Hope: An Anthology

by The Brotherhood of St Laurence Hope Prize

  Self-same virtues by which we live each day that are

  Never spoken of and although she has never known it,

  That is the very person that Wendy wants to be, in

  Fact the very woman that she is and always has been

  But never known it.

  And there she is, alone and very vulnerable, half naked

  With a man, a Chinaman, an alien from another planet,

  A man, at her front door! A man! A total stranger,

  A man with no English you could discern.

  It was all gibberish to her. She sent him off.

  Of course she had to. What else could she have

  Done with a strange man at her front door and

  Her alone, half naked? What would you have done?

  He stayed there at the door, God help him,

  Sat there at her door in front of the CCTV

  With bare and blistered, bleeding feet and

  For an hour, she stood there petrified, with

  Just the door between them in her defence.

  She watched him for that hour, wishing he would

  Go. She tried to bring a voice up from her soul to

  Send him on his way. She called her husband’s

  Name. She screamed it out but there was no

  Husband anymore. She called out for

  The boys but there was no one there.

  Her desperate calls soon fell to sobbing.

  She could have rung the neighbours.

  She could have called for the police

  But she could see the poor man’s pain.

  She could see blood there, on her doormat.

  God only knows whatever it was that ever

  Possessed her but for some mad misguided

  Reason she opened the door to him.

  This was not the thing to do, not in

  The leafy quietude of Beaumaris with

  The darkness of the night air filling in the

  Shadows, not with blood on the doormat,

  Not in such circumstances, not anywhere.

  So why on Earth would she do a thing

  Like that, so much against her breeding?

  She might have said it was defiance.

  Defiance? Yes, the very word she used,

  The very strength she found inside

  Herself that very day. It was an act

  Of bold defiance opening that door.

  She had defied her lesser self; her smaller,

  Meaner, frightened little self, cast off the

  Shell and already was the better person for it.

  It is not worth dwelling on here but there,

  On her polar bear cream carpet, in her

  Front entrance hall with his bloody footprints

  Everywhere she sat him down, brought warm

  Soapy water in a bowl and dressings, knelt down

  On her knees and bathed his feet; his bloodied,

  Blistered, Chinese feet in warm, soapy warm

  Water mixed with her tears, bandaged up his feet

  With tender loving care, rested him, fed him,

  Gently fitted him into her son’s best sports shoes

  And drove him slowly back along the long and

  Winding Beach Road, back to his ship.

  He hoped he would return one day.

  She understood that much from what he had

  To say and added that she hoped he would.

  She hoped he would. You heard the words.

  And five days later, there she is, leaning

  On the rail of her terrace balcony at midday

  Looking out across the bay, watching

  The Golden Rule in the distance moving out

  Of port and slowly coming closer to her

  Then disappearing down the Bay. Her own

  Words had never meant that much to her but she

  Knew she really had meant it when she said

  She hoped he would come back one day.

  She really meant it.

  The tears she shed that Sunday night; the tears

  That balmed his swollen feet and the tears

  She shed right there on the balcony that day,

  And often since, were tears of joy. She knew

  This because that night she found a bigger

  Self inside herself, a purpose so she says, for living

  And with all the wanting she has ever done she

  Wants for nothing now and every time she cries,

  She smiles remembering the Chinese man and how

  They both seemed to fit into each other’s need that

  Sunday night and how the unlikeliest of things can

  Sometimes make her feel deliriously happy.

  About the author

  David Porter is a Melbourne based landscape painter with some fifteen solo exhibitions to his credit since his first show in Newcastle in 1978. He also writes plays, most notably The Door which has had three productions since it premiered in Newcastle in 1979.

  His plays are described as particularly evocative of landscape and his paintings as distinctively story-based. Scar Tree at Billy Creek, his most recent exhibition at Brightspace in St Kilda, explored the dark wilderness of Gippsland’s darkest history as the story published here paints the wide sweep of Port Phillip Bay.

  He is currently working on a new play about Watkin Tench and the first few fatal years of the British settlement at Port Jackson.

  The Extra Piece

  Heidi Catherine

  Highly Commended

  People say I’m quiet. In some ways this is true. I don’t say much.

  But inside I’m a hurricane. Swirling and turning as my thoughts and dreams twist into knotted clumps of memories and despair.

  I’m screaming and shouting. I’m down on my knees with my fingers pulling at my hair. My heart beats like thunder. My stomach churns like the angry sea. I have fire eating at my soul and poison thrumming through my veins.

  I’m afraid if I talk you will hear me, so I say nothing. I am quiet.

  What can you hear right now? It’s not my voice, it’s your own. You take in my words and wrap your own thoughts around them before you decide what to hear. Just because I don’t say much, doesn’t mean I’m any different. I listen to the words you say, then I choose the words I hear.

  I’m at a local café with a group of mothers and their babies. I’ve been told I’m part of this group, but I’m not. I am a mother and I do have a baby sleeping beside me in his pram, but this is where the similarities end. I’m not one of them. I’m not part of their group. I’m different.

