He was short like her but that’s where the similarity ended as he was of a happy disposition, always smiling, and I warmed to him straight away. It had been decided that he’d live with us for a while until he found somewhere to his liking, but as expected our mother’s challenging ways and our father’s moods soon drove the poor bugger on to a less calamitous place of abode. But he still came with us to mass on a Sunday and dropped around sometimes for a visit.
On one of his visits my flapping ears overheard him telling our mother that he was going to propose to Sister de Lourdes, the Grade 2 teacher at our school, so I wasted no time rushing off to inform Julie of this horror. The thought of our Uncle Arthur and Sister de Lourdes marrying was inconceivable to both of us, but as it turned out her marriage to dear old God was rock-solid and to our great relief she sent our uncle packing.
He couldn’t have been too distressed by Sister’s rejection though because one day soon afterwards he turned up with a new girlfriend on his arm. Once again my eavesdropping skills proved valuable and I quickly discovered that they lived at the same boarding house and her name was Pearl. I wasted no time in delivering the news to Julie. Our mother was not at all impressed with Pearl as she smoked cigarettes, swore like a trooper and wore shorts, something our mother believed only loose women did. But I loved Pearl because she was so deliciously shocking and she didn’t give a crap what our mother thought about her. Needless to say every time Uncle Arthur and Pearl came to visit, the tension in the air was as thick as mud between our mother and Pearl. Not long after Uncle Arthur and Pearl were going steady more eavesdropping outside the lounge room door revealed the biggest bombshell yet, as I heard him telling our mother that he and Pearl were getting married. I’d previously heard our mother in one of her rare exchanges with our father whining about this possibility and judging by the silence in the room now she obviously didn’t like it one bit. From my position behind the door I could imagine her face working itself into a huge frown with her lips pursing as she was wont to do, then she gave Uncle Arthur a spray that he would never forget. Pearl is nothing but a guttersnipe. The marriage will end in disaster and what will people think of me if my brother gets divorced? There must be other desperate girls around, why did you have to pick her? On and on she went.
But despite our mother being pissed off, the marriage banns were posted and we still went to the wedding and it was only after it that we could finally call Pearl aunty. I think we weren’t allowed to call her aunty before the wedding because it would have made her part of the family and our mother wanted Pearl kept out for as long as she could.
Aunty Pearl had a sister called Dorothy and Dorothy had a bunch of kids. She had permed bleached-blonde hair and to our mother’s intense disgust wore the tiniest shorts that were so short you could see her arse cheeks hanging out. She drove around in a big car and her kids would hang out the window and stick their fingers up at other cars or people on the street. Dorothy never told them off or smacked them and I was always wishing I was in their family instead of mine. Our mother didn’t like Julie or me associating with these kids as she thought they would be a bad influence and I think she was right. When they first came to visit with Uncle Arthur and Aunty Pearl it was absolute mayhem – those kids ran wild and I was in complete awe. They showed no fear, even when our mother screeched at them to get outside and play. Their whooping like Indians right outside the lounge-room window was the final straw as her teacup came down onto her saucer with a crash and she told Uncle Arthur and Aunty Pearl to take them away and not bring them back.
At Uncle Arthur and Aunty Pearl’s wedding reception these kids’ behaviour was absolutely wild and I was so jealous because for the entire function Julie and I had to sit with our parents who instructed us to not move an inch or even look at the others. The highlight of the evening was when one of Dorothy’s kids revealed that Uncle Arthur and Aunty Pearl had their own house and had been living together the whole time.
Despite our mother’s fury, we still visited the ‘house of sin’ as she called it. And if she was looking for more things to whine about, she certainly wasn’t let down as Aunty Pearl introduced us to her blue budgie which she’d taught to swear. Our mother was so incensed that Uncle Arthur had to put it in the kitchen where she couldn’t hear it carrying on. While I was in the kitchen listening to it (under the guise of going to the loo) Aunty Pearl got onto the phone and asked Dorothy to come over. When she finished she gave me a wink and headed back into the lounge with a big smirk on her face. Sure enough when Dorothy arrived a short time later with her kids our mother decided it was time to go. In the car our mother ranted about Dorothy’s tight shorts all the way home but I thought Dorothy looked real cool and I vowed to be just like her when I grew up.
A few years later Aunty Pearl and Uncle Arthur adopted a baby boy they called Adrian. I was about thirteen or fourteen then and thought he was the most adorable little man. When we visited I would take him for walks in the park and give him leaves and sticks to play with and chew, and show him birds and insects. He works with native birds and animals now and I like to think that it is because of the time we spent together when he was a baby.
One day when Adrian was about two Aunty Pearl took me aside and told me that I could go and live with them. I think they suspected that I was being molested. I desperately wanted to go but was terrified of what our mother would do to me if she found out the conversation had even taken place. Uncle Arthur and Aunty Pearl have both passed away now but Adrian has grown up to be a beautiful person just like them.
11.
