Pearl in a Cage

by Joy Dettman

  ‘You take up enough space without your arm and leg taking up my space. Move.’

  ‘It’s my bed! I’ll sleep how I like in it. Now shut up, or he’ll be in here again.’

  ‘I’ll yell out louder if you don’t move.’

  Norman still threatened that Amber would have to leave if their fighting in bed continued. Jenny wanted her to leave. Sissy didn’t. She placed her arms beneath her pillow and gave up an inch or two of bed. There was peace for minutes, but her arms weren’t comfortable under the pillow. One fell across Jenny’s back. She picked it up, threw it back.

  ‘I told you not to touch me!’ Sissy snarled.

  ‘You touched me first!’

  ‘As if I’d ever touch you!’

  ‘Well, you did!’

  ‘You’re a liar. It’s you who is always touching me and waking me up.’

  ‘If I was shipwrecked and you were the only thing floating, I’d sink before I touched you and got your BO all over me,’ Jenny said.

  That was below the belt. Sissy grabbed a handful of her hair and tried to rip it out, so Jenny grabbed two rag sausages and clung on until one of the rags pulled out.

  ‘You rotten evil little stray dog. Now look what you’ve done. Mum! Mum!’

  She could call all night and Amber wouldn’t come. Once she went to bed, she stayed there.

  Norman came. He did the old sausage blanket trick, which, once he’d closed the door, lasted for about five seconds. He came back and did the old ‘Apologise to your sister’. He always made them apologise.

  ‘She started it,’ Sissy said.

  ‘I did not. She pulled my hair first.’

  ‘You didn’t have to pull my curl out.’

  ‘You didn’t have to pull my hair out by the roots.’

  ‘Apologise to each other,’ Norman said.

  They had their apologising down to a fine art. They did it together, on the count of three. It meant nothing, but pleased Norman.

  ‘That bit will be straight in the morning, Dad,’ Sissy whined.

  ‘If you can stand me touching you, I’ll put it back in,’ Jenny said.

  Sissy could stand anything in the cause of beauty.

  Norman turned on the light, though Jenny may have managed in the dark. She’d watched it done a hundred times. He stood at the door watching the operation, watching those deft hands, that mass of dark gold hair, wild after its fight with the pillow. Childhood had started its withdrawal from Jenny’s features; the woman stirring within was already showing brief glimpses of her face — though not yet of her shape. Still his skinny, nightgown-clad child, kneeling on the bed behind Sissy, rolling the hair around the rag, then the rag around the hair, tying a bow.

  ‘Now, no more of your squabbling,’ he said, plunging the room again into darkness. ‘You are sisters. Treat each other with respect.’

  He’d always said that. Before Amber had come home, he’d said that, and they’d tried to treat each other with respect. But respect wasn’t easy when you shared a bed, when you shared a wardrobe, when every pretty frock in it belonged to Sissy.

  Until Amber had come home, Sissy’s frocks had looked much the same as Jenny’s, and the worst part about that, which Jenny had learnt since she’d started growing, was that Norman had saved all of Sissy’s outgrown dresses in a cardboard carton he kept in his bedroom. All of those faded greens, those washed-out navy blues, years and years of them waiting there like a threat for her to grow into.

  Until Amber came home, Jenny had believed she had a mother somewhere, that her mother was like Dora Palmer’s and Gloria’s mother. This year, the year of her growing, was also the year of her knowing. Her mother wasn’t like Mrs Palmer or Mrs Bull — and her father wasn’t like their fathers either.

  Dora Palmer’s father called his wife ‘love’. She called him ‘darl’, and when he got his pay, they sat together at the kitchen table putting money into different jars so they could pay the bills.

  Norman called Amber ‘Mrs Morrison’ and she didn’t call him anything. Every Friday, he gave her seven and sixpence — which she spent on or gave to Sissy. On Saturday mornings, Norman walked around town paying his weekly bills.

  And the bedrooms too. Mr and Mrs Palmer slept in the same room in the same bed. Amber slept alone in the biggest bed in the biggest room. Norman slept in the smallest bed in the junk room, with the relief bag and his carton of Sissy’s old clothes and his piles of old newspapers, and the preserving pan, and old vases, and even the chest of drawers where the clean linen lived.

