The White Girl

by Birch, Tony;

  Odette made herself a pot of tea and sat at the table late into the night, drained even of the energy to relight the fire in the stove. She agonised over the knowledge that Lila had carried a secret she could not share, even with her own mother. She felt a deep sense of hurt, for herself, Lila and Sissy. She was almost asleep at the table when an unexpected knock at the front door startled her. She immediately thought of Aaron Kane and armed herself with the steel poker she used for stoking the fire.

  ‘It’s late here. Who is it?’

  A pause was followed by the toe of a boot scraping against the front doorstep. ‘It’s Bill Shea, Odette.’

  Bill? Odette opened the door, the poker gripped in her hand. ‘It’s a bit late isn’t it, Bill? What do you want, coming round here?’

  ‘Please, Odette. Can I come inside? It’s best that I’m not seen out here.’

  Odette wasn’t about to show Shea an ounce of respect. ‘You’re right, Bill. You wouldn’t want to be seen on the doorstep of an Aboriginal house, not this late. But there’s hardly a person left around here to see you anyhow. You been drinking tonight?’

  Bill looked a little pathetic. ‘No. You saw me at the station yourself. I’m sober.’

  ‘Come in then. But keep the noise down. I have Sissy asleep in bed.’

  Bill took his cap off and stood awkwardly in the kitchen. He reached into his jacket, took out a piece of paper and placed it on the table.

  ‘What’s this?’ Odette asked. ‘A summons?’

  ‘It’s nothing like that. This is your travel permit,’ he answered. ‘Stamped and signed.’

  Odette was surprised. ‘How about that? He signed it after all. What changed his mind?’

  ‘Lowe doesn’t know about this. And he can’t find out.’

  Odette picked up the piece of paper and read from it. It stated that she was legally permitted to travel within the boundaries of the State, for up to seven days due to ill-health of a family member. The permission had been officially stamped and signed by the local Guardian of Aborigines, Officer William Shea.

  Odette sat down at the table, the piece of paper shaking in her hand. ‘You forged this, Bill?’

  ‘I forged nothing. I’ve signed this legally. I’m still a registered guardian for the district until the end of the month, when I finish up.’

  ‘It says seven days. What will happen if I’m not back here in a week?’

  Bill shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why wouldn’t you be back?’

  ‘I’m just asking. What would the other policeman do? Will he come after me?’

  ‘I don’t know. He won’t be happy, I know that much. He has a thing about your people. Thinks he owns you. I don’t know why you just didn’t take off and get back here without telling him. He might have got wind, but you’d have been home before the Welfare Board acted.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why, Bill. I’ll tell you to my own shame. Most of my life I haven’t been able to do anything without your lot having control over me. Myself and all the Aboriginal people around here. We’re so used to being told what to do, where we can and can’t go, all we know is to beg.’

  Odette read the details of her travel permit a second time, pondering over what would have motivated Bill to come to her aid. ‘Why are you doing this for me now?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve been through enough, Odette. More than enough.’

  Odette shook her head slightly. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘You’ve finally understood, Bill? That me and the other women here have suffered enough?’ She could hardly look at the man who’d once been her childhood friend. ‘So, you reckon you know how much I’ve gone through?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t, Odette,’ he said. ‘But I’m sorry about what’s happened to you.’

  She studied the aged grain in the wood of the tabletop. ‘You say you’re sorry. What about this Kane boy then?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You came across Aaron threatening Sissy. He broke her bike and tried to drag her into a truck. I believe that is the crime of abduction, Bill? What have you done about that, seeing as you reckon I’ve gone through enough? You have Aaron down at the lock-up ready to charge him, I suppose?’

  ‘I don’t have anything to charge him with. When I caught up with him on the road, he told me he was trying to help young Sissy and the child wasn’t prepared to say anything different.’

  Odette thought Bill’s comment so ridiculous she wanted to laugh out loud.

