The Crocodile Hotel

by Julie Janson

  Aaron yelled, ‘Look, the kids are here!’

  She went to the door. ‘Come on in and say hello.’ The Lanniwah children crowded in. Jane smiled and asked their names. Shirley was fifteen with dark, thick lashes. She stood out from the others with her gold skin, curly blond hair, and a confidence that glowed. Her shyness seemed to be copied from the other girls. The boldness in her stance was magnetic and she obviously had a white father. She held a heavy old book with a gold embossed cover. Jane read the title: Arabian Nights. The girls pored over the plastic covers with their intricate silver decorations of Aladdin. Shirley turned the pages of another book – Sand and Sea by Norman Lewis, the pages worn with looking.

  ‘Did you bring these lovely books to show me?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Yeeai, my daddy book from Borroloola library.’ Shirley said.

  ‘We can read them later.’

  ‘We go school one year; dey not readem yet, I can read.’ She was a bright teenager, desperate to learn.

  ‘You teachem me read more words, Missus. I love it. My daddy teachem me.’

  Lizzy with her huge brown eyes and crown of spun gold, was another young beauty, tall and curvaceous, always smiling. These children gave out a magnetic energy and love.. She cooed: ‘We love dis school.’

  ‘Do we have a school cook or cleaner?’ asked Jane. David moved to the window and called out in Lanniwah language. A middle-aged woman walked into the schoolroom.

  ‘This one, she works at school too. She Margie. Her daughter Mayda, she oldest girl in school, she eighteen, marry soon.’

  Jane smiled and shook Margie’s hand; she might like to have a Lanniwah woman friend. Margie held her head low. She was tall and thin, her face round like a brown moon; her eyes stared at the ground. Jane was too talkative. ‘Lovely to have such great staff. We will make it a wonderful school’, she babbled as silence and uncomfortable shyness sat in the humid air.

  David helped Jane unpack boxes of textbooks and sharpen pencils, and they put up alphabet charts and multiplication sheets. Children clustered around a Women’s Weekly magazine; they touched the picture of roast lamb with a dessert of apple crumble garnished with whipped cream and strawberries. They mimed eating it. They licked their lips and put the picture on the wall. It was a beautiful classroom. She looked with pride at ‘her’ school. This Aboriginal school.

  ‘Later, you might be come up the camp and meet the headman. He Old Pelican.’ David’s eyes never met Jane’s as he stood awkwardly by a plastic chair and creased his hat.

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘I go to Batchelor College near Darwin; getting my certificate soon.’

  ‘Wonderful’, said Jane.

  ‘None of these kids can read or write, not even eighteen-year-old ones.’

  Jane was not expecting this kind of revelation; her training had been for high school English.

  ‘We can make big books of stories. They can read if we practice enough.’ He smiled and kept unpacking resources. David’s shyness kept him quietly working in the background at school. She watched how the children adored and respected him. He was a fine Aboriginal Teaching Assistant: his own reading and writing skills were outstanding.

  Jane cut oranges into quarters, while David arranged the orange segments on plastic plates. Children appeared in a great mob, giggling and pushing around the school table. David pulled eighteen-year-old Ricky forward and put him in charge of organising the children. The boy was a leader; his dark skin was dusty and he had shining white teeth.

  ‘Ok, line up. When you bin get your fruit, tell Missus Reynolds your name so she can write ’em down’, said Ricky.

  David gently pushed the smaller children, barefoot and in ragged but clean tee-shirts, into a long line. Four-year-olds squirmed and pushed, queuing with hungry eyes for their little piece of orange, their eyes big as they stared at the fruit.

  ‘They don’t get fruit, except wild plum. They love you for dis fruit’, said David.

  Shirley, with her little cousin clinging to her side, edged slowly up the line. She had never tasted an orange and she watched the boys who already had theirs mince the skin. Fifty pairs of eyes watched every piece. What if it was all gone? Jane knew what that felt like, to feel hungry. She took her piece and saw that there was almost none left. Shirley looked behind her at the two remaining children.

  ‘Here, Veronica, eatem up.’ She gave her piece away and Aaron took his piece from his mouth and handed it to the last child.

  ‘I’m sorry kids. I haven’t any more.’ Ricky nodded.

