Black Mirror

by Gail Jones

  In the afternoon they sit together in the shade and drink tea. Lola hands out biscuits and pours from a teapot, her motherly movements deft and precise. She passes Anna and then Griffo a cup of tea, and when she has her own she sits back in her chair, smiling.

  Well? Whadaya know? she politely asks.

  It is a rhetorical question. Griffo touches her forearm and dips a pale biscuit into his drink. In this small communion, and with sunshine through the lattice falling sideways upon then, they are knitted together by patterns of light. Anna can hear the pigeons making their mournful-sounding calls, she can see her father’s grey hair, and the way his face now resembles the leather of rabbit skin, she can see the woman beside him brush tiny crystals of sugar from the table. A dog barks somewhere. There is a slight breeze in the pepper mint. The simplicity of her homecoming almost moves Anna to tears.

  When she is settled in her bed the first night, Lola visits with a jam-jar filled with sprigs of smokebush.

  So you will know that you’re home, she says. So you will know where you are.

  Lola places the floral offering on the wooden floor beside the bed.

  You can smell it, she adds. Like a memory of something, eh?

  Anna smiles and pats her blanket so that Lola sits on the edge of the bed.

  Thank you.

  No problem.

  Well, thank you anyway.

  A relaxed silence settles, a respectful hush. Lola leans over and softly kisses her step-daughter on the forehead.

  Sleep now. It’s late. I’ll cook eggs in the morning.

  And then she rises and walks into the house, switching off the verandah light as she goes.

  Anna is remembering herself as a tiny child. She wore bunny-slippers with a bead clasp and a sky-blue animal-print nightie. Her mother lifted her skyward (fly! fly!) before she tucked her into bed.

  My, what big eyes you have.

  A gentle enfolding. A goodnight kiss.

  The verandah is draughty and Anna curls her body against the wind. For some reason, half-asleep, she chants to herself: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, hold the horse while I get on.

  For some reason, too, she remembers once again seeing trains-as-film — bubble faces, montage, consecutive images-in-a-flash — spooled on the curves of her new imagining, electrified by all that Victoria had shown her.

  About four years earlier Griffo had caught his right arm in the leather belt of mine machinery, and shattered irreparably the bones in his wrist and forearm. His flesh withered and the palm of his hand decreased in size by almost half; there was also some paralysis. No longer able to work underground, Griffo retrained as a ‘numbers man’, a clerk’s aide, in the above-ground mine office. He taught himself to write with his left hand, to shake hands back to front, and to hold a newspaper and shuffle cards single-handed. He re-learnt the world and its activities from the left side of his body.

  I got a walloping, said Griffo, and I needed a breather. But I’m all right now.

  In a modest gesture, he pulled protectively at his brown cardigan with his good left hand, as though afraid he had tempted fate by his satisfaction with life.

  I only think about the accident once in a blue moon. Life’s different now. Lola, the pigeons, the garden.

  Anna and Griffo stared at each other. Without his cloak of dirt, she thought, and with his benevolent Lola, my father is like Lazarus, returned from the grave.

  Give us a hand in the garden, Anna.

  They move outside, together, in concert.

  Pigeons flutter against the wire and sound their welcoming vroo vroo. The garden is a quiet fertile place. Anna helps Griffo break open sticks of gelignite, stolen from the mines, to spread as fertiliser in the soil beneath his blooming orange tree. As a child she expected exploding oranges. Now her father pats at the earth with his good left hand, he smooths the red soil and applies a little water, and tells with his body that there will be no more accidents or explosions. His manner is ceremonious and his pace steady and patient. When the task is finished Anna and Griffo wash their hands in a bucket. The sky rests there, broken by their washing, then reassembled. Everything Anna sees has this quality of precarious coming-together.

  In the back shed, now filled up with new gardening equipment, stands Anna’s childhood bicycle. It looks battered, old and surprisingly small. It leans with her into the angle of continuous past.

  It was not difficult to locate Ruby Morrell. Everyone knew of her. She was almost eighty years old, vigorous, indomitable, a leader of her people, and she spent most of her time at the offices of the Centre for Aboriginal Rights, installed in a bow-shaped wicker chair which framed her head like a halo. She recalled Victoria, not in appearance, but in some distinctive air of authority and command; and when first Anna met her she felt a recurrence of the taut contractions of grief. Told of Victoria’s death, Ruby became silent and inward, but did not weep.

