The Christmas tree is ginormous again!
It’s bigger even than the building Dad works in. I went there once. It’s a brick building. We sat inside a room with some of his work friends who leant over me with big smiles and said how grown up I was and how I looked just like Dad but better looking. Dad said he got that from his mother but I wasn’t sure what I’d got except the cream biscuit and lemonade which Dad pulled out from the bag Elizabeth gave him for when he picked me up that morning. Then the men went back to drinking coffee and using words Dad says I shouldn’t listen to. Even though I often heard him using those words with mum before he left to go live with Elizabeth.
Mum says I’m a good listener. Like when she says don’t talk to strangers, and if a stranger asks for my name I’m not to tell him. But I can talk to a stranger if I’m lost and say excuse me, we live in The Glades and Mr Sushi who wears a hat on the ground floor knows which apartment I live in. That’s not his real name but he said I should call him that because his real name is hard to say.
Besides ‘apartment’, ‘ginormous’ is the biggest word I know how to say.
I learnt it from my cousin Ronny who said, ‘That tree is ginormous,’ when he and his mum came over at Christmas last year when Mum had been crying and we went out to the Plaza and had pizza and coke. I like margarita, cos all the other stuff is too fancy. It’s not so bad, Elizabeth is nice and I get to see Dad often and we go to the park near his new place or watch TV together. Dad said you’ve just got to make your way in the world, you know, decide what you want and make your own way. And he doesn’t use the words with Elizabeth. He uses different words and she giggles and says not in front of the boy and he says I’m fine watching TV but really I’m listening.
Mum said it was great to have Ronny and Auntie with us then, she really needed it.
The ginormous tree is in the plaza in the middle of our sets of apartments. There is a playground there Mum and I often go to, where I meet up with my friends Troy and Sally who live in The Terraces but they aren’t brother or sister. We are friends from the childcare on level 4 of The Vista, where Mum always chuckles cos Miss Jessie, who makes us fruit cookies, wears so much lipstick.
At Christmas time the plaza is always busy in the evening. People crowd around and eat at cafes, and look at the store windows at the bottom of the apartment buildings and kids run around the playground. When we go out there Mum always says hello to Mrs Chong who runs the grocery store and who has a big round face and gives me a banana, and to Ace with all the studs in her face and tattoos who works at the coffee machine in The Plaza Café. She gives me a little cookie that she normally puts on the saucer with the coffee she serves to people. I don’t like coffee, but sometimes we have a hot chocolate. Which makes three big words: chocolate, ginormous and apartment. I wish I had some chocolate as ginormous as our apartment building.
Mum knows Troy and Sally’s mums too, and lots of others and they sit and drink coffees and talk until one of the kids squeals cos another kid won’t let him drive the boat on top of the castle or something like that. Mum says it’s good to take turns: it’s not right to be greedy and hog stuff.
But it’s busiest at Christmas when everyone comes from places like Far and Wide to visit and eat and walk around and take selfies in front of the ginormous Christmas tree.
There are huge presents under it too, all silver shiny with fat red bows. We never have presents that big. You could fit all our presents in one of those boxes. I lift one up and guess what, it’s not even heavy! It’s like there’s nothing in it. I shake it, and there is no sound. This is weird. I can even throw it. I wouldn’t be able to do that if it had any presents in it. That’s a rip off. Who’s going to open that on Christmas morning? That’s not right either.
I throw it again, and it crashes to the ground. I pick up another one, and it too is light, so I toss it up as well. And then another, this time to see if I can make it hit the bottom branches of the Christmas but it misses. So I try again, and the box isn’t looking so well wrapped after the second try.
That’s when the man who wears a hat like Mr Sushi comes around and shouts at me so I toss him a present and run away.
There are lots of people to hide behind cos it’s so crowded so the man doesn’t run after me, and I’m cool as a cucumber as Dad says, and walk around like I’m a big grown up all flush with cash as Dad says to buy loads of real presents for Mum and Dad and Troy and Sally and other kids at childcare. I think, now is the time to decide what I want and make my own way.
