Benevolence

by Julie Janson

  ‘Are you still hungry, Mary?’

  ‘Karndo. Jumna gorai.’

  ‘We will give you all the meat you want at our home,’ says Mrs Shelley.

  Mrs Shelley squeezes her hand and from a bag she produces a white hand-spun pinafore which she puts over Muraging’s head. She smooths the large garment and it hangs nearly to the ground. It smells of yams. She drags her arms through the armholes as big tears roll from Muraging’s eyes. She blows her nose with her fingers, but Mrs Shelley wipes it with a perfumed handkerchief.

  As Muraging leaves the square she crosses her legs and wiggles. She needs to pee. Mrs Shelley takes her to a tree and squats down. They pee, yilabil, and Muraging sees that Mrs Shelley is a girl like her. Her soft black dress is hitched up and she giggles at her new pupil.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1817-18: LIFE AT SCHOOL

  The Native Institution, which doubles as a home for the Shelleys, is on the edge of Parramatta town, on a street made of earth and stones. It is next to a convict workers’ camp on one side and a church on the other. The church has a tall steeple and a sign that says, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’

  The school is white wattle and daub with thick pale clay walls and glass in some windows. English gardens surround the building and a lean-to kitchen with hanging pots and pans and a huge iron wood fuel stove stands at the back. A picket fence surrounds it and its English gardens include a vegetable patch and chicken enclosures.

  Muraging sleeps her first night on a pallet bed. She will learn to read and write, and to eat with cutlery. She will learn to sit up straight with a stiff back and arms pressed to her sides. She will become like the English. She stares at the white-washed walls but only wants the sky. Breathing this air is unbearable. Muraging dreams of milk spray from her mother’s breast, but her mother is dead, long ago from waibala influenza. She curls up and holds her arms around herself in a hug.

  On the first morning Mrs Shelley calls the thirteen polished Aboriginal children to stand in line and introduce themselves to the new pupils. Mrs Shelley leaves Mercy in charge of the class and walks to the kitchen to give orders for lunch.

  The other pupils exude confidence, but Mary is afraid of shadows and tries to see out of the small windows by jumping up and peeking over the window ledge. Mercy takes hold of her arm.

  ‘You called Mary now. Say your name,’ says Mercy.

  ‘Naiya Darug! Whu karndi!’ says Mary.

  ‘You not run away! You Mary now! Paialla Mary,’ says Mercy.

  Muraging charges out of the classroom and climbs the picket fence onto the road, but she does not know where to run. Mercy chases her and drags her, kicking, back into the school room.

  ‘Mudjevu werowi,’ says Mercy and pats her to show her where to sit down on a chair.

  ‘Naiya Muraging, no Mary.’

  ‘Paialla English, you learn English and you budjery werowi, good girl,’ says Mercy.

  The girls laugh at Mary’s matted hair full of casuarina pods and she hides behind Mercy. There are two older boys at the school who help in the garden and they do not tease her. Most of the children can speak English and are smacked if they speak anything else. But now that Mrs Shelley is not in the room the little girls in pinafores keep together and chatter quietly in their language – their precious secret. Each child has a wooden doll on their lap that has been made by Mercy. Each doll has a costume fashioned from rags. One little girl holds up her doll and smiles at Mercy.

  Mercy has been at the school for two years and is the same age as Mary but is tall with a maturing figure and wavy pigtails. Her face has big, grand features with wide nostrils and huge black eyes. Her mouth is pink under full brown lips that never stop moving. Mary watches her running her fingers through her golden curls and thinks her parents must be from some gold clan. But she is from mountain people, Gundungurra. Mercy has total power over the other children – even the boys look to her as the leader. Laughing loudly is what she likes best, her head thrown back as she gives cheek or plays tricks that are not meant to hurt but sometimes do. A rubber band is her talisman and she flicks the girls’ ears with paper pellets when they are writing in the school room.

  Mrs Shelley comes into the room. It is bath time and she takes Mary by the hand and plunges her into a metal claw-footed outdoor bath filled with kettles of water from the fire. She screams but the other children laugh. She is scrubbed and left to huddle with others. Overhead a carrion-eating bird, wargan flies by. Mary flaps her arms at him.

