by Terri Janke
‘Who?’ Tally stopped kicking the can he was playing with.
‘That funny little man.’ They looked around the corner and saw a man holding a briefcase. ‘The one that comes every month.’
‘He’s knocking at the door.’ Lily was dressed in the clothes she usually wore to church. Her brother wore his good brown pants. They were too short to be long pants and too long to be shorts.
‘Get back.’ She hurried to hide at her brother’s side.
‘Let’s go before Mum makes us sit there and talk to him.’ Tally led her through the overhanging fronds of a palm tree. They made their way to the market, then ran down the alley, past crates of watermelons, towards the street, straight into the arms of their mother.
‘Children, you’re not planning on going anywhere, are you? Mr Woods is visiting today and I want you to be there.’
Francesca led them back to the house. The funny little man was still standing at the door. He dug into his top pocket and blew his nose into a checked handkerchief. He knocked again.
‘Here we are,’ called Francesca and led him into their home. The building had once been used for storage. Just inside the door was a table with four chairs in a room about six metres wide. A cooker sat in the corner. There was only one window. It was pushed outwards, held up by a stick.
The room opened into the bedroom, where there was a double bed, a single bed, an old wardrobe, a mirror, and a lopsided crate propped up against the wall. A kerosene lamp sat precariously on top. A faded picture of the Virgin Mary hung above the bed.
During the war, this street had been lined with brothels and gambling houses. People referred to it as Sack Street. Close to the docks, it was an ideal haven for soldiers fighting in the Pacific. After the war, the Chinese merchants moved in. They sold everything from vegetables to tobacco and salty plums. Even bêche-de-mer, which was believed to be an aphrodisiac.
The children sat attentively at the table with Mr Woods as Francesca made him a cup of Lanchoo tea and added Sunshine milk. Mr Woods gulped at the contents and placed the cup back on the table. Francesca was silent, awaiting his questions.
He coughed and cleared the phlegm from his throat. ‘Talford, have you been sick?’
‘No,’ answered Tally.
‘What about your sore tooth? Is it better?’
Tally’s hand covered his mouth. ‘Yes, it’s better now.’
‘Are you going to school every day?’
‘Yes.’ Tally glanced at his mother. He hoped Mrs Farrant hadn’t said anything.
Next, the funny little man faced Lily. ‘What about you, Lily, is school going well? Are you still having fun?’
Lily nodded and looked away. She liked the funny little man but he was a bit scary.
‘Francesca, can you still manage the rent for Mr Wang?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Francesca watched the man’s eyes scan the room. His pen was poised, he hesitated.
‘Do you have running water yet?’ He wiped the perspiration forming behind his neck.
‘Yes. Mr Wang put a tap just outside the door.’
‘How nice of Mr Wang.’
The funny little man finished the list of questions his new supervisor had prepared.
Is the coloured woman looking after those kids of hers?
Yes.
Is she giving them a proper roof over their heads?
Rents from Wang, the Chinese marketeer.
Is she healthy?
Appears to be.
Working on the side?
No evidence of this.
Are the kids healthy?
Apart from a little tooth decay, they seem healthy.
Unkempt?
No.
Attending school?
Yes.
Off the streets?
Yes.
The funny little man left, and walked through the open-air market. He took out a rolled cigarette and lit it, and then threw the match down on the ground.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Woods.’ Wang the Chinaman stood out the front of the market. He clicked his jaw as he chewed his tobacco.
The funny little man puffed, then nodded. ‘For Chrissakes, Wang, will you put some running water in that shed?’ He walked out onto the street.
Later, when the funny little man returned to his office, he wrote his report for the supervisor. ‘Francesca Plata is a half-caste woman. She is a respectable type with a good nature and has taken on the Catholic faith. She was born on Thursday Island and moved to Queensland with her husband Kit during the war. Kit, a half-caste Aborigine/Malay, died four years ago. She rents a small shed from Mr Wang in Grafton Street with her son, Talford (10), and daughter, Lily (8). She appears civilised and I see no reason to intervene.’
the palace
Cairns, 1953
Francesca liked to go to the pictures. She liked to sit in the stalls at the Palace Theatre every Wednesday afternoon, regular as clockwork, after she’d finished the ironing at Calypso House.
