These places have rules that aren’t written anywhere

On the playground, I learned that rules are fluid. At kindergarten everyone had to wait their turn, but in Chelsea’s Bicentennial Park in Melbourne’s outer south-east, the older children pushed in and told me they could do whatever they wanted because they were bigger and my cousin and I didn’t matter. We’d been waiting in line to use the largest slide in the park. Always in high demand, it was the spot where trouble happened when adults weren’t around. This particular time I started it by kicking at the boys, who soon had me in a headlock on the grass. My dad got involved and, after he’d pulled me out of the situation, he repeated to me that life wasn’t fair and the sooner I accepted it the better. At home the rules were different—my dad insisted on doing things his way but in public he tended to keep the peace by letting strangers have it theirs. Recently I learned that he’d never felt safe in Chelsea. Having been bullied and involved in lots of street fights for being a wog in his young Elvis days, he preferred to think of our house as his castle, while he’d come to accept that outside it life wasn’t fair.

Over the years the screws holding the large slide together came undone and it was removed. A blue wizzy dizzy replaced it and I often sat at its centre as a teenager, watching children jump round the sandpit—a dumping ground for the previous night’s condom wrappers, vomit and empty booze cans. In a second-hand winter uniform with a stapled hem, I often waited for the late afternoons to end, watching the local winos drink from paper bags and smoke Holiday cigarettes as they congregated at the benches near Thames Promenade.

For my closest mate, Libby, many local adolescents and me, the park was the meeting place. Between the trees on the periphery and the Patter- son River bike track, one of us could often be spotted mixing stolen spirits with soft drink. We sat, suffering from teenage angst and dressed in hostility, and got trashed together to the sound of music before going to a local bandfest or house party.

At twenty-three I got a resident tutor position at one of the colleges and moved to Parkville. Walking through the Melbourne General Cemetery, I crossed the road into Princes Park and glimpsed something of what I’d left behind. Before me was a foreign way of life—the grass was greener, people smiled and made eye contact. Keeping my head to the ground and my sunglasses on, I walked on with no idea of how to meet the eyes of strangers.

Whatever the time of day, people of all ages either jogged or power- walked round the perimeter, and I soon realised that I’d never get fit if I didn’t begin circuiting the park myself. Being a pack-a-day smoker, for me this was the beginning of a succession of challenges where habits from my previous life got in the way of becoming part of a park culture that is predominantly made up of exercise, family and friends. Here I saw a Muslim family laughing on a blanket while they picnicked and chatted among themselves, their children playing with Anglo-Australian and Italian-Australian kids in the wooden playhouse. This was something I never saw at Bicentennial Park, where different ethnicities stuck together and often adopted a code of silence.

Threaded through the green in Princes Park, people lay next to their bikes with their eyes closed and iPods on. Some sat cross-legged reading a book, while others talked. No-one seemed to worry about possessions being stolen or personal space being transgressed. Further on, a group of women in black leggings and tight tops participated in an outdoor Pilates session. Parallel to Park Street, where it’s mostly grass, with a few trees, benches and a swing set, an Asian couple held hands and ate gelatos. Nearby, a group of six young adults were having a guitar lesson. In my black tracksuit pants and hoodie, I walked with my face down while local footy players jogged past. There was no use trying to conceal the lit cigarette in my hand; I was the only one who stank of smoke.

In Bicentennial Park, next to the train made of coloured tyres and climbing bars, a blond man spoke on a mobile headset, holding an infant in one hand and pushing a little boy in the other. To the right of this professional- looking dad, a group of women walked back and forth from a line of parked four-wheel drives while they set two new barbecue tables with party food and lime cordial. Four-wheel-drive owners are generally from the beach side of the tracks. The overpowering smell of perfume and set hair, as well as the quality of the fairy dresses and superhero costumes that the children were wearing, further suggested they were from the Nepean Highway side of Chelsea. This beach real estate attracts a very different type of local than the Station Street side. They’re known as the people with money, and don’t have much to do with those who have none. Their children were playing kiss-chasey, wearing face paint and hats. At a distance towards Thames Promenade the skateboard ramp was dotted with teenagers dressed in black and silver chains.

