Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  Moishe, who won’t take no for an answer, persists, demanding to know why they can’t attend the local school. Finally, unable to get any satisfaction from the Department of Education, he visits Cootamundra himself and interviews the schoolmaster, Mr Fred Burrows.

  Burrows proves almost as reluctant to give any information to Moishe as the school authorities in Sydney, but he admits that the school had previously included several Aboriginal children.

  ‘They were removed at the insistence of the white parents. I’m afraid there is nothing I can do about it,’ he says, tight-lipped. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the schoolmaster replies, leaning back on his chair and tapping his desk with the end of a pencil. ‘Did they give a reason?’

  ‘They don’t have to, Mr Goldberg, being Aboriginal is sufficient reason.’

  ‘Do you not find such a concept abhorrent?’

  ‘Mr Goldberg, I have to teach in this town. I’m not a policeman, I’m a schoolmaster. It’s all right for you city people to come to the bush with all your fancy demands, but you don’t know anything about the blacks. Take it from me, they’re just not the same as us.’

  ‘Where have I heard that before, Mr Burrows?’ Moishe muses.

  The schoolmaster sighs. ‘You really don’t have any idea, do you?’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean, Mr Burrows?’ Burrows sighs heavily and, leaning forward, he opens the top drawer to his desk. After a few moments he produces what appears to be a letter written on cheap lined yellow stationery.

  ‘This is a letter from a man born in this town, a parent of two of the children at this school. He is well liked and respected, a local businessman and on the town council, so you can see he carries a fair amount of clout around these parts.’

  Moishe takes the letter and begins to read. He will later have Richard Runche present the letter in court as part of their case.

  Mr C. Fern Member, Legislative Assembly Sydney, New South Wales Dear Mr Fern,

  I object to the blacks assoiating with the children of the whites, especially my own Whom I am going to with draw Should the blacks be allowed to continue their attendance at the Above School.

  My reassons are, Principle first, Second I contend morraly mentaly and Phisickelly the Blacks are not fit to assoiate in the Play ground especially with children of from 6 to 8 years of adge, as little children continualy in the company of Blacks acquire to the ways and moodes of the Aborignies. I think it is very hard that us out back Should be put on a level with the Blacks by the Government. The smell in the School House from the Blacks in this hot climate is objectionable. Yours truly,

  A. Stevenson.

  Moishe looks up from his reading. ‘May I make a copy of this letter, please?’

  The schoolmaster shrugs. ‘Don’t see why not. It was sent to the local member who sent it on — it wasn’t marked confidential.’

  Moishe holds up the letter. ‘And so on the evidence of this one letter you removed the Aboriginal children from your school?’ he says.

  ‘No, there was also a medical problem.’

  ‘A medical problem? What, with the Aboriginal children?’

  Burrows grows suddenly frustrated and rises from behind his desk. ‘Mr Goldberg, I am not at liberty to discuss the matter. You will need to write to the Department of Education in Sydney.’

  So Moishe does just this and some weeks later he receives a copy of a report written by the principal medical officer of the School Medical Service.

  To the Under Secretary

  Department of Education 24 June 1923

  I visited the Cootamundra Primary School on the 22nd Inst., and inquired into the alleged outbreak of venereal disease among the scholars. It was alleged that one of the school children, named Arthur Simmonds, age 6, had contracted gonorrhoea. That he had been infected through using the school water closet, which had previously been infected by one of the Aboriginal children attending the school. (There are three Aboriginal children attending the school at present.) Some weight was given to the allegations, owing to the known fact that three Aboriginal boys had contracted gonorrhoea in March last. These boys, however, have not attended the Cootamundra Primary School for, at least, twelve months.