  Amber went to church now with Norman, but only since Sissy had joined the choir, which she’d only joined because Margaret Hooper liked to sing and Lorna wouldn’t allow her to join the Methodists’ choir. Amber sat beside Norman in church and that was as close as she ever got to him.

  Mr Palmer crept up on Mrs Palmer sometimes and put his arms around her while she was cooking, kissed her neck sometimes, flicked her with the tea towel, laughed with her. Norman never went into his kitchen if Amber was in there.

  At times, Jenny tried to remember what home had been like before Amber had got sick and gone away. She tried to remember seeing Norman ever putting his arms around Amber. Couldn’t remember seeing her until that first night at Maisy’s house — except for the wedding photograph. She’d always known that bride was her mother, though when she was small, she hadn’t noticed how the bride wouldn’t look at her. It was weird. Whichever place Jenny stood, Norman’s photograph eyes were looking at her but Amber’s never did. No matter what angle she stood on, she couldn’t make Amber’s photograph eyes look directly at her. She wondered if they looked at Sissy.

  A third relationship of mutual need had evolved this past year.

  During the Hoopers’ two-week stay in Frankston, Lorna as snarly as a Tasmanian devil with fleas, Margaret had done as her father had instructed and kept an eye on Sissy Morrison. They’d gone to a local dance on the second Saturday, Jim delighted to accompany them if it meant escaping Lorna for a few hours. He’d sat for most of the evening at Sissy’s side. Margaret sat out very few dances, and danced three times with Arthur Hogan, who, it turned out, was a builder from Willama. He and his father took work where they could get it. They’d taken jobs in Frankston. He’d spoken of the Willama Catholic Ball, held the first week in July, had suggested he may be there. She’d said she may see him there.

  In June of 1935, Margaret saw an advertisement for the Willama Ball and she wanted to go. Perhaps Arthur Hogan might be there. When they were girls in Melbourne, Lorna had, on rare occasions, been coerced into accompanying her to balls. Not this year. Margaret walked around to Norman’s house and asked Sissy to accompany her.

  Sissy received few invitations. She said yes.

  Norman said no. He told her she was too young to be attending balls, that she was not travelling to Willama by night. He told her that ballgowns cost money, that the railway department did not pay their stationmasters sufficient to supply ballgowns for sixteen-year-old girls. For two days he said no, but Sissy won. She always won.

  She and Margaret chose the fabric, the style. Miss Blunt took her measurements. She and Margaret chose the shoes, with heels, and Sissy needed high heels like a rooster needs a pond. She was Gertrude’s height, which in combination with the Duckworth hips, legs and ankles wasn’t good. But Margaret wore high heels so Sissy wanted heels.

  The entire house revolved around Sissy on the day of her first ball. Amber spent an hour on her hair. She powdered her freckles, painted her lips. Her eyebrows, plucked fine, were shaped with an eyebrow pencil, her eyes made larger with the same pencil. Then the gown was on, a green taffeta with a frill around the shoulders and a waist that would barely do up — and when it was done up, the gathered skirt made Sissy’s backside look the size of a barn door.

  Margaret Hooper arrived at seven, flushed and clad in frilly pink. Her backside wasn’t as broad as Sissy’s, but stuck out like an old-fashioned bustle.

  Jim was driving them to Wil
lama. He’d been driving since he was twelve. Half-boy, half-man, too tall and skinny, his front teeth rotting. Tonight, fashion or Margaret had decreed that his normally wiry hair should be parted in the centre and slicked down with grease. Nature knew best. His ears stuck out like car doors.

  ‘G’day,’ Jenny said.

  ‘G’day,’ he said.

  ‘Have you got a licence for driving now?’

  ‘No, but Margaret has.’

  ‘Is she driving?’

  ‘She can’t — much.’

  Jenny watched them walk out to the car, already planning her next letter to Mary Jolly. It was about a stick insect clad in a brand new dinner suit, who was escorting a plump little ladybird and a well-fed caterpillar to the ball. That poor green caterpillar attempting to walk upright on its back legs in high heels. It didn’t look comfortable.

