so we came to Australia,
hoping for a good life.
We left family behind.
And then you were locked away?
Father’s jaw clenched:
When the new war began, yes.
We were locked up in Loveday.
What of Mother and Oma?
Where were they?
Some women were sent to camps,
but your mother and Oma
worked on the land.
They stayed on their own?
On the farm?
Yes. There was no money.
There was no help.
And your mother
became very unwell.
ANNIE II
I shuffled through the box,
found a black-and-white photo
of me sitting on Annie’s small lap:
Annie’s hair shining whitely;
mine a flat dark shadow.
Her thin torso almost hidden
behind my plump little body.
Her stick thin arms
wrapped around my shoulders.
My mouth gnawing
a chubby index finger.
Her gappy grin, her pale lively eyes,
radiating zest and mischief,
and mine dark and round
beneath an uncertain frown.
CARTWHEELS I
Today the trees are full of flowers
and parrots.
Rainbow, musk and little lorikeets
hang from branches
like gaudy clowns,
squawking and chattering
as they strip the flowering gums,
leaving yellow pools
and blood-red shadows beneath.
A small cluster of corellas
and a dozen galahs
waddle in the middle of a grassy paddock.
Will the large flock come again?
Life is turning circles,
doing cartwheels around me,
and I am wandering alone
with the dead,
with Annie.
SCHOOL III
The first day of school
felt like a death.
The long school holidays
gone.
Back there with the kids
who didn’t talk to me
was like being at a funeral
every day.
Thank God for Jeffrey.
CONTRAST
Jeffrey and I were the same
but different.
He was black, I was white.
He was male, I was female.
But we were both tall,
we were both thin
and quiet.
And each other’s
only friend.
You’ve grown, he said
when he saw me.
It was true. I was taller
and I was different:
I had small breasts
and I had pimply bumps
on my chin and forehead.
Jeffery, too, was taller,
his limbs stronger,
his feet and hands larger.
We were both growing up
in our own ways,
together.
FAMILY HISTORY
We had to take photos of family
to school for Social Science
for a genealogy assignment.
I flicked through Oma’s box of memories,
chose one of Opa and Father
both tall and straight and handsome
in their German uniforms.
And one of Mother, beautifully
wrapped in her long dark coat
wearing the fox stole;
her hair silky-black,
her face luminous.
And one of Oma with her arm
wrapped around a young Aunt Hilda,
who looked girlish and shy,
slender and pretty.
I slipped them in an envelope
along with the photo of me
sitting with Annie.
FAMILY I
Where are your photos? I asked.
I don’t have any.
You don’t have any photos?
Jeffrey shook his head.
I don’t have any family.
What about the people you live with?
Aren't they your parents?
I thought Jeffrey was adopted.
He shook his head again.
They are nice people, but
they are not my family.
I asked him about Jimmy James,
but he did not know him.
I asked him if he knew how to track,
and he smiled a sad, upside-down smile.
I wish I could track back home.
FAMILY II
Jeffrey looked inside my envelope,
pulled out a photo and studied it.
That is me and Annie, I told him.
Annie is my sister.
He turned his gentle brown eyes
to mine and quietly said,
I didn’t know you had a sister.
I stared at the photograph
for a long time, a lifetime.
She died.
She drowned in Oma’s dam
when she was six.
The words fell from my mouth
as if tied to brick
plummeting, plummeting,
into deep, dark water.
WAR I
Others had brought photographs
of fathers and grandfathers
dressed in uniform.
But they were Australian
and British soldiers.
The kids in class said:
Your father is German
A Kraut.
Your grandfather
was in the Gestapo.
He was a Nazi.
He killed Jews.
You’re a Kraut, a Nazi,
a traitor, an enemy.
You love Hitler!
He did not!
I do not!
It’s not true.
We are peaceful Germans.
I did not tell them
about Loveday.
I did not tell them
that Father and Opa
were locked away.
