Purple Threads

by Jeanine Leane

  A black and white terrier, not much bigger than a rat, was caught by its front leg in a steel trap a few feet in from Cooper’s boundary. Aunty Boo parted the taut wire and threw a hessian sack over the dog as it shivered and growled, and snapped at her hands. She used her foot to open the trap and put the quivering dog in the hessian sack. Its front paw was badly cut.

  ‘Somebody’s pet, I reckon.’ Aunty Boo carefully examined the wound.

  ‘What are we gunna do with it?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmmm, wound needs washin’ an’ wrappin’ but best off walk down to young Mrs Cooper first, an’ see if she lost a dog.’

  We’d never met the young Mrs Cooper before, much less been close to the new flash brick house she had across the paddock. We set out with the little dog wrapped carefully in the wheelbarrow.

  Cooper’s new house was solid apricot brick with large iron lace gates at the front. Azaleas grew in thick clusters along the generous concrete veranda. All was silent as we unlatched the gate and walked up the front path.

  ‘No sign of a dog about,’ Aunty Boo noted.

  The place seemed deserted. Aunty Boo mounted the steps to try the front door. Something on the far end of the veranda caught my eye. I jumped and tugged at Aunty Boo’s shirt. An old man in a big grey chair with wheels started rolling towards us waving his hand.

  I backed behind Aunty Boo. ‘What is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘Hush!’ she snapped. ‘Mornin’, ol’ fella.’ She smiled as the man rolled up.

  He was wearing blue pyjamas and his small crop of hair was silver like frost. He seemed to have difficulty speaking. One side of his face wouldn’t move. Some mumbled, distorted words came out amid a trail of spittle. He gestured in the direction of the front door. I noticed that he was tied to the chair at the waist and ankles. Aunty was unperturbed and acted as if nothing was wrong with the man.

  ‘Lovely mornin’, ain’t it?’

  The front door snapped open. Heels clicked on the veranda. Aunty and I turned to see a woman in a green floral dress. She had ginger hair cut in a short bob and was wearing white sandals with hard, high heels. She looked startled.

  ‘Oh,’ she stepped back. ‘I didn’t hear visitors come.’ Her voice was crisp and English.

  ‘Beulah Stanley, missus, from over the hill, an’ this is Sunshine an’ Star. Jus’ talkin’ to the ol’ fella here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Young Mrs Cooper laughed through her nose. ‘You won’t get much sense out of him! Will they?’ She jerked her head towards the old man, who tried unsuccessfully again to speak. ‘He’s my father-in-law. Had a stroke, you know, last year in Sydney.’

  I’d heard stories from Nan and the Aunties about old Mr Cooper when he was in his prime. He was said to have been spritely and a good horseman. I couldn’t imagine it now. He looked so frail and worn out.

  ‘Nothing for it though,’ Mrs Cooper went on. ‘I wanted to put him in a nursing home in Sydney, but Jack’s very attached.’ She crossed the veranda to wipe the old man’s mouth. ‘Says he’d be better off here because he loved the farm.’ She paused and cast her heavily lined eyes over the paddocks that climbed the hill. ‘Can’t imagine why.’ She shook her head. ‘All very well for Jack, he doesn’t have to nurse him all day. I used to be a nurse, you know, in Sydney. I’ve seen hundreds of oldies in this state. There’s nothing you can do for them except keep them clean and fed till their time comes. Everything else is a waste of time.’

  ‘D’ya ever take ’im out an’ about the place fer walks, missus? He use ta know every inch of this place once.’ Aunty Boo cocked her head to one side.

  ‘Oh, Lord no. I hate walking in the bush. As for pushing that thing . . .’ She pointed emphatically at the wheelchair. ‘I’m not strong enough. Besides, he doesn’t know where he is these days anyway.’

  ‘Yes, well, missus, reason I come by was coz the girls an’ me found a little terrier caught in a trap. Jus’ wonderin’ if ya lost one or heard anyone else round here did?’

