Taboo

by Kim Scott

  ‘Your mum locked you out? Her boyfriend shouted at you? They locked you in the house? Of course we can help.’

  Tilly filled in the forms. Unable to live at home due to extreme circumstances. Family breakdown. Abusive men. Risk.

  Cheryl told her she didn’t want to make the mistake of relying on welfare though. ‘Look around, Tilly. All the women with no man, and lots of children. That sort of money doesn’t keep you living a life you want, not one I’m happy with, that’s all I’ll say. I don’t wanna live like that, and I never will.’

  *

  Tilly thought she would keep going to school when she moved out of her home and into Cheryl’s flat. And so she did, for a time. But there was so much to do, so much new. Never just sitting around with TV. Never.

  This rush her father must’ve known so well.

  Doug knew everyone, and he so quiet and polite most of the time when the others brayed and strutted, tried to show power and influence. Little sister, Cheryl said, and always made sure she got back safe from wherever they’d been. Cheryl was called away with work. Tilly found herself at Doug’s house. Her own room, own en suite.

  ‘Yes, you do need to be with your people,’ he would say. ‘Cheryl can help, but doesn’t mean you have to be down in the gutter, Matilda. You’re better than that.’

  Her mother never let her use candles, but Doug had no such rules. He had food delivered. Proper food. Tilly was happy to help keep the house clean. It was nothing. She felt important.

  And a surprise: Doug had three large guard dogs he kept in the backyard. The rear door was separated from the living areas and, having wandered the house one time in his absence, she stood by the heavy glass door. The dogs stood the other side of the glass, not barking, only quietly snarling and slavering at her. They followed her every movement. The backyard was such a contrast to the front, and the interior of the house. It was almost all concrete, with what she assumed were kennels in the far corner. Tilly retreated, and heard one of the dogs give a short bark.

  ‘Security,’ Doug said when she asked. ‘Don’t go out there, whatever you do. Unless they’re chained up. They’ll get used to you in time.’

  *

  Her father’s skin was tinged with grey, and his face more lined than she remembered. He was thin. He looked old and sick.

  He turned away when Aunty Cheryl went to kiss him. ‘I’m my own man.’ Hugged Tilly; his skin was clammy. He glanced around the room before he sat down, and held the gaze of the prison officer before he turned his attention to Tilly.

  ‘You ok, Dad?’

  ‘Better for seeing you, Tilly.’

  Her father licked the corners of his mouth, clicked his fingers at the end of sentences. Stabbed his index finger for emphasis.

  ‘No good. Kids don’t know who they are. Gotta get the language back. That’s it.’ He pounded his open palm against his chest. He said some of the old words.

  Tilly had heard all this before.

  She may have felt the air shift at her back, or more likely it was the prison officer’s body language, a change in his expression.

  Her father’s other family – the woman and children she’d seen at the funeral – had arrived. They were a dishevelled group, and hadn’t dressed up for the visit. The mother’s hair was tied back, her clothes rumpled and stained. Tilly didn’t recognise any of them from Facebook. They glared at Tilly. Doug seemed to have ushered them in.

  ‘There must’ve been a mix-up, Tilly. With the visits, I mean.’

  Doug was talking with the prison officer who had accompanied the family to the visiting room. They smiled together. Doug was calm, complacent and satisfied. The officer and Doug seemed not to look in the direction of Tilly and her father. They stood between the entry and the door of the office. Other prisoners and their visitors glanced at the mild disturbance; this bubble of ill-feeling. It amused them.

  No wonder her father felt proud of her, look at them. The boy tapping his thigh.

  ‘Perhaps you should go, Tilly.’

  She reached across to him, but he did not get to his feet. ‘Look after her,’ he said to Cheryl.

  Cheryl stood up. She spoke to the prison officer nearby, ‘We’ll leave now.’

