Sian: A New Australian

by D. Luckett

  ‘How was school?’ he asked as he sat down.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m writing a composition. Miss Alberts is nice. She says that there are books coming soon.’ I really wanted some more books to read.

  ‘Good. I’m glad. More like normal life,’ he said.

  ‘I met some other children, too.’ I thought about Mae. I wondered if I could get her to come to school. I wanted someone my own age to play with.

  Ellis was already eating his supper and didn’t reply. His mouth was full.

  He ate everything on his plate.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, as he sat back. ‘That’s very good, Sian. Did you make it yourself?’ I just looked at him, and he seemed to understand he’d just said something silly. ‘Only I haven’t had such a good meal since I came here,’ he added.

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Fresh vegetables. But if we want more I’ll need to buy them. There’s a man with a market garden. Two pence a head for cabbage, nine pence a pound for carrots.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ellis, ‘that’s cheaper than tinned peas.’ He stretched to one side, putting his hand in his pocket. ‘Here’s three shillings. And sixpence. Get whatever you like.’

  So there in my hand was more money than I’d ever had before.

  ‘I’ll need somewhere to cook them,’ I said.

  He watched me clear away the plates. ‘Why,’ he said after a minute, ‘I suppose I’ll have to build a kitchen.’

  So he did.

  And I didn’t have to get around him at all.

  I still hadn’t had any letter from home. But all I could do was to wait. I had plenty to do, and keeping busy keeps your mind off things, doesn’t it?

  Every day I went home by Mae’s place. Sometimes I bought some vegetables. Sometimes we just played. I wished she’d come to school so I’d have someone to play with there.

  I asked her why she didn’t want to go. She said she didn’t need to.

  ‘I’m going to be a gardener, like my dad,’ said Mae. ‘I know all about growing vegetables. We have new crops all the time – all sorts of things. Cabbage, leeks, carrots, beans. And this.’ Mae showed me a thing like a very big potato but with pointy ends, and golden.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  She tilted her hat back and scratched her head. ‘I don’t think it has a name in English. We call it gan shu,’ she said. ‘It’s like a potato but softer and sweet. It’s very good, and it grows well here. You don’t boil it, though. You roast it in the ashes, like a potato in its jacket. Or like a damper.’

  ‘Damper?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. You know.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s damper?’

  ‘Bread. Well, sort of.’ She nodded down the slope towards their little house. ‘Look. I’m just making some for our dinner. I’ll show you.’

  Ellis had come home early, before me, and was working on the kitchen. He was up on a ladder, screwing in a bolt and heard me come up. ‘You know, Sian, I think it would be best just to make the walls from flywire, with a flywire door. That would keep flies out but let the breeze through and the roof will keep the rain off. I can tell you, if you’re working over a stove, you’ll need all the breeze you can get.’

  Darkness fell and we ate our supper. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ said Ellis, when he put his knife down. ‘I didn’t know you could get pumpkin here.’

  ‘It’s not pumpkin. It’s a vegetable they grow here.’

  ‘What’s it called?’ asked Ellis.

  ‘Mae Gok called it gan shu,’ I said.

  Ellis looked at me. He swallowed and then made a face. ‘Gan shu? Gok? What, Sian?’ He looked down at his empty plate, and then up again. ‘Oh, no! Don’t tell me you’ve been getting these vegetables from a Chinaman?’

  I just looked at him.

  ‘Don’t you know you mustn’t buy things from the Chinese?’ asked Ellis. ‘Don’t you know that they grow their crops in … well, in nightsoil?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What’s nightsoil?’

  He gasped. ‘I hardly like to say.’ He looked down. ‘You know how you fill the hole in, when you go to the toilet, like?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well,’ said Ellis, ‘the Chinese, why, they dig it up and they put it on their gardens. That’s nightsoil. That’s why you mustn’t … it’ll make you ill.’ He stopped.

  I looked down at my plate. I had been so proud of what I’d cooked and it had been so good too.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Ellis. ‘How could you know? It’s my fault. I should have told you.’

