Becoming Kirrali Lewis

by Jane Harrison

  I made us all a cup of tea, just the drink for a crisis. Meanwhile, Kirk was patting Martina’s back just like I’d seen my sister, Rochelle, do when she was burping my niece, Alice.

  I began to straighten up the living room. Maybe Martina would feel better with some order in her life. I thought I’d ask her about something positive to distract her from whatever was troubling her.

  ‘How’s the land rights campaign going?

  ‘It’s not. Well, I’m not.’

  ‘Why not? I know you, when you get a bee in your bonnet ...’

  She cut me off, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  That went over well. I went back to the kitchen, piled up the newspapers, emptied the ashtrays and started on the sink full of coffee cups. It was my chore at home to wash the dishes and I settled into a soapy rhythm. Cups clinked and water sloshed. After a while I could hear laughter coming from the living room. Putting the last dish on the draining board, I tiptoed past the door to see what they were doing. Kirk and Martina were curled up on the couch munching potato chips while they watched Gilligan’s Island reruns. They looked like an old married couple.

  I went in and began to pick up the few cushions strewn over the floor. I didn’t dare pick up the tissues.

  ‘Will you stop it?’ Martina bellowed at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not the bloody cleaning lady. I’ve got one of those.’

  ‘You have? You’d better sack her,’ I retorted.

  ‘Sit down, have a drink and talk to me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said cautiously. Even though she was my best friend, deep and meaningfuls weren’t my cup of tea. Speaking of which ... ‘Another cup of tea?’ I asked.

  ‘Arggghh,’ howled Martina, while Kirk chucked a pillow at me. Its zip caught me beneath my eye where I was still tender after the bashing.

  ‘Ouch.’

  Kirk leapt up, concerned, but I told him I was okay. Martina chucked over another pack of potato chips and the sound of our munching filled the silence. Gilligan’s Island had finished and Martina flicked through every channel using a remote control — no one I knew had one of those.

  When she complained that she was still hungry, Kirk offered to go downstairs. The apartment complex had its own convenience store, Chinese takeaway, laundrette and bottle shop: the essentials of modern life, I guessed.

  Alone with Martina, I knew I had to bring up the subject of her marriage but being tactful wasn’t one of my virtues.

  ‘Martina, is everything okay with you and Robbie?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ she insisted, but her hand was shaking as she poured another gin and tonic. Then she lit up a cigarette — I opened my mouth to say something but shut it instead. My Martina didn’t smoke.

  Martina was happy to talk as long as it wasn’t about her. She quickly steered the conversation to my page three fiasco. By the time I’d told her everything that had happened, Kirk was back with a stack of food and we all got cosy on the couch. Despite the shaky start, the night turned out to be fun.

  It was late when we left and Robbie still wasn’t home. We caught a taxi back to the college, paid for with a footy club voucher. Martina had dozens of them.

  Finally I was alone with Kirk. I hadn’t wanted to get lovey in front of Martina so it was a relief to be in the back of the taxi — feeling a bit nervous, a bit excited — gently kissing. I was still worried about Martina but Kirk reassured me she would be okay. Anyway, I didn’t have a clue how I could help her.

  The taxi ride was over too soon. Kirk wound down the window to say a lingering goodbye but he said nothing about seeing me again. It was back to reality.

  Nine

  I wanted to thank Erin for looking out for me after the bashing and the Tribune disaster so I stopped by to see her. Aboriginal Student Services had a tiny cubicle in the student services area. It was just a desk, filing cabinet, noticeboard, two steel-framed chairs, a phone and a typewriter.

  I popped my head around the partition to find Erin staring into space, her hand still on the phone receiver.

  ‘Am I interrupting?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh sorry, Kirrali, come in.’ Turning away from me for just a minute, she wiped her eye with the back of her hand.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  Erin had the most beautiful smile, even when it was suffused with sadness, like now. She waved her hand in the direction of the phone, ‘Just the usual. Another false lead.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m looking for my sister,’ she said.