  Her father muttered, ‘Doug.’ Or was it ‘Dog’? Turned his attention to his other family who remained near the prison officer and Doug even though the space between they and her father was clear. They could have approached; but they waited. The prison officer took Cheryl and Tilly wide of Tilly’s other family; her siblings, she reminded herself. Only then – was it Doug gave permission? – did they and the officer move toward Jim Coolman. As Tilly reached Doug, she looked back. One of the girls mouthed, ‘Bitch.’

  The officer put his hand on the mother’s shoulder, helped her decide to sit at Jim’s table. Doug put his arm around Tilly’s shoulder and they left.

  It was very upsetting. Stressful. ‘Tilly,’ said Doug, ‘you know what makes you feel better. You know who you really are. You’re wonderful, Tilly, you are very, very special.’ He gave her so much; clothes and pills, music and dainty little pipes, broadband and subscriptions and needles and rituals of preparation to confirm the truth of his words. ‘For being you,’ he said, offering again. ‘Bonus.’

  *

  Next time Tilly saw her father he was in hospital; a chain between bed and wrist. In hospital, there was a prison officer in the room or nearby, but they let her see him. Doug helped arrange that.

  She missed Cheryl. Live in the moment, Cheryl told her. The moment. No longer segments of day and night; school and home. Tilly had never felt so good about herself. She was living in a state of exultation, she told herself, savouring the word.

  It was a shock seeing her father. Like walking into an invisible wall; the world withered and shrank in the instant it took to recover. Her father was dying. The prison officer stayed in the room, but tried not to be. He was looking through a women’s magazine; Tilly was touched by his courtesy.

  Even now, despite the obvious and aching sadness, she felt proud of herself. She was the hero at the centre of her life, as must be; had left her mother, found her father. She brimmed with strength, growing into what she would become.

  Her father treated her like an adult, an equal. ‘You’re special, Tilly. We’ve got thousands of generations before us, living in the same country,’ he said. ‘First People, we are. Ancestral country, but it’s massacre country too. Hardly any of us have; stole our country, killed us off, made were laws so we couldn’t go back, those of us left. Some don’t even remember. But you been there, Tilly. You lived there when you were a baby. I was in all sorts of trouble and your mum was sick, she had to foster you out. Must’ve been meant to happen. She’s a good woman, Tilly, your mother. I didn’t know where you were, but you was home, it was our old people’s country you went to. Not just co-incidence, that. Taboo, they say, but nothing happened to you, Tilly. Spirits of our old people looked after you I reckon.’

  He held her hand. He was so calm, Tilly thought, had so much love.

  ‘I’d like to see your mother, Tilly. I want to apologise to her for all I did. I was a weak man, wanting to be powerful. She’s done a wonderful job bringing you up.’

  Tilly squeezed his hand. Said she would bring her mother to see him.

  ‘I’m different now, Tilly. I was mad before, that’s why I’m here. But getting back our language, learning our history and that . . . I only knew the anger, the racism. Nothing worth passing on to you or anyone really.’

  Tilly was nodding at him. Tilly wanted to learn. What could she do?

  ‘Go back there, Tilly. Go back with some of our people. Not everyone is scared. We’ll take the language back, the stories that belong there and tell us who to be, what we can do. I can help make that happen, even if I can’t be there. But we’d need you I reckon.’

  *

 
Doug understood the stress she was under, the change and challenges she was facing.

  He listened to her, Tilly thought. He really listened.

  ‘Oh, so that’s where you’re from.’ He seemed very interested. ‘That’s your dad’s country. And you were fostered there.’ Doug gave a snort of laughter.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Tilly said.

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing. I know that area, that’s all. Pretty rough. It’s funny to think you’d be fostered there.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what dad said. Sort of.’

  They talked about the trouble with her mother. ‘I’ll get in touch with your mum,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange it so she can pay your dad a visit. With you one time, that’d be best wouldn’t it?’

  He massaged Tilly’s shoulders. Her feet. He gently moved her hair from her face when tears came or when she’d been sick. Supported her when she became a little confused.

