I Came to Say Goodbye

by Caroline Overington

  So what happened during our last visit to Tamworth? We boarded the plane on the Friday, as we had always done. We picked up the hire car and checked into the Best Western. The staff fussed over Savannah, saying how lovely she was, how big she was getting.

  Savannah slept well, and she was up with the birds. We had breakfast in the hotel. David put Savannah in her Baby Bjorn. She was almost, but not quite, too big for it. We walked hand-in-hand from the motel to the unit where Malok lived.

  Malok was there, but he wasn’t dressed for a weekend with Savannah. He was wearing white overalls, like he was ready for work. We knew that he sometimes worked a Saturday shift. Why we still had to deliver Savannah to him when he’d be at work most of the day, I can’t tell you, except that the Department insisted that it was important for Savannah to know her ‘extended Sudanese family’ and their ‘culture’.

  Malok took Savannah from us. He looked pleased to see her. He always did. He kissed her on top of the head. He handed her to a woman, who was presumably an aunt or a cousin. David and I said our goodbyes, and went back to the Best Western to wait out our day and night away from her.

  And while we were gone, they cut her.

  They cut her.

  From the moment we went to pick her up on the Sunday morning, after the long Saturday night without her, I knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong.

  The unit was full of people. It was always full of people, but this time, it was really filled to its capacity, and it was still early. We were never late. There were dozens of women and a strange sense of heightened excitement in the room. There was a great deal of food about. The smell of spices, and of food cooking, was overwhelming, and Malok, he seemed to be the centre of the festivities.

  When David and I came to the door, women came towards us with their arms outstretched. They guided us in. We were confused. We were bewildered. We smiled back at them. We couldn’t figure out what all this was about. I was looking around for Savannah and somebody – a woman, I think, although I don’t precisely remember – said something that set the other women off, and suddenly the room was full of screamingly happy women, like colourful birds; squawking, smiling, laughing and nodding. I could not understand what was going on, only that Malok was grinning at me, showing enormous white teeth, and then he was handing Savannah to me, presenting her like a gift, nodding, smiling, like she was somehow different from the day before, and then a group of women rushed forward, and it seemed they wanted to kiss me, and kiss Savannah, and I felt extremely uncomfortable. I wanted to get out of there.

  I held Savannah close. I looked into her face. She seemed normal enough. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t clingy. She was just as she always was: delightful. It wasn’t until I put her down on the hotel bed to change her nappy that I could see what they’d done.

  There wasn’t a great deal of blood, but there was blood.

  There wasn’t a gaping wound. There weren’t any wire stitches or deep cuts but there was a scratch, a sore, on the tip of her private parts.

  I screamed for David.

  He must have thought I’d uncovered a knife wound, because I was screaming, they’ve cut her, they’ve cut her, they’ve cut her, and the motel staff came running and people from the room next door came running, too.

  I held Savannah close to my chest, her bare bottom on my arm, and I was rushing this way, and that way, wild with grief, wild with anger. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think what to do. It was David who said, we’ve got to get her to the hospital, and it was David who somehow managed to find the keys and get us into the car and get the car started. I couldn’t bear to put Savannah into the baby seat. I held her on my lap, tighter than I’d ever held anything. I kept my lips pressed upon her head. Tears were rolling down my face and it was making Savannah cry, but I couldn’t stop.

  We pushed into the waiting room, pushed past other people that were waiting, and forced ourselves on the staff.

  The doctor we saw in Tamworth that day was brilliant. He was sympathetic and capable, and caring, and lovely. He bathed Savannah gently so we could see exactly what had gone on, and he told us it was the tiniest, tiniest pinprick, the size of a bee sting, just enough to satisfy local custom, nowhere near enough to demand stitches.

  Look, he said, it’s not even bleeding anymore. Look, you can hardly even see it.