  Long time, she said. It was a long time ago, when she left.

  Ruby had stiff white hair and a dignified expression. She lifted her chin when she spoke, so that she seemed to inhabit a taller and more assertive space.

  So this is Ruby. The sister. The long-lost sister.

  Anna placed the tin that contained Victoria’s ashes into the black woman’s open hands, and Ruby settled back in her wicker chair and told her story:

  Me mum Lily-white, and me, we didn’t vanish like Viccy said, but we left pretty soon after Henry Morrell returned from boarding school. Henry — the debil-debil man, Mum used to call him — had tried to attack me, and for Mum, who was scared shitless, excuse my French, that was the last straw. We headed bush, and stayed in a blackfella camp, the Five-mile, for a coupla months, then moved back to the mission where Mum grew up. I couldn’t stand all the God-bothering and the smirking nuns, but I learnt to read and write, and Mum still knew the old ways, the women’s Law, so she took it all in her stride. It was better away from that house, away from the white-debil-man and his shiny swords.

  We still knew what was going on because Mum and Mrs Murphy met in secret once a week. For some reason they both needed each other’s company. Mrs Murphy liked my mother’s stories about blackfella ways, and she had a few whitefella stories of her own too, I can tell you. Mum made her promise not to tell anyone where we were living, not even our Viccy, when she came back from school. She was that afraid of Henry Morrell. I missed Viccy like anything, but Mum had it in her head that Henry would kill me, or take me away. Under the ground, she used to say. Under the ground and into the mines.

  Of course Viccy was crazy about the Bell brothers, Ernie and Louis, and she had a thing going, as you know, with the elder one, Louis. Good-looking lads they were, and very good sorts. I was sweet on Ernie myself, but after the scarring he wouldn’t have anything to do with women. Broke my heart, your Ernie did.

  Terrible business, that was. Terrible business.

  And Mrs Bell, poor soul, left behind like that.

  (Here Ruby pauses for so long that Anna thinks she may have ended her story. She is moving through a time-stretched inwardness Anna can only guess at.)

  Back when Henry killed Louis Bell we thought he was a goner, that he’d be hung for sure down in Fremantle gaol, and it was pretty shocking, I can tell you, that he got off, scot free. Mum thought this showed that Henry was truly a debil-debil; to the very end of her life she was sick with fear of him. Everyone on the goldfields talked for months about the killing, and poor Mrs Bell, poor soul, she went round the twist a bit after it all happened, and died less than a year after Louis’ murder. They still hadn’t found the body when Mrs Bell died, and that was what got to her, I think, not knowing where he was, just wondering and wondering, every day wondering.

  It’s true that Ernie followed Viccy and Mrs Murphy to the city, but that’s not the half of it. Ernie stole some gold — enough to buy a baby, he said — and a lot of the miners, I think, were in on it with him. There was a great deal of sympathy for Ernie Bell, and everyone for miles around
hated Henry’s guts. Some blokes on the mine helped Ernie smuggle out the gold, and he took off, quick as a flash, still with his bandages on, down south to follow Viccy. When he returned he had a baby boy, your dad Thomas, now Griffo, and he loved that little boy like it was his very own. But anyways the cops were onto him, quick-smart. Ernie ended up serving two years in the local gaol, on a charge of gold-stealing. I reckon it was a short sentence because you just had to look at him, you just had to see his damaged face, what all that acid had taken away, to know how much dear Ernie Bell had suffered. Yours truly took care of the baby boy; I looked after your dad while Ernie was in the clink; that’s why he — and you, for that matter — have my married name, Griffin. When Thomas went back to Ernie he thought it best to keep the new name; that way, he reckoned, he could make up some story about dead parents, or famous relations, or whatever he needed to say. When your dad was a boy he asked me once if we were related, and I said, Of course we are, all Griffins are related — and he seemed to like that, cheered him up, and he used to visit and play with my own band of littlies. He’s like an older brother to my eldest boy Roy; they got along together like a house on fire. Mucking around. Down at the slag dumps. On their bikes like crazy-fellas. Still mates today, him and Roy. You know my Roy, works at the Lake View and Star.