  On a later visit Tilly saw that her father had shrunk. His head – his completely hairless skull – seemed huge and precariously balanced at the top of his spine; it tilted a little, and turned slowly. Although weak, he was able to sit upright in bed. Shirtless, she could see the ribbed detail of his barrelled torso rising from a tangle of sheets, towels, various cloths to absorb and not stain. One leg was folded beneath him, the other foot dangled at the side of the mattress from beneath the sheets. A prison officer sat just outside the doorway.

  Her father needed to be moved to another room for some tests. He’d had them before, the procedure was familiar. There was some confusion among the staff; the wheelchair, the stretcher . . .?

  ‘You take me, Tilly. Fuck ’em.’

  She stood in front of him, he put his arms around her shoulders, and she carried him on the curve of her back. So tiny, her father. She hunched her back, leaned forward, and his useless legs dragged on the floor behind them. Cheek to cheek, near enough; his arms around her shoulders and neck, their hands clasped. They were one; she carried him easily and he was no burden.

  *

  Jim Coolman was in intensive care. Tilly studied the large doll her father had become, quite still now but for the shallow rise and fall of his breath. Cables connected him to machines and screens where coloured lines and lights wriggled and blinked. The room was at the very top of the building, surrounded by windows. Outside was the unreachable and implacable bright blue sky. Sunlight shone in rectangles upon the floor, and no dust no particles no motes bounced in this air. It occurred to her that her father might be providing power to this whole building, this medical complex, this city.

  He recovered. Tilly rarely encountered a visitor; only the prison officers still stationed (ridiculous, since he was now so feeble) outside the door. And even they disappeared. Her father was not much more than a skeleton, the skin stretched over him, but became intensely alive. He sat upright in his hospital bed: the barrel-ribbed torso, the hands so large at the end of stick-thin arms . . . The span of his bony shoulders reminded her of a coathanger. He slowly turned his head, and fixed his bulbous eyes upon her.

  ‘I’m a Noongar man, Tilly,’ he croaked. ‘Been mixed up, what that means. Noongar warrior. Ha! Snared. Until just lately, and . . . Too late. Say sorry to your mum if you can, I never meant . . .’

  His jaw clenched, relaxed, clenched again like something mechanical. He might have been a puppet, but the fire of life burned ferociously. He was staring over her shoulder. Tilly turned. Doug stood in the doorway; glossy, leather-jacketed, smiling as if deeply satisfied. His head needs shaving, she thought, incongruously.

  ‘He and you?’ her father enquired.

  ‘Dougie?’ even though it was obvious who he meant.

  ‘Dougie?’ her father repeated, as if hurt by the intimate rendering of the name.

  ‘He’s been helping me,’ Tilly continued, defensive despite herself. ‘He said it was best you didn’t know, since you were sick. Because of the mix-up you’d had, one time. He said you’d been very close, and . . . Nothing really, is what he told me . . .’

  ‘Know her mother, too,’ said Doug, from the doorway.

  Tears in her father’s eyes. He leaned back into the pillows heaped around him, was slipping away from her.

  She touched him. Stood up. ‘Call the nurse,’ she said to Doug.

  But Doug did not move. He remained, leaning against the doorframe, studying her father.

  ‘Nurse!’ called Tilly, louder this time, she who was usually so quiet. The nurse brushed past Doug and into the room. She felt Jim’s wrist, checked the machines. He was ok, but perhaps needed some rest? It might not be long now.

  Doug had Tilly’s arm, and was moving her along the corridor. There was a small waiting room, and her father’s other children were there with their mother. They looked at her blankly. A boy, one knee jumping up and down as he picked and scratched at the skin of his face and arms. A daughter with headphones, fingers clicking. Another concentrating on her phone, her jaw working.

  ‘Got your dealer man, have you, darling? Boss man. Or he got you?’ The boy looked to his mother, as if for instructions. Her lips curled; it might almost have been a smile.

  Doug paused. ‘He’s all yours.’

  The woman looked at him, mouth open, jaw hanging. ‘And after,’ he said, ‘if you can keep your children civil . . .’

  ‘Children? We’re not . . .’

  ‘Shuttup,’ the woman hissed.

  ‘If you can control your children, go see Lindsay. He’ll have something for you.’

