his top shirt pocket and the words “I want to hold your hand, I want to hold your hand, I want to hold your hand,” in a melodic accent unknown to me disappear into the ether of this strange and exotic-smelling place. We laugh about that later, but much later because it's over a week before the swelling and blisters calm down.
The lady next door comes running out of her door into our front yard in her polyester black slip. "Sorry. I've been doing the housework," she mutters to my dad's raised eyebrows. She whisks me up into her arms shouting at my dad to show her where our shower is but she can only speak a little English which adds to the chaos; we don't have a shower. They put me in a cold bath and gave me a great big slice of watermelon. We all watch the green ants disappear down the plug hole.
Every morning at the kitchen, table Dad always reads me extracts from the newspaper. In the United States the president, John F Kennedy, has been shot dead – this information unsettles him and for a while, he’s distracted. He takes his glasses off to muse and gaze out the window into our back garden where the five tall trees stand at its end. The strawberry patch is full of snakes and the tomatoes burst on the vine. He returns to the paper, pops on his reading glasses again and relays another story: In Bondi Beach, in Sydney, a woman has been arrested for wearing a bikini.
“Why?” I ask, not even knowing what a bikini is. He explains it’s like wearing your vest and pants in public, although if you’re an adult woman you’d be wearing a bra and pants.
“Like the lady that saved me,” I note. “If she hadn’t had her petticoat on.” I know this will embarrass him.
The lady being arrested is more interesting than dead presidents to me. I do not realise that this is a setback for women’s liberation. I think the clothing issue is related to the high risk of being attacked by ants.
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