Taboo

by Kim Scott

  Again and again it was like she was slapped awake: an orphan. She collected her things, the bits and pieces of her childhood. Of course Tilly missed her mother. Her father too, who she’d only begun to know. Missed her old home and school life. But when it was withheld, she realised it was the bonus she missed most of all. She was a little ashamed of herself, of how she had turned away from her old life. But, as Dougie said, it was a lot for someone as young as her to go through. And what he offered helped. He was a great help. Some people, he explained, special people, they need support. Artists. Creatives. It was self-medication, and taking responsibility for yourself. You have to look after yourself first. And he was right; she needed to get herself right. She just needed a break. For days it was just her and Doug. She needed . . .

  She was glad when Doug began once again to stay away during the day. She guessed he had resumed work.

  No phone. No internet now. No Aunty Cheryl. She’d been too long away from school. Doug locked the house. Security screens and sliding metal doors – she had not realised the house was so secure – there was no point even trying to break a window, and certainly no exit via the rear of the house with those dogs waiting for her.

  The house was spotless. There was TV, DVDs, music. Magazines and books. He left medicine – her bonus – and the implements she preferred. Sometimes she told herself she wouldn’t take it. But then, why not?

  Because what difference did it make to be locked up anyway? She was safe. And once she relaxed, what did it matter if she was locked up? Good enough for her father, good enough for her. Only, when he was dying, he’d said he’d wasted his life.

  Tilly padded barefoot through the big house. Shied at some noise. Something in the ceiling? Told herself she didn’t need anyone. Sat on the big leather sofa and cried, loudly, her sobs absorbed by the house. Took the bonus.

  No more Cheryl. No more concerts, football matches, the champagne and the lights. Just the bonus. And Doug. Doug who dressed her, undressed her, told her she made him happy, told her he needed her.

  She only had Doug, and what he wanted with her.

  ‘You can’t stop me leaving,’ she said. Went to follow him out. But he could. He took her back inside, crying. ‘Have your breakfast,’ he said. He gave her a bowl of cereal, a glass of fresh juice he’d mixed himself.

  When she awoke she was naked but for underpants; too large, they weren’t hers. She had a collar around her neck. Was on a small mattress on the floor.

  Doug sat in a large reclining chair, his feet up. ‘You’re awake,’ he said, turning away from the TV and swinging his surprisingly small and immaculate shoes to the floor.

  He pulled on the leash, quite gently at first. Smiled; that seemed gentle, too.

  ‘Bonus? Something to make you feel better?’

  He pointed to a bowl of dried dog biscuits on the floor. Yanked on the leash again.

  She knew what he wanted. She ate, kneeling. He touched her and she bent her face low, did what he said; lifted her pelvis up. Ashamed of herself, the pleasure her body took from him even with that taste still in her mouth, still smeared around her lips and how she hated him.

  Remembered it later; amazed, disgusted, resigned to it happening again.

  Never told anyone.

  In the evenings he sometimes chained her up with the dogs. Muzzled her so she could not call, and tied the dogs so they could not quite reach her. They growled in their throats, showed their teeth, lunged on their own chains. Tilly crawled back into her kennel, kept her eyes on the back door waiting for Doug to return and rescue her. Did her best to ignore the dogs, which wagged their tails like puppies when Doug approached, so pleased to see him.

  As was she.

  *

  If you could’ve seen Matilda back then, once upon a time. Our Tilly, walking through the house as if her limbs were full of lactic acid. They weren’t; it wasn’t exercise that was making her limbs heavy, that was making her blood stream sluggish and weighing her down. She had the medicine to fix it.

  The house had a glass sliding door between two of its main rooms. Tilly walked into that glass, and staggered back with her hand to her head. She approached it again, both hands out in front of her, feeling the glass. She roamed the house grinding her teeth, bumping into doorframes, lashing out in frustration. Her eyes were vacant, her hair lank, jaw loose. Food stains at her chest. Tilly walked from room to room, muttering and singing to herself. A blowfly was trapped in the corner of one of the windows. She stood still, listening to it.