Until I was about eight or nine a regular holiday place was Normanville, a small coastal town east of Adelaide. We would spend our summer holidays there and sometimes a cold, wet and wintry weekend as well. Our parents must have thought it was safe for kids because Julie and I were allowed to wander down to play on the beach without supervision, the only stipulations being that we weren’t allowed to get our feet wet. That didn’t bother me because I loved to walk along the sand and in the dunes looking for driftwood and shells and feathers. Sometimes the beach would throw up rare surprises like starfish or beautiful creamy cone-shaped shells that were so highly polished they felt like glass when I rubbed my fingers over them or licked them to taste the salt. If I found two I would lie down on the sand and put one to each ear and listen to the swirling wind. I carried my treasures in a small blue beach bag I’d found, and examined them over again and again. At home they lived in a cardboard box underneath my bed.
Our summers at Normanville were balmy and free and every day gave us intense blue oceans and skies. The beautiful weather meant we had to share the beach with other people so Julie and I had to go a lot further down to have a piece of it to ourselves. Our parents sometimes came but a lot of the time we were there with only each other for company. Even on the hottest days the rule about not getting wet feet still applied but that didn’t stop us paddling in the shallows. I loved disobeying them.
But it was the winters at Normanville that I loved the most, with their wild winds and pounding seas. I had a more vigorous constitution than Julie so was allowed out into the intemperate weather rugged up against the elements to walk on the beach or sit on the dunes watching the changing sky and the ocean rolling in. Each wave was different from the one before and the one that came after. The angle, the curl, the spray, the foam that spread across the sand, they were all unique. Seagulls would swoop and soar in the stormy skies, their voices magnified and carried along with the howling winds and the crashing waves like a fugue. Once cradled in the curve of an enormous wave I saw a manta ray and, expecting to see it dashed onto the beach, I watched with heart in my throat, but it was gone as miraculously as it had appeared. After the big storms thick rows of seaweed would be washed up on the shore, and hidden in and under the folds would be all sorts of treasures. Exotic-looking crabs, a delicate orange-coloured seahorse, a glass fishing-net float. There is something magical about being alone and experiencing beauty like
this without another single soul to witness it.
12.
School had always been an escape for me from the ‘rigours’ of home and I viewed my final year with anticipation. Not because of exams but because I had been planning for some time that as soon as school was finished I would leave home. Although I’d have liked to have gone well before that I knew I had to stick it out, as an education was vital to my future and it would serve no purpose to end up without the means to either go on to university or get a decent job.
But if you trust in the universe things will always work out, just as they did for me. Julie had a friend called Mark who had a friend called Wayne, and as luck would have it Wayne moved out of his parents’ place and got a flat just around the time of my final exams. The day I did my last exam I went home, packed my belongings and took a taxi to Wayne’s flat. Wayne later became my husband, but I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been desperate to escape and had been free to take another path. Did I marry Wayne out of gratitude or because I needed a safe person to be around? Whatever the reason, I will be indebted to him for the rest of my life for giving me a safe place to live.
Moving out of home caused me no end of harassment from my parents who, when they discovered from Wayne’s parents where I was, constantly came around to the flat demanding I go back home and berating me for not going to mass on Sundays. Why they wanted me back was a great mystery to me. Maybe they felt empty without someone to harass, maybe I was a distraction from their own sad lives. Whatever the reason, I ignored their frenzied knocking and teary bleating at the front door and went about enjoying my newfound freedom with great enthusiasm. And I never set foot in a church again.
But it’s funny that how, no matter how much fun you’re having, old ways die hard, and after a few months I sometimes found myself missing our mother’s nagging so badly that I’d ring her up or go visit to get a dose of it. It was terrible. It was like battered wife’s syndrome, and no matter that the abuse had been so bad I just couldn’t drag myself away from it. I really despised that weakness in myself and struggled endlessly with it, but thankfully I took control a few years later and cut them off completely.
I know they had been through some harrowing times themselves such as making it through World War II and leaving everything they knew to live on the other side of the world, but there must have been some other really ugly stuff that had happened in their lives for them to turn out the way they did.
Anyway, despite growing up with such people and thinking that everything was going to be fine when I left home and made my way out into the big world, nothing could have prepared me for what I was to encounter when I went to live with my biological family. They were as different from my foster family as you could possibly get. They were an entirely new kettle of fish.
PART 3
1.
My family don’t even bat an eyelid when I arrive back on Bathurst Island and on their doorstep with my belongings, it’s like I hadn’t even left the place. But I can handle that because there are no routines here, people eat when they’re hungry and go to sleep when they’re tired, and after a lifetime of rules and being told what to do I know I am going to love the freedom.