  Mrs Cooper ventured to the edge of the veranda and peered into the wheelbarrow. ‘Oh!’ She wrinkled her nose at the little dog huddled in the hessian. ‘Oh no, I’m not fond of dogs and Lord knows I have enough to do without looking after pets.’

  ‘Right then, missus.’ Aunty Boo was already turning to go. ‘Well, we’ll take her home an’ clean her up, eh, girls? If ya hear of anyone that mighta lost a dog, missus, you’ll know where ta send ’em.’ She picked up the wheelbarrow handles and Star and I skipped up the path ahead of her. ‘See ya later, ol’ fella,’ she said, beaming at the old man.

  ‘Oh, he won’t know a thing about it,’ Mrs Cooper scoffed.

  I heard Aunty Boo grunt and mutter something under her breath, and when I looked back I thought I saw a slow smile spread across the old man’s lopsided face.

  ‘Snooty Bitch!’ Aunty Boo said as soon as we were out of earshot. ‘Poor ol’ fella, no wonder he can’t do nothin’ if she keeps ’im tied to that bloody chair all day! Mind youse, I’d ’ave to be tied up too, ta put up with that one!’

  ‘What was the matta with the ol’ man?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s old an’ sick, love. Had a stroke, so she was sayin’. That means his body’s gettin’ old an’ shuttin’ down, but it don’t mean ya treat ’im like he’s not there an’ got no value.’ She was worked up now and pushed the barrow hard over the rough stones. ‘I’d rather lay down an’ die under a tree on the hill if I get old an’ sick like that than have someone treat me like dirt, I would. Rather go an’ lie down an’ die in Hannibal’s House on the hill. An’ bury meself too so the crows won’t get me either.’

  Star and I laughed. ‘Ya can’t bury ya-self if ya already dead!’ I said.

  She laughed too. ‘Nah, damn right, I can’t, so that’ll be a job fer youse two. But I can tell ya right now – if youse think ya tyin’ me to a bloody wheelchair ya can think again coz I’ll run ya over with it, first chance I get.’

  ‘You might live to be a hundred and get a telegram from the Queen,’ I said.

  ‘Tell ya what, if I getta telegram from her majesty, I’ll wipe my arse on it an’ send it straight back. Coz that’s what I thinka her.’

  At home, Aunty Bubby decided the terrier’s front paw was badly damaged and couldn’t be saved, so she performed an amputation with a sharp pair of scissors. Nan packed the wound and carried the little dog round in her front apron pocket for days so it wouldn’t fret or feel unloved. Despite Aunty Boo asking everyone she saw and putting up a notice at the local shops, no one ever came to claim that dog. Nan named her Minni, and she stayed with us for fifteen years. She never got to be more than the size of a rat, and, even though she learnt to walk again on three paws without too much trouble, she spent most of her life riding in Nan’s big pocket.

  Epilogue – Country turns

  In the 1970s most of the sheep farmers were cleaned out by the weather. Men with vineyards and hobby farms replaced them. The big expanses of paddocks fenced off for mobs of sheep disappeared. Small mud brick cottages and raw hardwood A-frames sprang up where the long brick homesteads once stood.

  I was a big woman by then, and the Aunties said they’d finished growing me up. They were delighted that I’d made it through school and been offered a place in university.

  ‘Good on ya, babe,’ Aunty Boo gushed as she slapped me on the back. ‘You’ll be able to talk to the gov’ment an’ lotsa ’portant people. But donchya forget ya home talk when ya learnin’ to be flash.’

  As the time got closer for me to leave they began to fret and fuss.

  ‘Donchya go smokin’ bloody marijuana with all them hippies!’ Aunty Boo waved a bony finger. ‘If I hear of ya doin’ that, I’ll walk all the way to that university an’ kick ya arse till ya nose bleeds. Ya hear? But ya might make friends with some o’ them women’s libbers an’ bring ’em home ta meet ya ol’ Au
nty who don’t like men either!’

