Snake Circle

  I had been disturbed then to realise that the sort of behaviour I was used to, and the support I would normally have been able to rely on in a situation like this in Australia, was not available to me in Cambridge. Another mother in Australia, I felt, would have merely said to my daughter, ‘Well, it’s a shame perhaps, but you’ve got to do as your mother tells you, dear.’ Certainly I had never before had the experience of a mother ringing to challenge my authority over my own child.

  Pat’s offer was, therefore, very attractive, and with Russel living only a short distance away, I felt Naomi would be alright there for nine months. Finding a safe place for her to stay in Australia would free me to immerse myself in the books and take as many courses as I was able in order to shorten the time I would have to spend away to complete my doctorate.

  Reasoning that I would not need to be in Cambridge for the full Orientation Week, I continued to work until the last moment at the Health Commission. I wanted to amass as much money as I could, because I was sure that, as a family, we were going to need it.

  Russel was acquiescent but obviously not happy with my plans to leave him alone for yet another year. I overheard him telling one of his friends on the phone, ‘Mum’s going off again to America.’ From his tone of voice I suddenly realised that he had no concept of what it was I was doing there, how I was spending my time. He imagined me to be having a wonderful time from which he was being excluded. Naomi’s version of her months away was not about study and books, but about the games and events Chet had taken her to, places she had seen, things she had done, and, of course, Disneyland. No wonder he was feeling a bit left out of it all.

  As well, I would miss his next birthday, his very important twenty-first, so as soon as I had enough money set aside, I bought him a return ticket to Boston to use during his own university holidays in December. This shifted his focus, gave him something to wonder and smile about again. He began to ask about Boston, the long plane journey, stopovers, and everything else to do with undertaking a trip of this nature.

  When I went to pick up the parcel of things Joe Croft had put aside for me, I found in it boomerangs, posters, small cultural gifts and a whole heap of other valuable stuff. Gary Foley, employed as Director of the Aboriginal Arts Section of the Australia Council, had also given me some posters and other items. With this collection I realised I would be able to organise a display in Boston about Black Australia to draw attention to my community’s situation.

  Martha Ansara had given me a print of the film she had made with Essey Coffee, My Survival as An Aborigine. Essey told me I should leave it over there permanently so that the vital information it contained could be made available to anyone who wished to see it.

  Joe also had a small brown-paper packet waiting for me in which, he said, there was a special item, something similar to a bullroarer. My friend, Beverly, was to whirl it in the presence of her husband, and this would be sure to solve her infertility problem. I was not to be within earshot of it, he continued, unless I too was hoping to hear the patter of little feet. I did not share with him the unlikeliness of this happening. I had had the keyhole surgery of tubal ligation some years before, when I’d been advised that these procedures were reversible. It was a cautionary measure against ever again being subjected to conception through rape.

  To apply for another student visa I had to supply a form from Harvard which had been posted to me. In desperation when it failed to arrive, I rang the Dean, Paul Ylvasakir. I was sure that the form must have been sent by sea mail. Now it was too late to send another, even by airmail, and have it arrive in time for me to leave at the appointed hour. Paul came up with a solution—he would have someone take a new form to the airport and send it over by pilot’s pouch. I only later realised what an expensive exercise this was, for just one sheet of paper.

  The form arrived, delivered right to my door, and I rushed into the US Consul’s office. My friend from the previous year, Ken Shivers, immediately came out to greet me. My visa would be ready next day. Even though things were still hectic, they were certainly going a bit more smoothly than they had the year before. Why, I still had three days to spare. I was therefore surprised to receive a phone call the next morning requesting me to come immediately to the US Consul’s office.

  I was again shepherded into the interview room. ‘Did anyone come to see you while you were in Boston?’ asked Ken, a little tight-lipped.

  ‘Anyone like who?’

  ‘You know who I’m talking about.’

  ‘Oh, you mean those guys in the trench coats with their hats pulled over their faces? No. They didn’t come. No one did. And when I went to extend my visa, and pulled my papers out of a Harvard envelope, I had no trouble with the Immigration Office there either’

  ‘Well,’ he said, more to himself than to me, ‘I wish they would fix up their end of the business instead of leaving everything to me.’

  ‘The answers, in case you have to ask me your questions again, are still no. I am not now, and have never been . . .’ I said jokingly, at which point he gave a small laugh.

  ‘Okay, by tomorrow, I promise. And I’ll give you a multiple entry visa, though you’ll still have to bring your student forms in before you can travel.’

  He was as good as his word, even giving me a familiar pat on the shoulder as I was leaving. He had been delighted when he’d learned that I was going back to do the doctorate.

  I added his name to the list of people to be invited to MumShirl’s book launch.

  Too soon, then, it was time to go. This time, however, I had a fairly good idea of what I was letting myself in for, and my resolution was to get stuck in and finish my studies in the shortest time I could possibly manage.

