“You are, are you? And who might you be?”
“Well, I think I am his nephew. My mother was Elizabeth Boney, his sister. That is, if I have the right Sonny Boney.”
Bob had been expecting some sign of delight, some recognition or an invitation into the house. Instead he was met with silence. He started to feel his stomach tighten.
“Why didn’t you come knocking on this door three months ago?” the woman demanded. “He was looking for his sister his whole life. His whole life. You are three months too late.”
Bob felt weakness wash over him and tears pricking his eyes. He was about to turn and head back to the sanctuary of his car when a tall, dark man came to the door.
“You’ll have to excuse Mum,” he started.
“I don’t need anyone making excuses for me, Henry. Not here in my own home.” With that the woman retreated into the house.
“She took Dad’s passing rather hard. I’m Henry. Henry Boney. And if you’re who you say you are, well, that’d make us cousins.”
“I’m Bob Brecht.”
“Well, I reckon, since your reception here hasn’t been so jovial, we should adjourn to the Royal and you can shout your cousin a drink.” Henry slapped Bob on the back as he walked towards Bob’s car.
Bob was counting the number of drinks he’d been buying for Henry. He wouldn’t normally pay for so many rounds without getting one in return. The news of Sonny’s death had been a disappointment, but he was elated to have found a connection, to find part of what he was looking for.
“It was true what Mum said. Dad was looking for his sister his whole life. My eldest sister is called Eliza after her. He was a quiet man, my Dad — not like Mum. Well, you’ve seen her.” Henry shot Bob a wink. “He used to tell us some funny ones. When Mum ran out of bread, he’s say it didn’t matter ’cause he only ate toast.
“They met when he moved down to Narromine in the thirties. There was no mission there, see, so he lived by the riverbank with a mob of them, Mum included. Worked in the orchards and the wheatfields. Did some cotton picking too, when they got the irrigation. But he moved back here when he married Mum. She’s a Morgan from Brewarrina. They were married in ’44, yeah, that’s right, ’44. Story goes that when he arrived in town he saw this woman giving the shopkeeper what-for for overcharging on their food. Apparently it was love at first sight for Dad. They didn’t spend a night apart the whole time they were together. Here’s me with my third missus and I’m younger than you by the looks of it. But they seemed to mate for good back in those days.” He paused, looking into his beer.
“Mum was always fired up. She’s on the Housing Board and works up at the Medical Service. She was one of them fighting to get the Foundation up and running. Her latest thing is to get a bus for the school. No one takes on my Mum.” He grinned. “I’m always apologising for her.”
Bob could believe that no one would take her on. He wouldn’t.
“Loved his music though, my Dad. All that old American stuff — Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles. Loved it. Mum used to scoff at him and make him listen to it in his shed. But she’d take him cups of tea and chocolate slices. Used to pretend that she wouldn’t let him in the house to play that depressing music. But she really wanted to give him time alone with his thoughts. She’s tough, but she loved him. Hasn’t thrown a thing of his away since he died. Plays those records now herself. Puts them on in the shed and goes into the house to do her work so it seems like he’s down there listening to his music, waiting for a cup of tea. She’s sweet really, our Mum.”
Bob arched his eyebrows at Henry.
“No. Really she is, Cuz,” Henry continued. Bob felt the warmth of the term ’Cuz’ swim over him.
“Look, come ’round tomorrow and talk to her. I’ll have a word to her tonight and make sure she’s smoothed over. Just don’t expect her to apologise,” Henry added with a laugh.
Bob knocked again on Marilyn Boney’s door. The morning air was cool but hinted at the searing heat that would follow in the next few hours.
“Alright, I heard you,” Marilyn muttered from behind the door as she opened it. She held the door open, sweeping her hand towards the back of the house, directing Bob through.
“Sit down,” she said, and he pulled out a chair at a blue laminated table in a spotless blue kitchen. She slammed a cup of tea with milk in it before him. Bob was too nervous to tell her he preferred it black.