  ‘No worry bout that; we eatem stew for lunch maybe?’

  ‘Yes, plenty of stew.’

  The women appeared around lunch time with their hungry toddlers, pushing them gently towards the line of children with their plastic bowls. Hungry eyes. The salted beef hung green from a meat hook at the school camp kitchen. It looked grey and greasy, but Margie made a good dinner with damper for the children’s lunch. She added packets of dried vegetables, curry powder and lots of salt. It was beef called ‘killer’.

  ‘Back at camp, not much tucker’, said David.

  Lizzy put her arms around Jane’s shoulders. She whispered, ‘David, he likem you Missus – you not lonely nomore; and Robert like Shirley.’ Shirley punched Lizzy.

  ‘Don’t you talk about it – you bad, Lizzy! Shame’.

  Jane laughed and kept on working but she was strangely elated. Later, David stood at the school door, but he waited for her to pass and go out first before he lifted down a box of sport equipment. He had manners and as she passed by, she felt the heat from his body, an intake of breath, a sweet exchange of essence. A pulse of attraction so light, barely there but irresistible in her imagination. She let out an inaudible sigh.

  Margie was assertive and magnificent and had a smiling face but muttered angrily when Jane attempted to show her how to clean the school equipment and floors. The toilet was overflowing and appalling. Jane guessed that the whole clan used the school toilets. She had made a cartoon poster with all the jobs drawn in hilarious detail. Margie crumpled the drawing in disgust.

  ‘You whitefella alla time bossy.’

  Jane sighed, she would clean after the cleaner went home. She asked herself when would colonialism recede? It was embedded in her fairer skin. Incarnate. Her skin would have to be flayed from her flesh, and then she would be the same as them underneath.

  At home, a beige turd sat in the caravan toilet, unflushable. Margie had left another calling card. The children nibbled gypsum all day to ease hunger pains, but it bound up their stomachs and made white hard shit.

  School days were full. Jane established a routine of alphabet singing, numbers, counting and pre-reading and writing, and David sat patiently with the older boys as they learnt to hold pencils and trace their names. There was something strange about Lanniwah children – they were quiet, they listened in class and it was unbelievable.

  The children told Jane stories about their lives, how they hunted goanna or wallaby and stories about their grandparents’ time. She had an idea to teach reading and writing by making big books with the children’s pictures. She would ask them to tell their story then she would write it down for them and help them learn to read it by rote.

  After several days of practice, the children could stand in front of the class and ‘read’ their story. They showed enormous pride. Soon they could form the letters and copy out their stories. They were writing and publishing their own histories. The big books were the most cared for of all the books and children clustered around the books pointing out their own story.

  One day, Shirley walked into the school with Raymond and his friend, Burnie. This old man was well dressed in cowboy shirt and jeans, his face was full of kindness; he touched all the books reverently, then he smiled at Jane, his eyes on hers. The children nudged each other, this man was important. The girls were whispering.

  ‘He your new daddy, Miss Jane.’

  Raymond was a white man who had ‘gone
native’, ‘living combo’; his home was a shed in clear view from Jane’s caravan. He was old and softly spoken, his arm was tattooed with one winding blue mermaid. He had a pile of old books in his home that were oddly marked ‘From the Carnegie collection in the USA’. Jane sat with him and Burnie on his old metal bed-frame outside his shed.

  ‘I come from Queensland but got done for cattle duffing. It was a mistake, just a few cleanskins from Brunswick Downs. Black Angus … nice beasts’, he said.

  Jane saw that Burnie was measuring her character; she was shy with him staring, he seemed to know her already in an unfathomable way. It was like a new world opening for her, this acceptance, it was exhilarating. He kept nodding at her and laughing quietly, then he drew a picture while the others talked. Jane watched an amazing bright flat landscape emerge from the coloured pencils: it was laden with figures of men on horseback and they had guns. He was an extraordinary artist. She leant down to admire it and he tried to push the paper away, he seemed embarrassed. Burnie’s head slumped forward. Then he pointed to a hill in the scene; he watched her, then drew a group of black people running away. White men with whips drawn against yellow earth. He pushed the picture towards her. He watched her take it in. She didn’t know what to think, to feel.

  ‘You keepem dis picture yerself yeeai? Dat special place, one day, you seeum.’