  The hospital telephoned a Sudanese support worker, to counsel us. There were half-a-dozen of them in Tamworth and their job, it seemed, was to liaise between the refugees and the wider community, arranging such things as accommodation and work visas and immunisations, and to talk to the white community about Sudanese customs. And so, while I held my beautiful daughter and sobbed into her hair, this woman, who was herself Sudanese, talked to me about ‘the culture’ in Sudan. She said the local community had been told not to do what they had done to Savannah. They had been told that it was banned here, totally banned, punishable by law, but it was hard to make them stop. She said some women had taken to doing a little pinprick on baby girls, quickly and discreetly, before anybody noticed, to try to keep the practice going on some limited scale. They seemed to be hoping that the white community, our community, would turn a blind eye to it because it wasn’t done with sharp stones, it wasn’t the whole flesh cut away. I didn’t want to hear any of it. I’m ashamed to say I lost my patience. I shouted at the counsellor. I said, ‘How can you even think this is alright?’ She told me, ‘It’s not alright.’ She told me it wouldn’t have been Malok, he likely wouldn’t have even known about it until it was done. She told me it’s the women who do it, because it is women who want it, who expect it and the men are kept out of it. Probably the first Malok knew of it was when he came in from the kill floor to the big celebration.

  She said that what had been done to Savannah was ‘very minor’ and it could have been ‘much worse’. They could have cut all of her parts away, sewn her completely shut and made it impossible for her to urinate, or when the time came, to menstruate. The way she said it, it was like she was pleased with the progress she’d made, having girls not butchered, just stabbed a bit. She said that what had happened to Savannah was proof that the message was getting through. The community knew they weren’t allowed to do these things and so they were trying to hide what they were doing. They weren’t cutting girls anymore, now they were just pricking them.

  I thought, They just prick them! They take a dirty sewing needle, and they prick them and make them bleed, and they think it’s normal, it’s acceptable, and it’s necessary. They don’t do it on a dirt floor. They don’t do it with a piece of stone. But they still do it, and then they celebrate.

  David was saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. My daughter has been butchered and you seem to think that’s fine.’ The support worker said, ‘Please, calm down.’ She hadn’t been butchered. She had been scratched, and maybe we should consider what it meant. Savannah had a white mother – two white mothers, she said – and despite this, she had been accepted into her community! And wasn’t that marvellous? And it wasn’t a cut, it was a scratch, a prick, and it was still required in some cultures, and really, there was no harm done, no sewing, no infection, all healed up already, and who were we to judge?

  I told this woman straight. I said, ‘I do not care for your analysis. I do not care for your political correctness. I look at you and I assume, since you are a working woman, that you are a feminist, and it seems to me that feminists have long been on the right side in this debate, and now it seems to me that you are on the side of child abuse, and dressing it up as culture, and tradition.’

  I said I was taking Savannah out of the hospital that instant, and I was putting her on the plane to Sydney, where I would report the matter to police. I said I would push with all my might to ensure that charges were laid. When I walked out with Savannah, I did not look back.

  David called our personal GP – Savannah’s GP – from the airport, to alert him to the situation and, God bless him, he was
not at all caught up in the rights of people to practise their culture. He was as concerned – as alarmed, as horrified – as we were, and he agreed to meet us at Sydney Children’s Hospital, where he could examine Savannah.

  We did not telephone the Department. In my view, it was partly the Department’s fault that this had happened, because clearly, the people that Savannah was being left with did not understand Australian law.

  We also called our lawyer. We told him what had happened and, as with our GP, as with any normal person, he could hardly believe it. He told us he would go to the NSW Supreme Court and request an emergency hearing, and he would make sure that Malok’s right to see Savannah was severely curtailed, so much so that he wouldn’t be able to see her, except in Sydney, with supervision. I asked him when and he said immediately. He acted so fast that the Department really had to scramble. They got a call from the NSW Supreme Court saying an action was underway, and they had to rush to get somebody there.

