But she never made it back to her family’s camp. She was afraid of what she would find, and what she wouldn’t, if she returned to the place where the rivers met. And now she had a house full of children to look after and could not imagine how she could leave them to make the journey back to Dungalear Station, even if she felt ready to face what would be waiting for her there. And there was also the spectre of Mrs Carlyle ready to swoop and steal her sons and daughters should Grigor’s protection ever falter.
She had given birth to seven children, six to Grigor, and was thirty-five when she had the youngest, now three years old. She had not heard from Thomas, their first child, since he had left on the train to enlist and fight in the war. She tried not to think of him as another lost son — lost in the trenches, lost at sea, lost in the skies. She remembered Miss Grainger, the Howards’ housekeeper, and her obsession with the last war and feared she was becoming the same way with this new one. She kept reassuring herself that if anything had happened, if Thomas had been missing, injured or killed, she would have been told. Soldiers couldn’t just disappear. He had said he was going to enlist in the Air Force and anyone who knew the young Thomas and his love of airplanes, his obsession with flight, would understand his enthusiasm to join the flying forces.
Despite her assurances to herself, Elizabeth was unnerved by her last image of him, one in which he had disappeared, getting smaller and smaller until he slipped into the distance as she watched the train disappear into the horizon. She knew all too well the transforming power of trains. Her memories held him close while she awaited news of him.
Life with Grigor had the comfort of a shared understanding. Elizabeth had learned to live around his spartan habits. The doors of their house were kept closed and the windows, even in the coldest months, opened to ensure that the rooms were aired. Lights were only on when needed; heating was low at night, whatever the temperature; water was used sparingly. Grigor refused to heat any of the bedrooms, asserting that it was healthy to sleep in an unheated room with the window open. Engrossed in his work in the Communist Party, he left his family much to themselves unless asserting his patriarchal position on the periodic evenings he was home. Affection was reserved, given only when he and Elizabeth were alone. In the day-to-day running of the house, Grigor became an obligation, much like any of her children, but with separate, more binding demands and less obedience.
The world that occurred outside Elizabeth’s home, the one that Grigor was fighting to change, evolved without seeming to affect her. The happenings in the wider world never seemed to have the impact and importance of the daily trivialities that filled her every waking hour. The crises of sick children and petty conflicts eclipsed economic forces and the shadows of another European war. It was not until her eldest son, Thomas, left to enlist that Elizabeth would feel that the outside world had entered into her life again. Her family seemed to survive the Depression, even with a growing number of children. Elizabeth’s early life had made her resourceful and frugal and Grigor always provided for them, even when it turned out that he had been laid off from the newspaper or his freelance photography work seemed to be drying up. He kept secret the stream of money he received from Germany each month for his pocket—it would dwindle during the years of the war and cease by the time peace was declared — so Elizabeth did not know the full extent of his ability to provide.
Elizabeth’s favourite times were when Grigor was out of the house — away at work, drinking at the local pub, attending a union or Party meeting. She kept her children, so precious, close to her; they filled the space around her, relishing the lack of order in the house. She was, by the end of the day, as exhausted as she had felt during her early days in the Howard house, but now the rewards for her aching limbs were unconditional love and soft purring affection — things that she had not known since her days at Dungalear, which was another lifetime, another her.
Elizabeth enjoyed her bulging belly with each pregnancy — continued to whisper and sing to her stomach — and wept with relief and delight each time a child was delivered into her arms. She thrived on the demands of motherhood, her life filled with a special richness and a thousand tiny blessings, and she marvelled that she could experience such joy.
Thomas, her first child with Grigor, was born in the bit-ter-cold winter of 1924. A shy, gentle boy with acute ideas, he could recall where things were by shutting his eyes and visualising from memory. Her first daughter, Patricia, was bom two years later. From their earliest interactions, Patricia would fuss over Thomas, engulf him in her arms, almost suffocate him. Patricia felt most at ease when putting things in order, including her brothers, whom she battled to control. Her relationship with Thomas was one of indulged devotion, one that their mother could not witness without a pang of nostalgia for her own lost brother. William, born in the hottest part of 1928, was, from the start, vivacious and spirited, more adventurous, with the quickest temper. He rebelled against his older sister, resenting any assertion of authority, even if only in the form of affection and mothering. What Thomas would benevolently tolerate, William would try to quench and conquer with his fits. Patricia bore the bruises after attempts to contain him with the belief that he would, over time, grow to love her.
Some years later, in the spring of 1931, another child, a beautiful, bewitching girl called Daisy was added to the family. After Daisy’s birth, Elizabeth developed problems bringing a pregnancy to its full term until Bob was bom in 1937 and, amid the bushfires of 1939, she delivered Danny. A sense of emergency surrounded the birth of the youngest because of the sombre mood created by the natural disaster and the seventy-five deaths left in the wake of nature’s vengeance. The hardest birth, it was the beginning of Elizabeth’s frequent bouts of fatigue. By the time Danny came into the family, the elder boys had had their share of play-fathering, with Thomas and William already trying to emulate the aloofness of men several years older than them. It was his mother and Patricia who would fuss over Danny.