  I had a meeting with the (white) parents (about 30), at which the matter was freely discussed. The parents were then invited to have their children examined, and 45 children were presented by their parents for that purpose. Arthur S-, age 6, and his brother Tom, age 8, were found to be suffering from well-marked gonorrhoea. This diagnosis I confirmed by bacteriological examination. The other 43 children examined were found free from gonorrhoea, although a fair proportion was found suffering from other conditions of the privates needing attention. These conditions were pointed out and explained to the parents.

  Mr Simmonds, father of the two boys suffering from the disease, stated ‘the younger boy, Arthur, contracted it first, but he hadn’t been at school for nine or ten weeks previous to developing the gonorrhoea’. As the incubation period of gonorrhoea is about five to ten days, and the boy had not been to school for nine or ten weeks previous to developing the disease, the school could not have been the causal agent. Those parents I met appeared now to be quite satisfied that the school could not be looked upon as a source of infection. Many stated ‘they would send their children back to school’.

  The feeling against allowing Aboriginal children to attend the school appeared to be very acute. I was asked if this could not be stopped, or, short of that, could not these children be made to occupy a separate department of the school. I promised to place the matter before you on my return to Sydney.

  Signed

  Principal Medical Officer — School Medical Service.

  Following up on the report, Moishe discovers that the Simmonds children in question were white and could not have caught gonorrhoea at the school. They could only have contracted the venereal disease either from a member of the family or from someone else involving them in an act of sexual congress. In fact, no one had caught the disease at school. The Simmonds children were excluded along with all Aboriginal children but, unlike the Aboriginal children (who did not have gonorrhoea and who were never readmitted), the Simmonds children returned to the school when they recovered from the disease.

  However, despite his persistence, all Moishe’s efforts with the Department of Education to have Polly and Sarah, now that she had turned six, admitted to the school fail. The girls are condemned to receiving no education of any value within the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls.

  Life in the Cootamundra Girls’ Home is a harsh existence. The staff who supervise the children are poorly paid and, for the most part, ignorant, uncaring and cruel. There is nothing more desperate than the lower orders of whites given the opportunity to persecute those they believe to be inferior to themselves. Mary is encouraged by Richard Runche and Moishe Goldberg, on her monthly visits to the home, to obtain details of the conditions within the institution from Polly, so that Runche may use them in the forthcoming court case.

  Polly is an intelligent and observant child whose spirit has not yet been broken. But she and Sarah suffer greatly at the hands of the staff, who deeply resent the fact that Mary is allowed to visit her children. The two girls are constantly threatened by the matron to ‘keep your gobs shut’ and warned that if they tell their mother anything bad about the place they’ll be severely punished for telling lies. As a reminder the staff wash out the girls’ mouths with soap before every visit by their mother.

  But Mary speaks to her children in the Wiradjuri language and usually comes away with a much better insight into the institution, which Richard Runche encourages her to recall on her return to Redlands. He implores her to tell him every detail and suggests new areas of questioning for her next visit. Slowly they build up a comprehensive file on the institution, though of course it is one seen through
the eyes of an eight-year-old and can easily be discredited in court, so the Englishman makes Mary repeat questions, often two months later, checking Polly’s answers for their consistency.

  The food is deplorable — bread and jam and porridge with a cup of tea for’ breakfast,-bread and jam at midday and invariably stew at night. Although the girls say they are always hungry, they are by no means starved and Mary admits that the food appears to be more plentiful than it was back home in the Aboriginal camp.

  The children are subject to the usual adult bullying, with the matron having her favourites and then ‘the girls she come down on all the time, like me and Sarah’, as Polly explains. The children attend school within the institution for two hours each day and this is of such a desultory nature that by the time they leave the institution at fourteen they have seldom passed the stage of the first reader. It is rare that the girls can read at all, and their writing is limited to spelling out their names.

  Work takes up the major part of their day and it is mandatory even for the tiny tots. ‘Idle hands get up to mischief’ is a slogan written in capital letters at the top of the blackboard. In effect, the children do the majority of the labour at the institution — in the kitchens, the laundry, the vegetable gardens, scrubbing and polishing floors, mending clothes, ironing, sweeping, cleaning and emptying the chamber-pots, transporting the garbage and digging the latrines. Discipline is harsh and arbitrary and the most popular method of punishment is to be flogged with a wet rope. But the children’s worst nightmare is being locked in the old hospital morgue all night.

