Adelaide I

When I was a little girl I lived in a house with my two sisters and my dad. It was in one of those real poor suburbs, so the rents were cheap. Dad could pay a whole week's rent with a few five dollar bills.

Well, we lived there, and the back part of the house was divided off, and an old drunk man lived there. He didn't come out much, but when he did he was kind of stooped low. He tried to be nice to us and smiled really big, like this, but we didn't speak back. It felt kind of mean, but it also felt like the right thing.

We had a yellow brick house and next door was a wooden house where a real old lady lived. Mrs Bishop. She had chooks. She lived with a really old man. The house was always dark because they didn't open the blinds.

Mrs. Bishop had carpet in her house that was thick, but kind of dirty. Everything was like, dusty. And there were things piled up. Mrs Bishop would let children come over after school. Me and my sisters went, and there'd be about three or four others. They probably went to to our  school, but we didn't know them.  Everyone from round there went to the same school.

When we went over we sat on wooden chairs between piles of other things in this tiny lounge room. Mrs Bishop would give us a drink, and little pamphlets to share between two. The pamphlets would have four pages with a few songs and one story. Sometimes the songs were the same, but the stories were always different. Mrs Bishop would read them out, and we would listen.

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