  BIRTHS AND MARRIAGES

  Lorna Hooper’s mother had been the tight-laced daughter of an Englishman who had renounced her spinsterhood at twenty-nine and died of marriage before her fortieth birthday. Her blood ran true in Lorna.

  Margaret’s mother, the nineteen-year-old scatterbrained daughter of an illiterate farm labourer had enjoyed her first roll in the hay on her twelfth birthday. Her blood, somewhat diluted by an unknown party, a good Methodist education and being joined at the elbow to Lorna for twenty-six years, had modified Margaret’s behaviour, but by July’s end the sisters had come to a sad impasse.

  Blame Arthur Hogan, the young carpenter from Willama who Vern was now encouraging. He’d given him and his father the job of converting one of the back bedrooms into a modern bathroom.

  Lorna did not tolerate fools gladly and her sister was making a fool of herself over a roughshod navvy. She gave her the silent treatment, which on previous occasions had concerned Margaret dreadfully. Not this time.

  Arthur Hogan had some talent as a pianist. He wanted Margaret to sing at the adults’ concert in August. She agreed to, if he played the accompaniment.

  Vern booked three seats and told Lorna she was attending. She, more or less, told him where he could stick one of his tickets. He asked her if she’d like to spend the rest of the winter out at the farm where they were cracking ice on washbasins before they could wash their faces in the morning.

  August was starting out to be a cold month at Vern Hooper’s house.

  Fog covered Gertrude’s land. She was looking out across her goat paddock, looking for her kids who had walked off into that fog over an hour ago to check their rabbit traps, when she saw a bulky shape moving slowly towards her. It looked too bulky to be one of her own, unless one was carrying the other. She walked out to the fence to meet them, and recognised Mini, a middle-aged, near full-blood black, one of Wadi’s women. The bulk was not all her own. She had a baby clinging to her back like a monkey and another one, hessian bag-wrapped, in her arms.

  ‘Them dyin’ soon, missus,’ she said, offering the baby, sliding a yellow-haired boy to the ground. He was naked from the waist down, and on a morning that would freeze the extremities off a marble statue. ‘You give ’em Elsie, missus.’

  ‘You give ’em to the mission feller, Mini.’

  ‘Lucy bin comin’ wid some white fella, missus. She say she comin’ back soon and she not comin’. They bin dyin’ tamorra.’

  Gertrude looked down at what she held. The baby’s eyes were glued shut by infection, its face encrusted, and if it weighed six pound, she’d eat her hat. It would be dying tomorrow if something wasn’t done fast. She turned to the boy, shuddering so hard to keep warm, his little teeth were rattling.

  ‘Pick him up before his feet freeze off.’

  Mini had done what she’d come to do. She was backing away. ‘Them you fellers, missus. White fellers. Wadi done like them white fellers.’

  ‘That one’s a blue feller,’ Gertrude said. The boy was blue from the ears down. ‘Pick him up. You bring him to my house.’

  Mini wanted to be gone. She pushed him towards Gertrude, but, too cold to move, he sat and shuddered.

  ‘Bring him to the house and get some tucker for Wadi,’ Gertrude said, turning away and walking fast back to the house.

  Inside, she opened her oven door and placed the bundle on the floor before the stove where the heat might start the thaw. She’d left a blanket on her cane couch last night. She snatched it and went out to retrieve the other one.

  Mini wanted that tucker for Wadi. She’d brought the boy. Gertrude got the blanket around him, then led Mini around the side to her chimney. It got as hot as hell at times, and even this morning was offering good warmth.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  She found an unopened bag of oatmeal, poured a cup of sugar into a brown paper bag, a few cups of flour into another. She reached for a cane basket she could live without, tossed in a few potatoes, a few oranges, a dozen eggs, then exchanged the basket for the boy. Mini took off, with the blanket, walking faster without her load, no shoes on her feet.

  ‘How the hell do they survive?’ Gertrude said.

  The boy felt like ice in her arms. She carried him into the warmth of her kitchen, closed her door, then set him down. He danced on blue feet, until he saw the baby. Knew they belonged together, and ran to it, squatted beside it, his mouth open in a scream but no scream coming out.

  She had to get them clean. She had to get them warm. Wished those kids hadn’t gone out rabbiting.