  I understand from our lawyer that they argued pretty passionately in favour of the status quo, which, frankly, made me sick. They argued that it wasn’t clear what had happened to Savannah; that nobody could be sure who was involved; that the police would have to investigate; that charges would have to be laid; that cultural practices had to be taken into account; that it was important to Savannah to have ongoing contact with her Sudanese family, all the stuff we’d heard so many times, but the judge didn’t muck around. He said, ‘The child returns to the care of Ka’aren Atley and David Bennett, with no further contact with Malok Ibrahim, not while this is being sorted out’, and we were fairly certain, from the way he said it, that there would be no further contact, not unsupervised, not ever.

  David and Savannah and I waited at the hospital while the hearing was underway. You’ll know, I suppose, that it was the last time we spent any time with Savannah. She was, by then, a little under five months old and she was beautiful.

  She was in the room they call the Pandas, with five other infants. Not newborns. The newborns were down the hall in Joeys. She was with other children who’d been injured somehow. One boy had both legs in a cast that came up to his chest. Another had a bandage over his eye. Someone had drawn a skull and crossbones on it. He looked like a little pirate.

  At some point, David went downstairs and bought a stuffed giraffe from the flower shop near the kiosk. Savannah hadn’t liked it as much as we’d thought. Maybe it scared her a little. We put it on the windowsill. She was keen to play with David’s keys, though. She put them in her mouth, and when I took them from her, she cried. She was playing like normal, in other words.

  We chatted with the couple that were sitting near the next cot. Their child had taken a tumble. They were anxious. They asked us what was wrong with Savannah. I said that it seemed like she had a urinary tract infection. I wasn’t about to broadcast the facts to the world.

  The verdict – the decision, they call it – came in around 6 pm. Our lawyer said we were free to take Savannah home. We wouldn’t need to worry about the contact orders. Everything was suspended. Savannah would stay with us while the court had another look at what was best for her.

  I closed up the phone, and started pulling Savannah’s things together but then our GP came by and said it would be best for her to stay another night.

  I wasn’t at all keen. The cut – the pinprick – you could hardly even see it anymore. But our GP said it was in a sensitive place, and the catheter they’d inserted to draw urine away from the area while they examined her had only just been removed, and she’d have to wear a nappy, and the nappy would get wet, and he was worried about infection.

  He said, ‘Look, I don’t want to worry you. It’s healed perfectly, I’m sure of that. There won’t be any scarring. I can’t see any problems, longer term.’ But still, he said, it was probably wise for Savannah to stay on the ward for one night. It wouldn’t do any harm.

  And so we went home. We went home to our empty house in Hunters Hill, and we sat in silence on the couch, and then, at a loss as to what to do, I got up, and went into the kitchen, and began restacking Savannah’s baby food. I went through her plastic bowls, and her curved spoons, washing and wiping them. I wiped the high chair down. I folded her bibs and eventually, I curled up on the floor of her room, holding her blanket, and at some point, I must have fallen sleep.

  It must have been early – I’d say 3 am, maybe earlier than that – when we heard a knock on the door, and David, who had fallen asleep in the lounge, went to open it and it was Donna-Faye.

  People have asked me, how did she look? She looked much she always looked, somewhat vague and disoriented, weary, confused. I must have looked a bit disoriented myself. I’d slept on the floor in my clothes, and I’d been brought to the door, when it was still dark outside. I was concerned to see Donna-Faye there, not only because it was 3 am, but also because it seemed that she had driven to our house in an old Corolla, and I wasn’t aware that she could drive, or had access to a car.

  I said, ‘Well hello, Donna-Faye’, and I stepped back to welcome her into the house. I was thinking to myself: Does she know what had happened to Savannah in Tamworth? I’m not really sure. I don’t really know. We hadn’t told her. We hadn’t even told Dad, not yet. The court knew, and the Department knew, so maybe Donna-Faye did know. Somebody must have said something, because she said, ‘She’s gone back into hospital?’

  Just like that, ‘She’s gone back into hospital?’ like, ‘She’s gone to the milk bar?’ There was no concern in her voice.