During the first few days after I moved to Parkville, Libby stayed with me while I paced through sleepless nights. I found it disturbing that the smiles hadn’t stopped and arguments hadn’t erupted through the polite exchanges. I was unnerved by how pleasant everyone appeared to be and intimidated by their self-presentation and sophisticated mannerisms. After working in a bar and participating in pub culture for so long, my automatic way of behaving, speaking and dressing felt inappropriate. Everyone was nice and none of it made sense. I couldn’t read the rules.

‘Fuck, Ang, you definitely ain’t in Chelsea any more,’ was all Libby could say as she lit a smoke and offered me one of her UDL cans. She was right and I was freaking out. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do. With P.J. Harvey’s music playing in the background, Libby sat on my mattress sketching blue ink images while I arranged and rearranged the books on my shelf. Handing me a few valiums, she smiled at the ensuite bedroom I’d scored and said, ‘This is awesome, man, don’t fuck it up.’

I felt like I was in a movie and any minute the director would realise I wasn’t in the script and singe me out like a tick. The callous, rebellious parts of me that thrived in Chelsea didn’t survive the move to Parkville, where I tried to feel like a local by learning to live without cigarettes, valium and binge drinking. Keeping my mouth shut until I learned how to talk without swearing was the easiest part.

Before moving to Parkville, I often lay down on my favourite hill in Bicentennial at five a.m. and popped a valium so that I didn’t feel scared, while I smoked a cigarette and watched the dark sky and landscape transform with the light of a new day. In Parkville at five a.m., frost covered Princes Park and bodies ran themselves warm round it. Dressed in blue shorts, a lime singlet and a red hooded jacket, I stood in the dark chill and waited with the other early morning joggers for the lights to change before crossing the road. The same middle-aged man with round spectacles and a fluorescent vest stopped his bike and wouldn’t stop pressing the button until the pedestrian light turned green. Tying my red jacket on the rail among everyone else’s jumpers, I stepped onto the track and saw the same anorexic- looking girl I saw every morning. The moon and stars were still visible and, above, hot air balloons advertising wine floated higher. Obsessed with a particular tree on the outer periphery of the park, running parallel to Royal Parade, I was in the habit of stopping to stare at its bent form branching back towards the earth. When this image didn’t magically hand me a key to the novel I’m learning to write, I turned the volume up on my iPod and resumed my walk.

When the bombs went off in Bali, the unwritten rules that the people of Chelsea lived and died by broke. Bianca and Amelia—two girls who had once chain-poured beers in the main bar of the Chelsea RSL—were certified dead. That day, even the toughest-looking bloke in the members bar cried, and his voice sounded different without fuck, fucker, fucking and fucken. Inside, the tough facade—silence, anger, body odour, singed eye- brows, mistakes, pasts and clothes from fashions that don’t exist—no lon- ger formed a barrier segregating us in tension, judgement and fear. People who never usually spoke to each other shared their grief. The community mourned for two of their blond girls, twenty-four and twenty-seven, publicly revealing a softer side. For a fleeting breath in time the barriers dividing a suburb of people melted. No-one talked about it after the funeral, perhaps because no-one really knew what to say. Time passed and again we lived according to the same rules, but those of us who shared the loss of ‘our girls’ bonded. Even though I’d lived in Chelsea my whole life, it wasn’t until I was eighteen and working behind the bar at the RSL that community began to feel like a family, and Chelsea a place in which I was safe.

One morning in 2009, when I was jogging round Princes Park, a robust Italian woman scurried past with my red hooded jacket in her hand. I’d bought it on sale for $5 in Chelsea when Chain Reaction was closing down. Before leaving for her holiday in Bali, Bianca had touched the left sleeve and said the cherry red suited me. The fortyish-year-old woman stealing it looked beaten. Her beady eyes darted and, despite moving solidly towards Brunswick, she appeared lost and uncertain as to which direction to take. Our eyes met. The sight of her reminded me of what that kind of fear felt like. We paused opposite each other. She didn’t know I’d given her the jacket as I watched her steal it from me. Libby was right—I wasn’t in Chelsea any more. If I were, I’d never have left my jacket where I did, nor would I have reacted without reacting at all. On principle I would have chased that bruised woman, snatched back what was mine and sworn at her. But it felt as if I was watching someone else running with a future that could have been mine. The red jacket was a piece of material. With or without it Bianca and Amelia didn’t survive the Bali bombing, my 21-year- old cousin didn’t survive his motorbike accident, and the best friend of a sort-of-mate of mine didn’t survive crossing the Bonbeach train tracks. I watched the Italian woman run until I couldn’t see her any more.

