Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘You going to stay for some soup? I’ve got two plates but we’ll have to share the spoon.’

  Mary shakes her head. ‘It’s your tucker. I just come to see you orright.’ She smiles at Jessica and points to her stomach. ‘Your baby look pretty right. Got three of me own now, also two died. Girls, no boys, boys is trouble.’ ‘I’d like a boy,’ Jessica laughs. ‘Joe, that’s me dad, he always wanted a boy.’

  ‘You better pray God gives you a girl, Jessie, boy’s no bloody good,’ Mary repeats.

  ‘Will you come again, Mary? Come and see me?’

  Mary smiles. ‘You good to me and my mob, missus Jessie. My memory good. I don’t forget what you done.’

  She looks about her. The sun is beginning to set and the creek is a silver ribbon with the river gums bathed in a soft golden light. The birds are settling early for the night, making the usual fuss high up in the branches.

  Mary now points to the creek. ‘I make you a fish trap. There’s yellow-belly in there for sure, I show you how to catch the buggers. Good tucker, yellow-belly.’ ‘Yeah, I remember,’ Jessica says.

  ‘You have good memory, Jessie. One of them boys caught you that fish, he’s dead now.’

  ‘Oh. I’m so sorry, Mary,’ Jessica exclaims.

  ‘TB,’ Mary says, ‘cough hisself to death.’

  ‘Come any time you like, you hear, any time,’ Jessica pleads with the black woman.

  Mary takes a step towards Jessica and pats her on the stomach. ‘This women’s things, I help you, eh Jessie?’ ‘Oh, yes please, Mary.’ Jessica smiles, and the Aboriginal woman can see she’s close to tears.

  ‘Don’t you worry, you’ll be good,’ Mary says smiling. ‘You got a nice one in there, Jessie.’

  And so a friendship begins between Jessica Bergman and Mary Simpson that is to last for many years. The Aboriginal woman comes almost every day towards the end of Jessica’s pregnancy. She shows her how she must squat when the baby comes and makes her practise, the two of them laughing their heads off when at first Jessica falls over and tumbles in the dust. But after a while, as Mary instructs her in the tribal ways of giving birth, Jessica becomes accustomed to it and finds it more comfortable to squat. It feels more and more natural as her hips begin to expand with the baby pressing downwards.

  ‘I’ll be with you, Jessie, don’t worry about nothing, you hear? It ain’t so hard, just listen when I talk, do what I say.’ Mary pats her on the shoulder, comforting her.

  ‘You gunna be real good and I give you stuff after to make you better, bush medicine.’ She laughs. ‘Women’s stuff the aunties know about.’

  JessiCa hasn’t told Joe about Mary’s visits, so when he arrives one morning happy with the news that it’s time for her to come home he is surprised at her reaction.

  ‘Jessie, your mother and I, we’d like you home for Christmas.’

  ‘What, for Christmas dinner?’

  ‘Nah, by Christmas. You’re to stay on — the baby’s due soon.’

  ‘I ain’t coming,’ Jessica says defiantly.

  Joe’s been aware of Jessica’s increasing independence, but he’s still taken aback by her answer. ‘What you saying, girlie?’ he asks. ‘What you mean, yer not coming?’ Jessica places her hands on her hips, her legs are spaced wide and her baby is sticking out like a stolen pumpkin concealed under her dress. Joe knows the look of old — it’s Bergman versus Bergman and he doesn’t know if he’s got the upper hand any more.

  ‘No!’ Jessica says defiantly. ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘I’m asking nicely, girlie,’ Joe threatens. ‘I don’t want to have to fetch ya, tie ya up and drag ya back.’ ‘If you do I’ll tell the whole world about my baby.’ Joe shrugs and gives a bitter laugh. ‘You know something, girlie? Them two have done such a good job on you to the folk in the district that they won’t believe you. They all think you’ve gone loony, them at the church. All your mother would say is that you’re not well, that you’re making it up, that you’re hysterical about Meg having a child and they’d believe her right off.’ Joe pauses. ‘They know Meg’s expecting, Hester has made a big thing of it. They’ll just think her baby’s come early, that’s all.’

  ‘Come early? But she’s still got this big stomach stickin’ out?’ Jessica says scornfully, disappointed at Joe’s stupidity. ‘What’s she gunna do? Have its twin two months later?’