  It’s not just me who thinks this. It’s reflected back in the other mothers’ well-meaning eyes. They don’t do this intentionally, of course. They’re not cruel or rude or making attempts to exclude me. It’s the opposite.

  While they joke with each other about their lazy husbands or how long the hair on their legs has grown, they don’t do this with me. They ask me how my son is sleeping or when I’m thinking of starting him on solids. They nod and smile as I answer before politely extricating themselves from my company so they can laugh with each other once more.

  I would tell you that I’m like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, but that’s not accurate. I don’t fit the puzzle at all. I’m an extra piece thrown into the box to confuse you. When the puzzle is complete, all smooth and shiny, I’m the piece that sits to the side while everyone wonders what I was doing there in the first place. The puzzle doesn’t need me. And to be honest, I don’t really need the puzzle either. I’m happy on the side. It’s safe there.

  ‘Has Aidan said his first word yet?’ asks Anna, the one with the curly blonde hair.

  I shake my head. Aidan’s like me. His words are trapped behind his lips.

  ‘I’ve been saying Mama about a hundred times a day to Rosie.’ Anna laughs, trying to cover up my quiet.

  I want to tell her that silence won’t kill anybody. Not every moment of the day needs to be filled with chatter, but i
nstead I nod as a token that I’m listening.

  ‘I bet she says Dada first,’ she prattles on, lifting Rosie into the air and jiggling her about in such a way I’m frightened her milk is going to come up.

  ‘Come on, Rosie,’ she says. ‘Say Mama for me. Ma-ma. Ma-ma. Maaaa-ma.’

  If I were Rosie, my first word would be Dada. Not because it’s easier to say, but from pure spite.

  I cringe at my cruel thought. Anna is being nice to me. I don’t deserve her kindness.

  ‘She’ll say it soon enough,’ I tell her.

  She will. With a mother who talks as much as Anna, she has to. Daughters always turn out like their mothers.

  My mother also finds it hard to speak. There was a time when we both talked as if we were frightened our words would run out, but when we got on that boat everything changed. Not just our country, not just our language, not just the food we ate, but us. We changed. The essence of our souls was set alight and the charred ashes rose up to form someone new.

  In my father’s case, his ashes never rose up, instead sinking to the bottom of the ocean with the rest of his body. My sister’s too.

  I was the lucky one, my mother said. It never felt like that. Lucky ones didn’t get locked away as punishment for the crime of not wanting to be shot.

  Aidan wakes and wails. He has a loud cry, sensing he needs to make more noise than a regular baby to reach my ears. My son is smart like that. He knows me well.

  I lift him from his pram and kiss his sweet cheeks. My heart balloons, then I catch myself and force it to contract. I should never have become a mother. It was the most dangerous thing I ever did, even more dangerous than getting on the boat. For now my heart is open, as it was when I was a child and didn’t know how important it was to lock it with a key.

  Anna leaves her chair, saying she has to check Rosie’s nappy. I know this is an excuse. She doesn’t want to sit with my silence. I want to tell her it’s not my fault, but I don’t know how.

  Stella takes Anna’s place. She has a kind smile and I think if life were different we could be friends.

  ‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ she says, taking my quiet for depression, which perhaps it is although I’ll never see a doctor to find out.

  ‘He’s a good baby,’ I say, not answering her question.

  ‘Does he sleep well?’ she asks.

  I nod my head and smile without asking how her baby is sleeping.

  I know I can’t get away with my quiet much longer. I’ll be out of the group if I don’t speak soon. I’m not even sure why I want to be part of it. Perhaps because I haven’t really been part of any group since I arrived in Australia. Well, not a group of Australians anyway. It makes me feel like I belong, even though I don’t. And it makes my husband happy to think I’m making friends.

  Stella talks to me about her daughter and I notice the way her eyes flick around the table as she speaks, searching for escape.

  That’s the kind of person I’ve become. The sort who’s tolerated, yet never really accepted.

  As Stella speaks I let my own eyes scan the table. Different words from the conversations around me rise above the chatter and land in my ears.

  Tired. Filthy. Starving. Crying. Nightmare.

  One word lands on my lips, never making its way out.

  Relative.

  That’s the word that both haunts me and keeps me sane.

  It’s all relative.

  These women aren’t tired. They haven’t been kept awake for four days straight listening to a woman howling for her baby who died in her arms because her dehydrated body had failed to produce enough milk.

  Their houses aren’t filthy. Nobody is being forced to sit crouched on a faeces-stained floor with the smell of death lodged in the walls.

  These babies aren’t starving as they wave their plump little arms in the air demanding to be fed.

  Their lives aren’t a nightmare as they sleep in their beds without fear of waking to the barrel of a rifle pressed to their forehead.

  Their tears aren’t a sign that they’re crying. Tears take too much energy when you cry from the deepest part of your soul.

  What would these women say if I told them I know what all these things are like?

