Ron had laughed at the time as a drip fell onto a file and said something about bleeding for the cause. But she’d found it hard to laugh with him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he’d said. He was a jovial man and used to making people laugh.
‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ she’d said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, destroying all this history. Shouldn’t we archive it?’
‘Most of it’s rubbish, Lori, case notes on people long dead or moved on, old admin files. We’ve been told to cull them and that’s what we have to do.’
They’d spent the Saturday pulling out the old files, yellowed cardboard folders filled with white sheets, people’s lives typed all over them. Ron had responsibility for culling the files and, at first, she took little notice of their content. She tore them up and threw them in the garbage bags to be taken away for shredding. They’d laughed and talked and drunk coffee, their voices echoing in the empty building; she loved the old building, its grand staircase and high ceilings, she felt at home in it, even at night when others joked about it being haunted. But on the Sunday, as she’d sat on the floor in the main office, waiting for Ron to come back from the toilet, she’d picked up a discarded file from the pile strewn around her, half of its contents falling on the floor. It had ‘Native Welfare’ on the cover with the last entry dated 1951. She opened the file and began reading the remaining case notes. She didn’t hear Ron return.
‘Well, let’s get into it. We need to finish today. No time to read, Lori. I’ll start on the cabinet in Paddy’s office, there’s a lot of old admin files in there, if you want to keep bagging those old case notes.’
She looked up at him behind the counter, her eyes wide. She felt caught out, uncertain, but Ron was already in Patrick’s office, whistling to himself, the door half closed. She reached for another file and read that, another Aborigine, a woman this time, the last entry dated 1949. On top of each file was written a fraction—four-sixteenths, eight-sixteenths—what did they mean? She flipped through the pages of several more files and it wasn’t until she reached the back and read the earliest entries that she realised what they measured.
They were fractions of Aboriginality.
She kept on reading. Half an hour passed. A loud sneeze from Ron, his laughter and ‘Bloody dust’ unnerved her and she grabbed some administrative files on vehicle purchases balanced precariously on Hayley’s chair and thrust them into a garbage bag. She knelt up and peered over the counter. Ron came out dragging several bags.
‘I’m going upstairs to Adoptions. You right here? I’ll be a while. Just keep throwing it all in the bags.’
She looked at the files piled up on the desks, the chairs, spread over the floor, then back at Ron. He smiled and walked off. She continued culling but when she found one with Native Welfare on it she put it aside. An hour later, on the floor below the filing cabinets, she sat and read each one. Most were case notes, brief entries recording the department’s encounters with the person, rations provided—tea, sugar, flour or tobacco. But in some she found solemnly worded requests—seeking the department’s permission to legally marry; some were stamped approved, others rejected. It took her a while to work out.
Approval depended on the fractions.
She gathered the files into a pile beside her and leant back against a filing cabinet.
It was Ron’s sudden return that had caused the paper cut.
Lori stopped peeling the potato and looked at her finger. She still didn’t feel right about what they had done that day in culling the files. Her hands were dirty. She wished she could talk about it with Aggie, but that was out of the question. Perhaps I’ll raise it with Aimee … or Paddy. Warmth rose from her belly to her face at the thought of Patrick. She peeled the last potato and threw it in the sink with the others and rinsed her hands clean. The phone rang again and she dried her hands on her apron; it would be like this all morning as her family shared their love at Christmas.
Aimee opened her eyes and realised it was the first time she had woken up alone on Christmas morning. She was soaked in sweat and her mouth felt like the bottom of a cocky’s cage. She flung off the cotton sheet and sat up, squinting at her watch on the bedside table. Her head throbbed. What? It can’t be? Ten o’clock!
‘Oh, no!’ she cried. She’d told Lori she’d be there at eleven to help set up and she’d need to shower, dry her hair, get dressed, ring her mother. Lori’s present needed wrapping, and Gerry and Jan’s; she’d meant to do it last night but she got drunk instead. By herself. Not good. What had she been thinking? She knew what she had been thinking—about everything—the past, here, the future, her father. Lee.