  Joe sighs, but his heart beats rapidly as he’s damn nearly spilled the beans. ‘That ain’t a problem beyond your mother. She’d find a way, you know that, girlie,’ Joe growls. He wants to get off the subject fast in case Jessica twigs to what’s going to happen. ‘Jessica, I ain’t asking, I’m telling ya, yer to be home for Christmas and then yer stayin’ on, ya hear me?’

  Jessica’s eyes narrow as she looks at Joe and she can feel the anger welling up in her chest. ‘You’ve let me stay out here four and a half months, in the freezin’ cold and now in the heat. In the spring, with the snakes breeding and cranky as hell, you left me alone. One day I shot ten, all of them near enough to the door. What was you hoping for? That one would get me? Jessie dead to a mulga?

  ‘You brought me rations twice a week like a bloody swaggie, sometimes you didn’t even talk to me! It was what Hester and Meg wanted, that was good enough by you. Now they want me back. Can’t let it happen in a tin hut, can we — it ain’t Christian. Can’t leave me to have my baby alone, or folk might hear about it.’ Jessica tries to fight back her tears, but a single sob escapes like a hiccup. ‘You’ve taken Hester’s side against me. I dunno what I’ve done to you, Father. I’ve always loved you,’ she cries.

  Joe starts to protest. ‘No,’ Jessica raises her hand, ‘let me go on.’ She is suddenly calm again. ‘Hester pushed Meg into Jack’s arms so she’d get pregnant to him — planned it every step, I reckon. Meg ain’t got the imagination to do it without her. Now she’s Mrs Jack Thomas and a bloody heroine knitting baby booties.’ Jessica pauses. ‘But me? What I done, that’s dirty, that’s a disgrace. Meg’s a lady, so it’s all right for her to trap Jack into a marriage he don’t want, but Jessica’s a slut! And you? You go along with it, you take their side, like I done something terrible and Meg done something glorious.’

  Jessica takes a deep breath, her chest heaving with her anger. ‘Now you tell me I’ve got to come home because that’s what Hester wants.’ Jessica draws breath again then continues, ‘Well let me tell you something, that’s not what she wants. She wants my baby dead. That’s what she wants! If I come home, to have my baby she’ll kill it — it won’t draw ten breaths before she puts a pillow over its face. Poor mad Jessie, the Lord took her baby in childbirth. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ Jessica points her finger at Joe, not caring what he thinks. ‘You won’t kill my baby, Father. I’m not bloody coming home for Christmas, so fuck you, fuck the lot of yiz!’

  Joe can’t believe what’ he’s hearing. He’s confused, but he knows what Jessica is saying must seem right to her, must seem logical. In fact, he’s glad she’s said it, got it off her chest and had the guts to stand up to Hester, to him, to all of them. But he tells himself she doesn’t know what’s at stake. That if he lets her keep her baby they’ll all be destroyed, her included. If he wants to save Jessie, save his little girlie, Hester must get her baby for Meg to claim as her own.

  ‘Jessie, I swear on my life your baby will live. We won’t let it die, come what may. If it’s healthy born, it will live, I swear to you on me life. I’ll be in the room, I’ll hold your hand.’

  Jessica can’t believe what her father has just said, that he’ll be in the room to watch out for her. She senses that Joe is no longer trying to threaten her and that he knows what she’s said about Hester is true. That, for all his weakness, in this one important thing she should trust him again. But she’s been hurt too badly by Joe’s neglect of her and doesn’t know if she can or even wants to believe him now.

>   ‘Father, I don’t want to have my baby at home. I’ll come for Christmas dinner, but then, you’ve got to promise, you’ll bring me back here. Mother can come here if she wants, when it’s time, as long as you come too.’ Jessica waves her hand, indicating the tin hut. ‘She reckons this is good enough for me, putting me out here so I won’t embarrass her. Well, if it’s good enough for me, then it’s good enough for my baby. It won’t be the first or the last baby born in the bush. I’ll take me chances.’ Jessica is a bit shocked that she’s had the guts to talk to Joe in this manner, but she knows she’s not talking for herself, she’s talking for her child. She’d ten times rather trust her child to Mary Simpson than to Hester, even if Hester didn’t hate her. The fact that Joe says Hester won’t let her have a midwife shows her mother doesn’t give a bugger about Jessica’s child. Mary cares, Mary will always look after her.