  What other sound? A knocking. Thump thump.

  Tilly turned, saw a pair of legs dangling from the ceiling; this became a man hanging by his arms. The man let go, landed smartly on his feet.

  ‘Tilly, it’s me, Tilly. Gerry. Gerry Coolman.’

  Oh Tilly. Her heart was beating. She backed away from him. ‘Tilly. I heard, Tilly. Your mum.’

  Tilly’s head was going side to side, slowly. No no no.

  ‘Jim would’ve understood you couldn’t get to his funeral. But, your mum. She brought you up, Tilly. You should be there.’

  Gerry sat down on a sofa. Picked up a remote, turned on the TV. Tilly’s eyes went to the screen.

  ‘When you’re ready, Tilly.’

  She sat down.

  ‘You got people love you, Tilly. Missed your dad’s funeral, don’t want to miss your mum’s as well.’

  ‘Gerry?’ she said.

  ‘When you’re ready, Tilly.’ His eyes scanned the room. ‘Shit, I broke into houses before, but never had to break out of one.’

  He got to his feet, gestured for her to help him. They pulled a table under the manhole from which he’d descended. Then, considering Tilly a moment (her eyes kept moving from him to the TV screen) he swung a chair over to the table, put another one on top of it.

  ‘C’mon, Tilly.’

  He stepped onto the table, then onto the chair and his head disappeared into the roof space. He bent his knees and their eyes met. Tilly looked away.

  Gerry stepped back down onto the table, held out his hand. ‘Tilly. C’mon.’

  Tilly turned away from the game show on the television screen.

  There, a million dollars was being offered. Here, a man precariously stood on a table beckoning her, and could offer only his empty, open hands.

  ‘Yoowarl koorl, Tilly. Yoowarl koorl. Come this way, Tilly.’

  Tilly fumbled with the seatbelt before giving up and slumping in the seat. In a moment she was asleep against the door, a line of saliva running down her chin.

  *

  Jim, Tilly’s father, had said, ‘Get her away from him, Ger.’ But Gerald had to wait until he was himself released – that trouble his twin caused, along with too many fines from nothing but being inattentive and, he had to admit, out of his brain. It had not been easy to straighten himself up. At first, in fact, it had seemed impossible – until he started working with Jim, and found himself a different source to grow from.

  He was not going back, and he would help Tilly move on too. He often felt so alone these days. He went with Tilly to her mother’s funeral. There were very few people present. Gerry tried to introduce himself to Tilly’s stepfather, but the man turned away almost immediately. The man was upset, of course, but he snubbed Tilly also. Gerry and Tilly stood quite separate as the small crowd watched the coffin enter the furnace.

  ‘Thank you, Gerry,’ Tilly said, as they left. ‘I hate myself,’ she continued. ‘I keep thinking, go back to Doug.’

  ‘Doug, or . . .?’

  ‘Bonus, he called it. Dad was an addict too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, that was something Doug had over him. Doug worked at the prison for a while, apparently, early on, and your dad was so proud and so angry. Played into Doug’s hands, really. And then the drugs . . . Like an ambush. Doug likes that power over people. Seen that yourself now, un
na? Your dad wanted to break out of that cycle, for himself, but . . .’

  They went to Gerry’s Aunty Kathy’s house. The front door was open, the mat spelled out welcome. Aunty Kathy looked irritated, but almost immediately softened. Jim had been mad and bad all those years ago. She settled the girl, left her to fall asleep.

  *

  Gerry tried to explain the situation as he saw it. Yes, Tilly was Jim Coolman’s girl, and she’d picked up a habit. That Doug Harper. She and her mother moved from interstate, no other family so speak of it seemed. Her mother had been in love with this man, and now she had died he didn’t want nothing of Tilly. Tilly didn’t know who she was, never been told she had Noongar family. She met Jim recently – her dad, you remember when he first went inside? The mother was that girl. Gerry didn’t know how much Tilly knew, but she was mixed up (‘Not alone there,’ said Kathy). Didn’t know who she was or what it meant and Dougie-boy saw that and he grabbed her. Gerry had seen it before. That Cheryl, for instance, he’d discarded her now. He seemed to have got to Tilly very quickly, broke her down quickly too.