So I start walking around and look in the Valencio’s Woodfired Pizza House where we get the margaritas sometimes, and Betty’s Pho House which makes the hot soups I don’t like but the spring rolls I do. Next to that is a furniture shop Mum is always looking at so I stare through the widow and wonder why she looks at it so often, it’s only towels and sheets and sofas and lights and stuff. We have that, although the sofa in the shop doesn’t have the same stain on the cushion as the one Dopey Ethan from childcare left behind after he threw up at my birthday party this year. Mum says not to call him that – Dopey – he didn’t mean it, he’d had too much sugar. But he is a bit dopey. He threw up at childcare too after he tried to have more sugar than me in a red cordial drink.
Cool as an orange, which is better cos I like oranges, I walk to the next shop which is a Bing Lee, and I wonder if Mum would like a new TV cos our at home only gets Netflix. Or a blender cos then she could make smoothies like Elizabeth does with banana and yoghurt and just a pinch of nutmeg. Which is a stupid sounding word, but it tastes good in the smoothie. The dentist is next door, where Dr Sidebotham gives you an extra jellybean if you can say his name three times without laughing. I reckon he just says that to give jellybeans away so kids’ teeth rot and they need him to fix them up. Adults can be sneaky like that. Even nice ones like Dr Sidebotham. I know that cos he gives you an extra jellybean if you start laughing halfway through, cos you tried.
A group of older kids are outside Bing Lee playing Christmas carols on shiny instruments making a hell of a clatter as Dad says. People stand round watching them, and some of them toss some coins into an open case which has the same shape as one of the horns but inside out, like Nanny’s ol’ cake tin which is a fish shape and you put the cake mix in it and, lo, as Nanny says, you get a cake shaped like a fish but tasting of cake and not fish. I don’t know why she makes a fish shaped cake, but I laugh and clap my hands and she says we’ll make a chocolate fish cake next time, ok?
Next to Bing Lee is a flower shop which is open and full of people sniffing and picking up prices tags and lifting buckets of pink and red and green spikes and petals and leaves. I have to dodge people’s legs and bags, which is kind of fun cos I can hide amongst the flowerpots and pretend I’m a big bee.
So I sit, cool as the kiwi fruit which Miss Jessie serves us kids for morning tea, and, in the middle of all the perfumes, think up all the stuff I could buy Mum for Christmas to make her happy, like a new sofa and the blender and big TV and some big soft bath towels like at Sally’s home and massive bunches of big flowers that would fill the rooms in our apartment with the smells of grandma’s garden. I could buy Mum a new jacket too, and a dress, cos she said she’d need one if she’s going to start dating again, and one of those big baskets of cheese and crackers and wine covered up in clear wrapping, which is silly cos you can see what’s inside.
And we’d sit round our small tree on Christmas morning and she’d open the presents and laugh and ask me how did I know she wanted this, and this and this and this. And she’d try on the dress and pour the wine and offer me some cheese but I’d say no, Mum, it’s all for you and besides that cheese with all the blue bits is yucky. And she’d give me an extra big hug and we’d laugh together and have a great ol’ time, as Nanny says.
The thought of the cheese though makes me feel a bit hungry and I don’t have the money to buy all this stuff and I am not sure where Mum is right now.
I get up and leave the flower shop and look around and see all the people walking about, but can’t see Mum. I can see the tree, which is all lit up spooky like when you see it this far back, but men and women walk by and block my vision of where Mum might be. I look in the flower shop but there are too many people there, and past Bing Lee and the sofa store, but she’s not there, and everything is both dark and light and the big towers lean over us all like giants lit up with eyes all over their bodies.
There’s lots of shouting and noise over by the Christmas tree so I don’t think I should go there. I can’t hear what they are shouting out over there because the kids are playing their carols real loud, but I catch glimpses of people running around.
Someone runs by and shouts ‘Has anyone seen a little boy?’ as he runs by. I think, that’d be awful being a lost boy at Christmas, but he was so quick I don’t get a chance to ask him if he’s seen my lost mum.
