Adelaide II

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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Dad would leave for work early. Before he left he would lay out the clothes we had to wear on our beds. He would put our breakfast cereal in our bowls and pour the milk on. He was gone by seven when I woke up.

I had to get up first because I was the eldest. I had to make sure my sisters got to school on time. If dad left some change on the table we could catch the bus. Otherwise we'd walk.

My sisters didn't always get up on time. I would eat my breakfast first because I hated how the rice bubbles went soggy and the milk got warm. Sometimes my sisters wouldn't eat their breakfast. They'd chuck it over the fence for Mrs Bishop's chooks.

Mrs Bishop used to come over to give dad bunches of mint. Dad hated mint, but he took it anyway. After she'd gone he'd pull a face and tell us how much he hated mint and chuck it straight in the bin. One time when she came over she told dad she found rice bubbles on her side of the fence.

Dad wasn't happy about that. He made us all sit at the table, so I knew it was going to be bad. I just sat hard and stiff and bit down on my teeth. It didn't take him long to work out whose breakfast it was. I just kept staring at the table when my sisters got the paddling.

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