Early that morning she had washed her long black hair, dried it in the sun and pulled it up in a French roll, like the women in the movies. Francesca thought the roll, sitting high on her head, made her look taller. Which was what she wanted as she was only a small woman with slight arms.
She was to meet Tally outside the picture theatre. She had let him take the day off school because he had been so good helping out with errands.
The queue had dwindled to just two other people. Tally waited outside the theatre doors. The coins jingled in his pocket, and the tickets were sticky in his spindly fingers.
Francesca walked around the corner with a large bag of washing and a cabbage under her arm.
‘What’s that?’ Tally said, looking strangely at his mother.
‘It’s a cabbage from Mr Wang’s market. I went to pay the rent. He was going to throw it out.’
‘It stinks.’ Tally eyed the round vegetable. The outer leaves were curling off and the inner leaves were brown and decaying. ‘Yuk! Mum, it’s orf.’
‘It’ll make good soup. We’ll make it after the movie, after we collect Lily from school,’ said Francesca. ‘C’mon, let’s go in.’
Inside, seated in the dark, Tally felt a pointing finger tapping on his back. It made him jump.
‘Talford Plata! Shouldn’t you be in school?’
He turned to see a familiar set of thickset eyebrows above beady eyes. Mrs Farrant always wore tartan woollen skirts that came just above her ankles, even in the middle of summer when the temperature most days was over a hundred.
Francesca put her arm around Tally’s shoulder. ‘Mrs Farrant, Tally’s not feeling well.’
‘He doesn’t look too sick to me. We wouldn’t want Mr Woods from the welfare office to hear about this, now, would we?’
‘Thanks for your concern, Mrs Farrant. May God be with you. We always look forward to your singing on Sundays, especially the solos during communion.’ Francesca steered Tally away from Mrs Farrant and they found two seats up the back.
Tally could hear a crack of laughter behind him, forced and high-pitched. It sounded like James Dingan from school. James Dingan was always calling him names and telling Jacky Jacky jokes when Tally was in earshot. Behind him, Tally saw the blue cigarette smoke rising in the projector light.
‘Put this on the seat next to you,’ said Francesca, handing over the bundle of clothes and the cabbage.
Tally was embarrassed, thinking someone might smell the cabbage or see him with it. ‘Oh, Mum,’ he said, placing the large bag of washing on the canvas seat, the cabbage head on top. The lights went out and the film projector whirred.
The first few bars of ‘God Save the Queen’ started and Tally rose reluctantly from his seat, knocking the cabbage onto the floor in the process. The cabbage rolled down the aisle, gaining momentum until it stopped somewhere down the front.
Mrs Farrant turned around. ‘What’s that smell?’
The main feature was a horror film. There was a scene where a headless horse
man rode in. The cabbage moved again. It was under Mrs Farrant’s seat now. Her feet stopped the rolling cabbage. She looked down and thought it looked like a head. She stood up quickly. The rotting flesh of the cabbage stuck to her shoe. She screamed and gasped for breath.
The lights went on. People milled around Mrs Farrant, who had fallen down between the seats.
‘It’s just a cabbage,’ someone said.
Francesca looked at Tally. He had shrunk down in his seat. Francesca began to laugh. The two of them chuckled softly, watching Mrs Farrant being assisted by two ushers, who struggled to get her out into the fresh air. The lights went out again and the main feature restarted.
crocheted pillows
Gordonvale, 1980
In Aunty Sugar’s room, on the piano, there’s a framed photograph of Uncle Tom in an army uniform. The picture is one of those old-style portraits. It’s not like my school photograph. It’s like a painting. The strap of his slouch hat is tight under his thick chin. Perhaps too tight, because he does not smile. His hands are darker than his face. His neck looks like chocolate. His eyebrows are perfect lines that make his eyes seem sad. His sad, painted eyes follow you around the room. It’s creepy to go in there by yourself. The curtains are blowing, even when I swear there is no wind.
