Snake Circle

by Roberta Sykes

  I also wrote to the Reverend Charles Spivey, whom I had met when he was working for the World Council of Churches. He had left the Council and was living in Chicago. In response he sent me, along with his best wishes and news of his work, a short list of executive contacts at the Board of Global Ministries under the United Methodist Church. Time, however, was running short.

  Evan rang me with the news that the episode had caused changes in the selection process. The federal committee could no longer re-order the list compiled by the state selection committees. Applicants would be funded on the basis of the priorities set by the states. As I had been the first choice of the New South Wales selection committee, he assured me that in any further selection process I would most definitely be funded. He therefore urged me to consider applying the following year. Evan and I had both failed to find any alternative source of funding outside the province of government.

  Neville Bonner, in his reply to my letter, wrote, ‘this is outrageous, I will do everything in my power’.

  My friend Brian Syron travelled to Canberra and visited Neville on my behalf. Neville kept the appointment, but said he only had a minute to speak. When Brian put my case, and reminded him of his written reply to me, Neville summarised his own position succinctly: ‘I am very sympathetic—but this is an election year.’ On learning of this, I knew it was folly to expect help from that quarter.

  On 14 May, Senator Jim Keeffe, from my hometown of Townsville, brought up the whole question in Federal Parliament. He demanded an answer from Senator Carrick who was representing the Minister for Education. In his reply, Senator Carrick said, on behalf of the Minister for Education, that ‘My Department does not have funds available for the assistance of individuals outside established programs such as the Aboriginal Overseas Study Awards Scheme.’

  Les Johnson, Opposition Whip, also raised the issue in Questions Without Notice in the House of Representatives. In his reply, Wal Fife, then Minister for Education, informed the House that he was looking for other possible funding, but nothing more came of his efforts.

  While this was going on, Geraldine Willesee’s father, a retired politician, came to Sydney from Perth where he lived, for a family reunion. Gēraldine phoned me to come around to her house and give her father an update on where I was in my search. He was keen and said he would phone friends in Canberra to see what he could do. Before he left Sydney, however, he reported that he was making little progress and was no longer optimistic.

  News that I was looking for alternative sources of funds must also have gone out on the grapevine. I received a call from a man somehow associated with the Australian Council of Churches who said he knew me, but I did not know him, which was not all that unusual. A Black face in an otherwise all-white room sticks out a mile, while it is impossible for the Black person to remember every white person who was there. This man told me that the Australian Council of Churches had just received a large parcel of money from Germany to be used for women’s education, and urged me to make an appointment to see a woman who was second in charge. He requested that I not give his name as the source of this leaked information.

  I made an appointment immediately and turned up at her office with my folder containing, amongst other things, my acceptance papers from Harvard. The woman was very pleasant but jumped in early to tell me that the entire allocation for Aboriginal education had already been spent. We continued to make chitchat, the woman apologising profusely, lamenting the limit of Black funding in the face of so much need and sympathising with my position, while I wondered how long it might take her to realise I was also a woman.

  Almost an hour had passed when she finally said she had to attend a meeting elsewhere in the building, and began to usher me out of her office. Although I was deeply disappointed as I was leaving the building, by the time I arrived home I was angry. Okay, I thought, since this is your attitude I’ll go over your heads. I sat down and wrote off a letter to the World Council of Churches in Geneva, stating my purpose and inquiring if they had any funds. For good measure, I also wrote to Paulo Freire in Brazil, whom I had met during his visit to Australia sponsored by the World Council of Churches. Paulo and I had spent a morning talking about a range of things, and I felt sure that he would remember me. I asked him to contact the Council on my behalf, supporting my case. Also I asked if he would send me a letter of reference which I might use elsewhere if his request was not successful in Geneva. I realised, however, that time was by now getting short and although I sent these letters express mail, it might be some weeks before I received replies. Would my fortunes turn, and both people be sitting at their desks in the cities to which my letters were addressed?

  During this time, Sandra Bardas rang me from Melbourne to say that their Sportsgirl stores had brought in a Black American model, Touki Smith, for a series of fashion parades. Touki was coming to Sydney and knew no one, would I have tea or something with her?

  Russel agreed to look after Naomi while I kept this appointment. By now, Russel had started seeing a young lady. On the day in question, Russel came home, ran through the house to collect something, and was on his way out again when I pulled him up. Did he remember he was supposed to be looking after his sister? Yes, but his girlfriend’s mother was in hospital and he said he wanted to take her to visit her mother instead.

  I hissed to Naomi between gritted teeth, ‘Get yourself ready quick, child. You’ll have to come with me.’ Naomi appeared in less than twenty minutes, showered, beautifully dressed, with fresh frangipannis from our tree pinned most fetchingly in her shining hair. In all frankness, I felt like a dag beside her.

  My daughter absolutely charmed Touki, who asked if Naomi could come back the following day and spend the weekend with her. She had tickets to see Peter Allen, and they’d hang out together and have a wonderful time. Naomi, of course, drooled and looked so keen that even I couldn’t resist her.