Then a man says to me, ‘Hello young fella, are you okay?’
He is tall, like all grown ups are tall, but not ginormous, and he is wearing a suit like I’ve seen Dad wear at important do’s, but his tie is loose and his hair needs a comb.
He looks nice but he is a stranger, so I don’t talk to him, but I keep looking at him, I don’t know why. He doesn’t seem that mean. He looks slightly sad actually, cos his eyes are a bit red.
‘You gotta name, soldier?’
That’s funny cos I’m not a soldier, but I know he’s talking to me but Mum says not to give strangers my name, so I give him another one. ‘Andrew,’ I say.
‘Well, Andy,’ the man says, ‘are you hungry?’
‘Can you please take me to Mr Sushi on the ground floor?’ I say.
‘What a great idea,’ says the man. ‘I know just the place. Come with me.’
He takes my hand and we start walking through the crowd. His hand is way bigger than mine. Mine fits right in it, and I think there is no way I could get out of it.
‘It’s okay, young fella,’ the man says. ‘Just hang on to me and we’ll get through this throng.’
We push past heaps of people. I can still hear the shouting over by the tree but luckily we aren’t going anywhere near there. I can’t actually see where we are going, but after a while the pavement is less crowded and we are behind one of the buildings. I think maybe it is short cut to The Glades and Mr Sushi, but it doesn’t look like our building.
‘Here we are,’ says the man. We are standing outside a café type place which has a sign on the front that has a picture of a train on it. There is gold needly stuff all over the door and a picture of Santa on the window next to the train. Inside yellow lights are flashing on and off.
‘Let’s go eat,’ says the man. ‘My shout.’
He pushes me in front of him into the café and a group of men who look like Mr Sushi but wear different hats all shout out something I don’t understand but the man says ‘Thanks all. Me and this little lad’d like the pick of your sushi bar.’
More needly stuff hangs about the walls, some gold, some silver, some red and green. There are small lights all wound up in it, the ones that are blinking on and off, on and off. I touch teh needles. They are soft and almost furry. The man says, ‘You like tinsel, huh?’
I feel his big hands wrap my tummy and I am lifted up on to a high seat. In front of me is a row of coloured plates containing funny looking foods that slowly move along a white sort of snake like top. Behind them is the group of men who shouted when we entered. One of them smiles at me and says something I don’t understand. I smile back.
A woman comes up and talks to the man. He turns to me and says, ‘It’s Christmas. Whaddya say I buy you a coke. Would your mother be upset by that?’
I grin, and nod. He talks to the woman and she leaves.
‘What do you like?’ says the man. ‘Do you eat tuna at home?’
I think we have, but I am not sure.’
‘How about rice?’
I nod. I like rice.
The man lifts a plate off the moving top and puts them down in front of me.
‘You’d probably like this one,’ he says. ‘It’s got a bit of tuna in mayo and rice.’
He lifts the plastic lid off the plate and I see a bunch of rice balls with bits of stuff in the middle. It looks a bit like one of the flowers I saw in the shop just now.
‘Here,’ he says. ‘You pick it up and dip it into the soy sauce- ’ and he puts the end of the rice roll in the black sauce – ‘and then, take a bite.’ And he pops it into his mouth. ‘Not too much soy sauce though or it’ll fall apart.’
I pick up a rice roll and copy him. The roll is big in my mouth but I chew it down. I like it. It’s kind of sizzly in my mouth, a bit, but the rice is nice and the stuff in the middle is okay.
‘Go on, help yourself,’ says the man, and lifts more plates on to our bench.
The woman comes back with my coke, and what I know is a beer for the man.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Well, there’s a well brought up boy,’ says the man.
He’s got other plates for himself, which he says is raw fish. He offers me a bit but I say no, and he gets me a plate with something green in the middle. ‘Avocado,’ he says. ‘You’ll like it, it’s creamy.’ It is too. He is using sticks to eat with. I say, ‘What are they?’
‘Chopsticks,’ he says. ‘Wanna have a go?’