Aunty Sugar loves to crochet. She makes doyleys, tablecloths, pillow covers, tissue-box covers and doll’s clothes. Once she made a toilet-roll cover. She gave it to Dad for his birthday. Everybody gets something crocheted for birthdays and Christmas. Her hands are always moving, nimbly fingering the thin, hook-eyed needle and coloured yarn.
I sit on a crocheted pillow beside her. Two colours of yarn have been entwined into the square cover. The tassels are hard on my bum when I sit down.
‘That’s just where your uncle comes to sit and talk to me.’
‘Uncle Tom?’ I ask. Uncle Tom has been dead for thirty years.
‘Your Uncle Tom, the one there in the picture. He went to war, you know.’
‘What do you remember about the war?’ I ask her loud and slow, mouthing the words like my teeth are joined with rubber bands.
She shakes her head. She is quietly spoken. ‘I remember a small child with eyes like stars in a black sky,’ she says as she twirls a length of yarn around her bony finger.
I feel rude. Her age does not mean she is deaf.
‘A child with a waxen face and lighter skin than the rest. A man with a steel heart took him away. And we never saw him again.’ Her hands are on the move as we speak. ‘My husband Tom went to fight in that war. He even killed men, though he never spoke much of it. I was so happy for my husband’s return when he came back here. But things – things felt different. He was different. And I was sleeping in the arms of a killer.’
I can hear the others playing somewhere in the yard. ‘Uncle Tom must have been special.’ I attempt to wind up the conversation. I want to play too. I can see Shane out playing soccer with Clarissa when I look through the flying-up-and-down lace curtains.
‘He is. He visits me still. Sits right where you are now. And your Grandma Francesca, she comes sometimes. And others too, sometimes they play the piano in the middle of the night.’
My spine goes numb and hairy. There is a tingling sensation in my legs, behind my knees. I get up to leave. I run out of the room, out of the house and onto the green grass to play with my sister and brother. Even after I have pulled leaves from the tree to crinkle in my brother’s hair, the impression of the crocheted pillow is still there on my skin.
too easy
Cairns, 1992
The Far North Queensland summer is a humid time. Low-lying clouds hug the mountains in the afternoon, when the heat of the day is rising. The clouds fill and by the end of the day there is usually a rainstorm.
I get caught walking through town in the middle of thick rain. I don’t own an umbrella, not even in Sydney. My hair is wet as I walk.
‘What are you doing, cous?’
Steve, Uncle Tally’s son, leans out of the window of a green Datsun.
‘Hi. I thought I’d catch a movie.’
‘The pictures?’
‘Yeah. Do you wanna come?’
‘Sure, but you paying, cous. I’m busted.’
‘You wasted your pay already?’ Steve works at the local council, in the gardens.
‘On the horses. It was supposed to be a sure thing.’
‘Yeah, a sure loss.’
‘Listen, give me a break, you big-city blacks coming back here and telling us what to do.’
‘Hang on, I’m giving you a break, I’m offering to shout you to the movies.’
We sit on red fabric seats in the airconditioned theatre. Steve leans over to get a lolly out of the bag I’m holding.
‘It must be nice living in Sydney, ay? A blackfella in a big city?’
‘It’s okay, I like it.’
‘You better watch out, though, the city can change people. Plenty people turn into coconuts. You know, black on the outside, white on the inside. Specially them educated ones that get into university, they come back talking funny.’
‘Do you mean like how I talk?’
‘Yeah, but you know what I mean. We just simple Murris here in Cairns. I hope you’ll still talk to me when you get to wear that white wig.’
‘I’m yet to hear whether I passed,’ I tell him. ‘And not all lawyers wear the wigs. I don’t think you’re being fair saying I’m going to change just because I went to university. Didn’t the generation before us fight for the right for us to have equal education?’
