by Liza Perrat
The Silent Kookaburra
By Liza Perrat
Copyright © 2016 by Liza Perrat
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.
Cover design: JD Smith.
Published by Perrat Publishing.
All enquiries to [email protected]
First printing, 2016.
ISBN 979-10-95574-01-9
1
2016
Knuckles blanch, distend as my hand curves around the yellowed newspaper pages and my gaze hooks onto the headlines.
HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY. January 26th, 1973. 165-year anniversary of convict ships arriving in Sydney.
Happy? What a cruel joke for that summer. The bleakest, most grievous, of my life.
I can’t believe my grandmother kept such a reminder of the tragedy which flayed the core of our lives; of that harrowing time my cursed memory refuses to entirely banish.
Shaky hands disturb dust motes, billowing as I place the heat-brittled newspaper back into Nanna Purvis’s box.
I try not to look at the headline but my gaze keeps flickering back, bold letters more callous as I remember all I’d yearned for back then, at eleven years old, was the simplest of things: a happy family. How elusive that happiness had proved.
I won’t think about it anymore. I mustn’t, can’t! But as much as I wrench away my mind, it strains back to my childhood.
Of course fragments of those years have always been clear, though much of my past is an uncharted desert –– vast, arid, untamed.
Psychology studies taught me this is how the memory magician works: vivid recall of unimportant details while the consequential parts –– those protective breaches of conscious recollection –– are mined with filmy chasms.
I swipe the sweat from my brow, push the window further open.
Outside, the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean is still a pale glow but already it has baked the ground a crusty brown. Shelley’s gum tree is alive with cackling kookaburras, rainbow lorikeets shrieking and swinging like crazy acrobats, eucalyptus leaves twisted edge-on to avoid the withering rays.
But back in my childhood bedroom, behind Gumtree Cottage’s convict-built walls, the air is even hotter, and foetid with weeks of closure following my parents’ deaths.
Disheartened by the stack of cardboard boxes still to sift through, uneasy about what other memories their contents might unearth, I rest back on a jumble of moth-frayed cushions.
I close my eyes to try and escape the torment, but there is no reprieve. And, along with my grandmother’s newspaper clipping, I swear I hear, in the rise and dump of its swell, the sea pulling me back to that blistering summer of over forty years ago.
2
1972-1973
‘Oh god, not again!’ my mother cried out from the bathroom. ‘Why, why, why?’
A lizard flip-flopped in my belly, slithered up my throat, closing it tight. Was that same thing happening to Mum; the thing I couldn’t understand but knew was shocking and terrible for her, and for my father? I flung aside my Real Life Crime magazine, bolted from the bedroom.
I cracked open the bathroom door. One hand pressed against her belly, the fingers of my mother’s other hand clenched the sink. Bloody underpants dangled around her knees, green tiles stained red with wobbling jellyfish-clots.
I rushed in, clutched her arm. ‘What’s wrong with you, Mum?’
‘What are you doing in here, Tanya?’ She looked up, face ghost-white, shaking off my hold. ‘Go away, get out now.’
‘But all the blood, are you sick?’ I stared in horror at the fresh blood trickling down the insides of her thighs.
‘Nothing’s wrong. Just go outside and play.’ She made flapping motions at me. ‘Shut the door behind you. And don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’
‘You’re not fine, Mum. And I know this’s happened before. I’ve seen it, lots of times. Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?’
‘Go, Tanya, please. Really, I’m not sick. I’ll be fine ... soon.’
But as I reeled back from that swishing arm I knew my mother would not be fine.
Dad was hurrying down the hallway, pushing past me into the bathroom. I peered through the slit where he’d not properly closed the door.
He circled his arms around Mum. Her head resting on his shoulder, she sobbed.
‘Another one flushed away, Dobson. Like some scrap of toilet paper. How much longer can we keep trying? How many more do I have to lose?’
My grandmother came in from her hairdresser’s, her curls a darker blue than this morning.