  Anyways, I know what you’re thinking, but that’s not how it went. Viccy’s not your grandma. Mrs Murphy said that Viccy gave birth to a daughter, and a family, a rich family that lived by the river, took her away immediately. Viccy’s dad set it all up, the silver spoon, so to speak, and maybe so that he could keep track of her and someday meet up. His own granddaughter, after all. Ernie was distraught when he realised he couldn’t get Louis’ and Viccy’s baby, so he made what you call discreet inquiries, and paid the gold to someone who worked at the maternity hospital, and who acted as a go-between. Some poor lass, up the duff and with no man to support her, sold her son to Ernie Bell for a lump of gold. It made no difference, in the end, to Ernie Bell. He adored that boy, your father, and gave up work on the mines, a good paying job he had, so he could spend proper time looking after the baby. Bloody adored him, Ernie did. Excuse my French.

  Mr Morrell was pretty put out, as you can imagine, by all that had happened, and after the trial and the baby he sold his share in the Midas mine and pissed off back to Melbourne. Good riddance, we all said. He left Henry in the house, all alone, because no one would have anything to do with him, the bastard. Mrs Murphy came straightaway to live with me and Mum, and she liked living with us, I think, because we were a lively bunch; but she still liked to boss us around from time to time. Bossy-Boots Murphy, Viccy and I used to call her. Hadn’t changed at all. And her and Mum died, believe it or not, in the very same week, so we had a Christian funeral and a native one, and it was pretty damn miserable around here, I can tell you. Two grand old ladies. I miss them both.

  A pause. Now Ruby seems to have become aware of the tin of human ashes she is cradling. She gives it a little shake as if to shake off imminent tears.

  Two grand old ladies …

  You know in those days Native Welfare used to come and steal us light-skinned kids, but my mum always managed to hide and to save me. Coupla times we went bush, way out into the desert, and stayed there, escaping, living on love and bush-tucker.

  Whitefellas always wanta take what’s not theirs, Mum used to say. Whitefellas always wanting things, always wanting more and more.

  I lost Viccy, you see, but I never lost my mother. She hid me, Lily-white did. I never lost my mother because she never lost me.

  All those poor children, stolen away. But me, I was never stolen.

  Anyways, everyone thought — Ruby changes the subject — that Henry Morrell would eventually leave, but he stayed on in the house. Some kind of riding accident, people said, put him in a wheel-chair, and he stayed on inside, getting crazier and crazier, shouting at people from behind his wall. Henry’s dad paid a fortune to have nurses come and look after him; they had their work cut out for them, I can tell you, and earned every bloody cent. He was a complete loony by the end and a real handful.

  What I remember most clearly is Ernie Bell, when he first returned with the brand-new baby. Before the cops got onto him he shared that early time, and it brought tears to your eyes to see how tender he was, and how loving and devoted. Adored that boy. I’ll never forget how he held the baby up and kissed it on the tummy, and oohed and aahed and made a fuss like any new mother. I was still in love with Ernie then, and he broke my heart. He had eyes, as they say, only for baby Thomas. Still, I met my Harry Griffin, so it was happy-ever-after. For a while there, anyways. Before the gut-rot took him.

  Ernie and me got together in his last few years. When you left for boarding school, you know, he was very lonely. Missed you like crazy, he did. Talked about you all the time. Called you a smarty-pants and egg-head, but he was very very proud of that scholarship you got, and said you’d make something of yourself, and return to the goldfields some day, as a doctor maybe, or a teacher. We used to hold hands on my verandah, and share a bottle of home brew, and yarn for hours and hours about what happened in the olden days. Good yarner, was Ernie. Good listener, too. A real gentleman, your grandad.

  Ruby lapsed again into private silence.

  Me mum, Lily-white, she was the one. She knew all the stories. Mum knew everything.

  Ruby proffered a photograph. In it she stood holding hands with her mother Lily-white in front of a building Anna did not recognise. Both women faced the camera, resembling each other, except that Lily-white bore the shadow of her absent eye.

