The White Girl

by Birch, Tony;

  ‘Neglect?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You just said a child can only be removed by the court in a case of neglect?’

  ‘I did,’ the clerk answered, ‘but there is no evidence of it in this instance. I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I am not prepared to discuss the matter further in the presence of the child.’

  ‘I’ll be discussing this with somebody other than an overgrown choir boy,’ Lowe said. He glared at Odette and stormed out of the room.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ Michael apologised. ‘You shouldn’t have been put through that ordeal. Can I give you some advice, Mrs Brown?’

  ‘White people have been giving me advice all my life,’ Odette said. ‘You might as well have your say.’

  He gave her an odd smile. ‘White people?’

  ‘Yes. People like Lowe, the priests, white women who think they’re a godsend to me, doing me a good turn. All types of people. What’s your advice?’

  ‘I wouldn’t return to Deane in a hurry, if I was you,’ he said.

  ‘Is that it?’ Odette asked. ‘Your advice?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to disappoint you,’ Odette said. ‘You have been a real help to me and Sissy today, but you don’t need to tell me that. I’d be something of an old fool not to know that I won’t be going home. Not while that man is around, at least.’

  ‘Good,’ he smiled. ‘You two take care.’

  At the Haines’ house that night Odette placed her exemption certificate in an envelope and sealed it. She opened her suitcase and took out the photographs of Lila and Delores Reed’s daughters. ‘Do you think we could find a home for these girls on the wall?’ she asked Alma.

  Alma picked up the photographs of the Reed children. ‘What beautiful girls. Are they family?’

  ‘No,’ Odette said. ‘I met their mother many years back and it’s important to me that these girls are not forgotten.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find a place for them. And your own daughter, Lila, as well.’

  Odette relayed her encounter with Lowe and how the young clerk had stood up to him. ‘Never would have expected that,’ she said. ‘There was something about that young fella.’

  ‘Like what?’ Alma asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. Silly as it sounds, it was as if we were sharing a secret.’

  After they’d eaten and cleaned up, the two women, along with Sissy and Lidia, sat around the table playing a game of cards. Jack rolled himself a cigarette. ‘I’m going outside for some fresh air.’

  ‘Save yourself the need and don’t have a puff,’ Alma laughed.

  Jack opened the front door and sat on the veranda, enjoying his cigarette. The moon was full and the street was peaceful. He felt deeply for Odette, knowing what a gut ache it was, having to live with the humiliation of an exemption certificate. He had just finished his cigarette when he noticed a man standing on the footpath on the opposite side of the street, watching him. Although the man resembled an undertaker, in his dark suit, Jack knew instinctively it could only be the policeman, Lowe.

  Jack stood up and slowly walked down the steps to his front gate. ‘You after something?’ he asked.

  Lowe stepped onto the footpath. ‘Tonight, no, there’s nothing I’m after,’ he said. ‘But tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, I’ll be back.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Jack said. ‘You don’t have any business with this house.’

  ‘But you’re wrong. I do,’ Lowe said. ‘You have the child, Cecily Brown, staying here. Her welfare is my direct concern.’

  ‘You don’t need to be concerned at all about that child,’ Jack answered. ‘She’s being taken good care of by her gran, and by us. Family.’

  Lowe put his hands behind his back. ‘Don’t be stupid, man. You people can’t look after yourselves and you know it.’

  Jack had put up with similar insults all his life. ‘We’re getting by the best way we can. We don’t need anyone to run our lives.’

  ‘You might think you can get away with this but you’re wrong,’ Lowe said. ‘That woman, she was only able to walk out of that office today because some young fool was determined to undermine me. But as he advised me himself, all I need to show in regard to the child’s obvious neglect is due cause. I’ll be back, Mr Haines, and I can assure you that I will find that cause.’

  ‘This is my house,’ Jack fumed, ‘and you won’t be touching any child that is under my roof.’

  The women in the kitchen overheard Jack’s raised voice. ‘What’s going on?’ Odette asked.