OUTSIDERS
I did not fit in.
They called me a Kraut, a Nazi, Gestapo.
But I was born here,
my sister was born here,
my mother died here.
We will all die here.
My interest in ancient tombs
and mummies and dead things
did not help.
I was a freak, a vampire, a weirdo.
Aunt Hilda was right.
And Jeffrey’s dark skin,
amid a sea of white,
made him an alien too.
In the country
of his ancestors.
They called him abo,
darky, boong,
black boy, nigger.
MY ANNIE
She took the small canoe,
untied the rope.
Pushed the little boat into the dam.
I cried and cried.
Annie why did you leave me?
Why did you die?
Because I loved the water and
that sweet little boat.
I loved the rhythm, the ripples,
the reflections.
I lay on the boat
with my fingers dangling,
feeling for fish.
When I stretched too far
the boat toppled,
tipped me in.
The water was a shock.
It was icy and deep.
I drank it in, panicked,
forgot how to swim.
DEATH AND JEFFREY
I asked Jeffrey about the dead.
I asked him about his customs,
about his people.
He didn’t remember much,
just funerals
at the mission.
Whitefella funerals,
white folk sermons,
whitefella ways.
I remember some smoke,
and my mother and aunties
moaning.
But it was long time ago
and the memory is
like a wisp of smoke.
DEATH: A POEM
The hollowed-out hull
of a blue-tongue lizard.
Chickens charred
in a bushfire.
A heart attack or
a broken heart.
A small body
floating in a dam.
A long, dark,
deep depression.
Ash swirling
from an incinerator.
The smell of burning
on a hot breeze.
An internment camp.
A feeble body, a cold night.
A blue-born baby
and a bad placenta.
A birthday celebration—
thirteen today.
Breasts sprouting, limbs gangly,
a smear of blood.
WAR II
Aunt Hilda prepared
bratwurst and sauerkraut
for my birthday lunch,
which I would not eat.
I am not German.
I am Australian.
And I don’t—
I won’t—eat meat.
It was the first time
I had spoken to my aunt
since she cremated
my creatures.
You are German
and you will sit
and you will eat and
you will be normal.
I turned, walked out.
Leaving her with her hands
on her hips and her face
as purple as a cabbage.
DRESSED FOR DINNER
Father came home early from work
to take us all to dinner.
We were going to eat Swiss food
at a restaurant in the city.
I waited until he called, then emerged
wearing one of Mother’s dresses,
her earrings, her perfume,
and the fox stole.
Aunt Hilda’s eyes widened,
her mouth tightened,
at the sight of the curled creature
warming my neck.
Father, too, was stunned.
Lottie, dear Lottie. You look so very,
very beautiful.
You look exactly like your mother.
I smiled but there was sadness
and distance in his eyes.
I slipped on Mother’s coat,
gathered myself into her arms.
A GIFT AND A CURSE
Your dark eyes
Your dark hair
The ruby lips, the shape
Of your face
Your everything
is hers—
Your mother’s.
You are a gift
And a curse.
MORE GIFTS
Aunt Hilda gave me
the essentials: new underwear,
a flannelette nightgown
and perfumed soap.
Oma tucked my hair behind my ear.
Adrianna. You and she, just the same.
She gave me a photo of Mother.
Her beautiful sorrow held
in a gilt-edged frame.
There was still sadness in Father’s eyes
when he passed me the gift-wrapped box.
Usually he gave me books,
but this was a camera:
a Praktica Super TL.
I hope you like it.
You seemed to like Oma’s photos—
now you can make your own
box of memories.
I love it, Father. Thank you.
I stroked the leather case,
flicked through the instructions,
rattled the boxes of film.
I could not wait to try it.
SPELLS
When we stepped out into the chilly air
I put my hands into Mother’s coat pocket
and there it was, almost forgotten.
The folded envelope.
On the way home,
I pulled it out.
