The Mačka’s of 3175
by Alice Huijbregts
19-25 years | 1st Place
My childhood wasn’t in Dandenong, postcode 3175, nor do I speak Serbian but Mačka sounds like munchkin in English. It can mean both cat and a familiar face, like a friend or a neighbour you adore.
I moved out from a suburb called Belgrave Heights, my parents now being 15 minutes away, postcode 3160, on the 24th of September: key day.
My first taste of Dandenong was meeting a man who lived in unit 11, parked beside me.
‘European girl?!’ He wound down his car-window. ‘Where are you from?’
I felt curious, puzzled and anew because I actually haven’t thought about it? Looking the way that I do, it hasn’t come up before in such a casual way.
‘Australian.’ I hugged my kettle. ‘But my dad’s Dutch, from Holland?’
‘Netherlands.’ He blinked and nodded. ‘I, Indonesian.’
A lady on the other side of the fence watched down from her balcony, a mug in hand. I waved, she waved. I was moving into a home connected to other realms, I could hear bowls clank, vacuuming, babies-cry and belly-laughter. I felt a cuddle in my chest, I could use a tap that was my own, even though it was coming off its socket, exposing the metal-rope-part that’s meant to be completely hidden and a coffee splattered power-plug to make a cup of tea. I had a place of my own.
I unpacked the box I had made three months ago for my first day: Yorkshire tea ©, my Misses-Claws-Christmas-mug, oat milk and now the biscuits I just got from the real-estate team reading: ‘Congratulations on your new home, Alice!’
I soaked in the previous smell of someone else’s life. No furniture, worn out carpet, walls that were once flatline-white but now aged to become tea-bag-gold. I wanted to imagine my smell, the scent I give when I hug someone as the aroma everywhere in this place. I imagined dad with me painting the walls tomorrow. The carpet will be ripped away bare. Underneath I might find chalk numbers, measurements and arrows from the 1989 builders.
I let my kettle fizzle and went scavenger hunting. Looking through every window, using my phone-compass-app to gauge where the sun would set. Picturing where my monstera would go and where my pots of cacti will toast as the east facing window is due to be scorching by Christmas.
There was no smell of rain, but there were rain-clouds. In my childhood, there were kookaburra’s warning the downpour with their cackles echoing throughout the hums of the 3160 valleys.
The earth all around you even pouted like it was going to cry. Not in a human expression, but the ants below cramp back into their underground suburbs and this reminds the trees to reach up to quench their thirst.
The sky’s warning call for 3175 is grumbles and stone-cracks, blushing the pathways an oyster-shell-purple. My apartment went darker.
I people watched, a fresh cup of brew and biscuits to dunk.
A girl passed by and the wind unwrapped her hijab, she adjusted her scarf. I peered through the curtains, feeling the grime on my fingertips. The scent of mossy-concrete through my flyscreen.
‘Did you want an umbrella?!’
She followed the sound of my voice, back to me, my lounge-room window.
‘I love the rain!’ She raised her arms in a hallelujah stretch. ‘It is good for me!’
***
I eventually met the lady over on the balcony when her son Jessy visited. My kitchen window looks out onto their love-heart-shaped-rails and cottage looking roof. Jessy translated her Bosnian.
‘Mum has been wanting to tell you: keep your blinds shut, we all can see into your apartment. To stay careful as she thinks you are new here. Also too, you parked crooked. Cute cat in the window by the way.’
I turn to my Lynx, a grey-tiger with splats of orange, squinting down at us like she’s in a deep meditation.
‘My munchkin!’
‘You’re Serbian then? Your Mačka?’
‘No, munchkin, like my little cutie.’
Jessy walked down the stairs and was tall enough to peek over the wood panels nailed in a row, not pushing too hard because our fence has the strength of a baby-tooth ready to be yanked.
‘You need help moving in? Let us know, what about sugar, or basil?’
I enjoyed boasting that I was going to use a can of soup I pre-packed in a box, but there is no gas. The water and electricity still worked. Jessy had good stories that apparently you see high-vis people come every now and then to shut off power mains.
‘A lot of people rent. Always new people. Mums’ and me ‘ve been here for years. We run the place.’
After the introduction, Jessy stepped off the garden-bed on the other side and went back up the steps, a delicate Capuchino-grey with bluestones like dusted coco. The lady, named Anne, said something passionately.
‘Mum says you can have cake sometime soon,’ Jessy dubbed. ‘She likes you already, just not right now because today’s a red day on the Orthodox Calander, a day to rest.’
Jessy visits when he can but is at the age when people marry and start their own numbers. His being 3128, Lake Park, and his car-number-plate reads ‘9 Giant ducks’ with a little bit of creativity when I read: ‘9GD U7K.’
I learnt quickly that he was doing exactly what I do now, knowing everybody his whole childhood in 3175. Lending a hand with computer glitches, asking if anyone needed bread or milk when heading to the shops. You only have to walk by someone’s window and a cat will be there, a mačka, wishing you well on your travels.