“Well, what do you want to know?” she asked. But before he could answer, she continued, “He was the most decent man I ever met, I can tell you that. Not like those ones around here who drink too much and hit their women and kids ’round. Always worked hard to provide for us.
“We had the six kids,” she continued, turning her wedding band. “Sonny always thought that if you had six kids, even if bad things happened to them, chances were you’d be left with at least one. That might sound a bit pessimistic but that’s how it was when we were younger. Between the Welfare and the sickness.”
Her eyes turned from her hands to look into Bob’s eyes.
“You wouldn’t know how tough it was for blacks out here in those days. During the war, there was work around, men like your uncle could leave the reserves and work for real wages. As soon as it was over, they were pushed back to the margins — shearing, branding, fencing. He even tried opal mining for a while. Didn’t like handling the stones. The old people always told us not to touch them. But he would always put food on this table.” She tapped the laminated surface with her finger, making the whole thing shake. “Even if it was possum. I hate possum. Tastes like gum tree. He remembered the old ways, but our kids weren’t much interested in learning them. What do they care about being able to find water in the roots of gum trees when the riverbed is dry. They just get a bottle of it from the store.”
“And the missions. I grew up at Narromine where there was no mission. My parents moved us there from Brewarrina for that reason. You can’t imagine the conditions people had to live in. They kept anybody off the mission who started trouble and ’trouble’ was just complaining about the conditions. And if you lived there, the stores sold everything at inflated prices and the managers kept all the money. Did things like keep two docket books to rip off the little money the blacks living there had. They were dreadful places — frequent fights, too much alcohol even though there wasn’t supposed to be grog there.”
Bob heard the front door open and footsteps in the hall.
“You took your time gettin’ back,” Marilyn said to Henry as he entered the kitchen.
“Can I have a cup of tea, Mum?”
“Get it yourself. I’m not the housemaid.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Want another one?” he asked Bob. Bob shook his head. As Henry busied himself with the kettle, Marilyn turned her attention back to Bob.
“Many white folks didn’t like having blacks in the town. Always needed us to work for ’em but didn’t want to live with us. You don’t know what it was like back then. There was violence in the street and curfews to control us, especially the men. It was an offence to be drunk if you were black, and we were arrested whether we’d been drinking or not. I’ve seen men handcuffed and beaten with batons for no other reason than that they were black. Beaten until they died.
“When the Welfare Board was shut down, they just wouldn’t rent houses to us. Here in this town there was a Whites Only toilet and they would never let our kids in the swimming pool. Separate church services, separate playgrounds at the public school, separate seating in the picture show. Wouldn’t let us inside the hospitals either — put us on the back verandah.
“But Sonny wasn’t one to complain. Not like most of this mob, sit on their bum, do nothing and expect it all to happen for ’em. He kept his sense of humour. He told me once that he didn’t want to leave his eyes to science ’cause he couldn’t read too good… so they wouldn’t be no good to anyone.”
Henry chuckled. “Yeah, Dad would say a thing like that.”
>
Marilyn shot him a look to let him know who was telling the story. “And he was a smart man, too. Intelligent. We weren’t given the education back then. Not given the opportunities our kids were.” She levelled a stare at Henry. “But we both believed that we had the same rights as everyone else. Sonny wasn’t like me. He wasn’t involved with the medical service and the legal service. But he’d worked hard all his life and he knew what was fair and what wasn’t. He used to read a lot about what was going on. He used to read anything he could about Aboriginal people looking for their rights. ’We do not ask for charity, we ask for justice,’ he’d say.
“You wouldn’t know where that came from. It was something that Jack Patton and William Ferguson wrote. He liked that. Always believed that if we had citizenship rights, everything else would follow — you know, equal wages and equal education opportunities.”
“Dad was always saying ’It’s not charity, it’s justice’,” Henry added.
“You should have spent more time listening to him,” Marilyn snapped. “Stop interrupting and go out and mow that lawn before the sun gets too hot. When I’m finished here, you can take your cousin over to see Granny.”