‘Oy quit that racket, youse two,’ she said to the yapping dogs. But as ever, Billie-Jean and Bitta took not the slightest notice of Nanna Purvis.
She glanced up at me, still standing outside the bathroom door, my mother’s cries bleating down the hallway. ‘What’s going on, Tanya?’
‘It’s Mum. Dad’s in the bathroom with her ... there’s blood everywhere. What’s wrong with her?’
Nanna Purvis threw her veiny arms in the air. ‘Aw strewth, not another one gone. You come away from there. No ten-year-old should see such a thing.’
My grandmother went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, the dogs on her heels, and the awful truth hit me like an axe blow to the head. Suddenly I understood what was going on; what had been happening all those other times when they’d refused to explain it to me.
‘Too young. ’
‘You won’t understand, Tanya.’
They’d stopped discussing names, cots and prams; my mother stopped talking altogether. I knew this was the latest in the long and sad string of my mother’s failed babies.
I wanted to rush into the bathroom and hug her but it was obvious Mum wanted only my father.
‘It’s all right, Eleanor, you’ll be okay, love.’ Dad was patting her back, stroking her hair, sadness puckering his sun-wrinkled face. ‘We’ll get through this ... like we got through the others.’
‘I can’t bear it any longer. There’s something wrong with me. Has to be.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, love,’ Dad said. ‘Maybe we’re just ... just meant to have only one.’
‘No, Dobson, not just one. You know I need a boy to ... to make up for ...’
‘I know, love. But that’s over, in the past –– ’
‘Didn’t get a chance to hold him,’ she sobbed. ‘Those bitches snatched him away before I could even see him.’
Didn’t get a chance to hold who? What does she need a boy to make up for?
My cat wrapped himself about my ankles and meowed. I picked Steely up, stroked him, shivered as an ice block slid from my shoulders, down my back, my legs. Frozen; knowing, dreading the misery that was creeping up on my mother.
Waiting for that enormous beach dumpster to crash over her, swallow her down to the seabed, almost drown her. Until she could fight her way up to the surface and breathe again.
***
My mother was slumped over a cup of tea at the kitchen table. No “Hi Tanya, how was school?” No smile or kiss. No “Tell me about your day. Are you thirsty?” Just The Invisible Girl and a mother staring at air. Like every afternoon since that gruesome bathroom episode a few weeks ago.
‘Come on, Eleanor, drink the cuppa,’ Nann
a Purvis said. ‘Make ya feel better.’
‘I’ll make you a fresh one, Mum.’ I kicked off my shoes, peeled away sweaty socks and sat beside her, my palm hovering over her bent back, not daring to touch. ‘This one’s gone cold.
‘It’s Friday, so no homework,’ I added, my palm making circles between her shoulder blades, like she did to me when I woke from a nightmare. ‘I can help you with the housework or cook tea, or something?’
My mother sipped her cold tea, sat there. A mute person. She was gone again to that mysterious lost-babies seabed.
Dad strode in from another day of bricklaying, kissed Mum’s brow and ruffled my hair.
‘Hey, I’ve had a beaut idea.’ He threw his Akubra hat, boomerang-style, onto the table. ‘Let’s go camping? Would you fancy that, Eleanor?’
Mum sighed, didn’t look up at Dad.
‘Come on, love, weather forecast’s great and it’ll take your mind off ... off things.’
‘Camping?’ Nanna Purvis said, as if Dad had suggested rocketing off to Mars. ‘What with me wonky hip and me very cow’s veins? Stark-raving mad you are, Dobson.’
‘Varicose veins,’ I said to my grandmother. ‘Nothing to do with cows.’
‘Who said you’re invited, Pearl?’ Dad sniffed and lit a fag.
Nanna Purvis muttered, ‘Humpf’, hobbled into the living-room with her dog and switched on the television.
Dad clamped a dusty hand on Mum’s shoulder. ‘What about it, Eleanor?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I couldn’t ... maybe some other time.’
