Johnny and Beryl and all the kids are living with us; we all pack into the little house at Koora. We’re not so happy now. The house is too crowded and Johnny’s real bossy, like Darryl.
It’s 1971 and my Dad is being released from jail! He’s coming home after spending fourteen and a half years away from us. Days go by and we wait and wait. Mummy tells us, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be here soon’. Still, we wait and wait. Then, one day, Mummy’s reading the paper; she finds a picture of him. She sings out to me and Kevin. We’ve gotta come inside, she has something to show us.
She tells us we’re not to get upset but our Dad’s in the paper. She shows us his picture. He’s gotta woman with him. We can’t believe it. He wouldn’t do that to us; he said he was coming home and so did Mummy. He’s married. He won’t be coming home now. We’ve been waiting for him all our lives, all for nothing.
I’m devastated. He could’ve written. We had no telephone— there’s only the one up the main street at the post office that we can use—but he could’ve written and told us, anyway. I think Kevin is angrier than me, though. I hurt to see my brother hurting so bad. I ask Mummy about it. She says, ‘Boys need their father more than girls do’.
It’s the weekend. We’re not working but we’re not allowed to leave the house for some reason. Mummy tells us we’re having a special visitor today. She’s excited, she’s tidying up again.
He’s here! It doesn’t matter that he’s married, he’s here, he really did come home! We meet him, him and Cora, his new wife, who is Dutch. He met her while he was in jail. She writes for the New Dawn, the Aboriginal magazine.
She wants to take pictures of us kids being reunited with our father. Mummy’s angry. She tells them, NO! She says, ‘We’ve been persecuted enough. They’re not going to put our picture in no magazine for all of Australia to know what we look like and for nobody to hurt us.’
My father and Cora don’t seem very happy about this and it feels a bit awkward, but they all have cups of tea and a talk. It’s time for him to go and see Aunty Doris and her family. He’ll be coming back again in a little while.
He visits the rest of the family and then he comes back to the house. This time everyone is so happy—it’s like a new visit. Mummy, I haven’t seen her smiling so much, fussing over him. It’s like the whole world started smiling; the little brother came home to his big sister’s and our Dad came home to us.
After about an hour, it’s time for them to go. Mummy cries as she watches him walk away. We can’t believe it. He was here a minute ago and now he’s gone. We can’t understand why he had to go so quick but he’s on the way to Condo to see all the family there. We are all hurting deep down inside.
Mummy’s sad and she tells us kids that he deserves a new start in life and, not to worry, he’ll be able to come and see us all the time now. But Kevin’s angrier than he’s ever been in his life. He can’t wait to get outta this place. I think he’s angry about our Dad going and he reckons the photos wouldn’t have mattered much. I think, though, he’s just hurting all the way through because our Dad didn’t come home to stay, like he was meant to.
Looking back, I think our Dad was supposed to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for all of us: Mummy, ’cause her little brother finally came home to be a little brother again; and me and Kevin, well because he was supposed to be a father to us that he never was. But the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow after fourteen and a half years, it was a lie. It was more like a storm brewing before he came home and it sure wasn’t gonna be no rainbow now and, since his death, it has been just that.
I wish I had been the oldest kid outta me and Kevin. I think I could’ve coped better with it than him. The whole bit, our mother being dead, our father in jail, then him supposed to be coming home and then he didn’t. Kevin’s so unhappy. We all are.
Kevin wants to go and live with sister, Maureen, but Mummy won’t let him. She tells him he has to get his Fourth Form Certificate, then he can go. He’s a real battler, my brother. He struggles at school but stays, determined to do it. He does, and we’re all so proud when he gets his certificate in the mail; Mummy is bursting with pride. He leaves us then and goes to live in Wagga with Maureen.
38
The cherry pickers and the Tent Embassy
Mummy has bought another house for us in Koora. It’s on the other side of the railway track, closer to Aunty Doris. Her and Mummy still work hard out in the paddocks. Wow, this house is flash; well, not that flash but pretty flash, and for the first time in my life, I have my own bedroom. I put my mother’s porcelain doll on my bed each day after I’ve made it. I take out a couple of smokes and hide the packet in my undies’ drawer and head to school.