Henry left the kitchen through the back door. Marilyn returned her attention to Bob.
“We were both here when the Freedom Riders came through. Got a picture of me with Charles Perkins. You should have seen the reception they got.” Marilyn started laughing. “I don’t know what those white kids were thinking when they hopped a bus to come here. Met with hostility, tomatoes and eggs. Punched and heckled. Got the wind up the white folks who thought they were just snotty-nosed uni students coming from Sydney to stir up trouble on issues they knew nothing about. But,” she added more seriously, “it meant a lot to your uncle to know that people outside of here cared how we was being treated.
“I never had much time for those other uni types who came out here. They’d sit down and take our stories. Give the old men wine and cigarettes. Then piss on off back to the city, publish their papers and never give anything back to the people here. Old Reggie Green used to just make up stories so he could keep gettin’ drunk. I tell my kids they should get an education. Help us keep our own stories. Not give them to anyone else. Especially not people who don’t put anything back into our community.”
Bob could see the tears welling in her eyes. He stared at his cold milky tea. “Do you mind if I look at some of the pictures you have in the hall?”
Marilyn waved him in that direction. He walked through the lounge room to the hallway where the papered walls were covered in photographs — weddings, debuts, family portraits and a younger Henry dressed in a football jersey, arms folded across his chest, chin jutting towards the camera, eyes sparkling.
Marilyn walked into the hallway and, after quickly dabbing her eye, said, “Yep. Six children and nine grandchildren. Be hard on ’em this Christmas with their Pop gone.
“He missed your mother every day, he did. You could see it in his eyes, the sadness.” She was looking at the photographs as Bob glanced sideways at her. She seemed softer now.
She turned to Bob and tilted her head. “You know, he told me once that he sometimes felt that she was within his reach, that sometimes he could swear she was standing behind him, and only by turning around to face the thin air could he prove himself wrong. He wasn’t a superstitious man but he told me she used to visit him in his dreams.”
Marilyn was quiet for a moment. Then she snapped, breaking her own thoughts, “That’s why you should’ve knocked on our door three months ago.”
Henry kept telling Bob that they should go to see Granny. After Marilyn made them a lunch of curried-egg sandwiches and more milky tea, Henry walked Bob the three blocks to Granny’s little house. The afternoon summer sun beat down on them. Bob waved flies away as they walked. “You’d think they’d be too hot to bother,” Bob said.
Henry smiled. After a pause he looked at Bob. “How was Mum?” he asked.
“I got a good picture of what my uncle, your father, would have been like. I’m sorry I didn’t know him. He sounds like he was quite a character.”
“He was. He was gentle, but a hard worker. Real patient and honest. I don’t know how someone could go through all that Dad did and not end up bitter and angry. Not that he was happy about it. But I don’t know how I would do it. Things aren’t fair in this town but it’s much better now than it was when Mum and Dad were growing up. This town hides a lot of hate.”
Bob looked at him. “Your mother told me about the segregation and the violence against blacks.”
Henry stopped walking and looked at Bob. “I’ll tell you how deep it goes. If you walk out to Temperance Creek — I’ll take you there tomorrow — there’s a tree there called Butcher’s Tree. In this country, there are very few places to hide — everything is open. Dad said that as a kid he had seen the skeletons, bones and teeth, all sizes, like they were just waiting to be found. Skeletons lying over each other. And he could see the lead musket balls in the trunk.”
Granny was sitting in the shade of her porch when they arrived. Her house was the last in the street. Beyond it the road turned to dirt and the grass was long. She looked at Bob as the men approached and Henry spoke.
“You won’t believe who this is, Granny. He’s my cousin. His mum was Dad’s sister. Elizabeth.”
Granny peered at Bob. “I was wondering when you’d show up.” She waved him to a seat beside her, leaving Henry to stand. “So where did she end up, our little Garibooli?” Granny asked him.
“Elizabeth?”
