Free I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes by Mary Tennant Page B

This is a normal spring day where I come from. It dawned on me that I too was feeling the effects of living under a grey sky. I missed home.
    During the twenty months I had been away from Australia, I’d rarely had enough money to ring home – phone calls were expensive – but Mum sometimes called. One of those calls was on my twenty-third birthday. She gave me a running commentary on all the members of our family. Teresa had just delivered her third child – a girl, Naomi – and Jill was pregnant with her first. Brisbane and my family seemed a long way away. I hung up and decided to save enough money to go home for a holiday on my next semester break.
    But two days later I received another call from my brother-in-law, Frank.
    ‘Teresa’s unwell,’ he said. ‘Would you come home to look after the children?’
    It wasn’t exactly how I had planned things, but I immediately said yes. Dad sent me the money for my airfare and soon I was winging my way home to Australia, leaving herbal medicine behind me. My only regret was that I also had to leave my beautiful Peugeot bike behind.

10
    Arriving in Sydney airport after the long flight from London was like being released from prison. I sat in the terminal waiting for my connecting flight to Brisbane and listened to people talking around me, just to hear their accents. I watched people greet each other with warm hugs and big smiles, and I reflected on the contrast with some of the people I had nursed in England.
    One old lady had asked me where I was from and when I answered Australia she said, ‘You’re all mongrels, aren’t you?’ Another checked her fridge before I left to make sure I hadn’t stolen any food. And one man insisted I count the swans on his lake each morning. I didn’t belong in England. I belonged in a country where there was no aristocratic class.
    Frank picked me up from the airport and we stopped in to see Teresa on our way to their home. She was in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from postnatal depression.
    ‘I don’t understand why I feel this way,’ she said. ‘I have three beautiful children. I should be happy.’
    ‘The main thing is you need to get better,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about your children. I’m here. I’ll look after them.’
    ‘They’re going to give me shock treatment tomorrow.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘The doctor says it will make her better,’ Frank said.
    ‘Over my dead body! It won’t make her better! You have to stop them!’ Looking at Teresa I said, ‘You’re not crazy!’
    ‘You haven’t been here, Mary, how would you know?’ Frank said.
    ‘I know my sister. Do you know what the side effects of shock treatment are?’
    ‘No, what?’ asked Teresa.
    ‘Electroconvulsive therapy – ECT – is for people who have severe psychotic disorders. I mean people who are really crazy. You’re not crazy, you’re just feeling down. It causes memory loss and you don’t want that! Didn’t you ever see the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest ?’‘
    ‘The doctors know what they’re doing,’ Frank said.
    ‘No they don’t, and they don’t know my sister. I do!’
    Teresa didn’t end up having the treatment. She refused to sign the consent form.
    I moved into their spare room and became a mother overnight.
    ‘Stupid,’ Frank yelled. We were sitting at the dining table, about to eat the spaghetti bolognaise I’d cooked, and Matthew had knocked his glass off the table. The glass shattered on the tiles and the water was spreading across the floor.
    ‘He’s just a child,’ I said. ‘Don’t move, Matthew. I’ll clean it up.’ I was at the kitchen sink picking up a cloth.
    ‘He should know better.’
    Matthew began to cry.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘And easy to clean up. Look, there, it’s safe now.’
    He ran from the table to his room. I washed up the dishes. Frank, as usual, sat in front of the TV. After I cleaned up, I helped Adam clean his teeth and went to see Matthew. He was