‘Why do you eat with sticks?’
The men who are cooking the food shout out their thing again, so I don’t hear his answer, but watch someone else sit down near us. I take a swig of my coke. This is cool, cool as a coke this time.
I listen as the man talks, and he rolls a lump of rice in the little bowl of soy sauce as he talks.
‘Y’see Andy, I always wanted a boy like you. My wife and I never could. Tried, did all the stuff. Rounds of IVF, the works, but nothing came of it.’
He lifts the rice up but it falls apart and splashes into the sauce. It splashes on to his shirt and tie and he uses one of the words Dad’s work friends use. He picks up a bunch of paper napkins and dabs at all the black spots which have spread into his shirt like the ink we use at Childcare in art class. He uses another one of the words.
I hear a police siren in the background. I wonder if anyone has got drunk.
He picks up what’s left of the rice ball and the slice of pink fish and puts it into his mouth. I look up at him. He is crying.
He picks up another piece of rice, but it falls into the sauce again. This time he just uses the words but doesn’t try to wipe it off. He pulls it out and puts it into his mouth.
‘It’s my fault, y’know,’ he says. ‘Low sperm count.’ I don’t know what a sperm is, and he didn’t just say low sperm count; there was another of the words in there too.
The police sirens sound louder. I look over the man’s shoulder. I say,
‘There is a poster on the wall at childcare with lots of whales on it and Miss Jessie says one is called a sperm whale.’
The man laughs, and says, ‘You son of a gun.’ He picks up more rice, and this time succeeds in dunking it in the sauce and getting it to his mouth without spilling any. The men in the middle shout again as someone else comes in. The man drinks some of his beer.
‘She left me today,’ he says. ‘I don’t blame her. She wants a man with a bit of lead in the pencil, y’know?’ He wipes his eye and says, “No, I don’t suppose you do.’
He puts another plate of the avocado and rice in front of me.
‘My mum needs a blender,’ I say.
‘A blender?’
‘Yeah, to make us smoothies like Dad can.’
The man nods, and says, ‘Your Dad, huh. I’d give my eye teeth to have a boy like you. You’re a smart and sensitive kid y’know. We could have fun together.’
I look up at his face. It is red like when Simon at Childcare was crying after Dopey Ethan had hit him.
He drinks some more beer.
‘Waddya say?’ he says. ‘Y’reckon we could have some fun together?’
The sirens are very loud and red and blue lights flash, mixing in with the flashing lights on the gold and red tinsel.
The men cooking the rice shout again, but stop suddenly. A loud voice says,
‘There!’
Two policemen grab the man as he is about to lift some rice to his lips. It spatters on to him. They lift him away and push him into the wall. A third policeman lifts me and carries me quickly out of the café. I see the red sad face of the man pressed against the wall as I pass him.
Mum is outside. She squeals when she sees me and hugs me so close I almost vomit coke. She keeps on saying ‘My baby, my baby.’
She hugs me for a long time. So I hug her back. She’s been crying too. The lights flash blue and red across her head.
I look up as two policemen push the man into a police car. His hands are behind his back, just like in some of the TV shows I watch with Dad. I wonder what he did.
Mum sees what is happening and pulls my head into her neck so I can no longer see the man, but I hear the police car drive away.
A policewoman stands next to us. She has a big belt on and I can see a gun. She and Mum talk, but at no time does Mum’s grip on me weaken. I hear her say, ‘I just want to be safe in our apartment with my son.’
‘Of course,’ says the policewoman. ‘Let me drive you home.’
She turns to me and says, ‘So, Thomas, have you ever been a police car before?’
It’s full of gadgets and wires and is all black inside. Mum does not let me go one bit. The policewoman sits on the passenger seat in front; another one drives.
At the front of The Glades we all get out. Mr Sushi is waiting for us. ‘Hi Thomas,’ he says loudly. ‘Good to see you’re home and safe.’ He high fives me and I high five back from Mum’s grasp. ‘Very happy for you too Mrs Johnson,’ he says.