  ‘Doug set that up, the mother?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  Neither of them had faith in the police.

  Kathy made a cup of tea. They went out and sat on flimsy chairs in the big backyard, in the shade of a big tree near where Kathy had a small campfire going. Talked.

  Tilly would need a new environment, and good people around her. She had nowhere to go really. They’d seen enough addiction to know coming back to the same didn’t work anyway. But it would be good for her to get back into school somehow, especially since she’d been doing her last years of schooling and was doing alright from all accounts.

  ‘She’s a state ward. You could be her guardian? If she agrees? If we can get her at a boarding school or hostel or something? Then you’d only need to have her here in the holidays, maybe?’

  She might get a residential place at one of the boarding schools. Something. If she could rest, if she recovered, if she wanted. Not everyone did.

  ‘I know a school. Not far from me – ’course, I’m at the primary school, but I do some work there; language, and Welcomes to Country sometimes even. Get her in there and she won’t really need a guardian.’ She looked at Tilly slumped in her chair. ‘Yeah, I can help. They’re good, the school I mean. And there’s scholarships, to stay there and that. Bed, food, decent company,’ said Kathy. ‘My nephew, Ryan, he knows more about it than me. We’ll talk to him.’ She studied Gerald. ‘You too. Ever think about study? You come a long way, Gerald.’

  Gerry thanked her. He was not accustomed to this. He told himself to hold on to her compliment and appreciation; it would help him.

  KNOW SO

  At first it seemed to Tilly that she’d been dropped into a maze. It was easy to get lost among the rooms and people, and that was just the hostel. The classes were even more daunting, so different from the school she had previously known. Or perhaps, she was wise enough to realise, it was she who had changed. Most everyone was so purposeful and self-assured. She found herself favouring a view that was framed at one end of a corridor between buildings; a view of distant, shimmering foothills.

  Kathy visited her with one of her nephews. Ryan worked at the university near the school. ‘We just wanna give you some pathways, Matilda. Too many of our mob can’t help themselves.’ Ryan was an unassuming man. ‘You have to wear a uniform all the time?’ he said. Tilly said yes. It wasn’t true. Then they were talking about the language classes her father had led in prison.

  Kathy said it was healing. ‘Fixed me up,’ Ryan said. ‘Got me off the gear, and your dad too, he cut back, he would’ve come clean . . .

  ‘It means everything to me,’ he continued. ‘We need you able to stand on your own two feet, Tilly. Anything else is a bonus.’

  Tilly winced.

  He told Tilly the hostel – though most called it a college – where she would stay was advertising for an Aboriginal Support Officer, and she probably should make sure she introduced herself to that person as soon as they were employed.

  So, between them all Tilly’s immediate future was arranged, and within weeks Tilly began to show that she might blossom in this environment. She knew habit and routine – had secretly mastered her diet and body for most of her brief teen years, and now suppressed her experience with Doug with a ferocious will. She followed schedules, did sport. She was otherwise happy keeping to herself. She knew what she wanted; in fact it was not much more than to make herself a life like this; of timetables and study; of frequent, tiny rewards.

  A tutor helped her refine skills; she set goals and made plans to reach them. As for society, it was enough for her to greet the people who lived in the rooms around her and to share meals within the domestic confines of the college.

  *

  Gerald found a night job packing shelves in a supermarket, but the drudgery of it, to say nothing of his stoned companions, made it hard for him to maintain his resolution. Concentrating on ‘structure and purpose’ as advised, he applied himself to the language and other study he had begun in prison under the guidance of Tilly’s father: the wordlists, the imagined dialogues, the recounting of old stories and fashioning of new ones with the old language. But it was not the same.