I’m the last one at home and the last one at school, and I’m pretty spoilt. I love Coke and, every day, Mummy gives me two bob (20 cents) so that I can get a can. Boy, I think I’m in heaven! Beryl and Johnny still live with us—they have the sleep-out on the side of the house. One day, I come home from school and my mother’s doll is ruined. Her head is all smashed in. I’m cranky and I go out demanding to know what happened. Me and Beryl have an argument. She says the kids went in there and did it, but I know she goes in there looking for my smokes. We swear at each other and call each other names.
Mummy comes home and Beryl dobs me in for swearing at her. I tell Mummy about my doll, so she has a go at Beryl and tells her they aren’t allowed in my room and that the doll was special. I just want a normal life. I wanna go to school with nobody saying things about my family; I wanna be a teenager like every other teenager I know.
Our father’s in our life now although we don’t see him much. We’re real proud of him, though, and I know Mummy is especially. When I was fifteen, he was living in Sydney and Lynnie was living there, too. She was gonna star in my father’s play, The Cherry Pickers. I went to Sydney for a visit. He takes us to a Chinese restaurant in a place called Chinatown and it was up some stairs and really flash with red and gold splashed everywhere. My father orders this fancy tucker and I look at it and it looks so strange that I really don’t want to eat it.
I ask what that is there on that plate and get told that it’s pork. I’ve never eaten pork in my life. We have chops, baked dinners every Sunday and sausages and stews: that’s the tucker that I like. I don’t know this food and or where it comes from. It could’ve come all the way from China for all I know.
I know where the tucker I eat comes from. Sausages from the butcher’s and chops from sheep that lives out in the paddock. When we can afford it, Mummy buys one from the farmers and the boys hang it on the verandah in the old house at Koora and cut it up. But I gotta admit it don’t look good coming home from school and there’s a dead sheep with no skin on its back, hanging from the rafters, dripping blood into a bucket. That sure ain’t a pretty sight.
So I don’t eat the pork. I don’t like the look of that one. My father wants to make me happy; he tries so hard, ordering me a Coke and anything that I want. What I want is a hamburger but there’s no hamburgers on the menu. I nibble bits and pieces and try to look happy but I’m not. I try so hard but he pours me a shandy and I don’t drink stuff like that, only Coke. I think I’m angry with him because he doesn’t know me. Anyway, Mummy would’ve went crook if I would have drunk it. I think I still resent him getting married and not coming home. When we’re leaving, Cora asks me if I liked it. I tell her I would have preferred a hamburger better.
The Cherry Pickers is in rehearsals at the Mews Theatre Workshop in Sydney. Lynnie’s playing a minor role. When Sir Robert Helpmann sees her, he wants Lynnie to be the first Aboriginal model, with her face plastered all over Australia and overseas, but just like me, she’s a bush bunny. She couldn’t leave her family for that long.
The Cherry Pickers play doesn’t end up getting performed. My father closes it up. It’s because there’s this show on TV called Boney and they have an Indian man named Kamal acting as a Blackfella. In protest, my father shuts his own play
down. All those family members who were going to act in it—Aunty June, Aunty Flora and Lynnie—are devastated but they understand why.
The school holidays are coming up. My Dad and Cora have a place up near Taree now and Mummy asked me, ‘Do you wanna go and spend the holidays up there?’ ‘Yeah.’ It’s gonna be so great, I think. I go up and visit our Mob on the Purfleet Mission and I have a couple of friends there now so that’s real good. My father tries his hardest to make it a good visit; he spoils me a lot, but it’s a nightmare.
I go home to Mummy and my family, feeling bad that my visit wasn’t a real good one for anyone. I know my Dad tried very hard to make me happy. I tell Mummy that he said to me, ‘When you finish high school, if you want, you can go to university. You can be whatever you want to be and university would be good for you’. Mummy tells me to think about it—it’s a good idea if that’s what I want. I think about it for a minute. I know in my heart I’m a bush bunny; I couldn’t leave my family and live in Sydney.