  10

  As busy as I’d been before I left Australia, I had forgotten to let any of my friends know my arrival information. So after a flight taking almost twenty-four hours, there was no one to meet me. I gathered my suitcases, lead-heavy with all the cultural items I was carrying and, hauling them onto a trolley, headed for a phone.

  Fortunately, my first call was answered. It was Sunday morning, Beverly and Robert had been invited to a barbecue that afternoon. Jubilant at my arrival, Beverly said, ‘Jump in a cab, come on over. You can have a rest, then we’ll all go on to the barbecue.’

  Even before my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light. When I woke, it was dark. I saw a light in the stairwell which told me someone was still up, so I stumbled down the stairs and looked at the clock. Good heavens—the barbecue was well and truly over. Beverly heated me a plate of soup, then I staggered back upstairs and woke again about ten o’clock Monday morning. I realised I had slept through twenty-four hours.

  All the rooms at my first choice for Harvard graduate accommodation, the Cronkhite Graduate Centre, had gone. But staff at the housing office said they could place me somewhere on campus, since I was alone, since I was a doctoral student. I was allocated a dormitory room in Child Hall, far across campus from the Education School. I knew I would regret taking it once winter arrived and I had to plough through knee-deep snow across the Yard, but beggars can’t be choosers. We were permitted to paint our rooms, even given rollers and regulation paint to allow us to do so, and I did.

  That evening I returned to Beverly’s and, finding both her and her husband at home, I drew out the little parcel that Joe Croft had given me for them. Beverly was delighted with the gift, but even more so when I told her its purpose. She was, of course, sceptical, but with enormous gusto threw herself into whirling it, then made Robert have a turn, before she took it up again. The deep mystical drone filled and warmed their house. Later, they delivered me and my suitcases to Child Hall.

  Dick Katz was immediately pleased to see me. Would I be a teaching fellow for his class this semester? he asked. I had made up my mind to do my doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor Courtney Cazden, in the department of Teaching, Curriculum and Learning Environments, or ‘TCLE: pronounced Tickle’, as it was affe
ctionately called. Although I desperately needed the money the position paid, I felt I should concentrate on getting courses under my belt to count towards my degree. ‘Perhaps next year,’ I suggested. I was surprised then when he asked me if I would at least give a lecture to his whole class in the hall during this academic year, and I readily agreed.

  The new batch of Master’s students included a wonderful Black American woman, Donna Reed. Donna was Boston, born and bred. A single mother of an early adolescent daughter, Donna lived in an old apartment building in Dorchester. There is a bus which runs from Harvard Square, through Central Square, over the Charles River, and straight past one side of the Boston city centre, which I had taken occasionally. If I stayed on that bus, Donna told me, I would find it ran about the same distance again, and I’d be deep in the Black area of the town. I did so, in her company, and against the advice of some of the local students, and found myself in an area not too unlike Redfern, with its shuttered doors and derelict buildings. Donna and I often laughed that the distance between Dorchester and Harvard was about the same as the distance between the Black community in Australia and Harvard.

  Donna’s story was unique. She had gone to a ghetto school, where she’d become infatuated with some young man who was not a student but who had encouraged her to stay at school and to learn Spanish. She’d been depressed when, on her graduation from high school, with Spanish one of her best subjects, the man had made his intentions clear. He wanted her as a runner for a drug syndicate with which he was involved. His outfit could now advance because, with her language skills, she could go direct to the dealers in South America and they could cut out the middle man.

  Donna, instead, went on to college, taking preschool education. After that she had set up her own small child-minding facility in her apartment where she looked after and taught the children of mothers in the ghetto who needed to get out and work.

  Recently, however, the US Government had brought in new regulations, which required even people who ran small childcare operations such as hers to have a Master’s degree, so she was forced to close down. The work had been a labour of love for her rather than a lucrative operation, and Donna went onto welfare.

  The previous year, the government had also created a plan to get women off welfare by offering to pay school fees to enable them to better themselves. Armed with this information, Donna, quick as a flash, first got herself admitted to Harvard and then went to the welfare office and demanded they pay her fees. The women she dealt with at the welfare office were aghast at her audacity, not having such high credentials themselves, but there was nothing they could do to stop her. Donna had identified a loophole and exploited it, but it was quickly closed. The likelihood of another welfare mother from Dorchester going to Harvard completely disappeared.

  Donna pointed out the irony of her studying at Harvard. ‘I used to crawl around the floor doing finger-painting with all those little Black kids, and show them how to tie their shoelaces and do up their buttons. I have to get a Harvard degree now, so I can go back on the floor and do finger-painting.’

  Donna became my close companion, although how she ever managed to organise herself remained a mystery to me. Her fees were covered, but her welfare cheques did not go far, and she was forever trying to get bus drivers to accept food stamps for her fare because she had no money with which to get to school. On occasions when she arrived for classes flushed and hyper, I knew she had come on the train and then, small roly-poly person that she was, somehow climbed over a high fence to avoid going through the turnstiles because she had no ticket.