  I left to the sound of weeping women.

  In first term I tried to read the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx took a million words to say everything about property, greed, oppression, accumulation and appropriation that my Aunties said far more simply. And when we studied Macbeth, discussing its scenes ad nauseum, I never got sick of the witches. But when it came to a lecture on Wuthering Heights I only made it as far as the lecture theatre door. I sat in the sunny courtyard outside, unable to let a complete stranger talk about this corner of my Aunty Bubby’s heartland.

  Nan passed away at home that winter on a bleak August day. It was wet and cold, and our hearts were heavy, but that’s the way she would have wanted it – with the winter rains arriving as they should and the country still turning. Aunty Boo got the new young Reverend to come out from town to oversee the service we had for her. She warned him he wasn’t to say a word. It was me who read the passage from St Matthew about the lilies of the field to her for her last time. We scattered her ashes on the hill by Hannibal’s House. I knew that one day my Aunties would dream there too. Maybe Petal as well.

  When I came home at the end of my first year of university, Aunty Boo filled me in on a few things. I learnt that Alfi had been drunk and angry that stormy winter’s night. His ute had bogged on the slushy road when the river broke its banks. He had to walk two miles back to the hut in the deluge with a torch. He bashed Milli and she hit him with the iron fire stoker. When Milli ran to us, streaked with blood and tears, she wanted Nan and my Aunties to take her children. She was going to turn herself in. But the women had other plans. The wild, wet weather served them well. That night, when I was pretending to be asleep and heard Aunty Boo say, Let that lying dog sleep, that’s exactly what she meant.

  Aunty Boo also told me that the National Sheep Dip Alliance Party had broken up. ‘Farmers do different things now, girl!’ Her hair was white then, like the wool she used to shear off dead sheep and pick off the fences. ‘They a lot harder ta watch now too. Have all ’em rows of grapes an’ big high-sided yards of things like goats an’ llamas. Can’t see a damn thing now, no matta where ya go. Too many of ’em too! Split up Cooper’s ol’ place into ’bout six little farms.’

  And she told me where Petal was and what she was up to these days. Well, at least as much as she had heard.

  But I never asked Aunty Boo what happened in the O’Brien’s chapel late that evening all those years ago. That was one sleeping dog that I’d always let lie. It could rest in peace forever.

  ‘Ya Aunty Boo’s gotta new pastime now,’ Aunty Bubby told me one afternoon as she put on the kettle and shooed a lamb away from the back door. ‘It’s called Days of Our Lives!’

  Aunty Boo’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes sir, girl. Now there’s a bloody good show! That Salem City’s a wild place, I tell ya. Hope, Beau, Renee, Roman! Fancy namin’ a kid that, hey? Bloody Roman!’

  She spent the whole summer telling me about their exploits and intrigues. ‘Two things I love ’bout that show, girl. All them fellas when they get by ’emselves walk right out the front o’ the telly an’ tell everyone watchin’ what they’s thinkin’ an’ plannin’. Not like them politicians. Ya hafta think real hard ta work out what’s goin’ on ’tween their ears.’

  Aunty Bubby scoffed and laughed. ‘Can tell ya now, sista-girl, they ain’t got nothin’ ’tween their ears. Told ya that all along.’

  ‘They get pretty dolled up too, them girls, Renee an’ all, swoonin’ round the house all day wearin’ flash clothes. An’ ’nother thing I like ’bout that show is it don’t start till afta dinner, so I got plenty o’ time ta get ’bout the sheep on the hill first.’

  Aunty Boo watched Days of Our Lives for years, long after she was prevented by age and arthritis from walking the hills. All those flashy women with too much lipstick and too big a hairdo and too many men kept her entertained every day. She was old then, and, just like Nan had, she slept a lot by the fire with the dogs on her lap. She didn’t move much any more but there was always plenty going on between her ears.