The dominating conclave of the eldest three lorded over the youngest children, but Patricia, as eldest daughter, assumed her role as minor matriarch within the ever-expanding cluster of children, especially when their mother was tired. She saw herself as arbitrator of feuds. She could coerce and connive, convince and convict, knew when to bully and when to sweet-talk. She planned adventures, such as an expedition to see the newly opened Harbour Bridge. The younger boys never questioned Patricia’s authority. Even Thomas allowed her to have her way. And over the years, William was less violent towards her, begrudgingly giving her the deference she sought in exchange for respect of his privacy.
Elizabeth had always tried to treat her children equally but in her secret heart Thomas, the eldest, was the one she had the most gentle feelings for. He was the first to be placed in her arms and his arrival soothed a little of the pain of having had her firstborn taken from her before she even laid eyes on him. Thomas was a blessing she had clung to when he was the only child. When the house was filled with children, she spent more energy on the demands of the younger ones. She noticed that Thomas was more withdrawn and William more often in trouble at school.
There was also a special bond between the mother and her eldest daughter. Just as her own mother had told her stories to teach her lessons about life and showed her how to prepare food and cure sickness, so too Elizabeth began to teach Patricia the skills needed to run a house. Patricia’s natural maternal instincts made her a patient and dedicated student. Elizabeth saw much of her own eagerness to please in her daughter. Patricia would watch earnestly and copy faithfully, and Elizabeth was reminded of her own diligence when she first entered into service in the Howards’ house. Patricia would beat butter and sugar to a cream, beat in two eggs, one at a time, then add milk, lemon rind and flour sifted with baking powder and salt. She would leave the mixture to rise, steam for an hour and a half and serve with lemon sauce. Elizabeth would reflect sadly that the legacies she was handing down to her daughter came more from Miss Grain
ger than from her Guni at Dungalear.
Even in the midst of her domestic joy and contentment, her losses would haunt her, puncturing her bliss with their ghosts of sorrow. In her children — the shape of features, the curve of bone, the hue of skin — Elizabeth could see images of her family who were lost in another lifetime. Euroke, the lost brother, would often seem close to her; his features, so well known to her, scattered and drawn across the faces and movements of her children. It was Thomas, the eldest, who looked most like Euroke. She would look at his born-before eyes and it would cause an irrepressible longing in her. Some of her children were darker — Patricia, William, Danny — and the rest were lighter — Thomas, Bob, Daisy — but Elizabeth could never think of family comparisons without wondering about her missing, oft-remembered child: Euroke, the lost son.
Little Euroke. Whose features were imprinted on his face? What did he see when he looked in the mirror? And what did he think when his thoughts turned to a mother he had never known. She wished that wherever he was, that it was a place where he would know much of love and little of harm, where he would be far from the unspeakable violence of the Mr Howards, the spiteful meanness of the Mrs Howards, and the easily evaporated sympathies of the Miss Graingers. She hoped that he would be far, far away from the evil menace of the Mrs Carlyles.
If your family had wanted you, they would have come for you by now.
Elizabeth felt that she had lived as three different people within her skin. She had been Garibooli during her life by the river with her parents and Euroke. She would remember that life as a time of happiness even though she could still recall the things that made that existence hard. People were often dying, especially the older ones and the babies, food was scarce and there were many dangers. She was warned about the spirits that lived in the waterholes and the spirits that would take her away if she wandered too far from the campfire. She had been warned about the white men. She had heard her parents talking — and the old people too, especially Kooradgie — about the recent killings of her family and neighbours. They spoke of the disease which had spread through them. And they spoke about the way white men had killed off the things that gave them life, the animals and the waterholes. Despite all these things, because Euroke was there, she remembered being happy. She had loved running, across the open country, savoured the freedom to move. Euroke, who called her “Booli” — his playful brown eyes, so gentle and soft, dancing as she tickled him.
Then there came the train ride with Mrs Carlyle that began her life as ’only Elizabeth’. She would remember this miserable time only when it crept, unbeckoned, that wanted to scratch her skin off, to erode every piece of her. That time never left her completely. She could be washing a plate and suddenly see Mrs Howard’s hand coming to slap her face, or be tucking a child into bed and hear Mr Howard saying, “No one will believe you,” or making a bed and see the doctor and feel his cold fingers inside her. She could not even remember Xiao-ying without the bitterness and loneliness of her time with the Howards and the guilt of a broken promise about writing. These flashes would drag her back into that other world until the signs and sounds of her children rescued her, calling her back to her third life.