“We called her Garibooli. Means ’whirlwind’. We’re Eualeyai, us Boneys. In our language, Garibooli means ’whirlwind’.”
“Garibooli,” Bob repeated to make sure he was saying it right. Granny gave him a quick nod as if to say “I told you so.”
“I didn’t know that Garibooli meant ’whirlwind’,” said Henry.
“You never asked,” snapped Granny.
Bob came to Henry’s rescue. “My mother, Elizabeth … Garibooli, married my father and moved to Lithgow. She had six kids. I’m the second youngest.”
Granny nodded her head as Bob spoke, as though she was agreeing that what he was saying was correct. “She always liked little ones. You should have seen how she used to fuss over her brother. Broke his heart when she was taken. Never got over it. Blamed himself. And it killed his parents, losing her. If Sonny hadn’t had Marilyn — she’s a Morgan, you know — I don’t know how he would have done it. He loved his kids too, even though they mostly gave him grief.” She gave Henry a piercing look.
“She was a fast thing. Loved to run and was always up in the trees.”
Bob could not imagine his mother, whom he remembered as being so large, running and climbing trees. He had very few memories of her, but he did recall trying to put his arms all the way around her and not being able to reach. And that she smelled of lemons.
“And she was always looking at the sky, that girl. Liked looking at the stars,” Granny added.
Bob felt a longing for something and he whispered the first word that came to his lips: “Carole.”
He wanted to be home with her, feel her in his arms, smell her hair. She didn’t, he realised, make him feel white. She had, all through the years, made him feel complete.
29
1982
DANNY HUNG UP the phone.
“Who was that?” asked Gloria.
“No one,” Danny sneered at her.
“Oh, you’re in one of those moods,” she retorted, lighting a cigarette and returning her attention to the television.
“I’m going out,” Danny said as he opened the front door.
He walked into the street and turned towards the pub. Townsville was hot this time of year and even at seven-thirty in the evening it would wrap around you.
When he left Sydney with the takings from Pasquale’s restaurant in his pocket, Danny had intended that his family should never find him again. Trust Bob, he mutte
red to himself, to interfere and upset his plans. He’d felt a pang of sadness on hearing that Patricia had passed away. His leaving the way he did, knowing that she had always cared for him, never sat well with him. Many times in the last twenty years he’d thought about giving her a call. Just to see how she was. Now she was gone and the things he wanted to say to her would never be said. It had seemed too hard to face her and risk rejection. She was the only person who had been there for him no matter what. He could still remember how excited he’d get when he could make out her figure on the horizon, walking towards him as he sat on the stone wall, with the other boys, all hoping for a visitor. And he still remembered the panic he felt when she left, disappearing into the distance.
When he came to live with her, he never seemed to be able to settle down, sit still. He tried the jobs Patricia had helped him secure, but was never able to stick with any of them. Something or someone always seemed to trip him up. He met a gang of kids from Redfern and would stay in abandoned warehouses with them at night, breaking into shops when there was the opportunity. It was a world that revolved around petty thieving — bicycles, tools, machinery — a world inhabited by con artists and fast talkers. But in the simple code of loyalty amongst the street toughs — Aboriginal kids from all over the state — he found a place where he was respected. And making money their way was easier than working hard for it.
The police would target them. Danny got used to being picked up, beaten up and held in the gaol cells. Once they got to know him, the police couldn’t spot him without trying to start something with him and his mates. Danny sought out the violent conflicts. He could unleash his aggression and found that once he started hitting, he couldn’t stop until he was exhausted or beaten unconscious. His nights in the gaol cells only sharpened his resistance to authority and increased his skills for breaking locks; he also picked up useful tips about possible future ’business partners’.
The money sitting in Pasquale’s till was just too tempting. His plan was to make for Brisbane where some of his friends had moved after the police kept targeting them in Redfern. When Danny arrived there, he found that Brisbane was a more racist place than the one he’d left. In Sydney the police would lock them up overnight for no reason, but the stories of police brutality in Queensland often had a more deadly ending.
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