  Next day, despite the happy ending, I spoke to Russel. Knowing he was in trouble, he sat at the kitchen table with his eyes downcast. I began to lecture him on making commitments and then not keeping them, until he cheekily looked up and told me that his girlfriend had said I would be jealous.

  ‘Russel,’ I said, now deadly calm, ‘let me tell you something, my son. Girlfriends come and girlfriends go. Even wives come and go. And I will still be your mother! I have absolutely nothing to be jealous of. No one will ever take over my position.’

  From the look in his eyes I could tell that this truism had hit all his buttons. From that day forward, we have never needed to have any further discussion on this matter.

  Evan continued to keep me updated with his efforts on my behalf, and he had been trying to pull strings through the office. His counterparts in Canberra, he said, were very sympathetic but their office, and the government, had no additional funds.

  ‘The government’s out of money?’ I asked incredulously, and he responded with a small bitter laugh. I had, by then, received a second brief letter from the Minister of Education, saying very much the same thing.

  I felt I was running out of places to go when I received a late-night phone call from Naomi Mayers. She was the Administrator of the Aboriginal Medical Service where I had previously worked, and one of the co-founders, with Marcia Langton, Sue Chilli and myself, of Black Women’s Action.

  ‘I want to tell you this before somebody else does. I was in Canberra today for a meeting and the Minister stopped me in a hallway and asked me whether I thought he should fund you.’ I was unsure whether she was referring to Fred Chaney, then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, or Wal Fife, then Minister for Education, as I had written to both.

  ‘Hmm,’ I replied, hopeful but non-committal.

  ‘I told him no.’

  The disappointment and shock were so great that my ability to speak completely left me. Naomi had even been one of the two referees required for my application to the Aboriginal Overseas Study Awards, Joe Mallie being the other. I was in bed, and I swung myself up, threw m
y legs down over the side, and just sat there with my hand on my head in despair, receiver to my ear.

  ‘You’re not an Aborigine. People from Townsville have told me. Your mother even wrote it in the paper.’

  ‘The people from Townsville, who were they, and how would they know?’ I replied at last.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who they are. They know all about you.’

  Do they, I thought? Well, they think they do. I was deeply saddened.

  I tried to discern whether Naomi had been drinking. She had occasionally rung me for late chats, a glass of wine in her hand, and I had come to realise that some of the things she had said at these times were not precisely the truth.

  ‘Listen, Naomi, you have known me for almost ten years, and you know I don’t tell lies. You don’t know my mother at all, yet you would take the word of this stranger to you over mine. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, why would she lie? Why would she lie to the papers?’

  The answers were so complex, rooted in the racism of this country and my mother’s desire to escape from the harshness and poverty of her upbringing. I realised, therefore, that if Naomi did not, from her own experience, know about these things, there were no words that I had which would adequately inform her.

  ‘Is this why I didn’t get the Study Award?’ I asked. Frank Smith, who had been Chair of the national selection committee had written stating that their reason for excluding me had been that the course of study I had chosen to do was not ‘sufficiently closely aligned to my professional work’.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I heard that one of the committee members,’ she said, naming him, ‘told them all that you have too much.’ She gave a short, deep laugh. Only my most inner-circle of friends—such as Brian Syron, Lester and Gerry Bostock, and a tiny handful of trusted others—had been to my house and knew the circumstances in which we lived, and Naomi was amongst them. She had even offered me her old stove and a few items from her own house, after she had seen the conditions we were living under. And it was a standing joke that I purchased my clothes from the St Vincent’s around the corner from the Medical Service.

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ she continued. ‘You like to live so secret. Everybody thinks you’ve got everything.

  ‘But still, people like you shouldn’t get any of our money, we need it for our own things,’ Naomi said, sounding like she had caught me with my hand in her own purse. This left me quite bewildered. As well she knew, a whole host of white people were drawing very large salaries from Aboriginal Affairs, long before any trickled down into the community, and with very little benefit flowing to the people in need.

  ‘Now, listen,’ she went on, ‘if you’re going to make trouble for me over this, I’m going to go to the government and tell them Russel isn’t an Aborigine but he’s going to university on Aboriginal funds.’

  I gasped with shock at her vitriol and was dismayed at the baseness of her argument. It was true that Russel was receiving Abstudy to attend university, but at my income level he would have easily qualified for Austudy. The only difference in these programs was that Abstudy provided funds to enable students to travel backwards and forwards from their communities in remote areas, which, living in Sydney, Russel did not require. Quite a number of Aboriginal students had already switched to Austudy. Russel, though, was amongst those who thought that academic successes generated under Abstudy would help to ensure that the program was maintained, perhaps even expanded.

  My deepest dismay, however, was in knowing that Naomi was amongst the very few people with whom I had shared the awful secret of his conception. I took a deep breath and tried to appeal to her better nature.

  ‘Naomi, even though I can’t prove I’m an Aborigine, you know I’ve been treated like an Aborigine all my life. I was put out of school, I’ve been insulted and abused, and even raped in terrible circumstances because those men thought I was an Aborigine. I have been arrested, and worked hard to bring about changes, a better life for us all. Are you telling me—’

  Naomi cut me off. ‘Being raped doesn’t make you an Aboriginal. Even white girls get raped.’