  Donna’s life had been quite frightening. She, too, received no support from the father of her child and fended for herself in the tough neighbourhood in which she lived. After some classes, when she was ‘flush’ as she called it, we would go to a nearby eatery where she loved to have an Idaho potato. Although a short little woman with a definite tendency to be overweight, Donna was a keen dancer and performer, and well connected in the local theatrical scene. Despite all her hardships, she had a quick wit and a keen sense of humour, which made it a delight to spend time in her company.

  Donna shared with me her troubles, of which there were, and had been, many. The previous year, she had been a victim of rape and, perhaps because I was a sympathetic listener, felt sufficiently comfortable to talk with me about it.

  At the time, she said, she and her daughter lived in a first-floor apartment in a building adjoining a row of shops, almost opposite a subway station. One night a man entered her bedroom window, armed with a large knife, jumping over from the awning of the store next door. Donna had been in bed reading, her daughter asleep in the next room.

  In response to my quizzical expression, Donna continued: ‘I said, “Oh, do come on in, honey. What would you like me to do for you?’”

  ‘What!’ I burst out, shocked and dumbfounded.

  ‘I had my twelve-year-old child in the room next door. What do you think I should have done, scream? That would’ve only woken her up—no one else would have come. I didn’t want him to know she was even there—or we might both have been raped and killed.’

  ‘Okay’ I said, feeling very chastened. ‘Did you call the police when he had gone?’

  ‘He finished what he’d come to do, and was threatening to kill me if I told anyone, so as he was going back out the window, I said, “You come again, honey, anytime you want, hear me?” I knew he would just go over to the subway station for a while, lounge around, and wait. So, I call the police, they come, take a report, then go. Then he comes back and kills both of us so we can’t give evidence against him.’

  I was shocked by her low-key narration of this incident, which I found particularly chilling and appalling. ‘So, did you do anything?’ I asked, wondering how she coped with this life.

  ‘Sure did,’ she said brightly. ‘I moved. I moved out the very next day, went to stay with my sister for two days, then got myself a new place. It’s much safer where I am now, ain’t nobody can get in.’

  Donna took me once, when she had her rusted old car running briefly, on a tour of some of the nightclubs in her area. She wouldn’t allow me to go into the toilets alone, in case anyone was in there shooting up. She said she was ashamed of ‘her people’. At one club we saw all these ‘pretty Black men’, as she liked to call them, with their hair straightened and slicked down, dressed to the hilt in their finery. She pointed out an internationally famous boxer, whose name I have forgotten, but who was wearing ‘fine threads’ and a wide-brimmed hat as he stood breasting the bar. We made our way to a table to sit down and have a drink.

  Soon, the wide front door opened and two policemen walked in, replete with big side-arms on their hips and silver handcuffs dangling from their belts. There was a noise like thunder in the room, clearly audible above the loud music, before a perfect stillness settled. The police walked through the place, studying everyone at the tables, then spoke briefly with the bartender before leaving.

  ‘What was that noise?’ I asked Donna when the place started to pick up again.

  ‘That was everybody’s pieces being dropped on the floor.’

  I looked at her questioningly. She was obviously talking about guns.

  ‘If you not carrying it, it’s not yours. Police find some big ol’ gun on the floor somewhere near where you sitting, honey, it’s not yours and you’ve no idea how it got to be there. Musta belonged to the people who were sitting here before, them ones just left.’

  Donna loved to hear stories about Australia. She had never met anyone from Australia before, barely knew where it was on the map when I met her. The more she learned, the more she wanted to visit, even come over to live. She read everything she could get her hands on about the country and culture of Blacks in Australia. The more she learned, the more frequently she lamented, ‘I’ve always known I was borned in the wrong place. I’m an Aborigine, dropped by accident in the wrong part of the world.’

  Donna, who had only once been as far a
s New York, suddenly developed a deep yearning to travel—but only to Australia. She wanted to see Uluru, which she grew to regard as the centre of the universe.

  A few years after I left Harvard, Donna was diagnosed with cancer. She wrote to me constantly. On hearing that she was dying in hospital, I sent her a tiny envelope containing a pinch of red desert soil from Uluru. It had come from a small parcel which had been given to me as a ‘thank you’ for supplying funds to enable some Aborigines from the Centre, but living in Darwin, to attend the Uluru handover.

  Immediately this soil was in her hands, Donna’s condition stabilised and she went into remission. That very afternoon, just six hours after she had received it, she was allowed out of hospital. For the next six weeks, Donna danced and lived ‘the high life’, as she wrote in her letter to me during this period, and performed her poetry and sang at a number of public functions. She also wrote that she credited the Uluru soil with her ‘miracle’. At the end of this time, Donna relapsed and died very quickly.

  Another Black woman also often joined us, Deloise Blakely. Deloise was also a character, with a most unusual background. During her early days at school, she had come into Conroy Commons, put her hands on her hips, and announced very loudly, ‘My name is Deloise, and I’m from Harlem!’. This gained the attention of everyone in the entire place.