  I sat for a while. Then I got up and picked up the plates. ‘I’m not feeling sick,’ I said. ‘Just full.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Ellis. ‘I am too. I just hope it stays like that. Make sure you wash everything properly.’

  I carried hot water from the copper and washed up. And I said nothing for the rest of the night.

  We didn’t get sick. But I stopped buying vegetables from the Goks. I just went around to Mae’s to play. She was always working but I think she was lonely. She would point out the crops she was growing. She never asked me what I wanted to buy anymore, so I said nothing. I think she was afraid of scaring me away.

  There was a whole new world to explore anyway and nobody minded where we went.

  The railway ran along a little way off. There was only one train though, not half the size even of the engine that pulled the Newport train back home, and there were no carriages for passengers. Not even any seats. People sat on the flat wagons on their packs or suitcases. There weren’t many passengers – just miners going out to the diggings. You could almost keep up with the train if you ran beside it, and if you waved at the driver, he’d wave back.

  Sometimes we went down to the harbour. There weren’t many ships but always there were the pearl luggers working. They were sailing boats. Sometimes one or two of them would be in unloading bags of shell. Mae said it was mother-of-pearl and it would be made into buttons and brooches and things. The men unloading them looked Chinese and I asked Mae if she’d talked to them but she said not to be silly. They were Japanese, not Chinese, and they spoke a different language altogether.

  If we walked down to the sea we could fish from the wharf. I never caught anything but Mae was very good at it. She knew where the fish were lurking, in the shade under the wharf, at the right time of the tide. When the mud flats were covered there was a fish called a barramundi. Mae caught one, one time, and it was too big just for her family, so she gave me half.

  Once I saw a crocodile. It wasn’t a very big one but when it swam past the wharf I pulled my feet up. I swear it rolled a cold eye up to look at me and I could almost hear it thinking how nice I’d taste.

  Down among the wharf pilings, far below, you could see the sea snakes swimming in the water too. Mae said they were the deadliest of all but they didn’t try to bite you unless you annoyed them. Not like death adders. They’d come for you just out of spite.

  If it was too hot for walking far we went to the creek that ran just beside the market garden. It was still dry and we’d dig up some of the soil in the creek bed which was good for the garden. Sometimes we played hidey. There was a stand of canes – what Mae called bamboo – down by the creek and they were perfect for making a cubby. If you looked out for snakes, that is. Mae knew which ones were poisonous. That was most of them, mind. She told me that some would make you swell up until you burst and others you’d fall down dead before you even felt the bite.

  It was all so strange, so new, so different. And nobody to tell me I couldn’t do things. We could play where we liked.

  Every morning I still went to school by way of the Goks’. It was a great deal longer to go around by the streets. The mornings were getting hotter and I didn’t want to walk any further in the sun than I had to. It was getting more and more steamy too. And then, one morning, there was a thunderstorm off over the sea, coming closer. That would be the start of the wet seaso
n, I thought.

  That morning, as I passed by, Mr Gok was planting a tree. He shovelled earth out of a wheelbarrow that was just by him, packing it around the tree’s roots. He stood, dusted off his hands, then used a spade to take some crumbly grey powder from a hessian bag and spread that around the tree. Then he used a watering can to water it well.

  He stood back. Mae was just coming up with another barrow full of earth and another small tree.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. She nodded at the tree her father had just planted. ‘We’re planting cuttings from our mango tree.’

  Mango tree? He was growing mangoes? ‘I really like mango,’ I said, before I could think to say, Nothing today, thank you.

  ‘Well, of course,’ said Mae. ‘I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like mango.’ She looked at me and grinned. ‘We’ve got two mango trees already, you know. Father says the first two will fruit this year for the first time.’

  Ellis had told me not to buy vegetables from Mr Gok. But mangoes aren’t vegetables, you know. They’re fruit. Ellis hadn’t said not to buy fruit.

  I looked at the mango tree in its plot of ground. Nothing smelled bad. Just moist earth and growing plants.

  ‘Aren’t you growing them in … you know … nightsoil?’ I asked. It just popped out before I could think.

