The White Girl

by Birch, Tony;

  ‘There’s nothing crazy about it. Yusuf’s cousin, Miriam, over at Thunder Ridge, she told me herself. The policeman out there, he’s a new fella as well. He came round not long ago and was quizzing her. Asking all types of questions. He even took photographs of her grandkiddies. I heard one of the women, a young girl, she recognised his face from when she was in the Homes, said that he’d worked there before he joined the coppers. She took one look at him and ran off into the desert.’

  ‘What did the woman say about him?’

  ‘Nothing. She went away for two nights and when she came back she wouldn’t speak about him. Not a word.’

  ‘You say he took photographs?’

  ‘He did. A couple of them kids are real light-skinned. Same as your Sissy. Their daddy is a Swedish man, a rigger. Miriam put this copper off by showing him her papa’s immigration papers. He was born in the Punjab over there. Same as Yusuf’s people. She told the copper they are pure Afghans.’

  ‘But Miriam’s mother, isn’t she from country round here?’

  ‘Sure is. But she wouldn’t be telling a copper her true identity. Miriam’s worried sick over the grandkids. The whole mob is thinking of getting on the move, heading further out on the stock run, to the desert.’

  The women reached the main street of Deane. Sissy was waiting for them, resting on her bicycle, looking pleased with herself. The morning sun captured the light in her hair and the pale skin of her face. A knot of fear gathered in Odette’s stomach.

  Millie tapped Odette on the arm. ‘I have to get to the hardware store. You do me a favour and go see that doctor.’

  Sissy rested her bike against the horse trough outside the town’s only surviving hotel, The Squatter, and walked along the street with Odette. They first went into the post office and had the greeting cards weighed, stamped and posted. Odette converted her most recent money order to cash. The cashier, Estelle Slocomb, the current mayor’s daughter, had a habit of never looking directly at Odette as she counted out the one-pound notes. It was clear to Odette that Estelle felt the task of handling money for an Aboriginal woman demeaned her. She once heard the cashier say to the postmaster, ‘I don’t know what she does with all that money.’

  Next, they went to the general store to buy groceries. Owen Healy, the owner of the store, was close to ninety years of age. He had outlived his wife and eldest son, and continued to run the business with his youngest son, who was close to sixty years old himself. Owen always spoke politely to his customers and was well liked.

  ‘How are you, today, Odette?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well, Owen, but not as fit as you.’

  Sissy helped Odette load the shopping into the basket on the front of the bike. ‘This is too heavy for you,’ Odette protested. ‘Let me share the load.’

  ‘Maybe you could ride the bike home,’ Sissy teased her nan.

  ‘I hardly think so. I’m too old.’

  ‘You’re not old, Nan. Not like Mr Healy is old.’

  Odette had felt old in recent weeks. ‘Not too many people get to be as old as Mr Healy,’ she said.

  They walked back, past the bank, the bicycle between them. Odette glanced down the side street and noticed the Surgery sign hanging from a hook above an open door. She stopped outside the local picture theatre, The Palace, which had closed down two years earlier.

  ‘Sissy,’ Odette said, ‘I need you to wait for me.’

  ‘Where are you going, Nan? I could come with you.’

  ‘No, I need you to wait. There’s a doctor along the street here. I’m going to call in and see him and get some powders for this pain I’ve been having. I won’t be long. You don’t move, and I’ll be back soon.’

  As soon as Odette was out of sight Sissy thought about jumping on her bike and tearing along the main street. The first time she’d ridden her birthday bike in Henry Lamb’s junkyard, Sissy felt an exhilaration she’d not experienced before. She knew it wasn’t anything to match the magic a bird must feel, gliding across the sky, but just the same she liked to imagine she was flying. Her grandmother had told her she was allowed to ride along the river track on her own, but only as far as the turn-off to town, unless she was riding to school. Each day Sissy secretly defied her grandmother, venturing further along the snaking river trail, setting herself a new marker to reach before turning around and heading for home.

