by Nene Gare
‘Bicrikey, you was lucky ta get outa that, Joe,’ Dusty Dodd said, shaking his head. Dusty had just come back from a trip to Perth to see his wife who was in hospital. Three hundred and fifty miles by taxi had chewed quite a hole in his pay packet, but there was still some money left, and Dusty was staying with the Comeaways until it had been spent.
‘Ask me, that Willie’s a real bad one,’ Charlie said heavily. Charlie was remembering that his commands to Audrena to get off to bed had had no effect alongside Willie’s invitation to her to go for a walk along the beach.
‘Gee, it’s got some kick, that stuff,’ Mr Comeaway said approvingly. ‘I ain’t never tasted that whisky before. Jus as well them pleece didn’t show up an start askin their questions after ole Horace got a taste of it. Woulda landed someone sure. I just knew e was ripe for a bit of a do.’
‘You too,’ Mrs Comeaway stopped to berate him. ‘You’d a got us all in trouble if I hadn’t kep pokin ya with me elbow. Talk bout Horace. You was lookin fa trouble two days after. An ya know them monarch have ya up soon as look at ya. That’s the way they get ta be sergeants, pinchin people.’
‘Not me,’ Mr Comeaway said comfortably. ‘They wouldn’t pinch me. They know I don’t go round makin trouble.’
‘Dunno so much bout that,’ Mrs Comeaway said acidly. ‘Ya pretty free with ya fists when ya had a few.’
Hannie appeared in the doorway.
‘That meat smells like it might be burning,’ she said mildly.
‘Fa Gawd’s sake put a bit more water in it well,’ Mrs Comeaway told her.
Hannie nodded amiably and disappeared.
‘Better do it meself,’ Mrs Comeaway said resignedly, following her. She grabbed for the saucepan whilst Hannie stood meditating before a shelf of crockery.
Mighty snarlings and cracklings filled the air as Mrs Comeaway held the saucepan under the cold water tap.
‘Was just lookin for somethin ta get the water in,’ Hannie said apologetically.
‘I fixed it now. Ya can go back an sit down.’
The hint of worry disappeared from Hannie’s brow. She settled herself gratefully on her chair before the stove.
‘Never can make out what goes on in your head,’ Mrs Comeaway said good-naturedly, stirring the contents of the saucepan. ‘Always sittin about thinkin. Ya don’t seem ta know alf what’s goin on.’
‘Dunno that you’d call it thinkin,’ Hannie disparaged. ‘I just like ta sit where it’s warm.’
Mrs Comeaway chuckled. ‘One thing, ya don’t do much harm jus sittin. It’s when ya up an about ya get in me way.’
Hannie listened attentively. Now that the move had been made, she had settled down into contentment again. She would have been equally content in the humpy or back in the bush camp.
Trilby spent more and more time in her room. She hated anyone, especially men, to see her in her present condition, and the house seemed always full of visitors. Most of them she had never seen before, and she liked their rough good humour no more than she liked their curious glances.
The visits of the police had reawakened the nightmare of her own stay in jail: heightened the feeling she had of being caught in a trap. So far she had found no way out.
Examining her face in the mirror she brooded over the shape of her features and the colour of her skin. She was lighter-skinned than many of the others. She had seen white girls with deeper toning. Perhaps, down in Perth, she might be accepted as a white person. Would her flattish nose give her away, or the short square white teeth? Fretfully, anxiously, she would peer at herself in the mirror; colour her lips with red to hide the tint of dusty purple that she hated; try out a trace of pink on her cheek-bones, varnish her shell-pink nails the same bright red as her lips.
She practised walking, holding herself high and proud. A lot of the girls she knew walked like old women, shoulders forward, knees bent, in a kind of shamed shamble.
Sometimes she would rise from the bed sick with herself, seeing herself besmirched with the colour and the features of the aborigine, certain that nothing but frustration lay ahead of her.
It was during one of the latter periods that she first accompanied Bartie on one of his rambling walks. She had followed him on a swift impulse, and when he sat a short distance from a tree that had blown almost horizontal with the ground and proceeded to draw it, she thought him quite mad. Bartie acknowledged her presence with a shy grin, presently losing himself in his work, so that he forgot she was there. Trilby drew closer, watched the wind-swept tree appear again on paper, and was interested in spite of herself.