Steve is looking at me, grinning. ‘Sure, I guess you’re right, but I still can’t believe you’re going to be a lawyer.’
‘Well, I’m not there yet, cous. There’s a long way to go.’
After the movie, Steve drives me back to Mum’s house. He pushes a cassette into the player. Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody are singing about an Aboriginal man in the Northern Territory who stood up for Indigenous workers’ rights. It’s 1966, the same year Australia introduced decimal currency, and Vincent Lingiari are leading the Gurindji people off the Wave Hill cattle station. They’ve decided not to work for Lord Vestey for a pittance, but to settle at a nearby waterhole.
‘Dad told me you’re trying to get the butterfly brooch back,’ Steve says. ‘I think that’s good of you, Tarena.’
‘I’m not sure how it will go.’
‘Can I help?’
‘I’ll be right. Just help your dad with getting ready for the court. He has to talk in the court.’
‘No worries.’ Steve smiles as he presses on the horn. ‘Take it easy, ay cous.’
rain
Cairns, 1992
The drops of rain on the windscreen flatten. Like silvery beads of mercury they run to the edges and across my view. The dead cane toads squashed on the side of the gravelled road look like eggs cooking in a greasy pan. The deluge is too heavy for me to continue.
I remember how my father used to call out the window, wet-faced with excitement, ‘Send it down, Hughie.’ He liked to taste the rain. It was my father who taught me to interpret rain, to listen to the patterns of falling water.
Thick, downward-knocking rain means a change is coming. Falling spears indicate the world is angry. ‘Tomorrow they’ll be toadstools.’
Steady rain easing before the sun makes a rainbow. ‘It’s time to create.’
I stop the car at the side of the road. It sounds like someone in metal high-heels is jumping on the roof.
I can’t remember where I am and now I have forgotten the language of rain.
paper healing
Cairns, 1954
Francesca held the water in a small glass. She licked her lips, unfolded the yellow and white paper and added the powder to the glass. The medicine smell got up her nose. She kept powder-filled papers in her handbag. She had a box in the drawer near the top of the kitchen bench. There was another box on her bedside table.
Lily knew she was not supposed to open that dr
awer. It was out of bounds. It was where the matches for striking to make fire were kept, along with spare white candles. It was where the scissors with the black handles lay, scissors with two legs that opened and shut like a play man.
Lily had heard the crackle of the paper medicine. ‘Mum, are you going to be all right?’
‘Yes.’ Francesca coughed like a lion without teeth.
‘When are you coming outside?’
‘When I feel better, just let me rest.’
the funny little man
Cairns, 1954
The moon hungered. Francesca was not well. She grew sicker each month. Her cycle was changing. She was weaker, and tired. She could no longer work at the boarding house. She could no longer cover up her sickness. Her vision was blurry. She was forced to sleep all day in the heat.
The funny little man knocked at the door. No answer. ‘This is the regular time and the usual day. Church is Sunday. The children must be at school.’ The funny little man talked to himself as he checked his watch.
Usually Francesca managed to get up, even in her weak state. But today she was too tired to put on a show. Too tired to care what he wrote in his reports. Too tired to even pray. Too tired to breathe evenly. She just clutched her rosary beads, the ones that were broken at the seventh Hail Mary, after the second Our Father.
It was five years since Kit died. Since then, Francesca had been on her own, rearing her two children. She had been faithful to the Church since her husband’s death, her heart given only to God. She was a regular member of the congregation at the Star of the Sea Catholic church, her faith and commitment strong, like that of an unquestioning nun. She made the sign of the cross every time she passed a church. Within seconds of entering and seeing the crucifix she was ready to pray.
The funny little man stood at the door for another minute, sucking at his perfect teeth. His hair was shiny, the slicked strands remaining where he’d placed them so carefully before he left the house. He clutched a fake-leather briefcase containing his notes. The notes he took for his files and for reporting back to the department.