Not Just Black and White

by Lesley Williams

  It was also helpful having cacti planted strategically beneath the bedroom windows. I told the kids it was to stop prowlers from breaking in, after a man’s watch was found in the garden, but it worked equally well to stop the kids breaking out.

  Blackfullas have a habit of turning up on your doorstep unannounced, looking for a place to stay. There is some comfort knowing you can travel almost anywhere in Queensland and, if you’re stuck for a bed, a cousin or distant relative, even a friend of a friend, might take you in.

  In the mid 1980s, when the boys were about nine and twelve, and Tammy seven, there was an unexpected knock on our door. Standing on the veranda was a relative I had not seen for years, along with his partner and teenage son, looking for somewhere to sleep. I let them stay, although reluctantly, because I was suspicious of what they did for money. Neither of them had a stable job yet somehow they managed to travel around.

  The boys were shifted into one bedroom while Tammy and I continued to share the other, so that the visitors could use the other room. After a couple of nights, there was still no sign of them leaving. They didn’t cook or clean, or give me any money for food, and I was getting fed up. But I said nothing and didn’t kick them out, in case our mob thought I was turning my back on family. Who knows what they bloody did all day while the kids went to school and I worked? On about the third day, I returned home from work and was surprised to see them digging in the back garden.

  ‘What are you fullas doing?’ I questioned, as they sprinkled seeds in the soil. The teenage boy wouldn’t look me in the eye, leaving the explaining to his father instead.

  ‘Oh we’re just planting some pawpaw trees for you,’ the older relative replied, before reaching for the hose. ‘With a little water, soon you’ll be picking your very own fruit.’

  I returned inside feeling slightly guilty for believing my visitors were freeloaders. Although it would’ve been nice to receive some money to help buy food, growing us some fruit seemed a thoughtful gesture.

  Early the next day our visitors left, the same way as they’d arrived: without much warning. The boys moved back into their separate bedrooms and life returned to normal – except my weekly routine now included watering the back garden. I enjoyed the time outside in the yard, watching to see how much the plants had grown. I’d think of Christmases in Cherbourg with my family, eating the pawpaw and rockmelon Ma had bought.

  Amazingly, in a matter of weeks, dozens of bright green seedlings started sprouting from the earth. I’d never been much of a gardener, but with just a bit of water and some sunshine my pawpaws were really taking off. ‘Soon we’ll be having fresh fruit to eat,’ I’d skite to Dan and Rodney, showing them the plants. They didn’t appear interested in my feats as a gardener, preferring instead to kick a soccer ball around.

  On the following Saturday I arrived early to pick up the boys from Scouts. To pass the time Tammy climbed a tree with some other children, while they waited for their brothers to finish. I waited in the car and I reached for my magazine beneath the driver’s seat, only to find next to it, a matchbox … half filled with something much lighter and far more suspicious than the usual matchsticks. Inside were tiny seeds – not the kind I’ve seen in pawpaws. I suddenly realised what those freeloading relatives were up to.

  ‘Tammy, come quick, get in,’ I ordered as I started the engine. The poor girl leapt with some grace from a low-lying branch straight into the back seat of the car.

  ‘Where are we going, Mum?’

  ‘Don’t ask questions. We gotta go.’

  Gem-Gem rattled along the road as we sped off looking for the nearest phone box.

  ‘Do you think it’s yarndi?’ I quizzed my sister Alex over the telephone, as I’d never seen marijuana seeds before.

  ‘It sounds like it could be,’ she replied after listening to my description.

  ‘Then what should I do?’

  ‘Well you’ve got no choice but to report it immediately to the police. Because if you don’t and someone else finds it, they might think these are your drugs!’

  I thought of the ‘pawpaw’ plants I’d been religiously watering in the backyard. Many of them had grown to various heights but were yet to bear any fruit. I couldn’t believe the neighbours hadn’t seen them, or the family services’ people who came around for their unexpected chats. I was terrified to call the police. Who would believe my pawpaw story?

  For the rest of the weekend I tortured myself with images of being arrested. But far worse than being locked up was the thought of having my children taken off me by government workers, to then be fostered and cared for by someone else.

  I sweated it out until Monday morning and took the matchbox to the school principal. My reasoning was that Mr Baker was a respected person in the community, so then maybe he could tell the police what an honest person I was. As we waited in his office for the police to arrive, he assured me I wouldn’t get into trouble – and I didn’t. It turned out that one of the fathers involved with my sons’ Scout group was in fact the local detective. He took the seeds into police custody and then accompanied me to our house.

  ‘So it looks like we won’t be eating pawpaw this summer, hey?’ I joked, as the detective pulled out the crop growing in my backyard.

  ‘Not from this lot, you won’t.’

  Tammy

  Fortunately, I’ve never had a taste for alcohol or a desire to use drugs. Having a teetotaller mother and grandmother and several sober aunts reinforced in me how a strong Aboriginal woman behaves – she doesn’t need to drink to have a good time. I have seen enough drunkenness to put me off for a lifetime. I have been shocked to see how quickly a wedding can be ruined by a grog-fuelled brawl, or Christmas celebrations disintegrate into a child’s worst nightmare, like Christmas evening 1987, when I was too terrified to sleep in a tent with my family, in case ‘that Cyril man came back to kill us’.

