How Rosie got to Australia is a mystery. How her brother, Frank, and her sisters, one who lives in Brisbane, the other in Mt. Isa, got to Australia, is anyone's guess. Rosie acts poor. But she has her own home. Peter and Rosie moved from Christmas Island to Australia in the early 80s. I learnt from my aged care course that people suffering from dementia make up stories. I tell her that I just got back from Malaysia.
What were you doing there?
I was shooting niggers, hundred bucks a pop, but only 30 dollars in Thailand.
Rosie doesn't like the blacks.
But Rosie is pretty dark skinned.
She looks no different to a Malay.
Her grandmother is German, and grandfather on her mother's side is Yugoslavian.
Now she's telling porkies.
I go out on an errand, Rosie has ran out out candles for her prayer shrine.
She has about twenty portraits of Jesus.
In another room, even more.
Junk, that's all it is. She's probably collected them over the past 20 years of Easter and Christmas, when her Church hands out junk to their congregation.
I invite myself inside. Rosie is dancing. She has her 1980's stereo on, which was state of the art, back then. She's got a song on now. She's found her thrills on blueberry hill. She's gracefully moving. Dancing, to be precise. She's left her door open and I return with matches, has to be Red Heads and her candles, and she's drifting around her house. Doing a ball room dance with herself. She's whispering sweet nothings to Peter her husband who died almost thirty years ago.
'What?'
Nothing Rosie. Really, I don't have an issue with this.
