Southern Ruby Read Free

rubbish.’
    I knew even then that her comment had nothing to do with the quality of jazz musicians and everything to do with my father who had been a native of New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. If not for a horrific twist of fate, I might have grown up in that Southern American city instead of Sydney. I might have been Amandine Lalande instead of Amanda Darby. I might have known my parents.

TWO
Amanda
    â€˜Y our grandmother left everything to you,’ advised Tony, who Nan had appointed as executor of her will. ‘But you’d better hold on to the house for twelve months in case any long-lost relatives appear out of the woodwork and make a claim.’
    Oh, God , I thought. Somebody appearing, no matter how unlikely — a love child, a long-lost cousin, a prodigal sister — would be welcome. Anyone who could help to relieve this feeling of being cast adrift in the world.
    It took me six months to decide to rent out the house and go live with Tamara so I could figure out what to do next. It then took me a further four months to clear out the furniture and personal effects so tenants could move into it. I put sentimental items, like the piano, into storage but with every piece of furniture I sold or gave away it was as if I was destroying the life I’d had with Nan. The last room that I tackled was hers. I was tempted to leave it as it was and seal it up like a time capsule. Even when I worked up the courage to step inside, it was as ifI was invading her privacy and shouldn’t be there without her permission.
    I opened her dressing-table drawers and the sight of her neatly folded underwear and the scented soaps between them was too much to bear. I sat down on the bed. I might have to ask Tamara to help me , I thought. But then I dismissed the idea. It would have made Nan uncomfortable to have someone other than me going through the intimate parts of her life. I steeled myself and began to empty the dresser drawers, sorting what needed to be given away or thrown out from what I wanted to keep.
    Nan and I had very different tastes in jewellery. She thought only yellow gold was worthwhile, and I loved silver, white gold and platinum. She had been buried with her wedding ring, but she hadn’t left any instructions regarding her dress watches, pearls and charm bracelets. I decided I would give them to Janet. She could keep anything she wanted and give the rest to the church. I was placing the jewellery in a box when I came across a heart-shaped Lucite pendant with a pink rose accented by green leaves in its centre. It wasn’t an expensive piece but it was pretty. I remembered Nan telling me that my grandfather had given it to her when they were courting. It made me smile to think of Nan as a young woman in love, and I picked up the pendant and put it around my neck.
    â€˜I’ll wear this in memory of you, Nan,’ I said out loud.
    The pendant seemed to give me a burst of strength, as if Nan was there telling me there was a job to do and to get on with it. She’d been born into a rugged farm life, where people accepted fate and were grateful to have food on the table and clothes on their backs and didn’t endlessly analyse it when life dealt them a blow. They pressed on. So I pressed on too: emptying the bedside-table drawers and wiping away tears at the sight of her Bible and reading glasses; and deadening myself to the pain when I took her landscape paintings from the wall. I waspacking away her life and the room gradually began to lose its personality — her personality.
    The wardrobe was another matter. I knew that somewhere in there were letters from my mother along with photographs from New Orleans. I knew about them because when I was fifteen, Nan and I had a fight about them.

    â€˜For God’s sake, Amanda! That man ruined our lives!’ That’s what Nan would say if I asked her about my father. That’s what she always said.
    I lay in bed and listened