  Jessica knows she wouldn’t think like this without Mary Simpson being in her life. She’d be too terrified left alone to have her baby. But now she’s all right, she’s got a friend, someone who cares, who’ll take care of her when her time comes. Jessica doesn’t want to belong to her family any longer, even to Joe, whom she loves despite his betrayal. The new life breathing within her tells her she can’t depend on Joe any more, even if he’s holding her hand in childbirth. The little black lady with the shy smile, skinny legs and spreading hips who’s taught her to squat in preparation for childbirth is her true sister, better than her kith or kin.

  ‘Righto,’ Joe says, ‘come home for Christmas and I’ll talk to your mother about the other.’ ‘No, Father, talk to her first. I want your word on it.’ Joe sighs wearily. He is seated on a log outside the tin hut with his hands covering his face. Jessica looks down at him. He’s wearing the hat he had on the day she shot it off his head and it landed in the saltbush — he came and retrieved it later that day. It was once his best hat, but he’d been forced to wear it for every day because she gave his work hat to Billy Simple. But now it’s lost its shape a bit and is peppered with holes from the birdshot. Jessica reckons she’s done Joe a big favour and made his best hat into a work hat with just two blasts of the shotgun when it would’ve took him a year of sweat and mucking about to achieve the same result. That hat, she decides, always looked crook on Joe — too new, the nap brushed by Hester the moment they got home from somewhere then put away in a box from Heathwood’s Haberdashery. Now it looks perfectly natural, like it’s been around a fair while.

  Joe draws his hands slowly down over his chin. ‘We done wrong by you, Jessie, I admit it. But it’s for your own good. You don’t understand yet, and I don’t blame yiz for going crook on us, but one day you’ll see the reason we done what we done. Your mother’s acted right and proper. I know you think it’s only for Meg, but that ain’t true, she’s done her best for you too.’

  Jessica looks at her father scornfully. ‘Bullshit,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, Father, but I don’t believe you.’

  Joe looks despairingly up at his youngest daughter, chastened by what she’s said to him. ‘Honest, girlie, your mother’s only done what she thinks is right for us all.’ Then he shrugs his shoulders and gives a deep sigh, bringing his big hands to rest on his knees and looking down into the dirt just like Jack would do after his father had a go at him and he’d crept away to hide. Without looking up, Joe beseeches her, ‘How am I gunna make you believe that, eh?’

  ‘You can’t,’ Jessica says simply, ‘I don’t believe nothing she says any more.’

  Jessica suddenly wants to cry, for she can see Joe honestly thinks that Hester is doing the right thing. Joe is going along with his wife because he reckons, in the end, it will be best for Jessica and her baby. Hester has defeated Joe so completely that he is no longer capable of standing up to her. Joe is finished. ‘Bergmans nil, Heathwoods ten!’ That’s how Jack would have said it.

  He was always turning things into teams. ‘Heifers three, jackaroos one,’ he’d laugh after a mob of heifers got away from them in the scrub. ‘Ten nil to the Heathwoods, put down your glasses. It’s a walkover, a right thrashing!’ he’d have said, grinning.

  Not a day has passed when she hasn’t thought of Jack and longed to hear word from him. Her first question every time Joe comes to the hut is, ‘Have you heard from Jack?’ Joe always says no, though she senses this is because Hester’s told him to. Joe is not a good liar and he hesitates too long before he answers her. Once he’d said that Jack’s regiment hadn’t gone to Britain but to Egypt to guard the Suez Canal, but then hurriedly added that he’d read this in the newspaper.

  Jessica tries to imagine Jack in Egypt, a place she’d learned about in Bible lessons at Sunday School. Him sitting on his horse near the pyramids with date palms, and camels passing by, Arabs in their long, white robes seated astride them like the three wise men on Christmas cards. The sand looking like a yellow sea with waves, only not moving, carved by the desert wind and stretching to the other side of sunset.

  She wonders if Jack will wear a burnous, so the sand don’t get into his eyes and up his nose. She’d seen a postcard once of just such a scene, but without the Suez Canal, which she thinks of as like the Yanco irrigation channel, but dug in the desert and a bit bigger of course, so as to accommodate giant ships. Pity it can’t be fresh water, she thinks, then Jack would see the desert bloom, like he’s always said will happen in the Riverina.

  Jessica feels in her heart that Jack has written to her and that Hester’s kept his letter, or letters, back from her. It’s just another reason why she doesn’t want her family any longer. She’ll wait for Jack and even if she can’t have him, there’ll never be anyone else, Tea Leaf will always love him.