  Mae looked at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘Nightsoil? Of course we don’t use nightsoil. What an idea!’ she said.

  Then she frowned. ‘Is that why you haven’t been buying anything, lately? You thought we would do that and then sell you the vegetables?’ She thought some more. ‘Oh, I know. Someone told you that being Chinese means all sorts of bad things. And you believed them!’

  ‘Nightsoil, though … urk!’ I said.

  Mae glared at me. ‘Look, I told you, we don’t use it. Look around you! Why must you always believe the worst? And urk? You blow your nose on a piece of cloth and then put it back in your pocket! That’s an urk, if anything is.’

  My mouth opened in surprise. ‘Why, what do you do?’

  ‘We use a leaf.’

  I looked around at the red earth between my feet. ‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I was told …’

  ‘Oh, you were told, were you? Who told you? What did they say?’

  I wasn’t going to put Ellis in, was I? That would be like telling on him. So I just said, ‘Why, I just heard.’

  ‘The kids at school, I suppose,’ said Mae. ‘Well, that’s not a surprise. Now you know why I’m not going to school. To hear some people talk, I’ll never be anything but Chinese. I’ve never even been there, you know.’ She took one hand off the barrow, and waved it around at the land, the red earth, the scrub, the tin roofs that were scattered around, the sky, the dry gully that was waiting for the rains. ‘This is all I know.’

  She looked up. Footsteps were coming up from behind me.

  ‘Mr Gok,’ said someone, over my shoulder. I knew who it was even before I turned round. ‘And Mae. Good morning to you both. What’s ready to pick this morning?’

  It was Miss Alberts. She was standing with a straw bag in one hand and her parasol in the other so that it shaded her from the sun. It was already hot, even though it was still early in the morning. Her parasol was a beautiful one – silk, I suppose, white, but with little forget-me-nots done on it, and she had a wide shady hat as well.

  ‘Good morning, Sian Roberts,’ she said to me. ‘It’s all right. You won’t be late for school. It can’t start until I’m there, you know. I came to buy some vegetables from Mr Gok and see if I can persuade Mae to come to school.’

  ‘We have some long beans just ready, Miss Alberts,’ said Mae. ‘And some squash. Carrots, of course. Some cabbages, the Chinese kind, but very tender.’

  ‘How lovely. I must have some of those. My father the town councillor is coming to dinner for the first time in the new teacher’s house – my house – and I want to show him that I can manage things for myself.’

  Mae said something in Chinese to her da, and Mr Gok’s eyebrows went up. He said something back.

  Mae said: ‘My honoured father says that your honoured father might not care for vegetables grown by the Chinese.’

  ‘My honoured father will have to lump it,’ said Miss Alberts, cheerfully. ‘Fresh vegetables will do his liver the world of good.’

  That made my mind up. ‘I’d like some beans too,’ I said. Ellis would have to lump it. ‘And when will the mangoes be ready?’

  ‘Not for another month or two, I think,’ said Mae. ‘I’m not actually sure. This is the first time mangoes have been grown here. And if we can just keep the bats and the birds off them …’ She thought a moment. ‘I’ll get some nets to put over them,’ she said.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Miss Alberts. ‘And what about coming to school?’

  Mae looked away and didn’t say anything. Miss Alberts sighed. ‘Mae. You need netting to put over the trees, you say. How much netting?’

  ‘A bit, I suppose.’

  ‘How much is “a bit”? How tall are the trees? How wide are their branches? How many yards of netting is that? If netting costs ten pence a yard, five yards wide, how much will it cost to cover the trees?’

  Mae didn’t say anything. She just shook her head. She’d been ready to argue with me but Miss Alberts was something else again.

  ‘That’s why you need to come to school. To learn how to work it out or you won’t be able to run a market garden,’ said Miss Alberts, gently.

  Mr Gok said something. Mae just shook her head again. She was looking down at the ground. She looked sorry and annoyed and ashamed, all at once. I was sorry for her. She was proud of being Chinese and proud of being born here, both at once. And why shouldn’t she be?

