Free Whole Wild World by Tom Dusevic

biscuits are on a small table in the lounge-room. Lemonade for the boy! Look how tall he is!
    Teta’s not here for pleasantries and confronts Marija about the missing cache of gold. Marija tells a rambling story, excuse after excuse. Mama shakes her head and clicks her tongue. Teta’s heard enough and calls the woman a liar and thief. Marija collapses. Has tiny Teta head-butted her? Marija is carried by other women into a bedroom and placed on a bed. There’s a stalemate over several hours, with Marija, prone, in a catatonic state, calling for her husband.
    â€˜ Ajme Ante! Ajme Ante!’ ‘Oh my Ante!’ emanates from a dark room, tucked between a sing-song of moans and whimpers. Cold compresses are applied.
    I can tell Gold Marija is faking it. The visit is as surreal as it is melodramatic. They’ve run out of lemonade and chips, soI’m itching to leave. Talk of an ambulance and Ante’s imminent arrival leads to our rushed departure.
    But this isn’t over. We will claw back our gold, calling in favours from families with influence here and in the old country. No blood is spilt, but Marija – her heirs and successors, plants and pets – are dead to us. On the forlorn walk to Fairfield station I begin mimicking the accursed woman, delighting in her woe.
    â€˜ Ajme Ante! Ajme Ante!’
    Some kids are forced to play the piano accordion when other families visit. ‘ Ajme Ante!’ – the name we’ll forever use for that thief – is added to my stand-up routine.
    We took Teta and Sam to the airport. In those days flights to Croatia were charters, which meant the plane is filled with people we know from church and the club. Two cousins are jumping out of their skin to get on the plane. Sam has an ultra-cool blue BOAC cabin bag over his shoulder, even though they aren’t flying with the British carrier. I regret not being part of it – especially as the highlight of the trip is seeing our only living grandparent, Baba Luca, Tata’s mother – but I didn’t want to spend that much time away with Teta or miss school before my Communion. Aged seven, three months is a big proportion of your life. Sam, the top student in his grade, is giving the field a chance to catch up.
    Mama cried when they departed, her pitifully low threshold for tears (even lower than mine) justified in this case. I just waved goodbye. In the car, I had the whole back seat to myself, instead of being stuck between Teta and Sam. While I did miss Sam, I adapted with obscene haste, like a widower marrying his new girlfriend the day after his late wife’s funeral. This only-child thing worked for me. It instantly meant I was out of the cot and sleeping in Sam’s bed. Life was a holiday from the usual family dynamic.
    Sam’s absence meant I made friends with neighbouring kids, particularly those who attended public schools. I also became slyenough to ‘borrow’ coins from Mama’s purse – how could she possibly miss a few one-cent or two-cent coins? I’d slip out while she was busy, sprinting to the shop near the Greek Orthodox Church for lollies. This was my area of know-how: the five-cent mixed bag, curated with the greedy child’s arithmetic of maximum weight.
    We were sent pictures of the travellers. The light looked bright in Ljubač and Kali, Sam surrounded by kids I could not place, everyone looking slim and tanned. Even Teta is smiling in the photos.
    As a family of three, we started visiting and hosting different people on Saturdays and Sundays. I met new kids – a chubby older cousin called Dean, his dad a fisherman from Port Lincoln, who’d win a gold medal at the L.A. Olympics – and told them about my big brother who was on ‘holiday’, Croatian shorthand for ‘visiting the homeland’. Going on a vacation to the beach, staying in a caravan or visiting another city were unheard of in our wider social