This third life also began with a train ride. In this life she was called ’Mum’, ’Mummy’ and ’Ma’. Even Grigor called her ’Mother’, though not when they were alone. Then, she became ’Elizabeth’ again. There was a way he looked at her as they talked late into the night, a way in which he seemed to sigh with contentment as he peered into her face, that confirmed he still loved her. Despite this devotion, Grigor seemed, to Elizabeth, to have no interest in their children. He had opinions about them — he always had an opinion — but he did not like to interact with them, preferring them to be scarce when he was at home. This was hard with so many sons and daughters and it was easier when he stayed out late and arrived home when the children were in bed. Still, mothering, she felt, was a woman’s job, so she could not be too harsh on Grigor’s seeming indifference to child-rearing. Secretly, she preferred that all the parental duties fell to her. She was never happier, never more whole, than when she was ’Mother’. Each of her children, each a part of her, created this being she had become in the third phase of her life. This new her was physically abundant, overflowing. She felt that it was not the different location that had made her different, it was the people around her that brought out different qualities within her.
Elizabeth, when flooded with love for her own children, would see her own mother most clearly. She felt a strengthening attachment to her through the grief and loss created by the theft of a loved child, as though the shared pain enabled her to keep her mother invisibly by her side, allowed her to understand what her mother must have felt and must still be feeling. Six children could not erase the one she had lost; her new family never replaced the one that had been taken from her. At these times, Elizabeth longed to tell her mother — tried to do so by sending her a message from her mind to her mother’s — that she had created a new world in which she felt complete and content.
If they had have wanted you, they would have come for you by now.
She remembered Miss Grainger’s words, could still hear the voice in which she had said them, but Elizabeth would try to push them away. Her own powerlessness and lack of choice allowed her to understand all that could be beyond a mother’s control. She understood the safety that Grigor gave her, that he offered her protection from the Aborigines Protection Board; her children were safe with her while Grigor reigned over the household.
Elizabeth did not feel as though she could talk to Grigor any more about her lost family and her deep wish to see her brother. She feared the dismissiveness that had crept into their conversations about her family, replacing Grigor’s previous sympathy on the subject. He seemed to have shaken off his feelings of restlessness, but the end of his time as an emotional nomad had not eliminated her own yearnings, which she now nursed in private.
Grigor never mentioned her skin, as though it did not matter, but Elizabeth came to realise over the years that it did; his silence confirmed how important it was to him. He would never say the things that Miss Grainger thought and would let slip, but she felt acutely his sense of superiority and his pride in rescuing her from the very thing she hungered to find again.
So Elizabeth stayed in the little town behind the Blue Mountains, her swarm of six children around her. Her thoughts in rare moments of peace drifting back to her brother, her head resting in her mother’s lap, Kooradgie and his wrinkled face, and the place where the rivers meet.
On nights when the children were asleep, Elizabeth would walk to the back of the yard, sit on the cold grass in the borrowed light of the moon and look at the nocturnal sky. The same unchanging stars looked down at her. She would try to remember the stories, the songs. Here, for a fleeting moment, she was still Garibooli.
Thomas, her eldest, was the only child who would join her. She would not chide him back to bed but allow him to sit beside her on the back verandah or behind the shed at the end of the yard, and stare silently, contemplatively at the sky. In the dimness of the night, she could pretend he was Euroke; in the half-shadows, with the angles of his face, he could have been.
Once, she opened up to him and told him a story she had almost forgotten:
Naradam wanted honey. He watched until he saw Wurranunnah*. He caught him and stuck a feather in Wurranunnah’s tail so that he could follow him back to his nest. Naradam told his two wives, who were sisters, that they had to follow him and help him get the honey from Wurranunnah’s nest.
* wurranunnah = bee
When they reached the tree, Naradam told one of his wives to go up to the hive and get the honey out. She climbed up to the fork of the tree and slipped her hand into the hive, but could not get the honey out. When Naradam climbed up to help her, he realised that she was stuck and the only way to get her free was to cut her hand off. He did this quickly. His wife was so shocked that she died instantly. Narad
am brought the body down to the ground. He ordered his other wife up into the tree to chop out the hand and get the honey. When this wife saw that her sister was dead, she was afraid and did not want to go up the tree. She begged Naradam not to send her up the tree, but Naradam took a stick and threatened to beat her so she reluctantly climbed up. She slipped her arm into the tree beside her sister’s hand. She became stuck and could not move. Naradam, upon finding her stuck too, chopped her arm off. She died also. Naradam took his second wife’s body down to the ground.
When Naradam returned to the camp, the other sisters of his dead wives ran to meet him, hoping that he would have honey to share with them. When Naradam came closer they could see that he was alone and that he was covered in blood. The girls were frightened of him and ran to tell their mother. Their mother went to Naradam and asked him where her daughters were. Naradam replied, “Ask Wurranunnah. I do not know where they are.” He remained silent in the face of all other questions.
The mother went and told her tribe that her daughters were missing and that Naradam would not tell her where they were, even though she felt sure he knew what had happened.
An Elder said, “If Naradam has hurt your daughters, they will be revenged. His tracks will be fresh. We will get our best trackers to find out where he has been and see if they can figure out where your daughters are.”
The young men with the best eyes and the fastest feet were sent to find the sisters. They found Naradam’s footprints and followed them all the way to Wurranunnah’s tree. They could see what Naradam had done.
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