  ‘About those beans – and perhaps some carrots,’ I said, to take her mind off it.

  So I bought beans and carrots and some squash, and Miss Alberts put them in her bag for me with her own vegetables. ‘Good morning, Mr Gok, goodbye, Mae,’ we said, and walked off to school together.

  ‘I didn’t know you bought vegetables from Mr Gok, miss,’ I said, after a while.

  ‘Well, Sian, now you do. If I want fresh vegetables, that’s where I get them. And I do want them. My father says …’ But she stopped and shook her head. ‘People just don’t like the Chinese,’ she finished.

  ‘But Mae isn’t Chinese. She was born here,’ I said.

  Miss Alberts sighed. Then she said: ‘My father thinks that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter about them or about the Aborigines, or about anyone who isn’t like him. But he’s wrong. Sooner or later he’ll find that out for himself. Most people will, in time.’ She walked faster and I had to stretch to keep up. ‘Enough of that. How is your latest composition coming along?’

  After school I came home with the beans and carrots and squash from Mr Gok and put them on the bench, fresh and green, not even wilting yet, even though the heat was fierce and it felt as if thunder was brewing.

  I’d have to get around Ellis, if I wanted to cook vegetables, like getting around Da. Only I didn’t have Olive here to show me how to do it. And it didn’t feel right, anyway. Ellis wasn’t like Da.

  The kitchen now had a concrete floor like the house, and a path from the house to its door, so you didn’t track mud in. Ellis had built a bench along one side and the new wood stove had been delivered. It had a chimney that came out of the back wall. A pipe ran from the tank to the bench so you could fill a basin or a kettle. We’d even had firewood brought by a man with a dray and Ellis sometimes brought off-cuts home from work. It was hot but there was a breeze blowing through the wire walls.

  When Ellis came in just after dark I had supper ready.

  ‘Did you buy these at the store?’ he asked, cutting into a squash. ‘Only I didn’t know they had fresh supplies in. There hasn’t been a ship for a week.’

  My mouth was full, so I didn’t say anything. It’s rude to talk with your mouth full. Anyway, I had to wait until Ellis had eaten some. It would be easier tell
ing him once he’d got the taste of it, like. But he was already doing that.

  ‘They’re nice, aren’t they?’ I said, when I was ready.

  He ate some more squash. ‘So, you got them from Miss Alberts, then? She grows them, does she? Or is there a garden at school, like?’

  I was going to put this off for as long as I could. ‘I got them from where Miss Alberts buys vegetables,’ I said. ‘She had to make dinner for her father. He’s a councillor.’

  Ellis didn’t say anything for a moment. He couldn’t, with his mouth full. Then he took a sip of tea. ‘Oh, it’s good, all right. I hope you didn’t have to pay too much, then.’

  ‘No. I’ve still got some of the money you gave me.’

  ‘So where does Miss Alberts buy her vegetables?’

  Well, there we were. Now I had to say.

  ‘I met Miss Alberts on the way to school. She was buying vegetables at Gok’s. They don’t use nightsoil. These are the same vegetables she bought from them.’

  Ellis looked up at me and I saw his eyes open wide. He stopped chewing. For a moment he looked at me just the same as Da used to, when Da was about to say, Sian Mary Roberts! in the loud voice that meant he was angry.

  I watched Ellis’s face and I could feel my heart thumping. ‘I swear they don’t use nightsoil. Go and see for yourself. It’s just clean fresh vegetables, much better than what’s in the store. Miss Alberts is giving them to her own da for his tea, and he’s a councillor. She said they’d be good for his liver.’ Ellis’s mouth opened but I think it was surprise more than anything. ‘Please, Da, don’t be angry,’ I said. I didn’t know what else I could say.

  See, in the end I couldn’t get around him. I just had to tell him the truth and hope for the best. He was Ellis, not Da. Only come to think of it, I’d just called him …

  Ellis stared at me for a long time. He took another sip of tea. Then he cut off another bit of the squash, picked it up on the blade of his knife, and ate it, chewing slowly. He swallowed. Maybe it took a bit of an effort but he did.