The Cherry Picker's Daughter

by Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert

  Yours Sincerely.

  Joyce Hutchings

  (Signed and dated)

  Mummy was such a proud woman, never asking for anything of anybody, but here she is begging the Queen to release her baby brother. In my mind, I can’t write in the letter about what he’s done ’cause I still don’t know. All I know is that it was something bad and he’s in a place for bad people, just like the Welfare puts bad kids in Homes and takes them away from their parents. My father did something bad and they took him away from us kids and his family. You don’t have to understand the reasons for authorities to do what they do to be afraid of them.

  Mummy goes to her room and stays there for a long time. She comes out, eventually, but doesn’t say a word. I’m too scared to ask. She’s not happy but she tells me, ‘One day, your father’s gonna come home; he’s gonna come home to you and Kevin’.

  I get little snippets of information now about my Dad. Not a lot, just a little bit now and again. Sharon, my cousin, sings, ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’ and tells me that the song’s for me. ‘It’s for your father, Uncle Kevin.’ But I know it’s about my mother, too. I can feel it in my heart. Is she supposed to be Mary, hair of gold and lips like cherries? I don’t know. What’s the tall oak tree mean? Are they gonna hang him under some tree? I just get so confused and I wanna scream out loud, Somebody, tell me! I gotta know! The thought doesn’t enter my head that I have a right to know.

  Sharon’s got a beautiful voice; it’s like the words drift in the wind real soulful and sadness is all over her face as she begins to sing. I listen to the words and feel sad deep down inside as well. Still nobody tells me why he’s in jail. I am thirteen years old.

  One day, Mummy says there’s a show gonna be on TV about our father. Aunty June, Mummy’s younger sister, along with a group of white women, are trying to get him out of jail. Lynnie and Paddy aren’t allowed to watch the TV show; only me, Kevin and Mummy. She closes the lounge-room door so the others can’t hear and can’t see.

  We’re watching Aunty June talking on the riverbank. She tells how my father and her and Mummy and all their other brothers and sisters became orphaned—my Dad was only seven. They were living at Three Ways in Leeton when their own parents died.

  Mummy’s crying. Her mother had made her promise that if anything happened to her, she was to take care of the family. She’s sobbing and I don’t know what to do as I sit and feel tears roll down my face.

  Our white Pop is on the show, too. He’s telling them that my father deserves to rot in jail. I see his face, his torment there for all to see, his anger built up for years; his hate for him blazes from the television.

  They zoom the camera into a dark night, a lonely road. My father begins to talk about my mother and why he killed her. Before he says a word, through her tears, Mummy keeps saying over and over again, ‘Don’t you believe what they’re saying! It’s lies—your mother was a good girl’.

  I’m shattered by what my father says next. My father, on television, tells the entire world I am not his child; that my mother was running around on him. I know it’s wrong because I looked so much like him the times we visited him in jail. I feel Mummy’s heart breaking as we hear the shotgun blasts that take my mother’s life away, through the volume of the television.

  My father says he was a Black man in a white man’s court and he had killed a white girl—the worst thing he could do. He says that the courts never took into account the circumstances. I hear none of this, just the words over and over again, she’s not mine. But I look like him! He musta got it wrong; he’s my father.

  I can’t help crying but I’m crying for my family. For Mummy. Not for my mother or my father but for Mummy. Her whole life has been for her family, for her kids, his kids. She would’ve believed that she had let her parents down and her brothers and sisters, too. Now Kevin Gilbert, my father, has told on the TV show about the hidden secret of his own parents’ deaths back at Three Ways.

  It was another taboo subject for the family that nobody talked about it. Our grandfather, a white man, shot our Aboriginal grandmother and then turned the gun on himself—a murder-suicide. My father, Aunty Flora and Aunty June were there when it happened. Aunty June ran to get Mummy and Aunty Doris. Now, it’s out there for the world to see and know—Mummy is devastated.

  I don’t even cry for me and Kevin. We’ve got our life. I haven’t missed out on much. I’ve got Mummy and my family. Mummy, her tears don’t stop, not for one moment. She has to relive the memories of all these deaths again, the hurt and the pain. I cry for us all.