  ‘That crow is bad fella,’ says Mercy. ‘He want to steal all Eaglehawk wives. He chase them all along rivers.’

  …

  Days go by and Mary hears other children’s stories whispered in the night. Many have seen, and still see, the bodies of their parents shot and hung on trees with corn cobs in their mouths. They still watch in horror as crows peck out living eyes and black beaks pick brains. As men rush at each other with swords and nulla nulla. One of the boys saw his pretty aunty crying as ten soldier men took turns to jump on her and heard her last sad wail as a sword killed her. Some tasted blood in rivers and witnessed the burning of farms by warriors and their heroes, Branch Jack and Musquito.

  Mary blocks her ears. These stories steal her sleep. Mary tosses next to other hot little girls also tossing to and fro in the night. Mercy holds Mary’s hand and tells her how she had been caught setting fire to a farmer’s house on the outskirts of Ebenezer. Her family had come with her tribe, the Gundungurra mountain warriors, and she had helped to attack a house with fire brands made with mootin spears and fizgig, but the family had escaped. Mercy is no longer the laughing and silly girl to Mary. This story is whispered because such a tale would terrify the Shelleys and perhaps Mercy would be imprisoned.

  ‘You not tell. You never tell my secret here in your heart,’ says Mercy.

  It is a secret between these girls, now closest friends.

  Mary is pushed, each day, into a scratchy shapeless shift like the shroud of a dead white person. Her head is bent over a stinking kerosene bath to kill nits, lice and all manner of ‘crawly vermin’, so Mr Shelley says. She is getting used to being smacked for no reason and she is getting used to pining for her father.

  Every day the boys close and latch the gate to keep out marauding pigs that snuffle and grunt at the fence. These hogs escaped from the ship Perseverance and have bred. They have short black bristles, horrible yellow teeth and razor-sharp tusks.

  One day there is a terrible noise outside the school and Mercy huddles the children together to watch from the window a parade of starving Aboriginal people running by. Dyins grab at their rags to hold their bouncing breasts. They are in tatters, like spiders that have scattered before a fire, with big hungry eyes. Men on horses chase them down like dogs. Why are they being chased? No-one can say. Mercy shakes her head. She doesn’t know why this is happening and the smaller children hold onto her dress in fear. Mary sees that the running women might fall and be eaten by the hogs. Her panic is complete. She falls to the floor and cannot speak for days.

  When Mary is better, Mercy explains that at night the wooden door is closed with a heavy beam used as a latch. Mary asks with her eyes why the latch will be closed.

  ‘Tuabilli were waibala. To keep out bad men,’ Mercy replies.

  ‘Karama kurung?’ says Mary.

  They hear from the teachers that bad men are waiting on the street to grab them – to push them to the ground and hurt them. She hears the tapping of wooden shoes on the flagstones; she looks out the window and sees men in chains digging in the school garden, rattling metal against shovels.

  The door opens and the room is alive with sparkling sun. She looks out at the garden and gasps as a convict man watches her from the other side of the gate. Panic runs through her.

  The convict’s hairy neck is shining with sweat. He is thin and white. He touches his palm to his mouth, asking for bread. His eyes beg and she feels sorry for him. She sneaks into the kitchen and takes
a piece from a crusty white loaf and hides it under her pinafore. She knows the punishment for stealing is a beating with a wooden cane, but she is valiant and walks calmly out of the gate.

  ‘You man eat! Patama, bread,’ says Mary as he looks up. He wolfs it down with a guzzling sound. Then he bows and creeps back to work on the road.

  Next day, she throws a bread morsel from the window and the man wolfs it down again, nodding his thank you. Mary throws the whole loaf and doesn’t care if she is punished.

  ‘Thank you, little girl. You will go to heaven. And I will run away to Arcadia over the mountains,’ the convict yells.

  The next day she sees the man huddled by the fire. He seems invisible to all except Mary. He smiles. She watches in horror as he is flogged by the overseers and dragged away to a pillory.

  …

  Mary begins to learn in the school room and sits with her legs dangling from a wobbly chair with hard edges. The children are crowded into one room, sitting along rough benches. A cane hangs from a hook and Mary can see the boys cower as their eyes dart up to watch flies circle the implement. One boy punches another and then clenched fists are up and ready to strike. Mr Shelley looks at them and they crumple into a docile heap. The fight will keep.