After that first time she went with him often, and a sort of comradeship grew up between them. Gregarious by nature, Trilby craved company even whilst she shunned it. Bartie asked no questions. He was quite simply uninterested in anything outside his drawing and painting. He had to be quicker than lightning to catch the curl of a wave before it broke. And he needed all his concentration to get down on paper what that wave meant to do. Trilby’s interest grew, and whilst she was with Bartie she shared, in some strange way, his inner peace and his quiet happiness.
At home she rebuffed every attempt at friendliness. She could endure neither her mother’s frank comments on her changing shape, nor Audrena’s sly eyes that always slid to her belly. Once, in answer to a sneer, she rushed at her cousin with a hot flat-iron, but her mother grabbed her wrist and made her drop the awful weapon. She fled from Mrs Comeaway’s impatient and irritable scolding, though if she had stayed she would have heard a second being delivered to Audrena. There were no flies on Mrs Comeaway, and she had not missed any of Audrena’s attempts to upset Trilby’s hard-won control.
Towards Noonah, Trilby felt an impatient and grudging gratitude. With gentle consideration, Noonah skipped side issues and concerned herself only with present problems. She informed her sister of all that lay ahead of her, what she could expect in physical changes and sensations, and she anxiously minimized the pain of the actual delivery. Trilby was interested in spite of herself in a book Noonah gave her about methods of painless child-delivery.
Noonah gave her other things, too. Small-scale clothing for the new arrival, half a dozen napkins, a dainty pink and white frock. Trilby was not interested in these things. She stuffed them away in her drawer, out of sight.
Sometimes, lying on her bed in the dark, hearing Noonah’s quiet breathing alongside her, Trilby fought out a private war inside herself. In the hiding dark she wanted to pour out all her doubts and fears—tell her sister exactly what had happened—question Noonah, why? Sometimes she had to bite her lips to keep back the flood. She would not give in. She would not allow anyone to see the weakness in her.
Allow Noonah to know that she had gone into this thing with eyes only half open, like any stupid, ignorant black-nigger girl? No! And again, no! It was the stupidity Trilby could not forgive in herself. Badness, wickedness, anything was excusable except plain downright stupidity.
In her own bed, Noonah was always conscious of Trilby’s tenseness. She thought it was because Trilby hated to share her room and, though this was no fault of hers, she tried to make amends. She told her sister amusing things that had happened at the hospital, coaxed Trilby to tell her what went on at home. Once she was started, Trilby could keep Noonah amused and entertained for a couple of hours. It took only a description of Hannie sitting in her chair nodding her head and agreeing with everything Mrs Comeaway said for Noonah to have to stifle her giggles in her pillow.
‘And lazy!’ Trilby said one night on a breath of scorn. ‘You know everywhere she’s been by the stuff she leaves behind her. She doesn’t even pull the chain in the lav. If she puts on a dress and it’s inside out she just leaves it that way. She’s always wrapping up little parcels of rubbish and leaving them on the sink so she won’t have to go outside to the bin. And Mum is always coming across them and stuffing them away in the food safe. I found three lots of tea-leaves there yesterday. Mum seems to like her but I think she’s crackers. She fall
s off her chair asleep every time she has a bit of conto, she lets people cheat her at cards, she just smiles when Uncle Charlie yells terrible things to her, and one day she let Stella eat a whole tin of condensed milk so that she was sick. Mum says her trouble is she’s too good-natured. I think her whole trouble is in her head.’
‘She is kind,’ Noonah decided. ‘What’s Blanchie like?’
‘Blanchie’s like a young Auntie Hannie. Tommy nearly choked the other day on something she gave him to play with, and Mum had to pick him up and bang him on the back to make him cough it up. Blanchie just stood there giggling.’
‘She was nervous,’ Noonah said, with quick sympathy. ‘I think she really loves Tommy.’
‘Mum does,’ Trilby told her sister. ‘Every time she goes out she buys something for him. Every time she’s got money, that is. There isn’t much around here except when you come home. God knows how we eat.’
‘Doesn’t Dad work at all?’ Noonah asked, troubled.