  Mummy says that we’re not to talk to anyone about the TV show. She tells us, again, that our mother was a good girl and that my father was drunk and angry. She says, if people ask, we are to say nothing, just tell them they have to ask her—Mummy. I know nobody would be game to do that.

  The people in Koora do mention the show to us now. They all think Aunty June is Mummy but I tell them, no, that wasn’t her at all.

  And now my brother, Kevin, hates me. He believes our father’s lies; that I’m not his child. He blames me for our mother’s death.

  I can’t understand how my father could say I wasn’t his when I look just like him. Did he hate me when I was a baby because my hair was blonde and not black like his? I look like my brother, too—you can tell we’re brother and sister—so how can he say that? I scream loud inside at both of them, ‘I’ve got black hair now!’

  Big brother, Paddy, knew what was going on. He was always trying to protect me from the other two; if he caught them giving me heaps, he would give them heaps. They didn’t pick on me when he was around. My big brother was my protector all my life. It was strange how Lynnie and Paddy are real brothers and sisters, and Kevin and me are real brothers and sisters but it was always the other way around; Lynnie and Kevin, Paddy and me.

  I search now for other information about the death of my mother. Mummy’s out fruit-picking, doing the tomatoes at Goolagong. I know I can’t ask her for information; I don’t want to make her cry again. Sister Maureen’s the best—she’ll tell us things if we ask but we gotta ask first. I wait for her to come and visit. She still spoils us a real lot; we love Sunny Boy ice blocks so she always buys them for us. I ask her about my mother. She was only ten when it happened, she says. Meryl knows better than her but Maureen tells me what she knows.

  She tells me how the Old Man, Kevin, was a womaniser; he was seeing another woman while he was married to my mother and that’s what started the fight. He was drinking with Daddy and some others, playing cards, and he started fighting with her. So, when the card game ended and it was time to go home, they left in the panel van with me and Kevin. Afterwards, he drove us all back to Mummy.

  35

  Hearing the stories of my mother

  People talk a little bit more now about my real mother and father; just not when Mummy’s around. Maureen’s good about talking to us kids. She lives in Wagga Wagga with her boys and her husband, Sam, is in the army.

  Maureen tells me how, after my mother was killed, we was all living out at Trundal and Daddy was working on the railway. Kevin had to sleep with Maureen because we didn’t have enough beds. Maureen says that, one night, she woke up to our dead mother’s spirit standing over the bed crying.

  Maureen called out to Mummy and she rushed in and found that Kevin was real sick—he was gonna die. Mummy and Daddy raced down to the railway track and got him on the goods train to Condo, to the hospital, just in time. The train comes at midnight every night and it’s the only one. He had pneumonia and a really high temperature. The doctor told Mummy that, if they hadn’t caught that train, he would’ve died. So our dead mother’s spirit saved my brother’s life.

  I listened, wrapped up in this story, soaking in each word, picturing this woman who gave birth to me. I know her a little bit in my mind but not a lot in my heart. I smile, proud that she saved my brother, happy he’s alive because of her. I picture her as Maureen is talking. A beautiful woman in
a pretty white dress with long hair and a hanky held to her face as tears roll down her cheeks; standing over my sick brother, knowing that there is nothing that she can do to save her firstborn.

  Tears well up in my eyes and I gotta take a deep breath. Maureen says that, after it happened, she mainly took care of Kevin and Meryl looked after me; they had to help Mummy, as well. Kevin would cry, asking for his mother and he would talk about all the blood that was around. He was older than me so he remembered things.

  She tells me how, when they were burying my mother, they were gonna bury her as a pauper—that means that the government would pay for her funeral—and that they laid a red rag on her coffin to say my mother died a poor woman with nothing. But Mummy and Daddy came to the funeral and seen the red rag and told them to take it off, that they would pay for her burial. Maureen tells me, ‘They paid two quid a month outta Daddy’s pay—he was a fettler on the railway—until it was paid off ’. She don’t know if my Nanna and Pop, my mother’s parents, or her brothers came to the funeral. She can’t remember.