  I said, ‘Yes’ and I stepped further back into the hall to let her in, but Donna-Faye didn’t step forward. She didn’t say, ‘Well, what happened to her? Did she hit her head or take a tumble? Does she have a cold? Why is she in the hospital?’ She simply stood, holding a large, stuffed toy, an incredibly ugly, purple dinosaur thing, one of those toys that doesn’t come from a toy shop, but from a fete or a show, the kind of thing that people win when they put balls into the mouths of clowns, and it wasn’t new. There were small balls of polystyrene popping out through a broken seam under the toy’s arm, so perhaps it was something she’d picked up at a fete one day, years earlier, during a break in her pony shows. She held it towards me. She said, ‘Can you give her this?’

  I took the animal and, straightaway, it started leaking white balls, lighter than air, on the runner in the hall. I said, ‘Come in, Donna, don’t stand there on the porch.’

  She said, ‘I’m okay. I just wanted to make sure you got this to give to Savannah.’

  I said – and maybe this was the wrong thing to say – I said, ‘It’s gorgeous, Donna, but I’m not sure it’s right for Savannah. Look, it’s leaking. She might swallow one of these balls.’

  She said, ‘You could fix it up.’

  I said, ‘I could get that done, yes.’

  She continued to stand there for a moment, and then she said, ‘Well, bye.’

  I said, ‘Do you know what happened?’ because at that point, I still wasn’t sure that Donna-Faye really knew what happened. She hadn’t even said, ‘Is my baby alright?’ Behind me, David said, ‘Ka’aren, careful’ but Donna-Faye merely shrugged and said, ‘I suppose it’s just what happens.’

  Now, what does that mean?

  I suppose it’s just what happens?

  Maybe to Donna-Faye, that made sense. She had babies, and they went into hospital, and she didn’t see them again.

  Maybe by then, in the steel grip of her madness, she thought that’s what happened to everybody’s baby.

  I said, ‘Are you sure you won’t come in, Donna?’

  She said, ‘I better get on. Just, if you can get it fixed and give it to Savannah, will you?’

  I said, ‘Well, Donna, I’ll certainly try.’

  She nodded and turned away and walked back to the Corolla. She opened the driver’s door, and she got in the car. I turned and went inside to raise my eyebrows at David and show him the purple toy she’d brought. I heard the engine start and then, jus
t before she should have pulled away, Donna-Faye got out of the car again, and came back onto the porch and knocked for a second time.

  I opened up. I was confused. I saw that Donna-Faye’s car was still running, and that the driver’s door was open and the headlights were on, and it was surreal, so early in the morning to hear such noises, and see such things.

  I said, ‘Well, hello again. Are you coming in?’

  She said, ‘No.’

  I said, ‘Did you forget something?’

  She said, ‘I came to say goodbye.’

  Now, as I’ve said, it wasn’t unusual for Donna-Faye to get muddled. I knew that she was on some kind of medication … on all sorts of medication. She had been taking it when she lived with us. She had already said bye and now here she was again, not a minute later, saying, Bye.

  I said, ‘Okay, well then, bye, Fat.’

  She said, ‘Okay. Bye.’

  And she was gone.

  Chapter 18

  Kat Atley

  THE FIRST PERSON TO TELL ME that Savannah was missing wasn’t the police, and it wasn’t the Department. I heard it at six in the morning on 702 on the ABC, along with every other person in Sydney.

  An announcer broke into the program to say, ‘Police are searching for a baby that has apparently gone missing from Sydney Children’s Hospital in Parramatta.’ That was all; there was no more than that. ‘Police are searching for a baby that has apparently gone missing from Sydney Children’s Hospital in Parramatta.’

  People have asked me how I knew it was Savannah. I don’t know, except that I knew. I knew that instant, that very second, that it had to be Savannah, and just as my heart was racing towards the back of my throat, just as my stomach turned towards the floor, the telephone rang, and it was the police.

  They didn’t need to tell me to drive to Donna-Faye’s. I was half-dressed. I had on one shoe. David was in the driveway. I had the mobile telephone in one hand, and the dogs were yapping after me. David was turning the keys over in his hands, trying to get one into the ignition.