Last winter I worked on my novel between four and nine-thirty a.m., which shifted my Princes Park walks to ten. A Greek man and I often passed each other. I’m guessing he was in his late fifties. He walked clockwise round the park and I walked anti-clockwise. He always pulled strange faces at me and mumbled words I couldn’t hear through my iPod. This went on for a week or so. It made me feel uncomfortable and I couldn’t stand him. I turned up the volume to the Beatles and imagined he wasn’t real or making fun of me. He didn’t behave this way towards anyone else he passed. In my guts I knew he wanted to expose me for the imposter I believed myself to be, until one morning he circled me, singing. Waving his hand in front of my face he knocked on my forehead, ‘Allo, you home?’
I pulled my headphones out. ‘What do you want?’ I snapped. I expected him to tell me I had to leave because I didn’t belong here. I know, I’d say to him, as if I didn’t give a shit. What I wasn’t ready for was how his face soft- ened into an expression of affectionate concern, ‘You no smile.’ ‘So?’ ‘What is wrong? Your man treats you bad?’ Inside a navy woollen hat and black tracksuit this man was gladiator strong. His dark brown eyes shimmered with the kind of European spirit that’s susceptible to being overwhelmed with rage. ‘Well you leave him. Don worry what people thinks, I been married three times. People likes me way I am. If not, fuck off. Goodbye and good luck, I say.’ Smiling at his gold-capped tooth I visualised the kind of women he’s shown the door. It also occurred to me that some of these women may have kicked him out. ‘You know what I miss about Greece, you from there too, hey?’ ‘Nah, my grandparents are from Sicily.’ ‘It be the same for Italians too. People back home, they live with juice. They alive and relax.’ ‘I haven’t been to Europe.’ ‘This sad. When you go you understand what I speak about.’ Seeing Italy, the place my grandparents escaped a life of poverty, illiteracy and superstition from, is something I’ve only recently acquired a curiosity for. ‘Kids here too spoil, they don work like I did. Got no idea, that’s their problem.’ ‘My dad used to tell me that,’ I mumble. ‘He’s right.’ ‘Yeah well, I’ve gotta go.’ ‘Okay, but I tell you cos maybe you don know.’ ‘Know what?’ ‘Life can be better if you smile.’

In Chelsea, when Libby and I woke up with the previous night’s make-up smudged across our faces, we laughed until it hurt. One time we joked about our inability to remember how our night in Funkytown had led us to a local Seaford footy player’s mattress. Waiting for the codeine to kick in and fight off that ratty morning-after feeling, I laughed as Libby spoke of the possibility that we’d been slipped roofies again. We were averaging complete memory loss at least two nights a week and it did feel like bad situations kept finding us. Behind black sunglasses, with the taste of cigarettes and tequila keeping my nausea company, I didn’t care. Nothing mattered. Dependent on tranquilisers to sedate, and spirits to laugh, I couldn’t feel how sad I was, nor recognise how toxic my life remained.

Aside from late afternoon picnics on weekends, I’ve rarely seen alcohol consumed at Princes Park. The back end of Bicentennial Park that leads to the bike track, tennis courts and the local community centre is where underage drinking took place when I was a teenager. It wasn’t uncommon for girls to giggle over having had sex in various parts of this outer park area. Nor was it uncommon when others cried about having been raped here and never breathed a word about it again.

Working as a resident tutor at college showed me that not all students—or people—grow up the way Libby, I and everyone around us did. I’ve learned much from having observed the way students slip right into Princes Park’s routine and make it their own. They seem to have an inbuilt calmness, openness and fitness. I think of myself at their age, my brother and his friends who are their age, and there are very few connections to be made.

My memories of Bicentennial Park feel more real than the Bicentennial Park I returned to upon writing this piece. In my mind, the swing is still there and I’m still that little girl nagging my aunt to push me higher, wishing she’d send me flying to some magic place like the ones I’d seen in Disney cartoons. All I ever arrived at was the toilets where I spewed up red icy poles and marshmallows. I’m guessing Princes Park will never stop being the window I looked through, the day I strayed from wandering the cemetery’s graves, to witness in it a different way of life. In these places, I have appeared to be different people, behaving according to rules that aren’t written anywhere.

Note Names other than my own have been changed.

Copyright Angelina Mirabito 2011