In our apartment Mum sits on the vomit stain on the couch. She talks with the policewoman. The other one offers to get us some water or a cup of tea but Mum says no.
The policewoman asks me loads of questions. I tell her about the sofa shop, and the blender and hiding in the flower shop. She asks me about the man. I tell her I didn’t want to talk to him, but said to him like Mum said I should, that I wanted to see Mr Sushi. Mum explains who that is. ‘But,’ I say, ‘he took me to the rice café, where I had a coke and some rice with avocado and tuna.’ Mum held me tight at that.
I tell the policewoman that the man was crying in the café because his wife had just left him like Dad left us year. And he didn’t have a son like me.
Then the policewoman gets a bit dumb, cos she asks me over and over, did the man try to hurt me, did he touch me, did he yell at me, did he force me to go with him. They are all the same questions over and over again, and I begin to feel like I have done something wrong so get a bit scared and Mum says ‘It’s okay, Tommy, we’re just making sure you are okay.’
I tell her no to all these questions, except the one about touching me, when I say I held his hand to get through the people and he picked me up to sit me on the chair. But apart from that he gave me rice balls with tuna and avocado and a coke.
After a while they go and Mum hugs me all over again. Then she runs me a bath and we throw soap suds on the wall and she laughs in a funny sad sort of way like when she was telling stories about Grandpa at the party after he was buried.
I sleep in Mum’s bed that night, and the next. The next night I want my bed back.
I’m watching TV the day before Christmas and there is a knock on the door. Mum opens it and I see the man. He has a big box in his hand, covered in silver paper with a big red bow, and a ginormous bunch of flowers from the flower shop I hid in.
He says,
‘Hello. Cassie, is it?’
‘Yes,’ says Mum. He hops from one leg to the other.
‘I was surprised to get your invitation.’
Mum stands there for a moment, then says, ‘The police told me your story. When my boy said he wanted to go to Mr Sushi, he meant the concierge in our apartment.’
‘I met him just now,’ says the man.
Nothing much happens for a while. They just look at each other.
Then he says, ‘I want to apologise for causing you so much grief the other night. I – I wasn’t in my right mind. I- ’
Mum puts up a hand and he stops.
They stand there for a bit, then the man says, ‘I wanted to give Andy this.’
‘Andy?’
The man looks at me. ‘He told me his name was Andrew.’
‘It’s not.’
The man looks at the floor. Adults do that when they can’t think of what to say.
‘I wanted to give your son this.’ He holds out the parcel. ‘It’s okay, it’s a book on whales and a blender. And these are for you.’ He pushes the flowers out in front of himself. It is so big I can’t see him.
‘I’ll understand if you never want to see me again,’ says the man’s voice. ‘But I thought I should try to make amends.’
The flowers and silver parcel float in the door with a pair of legs below them.
Then, Mum uses one of the words from Dad’s work and says, ‘I invited you here. It’s Christmas. You weren’t preying on my boy. You were looking after him, in a very ham fisted way. You should’ve called the police he was lost.’
The man is standing in the door, shaking his head, and mumbling, ‘Mmm, mmm, mmm,’ as Mum talks. Then he says, ‘I was pretty – and then uses one of the Dad words – up’.
‘That’s why I invited you over,’ says Mum. ‘I had an awful Christmas last year when my husband left me, and while this one isn’t too great, it’s better. I’ve got my kid. And I heard you copped it this year. I had people help me out last year when my husband left me. So I thought I’d extend a bit of Christmas sympathy. Christmas can be a tough time.’
‘That’s exceedingly kind of you, exceedingly understanding,’ says the man.
‘Come in and say hello,’ says Mum.
She steps back and the flowers come in, followed by the man. He says, ‘Hello, soldier.’
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘This is Thomas,’ says Mum, ‘and I’m Cassie.’
‘How do you do, Cassie, I’m Iain. Iain with an extra ‘i’ by the way.’
Mum smiles, and says, ‘Merry Christmas, Iain with an extra ‘i’ by the way.’
That’s silly. Even I know that.