‘Doesn’t want work, if you ask me,’ Trilby said shortly. ‘He keeps saying he’s going to get up early and go down to the wharf, but he never does. That’s since Uncle Charlie came. They don’t do anything but sit around on the veranda or take little walks up to the town. Dad wins some money at cards sometimes. They gamble just about every night. If they don’t have money they use matches or razor-blades or even their clothes. Dad lost his good trousers the other night, and he would have lost that big coat too if Mum hadn’t hidden it. Not that she doesn’t go mad about cards too. She’s as bad as the rest. She just likes that coat to put over her feet at night.’
‘Does Dad lose often?’
‘You’ve seen him,’ Trilby said indifferently. ‘All depends who he’s playing with. Dad plays so fast I can’t follow him, and sometimes I think he wins because nobody else can follow him either. When they’ve been at it a while you wouldn’t disturb them if you dropped a cart-load of bricks alongside the table. The only time they talk is when someone’s brought a few bottles. Then they start arguing and won’t always pay up if someone else wins. I always go to bed, but I can hear them through the wall. If there’s an argument I lock the door. One night some woman came wandering in looking for a mirror. She woke me up when she put the light on. She had her eyes all bunged up and her nose was bleeding. Mum told me her husband gave her a thrashing because she tried to take his cards.’
‘What did she want a mirror for?’ Noonah wondered.
Trilby sniffed. ‘Said she had to breathe on it so she’d know she was alive. Told me she read it in some book she got hold of.’
Noonah let out a delighted giggle then she sobered. ‘Do they wander into the kids’ room too?’
‘Mum keeps them out of there,’ Trilby said significantly. ‘A man went in one night and woke them up. They were playing for pennies that night and he’d been winning.’ She smiled unwillingly. ‘He said he had too many and they were too heavy to carry, so he was going to give some to the kids. Stella got frightened and yelled, and Mum rushed out and told him off, and then Dad came out and there was nearly a fight. I was scared stiff with all the noise and shouting. I thought the police might come because the whole street must have heard them.’
‘Dad had a right to keep him out of the kids’ room but.’
‘Dad shouldn’t have encouraged him to come here,’ Trilby gloomed. ‘We have some awful people here sometimes. You should have seen some we had last week. All the women bring their kids, and so they’ll get some peace they open up their blouses and let those kids feed from their chests right in front of everyone.’ She shuddered. ‘They make me feel sick.’
‘It shouldn’t,’ Noonah said mildly. ‘That’s the best food most of those babies get.’
‘These aren’t babies,’ Trilby said scornfully. ‘They’re up to three and four and five, and they sit on the edge of the table and hold those women’s tits up to their mouths and suck and drool—I can’t help feeling sick.’
Noonah was silent. In the dark, her hand went to her own small, firm breast. She wondered, with a little shamed thrill, how long it would be before she felt the warm mouth of a baby drawing its nourishment from her.
‘Mum told me about a little boy who’d turned six and still wanted his mummy’s tit. But even she thought he was too old, so she stopped him by painting a big black face on her chest. When she undid her buttons and dragged it out he got such a fright he ran screaming.’ Noonah heard the distaste in her sister’s voice and was glad Trilby could not see her own highly-amused expression.
‘Noonah!’
‘Yes?’
‘I liked being home at first, and still can’t help liking Mum and Dad—you know the way they are—we have fun sometimes still. And Bartie’s not a bad kid, or Stella either. But I hate all those people who come round.’
‘Mrs Green has a lot of people at her place, too. She says they just come, and how can she send them away.’
‘Some of them look so rough and awful,’ Trilby brooded. ‘And they tell me they’re my “lations”.’ She mimicked one of them. ‘“I’m your lation, gal. Ya mummy’s my lation an so’s you.” Some of them want to give me money. A few have such big rolls of notes after they get their cheques changed at the bank. I suppose some of them aren’t too bad.’ Her voice was reluctant. ‘I must say they make the place a bit more cheerful, the nice ones. But one old woman frightened the life out of me. She would keep talking about “hairy men”. She said I must never go outside at night if I heard birds calling or whistling because likely they were “hairy men” waiting to catch me. She said you can always tell. She said she threw a stone at an emu once and the emu ducked, and that’s how she knew it was a “hairy man” because emus are too stupid to duck stones. She said it chased her.’