  Mr Shelley walks up and down and studies the green writing slates with their wooden edges and sponge rubbers. All the pupils have been given these writing implements. Mary’s has lots of spit where she has smeared the chalk in an effort to copy the marks from the board – the alphabet.

  ‘This slate is an abomination,’ says Mr Shelley as he wipes it down. He takes Mary’s hand and forces her to hold the grey chalk. She looks at his clean pink nails, as pale as grubs. She pulls her hand away and presses it between her legs as he picks up a ruler and bangs it down on her other hand. Her lip trembles and she feels a rising panic. Mercy nods to her to be still – she must learn to show no surrender. Mr Shelley scratches his nose with the end of the ruler; Mercy pokes her tongue out and rolls her eyes behind his back.

  ‘Dear child, you tire me out. I am trying to train you to write your letters and speak English. We are inured to this work of toil and cannot recognise fatigue. You will display some respect for your writing!’ says Mr Shelley.

  ‘Bulala naiya. Outside,’ says Mary as she points to the sunlight streaming on the trees; the children cheer.

  ‘No, you cannot go outside!’ says Mr Shelley.

  Mary sees a snake eating him from the head down, its creeping throat sucking this waibala up. She hopes it will suck up the King of England too, whose picture hangs above the blackboard. The teacher’s wooden ruler is a tiny weapon like a woomera but this man uses it and his cane to beat children, not hunt kangaroo. She squeezes her eyes shut and makes her body tight.

  Mrs Shelley walks into the room, wafting a perfume of flowers behind her. She strokes Mary’s cheek and Mr Shelley moves to his wife’s side and takes hold of her arm saying, ‘Don’t touch their hair; vermin live in it.’

  ‘Mary will learn with our love, and she will settle,’ says Mrs Shelley.

  Mrs Shelley removes her hand and rubs it on her apron, but she smiles at Mary. She sighs and, astonishingly, bursts into song. The children laugh and clap.

  ‘Build on the rock and not upon the sand. You are safe forever more, if you build on the rock!’ she sings.

  She dances around the room and lifts her skirt a little to point her black stockinged foot. She seems so blithe and happy that it is contagious.

  When they leave the room Mercy puts on Mr Shelley’s top hat and mimics his walk. The children scream with laughter.

  …

  One dark night Mercy and Mary hide in a hall cupboard eating stolen jam pudding. If Cook finds them, they will be hit with a wooden spoon. Mary sucks the sweet sauce and Mercy licks a bowl, still part full of yellow custard. They take turns to taste the mixture on the spoon. A noise stops them and they freeze with spoons in their mouths, worried it might be a goong. But it is Mr Shelley leaning against the door whispering some love words to Mrs Shelley. The girls cannot move as they clutch each other. No movement. Now the Shelleys are leaning against the door, breathing hard. He is panting and talking softly. They are fucking!

  ‘Dearest Eliza,’ he is crooning and whining like a lost animal. The girls wonder if they should burst out of the cupboard to save the mistress from nguttatha; they have heard these noises many times. But the puffing and groaning is tender and not a bad or a frightening thing. Mercy sniggers with her hand against her mouth.

  …

  Weeks pass and Mary watches the shadows grow long. The view from her window changes from green to dry yellow grass along the road where the new sandstone road is being built by convicts. Mary watches the click, clicking of hammers. She still plans to run away but somehow cannot make the move. She has become used to being called Mary and practises her words and writing. She learns to speak English and is one of the quickest in class. She speaks to Mercy in her newly acquired language.

  ‘Why waibala got big house when our people live like slaves in that Bible and black servant kept in shed? Why they got picture with dead people? Why they want look at dead men with long beard and them baletti dead ladies and dead children. Bimung garai stupid. They trapped in glass. Where that place Tahiti? They talk about flower and coconut tree. Why that?’

  ‘They got big house because they rich,’ says Mercy, ‘One day we might get rich. Wallawa stay here, marry big fella, rich fella.’

  ‘Beal, no. Not for me ngubaty. Find biana. You see.’

  Mercy shakes her head. ‘Your father, he gone long time,’ says Mercy. Mary punches her.

  ‘Not say that thing. Naiya, no forget, no bulala.’