‘Come on, Mum. We’ll cook sausages and toast marshmallows over the campfire like last time. It was great fun, remember? And we’ll go to the beach all day Saturday and Sunday.’ I looked up at my father. ‘Won’t we, Dad?’
‘You bet, Princess.’
Mum pushed away the teacup and stood up. ‘All right then, if you insist.’
‘That’s my girl. I’ll get the tent packed.’ Dad pecked her cheek and hurried out through the kitchen flyscreen door, down to the storage shed.
‘I’ll get the food ready, Tanya,’ Mum said, trying to sound enthusiastic as she took a pack of sausages and a loaf of bread from the freezer. ‘You grab the swimmers and towels, okay?’
‘Sure thing! Don’t forget the tomato sauce.’ I skipped down the hallway to my bedroom, wanting to shriek a whoop of excitement at the smile that had crept back onto my mother’s face, and into her eyes.
***
We left Wollongong around five o’clock, Dad driving the Holden to the Royal National Park, which was halfway up to Sydney.
While my father wrangled with the tent pegs, amidst foraging currawongs and crimson rosellas, Mum and I kindled up a campfire and roasted the snags.
‘Look at him.’ I pointed to a large flat rock. Behind it, a shy wallaby peeked out at us, rubbing its forepaws together as if clapping at our show.
‘Aw, what a sweetie,’ Mum said, handing me a sausage sandwich smothered in tomato sauce.
A magpie swooped over us, clacking her bill. ‘Quardle, oodle, ardle, wardle, doodle.’
‘Defending her nest,’ Mum said as we toasted the marshmallows.
Dad smiled, gave her leg a pat. ‘Like all good mothers.’
And in the falling darkness of the coastal breeze we followed the scents of the night creatures: long-nosed bandicoots, brush-tailed possums, sugar gliders and many others whose names I didn’t know.
The shriek of a sulphur-crested cockatoo woke me on the Saturday morning. I struggled from my sleeping bag, stepped outside the tent, walked towards the smouldering campfire and almost trod on a snake. Its slimy scales gleamed in the pearly dawn light.
I almost peed myself, but held it in, not daring to cross my legs; afraid to budge an inch. A blob of sweat dribbled into my eye.
‘Dad, quick, snake!’
My father lurched from the tent as the black snake reared up, its thick underbelly a streak of fire. Head pointed, forked tongue out, it fixed one dark eye on me and hissed.
My throat seized up, crazy moths flapped about in my heart. I wanted to run, to scarper from the snake as fast as I could, but Dad was holding up a warning hand.
‘No quick movements, Tanya. Just wait, it’ll slither away if you don’t scare it.’
Tears pricked at my eyes. ‘No, no, it’s going to bite me ... to kill me. Get rid of it, Dad!’
Mum clutched Dad’s arm, a hand flying to her cowlick. ‘Do something, Dobson ... just stay very still, Tanya.’
My schoolteacher’s voice clanged through my mind. Blackies can be dangerous ... can hurt you badly but they likely won’t kill you.
The red-bellied black snake sure looked deadly to me. My bladder was about to burst; my legs wobbled –– jelly left out of the fridge in a heatwave.
Go snake. Just please go away, please.
As if it had read my mind, the snake lowered its head and slithered away into the bushes.
‘Relax, Princess,’ Dad said. ‘It won’t be back. You know they don’t actually search for humans to bite ... only if they’re scared.’
‘Okay,’ Mum said, ‘can we just try and forget about the snake and eat something so we can get down to the beach?’
It was only early November, but the day was hot as mid-summer and after our damper bread and billy tea breakfast –– the snake incident almost forgotten –– we traipsed down through the rainforest to a sea the bright green shade of a dragonfly.
Gulls hark, harked overhead and on an outcrop of shiny rocks that looked like mudflats, herons strutted about on thin legs and cormorants kept an eye out for fish.
‘Look, Tanya.’ Dad pointed to the coal tankers on the horizon, sailing to and from Port Kembla harbour. ‘Those pirate ships are sailin’ the high seas again, m’lady.’