  Instead, Sissy took an apple from the shopping basket and sat on the bench outside the picture theatre eating it. She looked up at the faded movie posters in the front window of the theatre. The final movie to be shown there had been Imitation of Life. She and Odette had not been to see the movie, but Sissy had heard a group of white girls from school talking about it.

  Angeline Adams, the publican’s daughter, believed it was the saddest movie ever made.

  ‘What’s it about?’ one of the other girls asked.

  ‘It’s about a part-black girl who doesn’t want to be black and she treats her own mother like she’s dirt,’ Angeline explained to the girls gathered around her. ‘She even pretends that she doesn’t know her mother,’ she added. ‘They do that around here too, some of them.’ She looked directly at the Aboriginal girls, including Sissy.

  The stars of the movie, Lana Turner and Juanita Moore, had been trapped in the cobwebbed theatre window since the night of the final screening. In another poster, a white girl and a brown-skinned girl, around the same age as each other, were sitting on a beach, smiling. Sissy stood up and walked across to the window. She rested her back against the glass, rolled up the sleeves of her jumper and placed one arm alongside the bare skin of the brown girl. She did the same with the other arm against the skin of the young white girl. She then stood between the two girls, looking up at them watching her.

  The surgery waiting room consisted of two wooden chairs, a bench seat and a framed photograph of Queen Elizabeth on the wall. A sign on a closed door read Dr Nathan Singer M.D. Odette could hear someone moving around in the next room. The door opened suddenly, startling her. A man around ten years younger than Odette appeared. He was wearing a dark three-piece woollen suit, an older-style rounded shirt collar and a polka dot bow tie. His thick, dark hair was flecked with streaks of silver around the temples.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not realise that there was someone waiting. Please come in and take a seat.’

  Odette hesitated before walking into the room. The doctor followed. She immediately began to feel nervous and remained on her feet.

  The doctor gestured towards the chair. ‘Your name is, please?’

  ‘My name is Mrs Odette Brown,’ she said. ‘I live in Quarrytown.’ She took her purse out of her coat pocket. ‘I have my own money,’ she said. She took out a two-pound note, which she offered to the doctor.

  The doctor was clearly puzzled. ‘Money?’

  ‘I am able to pay you myself. There’s no need for you to bill the Welfare people. I can take care of this.’

  The doctor frowned. ‘There is no need to discuss payment now. Please, Mrs Brown, do take a seat and tell me why you are here this morning.’

  Odette sat and nervously looked around the room, which was sparse but clean. Several leather-bound books sat on the mantle above a fireplace behind a large desk. On one side of the room was an examination table and screen, and on the other, a trolley containing medical instruments, medicines and a sterilisation oven. The doctor waited for Odette to say something. When she didn’t speak, he prompted her.

  ‘How can I help you today, Mrs Brown?’

  ‘Some time back I started to get these pains in my side. I get it mostly when I’m walking, and other times when I need to lift something heavy. I’ve been expecting the pain to go away. But it hasn’t.’

  ‘Which side of your body is the pain on?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Underneath my ribs.’ Odette rested her hand above her left hip. ‘In h
ere.’

  ‘Okay.’ He smiled. ‘Do you have any other symptoms?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I haven’t been eating much as I haven’t felt hungry lately. And my sleep has been poor. I get tired early but wake up in the night.’

  ‘Is it the pain that wakes you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s the pain.’

  The doctor nodded towards the examination table. ‘It will be necessary to take your blood pressure and your temperature. I need to know if you’re running a fever or have an infection. I do think it best if I can also examine you, Mrs Brown.’

  Doctor Singer detected Odette’s look of concern. Her experience with medical people, as limited as it was, had always caused her anxiety. The doctor manoeuvred the screen into position beside the examination table. He opened a cupboard door, brought out a dressing gown and handed it to Odette.

  ‘I’m sorry. This is a gentleman’s robe. It’s all I have for now but it is clean. Please remove your clothes, place this over your underwear and lay down on the table. Call me when you are comfortable.’