  ‘Oh, that will be Jack talking to the Italian fella next door,’ Alma explained. ‘I’ll just go and see what they’re on about.’

  ‘Listen closely,’ Lowe continued. ‘You may believe that you have some rights, but you’re mistaken. The exemption certificate is called the dog collar for good reason. You best check yourself, Mr Haines. I should not have to remind you that you have your own grandchild to consider.’

  ‘You lay a finger on her and—’

  ‘And what?’ Lowe smiled. ‘If you dare interfere with the operation of the law your exemption certificate will be torn up and you could find yourself in great trouble. Think about that, Mr Haines. You can either support the irresponsible behaviour of Odette Brown, or you can protect your own family. I’ll leave the choice to you. For now.’

  The policeman walked off.

  You’ll never stop, you bastard. Jack was enraged. He walked along the side of the house and picked up the tomahawk that he used to chop wood. He was about to open the front gate and follow Lowe down the street when Alma called to him from the veranda.

  ‘Leave it be, Jack.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’m doing nothing but going for a walk.’

  ‘A walk? With an axe in your hand. You put it back and get yourself inside.’

  ‘I can’t, Alma’ Jack said. ‘This one, he’s not going to stop, Love. None of us are safe while he’s around. I have to do this.’

  Alma wrapped her arms around her husband. ‘Do you really think that killing a policeman would save us, Jack Haines? You’d end up in gaol, or maybe hanging by your neck. What hope would I have on my own, keeping this family together.’ She shook him gently. ‘Don’t think he’s the only one out there, Jack. It will be a long time before change comes for us. You can’t kill them all.’ Alma gave her husband a passionate, full-lipped kiss. ‘You’re a good man, now behave like one.’

  Jack rested the tomahawk up against the wood stack. ‘What will we do, then?’

  ‘What we’ve always done. Keep our heads down, think smart and get on the move again if the need comes.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Months later, Odette was sitting in the local hall, along with Sissy and the Haines family. The room was crowded. The audience were listening to different speakers on stage, talking about Aboriginal citizenship and rights. Odette had never heard Aboriginal people talk so strongly in public, at least not in the company of white people. After each speaker finished, Sissy, seated next to Odette, clapped as loudly as anyone in the hall. Afterwards, Odette bumped into Wanda Harrison, the receptionist from the hotel.

  ‘Oh, that was so inspiring,’ Wanda said. ‘I think real change is going to come to our people.’

  ‘We can only hope,’ Odette answered, as cautiously as ever. She looked across to the other side of the hall and spotted Michael, the young clerk from the Aborigines Welfare Board. He smiled at Odette.

  She tapped Wanda on the shoulder. ‘That young fella over there, is he white or an Aboriginal boy?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve never seen him before. What do you think, Auntie?’

  ‘I can’t be sure either, but looking at him out of his suit and tie, he could be one of our own people. I can’t be certain.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t know,
Auntie, no white person would know either. I’m sure of that.’

  Odette walked out onto the footpath and took Sissy’s hand. Jack and Alma joined them. ‘That was a big night,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yeah. Strong people. White people, too,’ Odette observed.

  ‘Yeah. More and more whitefellas come to the meetings these days,’ Jack said.

  ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful,’ Odette added, ‘but do you believe we can trust them, white people?’

  As was his way, Jack began answering the question with a story. ‘When I was a small boy, maybe six or seven years old, my family, we worked together picking fruit. Back in those days, you had to pay a deposit for an empty crate, then you filled it and waited on the farmer to pay you at the end of the day. One time we were working, in the burning heat, without a feed, not even a water break. We must have filled half a dozen of those crates between us. My dad, he was real proud of us kids for working as hard as we did. When the farmer came along, we all stood to attention, waiting for him to settle with Pa. And he did, at one half of the rate he paid the white pickers.’

  ‘He robbed you?’ Odette asked.

  ‘You bet he did. He robbed us.’

  ‘So, what are you saying, Jack, that the white folk at this meeting tonight are out to rob us?’

  ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I haven’t finished the story yet.’

  ‘I thought you’d know by now,’ Alma interrupted, ‘Jack takes his time getting to the punchline.’

  ‘The next day,’ Jack continued, ‘after the picking was over, we moved to another farm for work. It was even hotter than the day before. None of us wanted to do the work. Not because we were lazy or anything. We knew Pa had been robbed and we knew it was wrong. My older brother, Johnny, he had an argument with the old man, called him a silly old fool. It changed nothing, of course. We were ordered to get on with it and do the work, and we did. Pa was the boss of the family and his word stuck.’ Jack paused and began rolling himself a cigarette.

  ‘And what happened?’ Odette asked, a little impatiently.

  ‘We filled them crates and stood by, just as we had the day before, although we young ones slouched a little because we were certain our old man was about to get burnt again and we felt bad for him.’ Jack took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Well, the farmer came by, checked the fruit for bruising and then paid my father, in full, a white man’s rate, plus a cash bonus and a free box of fruit thrown in.’

  Jack smiled at Odette. ‘I never forgot that moment. Whatever else I might have thought about them whitefellas, that one time, it stuck with me. Then one day, this was years later when my dad wasn’t in such good health, I asked him about that time on the picking. I said to him, “How did you know to trust that farmer fella only one day after we’d been robbed by his neighbour?”

  ‘“I didn’t trust him,” he said to me.

  ‘“Then why did we spend the whole day in the heat picking if you thought we might be robbed again?” I asked.’ Jack took a final drag on the cigarette and ground it under the heel of his boot. ‘The old man said what he’d done had nothing to do with trust. “White people aren’t ready for trust,” he said. “But some days we don’t have a choice but to take a chance with them. We were down to nothing at the time and I had to take a chance on that fella. I had no other choice but see my family starve.”’

  ‘So, that’s what we’re doing?’ Odette asked. ‘Taking a chance with these white people? That’s a risk, isn’t it Jack?’

  ‘It is,’ Jack agreed. ‘But for now, it’s all we have.’

  Odette thought about Sergeant Lowe and when he would next interfere in their lives. Jack seemed to have read her thoughts.

  ‘We’ve been dealing with the devil for a long time now and he’s not going away. They could make me the prime minister of this country and the devil would be there at my shoulder. Yours too, Odette.’

  ‘Hey, no more talk of the devil,’ Alma said, nodding her head towards Sissy. ‘We’ve had a good night. Let’s enjoy some peace.’

  ‘We have had a good night,’ Jack agreed. ‘What I’m saying is, we can’t put our faith in anyone but our own people. This citizenship is coming. Whatever else happens, it could put more of the law on our side.’

  ‘And until that happens, Jack, what will we do?’ Odette asked.

  ‘Hope,’ was the only response he was left with. ‘It’s all we can go with.’

  Epilogue

  Sissy finished packing the car for the road trip. Lidia had volunteered to go along for the ride. While Sissy was grateful for the offer, it was a journey she needed to take alone. Auntie Alma had been baking and packed the provisions for the long drive – sandwiches wrapped in tin foil, a slice of Sissy’s favourite apple and pear cake, and a flask of tea. Uncle Jack was sitting in his battered chair on the front veranda, enjoying the morning sun. Lidia helped her sister-cousin lift the last bag into the boot of the car. Sissy gave Alma a hug and said goodbye to Jack.

  ‘Where you off to again?’ he asked. Uncle Jack’s short-term memory had been increasingly failing him, although he was able to remember the days of his childhood in detail.

  ‘I’m going west, Uncle. I’m taking Nanna home.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, excited by the news he thought he was hearing for the first time. ‘What sort of car are you driving?’

  ‘My Torana. I’ve had it serviced and put new tyres on it.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good cars them Toranas. Are you taking a shotgun with you?’

  ‘No,’ Sissy laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with a shotgun, Uncle.’

