Whole Wild World by Tom Dusevic Page A

Australian girls are in a variety of prim white dresses. Tata has a Saturday shift at Kellogg’s and won’t be at the Mass. I’d been looking forward to this day for two years, ever since Sam entered the big league for Catholics.
    The reading goes without a hitch. When our turn comes to take Communion, we kneel at a rail at the front of the altar. Taking the Host for the first time is a moment of awe and reverence, as close to transcendence as I’d come in seven years. Ikeep a serious face all the way back to the pew and kneel down to pray. I don’t look around at other kids or anyone else in the church. This is my time with God.
    Still, to put things in perspective, the highlight of the day for me is the morning tea for communicants, held in the double- sized kindergarten classroom. All the footy boys get a photo taken together. We munch on classic party food, including chocolate crackles, which Mama and Teta can never master. There is something from every one of the twelve basic lolly groups. We each get a bottle of soft drink, which due to runaway inflation and speculators will rise to seven cents or even eight cents a bottle during the Whitlam years.
    Our families are on the landing, watching us play and eat. I was once an onlooker. On the outside, separated by windows, unable to hear the joy in the room, but trying to lipread the buzz from the animated faces. Now I am inside. Being watched in this way makes the day more special. Hey little kid, this is how you eat a party pie with sauce in one go!
    In a week the magic will wear off when I try to take the Host for the first time at St Anthony’s, the Croatian church. When I approach the priest at the altar he demands my credentials: ‘Have you made your Communion?’
    He thinks I’m an interloper. The Mass seems like it’s come to a halt. I’m destroyed. My face burns, feeling the eyes of the congregation upon me. I can’t speak for a moment, so I simply nod.
    â€˜Have you made your Communion?’ he asks again.
    â€˜Amen,’ I reply.
    Wrong answer. Illegitimate.
    He serves Communion to the person next to me. It’s over. I’ll never be able to do this again, I tell myself, as I go back to my seat, kneel, bow my head, and fake-pray for a couple of minutes. I curse this haughty priest and his ridiculous toupee.

5
    Smoking gun
    It’s the day of the 1971 rugby league Grand Final between South Sydney and St George. We have visitors, an odd thing at midday on a Saturday. Our uncle Dado, George, his eleven-year-old nephew and our cousin, and Rudi, a man from Tata’s village, have popped in. Rudi is a grinning, good-time guy with wild curly hair. I suspect – I know actually – that he likes a drink. George, who lives in Marrickville, is mad for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, an excitement that rubs off on all of us. On a whim, Dado and Rudi decide to take George and Sam to the Grand Final. No tickets, no worries, freestyle. I beg my parents to let me go.
    Dado gives me a wink and a nod. Get changed. I put on my new watch.
    â€˜Just ask me if you need to know the time,’ I tell the men and boys, showing off my prize.
    Even when they don’t ask, I’ll ape the free-call service I’ve discovered in the red telephone booth near our house. ‘At the third stroke it will be eleven fifty-three and thirty seconds. Beep. Beep. Beep.’
    On the walk to Belmore station we saw a car painted red and white, the colours of the Dragons, who represent St George, the district next to ours. Who would change the duco of a car for one game? Another uncle, Zvonko, Blanka and Maza’s dad, is a Saints man and he puts streamers on his Holden on Grand Final days.
    This is the first time I’m standing in the train on the way to the city. Near the doors, too, which is thrilling. I know we are closing in on Central when we pass certain factories and the houses get smaller. You can see right into