‘Gee!’ Noonah said, impressed.
‘She was so dirty, too. Even Auntie Hannie looked clean and tidy alongside her. She used to follow me about and get me to listen to these terrible stories that I just don’t believe. She said she was staying at a camp once when there’d been a drought and there wasn’t much food about, and she saw a man drag a baby away from its mother and throw it straight on the fire. And after—he ate it. That wouldn’t be true, would it, Noonah?’
‘That’s silly,’ Noonah said stoutly. ‘You ask Mum. I bet if you’d told Mum what she was talking about Mum would have got her out of here.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Trilby derided. ‘She frightened Mum just as much as she frightened me. And Mum believed her, specially about the “hairy men”. She said she didn’t, but I knew she did.’
‘I don’t.’
‘And she told me the way to get rid of a baby is to put dirt in its mouth as soon as it’s born, or chew up some bread until it’s soft and mix it up with tobacco and let the baby suck it. And I could have killed her for the way she looked at me, as if she thought I might do the same. But she’s gone, thank goodness. She must have started on Dad one day because he got wild and called her a dirty black nigger. She looked at him just as if next minute she was going to spring at him, then she went down the path yelling back at us and swearing every other word. And she shook her fist at Dad. I think it was what he called her that made her get in such a rage. She was just a fool!’
‘A fool?’
‘Yes, every time she talked about herself she called herself a black nigger, but because Dad said the same thing she went crazy at him. I thought she was going to have a fit. Right here. Her eyes…,’ Trilby hesitated, ‘and her mouth with white spit all round it as if she’d sucked soap. You know what, Noonah? I hated her then, but I was sorry for her too.’
‘Why ever?’
Trilby’s barriers were down. What she was saying now was coming from inside her, from the sore hurting spot that questioned and could not accept that a coloured skin made you different—and inferior to white people.
‘Because I knew how she felt. I even know why she could call herself a black nigger. She had to keep saying it, to try and fool people into thinking sh
e didn’t care, and that it didn’t matter to her if she was black or white or any other colour. And that was so they wouldn’t call her that if they wanted to hurt her. I don’t think she’d have cared what else Dad called her, so long as it wasn’t that. Black nigger! Imagine, Noonah! Even a poor, dirty, skinny old witch like she is still doesn’t want to be called a nigger.’ Trilby sat up in bed and her voice was fierce. ‘If anyone called me that I’d kill them.’
‘I just hope she never comes back,’ Noonah said worriedly. Her thoughts were occupied with Bartie and Stella. She had hardly heard Trilby’s last words.
Trilby was instantly hurt and furious. ‘Don’t you ever think about the colour you are?’ she demanded passionately.
Noonah was getting drowsy and was not so sensitive to Trilby’s change of mood as she might otherwise have been.
‘What’s the use?’ she yawned.
Trilby let herself trembling down on to her pillow. For a long moment she was bathed in humiliation. Again, her own fault. What was the use, as Noonah had just said? Of anything! Especially telling anyone the way you felt. She tried to stiffen herself to resentment, but a forlorn sense of betrayal brought a rush of tears to her eyes. Behind her closed lids they forced a way out, ran endlessly down her cheeks to her pillow. And Noonah slept.
EIGHTEEN
It was midweek, and Mr Comeaway was alternately yawning and wishing that the rain would stop long enough for him and his brother to take a walk down to the town. If he did get down there he was darned if he wouldn’t go into that Employment Agency and try to get himself a job somewhere. A man got tired of sitting about the house, specially on a rainy day. Mrs Comeaway had kept the children home from school: Blanchie’s Tommy was crawling around on the floor, Blanchie and Audrena were sprawled on the settee-bed reading magazines and comics, the women were sitting as close as they could get to the stove, and Charlie was taking a rest on his bed under a pile of old clothes. Besides not being able to take a step without falling over someone—Bartie was lying right in the centre of the floor—Mr Comeaway did not care for the company. He felt alert and restless, not in the least like taking a nap, and he was conscious of active resentment towards Charlie for leaving him alone with a lot of women and children.