  ‘Has she gone missing?’

  ‘She was a stolen child,’ Erin said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘You mean she was from the Stolen Generation? One of the Aboriginal children who were taken away? But wasn’t that a long time ago?’

  ‘No way. It was still happening in the sixties and seventies — they just made out that the children were neglected. Maybe some of them were or maybe they just didn’t trust Aboriginal mothers to bring up their kids. My oldest sister was taken from Mum when she was a day old and adopted out. Mum had five more kids but she was allowed to keep them.’

  Erin’s voice was even but her anger and sorrow was evident. It sparked off my own thoughts. I wasn’t born until 1967 but perhaps that had been my fate too. I had always assumed that my mother had given me up because she was too young to look after me. It had never occurred to me that I might have been taken against her will. I wanted to find out more but Erin was crying and I had to shove aside my own concerns.

  Lately it seemed that people all around me were having crises and I didn’t know how to respond. When I fell over as a kid, Dad would ‘kiss it better with a bandaid’. Mum believed chicken soup, fresh air and a good night’s sleep cured practically anything but none of those seemed right for Erin’s troubles. Kirk’s approach worked well with Martina so I gave it a go.

  I went behind the desk and patted her softly on the back. After a while, she blew her nose on her hanky and gave me a grateful smile. Unlike Martina, Erin wasn’t avoiding the issue that was troubling her.

  ‘I haven’t spoken much about my sister to you because I didn’t know whether you were … stolen, too.’

  I shook my head and she continued.

  ‘My family’s been searching for my sister for a few years but it’s really hard to track someone down. She would be in her mid-thirties by now. Family Connect, the agency that tries to link you up with the adoptee family, has to tread carefully.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, the adopted person has to want to meet their biological family. Sometimes it’s too traumatic and it brings up memories that they can’t deal with. Plus it takes ages. Family Connect has to check records and follow up leads from where the person was adopted but they might be married or have changed their name. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ Erin lowered her eyes. ‘Even if they find my sister, she might not want to meet us.’ She added, ‘But you probably know this stuff anyway.’

  I shook my head and she gave me a puzzled look.

  ‘Look, my parents have encouraged me to look for my birth family, as they did for my sister, Beatrice. She’s white but she was also adopted. A few years ago she wanted to meet her ‘real’ mum. So she did and we all went out to a Smorgy’s restaurant. Bea ate too much ice-cream and got a stomach ache. Afterwards, Bea didn’t really want to see her again. But me — I never felt the need to meet my birth parents.’

  Erin gathered her thoughts. ‘I’m only a few years older than you but as you get older you become more interested in where you come from. When you’re a teenager, you’re just caught up in your daily life. I know I was. A pimple was a major trauma. Now I hardly even look in the mirror.’

  ‘You don’t have to, you’re beautiful,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Quit gammon me.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Kidding me, joking.’

  ‘I’m not. You’re gorgeous. But that stuff about looking
for my family, I think I’m just scared of what I might find. My mother gave me away once ...’

  ‘Kirrali, you really have no idea. So many of our women were forced to give up their babies. Say if she was sixteen when she had you …’

  ‘But how could a sixteen-year-old look after a baby?’

  ‘Because the extended family would have helped. The nuclear family is a white thing. We don’t work that way. If your mother had a sister, she would have taken on the role of mother as well.’

  ‘Hold on a second. My aunties would have been my mothers too? Oh, it’s too complicated. An aunty can be another mother but an aunty might not even be related to me because that’s what you call Elders.’

  ‘Yeah, you got it. It’s not that hard. The important thing to remember is that with our mob, family look after family.’

  ‘So even if my mother was a teenager there would have been plenty of people around to look after me?’

  ‘Yep. I’ve got two brothers and two sisters and we had two uncles and an aunty living in the house, as well as my grandmother. Mum and Dad were often away picking fruit so my two sisters practically brought us up.’