I slipped the rings on my fingers,
rubbed and rubbed them,
as if they were a genie’s bottle.
Tried to spirit something
of Mother from the rings
and into me.
A deep yearning had settled.
I needed Annie.
My dear, dear Annie,
who had disappeared
like a broken spell when
I spoke her name to Jeffrey.
PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE I
I took my camera everywhere
and photographed what I saw.
I collected images of feathers
and half-eaten plums,
of bones and skulls, of maggots
eating the inside of a blackbird,
of a decomposing kangaroo
lying on the side of the road,
its mouth ajar as if in surprise,
eyes dull and dry in death.
Its stomach had a wound
where large birds had been feasting.
There was a stain around the body
like a dark shadow.
Its left foot was severed, but for
a sliver of fur.
I took Father’s small knife
from my pocket and sliced it free.
Photographed the paw,
the black claws.
Then wrapped it up
took it home.
MOTHER MEMORY VI
Mother is leaning over my bed.
She has woken me gently
from a shallow sleep.
Her face is shadowy
in the dim room.
I inhale her perfume.
Her hair tickles my face.
I run a strand along my cheek,
as soft as a feather.
Be good for your father,
she whispers.
Her breath is fresh and sweet,
as if she has just eaten
fruit salad and honey.
Be good while I am gone.
She unwraps her hair from my fingers,
kisses my hand and cheek,
offers a sad smile
and glides away.
Gone.
GOLDEN BANDS I
The next day I slipped the rings
from my fingers,
placed them on Father’s desk.
He picked them up,
turned them over and over.
I found them in a pocket
in Mother’s long black coat
in this folded envelope.
Father slipped them on
his ring finger
up to knuckle—
as far as they would go.
I thought they were lost,
gone forever.
I must have put them in the coat.
I don’t remember.
His words were as heavy
as an anchor thrown to sea.
Your mother took the rings
from her swollen fingers
before the birth.
The golden bands shone;
the diamonds glittered.
She asked the nurse
to keep them safe
until I arrived.
We never saw her again.
He took a long, long breath.
Not alive.
GOLDEN BANDS II
Were you happy together?
Did you love her?
I wanted to know.
Yes, I loved her very much.
Yes, we were happy. Once. Often.
But not always. Not in the photographs.
Or in my memories.
Not when Annie died.
We did not c
ope, I suppose.
But even before—in the photos.
You both look sad.
The war years took their toll.
My father, your grandfather, died.
Your mother and grandmother
had to fend for themselves—
farm the land,
feed themselves.
Your mother was weak from hunger,
weak from the work,
even after the war
when Annie was born.
And then you arrived,
and then the other baby,
carried to term and lost.
Lost.
Both of them gone…
THE SADNESS LINGERED
Your mother was fragile—
we lost many relatives
through the war.
We suffered
the indignity of being imprisoned
by our adopted country.
Family and friends
died in the war.
Some at the hands of the Nazis.
Your mother had Jewish relatives
and friends who disappeared.
People she loved.
Those years after the war
were not easy.
The sadness lingered,
but nothing compared
to the loss
of our dear, dear Annie.
She was such a joy.
She was the sunshine
we longed for.
And then she was gone.
WHAT OF MOTHER?
Father cleared his throat.
The baby was stillborn…
He looked out the window.
I nodded, said: Yes, yes.
I wanted more.
I wanted it all.
He had skirted
and sidestepped this
too many times.
We never spoke of death.
We never spoke of Mother.
We never spoke of Annie.
Your mother was not strong;
she had suffered for years—
since the war.
She died during the birth,
of the birth.
They said it was
a blood infection,
but I think she died
of a broken heart.
DYING MANY DEATHS
I thought back to Father’s words:
She died of a broken heart.
And to Annie’s words:
Jill fell down and
broke her crown and Jack
came tumbling after.
Father tumbled
when Mother died.
We all died
when Annie died.
The Art of Taxidermy Page 8