  On that occasion, we’d seen our elderly great-aunt set upon by her drunken non-Indigenous partner, Cyril. He had been offended that someone had turned down the volume of his blaring radio, so he took out his anger on our aunt. As ‘payback’, my uncles flogged him – drawing blood from his busted lip and giving him a wound above the eye. Cyril was no match for men half his age, so he rang the local police and pleaded for their assistance. ‘Come and lock up these coons who’re at my house,’ he said.

  Sure enough, the blue-and-white reinforcements soon arrived. But to Cyril’s dismay, the police apprehended him instead.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Cyril,’ we cheered, waving goodbye as the paddy wagon took him away.

  ‘When I get out, I’m gonna kill ya all!’ he screamed back at us.

  That’s what I remember most about that Christmas. There’s nothing appealing about seeing adults staggering around at a party having pissed themselves, and the next day, having sobered up, expecting to be treated with the respect deserving of an Elder. It was the strong women in my family I looked up to, and respected, rightfully as my Elders. That is why I never went near the grog or smoked yarndi, knowing that these substances have broken so many Aboriginal families.

  Chapter 22

  Lesley

  The hockey fields were teeming with the colours of all the different uniforms. From the car I had a clear view of Tammy and her best friend, Naomi, practising before the inter-school carnival started. The two friends had been playing together for at least five years, since the early grades of primary school. The whole family had turned out to watch Tammy’s first game, as a six year old.

  On this brisk and foggy Saturday morning, the gullies and floodplains were smothered in a dense white cloud. I remember the white hockey ball rolling to the edge of the field and disappearing into the mist. The girls chased after it, like a pack of fox terriers out on a hunt. They were eager to win their debut match by as many goals as possible. Their teenage coach had promised to buy a lolly for every goal scored. The
team won, so Tammy says, thrashing the other side fourteen goals to nil.

  Tammy

  How could I ever forget the score? I remember it by how many lollies I held in my hand!

  Lesley

  Later, Naomi and Tammy would travel all over the state in representative sides. They were good little players and took the sport seriously, even when they competed against other schools in a friendly local competition.

  As the girls were practising their drills that autumn afternoon before the carnival started, I saw two boys from another school sitting on the retaining wall near my car, eating apples.

  ‘Hey, there’s an Abo!’ pointed one of the boys, as Tammy ran to retrieve a stray ball. To the enjoyment of his offsider, he then threw the remains of his apple at her.

  My daughter stared at the splattered juice on her uniform and the core lying on the ground. She seemed unable to respond – and I understood that. It brought back my memory of being teased by the other kids, as my Cherbourg classmates and I left the sports oval on the back of the truck. The deep and ancient instinct to protect my child kicked in. It blocked the fear that would’ve normally prevented me from speaking. The slamming of my car door made the boys jump out of their skins. They hadn’t expected the Abo’s mother to be suddenly standing right behind them.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I demanded. The boys responded with a stony silence and refused to answer the question. I scanned the field for a teacher, spotted one, and went up to report what had happened.

  ‘Oh well, she probably said something to them,’ the teacher argued, trying to downplay what had happened. Then she turned her attention away from me to rummage in her handbag.

  ‘Unlike you, I-I-I was there,’ I stammered, ‘and saw the whole damn thing!’

  Her lack of concern shook my confidence, but there was more I wanted to say. I wanted to make up for a lifetime of knockdowns for which I’d previously remained quiet. As the starting siren rang out across the fields, teams of children hurried to take their positions and coaches paced nervously on the sidelines. But I would not let her go. ‘My daughter came to play a game of hockey, not to put up with racism.’

  I’m not even sure if the teacher heard me. She just turned and walked away. But it really didn’t matter. I had a voice now, and this was the first time my child had seen me find the courage to use it.

  You’d hope that to be accepted as an equal, and not be subjected to racism, you simply have to be a human being like everyone else. We know that’s not true. Equality – it’s a strange thing … good to have, difficult to get, far harder to keep.

  Equality for blackfullas, especially in the 1980s and 1990s meant performing better than the average person, working harder than your colleagues, having a cleaner home than the rest of the neighbourhood, always being polite and well mannered, never making a scene. If you have to put in more effort and outperform before you might even be considered equal, can you ever have equality?

  It wasn’t fair having to jump through so many hoops. But times were different then, and I was different. There was only one of me and so many of them. Besides, if I wanted to get ahead and provide a better life for the kids, I needed a permanent job with a regular income. And for that, it was worth jumping the next hoop.

  While my traineeship as an Aboriginal teacher’s aide remained on contract rather than permanent, there was always a cloud of uncertainty hanging over our lives. Would the position be extended and the agreement renewed? Would the funding for my wages dry up? Should I hold out for the contract to be extended or look for a new job? My plan was for my role to be made permanent and eventually it was, in 1986, after two years of being a trainee – but it wasn’t easy to pull off. The school had to really need me to justify a permanent position. So by working hard I hoped the school would see the valuable contribution I was making – that I was helping the Aboriginal students and their families cope with the often stressful experience of mainstream schooling.