  As we’re getting older, we hear rumblings from the big ones. We have always been dimly aware of murmurings: the older ones resenting us younger ones; how, if Mummy never took us on, things would have been easier for everyone. How the older ones blame us because they had to go without now and again so that we littlies always had food and clothes on our backs.

  It’s out in the open now. Animosity, hate, the whole lot. Hate from inside our family and hate from my father’s. His documentary gave people permission to make our life a misery; our lives changed forever after that. Again, I hear the whispers about murder and Aboriginals. Some of the people in Koora are still trying to find out for sure if that was Mummy’s brother on the TV. Mrs Friend asked me the other day, again, if that was Mummy sitting on the riverbank. I tell her, ‘No’. She said, ‘It sure looked like her’.

  I know now why Mummy wouldn’t let anybody tell us the truth before. She knew what we was gonna cop, not only from strangers but from the family as well. Life’s a misery sometimes if you don’t know if you belong or not. I know how much I love my family and I know in their hearts they love me, too, but sometimes it’s real hard if they get mean and say things that hurt.

  Sister, Meryl, tells me what she knows about my mother as well. She talks about how my Mum was real kind. One time, Aunty June was having to look after Meryl as well as her own daughter, Cheryl. Aunty June would lock the two of them in the flat in Sydney and go to work and leave them there by themselves. One day, my mother came home and found them there alone so then she changed her work hours so she could take care of them. Everybody says the same thing; how kind and wonderful she was. Even big brother, Johnny, says so.

  Sometimes now, I wonder what it would’ve been like if my real mother hadn’t died, if my Dad hadn’t killed her but my thoughts are fleeting. I don’t really mind being Mummy’s. And those times of wondering only really happen when someone gives me a hard time about not being Mummy’s.

  It’s 1970 and I’m close to fourteen. After we pick the cherries in Orange, we call in and see our grandparents but we don’t stay there by ourselves no more. They want to stay in touch, though. They still don’t talk about my mother but, one day, Nanna gave me my mother’s doll. It’s real old and made of porcelain and got these real old clothes on. I treasure it. Years later, it got broken and I lost it amongst the travels. A big regret.

  36

  Nearly fifteen

  Every year, we go and visit family that live on the Erambie Mission. Mummy has to get permission from the Mission Manager to enter the Mission. He always lets her, though. It’s wonderful visiting. Mummy and Aunty Gwenie sit and have their cups of tea and I sit and listen to them talk or I go and play with the other kids. We got a big family and they live everywhere; not just in Condo and Koora but all over—I’m real proud.

  But Mummy’s worried about dying and I don’t know why. When we’re driving home, she tells me, ‘If anything happens to me, you’ve gotta push me outta the way and stop the car as best you can and get out’. I’m not to worry about her but I gotta make sure I’m safe. I don’t know why she’s telling me this but I say, ‘Yes, Mummy’. Now, I watch her like a hawk when she’s behind the wheel, making sure she’s all right, worrying if anything’s gonna happen to her.

  I’m too scared to ask the others why she’d be worried. It’s like the fear with the Welfare: if I ask, it might come true. I know she had cancer years ago. That’s why she was in hospital those times, why the other kids had to go to the Homes till she got better and why she was sick when we was living in the tents. Biting my lip, I worry.

  There’s a talent quest on at the Koora hall, put on for us young ones around town. Me, Lynnie and Kevin go. We have fun. Me and Loretta and Heather sing ‘Daddy Cool’ and come second. Some boys have taken Lynnie’s shoes and we’re trying to get them back; we’d get in trouble if she came home without them. Mummy has heard the ruckus from the hall; she thinks they were my shoes because she heard me singing out about them. I try to tell her they weren’t, but Lynnie and Kevin say I’m lying. Mummy believes them and I get a hiding with the jug cord; my first-ever hiding, for doing nothing wrong.

  I hate them for getting me in trouble for nothing. I can’t believe that Mummy didn’t believe me. Meryl comes over and asks me why I’m mucking up so bad. I don’t try to explain ’cause I know she wouldn’t believe me, either.