  ‘You’re right. A child. Sissy is a thirteen-year-old girl, an Aboriginal girl too frightened to say a word. You knew what the Kane boy was up to. And he’s still up to. Following Sissy home from school, almost running her down. If nothing is done that boy will follow in his father’s footsteps, just like all the other white men round here.’ She waved a finger in the policeman’s face. ‘And mostly, Bill, they got away with it because you turned a blind eye for all those years. You didn’t want to know. Don’t tell me you know how I feel, and don’t you dare say sorry.’ She lowered her voice so she wouldn’t wake up Sissy. ‘Men like Joe Kane, his boy and your boss, the only difference between them and you, Bill, are the different ways you abuse us. You’re all the same.’

  Shea was taken aback by Odette’s outburst. He was stricken by the truth of the words she’d spoken.

  Odette held the travel permit in her hand. ‘What do you suppose I do with this?’

  ‘Well, it’s what you asked for, permission to travel. No one will trouble you as long as you show them that piece of paper.’

  ‘And Sissy? What about her?’

  ‘She can’t go anywhere. You should know better than to ask. It’s like Lowe explained, your granddaughter is a State ward. You go and visit your sick cousin and leave Sissy with Millie Khan. Or another Aboriginal family.’

  Odette was surprised Shea had swallowed the story of the gravely ill relative. She almost felt pity for him.

  ‘You know, Bill, when you were a kid,’ Odette said, ‘and you spent all your time with us, on the track and playing down along the riverbed, I sometimes thought that you must be a blackfella.’

  ‘I did myself, sometimes,’ he said, with a touch of embarrassment.

  ‘After your mum kicked me out of the front yard for playing with you,’ Odette continued, ‘and barred you from hanging around with us, you were frightened of us, Bill. I can understand that. It wasn’t your fault. You were only a child yourself. But the rest of it, everything that’s gone on since, I don’t understand any of that. What happened to you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged.

  Odette stood up. ‘I do. The drink is what saved you from thinking too much, Bill.’ She walked to the door and opened it. ‘I need you to leave now. Thank you for the travel permit. I’ll be using it. I’ll be leaving this house and taking my Sissy with me. If you really want to help me, Bill, you can do me one last favour.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Keep your mouth quiet, at least until we’re well away.’

  Bill put his cap back on. ‘Odette, let me warn you, for your own good as well as your grandchild. You can’t be taking her across the State. Not on a bus, a train, or on foot. That permit will get you some freedom, but not her. You’re living under the Act, and she’s under the Act as well. That girl is not permitted to travel anywhere. It’s as simple as that. You take her out of the district and get caught, you’re likely to lose her for good. You know that better than me.’

  ‘And if we stay around here, I’ll end up losing her anyway, to either your boss or one of them devils prowling the countryside. I’m taking her with me. And we won’t be coming back.’

  ‘Odette, be sensible. Sissy cannot leave this town.’ Shea threw his hands in the air. ‘Listen to me, please, Odette. It’s not as if your Sissy is a white girl.’

  A wh
ite girl, Odette thought. She slowly nodded her head. ‘A white girl. You’re right, Bill.’

  Odette stood on the veranda, watching Bill leave. She was stuck on three simple words, a white girl. As impossible as it seemed, once the idea revealed itself, Odette knew it was their only hope of escape. She went back inside and retrieved a battered suitcase from under the bed. She took out a pair of black dancing shoes, scuffed, and a white lace dress. The shoes, second-hand, had been too big for Sissy when she wore them to the school play the year before. Sissy had played the part of the White Witch, which had amused Odette and Millie Khan. Odette cleaned the shoes with a lump of damp charcoal, followed by a quick polish with her trusted castor oil. Satisfied, she turned her attention to the dress, which she had made herself out of a pair of lace curtains and satin lining. It was now both too short and too tight for Sissy. Odette spent the next hour unpicking the sides of the dress, taking it out and lowering the hem.