  ‘And I thought we had a big family. You must have had a huge house.’

  ‘Nah, only two bedrooms. We had a built-in verandah and most of the kids slept there. Bloody cold in winter but. Dad would plug up the walls with newspaper to keep out the wind.’

  I sighed. I had been mapping out my future since I was twelve. I imagined being offered a plum job at a prestigious law firm, not getting bashed up or getting caught up in Aboriginal issues. But as Erin pointed out, I was getting older and maybe, just maybe, it was time I started finding out a little more about who I was.

  Erin suggested another possibility. ‘Have you ever thought that your mother could be looking for you?’

  ‘Can she do that without my permission?’ It was all very well if I decided to look for my birth parents but I hadn’t even considered they might be looking for me.

  Erin shrugged. ‘She could look. As for meeting you, she would have to go through the same channels as everyone else. Someone from one of the agencies would contact you to see if you wanted to meet her.’

  ‘Well, no one has ever rung me. Chances are she doesn’t want to meet me. She probably wants to forget she ever had me.’

  Erin smiled at me sadly. ‘No mother can ever forget her own child, Kirrali. No matter what else has happened to her in her life, she will always remember you.’

  With that, I remembered I had a tutorial. I hugged Erin and flew through the university grounds. But when I got to the study room, I stopped. Stuff the tutorial, I thought. It was time I did something far more important.

  I walked back to the student lounge and grabbed the tattered telephone directory. In a strangely disconnected way, I watched my finger punch out the phone number.

  ‘Hello, Koori Family Connect, how can I help you?’

  The receptionist put my call through to a woman called Rosie.

  She asked me a few questions which I answered as best I could.

  ‘Well, Kirrali, we’ll certainly try to help you. I’ll put you back to reception so you can make an appointment to come in. Let’s see what can be done about reconnecting you.’

  I put down the phone and tottered over to the nearest chair, collapsing into it. My stomach was churning and my left leg was twitching uncontrollably. I felt sick. I had made the first step towards finding my birth mother.

  Who knows how long I sat there? My body was in neutral but my mind was revved to the max. Next thing, Amber was flopping into the chair next to mine. I usually sat next to her in tutorials or we swapped notes if one of us missed a class — not that we did very often as we both tried to be conscientious.

  ‘Hey, Kirrali. Missed you in the tutorial. Hey, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Do I? Well, I feel like I’ve been digging up ghosts or perhaps it’s skeletons in the family closet. It’s a long story. Anyway, how was the tutorial?’ I didn’t want to explain myself to Amber when I hadn’t even processed in my own mind what I was setting out to do.

  ‘Oh, the tute was okay. It was on research skills for lawyers. How to chase up precedents, that kind of thing. The juicy bit was how to dig up the dirt on your courtroom opponent or how to track down someone who’s vital to your defence. Detective work. Like in Charlie’s Angels. I so love that show. It is like, legit, the best thing on TV. Did you see the episode where Tiffany was having psychic premonitions?’

  I looked at her in amazement. What was she going on about?

  ‘Stop! I have a feeling I am going to need those skills … from the tutorial, not from the TV show. You’d better give me a rundown.’

  While Amber bounced off to the library to photocopy her notes, I had a chance to calm down. I told myself I didn’t have to keep my appointment with Rosie. I didn’t have to follow through with it if I didn’t want to. I was perfectly happy with the family I had already. But then I remembered the look of despair on Erin’s face.

  Maybe, just maybe, my birth parents were looking for me, or even just wondering how I’d turned out. Maybe I could help set their minds at rest. Maybe that was all I needed to do and I wouldn’t have to get involved with them if I didn’t want to.