  One day, after picking tomatoes out at Goolagong, I go down to the old, rundown wooden toilet away from the house. I sit and pretend to be going to the toilet while, all the time, I’m having a smoke. Because there’s holes and cracks in the old wood, I wave my hands around trying to blow the smoke away so that, if Mummy’s outside, she can’t see none coming from inside the toilet.

  I finish my smoke and walk back to the house. As I walk in, Mummy says, ‘Come here to me, Miss’. I know instantly I’m in trouble.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Nothing, where?’

  ‘In your pocket.’

  ‘Nothing’s in my pocket.’ I look down and find my cigarette packet sticking halfway out of my jean pocket. I feel myself dying inside; now I know I am in deep trouble. I hold my breath, not knowing what to say, what to do.

  ‘Give them to me,’ Mummy says. I pull them out and pass them to her. I know I’m gonna cop it. I try to reach out as far as I can so she can take them but it doesn’t matter—she clips me under the ear. I hurt, not so much from the physical slap, but because Mummy had caught me doing something wrong. My ear is still ringing when I go into my bedroom crying, shattered. I have been Mummy’s little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes all my life and now things have changed. I lie on my belly, shell-shocked that Mummy found those cigarettes.

  After a while, I get up. My mood has changed. I’m pissed off now ’cause I lost my smokes. How am I gonna get another packet? I spent all my tomato money on them; I won’t get no more till next weekend when we go to the paddocks again.

  I look down at my hands. They’re a mess; look at my nails—too many tell-tale signs of being a fruit picker. I feel myself getting wild with Mummy. If she wasn’t in the kitchen when I walked through, I could’ve got the smokes to my bedroom and hid them. I start doing my nails. I feel better. I start singing one of them country and western songs. I do one hand and the next. I hear Mummy sing out to me.

  I go out of the room happy. I’m over it now, having the shits with Mummy. I’m gonna make her a cup of tea. I grab the teapot and put the tea leaves in, waiting for the jug to boil.

  Lynnie comes in.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Making Mummy a cup of tea.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right! Mummy’s baby, hey.’

  ‘Fuck off, okay.’

  I stand in front of the jug, willing it to hurry up and boil faster before anyone else comes in to give me shit. I was making the tea ’cause I love her, not to get in her good books. It takes more than that, anyway. My mind’s thinking n
ow: will Mummy think I’m making her a cup of tea just to suck up? I add the sugar and the old Sunshine milk. God, I hate that stuff in tea. I take it out to her.

  ‘Mummy, I made you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Thanks, daught.’ All is right with the world.

  Faintly, I hear Kevin sing out to me, ‘Kerry, Heather’s here’. I run out the door. She’s got her denim gear on, too—I love it when we hang around together and dress the same. I get her and me a can of Coke each out of the fridge and we go outside to sit under our favourite tree. Heather tells me they went to town and did shopping, and she ran into the Buckleys—some of the other kids we hang around with—while she was there.

  37

  A fight and a visitor

  We keep picking the fruits during the holidays. Old Great Uncle Paddy comes picking with us this year; it’s wonderful. Mummy loves her family so much. I take a picture of them with their fruit-picking bucket hanging over their shoulders beside the tractor with the crate full of oranges. When we do the oranges, we have to stay over at Leeton and camp, usually in the boss’s quarters. One time, we had a house, a proper house to stay in, and we couldn’t believe it. Not a humpy, not a hut or an old train. A house! Boy, how lucky were we?

  And then, on weekends we used to sell the oranges door-to-door. It was just like when we had to sell the flowers. We hated it ’cause now we were bigger, too, and the kids we went to school with treated us real bad and said rotten things. We tell Mummy and she says to tell them, ‘It’s an honest living’.

  We still go to pick at Matt’s in Orange and Gegg’s in Young each year. It’s easy at Gegg’s ’cause it’s out on the highway at Young and we only have a one-minute bus ride to school. Not like when we are at Koora and then we gotta go for miles. We sell the cherries, too, door-to-door. Gegg and Matt don’t charge us for them. They let us pick the ones leftover on the trees but, boy, that’s hard work ’cause you may only get a handful left on one tree and it could take you twenty trees to fill your bucket.