  Once the repairs were completed she fetched a bundle of letters from a canister above the stove, tied together with a length of string. There were eight letters in all. Odette opened and read each letter, beginning with the first note Lila had written her after she’d run off, and ending with the final letter that briefly mentioned the café where Lila was working. She then retrieved the jam tins containing the money she’d saved from the gift cards. As Odette sat at the table counting the money, she did not realise the sun had come up. Sissy opened the bedroom door and walked into the cold kitchen. Odette had no time to hide the pile of notes sitting on the table. Sissy had never seen so much money. She sat down at the table, rested her chin in her hands and stared at the bank notes.

  ‘Hey, Nan. You see all this?’

  ‘I do indeed, Sweet. I just counted it.’

  ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘Well, technically me. But seeing as we’re related, I guess it belongs to you as well,’ she smiled.

  ‘That’s a lot of money there, Nan. We must be rich.’

  ‘Well, in the world out there,’ Odette said, nodding towards the front door, ‘it wouldn’t make us rich, not exactly, although it would keep us out of harm. But if you’re talking about a black woman with a long dead husband and a grandchild to care for, that’s a different story. Yeah, I suppose we’re rich.’

  ‘Can I touch it? The money?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘Of course you can. Pick it up and sniff it if you want to.’

  Sissy rested a hand on the pile, but dared not pick up a note. ‘Where’d you get it all from?’

  ‘I saved it, over the time I’ve been doing the greeting cards.’

  ‘And what are you going to do with it?’

  Odette picked up the money and folded it into several tight rolls. She opened a kitchen drawer, found some rubber bands and wrapped one around each roll.

  ‘Well, I’m going to use it to help us. I’m not exactly sure how yet, so don’t be at me for an answer.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘You’ve had your head in that book all day,’ Odette said, handing Sissy a cup of tea. She’d been curled up quietly on the veranda all morning. ‘What’s the story about?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s the story of a boy who lives with his grandpa and a dog in a swamp. The dog comes all the way from Africa. And it doesn’t bark. The dog can sing instead. It’s called a Basenji.’

  ‘Are you liking it? The story?’

  ‘I am. Except I’m up to the part where the dog disappears in the swamp and the boy can’t find it. I think it’s going to end sad, Nan.’

  Odette kissed Sissy on the forehead. ‘Too many stories do end sad. The ones I know, at least. I’m off to the graveyard. I’d like you to walk with me, there’s something I want to talk to you about along the way.’

  ‘What is it? Can’t we talk here?’

  ‘We could. But I need you to come with me. We’ll talk when we get there.’

  ‘Will I see any ghosts?’

  ‘Only if we head into town.’

  Odette struggled on the walk to the graveyard. She looked over at Sissy and smiled, disguising her pain as best she could. When they reached the mission, she bypassed the church and walked with Sissy straight over to the graves of her parents. ‘Please, sit,’ she instructed, ‘on the ground with your people.’

  Sissy sat on her great-grandmother’s grave and traced her name and the date of the woman’s death with a fingertip. ‘Why is it,’ Sissy asked, ‘that here, next to the day of her birth the word written down is Unknown? Everyone knows their birthday, don’t they, Nan?’

  ‘Not back then, they didn’t. Your great-grandmother, she wasn’t born on the mission. There wasn’t any mission when she was born. She was free. Born on her country. Birthdays didn’t matter so much before the mission days.’

  ‘That means nobody knows how old she was?’

  ‘Well, maybe not the day or the year, but she was a respected woman. That’s all we need to know.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She died giving birth to me. But she was already ill, my father said. Being put here against her will, on the mission, it wore her down. The mission took her away from us.’

  After visiting with her parents Odette walked Sissy past the other graves, explaining the connection she had to family and Odette’s childhood friends.

  ‘You need to know all of these people,’ she said, ‘and you must remember them.’

  Sissy looked around at the headstones. ‘There’s a lot of people here, Nan. How will I remember all of them?’