  ‘Jessica, how am I gunna convince you that your mother will let you come back here after Christmas dinner?’ Joe now asks.

  Jessica sees her father’s problem immediately — nothing Hester can say or do will make her trust her mother. Jessica has a sudden idea, and grins. ‘We could have it here,’ she says. ‘A picnic on Christmas Day, Christmas dinner beside the stream,’ she points towards the place, ‘under that big river gum. I’ll clear a space.’

  Joe looks doubtful. ‘She’ll want the turkey hot, like always, she won’t want to serve dinner on a cold plate.’ Jessica laughs harshly. ‘It’s always what she wants, ain’t it, never what anyone else wants? If she wants to help with the birth, she’s gunna have to come here anyway. May as well kill two birds with one stone.’

  Joe rises wearily to his feet. ‘I’ll tell her you’re not comin’ home, not comin’ for Christmas dinner neither, but you’ll have a picnic here, that’s all.’ He looks at Jessica. ‘Best I can do, girlie. I can’t tell your mother nothing no more,’ Joe confesses.

  On the morning of Christmas Eve, Jessica decides she’ll spend the day clearing around the big red river gum in preparation for the next day. Joe has brought back the news that Hester has agreed to come over and bring Christmas dinner — cold turkey and her special pudding. Jessica feels both triumphant and frightened. She hasn’t seen her mother and sister for five months and she doesn’t know how she’ll react when they arrive.

  Meg’s baby, she thinks, will be nearly as big as her own by now. Jack’s child in her sister’s stomach — she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to contain her tears, or even her anger. The child Jack didn’t want to have, in case he was killed, is sitting snug as a bug in a rug inside Meg’s tummy. In the stomach of Mrs Jack Thomas. Jessica thinks bitterly to herself that her beloved Jack has ended up with the child he doesn’t want, inside the wife he doesn’t want, and all because of her mother and sister wanting to get their greedy hands on his fortune.

  Jessica decides she must make a large clearing in case of snakes. They’ll need to be able to spread the rug Hester brings so that there’s lots of cleared ground around it. Snakes don’t see or hear too well and with so many about, one could quite easily drop in on them. She’ll keep the shotgun and the axe
nearby and Joe carries the Winchester in the sulky at all times.

  Jessica plans to start early, before sun-up so as to beat the worst of the heat. But as she comes out of her hut not long after first light, she finds Mary waiting for her. ‘Good morning, Mary, you’ve come early,’ Jessica greets her.

  ‘Sorry, Jessie, but I can’t come this afternoon. They’s having a Christmas party for the blackfellas’ kids up the Lutheran Mission and me two young ’uns wants to go and some of the others from the mob also. I’m the Mission girlie, see, so I gotta take ‘em.’

  ‘Can you stay for a cuppa?’ Jessica asks.

  ‘No, ta Jessie, I got to go.’ Mary tilts her head to one side and examines Jessica. ‘It’s getting pretty close, that baby,’ she laughs, and puts her small black hand on Jessica’s stomach. Then she bends and puts her ear to the side of her tummy, still keeping her hand on it. ‘Strewth, could be your Christmas present from Santy Claus.’ She laughs again, then she straightens up and wishes Jessica a merry Christmas, putting her hand into the pocket of her pinny and taking out a brown paper packet. ‘For your baby, Jessie.’ She smiles shyly, then says, ‘The mob got a bit o’ money together. They not forget you, Jessie. Us aunties, we gone into Narrandera and bought it in the Chink shop,’ Mary explains proudly.

  Jessica opens the packet and pulls out a tiny baby’s dress in oyster-coloured Chinese silk with cherry blossoms embroidered on the front. ‘It’s for a girl,’ Mary announces. ‘Boys go bad, you’re gunna have a girl, Jessie.’ ‘Oh Mary, it’s lovely,’ Jessica exclaims, holding the tiny dress up. She kisses Mary. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she cries and bursts into tears. ‘Mary, you are so kind to me,’ Jessica sobs. Mary embraces her and takes her into her arms, though she can hardly manage to do so for the size of Jessica’s baby sticking out in front. ‘That baby coming soon — crying, that’s always the sign,’ the little Aboriginal woman declares, then adds, ‘You do them squatting, you hear, Jessie? Much as you can. I come back tonight after Santy Cia us seen the kids at the Mission.’