Ato said the perfect cabbage would be bright green with crisp leaves tucked tightly in together, like it was keeping a secret. I found a bundled lime-coloured cabbage and held it up for her inspection. She shook her head – too small. She said she wanted a big one. A big one would have a mild flavour and be ideal for wrapping spiced rice and slivers of red meat. When I asked her how big, she pointed to her head.
Ato had a big head. Her black hair bun was a golf ball in comparison. A big head meant a big face and Ato’s face seemed to have more of everything: more cheeks, more chins, big eyes. She always wore a stark pink blush and red lipstick and, right now under the fluorescent Franklins lights, Ato looked like the Disney drawings of Snow White.
I picked out a large cabbage and held it up towards her head for comparison. It was heavy and I had to use two hands. Ato clicked her tongue at me, grabbed the cabbage, and used a square nail to point out fuzzy black spots across the base of it.
She always wore a stark pink blush and red lipstick and, right now under the fluorescent Franklins lights, Ato looked like the Disney drawings of Snow White
“La ah!” No!
She insisted that if I didn’t want it on my face, we wouldn’t want it on the cabbage. I shivered at the image of black rot growing on my face. I hadn’t seen this happen to any other seven year olds, but adults had all sorts of strange things growing out of their faces, so it seemed possible. Ato herself had three moles on her neck that looked large enough to start talking. I watched her dig around in the crate and pull out three enormous cabbages. She squeezed them, checking their firmness. I copied her, giving the last one a knock like I had seen my mama do to watermelons.
“Chooga la bayet kha rakekha, balbich goo mardakhta,” she told me. You never want one that’s soft, it will turn to mush in the boiling.
She picked up one of the three. Big, bright and firm. She held it with two hands at face height and had such a warm look in her eyes that, for a second, I thought Ato was going to French kiss the cabbage. Then she asked me if it looked like it had a good secret. I looked at how tightly the leaves were bundled, and nodded.
“Perfect.” She rolled her Rs when she said the word.
“Perfect,” I repeated. I said mine the Aussie way, where the ‘r’ sounded like an ‘h’.
At the Franklins checkout, Ato held her cabbage instead of setting it down on the conveyor belt. She paid for it in stacks of 10-cent coins and refused the plastic bag, insisting she could carry it under her arm. As we walked out of the store, past the clothing shop selling purple power suits and towards the front parking lot, Ato spotted her friend Linda. Linda was a face pincher and she liked to talk for a long time. She burned musky incense in her house and you could always smell it on her skin. The scent made me dizzy as she reached out and squeezed my left cheek between her thumb and forefinger.
Linda was a face pincher and she liked to talk for a long time. She burned musky incense in her house and you could always smell it on her skin
“Kma’ shetrantah!” Linda squealed. How pretty.
Ato nodded in agreement and patted me on the head. I pulled at the loose threads on the hem of my skirt while I waited for them to finish talking. Linda told Ato she was going to Franklins for groceries and then rolled her eyes into the back of her head. Linda hated Franklins and wished there was a Woolworths nearby. Ato laughed and agreed, Franklins was the worst. The shock of Ato saying this caused me to pull too swiftly on my skirt strings and snap them off. I didn’t understand why she was lying. Ato loved Franklins! Sometimes she came to Franklins just to walk through the aisles. This reminded me of my cousin hiding the ‘No Frills’ milk cartons in the laundry basket when her friends came over. I watched Linda nod along before leaning in to whisper, “Did you hear about Shmonee?”
I tried to contain my groan. This was definitely going to be a long chat. I looked around the shopping centre. The newsagency that sold 3D stickers was too far to go on my own. Then I spotted a chef hat and moustache, Michel’s Patisserie, just a metre away. Maybe I could look at their desserts while Ato spoke to Linda. I waited for a pause in the conversation to ask for permission, but there wasn’t one. Surely Ato would not mind. I’d be within eyesight.
I walked over to Michel’s. The buzzing of their refrigerated display case drowned out the other sounds of the shopping centre. There were three chocolate-covered cakes in the domed window. The first was covered in brown butter cream icing that separated where the caramel centre had started to drool out of the sponge. It had the words ‘Happy Birthday’ scrawled in cursive across the frothy top. The second had a white chocolate shell with a drizzle of dark on the top. The fat drops of ice magic around the base made it look like a melted candle. The third was the best; three tiers layered with cream, dusted with flakes of milk chocolate, topped with eight dollops of cream, each with a shiny red glace cherry in the centre. I had never had a cherry, but I had seen them in cartoons repeatedly plopped on the top of every sundae, cake, milkshake and cream pie.