  He turned up at the meetings his parole demanded, and went to enquire about an Aboriginal Bridging Course at the university. There was mention of a language class being held at a local community centre. He was proud that he got himself there. They concentrated on sounds, drew their own representation of spoken words with a finger, stick or brush dipped in paint. The words were written with great care and – Gerry hesitated in saying it – with love.

  He went to a lecture with his cousin, Ryan, which centred on the ‘shared history’ of their nation, and offered the ‘fundamental truths’: stolen country, the tiny minority of the original population which survived the first decades of colonisation being subject to generations of oppressive legislation into the late twentieth century.

  He rarely saw Tilly. ‘She’s good,’ Kathy said. ‘Don’t see her much myself. Maybe next year.’

  Some weeks into term Tilly received a notice saying a woman had been appointed to the Aboriginal Support Officer position. Remembering Ryan’s advice, Tilly went to see her.

  ‘Yes, can I help you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m Tilly.’

  ‘Well, I’m the Aboriginal Support Officer.’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I came to say hello.’

  ‘Oh, you’re Aboriginal?’

  ‘I’m a Coolman.’

  ‘Yes.’ Make sure you tell people, Gerry had told her, otherwise other people will tell you who you are.

  ‘I see. Gee, with some of you it’s hard to tell. Where are you from? That’s what matters to Aboriginal people, did you know? That’s what they always ask.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Tilly.

  The pin-up board behind the woman was covered with pictures of Aboriginal people. Many were copied from newspapers, magazines and from books but most were apparently quite recent photographs.

  ‘I’m Maureen McGill,’ the woman said.

  Maureen noticed Tilly studying the photographs. ‘I took the photos myself,’ she said.

  ‘They your family?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not Aboriginal.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘I just took them, you know, around the place. I thought it would make people comfortable, to have them up in my office.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘I’ve worked with lots of Aboriginal people, you know, up north. Cultural people, still on their country. I’ve got a skin name.’

  Tilly nodded.

  ‘What’s your skin?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Tilly.

  ‘That’s alright. Lots of people lost their culture down this way. We can fix that up. I’ll get some wo
rkshops, some classes or something happening. We’ll have excursions – we had one this morning, to the Aboriginal Community College.’ She named the suburb. ‘But it was terrible, those poor kids.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Tilly.

  ‘None of them could play didj. Some of us, some of our kids, will have to go and teach them.’

  ‘Didj doesn’t come from down here.’

  ‘Oh, Tilly, but it’s so Aboriginal. Didgeridoo means Aborigine to everyone, surely!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’

  ‘You Stolen Generation, love?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Who’s your mob? Where you from? That’s what Aboriginal people always wanna know.’

  ‘Yes. I see.’

  ‘I want everyone to be proud of their culture, Tilly. Sit down, I want to show you something.’

  She got up from her desk and closed the door. ‘I thought we’d run some workshops, you know, maybe some art, artefacts or dancing or something like that.’

  ‘Can’t help you.’

  ‘’Course you could.’ Maureen played with the computer mouse. ‘Look.’ She flicked through a series of images of boomerangs painted in bright patterns of dots and lines. ‘Googled them. I thought we could have all the Aboriginal kids teaching the other residents the traditional art of boomerang painting.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘But it’s your culture, Tilda.’

  ‘Tilly.’

  ‘This art; it’s your culture, Tilly.’

  The office door was closed. The window blind drawn. Tilly thought she might get up and run.

  ‘We’re going to have a proper College Ball, at the old prison. I thought we might put on some Aboriginal dances for everyone. We’ll have some dancers teach us.’

  Tilly nodded.

  ‘Would you be interested?’

  ‘Do anything.’

  ‘Good. I’ll let you know then.’

  She got to her feet, opened the door and Tilly escaped.

  *

  The school ball was imminent. Maureen grabbed Tilly’s arm to tell her about rehearsals for the dance they’d perform. Despite the Support Officer, Tilly felt obliged to go.