Mum laughed.
‘Oh Dad, I’m not a kid anymore.’ Though I couldn’t help laughing too, remembering how terrified I’d been as a kid of those “pirate ships” but feeling safe with him. My father would always protect me, keep me safe from everything. Even red-bellied blackies.
We drove back to Wollongong on the Sunday evening, the first violet jacaranda and red flame tree flowers, blooming. Mum and Dad chatted and laughed together in the front seat, my smiley mother returned from her sad seabed place.
Yes, she was back with us, almost the same as before. But not quite, because each flushed-away baby always took a smidgeon of her happiness with it to its toilet grave.
3
‘I’m going to have a baby, again.’ Mum smiled, laid a hand over her flat belly. I’d never seen it swell in the slightest. None of them –– besides me, if I was not adopted that is –– had ever made it that far. ‘The doctor confirmed it today.’
It was a few months after the camping weekend, around February of 1972, and I’d almost forgotten that last bathroom episode in the excitement of beach trips, Christmas presents, turkey lunch and long, warm evenings playing Monopoly with Mum and Dad. Another lost baby would put a stop to all that.
Dad, Nanna Purvis and I fell silent; stopped chewing the chops, mash and beans my mother had just served out.
‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ Mum looked around at us. ‘Aren’t you all pleased?’
‘That’s beaut news.’ Dad gave my mother his fake smile and kissed her cheek.
‘Yep, great news, Mum.’
Only it wasn’t. I was almost sorry it was happening, sure this one would end the same as all the others and my mother would, once again, slip away from us. My appetite fled and I gathered Steely into my arms and stroked him.
‘Well, let’s hope this horse makes it the whole way round the race-track,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘But me hairdresser, Rita, reckons after losing so many there’s Buckley’s Chance of one making it to the finish line.’
‘Jesus bloody Christ thanks for your optimism, Pearl.’ Dad shoved away his plate of half-eaten tea. ‘Really helpful.’
‘Gotta stare the goanna in the guts, Dobson
,’ Nanna Purvis said.
My mother’s face pinked up. She stared down at the kitchen lino. No one said anything else.
Dad lit a fag and flicked ash into one of his push-button ashtrays. Click-click, click-click.
I cleared away the plates, shovelled the uneaten food into the rubbish bin, and outside, cicadas whirred into the dusk light, louder, more screechy.
***
During those first three months of my mother’s new pregnancy –– the dangerous period, I’d learned –– the whole of Gumtree Cottage quivered. It could have been the westerly wind though, that blasted for over a month, gales whistling through the fig, gum and jacarandas, sneaking beneath the low-slung verandah eaves and rattling the stone foundations.
‘Not another one, not again,’ the house whisper-shrieked.
Or perhaps the house seemed to shake from all of us tip-toeing around it, barely speaking, holding our breath. Just waiting for those cries from the bathroom.
My mother pottered about pretending everything was normal, but not getting any jobs done. Half-jobs, flitting from one thing to another.
‘Let me do the vacuuming,’ I’d say, taking the Hoover from her, while Nanna Purvis cooked tea.
‘I’ll do the washing up, Eleanor,’ Dad said each night after we’d eaten. ‘You go and put your feet up.’
‘But I haven’t done a thing all day,’ Mum would say. ‘None of you will let me do anything. I’m not sick you know.’
‘I know, love,’ he said. ‘But still ...’
Dad didn’t clean the cot or dust down the night-feeds rocking chair. We didn’t discuss names, or mention the pregnancy to friends, family or neighbours.
But those dangerous three months went by. Then four and five. Six! Nanna Purvis’s horse hadn’t made a false start or stumbled; it had made its way around two-thirds of the racetrack.
Mum’s stomach ballooned, her grin a fair clown’s, her face a pretty pink rose. ‘A miracle... it’s a miracle,’ she kept saying.
A month before the baby was due, I patted her huge belly. ‘Will I have a sister or a brother?’
‘Ah, that’s the big surprise, Tanya.’