The phone rang, jangling her head; she gripped the side of the bed and unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She stood up slowly and felt her way into the kitchen, bumping into the breakfast barstool as she stretched out for the blue phone on the wall. With the other hand she rubbed her forehead back and forth.
‘Hello,’ she drawled. Saliva dribbled out the side of her mouth as she leant on the breakfast bar; the white laminex appeared to shimmer in front of her—she gagged.
‘Aimee?’
‘Yes, hello, who is this?’ she asked, swallowing quickly.
‘It’s Lee, Aimee. Merry Christmas.’
Lee? Aimee squeezed her eyes tight as if that might stop an image forming, stop her regretting.
‘Aimee, are you there?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry, Merry Christmas, Lee. How are you? How’d you get my number?’ They hadn’t spoken since last Christmas when Lee rang her parents’ home.
‘I rang your mum.’
‘Oh, okay, um, how’ve you been, how’s Lillian?’
Lee’s mother, an editor, worked in Melbourne for a small publishing firm. She’d been widowed last year when Ben, Lee’s father, died, several months before Aimee moved out. It had triggered her decision to leave; Lee had asked her to come to the funeral and meet Lillian and the rest of the family and although their friendship had deepened over that year, a development she’d found both disconcerting and exciting, she’d felt uncomfortable about attending. It was too big a step and Lee had started to notice things, to ask questions she couldn’t answer. While Lee was away, she’d applied for the social work position in Kalgoorlie, and the week before Christmas she’d moved out.
‘Mum’s good. I stayed with her on the way back from Tassie last month. She’s got plenty of support and her work keeps her busy. She asked about you.’
Aimee’s head throbbed. She needed a drink of water. She sidestepped her way round the breakfast bar to the sink, stretching the phone cord as far as it would go, and turned on the cold water tap. With her mouth under it she gulped the warm stream, unable to tell if Lee was still talking, the phone a few inches from her ear.
She wiped her mouth on her arm and struggled to stay focused. ‘Did you say Tasmania? What were you doing over there?’ she asked politely.
‘I met up with some activists and I’m thinking of going back next year to work with them. If I drive over maybe I could drop in.’
She wanted to say how much she admired Lee’s courage, that she missed their time together, that she was sorry; but she just wanted to be sick. ‘Yeh, sure. Look, I have to go, Lee. I’m running late for lunch at a friend’s. Thank you so much for ringing. Merry Christmas, Lee.’
‘Merry Christmas, Aimee. I—’
Aimee hung up and bolted to the toilet.
Half an hour later, she leapt in the car to drive to Lori’s. Her headache had gone thanks to two Panadol, she’d wrapped Lori’s present, her hair was still wet, she hadn’t rung her mother and her stomach felt cavernous; but she had remembered the crate of cooldrink she was contributing to lunch. The icy cold bottles clinked as she drove away and she reached back to grab one, pressing it against her hot cheeks and over her bare arms. She resisted the urge to drink it and slid the bottle back into the crate, keeping her eye on the road. Not that there was much traff
ic about; several children on new bikes rode past her, brightly coloured plastic streamers flying out the end of the bikes’ handlebars. There was a languid heaviness to the day that matched how she felt.
The main street was empty as she crossed it. She looked up at the post office clock, five to eleven—ten minutes to Lori’s, five minutes late. She drove past Paddy Hannan’s statue and a median strip of lawn outside the Town Hall. A small group of men, women and children and several stringy dogs sat under one of the trees dotted along the strip. One of the dogs ran after her car, barking. She looked over and a woman she didn’t know waved to her; perhaps she saw the government plates and thought she knew her. She waved back anyway then recognised her as one of the women who’d sat beside her at Cundeelee—Edie’s daughter, Noreen—and she waved back harder.
She thought of lunch last Sunday with Gerry and Jan—their conversation had been on her mind last night and she would have asked her father about it had she rung this morning. They’d shared two bottles of good red wine that, perhaps, had made Jan unwary, as she’d claimed it wasn’t a water shortage that was forcing the people of Cundeelee to move. Gerry had interrupted, tried to change the subject, but that had only made Jan more voluble and she’d glared at him through half-closed eyes, her hands cupping her chin, elbows on the dining table. She’d leant forward, a little unsteadily, and enunciated, ‘It’s uranium.’