  Odette undressed and lay down. She concentrated on the web of cracks in the plaster ceiling as Doctor Singer examined her. She answered each of his questions, delivered in a quiet voice, as thoughtfully as possible. He’d removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Odette noticed a set of numbers tattooed onto his forearm. Their eyes met. Odette looked away.

  ‘You’ll need to have an X-ray at the hospital in Gatlin,’ the doctor explained. ‘I work there three days a week, where we have the equipment to complete some tests for you.’

  ‘Tests for what?’ Odette asked.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t be sure at this stage. You certainly have some swelling on the left side of your abdomen. But without an X-ray and perhaps some pathology tests to follow up I can’t be certain. Do you know the Gatlin hospital?’

  The only time Odette had visited Gatlin was twelve years earlier when she’d walked the streets searching for her daughter, Lila. ‘I can find the hospital,’ she answered.

  ‘Good. I will arrange an appointment date and time for you to attend. I will have a detailed letter ready for you to collect by Monday morning.’

  The doctor rolled his shirtsleeves down and buttoned the cuffs. As he did so, Odette again noticed the tattooed numbers on his bare arm. She knew a little about the war in Europe and what had happened to the Jewish people. Some years earlier she’d seen a magazine with photographs of thin and starving people waiting in line for food at a Red Cross station. In one photograph three men displayed tattooed numbers on their arms, similar to Doctor Singer’s.

  ‘Have you always lived here, in this town?’ the doctor asked Odette after she had dressed.

  ‘Yes. I’ve never lived any place else.’ She was curious about the doctor’s own story. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked, surprising herself with her forwardness.

  ‘I’m from the other side of the world. Poland,’ he smiled.

  Odette was curious about why a person would travel many thousands of miles from Europe to a lonely town in Australia, stuck between the mountains and the desert. The doctor opened the door. He followed Odette into the waiting room.

  ‘We should have an appointment for you at the hospital within two weeks. My letter will contain all the necessary details. In the meantime, it would be best if you are able to get some rest.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m grateful for your help.’

  ‘It’s what we do,’ he said. ‘Help people.’

  Walking back to the main street Odette saw Bill Shea outside The Palace looking down at the ground, his hands resting in the small of his back. She could also see Sissy, who was using her bicycle as a barrier between herself and Sergeant Lowe.

  ‘What do you want with her?’ Odette asked more abruptly than the policemen may have expected.

  ‘Whatever I think is necessary,’ Lowe answered.

  ‘I need to know what your business is with my granddaughter.’

  ‘Do not be alarmed,’ he said. ‘I have been talking with young Cecily. She has been telling me that she had a birthday recently and was presented with this bicycle. I have been asking Cecily what plans you have for her future, Mrs Brown.’

  Odette felt a single bead of perspiration run from the base of her neck down the centre of her back. ‘Oh, we don’t have any plans,’ she answered, doing all she could to remain calm. ‘We’re on our way home. Come on, Sissy, we need to be going.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ Lowe interrupted, gripping the handlebars of the bike. ‘The welfare of the child is my concern.’

  Odette looked nervously towards Bill Shea, hoping he might have the courage to intervene. Shea dropped his head, finding a sudden need to study the frayed cuffs of his trousers.

  ‘Come on, Sis,’ Odette ordered a second time. ‘Let’s get home.’

  ‘Not yet, Mrs Brown,’ Lowe said. ‘Not until you hear what I have to say. Change is coming to the town of Deane and it’s best that people prepare for it, yourself included.’ He patted Sissy’s hand. ‘She is a smart young lady, your granddaughter. I would not want to see a girl with such potential slip back. It is my duty to uplift children such as Cecily and I will not fail her. Good day.’

  He strode purposely across the street in the direction of the police station. Shea followed him like a clumsy but loyal pup.

  ‘What does he mean by that, Nan? Uplift? What does that mean?’ Sissy demanded.

  ‘It means nothing,’ Odette said. ‘Don’t be worrying yourself over this. It’s just police talking the way police have always talked.’