  I was about to drop the phone when, perhaps realising that she had gone too far and sensing my intention, Naomi raised her voice.

  ‘Wait. Wait. Listen, I’ll help you. I’ll help you raise the money. We can put out an appeal through the Medical Service. You can use our phones. The Black Women’s Action account is still active, and we’ll keep the money in there. We can do it.’

  Dumbfounded, I said, ‘Goodnight, Naomi,’ and she replied, ‘I’ll call you on Monday morning.’

  The snake opens its mouth and cries soundlessly. I spent a restless night, indeed entire weekend, falling into sporadic short sleeps in which demons plagued me, hearing again, over and over, the voice of the convicted rapist being led off to the cells below the courthouse screaming, ‘She’s just an Abo, just a fucking boong,’ and waking intermittently to find my pillow soaked with my tears.

  I was still dozing fitfully when the phone rang on Monday morning. Naomi said she would be in the office at ten-thirty, and asked me to meet her there.

  We are not ‘just’ Abos, not ‘just’ fucking boongs, I thought, and excelling at Harvard would be a very good way to make that point. Did it matter that, in order to prove this, I would have to go along with Naomi’s offer, when I really felt like giving her a good smack in the mouth? I had been treated worse at times in my life, though never by someone I had regarded as a friend.

  My ambivalence paralysed me, and it wasn’t until Russel came to the bedroom door to say he was leaving to go to university, that I climbed out of bed and began to face the day. My daughter was having midterm holidays, and would have to spend the day with me. Over my solitary coffee in the kitchen, I thought, what the heck, and made up my mind to go to the Medical Service and at least speak with Naomi.

  The office was its usual bustling self when I arrived, and Naomi was very businesslike. She greeted me and her godchild, little Naomi, warmly, and it was almost as though she had never said all those offensive things. I recalled Gary Foley remarking once that Naomi was both my ‘best friend and worst enemy’, but I had never expected these two facets to manifest themselves within one phone call. I said nothing to remind Big Naomi of her spiteful and wounding words, desiring instead to maintain harmony in the godparent/godchild relationship. Naomi said she had located the Black Women’s Action bankbook, and told me to use a phone in the adjoining office if I wanted to make any calls.

  I began by writing up and circulating to all those people who had previously been involved, or expressed interest in, our Black Women’s Action Group, a pamphlet titled ‘A Call for Alms’. After they were posted, I realised that this method would be very slow, we needed greater coverage. So I put in a call to the Sydney Morning Herald. I told my story, of being invited to postgraduate school at Harvard without high school or undergraduate degrees, and of being refused funding from the government that would allow me to take up the offer. Initially I was met with disbelief by the reporter who took my call, Carolyn Parfitt. If this was true, however, she told me, it was ‘a bloody good story’. Some checking was needed, but would I come in for a photo?

  With Little Naomi for company, we went into the Herald’s off-Broadway office, and were taken to a photographic studio. Naomi, playing coy around the men in the studio, kept trying to insinuate herself into the photos they were taking, draping herself over me and being disobedient when I told her to stand back. Eventually, to appease her I thought, the photographer said he would take a couple of shots with her in them if she would step aside after they were done. Fiercely protective of the children being exposed in the media, I admonished him not to use those shots in the article.

  Not only was I still asleep but it was also pitch dark on the morning of Tuesday, 13 May 1980, when the phone rang. ABC-Radio, would I do an interview about the article in the paper, which of course I had not yet seen, directly after their AM program? I agre
ed and rose to brush my teeth and rinse my mouth, anxious to rid myself of that ‘just woken up’ tone in my voice.

  When finally the papers were delivered, I was astonished to learn my story had made front page headlines, and disturbed to see Naomi’s cheery face hanging on my shoulder in the accompanying photo.

  Mrs Owens had invited Naomi to see a pantomime in the city. She later told me the pair of them had also gone into every newsagency along the way where Naomi ‘discovered’ the front page picture of herself anew with a piercing shriek.

  I was not prepared for the deluge that followed the article’s publication. Envelopes with small donations poured into the Medical Service from many quarters, the overwhelming majority from ordinary mums and dads in the suburbs. During the afternoon I took a call from the ABC program manager for whom I had agreed to do the early morning interview. He said that two people had rung, wanting to send contributions. One man, ringing from the Southern Highlands outside Sydney, had initially said he wished to finance the whole project, but had rung back saying he had heard that I wasn’t an Aborigine. If the station could confirm that I was, he was still prepared to do so.

  I had no idea how the station had head-and-tailed the interview, because I hadn’t been asked about this issue during the program. I even felt resentment towards the potential contributor for his attitude.

  As well, many obviously poorer people had already leapt up in their attempts to help me raise the money I required. I wanted to acknowledge them, not let the kudos just go to one person who had more. I refused his offer, stating my reasons and inviting him, if he liked, to send a smaller donation and be part of the larger grassroots response.

  At lunchtime that day I had raced up the street to buy a sandwich from a nearby takeaway. On the way I was stopped by countless Aboriginal people who congratulated me on my stand, and pressed one- and two-dollar notes into my hand. A few wanted more information—where was Harvard? What did I need? How could they help?