  Jack was clearly disappointed and shook his head. ‘It’s wild country out there. A fella told me one time, I wasn’t more than a boy myself, and he said that a man should never head west of the Range without a shottie, both barrels loaded. And a mad crazy dog at his side just in case the gun jammed. You have a mad dog with you?’

  ‘No, Uncle. No mad dog and no gun.’

  ‘Don’t you be a fool, Jack,’ Alma said. ‘It’s 1980. The days of the wild west are long gone.’

  Jack raised a bony nicotine-stained finger. ‘Hey, not out that way. Could still be 1880 for a blackfella out there. Them white boys are prehistoric, that’s what they are. Haven’t seen a television, I bet.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Jack,’ Alma sighed. ‘They’ve had TV since 1956.’

  ‘Not a colour one, I bet. That would be a shock to them dinosaurs,’ he laughed.

  ‘Ignore him, Sissy,’ Auntie Alma said. ‘When was the last time you were out west, Jack?’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Well, I can. You’ve been a city boy for a long time now. And a soft one at that. You haven’t moved your bum out of that chair in years.’

  Sissy hugged her uncle, kissed Lidia on both cheeks and walked to the car with Auntie Alma, nursing a parcel wrapped in brown paper.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own?’ Alma asked.

  ‘I know I will, Auntie. Nanna will be with me all the way. It’s been five years now and she needs to be back home with her people.’

  Sissy opened the passenger door and Alma sat the parcel containing Odette’s ashes on the front passenger seat.

  ‘Do you reckon I should buckle her in for you?’ Alma laughed.

  The women hugged. Sissy felt Alma’s tear on her cheek. ‘I’ll be back safe, Auntie. Don’t worry.’

  ‘You take the best care of both of you.’ She looked at Jack. ‘He really has become half a fool, but not a complete one. You might not be in need of a gun out there. But be careful just the same.’

  Sissy pulled out of the driveway and navigated through the suburbs of the city until she reached the open highway. She switched on the radio, turned it up and sang loudly. Around lunchtime, she pulled into a petrol station in a small country town and ate lunch sitting under
a tree. By the afternoon, she’d crossed the ranges, and hit the flat expanse of the west.

  Arriving in the main street of Deane the first thing Sissy noticed was that the old picture theatre had been bulldozed and replaced by a used car yard. The courthouse and police station were chained and padlocked. When she reached the end of the street and turned onto the gravel road by the old riverbed, her heart skipped a beat. She could see a bent figure on the side of the road up ahead. As she got closer she saw it was a woman wrapped in a shawl, supporting herself with a walking stick. Sissy pulled over and got out of the car.

  ‘Auntie Millie?’

  The woman lifted her head. ‘Say it again, the words you just said.’ Her face was deeply wrinkled. She had whiskers on her chin and a film across her eyes.

  ‘Auntie Milly Khan!’ Sissy said. ‘It is you!’

  Millie broke into a smile. She didn’t have a single tooth in her mouth. ‘And it’s you,’ she said. ‘Sissy Brown. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.’

  Sissy hugged Millie. ‘You recognise me?’ The old woman was so light and frail Sissy almost lifted her off the ground. ‘And what do you mean, you’ve been waiting for me? Out here on the road?’

  ‘I know I’m old, but not so silly. I knew you’d be coming through here sooner or later, is what I mean.’

  ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘There you are, being silly. The old people told me.’

  Sissy knew better than to doubt Millie’s word. She’d witnessed many occasions when the old people had provided advice to Odette. It was obvious to Sissy that Millie was almost blind. She guided the old woman to her house. The saddlery had almost been swallowed by the old billabong. They sat together on a dusty couch out the front. Millie rested her head against Sissy’s shoulder.

  ‘Do you live here on your own?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘More or less. Yusuf, he’s been gone for over five years now. I still had my eyes then. The Muslim people, his people, they came and washed him clean like a newborn bub, put him in a cloth and took him away. They wanted me to go with them, out to the desert, but I told them no. They could have his body there and I’d keep his heart here with me.’