  There was a small tin tub in her shed. She ran for it, set it on her table, poured in a bucket of cold water, added enough hot from her kettle to warm it, found soap, a piece of sheeting for a washcloth, a towel, then tackled the baby. She removed the sack it was wrapped in, removed a jacket that might have once been white, and got it into the warm water, got it soaped, washed its poor little face, its fluff of yellow hair, shook her head over its emaciated limbs as she wrapped it in a towel and placed it back on the floor.

  The boy she’d last seen taking off into her bedroom. He’d gone under the bed. She got hold of a leg, got him out, fought the few rags off him, added a dash more hot water, then lifted him into the tub. His eyes were damn near glued shut, but there was nothing wrong with his vocal cords.

  ‘I’m not murdering you, darlin’. I’m being cruel to be kind,’ she soothed.

  He didn’t believe her and she couldn’t blame him. Water went everywhere, and a fighting two year old, slippery with soap, is hard to hold. He turned the tub over, and went overboard with the water, but she caught him and, clean or not, called him clean enough and immobilised him in the straitjacket of a sheet while checking his head for lice.

  ‘I think you’re too cold for them to live on, darlin’,’ she said, finding no sign of lice.

  Holding him then with one arm, working with the other, she poured milk into a saucepan, stirred in a good measure of sugar, warmed it, then poured half a mug full, offering it to the boy while his arms were imprisoned.

  He spilled a bit before he got the taste, then he stopped screaming, stopped fighting and spilled no more. She offered a biscuit. His eyes told her he wanted it. She sat him on her cane couch, released his arms and handed him two biscuits, needing him occupied while she had a good look at that baby. He watched her every move, but knew what to do with biscuits.

  Warmth may have anaesthetised the baby. She tried spooning milk into it, with little success. It was the weight of a newborn but the length of a four month old, a girl. She pinned a square of sheeting onto her scrawny little backside, wrapped her in one of Elsie’s old sweaters and made her a bed in a cardboard carton she placed close to the stove.

  Two more biscuits offered, and she went in search of something she might use to clothe the boy. Found one of Joey’s outgrown sweaters. It would have to do. The boy looked to be around two years old. He liked her biscuits, but he wasn’t having her handling him. She gave up on clothing and offered the last of the warmed milk. He downed it fast and looked for more. She was pouring more into the saucepan when the kids came in.

  ‘We got six
pair,’ Joey greeted her.

  ‘And a wild cat, Mum, and you should have seen —’ Elsie silenced as she sighted Gertrude’s catch. ‘What?’

  ‘Mini brought them in an hour back. She says they’re Lucy’s.’

  ‘Mini seen her? Where?’

  ‘From what I could gather, she left them at the camp a while ago and said she’d be back. I don’t know how long they were out there, but long enough to get into a state. We’ll get them out to the mission tomorrow.’

  ‘She’ll come back, Mum.’

  ‘She might.’

  The babies stole that day. Maybe Elsie looked like her sister — the boy didn’t mind her getting that sweater on him. He let her roll the sleeves back and find his little hands. He needed those hands for biscuits. The sweater reached his knees, which was as well. They had no pants small enough to stay up on him. They tried him with a pair of socks, which he studied for a time before pulling them off.

  Elsie found an old teat. It was perished, but they eased it over the neck of a bottle, and here was one baby who wasn’t fussy. She sucked, watching Elsie with one blue eye while Gertrude attempted to bathe the other eye open.

  ‘Did Mini say where she been, Mum? Lucy.’

  ‘With some white chap, she said.’

  Harry and Joey had been attending to their catch. They came in with two pairs of dressed rabbits. They’d sell the rest.

  ‘You’ve got a sister, Else?’ Harry said.

  ‘A long time back, I did. She’ll come back for ’em, Mum.’

  ‘She might too, darlin’, and if she does, she might leave these poor little mites someplace worse next time. I’ll get Vern to take them out to the mission in the morning. They’ll be safe there.’

  The babies slept with Elsie that night, and the following morning Harry drove her out to Wadi’s camp where they learned little other than the babies’ names. The boy was Lenny, the girl may have been a Jeany, Joany or Janey. Elsie settled for Joany and they slept a second night in her bed.

  The following morning, a not so foggy morning, Gertrude was milking her goats when Harry came out to lean on a fencepost.