I’m in Fourth Form now and Mummy takes me to a specialist. He’s supposed to be the best in Australia—he’s from England. I gotta have my ankle operated on, the one that I hurt up in Sydney all those years ago. Mummy asks him to check out my back as well; I was born with a curvature of the spine and she just wants to make sure it’s okay, too. He wants to operate on my back as well but Mummy won’t let him.
The Tent Embassy
It’s 1972 and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is being set up in Canberra. Mummy knows my father’s involved; he always lets her know what he’s doing. Mummy’s worried; she knows he’s on bail and has bail conditions and that he’s not allowed to leave the state, and Canberra’s in another state. We sit glued to the TV hoping that we don’t spot him; if the police did, he’d be back in jail.
We go over there one day to see him but we don’t stay long. Mummy’s worried Kevin and me will get hurt and then the Welfare will be involved. My father tries to protect us kids in his own way and tells her to watch out for us if any strangers come to town. He tells her to watch out for people—ones that wanna talk to us kids and ones with cameras.
He says they would be trying to get to him through us. I bet he’s glad now that Mummy wouldn’t let him take pictures of me and Kevin when he come home from jail. He knows Mummy don’t need no telling. She’s been doing that all our lives, protecting us while he was locked up. We watch it on TV, feeling proud that he’s there trying to make changes for Blackfellas.
There’s trouble at the Tent Embassy; the police are gonna come in and pull it down. This means that they’ll arrest the ones there that are protesting. Mummy tells us to pray our father’s not there, that they don’t pick him up and send him back to jail. Kevin has to run up to the post office to use the public phone and get the switchboard to ring up people we know to find out if he’s safe. Kevin comes home: yes, our father’s safe!
I go into hospital and they get me ready for the operation on my ankle the next morning. Mummy’s not here. I tell them, ‘You gotta wait for Mummy. I can’t go in there without her.’ They wait awhile and tell me I gotta go into theatre. I start crying, then I look up and Mummy is there. She had to drive in from Koora, the whole twenty-seven miles, and there was roadworks on the way. I bet she was speeding for the first time in her life. She tells me she loves me and she’ll be waiting for me. I tell her I love her, too. I’m so scared.
I have my leg operated on about two months before the Fourth Form School Certificate. I’m in hospital for a while and I gotta study for the exams while I’m here. They have a cage over my leg so that the blankets don’t fall on the plaster which goes halfway up my leg. My brothers and sisters come to visit me and hide a packet of smokes down there when Mummy isn’t looking.
Mummy doesn’t know but I’ve been going out with a good-looking boy named John. He comes and visits me when she isn’t around. It’s time for me to come home from hospital and Mummy and Beryl come to pick me up. Mummy drives a Mini Minor now and I have to try to get in the back seat with my leg covered in plaster. Its pure murder, my leg is hurting so bad. We head home to Koora.
My leg isn’t healing the way it’s supposed to, though, so I gotta go back to hospital. I study for my exams which are getting closer and closer. I go home again and then go to school on crutches. I have a new nickname now in Koora: ‘little Hutch with the three crutches’. (My last name is Hutchings).
At last, the crutches are gone but I have to wear boots to school to support my ankle. Beautiful white boots that come up to my knee, the kind that Nancy Sinatra wears, like in the Elvis movie. Oh, I look so good and I feel so sexy. I reckon I’ve gotta be the coolest chick in school with my boots and my school uniform.
39
My mother’s grave and the Gilbert name
I’m sixteen and Mummy is ready now to take me to my mother’s grave in Parkes, with Aunty Doris. We’re searching for her resting place. It’s been a long time since anyone has been here. All we have is a plot number and a row number. These two women that I love have split up, walking each row, trying to pull from their memories where this grave would be, amongst the pain in their hearts.
They look for the plot number that the council man gave Mummy. She couldn’t remember where the grave was after all these years. I follow behind them, looking and feeling helpless. Their tears are falling as they walk beside the other people’s graves, looking for the grave number. All of a sudden Mummy sings out— she found it.