  I got home less and less. Then I ended up in middle-class suburbia with a baby at my breast staring out a sunny window at a patch of dirt where I was trying to plant a garden and thinking about the women at home; the purple threads who wove my life. I went back with my babies and collected flowers and stories both of which can live forever.

  Aunty Boo died in her sleep curled up in her armchair, dogs sleeping peacefully on her lap aged ninety-six. So the Queen was spared her shit-stained telegram that she was going to wipe her arse on.

  Aunty Bubby read Wuthering Heights till the day she died seven years after Aunty Boo. Emily was always her soul mate. They both knew there was no life higher than the hills.

  When I go home now, I see the ghosts of the women who raised me. There’s nobody walking the hills now but if I stare too long I see my Aunties. My sister sees the same ghosts I do. Sometimes the snowy breeze from the Brindabella Mountains catches the thin bleat of a new winter lamb and carries it clear across the frosty paddocks to the outskirts of my city. I hear it and it takes me home. I miss the sound of women talking as a fire burns and they watch their children and dogs sleep.

  I always take a walk across the Prince Alfred when I’m in town. The bridge is closed to traffic now. A huge feat of modern architecture spans the whole town. The Murrumbidgee is a shadow of its former self. It’s been thirty years since it flooded like it did that night when Milli ran to us through the storm. The flats are pale and tired but the water under the bridge still flows deep and steady.

  Petal’s the only one left now, sailing through the unchartered waters of her swansong. The whole house will fall down waiting as Petal waits. And when the old place is gone there’ll be nothing but flowers.

  My sister and I scattered the ashes of the Aunties with Nan’s under the granite shadow, on the royal green moss at Hannibal’s House. We hope their unmarked site will be trodden by many children and their dogs. It’s still a good place to dream while the country turns and turns.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to all the people who have made this book possible. Special thanks to all the Aboriginal writers whose works across many genres have inspired me and who have generously offered me advice along the way and nurtured and encouraged my work – in particular, all those in my local Canberra community.

  Thanks to Dr Janet Hutchinson for her calmness and for making the once daunting editing process not only manageable but a valuable learning experience; to Rebecca Roberts, for her thoughtful comments; and to UQP for the finished product.

  Last but not least I would like to acknowledge my Wiradjuri ancestors and Elders past and present and the Ngunnawal people, on whose land I now live, raise my family, work and write.

  About the David Unaipon Award

  Established in 1988, the David Unaipon Award is an annual literary competition for unpublished manuscripts in any writing genre or Indigenous language by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander writer.

  The award is named after David Unaipon (1872–1967), who, in 1929, was the first Indigenous author to be published in Australia. He was also a political activist, a scientist, a preacher and an inventor. David Unaipon was born in Point McLeay in South Australia and is commemorated on the $50 note.

  This prize is judged and chosen by a panel of established Indigenous authors and a representative of University of Queensland Press. The author of the winning manuscript is mentored and the work published by University of Queensland Press.

  Winners of the David Unaipon Award receive financial assistance from the Queensland Government through the Minister for the Arts.

  Previous winners of the award include Tara June Winch, Vivienne Cleven, Gayle Kennedy, John Muk Muk Bourke, Sam Wagan Watson, Larissa Behrendt and Nicole Watson.

  Information is available from the Queensland Prem
ier’s Literary Awards website.

  First published 2011 by University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  www.uqp.com.au

  © 2011 Jeanine Leane

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,

  criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,

  no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior

  written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Purple Threads / Jeanine Leane

  9780702238956 (pbk)

  9780702246654 (epub)

  9780702246661 (kindle)

  9780702246647 (pdf)

  Sponsored by the Queensland Office

  of Arts and Cultural Development

  Cover design by Luke Causby, Blue Cork

  Cover photographs by Corbis and Highway 51

  Typeset in 11/16 pt Adobe Caslon by Post Pre-press group, Brisbane

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.