Within minutes of my arrival Aunty Marie Evelyn turns up. She is a shameless gossip and is obviously here for some juicy information to pass on to other waiting ears and not because she has missed me. She immediately starts throwing out little hints about what I’ve brought in all the boxes and suitcases and how much money I’ve got, so to distract her I ask her how come I have to call her aunty if she isn’t my mother’s or father’s sister. Now aunty loves talking just as much as gossiping so she fidgets around a bit to get her ample arse into a more comfortable position and takes a big sip of tea to lubricate her throat and off she goes. She tells me that because of the strict marriage structure, everyone here is related to each other, so when I was born I was automatically a daughter, mother, aunty or grandmother to every Tiwi person. And although mummy and I were both born in Arnhem Land we are still considered Tiwi because marriage ties are as strong as blood ties. So being related to everyone ensures that we are obligated to them in different ways so there is always someone to look after you, young or old. And if a woman has sisters then all her sisters’ kids call her their mother as well, and the same with blokes and their brothers. That way there are plenty of parents to look after the kids if someone dies, or if you are a widow there will always be sons and daughters to care for you, both biological and kinship. This is a bit daunting, I am only beginning to get used to my biological family and now I have two and a half thousand kinship family to contend with as well. As aunty swallows the last of her tea and gets up to leave after extracting twenty dollars from me, I find myself wishing I hadn’t asked.
This time mummy gives me the right-hand front room to live in. I like how she doesn’t ask a million questions about what my intentions are and how long I’m going to stay and all that crap like the old bat would have done, because I don’t even know myself. In mummy’s house Louis and Gemma have the left front bedroom, Mario, Theresa Anne and baby Casmira have the back bedroom and my mum is still on the lounge-room floor with Lorraine and JJ where I was sleeping a few months ago. It’s great having a room for myself because I won’t have to fret so much about getting nits and listening to mummy grind her teeth in her sleep and everyone snoring.
Lorraine who is fourteen comes from Belyuen and JJ who is ten comes from Wadeye. They were both abandoned at Darwin Hospital at birth so my mum took them home after she’d been there visiting family. Despite attending Monivae College in Hamilton, Victoria because the mission must have thought he had ‘promise’, my brother Louis works at the garage as a mechanic. This is really handy – when I complained about not having a mirror he brought me home a mirror off a truck. He was once spotted by an Essendon football talent scout because he could kick a ball down the footy field further than this bloke had ever seen it done before. But Louis didn’t want the bright lights of the AFL world because he couldn’t bear to leave our mum. His wife Gemma is a senior health worker who studied nursing but has always considered herself a health worker. Health workers are locals from the community who have some medical training but, despite their expertise and intimate knowledge of the community and the people and their lives, are paid a pittance for what they do. My other brother, Mario, works at the school printing books in the Tiwi language for the kids to read, and he sells dope. He makes more money selling dope than he does working and is considering giving up work. He is a beautiful artist with a cheeky sense of humour and his wife Theresa Anne stays at home looking after baby Casmira. Mummy is a weaver of exceptional talent and she sometimes paints as well and makes things like tunga which are waterproof bark baskets, and tutinni which are ceremonial headdresses and armbands.
Lorraine and JJ head off to school every day but rarely make it and go off to their mates’ places instead like most of the kids do. Despite my nagging they see no point in going to school because all the good jobs on the Tiwi Islands are filled by white people. I tell them, ‘Look at me, I’ve gone through school!’ but they stare at me askance like I’m confirming their reasons not to go. And they might have a point there, school obviously did nothing for me if I am living like a blackfella in an overcrowded house at a mission in the middle of nowhere.
Panacua’s name has something to do with Tangiyaw, our place on the south-western side of Bathurst Island that was named Cape Fourcroy by some French explorer by the name of Nicholas Baudin. Mummy tells me that I am to refer to Panacua as my brother. Brother? Although I’ve seen childless people treating their dogs like babies, this is the first I’ve heard of people referring to dogs as real members of the family. In addition to that I call Aunty Ursula’s three dogs my son, my son-in-law and my daughter and Aunty Beatrice’s two dogs my uncle and nephew. Each dog in our extended family is explained to me in kinship terms and the term of acknowledgement I must use for them, but there is still the thought in t
he back of my head that they’re having me on. I ask what happens if different family members get puppies from the same litter. What happens then? But, they explain patiently, if the litter of puppies belongs to my aminay, for instance, I will always call the puppy uncle or aunty, no matter who they are living with. I realise after much discussion that they are deadly serious about the dogs belonging to our family structure and no one is pulling my leg.
Before I start learning anything more I sweep and mop the floor and scrub the years of ingrained dirt off my bedroom walls. Smack-bang in the middle of the wall is a foot-sized hole between my bedroom and Mario’s so I get out the scissors and cut the side off a cardboard box to cover the hole up and then I cut out pictures from the Women’s Weekly magazine and glue them on so it looks like a nice collage instead of boring cardboard. I leave the old shirt that is already stuffed in the hole for extra sound-proofing and stick my masterpiece over the hole with sticky tape. I sew up the broken flyscreens and put up curtains for privacy. No one seems to give a stuff about privacy or personal possessions around this place and having grown up with locks on doors I am a bit uncomfortable as my door has a hole where the door knob was once and a T-shirt has been tied through the hole so the door stays shut when you close it. I have taped another piece of cardboard across the door-knob hole so no one can peek in but I don’t like the fact that anyone could barge in at any time or go poking through my stuff when I’m not there. My bed is a blow-up camping mattress which will be a lot more comfortable than sleeping on a blanket on the floor like before. The bruises on my hip bones, my arse and any other bone that had contact with that floor have faded now and with a fold-up camping chair to sit on, my future looks a whole lot less painful.
Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea Page 7