  Sissy looked at the movie poster of the two girls comparing their skin colour. ‘I bet it does mean something, what he just said to you.’

  ‘Whatever it means, you’re not to get upset about it. It’s my job to care for you, and nobody else. We need to get these groceries home. I’ve got butter in this bag for making a cake. I don’t want it to melt.’

  ‘I’m not leaving until you tell me what the policeman was speaking about,’ Sissy insisted. ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘Aren’t you just? There’s nothing to tell you. And by the way, I don’t like him either.’ Odette slapped her hands together. ‘We’re going home, Sissy.’

  ‘But Nan.’

  ‘No more!’

  Sissy rode her bike slowly, sulking the whole way home. She went straight to the bedroom and lay down and read. A little while later Odette went to check on her. Sissy wouldn’t look up. Odette sat on the bed next to her granddaughter. After Lila left she’d sworn that no harm would come to the girl while she was alive. It was an oath she’d reinforced to herself many times over the years.

  ‘Are you going to keep this up, ignoring me?’ Odette asked.

  Sissy could never stay angry with Odette for long. ‘I’m just reading, Nan.’

  ‘Are you going to eat, then?’

  ‘If you are, Nan.’

  ‘I don’t want you worrying over what that policeman was talking about,’ Odette said to Sissy as they ate.

  ‘I’m not thinking about him, Nan.’

  Odette doubted her granddaughter’s response but let the matter be.

  Chapter Six

  When Sissy arrived home from school one afternoon the following week she found Odette in the backyard stoking hot coals under the bathtub and running buckets of water from the laundry.

  ‘Nanna, do you know what day it is?’ Sissy asked. ‘You know that it’s not Sunday, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, I know what day it is,’ Odette answered, annoyed at the suggestion that she may not. ‘Today is Wednesday, and tomorrow will be Thursday. How’s that for you, Missy?’ she grumbled. Odette marched breathlessly back and forth across the yard, spilling more water on the ground than she managed to tip into the tub.

  ‘But you’re heating the bath water. You’ve
never done that on a Wednesday. Why are you putting water in the bath?’

  ‘Because I’m about to get in it and wash myself,’ Odette snapped. ‘I can take a bath any day I feel like it,’ she added, ‘after all, I’m a grown woman.’ She stopped suddenly, dropping the bucket at her feet. Water splashed over her legs. She fell back into the dirt, muddying the back of her dress.

  ‘Oh, Nan. What’s wrong with you?’ Odette could see Sissy was trying not to laugh. Sissy ran over and took hold of her hand. ‘Let me help you.’

  Odette struggled to her feet and felt the back of her dress. ‘Oh bugger. Look at it. The dress is filthy.’

  ‘Let me look after it for you, Nan.’ Sissy walked over to the bathtub and ran a hand through the water. ‘It’s just right, the water. You hop in and I’ll rinse the dress in the trough.’

  Odette struggled out of her dress and hopped into the bath. She lay back and closed her eyes. Sissy scrubbed the dress with soap and a brush and hung it on the washing line, stretched between the laundry and a gum tree. Odette was almost asleep when she felt Sissy’s fingertips caressing her forehead.

  ‘Will you let me wash your hair for a change, Nan?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to that,’ Odette smiled, feeling calmer. Her silver mane glowed in the sweet light of dusk.

  ‘You should do this every day,’ Sissy said, rinsing Odette’s hair a second time. ‘Give yourself a rest and a bath.’

  ‘I don’t think so. We’d run out of fuel in a week if I did that. There’d be no wood for cooking.’ She asked Sissy to pass her the calico sheet folded over a wooden chair. ‘I need to tell you something, Sweet. The reason I’m having the bath tonight is that I have to go to the hospital in Gatlin tomorrow. I’ll need to catch the early bus and will have no time to wash in the morning.’

  Sissy frowned. ‘Why are you going to the hospital?’

  ‘Remember I saw that doctor in town?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, he told me I need to have an X-ray.’