  The mysterious picture was placed carefully in a drawer, she closed it and turned back to Raymond. Later, Jane would look at it, try to make sense of it.

  ‘I was in the lock-up so much at Borroloola that I read through their library. I like a book with meat in it, like Plutarch, Herodotus, Emerson, and Karl Marx.’

  ‘Are you married to Gertie?’ she said.

  ‘Yeeai, it was the convention that whitefellas could have intercourse with native women but not marry them. Well bugger that, sorry. We got married in a church. You know about this country? That East Africa Cold Storage Company killed thousands of Aborigines to set up for cattle. Those overlanders, front line troops in an undeclared war. But I never hurt anyone. Did I, Burnie?’

  ‘Good whitefella, Ray, not hurtem any fella.’

  ‘Burnie, he’s an important old man, he will take care of you, any problem you can ask him.’

  ‘I’ll give Shirley some ice cream for you’, she said. Ray nodded a toothless grin.

  ‘Boss gives her plenty of extra tucker, she’s his pet.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I like metho better, White Lady. We ran out of Bollinger, eh Burnie. No, you’re all right.’

  ‘No good Ray, you gibbit up’, said Burnie.

  ‘Jokin’. You know, if anything happened to that little girl I’d neck meself.’

  In the late afternoon, the sun was setting and red sparkles bled onto the billabong, Jabirus flew off into the sky. Jane needed companionship: she would be brave. She walked the hundred metres to the camp. Leroy came up to Aaron: he was his best mate; he was eight and wild and cheeky.

  ‘You play wid me, come play near my house’, said Leroy. Aaron rushed off.

  The heat was unbearable; Jane walked boldly to the edge of the Lanniwah camp and stood still. Some people were afraid of the Boss; she should go away, but she saw David watching her. He seemed amused at her confusion; he beckoned and guided her around the camp. It was spare. Tin shacks and humpies made of corrugated iron and canvas, cardboard, paper-bark, flattened kerosene tins – anything to shelter from the rain and sun. Dilly bags hung from tree poles and mangy camp dogs slept everywhere. Sunshine powdered milk tins were the billycans. Jane saw small fires burning and women squatted before them cooking dampers.

  ‘Children hungry; sometime they get tucker like beef, or might be camp pie.’ David sighed.

  They walked past Raymond’s corrugated iron shed. Shirley and Mayda sidled up to Jane and leant against her shoulder. Mayda had flowers tucked behind her ears; her skin shone like cocoa butter; she had a full woman’s figure. She whispered to Jane:

  ‘You likem Lanniwah place?’

  ‘Yes, it’s your home, your wonderful country’, said Jane.

  ‘You missem that Sydney? You miss your mummy?’

  ‘No, we live here now.’

  ‘Lotta handsome fella in Sydney? Dey like Lanniwah womans?’ Mayda said.

  David motioned to her to be quiet, pursed his lips to indicate that she should move away.

  ‘Maybe, but you just study school now, okay?’ said Jane.

  ‘You leave teacher look around.’ David walked ahead.

  ‘We got promise husband; all Lanniwah got dat. We not free, I not need readem.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I eighteen. I married soon. I run away before dat.’

  ‘Just come to school; you can help me,’ said Jane.

  ‘Burnie adopt you for him daughter now. You Lanniwah. Find your skin and family. Burnie mob now, eh?’

  ‘Okay, for Aaron too?’

  ‘Yeeai’, Mayda said.

  ‘You got mothers, fathers, daughters, you aunty for me.’

  Shirley squeezed her arm and ran off. Jane caught up with David and they strolled past a group of women her age who were making bread, but the Lanniwah women looked suspicious of the new teacher. She was too young. Their eyes never met hers. They turned away and laughed when she and David walked past. Whispering followed their walk.

  Someone yelled out:

  ‘Teacher got new blackfella boyfriend!’

  David picked up a rock and threw it in the direction of the voice. The women laughed and scattered, but Jane had seen enough and she headed back to her caravan. Her face was hot and red with humiliation, her anxiety rose and she shut the door, she would read a book: there was nothing else to do, she would face her hated solitude.

  Jane and Aaron now had a special place in the Lanniwah society but had to learn how to fit into Lanniwah life: being part of a family and clan would have consequences and obligations.