  To be so tired I forced my mother to swim for us both. To be so starving I ate a cockroach that crawled across my chest. To be so filthy the customs officer gagged when she led me to the shower.

  I know what a nightmare is and I certainly know what crying is.

  But to say all this aloud instead of in my head would make me sound like I thought my pain made me superior to them. It would belittle them and their luck-filled lives.

  It’s all relative.

  They don’t want to hear it and I don’t want to say it.

  My parents wanted a luck-filled life for their daughters. They were no different to the women sitting around this table. Anna would get on a boat with Rosie to save her life. I know she would.

  But Anna will never have to and that’s why she can’t understand my pain.

  I get up from the table and strap Aidan into his pram.

  ‘I have to go now,’ I tell them.

  Nobody asks me why I’m leaving early. Nobody begs me to stay longer. Instead they smile and tell me they’ll see me next week.

  There’s no bill for me to pay. I had water while the other women drank coffee and dropped crumbs from biscuits down the front of their shirts. I let them think I don’t like coffee, so they don’t guess the expense is beyond my reach.

  My husband works nights in a clothing factory. His wage must feed our small family plus my mother. A portion must also be saved and sent back to his family. We want to save for Aidan’s future, but we cannot. If I were to drink coffee I would be drinking his education. I’ll stick to water.

  As I leave the café, I wish once more that I was the daughter who drowned in my father’s arms. In many ways my sister was the lucky one.

  I live in a world where I no longer fit. Not in the country I was born and not in the country I now live.

  Aidan looks up at me from his pram.

  ‘Mama,’ he says.

  That’s when I know I’m wrong. I do fit somewhere. I’m not an extra piece. I fit in the heart of my son.

  ‘Mama,’ I say back to him.

  He laughs at me, his round face grinning with mischief. If only Anna could hear this. I push the pram and laugh with my son until we return home to our apartment. My husband’s waiting for us.

  ‘You’re smiling,’ he says to me, a new light shining in his eyes.

  And I realise how long it’s been since I smiled with my heart as well as my lips. My life here is hard. There are so many things I don’t have that I want, and many more I do have that I’d like to give away – my memories, my fears, the scars upon my back.

  But my son has given me the gift of hope for a future that’s different to my past. I’ll give him the life my sister never had. He’ll lead a luck-filled life. I have no power over my past, but the present is in my hands. The evil that swallowed my childhood will not swallow the rest of my life.

  Relative to other Australians we may be poor, downtrodden and desperate. But relative to so many more, we are wealthy. We have a roof to keep us dry, blankets to keep us warm and fresh water in our taps.

  I have a husband who works hard and a boy who calls me Mama. It’s time my words fell from my mouth. It’s time I put out my hand.

  ‘Where are you going?’ my husband asks, as I turn Aidan’s pram to leave the apartment.

  ‘I forgot something,’ I say.

  This isn’t a lie. I forgot to ask Anna if Rosie has any teeth yet. I didn’t ask Stella if her baby’s reflux has cleared up. And I’ve never asked any of the mothers if they love their babies so much they feel like they might explode.

  I run back to the café, taking Aidan with me.

  I see the women through the window before they see me. They’re laughing, holding each other’s babies as they share the joy and
hardship of their experiences as new mothers.

  I want to be part of this group.

  I know I could be part of this group in a way I’ve never been before.

  It’s all up to me.

  I feel my father’s arm around my shoulders. My sister is tugging at my hand, urging me ahead.

  I enter the café and take a seat at the table.

  ‘You’re back,’ the women say, their faces polite and confused.

  I shake my head.

  ‘I’ve only just arrived.’

  About the author

  Heidi Catherine is a Melbourne-based writer and ‘The Extra Piece’ is her fourth published short story. The story was inspired by Heidi’s experiences growing up in a family with a migrant background. This has given her empathy for today’s asylum seekers trying to find their way in a foreign country. She has won several writing awards, including Romance Writers of Australia’s best unpublished manuscript award for one of her young adult novels. Her current focus is on writing psychological thrillers, a genre she has always been fascinated with. When not writing, Heidi enjoys spending time with her husband, two sons and two furry daughters.

  The Common Good

  Christine Fontana

  Highly Commended

  Fear:

  I’m maybe a little bit afraid, I can smell it in my armpits. Mr Drake says fear’s okay as long as you remember that the other guy is probably more afraid than you, and after all you’re the one holding the gun.

  Get this:

  I’m holding a gun.

  Generational legacy:

  Drake says the desire to work has been bred out of my bloodline and when I try to fight against my nature it’s gonna resist and buck like a wild bull in a cage.

  You wait, he says, all of them bucking like wild bulls in a cage, you’re gonna need this gun.

  I ask him who ‘all of them’ are, and when he says there’s never any doubt about who the enemy is that’s when I see it, the black silhouette, always the same black silhouette. It’s in the shape of a man and has a bright red target on its chest. There’s a loud clank and the grinding sound of metal against metal echoes up from the runners as the silhouette at the end of the tunnel shudders and starts moving towards me.