  The day starts at six a.m., when the old bell in the courtyard is rung for prayers, and ends the same way at eight p.m., six days a week. On Sundays the work is less though the time is taken up with church service, Catholic in the morning and Lutheran in the early evening, with compulsory attendance at both. Religion is thought to be the central core of the girls’ assimilation into white society and it is made quite clear to them all that the Lord Jesus is a white man who came to earth to save their dark, black souls. They are taught that life is about good and evil, that there are black thoughts which are wicked and white thoughts that are good. They are told that the black thoughts come from their Aboriginality and the white ones are from the European blood they are fortunate enough to possess. To be black is to be evil and to be white is to be good. They must spend the remainder of their lives combating the blackness within them and nurturing their white purity.

  There is no heating in the dormitories during winter and with only one threadbare blanket per bed the children suffer terribly from the cold. Many can barely walk to the cold showers during winter from the chilblains which so badly affect their feet. All this. is thought to be character-forming and small children are severely punished if they double up their blankets by sharing a bed and hugging each other for warmth. Polly tells her mother how she’d waited one bitterly cold night until there was nobody about and she’d taken Sarah’s blanket and put it over her own, then taken her sister into her bed to keep her warm.

  They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms and had been discovered by the matron in the morning and given a sound flogging. ‘You’re wicked and it’s the Devil part in you, the sinful black part. Go down on your knees at once and ask God for forgiveness!’ She’d made them take all their clothes off and kneel naked in front of her to beg God for forgiveness. After this she’d made Polly hold her still-naked, shivering little sister while the matron flogged her with the wet rope. Then she’d doubled the punishment for Polly,’ whose idea the bed-sharing had been.

  ‘Mama, why is it the Devil part in us? What did we do wrong?’ Polly asks Mary on her next visit. ‘Are black people wicked and don’t know it?’

  Mary clasps both her children to her. ‘You did nothing wrong — blackfella love God the same as the whitefella. You done good keeping Sarah warm, it the right thing to do.’

  ‘No, mama, you’re wrong, it was wicked — all the other kids said what we done was wicked, sharing beds is wicked!’ Polly says tearfully, now totally confused.

  Mary tries to caution her children against believing the things that are said about black people, but Polly will have none of it and Sarah now looks more to her sister than to Mary for the truth in her small, hard life. ‘Mama, they tell us all the time, every day, that we mustn’t go near black people. Black people is dirty, dirty, dirty, they says.’ Polly stops and then asks, ‘Mama, don’t you want us no more?’

  Mary urgently grabs her children and hugs them. ‘Mama wants you both with all me heart, my darlin’. We fighting to get you outa this place and back home with your mama.’

  Polly looks doubtful. ‘They say our people don’t want us, they’re just dirty and don’t want anything to do with us.’

  The tears run down Mary’s dark cheeks. ‘My darlin’, you mustn’t believe them, your mama loves you and Sarah and Dulcie and baby Katie. The black people love their children, it break their hearts to have them took away, stole from them. You know your mama loves you!’ ‘We’re not allowed to say we love our mother! Millie done that and they killed her.’ Then Polly realises what she’s said and her eyes grow big and she brings her little hand up to cover her mouth.

  Mary looks up in alarm. ‘Who killed who, Polly?’ she asks slowly.

  Polly says in the Wiradjuri language, ‘We’re not allowed to tell, I’ll get into trouble. They’ll kill me and Sarah if we say — that’s what the big girls says, to shut our gobs.’

  ‘Who was killed? Who’s this Millie? You must tell Mama, Polly.’