  ‘Through the stories,’ Odette said. ‘I’m telling them to you, and it will be your job to remember. It’s just like the story in the book you’re reading. The story of the dog from Africa. You told me about that today, and already I can remember it. Our stories are not written in any books, which means you’ll need to keep telling them to your own family one day.’

  Odette sat down next to Sissy on a stone bench outside the church. She’d sat on the seat many times as a child, waiting to be called inside by one of the missionaries who would then quiz her about her knowledge of the Bible.

  ‘There’s something that I need to ask you to do,’ she said to Sissy, dreading the conversation ahead. ‘But first, I need to explain something to you.’

  ‘Yes, Nan.’

  ‘My father brought me up to be an honest person. Always. It didn’t matter how much trouble our family suffered at the mission, my father, he told me I had to stay true and honest to all people.’ Odette’s stubborn attachment to honesty and her habit for directness had occasionally caused her trouble. She paused, thinking carefully about what she had to say next. ‘I’m going to tell you a new story, Sissy. It’s one that we might have to tell together, one to help each other out. It’s a made-up story, but one as important as any I’ve ever told you.’

  Sissy was sharp enough to know where her grandmother was heading. ‘I think you want me to tell a lie?’

  Odette put an arm around Sissy’s shoulders and drew her close. ‘Yes, it is a lie. But a lie told for an important reason, a good reason. To protect you. My father, he was strong, and he was proud that he was known right across the country around here as a man of truth. Even when white people didn’t want to hear what he had to say and it got him into bother, he told the truth. This story, the one we’re going to share, he would understand why we might need to lie. I’m sure he would. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so, Nan.’

  Odette knocked at Henry’s gate. The padlocks were missing, as was the heavy chain. Henry didn’t answer. Odette pushed the gate open. Not wanting to startle him, she called Henry’s name. When nobody answered she made her way through the yard. She could hear the distinct sound of a shovel hitting dirt. She followed the sound and found Henry digging a hole about three feet long by a foot wide. Laying in the dirt, next to the hole, was Rowdy. His coat was matted and his body looked as h
ard as stone. His swollen tongue hung from the side of his open mouth. Henry briefly looked up at Odette before returning to the grim task. Sissy, who held a fear of dead animals, stood back.

  ‘Henry, I’m so sorry,’ Odette sighed, looking down at the poor dog. ‘What happened to him?’

  Henry ignored her and continued digging the hole until he was satisfied the walls of the grave were straight. He dropped the shovel to the ground, walked over to Rowdy, lowered his head and whispered a prayer, ending with an Amen. He lifted the dog in his arms and cradled him to his chest before gently lowering the animal into the hole. He bowed his head.

  Not wanting to interfere with Henry’s privacy, Odette walked across to where Sissy was standing and waited until he’d filled in the hole and patted the last shovel of soil into place. It was only then that Odette’s earlier question appeared to register with him.

  ‘He was thrown a bait,’ Henry explained. ‘This morning, the wind had turned and I could smell him. Must have been dead for all this time I thought he was missing.’ Henry walked to the bonnet of a car wreck and returned with a piece of rotten meat in his hand. ‘I found this bait on the roof of one of the tractors. Thrown over the fence, it must’ve been. There’s glass all through it. There must’ve been another bait he ate, I reckon. That’s what killed him. You know who it was, don’t you, Odette?’

  Remembering what she’d witnessed at the Kane farm, Odette had no doubt who had poisoned Rowdy.

  ‘It was that Kane boy,’ Henry said. ‘Would be nobody but him. That boy, he’ll have to pay for this. They’ve got bad blood in them, the Kanes.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Odette said, thinking not only of George Kane, but of her granddaughter too. Although she understood Henry’s feelings Odette worried that revenge would only bring him more trouble. ‘I think you should let this rest,’ she advised.

  ‘Sorry Odette, but I can’t do that.’

  Henry hurled the piece of meat back over the fence. He looked across the yard at Sissy. The sight of the dead dog had distressed her.