  I would arrive early and work late, work during my lunch breaks and took work home – accumulating 240 hours of unpaid overtime. When I finished my duties in the library I’d volunteer in the classrooms or help out in the school tuckshop, making sandwiches. My day was jam-packed with helping out and being needed. I’d greet everyone with a chirpy hello in the morning, yet in the catty world of workplace politics, you had to tread a fine line. You didn’t want the others to think you were ‘sucking up’.

  Even working hard had its risks: on the one hand you had to be seen to be doing your share of the work, but on the other, you had to be careful not to do too good a job and so receive undue attention. It happens in most workplaces and certainly wasn’t unique to the school, but my situation as the only Aboriginal staff member came with its own particular challenges.

  By far the hardest part of striving for equality is dealing with racist comments. Not the blatant, in-your-face kind of racism, which is obvious, and your response can be equally so – a quick burst of justified anger. In those cases, you mouth off at the offender before you know it, and you make a complaint, and no shred of doubt erodes your confidence. It was the subtle kind of racism that was more damaging – slimy remarks camouflaged as a joke or a slip of the tongue, often coming when least expected. It was not necessarily the words themselves but how the remark made me feel that I hated.

  Anger. Hurt. Doubt. Betrayal. Sadness. The emotions you feel when you experience racism from unexpected sources are confusing. You don’t know what to think. The body flinches but the head desperately wants to believe the best.

  ‘Lesley, you’re different … you and your children are not like those other ones … especially the half-caste activist types.’

  Flinch.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. Lighten up! It’s very Australian to have a good laugh at yourself.’

  At times my confidence would take a hit and feed my low self-esteem. Is my friend really a racist, or is it just me – am I being too sensitive? I also hate when, afterwards, the friend goes off and gets on with life without so much as another thought, while my spirit limps away. Such mixed feelings linger.

  One such experience at the school still upsets me whenever I think about it. I may have succeeded in my goal of securing a permanent position, but my efforts weren’t enough to gain the respect of at least one colleague, my then supervisor. At the staff Christmas party, in front of all the other staff, she mocked a colleague who had asked me to help him with a task. ‘What did your last gin die from?’ she teased.

  I stayed at the party for as long as I could before the humiliation gnawed too painfully. I’d incorrectly assumed my supervisor saw me as equally deserving of respect – for all the valuable work I did. What added to my pain and sense of betrayal was that I’d always thought I was the only Aboriginal person working at the school at that time. Certainly no one declared their Aboriginality in support of me at that party. But many years later, in the late 1990s, one of the former teachers called in to my house to see me. This was surprising because she hadn’t ever been very friendly to me. After some pleasantries, she sat down at my kitchen table and pulled out some paperwork. She wanted me to support her daughter’s application for a special benefit – on the basis that she was of Indigenous descent.

  ‘Are you Aboriginal?’ I asked, shocked by the sudden revelation. In all the years I’d known her, I’d never seen her engage with the local Indigenous community, let alone intimate she was Aboriginal. The teacher plonked her so-called ‘evidence’ on the table, including what she believed was proof of Aboriginality – a photo album and family tree, along with the declaration that her ancestor was an Aboriginal.

  Her response still didn’t answer my question. Did she identify as an Aboriginal person?

  Tammy

  I knew I was different – brown-skin different, a-dad-who-died different. Differences never to be ashamed of but nonetheless seized upon in the fickl
e world of the school playground. It is among the swings and in the sandpit where hair colour and hairiness, height and roundness, even the newness of the family car, determines the all-too-important pecking order – and the gulf between mere friendliness and being the best of friends can suddenly become a deep and impassable chasm. Being the only Aboriginal student in my class, my differences were first pointed out to me when I was about five.

  ‘What stinks?’ a group of pig-tailed, ribbon-wearing girls giggled when I approached to play. I sniffed the air for the offending scent and checked the soles of my shoes. No dog poo. No foul pong. There was nothing to cause the pretty little girls with their porcelain faces to gasp and flee – other than me.

  The next day, the day after that and for many more days thereafter, I continued to hover around the same group of girls. I hoped that, by waiting long enough, I’d be absorbed into their game. Sometimes the chance came via a stray ball. Or, if the numbers were short and an extra player was needed – someone who could help them win – that someone, because I was quick and agile, was occasionally me. Eventually I tired of waiting and hoping, forging instead my own group of special friends – some of whom also happened to be on the outer. We were all different in our own unique ways (some were male, others female, and each belonging to families of varying social status) but, to us, it made no difference. These friendships continued, along with others added to the fold, well into high school, with our bond only strengthening as we got older.

  Although I’ve never been short of friends and remain grateful for those dear friendships, as a child you tend to notice, and remember, those things you missed out on, or were excluded from.

  ‘You’ve got a good bunch of friends,’ Mum would often remind me. ‘Don’t be worrying about them other pissy girls. Because when you finish school, you’ll probably never see them again for the rest of your life.’