We all come together and stand in front of this little, tiny mound of dirt with nothing on it. Nothing. Not one flower or even a little white cross, nothing but dirt. These two wonderful old women that I love so dearly sit on each side of my mother’s grave and try to straighten the dirt up, try hard to make it look nice. They sit sobbing, rubbing the top of the grave as if they are patting the back of a baby, making it feel better. I’m sure they are talking to my mother, to Goma, deep in their hearts, and I’m pretty sure that she’s listening.
I stand at the end of the grave, just watching them silently. I wanna cry ’cause they’re crying and I can feel their pain deep down inside me but I wanna be strong for them, too. I know if I start, their tears and heartache will only get worse. That will break them in two; so I hold back and stay strong for them.
I stand back a bit from the grave, not knowing what to do or say. I’ve been deliberately walking in Mummy’s footprints because I didn’t wanna be the one to find it. There is no sign that anybody has been here in sixteen years. Why haven’t her other family remembered her enough to put a bunch of flowers on her grave?
I know exactly why we haven’t been here before now. Mummy wouldn’t have brought me here until she thought I could handle it. I can see on their faces the years of keeping the pain inside. Of not being able to cry, not only for my mother but for their little brother and their family. I see the thoughts of ‘if only’ flicker across their faces. If only it never happened. If only they could have stopped it.
They get up to leave the grave, leaving me there by myself. They cuddle me and tell me they love me. Mummy and Aunty Doris walk away, tears rolling down their cheeks. They are holding onto each other so tight, trying to hold each other up so they don’t fall down into all their pain. I see their legs buckling but I see their strength, too, as they cling tight. I hear their sobbing and my heart is weeping, too, but there’s nothing I can do to make it better for them. I feel their pain but I’m helpless.
I watch them, making sure they are back at the car, making sure they got there safe without either one of them fainting from the pain. I bend beside the top of my mother’s grave and try to cry for this woman I’ve never known. I hurt deep down inside. I tell her I’m sorry I didn’t know her and that she never got to be my mother and that I’m sorry she wasn’t; but I’ve got Mummy and she’d be happy about that.
I take off my special necklace that Mummy brought me years ago and I dig a hole and bury it into her resting place. I tell her I love her and hope my necklace will keep her h
appy. She’s got something of me now. I tell her Kevin is good and that he’s a good big brother. He is not hurting so bad now and he knows it wasn’t my fault she died. Me and him are pretty close now that we’re grown-up.
We can finally talk about it now. I can ask Mummy little bits and pieces about my mother and father but I don’t ask too much because I feel her pain stabbing her the moment she starts talking. I learn to pick my moment if I wanna talk about grown-up things with Mummy. It’s best to get her while she’s driving. I’m sure, this way, she’s able to hide her pain and sorrow from me by looking straight ahead.
40
A daughter’s love
I tell Mummy that I love her and how lucky I am that she decided to take us home. She says, ‘No, Babe, it was Ned, too’. (Ned is Daddy’s real name.) ‘We kept you and Kevin because of him as well.’ Mummy had told him she was worried about how they was gonna keep us all. It was already hard for them as a family; they had everyone else to take care of. Mummy knew it would be much harder with an extra two but Daddy said, ‘We can’t let these two little kids be split up’.
‘June wanted to take you and Raymond wanted Kevin. We both wouldn’t let you be split up. You had to stay together. That’s what families do.’
I say a silent ‘thank you’ to Daddy. I don’t and can’t think of having any family other than the one I have. I thank Biamie1 for giving me them.
Mummy tells me why she had to make us four younger ones State Wards. They couldn’t afford all the kids, money was hard to come by. They didn’t know when or where the work would be. She tells the story of how her and Aunty Doris would walk for miles to fell some trees, getting paid almost nothing—one shilling and threepence—so that they could buy food to feed both families. And that’s all it bought; there was never any money for anything more.
The Cherry Picker's Daughter Page 14