  Nice. You look like sisters, Anna said clumsily.

  There was a bloke once, too. Before I was born Mum lived with an Afghan, a cameleteer, a bloke named Ali. They lived somewhere up near Ora Banda way — true love, I reckon, from the way she spoke of him. Mum said he wore a red silk turban and had skin like a blackfella. Prayed. Spoke quietly. Decent sort of bloke. Ali got stabbed in a brawl trying to help out a mate. Just one of those things, I suppose. Sad. In the old days. Like poor Louis Bell. Like Rose. Like Rose Morrell.

  Me mum, she knew everything, Ruby repeated. Like she could see inside you. Like you had a special window set into your body …

  Ruby embraced Anna when she stood to leave.

  Did Viccy ever talk about me an Mum?

  All the time, said Anna. All the time.

  In the night Anna woke after only two hours sleep. What had she been dreaming?

  It was a dream scenario in which Lily-white and Winston coexisted, as partners, perhaps, or as brother and sister. In the image fragment that remained, they were holding hands together, on a shady verandah. Lily-white was young and lovely, her two eyes preserved, and Winston was naked to the waist, as though he had just bathed or finished labouring work. Anna found this fragment completely opaque.

  She lay in the darkness, remembering.

  Victoria had told her once that Lily-white’s totem creature was the blue-tongued lizard. She was not sure what this meant, except that Lily-white would never eat them and was careful not to harm them. She told of an occasion when they came across one in a laneway. It raised itself up, opened its mouth wide, and exposed its broad indigo throat and its dragonish face, and Lily-white had clasped it carefully behind the neck, and then gently, very gently, moved it to safety under a bush. She knew things, Victoria said. Lily-white knew everything.

  Winston said once that his nickname was Makandal. His mother’s family was from Haiti, and Makandal was a legendary Haitian leader who waged war against French planters in the late eighteenth century. In local stories Makandal would miraculously escape from his enemies by transforming himself into a bird, or a lizard, or fire, or a wolf.

  H’m, my lil one, my Makandal, his mother used to say. Someday gwan fly. Someday gwan burn.

  I didn’t know him, thinks Anna. I didn’t know Winston at all.

  There is a humility and wisdom to her revelation. She has given him back to his f
amily. She has returned him to Jamaica. She faces the night without imagining loss and deficiency.

  Well? Whadaya know?

  It was their last evening together and Anna was having dinner with Griffo and Lola. Over crumbed cutlets and white beans, and aware of the indelicacy of her task and the embarrassment she would cause him, she told her stunned father the story of his life. An inarticulate man, he was now almost speechless. He moved the food about on his plate with deep solemnity. His damaged right arm hung at his side. For a few moments Anna thought her father would weep: his chin twitched and his lip trembled and he could not meet her gaze.

  Well, he said at last. I knew about that Henry Morrell business, killing Louis, an’ all that. But for the rest of it … well … for crying out loud …

  Ernie had maintained, all his life, that Griffo was the child of a young couple, Nellie and Theodore Griffin, killed in a car accident. He had supplied descriptions and heroic and detailed biographies.

  There’s a photo, Griffo said, of Ernie and me together. He’s holding me up and he looks just like a dad with his kiddie. I really should’ve known that he was my dad. I should’ve realised then.

  Poor Ernie, added Griffo. Poor Uncle Ernie.

  Lola attempted to revive the dinner spirit with tiramisu. She kissed Griffo lightly on the cheek as she placed her triumphant home-cookery before him on the table.

  Eat, she commanded. Both of you now. Eat.

  Later that evening Griffo pressed an address into Anna’s palm.

  Your mum wrote to me, he said. After all these years. She’s been searching for you. I wrote back saying that you were off in the Old Country for a spell. Look her up, Anna. She’d like to hear from you.

  Anna caught sight of herself, at a distance, in the speckled mirror hanging on the wall behind her father’s head. Under the dim light she was surprised to see herself appearing — so manifestly — a woman enveloped and contained by grief. She looked older and ragged, and the quality of sorrow that had rested incipient in her features was now evident and exaggerated. She wondered if she should have left Ernie’s story undivulged.