Power tools grind in the distance, over the fenceline a three-storey house is being repaired or torn down. I’m not sure, the scaffolding seems suspicious, but at least my countrymen are slight. It’ll hold. The small house by the way is blaring TV or radio in a language I don’t understand. It’s loud white noise. It’s gentle rain, the telenovela version.  

The toenails of my feet, wearing outside thongs, are finished in the same shade of baby blue favoured by the Virgin Mary—my immaculate style icon. October is the celebratory month of the city’s patron saint, her image plastered on plastic signs reading ‘Nuestra Virgen de Pilar’… our Virgin Mary of Pilar. I admire the colour and commend myself on the certainty of one life choice this year.

I’m absentmindly swinging on an iron loveseat and swing set, enamel coated in an appalling turquoise colour that matches the outside paintwork of the house. Banana groves, a solidary stoic mango tree, and birds of paradise shade the dirt and fan the breeze over my humid skin.

It would sound romantic if it weren’t so filthy. Hammocking gently in the breeze with the gentle pining of a lustful heart tuning in the distance. Watch your words- sweet Heroine, do we mean this? It’s not filthy it’s dusty, the whole city is always swirling in gusts of pollution and dry dirt. It seems a contradiction that somewhere where the air content is almost water that the ground always tosses up dry dirt, coughing it up and between your toes. Never wear sandals outside the house.   

The gardener has swept the compacted dirt that passes as a backyard with a broom of old sticks tied at the top with rope- seems traditional, worked effectively. Only yellowed leaves fall from the outstretched mango tree overhead, crunchy and crinkled. He’s just finished and he will only just have to begin again. I guess that’s why he’s always here. Kindly excuse the landscaping. We’re family feuding about whether to cement it all. If reportage is about hearing both sides of a story, the one that I have been privy to since my grand return here explains a lot. I feel a deep shame in the ruin of legacy.

My Grandfather built this house for my Grandmother. And my exiled Mother, raised me peering through the nostalgic kaleidoscope of the place she grew up in as home. I don’t know how you connect child to place but she did it. My Grandfather signed over the house to my parents after they married and Romeo thought the land of plenty was plenty good and far in Australia. After my parents divorce, the story shakes, and I can’t find the thread to pull that will unravel the truth. The important part is, my Father didn’t sign it back. So when my Mother asks questions of why my Uncle allows her beloved childhood home to crumble, she is too love blind on her new boyfriend to think through, we don’t fucking own it.

My Grandmother is obsessed with laundry. This is how I will never be her. I stopped wearing underpants because I realised it was a scam. Another thing to wash. She the cluey witch notices that there’s no panties in the handwash. Please, you cannot change her mind that undergarments can not go into a washing machine. Please. The other activity she enjoys is, handwashing her undergarments every couple of days. It seems just enough housework to keep her busy. A light but dutiful load. She tells me she survives because she is hardworking. Like babe, take a break. Ninety-two is way too old to keep willingly wanting to wash by hand. I’m twenty seven plus ten and I just figured out I can skimp on the machine cleaned laundry if I just dont wear fucking panties. Which of us has the life hack?

So, I sit here under my version of the banyan tree and diligently work away, laptop teetering over knees. Cosix bone compressed into steel, hunching over keys and I pause to think, Petite Heroine, you asked to write. You didn’t specify where or how. Hard work won’t kill you and you have to will yourself a way babe. You can type in a dirt patch. Fuck do you think the guys scribing the Rosetta stone did all day? Complain?

SJ xx