  Tilly could hear their voices rising as the doors closed behind. She might have been a patient herself, and Doug her protector; or a prisoner, and he her jailer.

  ‘Here,’ he offered, almost as soon as they got back to his house. Home, is how she put it to herself these days. ‘A bonus.’

  *

  Tilly’s phone wanted her. It made Tilly almost nostalgic. Like Cheryl said, she had real friends and family now, face to face friends, not just Facebook friends. So she had been breaking the bond between her and the phone. But the phone gave that little buzz – a message – and she remembered the pleasure. Silly.

  Call me. About your mum.

  It was from her stepfather. As if she wanted to talk to him, especially after all the bossy shouting she’d put up with from him lately. Nothing new there. She had a good idea what that would be about. She ignored it.

  He was persistent. She was determined not to give way. Tilly switched off the phone, put it away from her.

  Later in the day when she turned it on again, almost without realising what she did, the habit still so strong, she was pleased to see a message from Dougie. This was unusual. He might not be back until late. And there were a few repeats from her mother’s man. A little wave of worry lapped at her. If Mum really needed her, she’d call, wouldn’t she? The wave receded, clutching with feeble fingers. Tilly put herself at ease.

  The doorbell called her. Now? It was dark already; the day had left her behind. Peeping through a narrow tunnel, a figure at the other end, distorted by the lens that let Tilly see through the door. Cheryl?

  ‘I lost my key,’ Cheryl said, hugging her. The embrace lingered. ‘Tilly.’ What was it? Tilly wondered. Cheryl went to the fridge, took out a drink, gestured did Tilly want one also? Cheryl stood in the fridge door, illuminated by it. Like a character stepping from between the pages of a book. But no, Tilly didn’t want a drink.

  Cheryl seemed nervous about something.

  ‘Tilly, darling. Doug . . .’

  ‘He’ll be late. I had a message.’ Tilly knew already. He’d let her know first.

  ‘He’s with the police.’

  So? He was hurt?

  Tilly’s face must’ve shown more than she realised, because Cheryl was quick to reassure her. ‘He’s alright. He’s alright. Some trouble with some prisoners. They took the car. Escaped. The police need to
talk with him, that’s all.’

  And then, before the details, before the story. ‘They crashed it. Your mum was in the car.’

  That was a surprise. How come?

  ‘They took her to hospital. She’s passed away, Tilly.’

  It played through her head for many days to come, getting the story straight, coming to terms with it. Cheryl stayed that night. Went with her to see the body. It was just the two of them. And a body. Tilly couldn’t believe it was her mum.

  Doug was suspended from work and, despite all the pressure he was under, he was so very helpful; he supported her.

  Doug might be too nice.

  He wasn’t even officially working, apparently, when he gave two prisoners – well, they were on parole – a lift. He knew them. They were in his care. Tilly’s mum was in the car. Doug said she’d wanted to talk about Tilly, that was why she was in the car.

  The prisoner behind Doug had overpowered him at some traffic lights. Got the seatbelt around his neck, pushed him out of the car. He’d almost blacked out, and might have been run over by one of the cars behind. Twenty minutes later they’d crashed.

  ‘Your mum, Tilly. She was gone by the time they got her to the hospital. One of them died too. They were both high as kites, the prisoners I mean.’

  They must’ve both grabbed Doug then. He wasn’t sure, he could hardly remember it. But he was a big man, Doug. The prisoners were boys really. The seatbelt around his neck was what did it. That’s how they overpowered him. They must’ve been high when he gave them a lift. Her mum was already in the car, and he saw the two men in the street and gave them a lift. Too helpful. He was too nice, and it might be that he was in trouble because of it. He’d lose his job maybe. He’d be under suspension for a time.

  A LONG WAY

  Tilly never went to her father’s funeral. Never heard until it was too late. The days flipped by. She thought of something she’d seen in an old film; a paper calendar, the pages flipping quickly one after the other, but she couldn’t even make out the numbers.

  Her mother’s funeral would be delayed, Cheryl told her. Because of the accident and everything.