  ‘Millie Carter, from Grong Grong, she was at school there with me. She was took with us when they came.’ ‘Banjo Carter’s little girl? I seen her here once when I visited, she waved to me. I told her dad when I got back that I seen her. They killed Millie?’ Polly nods. ‘They said she had asthma.’ ‘What happened to her? Tell me, Polly, tell your mama,’ Mary says fiercely.

  Polly looks at her sister and then about her, and Mary sees that their eyes are fearful as Polly recounts the story to her mother, keeping her voice down almost to a whisper. ‘Millie shouted when we was standing in line for our dinner, she shouted that her mama loves her. She was at the back of the line where those who are the most black must stand. They get everything last — the whitest first and the blackest last — and so when it come her turn there was nothing left, no tucker. That’s when she said it.’ ‘Said what, Polly?’

  ‘Millie said, “Me mother’s a blackfella and she loves me!” She shouted it out.’ ‘Then what?’

  Little Sarah, who has been listening silently, now volunteers, ‘They said she was very, very wicked, Mama.’

  ‘Yes, and that it’s the Devil’s talk, and a pack of lies and she must be punished,’ Polly continues. ‘They took her and tied her to the bell-post out in the courtyard and they flogged her. We could hear her crying and screaming when we was in the dormitory in bed, but we wasn’t allowed to look out the window. In the morning she WaS still there tied up and they found her dead.’

  Mary holds Polly by the shoulders. ‘Polly, are you sure?’

  The two children nod vehemently, their bottom lips tucked under the top. ‘We looked out the window early, all us kids,’ Polly says. ‘We got up before the bell and they was cutting her down and Mr Phillips was pushing her chest with both his hands. The matron was there and Mrs Roberts, the schoolteacher, too. Then he shakes his head and they took her away by her shoulders and legs, Matron and Mrs Roberts, and Millie’s arm was dragging on the ground.’

  Mary recounts this appalling story to Jessica and Richard Runche when she returns home. They are both deeply shocked but the old barrister clasps Mary’s hand and says, ‘Though a shocking and terrible story, it could be our salvation, my dear. We must attempt to verify it. If we can substantiate the facts, it might well be pivotal to getting your children returned to you.’ ‘How come?’ Jessica asks.

  ‘Well, my dear, if we
can prove that the children are in mortal danger where they are incarcerated, then we have a good chance of proving negligence against the Aborigines’ Protection Board — in effect, against the State itself. We will need to get Moishe onto it right away.’

  The case of Mary Simpson versus the State is finally convened in the district court at Wagga Wagga on Monday, 14 September 1925. The case attracts very little attention as Aboriginal affairs are of no concern to the white population in the cities and country folk, for the most part, don’t have much sympathy for the blacks being kicked off the land or for their dirty, snotty-nosed children being taken away from them. The soldier-settlers have earned their free farms at Gallipoli and Ypres and Paschendale, folk reckon, while the bloody Abos sit on their backsides, breed like flies and draw government rations paid for by the taxes of the hardworking white man.

  The case takes place in front of Justice Tom Blackall, a recent appointment to the circuit court and formerly a barrister in Wollongong, of whom not much is known among the country people.

  He has a very small head, with a sharp, down-turned nose and dark beady eyes. His skin is of a sallow, waxy complexion with a permanent five o’clock shadow despite his cheeks being closely shaved. His wig seems too new and overly brushed and is much too large for his head. He is tall and extremely thin with a hunched back and an angularity that makes his limbs seem more bone than flesh. Gathered up as he is in his black robes, he looks for all the world like Mr Micawber of storybook fame.

  Those who know and care about such things might conclude that a ‘touch of the tar brush’ might well have lurked somewhere in his distant past. This is not seen as a good sign by Richard Runche, who confesses to Moishe that it often makes them more racist, a sort of backhanded compensation for their appearance.

  Moishe shrugs. ‘If I looked the way I do and had a touch of the gentile in me, it wouldn’t make me an anti-Semite.’