  One afternoon after school lunch, Shirley, Mayda and Ricky walked with Jane near the Boss’s house. Hubert sat on his veranda smoking and idly set the red heeler dogs on the children: they ran, leaving Jane to fight off the dogs with a stick. She kicked one until it whimpered. It felt good.

  ‘Thanks for calling the dogs off, Boss!’

  ‘No worries, Mrs Reynolds … My spies tell me that you’ve been up at the camp!’

  ‘I need to meet parents.’

  ‘They can go to the school. I make the law around here!’

  ‘Sorry, I have to do my job too. Why don’t you chain up those dogs? Have you trained them to bite only Lanniwah kids?’

  Hubert laughed.

  ‘And tell that girl Shirley to cover up. She walks around with her little titties stickin out.’

  Jane was horrified that this boofhead of a man would be spying on the girls; it was sinister. She leaned over the fence to talk to Edie.

  Edie was digging in her beloved geranium garden, all red, pink and orange. She looked up and wiped her face as she pushed the trowel into the earth.

  ‘Look at my reds this year; they’re good enough to win a prize at the Katherine show. I’ve even got lemon scented. They were first prize-winners last year. I can bring you some.’

  ‘Lovely geraniums’, said Jane.

  The children clambered over a broken tractor to look at its new graffiti. Lizzy called out: ‘Robert. You bin writin with Texta on the old tractor, “Shirley you sixy gril”. It not spelt right. David say you can’t spell, Robert! You tryin’ to git love from a promise-girl! She promise to an old man. You git a flogging.’

  Jane saw Lanniwah women walk past with lowered eyes. She squirmed. She played with the children and ran after little ones as they squealed with joy but longed for female intimacy. So she wrote a long letter to her Sydney friends. She was getting depressed.

  One day, Jane noticed an old lady from the camp smiling at her. Jane walked to her fire and sat in silence and added the wood that she had collected with Aaron. Old Lucy was wizened, her g
rey hair hung down her back in a dirty pink ribbon. She took Jane’s hand and rubbed it against her cheek. Sublime. She gave Jane a gift of a crocodile egg; it was pale greenish white and pulsated, an embryonic reptile inside. Old Lucy’s home was a cardboard box house with five mangy dogs and she beckoned with tiny black claws, glaucoma eyes smiling, her dilly bag hung up out of the dogs’ reach, a fish head on a tin plate. Jane followed and Lucy took Aaron onto her lap. He squirmed with uncertainty as she crooned in Lanniwah language and tickled him. He looked a bit scared but Jane stroked him and soon he was at home in the old woman’s arms.

  Jane sat quietly; she watched the changing light and children playing. She knew that too much talk was not right, remembering that white people never stopped talking and asking questions, wanting something. Jane wanted to learn to slow down and watch birds fly past, or ants crawl; she too could settle into the culture and be happy.

  CHAPTER 4

  Old Ladies and Uncles

  Old Lucy and Beatrice shared a camp and Jane watched tobacco from a tin rubbed in old dark hands. This was like Jane’s dad, who would roll Champion Fine Cut tobacco in his calloused hands with a cigarette paper stuck to his lip. She had watched him cup his hands around the smoke; she learnt about life at his knee as he squatted with the men, Jane’s Koori uncles, on wooden fruit boxes, drinking KB beer from big brown bottles.

  When they visited Taree, Uncle Bill would take the kids to the Red Rose Café in town for lime spiders, soda drinks with ice cream, and they sat up with their best manners.

  ‘Nice table manners, kids. Act white. Act white’, he’d say. They sucked down the drinks with pleasure.

  ‘I’m going to go to university’, said Jane.

  ‘Oh yeah! I got a government scholarship to a Boys’ Home, worked all day, no flaming shoes, bringin in the cows, freezing, whipped with a stock whip, but you kids can go to school and learn’, said Uncle Bill.

  Jane noticed that the café manager wiped down the plastic seats with Pine-O-Clean disinfectant as they left.

  Uncle Bill’s canvas tent by the railway line leaked; it was grey with mildew. The fettler camp was alive with the smell of burnt rubber and glue used to remake the soles of their boots. Her uncles sat with their harmonicas by a fire. There was a white cockatoo in a cage. The past floated alongside of you – it never left.