  Ten

  When I walked home that afternoon, my thoughts were zipping from one to another. There was Martina and her marriage. Erin and the pall of sadness that hung over her like early morning fog. And the possibility of finding my birth parents — that was a confronting thought. If I met them, what would I call them? Definitely not Mum and Dad. Were they married or had I been illegitimate? Probably. That didn’t worry me. Maybe they’d married later on and maybe I had real brothers and sisters. I already had ‘real’ brothers and sisters. Rochelle, Tray, Tarquin, Michael and Beatrice were as real as you could get.

  Suddenly I had pangs of homesickness and tears welled up in my eyes. I turned the corner and there was Kirk waiting on the college steps. He took one look at my face and ran towards me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I want my mum.’ I sobbed.

  ‘You’ll find her one day, Kirrali.’ He put his arm around my shoulders.

  ‘I mean my real mother. I mean, the one I’ve always had — I don’t care that she’s not my biological mother, she’s real to me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I pulled myself away from Kirk and went inside. I couldn’t explain to him how I was feeling — I didn’t know myself. I took the steps to the first floor two at a time and ran down the hall to the now familiar green door. Room 119. I flung myself on the bed and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

  It was dark outside when I woke up. I was thirsty and confused and I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping.

  ‘Kirrali?’

  In the darkness, a shape moved towards me. I jumped up, fear shooting through me but the light clicked on and there was Kirk, smiling.

  ‘What are you doing here? I’m not allowed any male visitors, especially after dark.’

  ‘I was worried about you. I came up to see if you were okay but you were already asleep. You really should lock your door, anyone could wander in off the streets.’

  ‘Yeah, like you, wild man with dreadlocks. How did you know what room I was in?’

  ‘Easy. They always reserve the end rooms on each floor for the Koori students. Erin’s on the ground floor, Room 19, so I knew you had to be in 119.’

  I stared at him. ‘So that’s why I scored a room through the housing office. Because I was Aboriginal. I thought I was just lucky and all the time I was getting special treatment.’

  ‘Kirrali, do you know how hard it is to get a room in one of these colleges? Dude, that’s why you had a big A on your key ring — A for Aboriginal.’

  ‘Well, you said I was naïve. Now I realise I know nothing about how the real world works.’

  Kirk moved closer and took my hand. ‘You said you weren’t allowed any mal
e visitors. I’m not any old fella, am I?’ He looked into my eyes and I was captivated once again by their green glow, even in the low light from the 40-watt bulb.

  ‘I guess not,’ I said, feeling my insides melt into mush. I opened up the bed covers and Kirk slipped in beside me. His skin was warm. We held each other for a long time, talking in whispers about nothing and everything. We kissed and touched each other’s face. Later, cradled in his arms, I fell into a restful sleep.

  When I woke at dawn, Kirk was already gone. I lay staring up at the ghosts of past water leaks on the cream ceiling. So this was what Martina meant when she said she ‘fell’ for Robbie. Every time my thoughts turned to Kirk my stomach would start skydiving — that sensation of weightlessness you sometimes feel in a fast-falling lift. I hoped I was in for a soft landing and that I wouldn’t have to go through what Martina was experiencing.

  During the night, Kirk and I had talked about why she’d seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown when we’d gone over to see her.

  ‘I suppose it’s cool for me to tell you,’ he said.

  I gave him ‘that look’ which he already recognised as ‘that look’.

  ‘Okay, Robbie has a problem with the horses. With gambling in general, actually. He’s down at the racetrack a lot — they don’t have that much to do in the daytime, the players — and at night there’s the trots. Greyhounds. Interstate races. You name it, he’ll bet on it. It got to the point where he was being hassled by some heavies ’cos he’d run up these huge debts.’

  ‘Wow. I thought he might be having an affair or something. Or maybe he was drinking.’

  ‘He doesn’t drink. Not every blackfella does you know. But some of the players do get into trouble. The nightclubs and pubs give the players free drinks ’cos where the players go, chicks will follow, and where there are girls, guys put a lot of money on the bar. But then drunk whitefellas think it’s macho to pick a fight with a footy player. Like a badge of honour. My cousin plays for Essendon so I see it when we go out.’