I pressed my nose forward and held my hands against the glass. I wish I could smell the cakes. I wish I could sink my fingers into the soft sponge. I wish I could taste the grains of sugar and cocoa on my tongue. I turned around to ask Ato if we could buy one, but she was gone. I searched for her purple floral skirt and big head in the groups of women walking by, but I couldn’t find it. My heart sank into my stomach. How could Ato leave me? What if we never found each other again? The strangers passing by started to look terrifying. Their voices too loud. Their heads too small. Their pimples, moles and skin tags coming towards me. Where did Ato go? Did she leave the shopping centre?
I turned around to ask Ato if we could buy one, but she was gone
A woman with tan stockings, thin lips and dark drawn eyebrows stopped and smiled at me. If Ato was Snow White, this woman was Queen Grimhilde. The woman was carrying heavy bags of groceries and one tore from the weight and spilled fruit at her feet. I didn’t stop to check for a poisoned apple. I ran away from her and from Michel’s, trying to think of where Ato had gone. Aside from the cabbage, I couldn’t recall anything else she wanted to purchase today. Then I remembered what Linda had said about buying groceries.
If I went to Franklins, I would find Linda and she could help me find Ato. As I ran towards the big red ‘F’, I tried my best not to cry, but by the time I got to the entrance, the fear had swallowed me whole. I felt two fat tears roll down each cheek. Two tears gave way to four and the sniffling became useless against the snot running down my chin. I slipped through one of the checkout gates and saw a blond boy with a pink face sitting in his parents’ trolley. He watched me crying and started to mimic me. He made his lips tremble and his eyes squint. He balled his hands into fists and twisted them in front of his face. I felt the heat of embarrassment lick through my chest and turned to walk away from him.
I walked down each aisle carefully. Checking every adult’s face for familiarity. Then I found her, Linda with a half-full trolley, standing in the aisle that smelt like flowers. She was picking out a box of washing powder. I couldn’t speak, I just stood in front of her trolley and cried. I was so relieved to see someone I knew. I didn’t even mind when she pinched my cheeks and asked if I was okay. I shook my head. Then she asked if I was lost and I nodded.
Linda told me she didn’t have a mobile, but she was sure if I stayed with her Ato would find us. How? Bonnyrigg Plaza was huge. What if Ato didn’t find me? What if I had to go and live with Linda? How would Mama and Baba feel? Could I live in an incense house and get my cheeks pinched every day? I saw a jar of chocolate spread in Linda’s trolley. Maybe an incense house wouldn’t be so bad. I looked over the rest of her trolley for more treats and saw the cabbage with the black spots under a dented Corn Flakes box.
Suddenly the thought of living with Linda became horrifying. The sadness, that had been lulled by Linda, started to bubble in my belly again. Then I heard someone screaming my name at the front of the store and when I turned to face their direction, I saw a glimpse of a golf ball bun. Was it her? As the groups of passers-by dwindled down to one or two, I saw Ato standing there waving the head of cabbage at me. I ran to her, ducked under the metal gate that barred people from exiting and grabbed her around the legs, rubbing my tears and snot on her skirt. The bubbles of sadness popped and I felt soothed.
As the groups of passers-by dwindled down to one or two, I saw Ato standing there waving the head of cabbage at me
“Kamo shwiklakh gohtee?” Why did you leave my side? Ato asked, holding me by the shoulders and forcing me to face her.
I told her about the cakes in Michel’s Patisserie and watched her nostrils flare. Then she started yelling at me. Yelling that I was terrible and naughty and careless. That she was so terrified she had lost me and so happy that she found me. Then she hugged me, pressing the cabbage between us.
On the drive home Ato insisted that I had given greys to her freshly dyed hair. “Yimakh w’ babakh tawiwah Ktililee!” Your mother and father would have killed me!
I sat with the cabbage in my lap. The edges of it, once crisp, were now wilted. The outside leaves had come undone. They hung free from the rest of the cabbage head. It had revealed its secret and I had missed it. When I asked my Ato what the secret was, she said, “Kam amireh eka machkenakh.” It told me where to find you.
This story is the runner-up of the 2022 SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition.
Listen to runner-up Monikka Eliah and winner Tessa Piper on the final SBS Voices podcast episode of , in the , , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Listen to the podcast
The winning competition entry that took 20 years to write