  Late in the night, Mary takes one of the orphan children to comfort and climbs into bed with Mercy.

  ‘I heard a story about Barrangaroo, she is wife of Bennelong and she invited for a big dinner, big karndo, by that Governor Phillip,’ says Mercy. ‘He sent her a new dress and petticoat, really pretty, for her to wear. But that Barrangaroo, she not want that dress. So she knocked on that Governor’s door at dinnertime and she was naked. Nabung all hung out. She sat down with the fine ladies with fur and jewel. She wore black skin. She was beautiful already. That Governor couldn’t stop lookin at her nabung.’

  ‘I got nabung,’ says Mercy.

  ‘You got nabung titty nothing.’

  …

  On the wall of the dormitory hangs a framed picture of Jesus. He is surrounded by a crowd of smiling white children. Mary traces the Jesus head with her finger. Then she finds that she can scrape at the stone wall in this room and after a long bit of crunching with a trusty stick, she has carved a kangaroo around the Jesus picture.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ asks Mercy.

  ‘Buru is my totem, and my name is muraging, native cat,’ says Mary.

  ‘I’m wirriga, goanna.’

  The afternoon stretches on and Mary eats some cabbage and bean soup, which looks like waiali, possum poo.

  ‘I catch waiali, a lot. With bobbina, we climb up tree with big one rope to make me go up,’ says Mary.

  ‘He finish up now? He baletti dead?’ asks Mercy.

  ‘He die influenza. Biana real sad,’ Mary replies.

  ‘I cut them with boomerang, get lotta wai ali. Good tucker,’ says Mercy.

  ‘Aunty Wirawi, throw for me to take out guts,’ says Mary.

  ‘Make a pillow too.’

  Mary mouths the words, ‘Brush tail possum, wai ali; glider possum, bangu; that ringtail possum, chubbi. We won’t forget our mother tongue, eh?’

  ‘Not forget. You know I see inside your kobbera head, like fire. You real strong,’ Mercy tells Mary.

  The girls huddle together in the day and pick at each other’s hair. It feels good to lie down in a lap and have a caressing hand in their hair. They lean on each other and do everything together and are, in some ways, a tribe. Sometimes, they all follow Mercy during the day and she scolds them for not doing any
work such as cleaning the room with brush brooms. Mary feels alive when she is all tangled up with children.

  …

  One day Mercy sees Mary trying to climb over the fence of the school and grabs her by the hair and brings her back.

  Mercy forces Mary to wash with hard grey soap. The soapy liquid runs down her face and stings her eyes.

  ‘Wallawa, stop! I want get away! Bimung gurai, stupid! Soap stink,’ says Mary.

  ‘You learn not run and you talk English quick and foller me or you get flogged by Cook. And she flog me for letting you go. I get blame! You live here now, you got five pounds bread in week, two pound meat. A pound rice, half pound sugar. You eatem all up yerself.’

  ‘Naiya, run, nalla yan.’

  ‘You not nalla yan. If you run away, you gunna get lost. All the time mens shoot native, they all gunna die. Mrs Shelley tell us that. Captain Wallis kill chiefs near Appin. Kill all family. You forget about alla native business; you and me waibala now. You gotta stay and help me,’ Mercy pleads.

  Mary struggles to force Mercy’s hand away. There is strength in Mary’s body – she is more powerful than a boy. The soap is dropped and Mary turns to face her torturer. There is recognition and new-found respect. Mercy has power over the children, but the two girls are now friends – sisters perhaps. Mercy mutters that she is sorry. She reaches out and strokes Mary’s hair.

  …

  Some months pass and one morning a school inspector rides into the yard on an old brown horse. He walks in without knocking. He is as thin as string and has a long moustache of grey fur, like kangaroo skin. His dusty coat has ragged sleeves and a fob watch hangs glinting from his dark breeches. He walks with a shuffle and sneezes constantly while peering closely at the children and wiping his pointy pink nose with a white handkerchief. He walks up and down the classroom rows and examines the children for spelling and Bible study. Mary can now speak English and has learnt to write, and Mrs Shelley shows her pride by singing their praises, in song.

  ‘The children are our pride and joy, pride and joy; Hallelujah praise the Lord!’ she sings.