Aimee braked suddenly as a kite fluttered furiously in front of her windscreen. She’d crested a small rise in the road where the railway line crossed and, directly in front of her, a man and a boy were trying to get the kite in the air. They jumped off the road and ran along the dusty footpath but the still air provided no leverage and the colourful diamond crashed to the ground. She waved and smiled as she drove on and they laughed and waved back. On the other side of the road several children in bathers leapt under arcs of water from a sprinkler on their front lawn. She heard their squeals of laughter and smiled—sounds of her best childhood memories; chasing her brother with a water pistol, squirting her parents with the hose, her father chasing her mother with a bucket of water. Heat, water and Christmas, they went together. The best Christmas Day she’d ever had was in water, in the Indian Ocean in front of Lee’s house, the year before last. It had been so hot in the house they’d grabbed their lunch and an umbrella, walked over the road, across the sand and plonked themselves in the sea.
She sighed and let the sadness move; she didn’t try to push it away, to not know it. Maybe she was hungover and didn’t care. She turned into Lori’s street. The shady trees on both sides gave a semblance of coolness, belied by the waves of heat shimmering above the bitumen. Several cars were already parked in front of Lori’s house. She judged she could fit on the verge and turned up the driveway onto the dirt, opposite the front gate. Voices and music and laughter greeted her as she stepped out of the car. She lifted out the crate and staggered in through the gate. The front door, bedecked with a plastic Christmas wreath, was open.
‘Hello, can I come in?’ she called out.
There was no answer so she kept going, down the hall. The kitchen was full of people, all talking at once. They spilled out through the open back door and onto the patio. Children chased each other around the garden, squealing. Framed in the doorway, an old woman dressed in black, who she assumed was Lori’s nonna, leant back on a lazyboy, a small child on her lap. Just as she thought she’d drop the crate a tall, olive-skinned man noticed her and reached out for it.
‘Here, I’ll take that. I’m Antony, Gina’s husband.’
At that everyone stopped talking and turned to stare at her. For a second she froze, the crate halfway between her and Antony, then like a film paused and restarted, everyone moved and spoke at once.
Lori rushed over. ‘Aimee, you’re here. Everybody, meet Aimee, Aimee, this is my brother-in-law, Antony—oh, you’ve met. Mum, Mum, this is Aimee, Aimee this is my Mum, Karen,’ proclaimed Lori, tugging at her mother’s sleeve.
The crate disappeared from her grasp and she was clasped to Karen’s bosom, kissed on both cheeks then passed around all of Lori’s relatives. Within minutes she had met and kissed them all, forgotten most of their names and was seated beside Lori’s nonna, a cold drink in her hand. The large brown eyes of the cherubic child in Nonna’s lap fastened on Aimee, her short black hair tucked behind her ears, so thick it looked like a wig. She was surprised to see her ears were pierced with little gold studs.
‘You like to hold the bambina, Aimee? Here, take her.’
She went to decline, the drink in her hand an excuse but Nonna was holding the child towards her and the child’s chubby little arms were already up, reaching for her, a toothless smile opening her face. She was clearly used to being passed around. As Aimee placed her drink on the ground under her chair and took the child from Nonna, she glanced towards the kitchen and saw they were all looking at her through the window, the back door, and they all had the same soft smile, a look of adoration, that flowed over the child. For a moment she basked in it too, something softening inside her, a rich and liquid sweetness. The child bounced in her lap, and Aimee laughed, struggling to keep hold of her.
‘Caty, Caty, careful. Where’s your mamma? Angela, time you feed her, no?’
‘I’m coming, Nonna,’ Angela called out through the kitchen window. A few minutes later she stepped out the back door and smiled at Aimee with her arms outstretched and the child bounced exuberantly at the sight of her mother. ‘Thanks Aimee, you look like a natural. Come on little one, I’ll feed you and change your nappy before lunch, eh.’
Caty’s fat little legs pumped the air as she passed her up. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Aimee mumbled and fiddled under the chair for her drink but Angela was already back inside. She quickly turned to Nonna but she’d dozed off. A basketball bounced in from the backyard followed closely by two boys, Angela’s eldest and Gina’s youngest.
‘Out the back, boys, out the back,’ called Lori from the back door.
Aimee stood up. ‘Let me do something. Can I bring anything out?’
‘There’s already enough cooks in the kitchen. But I’ll tell you what, Dad’ll be back in a minute with the ice, if you want to help him put the cooldrinks in the eskies; keeps the kids from opening the fridge all the time, it’s struggling as it is.’ Lori scanned the scene under the pergola, hands on her hips and seemed pleased. ‘It looks like Christmas, doesn’t it? I’m glad you could come.’
Aimee nodded, taking in the white tablecloths covering the long wooden trestle tables, adorned with small tubs of scarlet poinsettias and garlands of greenery, a mix of ivy and baby’s breath; a dozen places had been set with a variety of tablemats and cutlery, a glass in front of each one. Wooden pews, softened by long narrow cushions, provided the seating, except at the far end of the table where a high-backed chair had been placed. ‘It certainly does, Lori,’ she answered, smiling at her friend. ‘It’s magical.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lori throwing her arms around her, squeezing tightly. She stepped back, her hands on Aimee’s shoulders and grinned. ‘Paddy should be here soon and I’ll need your help to save him from the horde,’ she whispered.
‘What’s that, Lori, your priest, he’s coming?’
They turned and looked down at a wide-awake Nonna, peering up at them.
‘Yes, Nonna, I told you he’s coming for lunch and he’s not a priest anymore,’ Lori responded gently and ushered Aimee inside.
‘Once a priest always a priest,’ Nonna muttered to their backs.
The heat inside the kitchen hit them like a blanket. The smell of the roast dinner made her mouth water. Lori’s mother and sisters were buzzing around the room with saucepans and dishes in their hands, the men were cutting up turkey and ham and there were plates lined up on every available surface. They were all talking at once, giving each other orders and wiping sweat from their faces as they tried to manoeuvre around each other. It looked to her like organised mayhem. Lori grabbed a pair of mitts a
nd opened the oven; they all moaned at once.
‘Sorry,’ she said. She lifted out a large pan of golden roast potatoes and quickly closed the door. At that moment her father arrived down the hallway carrying several large bags of ice. He was the only cool person in the house.
‘Let my friend, Aimee, help you with those, Dad,’ Lori yelled pointing at her from the other end of the kitchen. The noise in the room was reaching a crescendo.
‘It’s a madhouse in here, Aimee, it’s safer outside, come with me,’ he said, grinning at her, as he handed her a bag of ice.
She followed him relishing the coolness. Alfredo was solid with wide shoulders and a thick head of curly black hair, although she guessed he’d be late fifties, around her father’s age; her father was still handsome but his thick, darkening blonde hair had receded.
‘Where do you want this, Mr Patroni?’
‘Let’s fill the big esky in the corner first, Aimee. And call me Fred, everybody else does.’ He looked as if he was about to tease her, his eyes amused, or was waiting for her to say something funny.
‘Okay, lunch is nearly up, everybody in and wash their hands,’ Lori called out to the children. ‘Dad, when you’ve finished, can you help Nonna up to the table, please? Aimee, could you …’
She looked up to see Lori swing around and Patrick standing behind her. He was late. A few minutes later he was hurried out the door by Lori, his fold-up table in hand with instructions where to place it and a small white tablecloth to put over it. Lori dashed back inside leaving Nonna to stare up at the stranger, and leaving him somewhat bewildered. Aimee rescued them both.
‘Paddy, this is Lori’s nonna, Nonna, this is Patrick O’Connor, Lori’s supervisor.’
‘How do you do, Nonna,’ Patrick said, with a respectful nod of his head.
Nonna, her head tilted sideways, squinted one eye against a ray of sunlight shining through a tiny gap in the vine leaves and fixed the other on Patrick, ‘Ah, the priest. Welcome.’
The Secrets We Keep Page 10
