The sudden downpour was like a jug of water being poured from the sky. I ducked into a doorway. What happened to the sunshine? Where was a taxi when you needed one? They all zoomed by and I carried on walking. Another shower sent pedestrians hurrying for cover — except for me. I had gone from being early to late and I was anxious as all hell. She might think that I was standing her up.
Dripping wet, I stepped into the café. Its fashionably gloomy interior meant I had trouble adjusting my eyes. I scanned the room. There she was, at a table at the back, reading a book.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I said, trying not to drip on her.
‘You can’t help the weather,’ she replied. ‘Did you have trouble parking?’
‘I walked. I don’t have a car,’ I explained.
‘Why not?’
‘Everyone driving their own cars, clogging up the roads, needing more and more freeways ... you know, environmental reasons,’ I searched her face for some hint of agreement but she just stared blankly back at me.
‘I can’t wait to get my own car.’
The waiter came up and took our order which filled a few awkward moments. She ordered Earl Grey tea, and I ordered a strong macchiato and two macadamia nut brownies.
‘You don’t drink coffee? I thought all students drank coffee,’ I ventured.
‘Well, they don’t,’ she said. ‘By the way, my friend Martina is coming but she’s running late.’
‘Oh, is she usually late?’ It was a stupid question but I was scrambling.
‘No,’ she said scornfully.
We both looked up as the front door bell of the café tinkled. But it was just a lady with a pram. There was more silence, except for the espresso machine frothing and spitting in the background. I wasn’t game to say anything in case I made another faux pas.
The waiter brought our drinks and the brownies. At least she ate chocolate — we had that much in common. We nibbled away. I badly wanted to look at her, to study her face, but I didn’t think I could get away with it.
Kirrali fiddled with the crumbs on her plate, arranging them in a line. Finally she spoke.
‘Look, I don’t need another mother.’
‘Wow. There’s an opening line.’
‘I’m sure you’re a nice person and all of that but I’ve already got the best mother in the world. I just want to find out who my father is. That’s all I need from you.’
Blunt, just like her father.
‘I can’t just tell you, because ...’
‘Because why?’ she demanded.
‘Because he doesn’t know about you,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ I could see that she hadn’t considered that possibility.
‘I’ll talk to him first and then get back to you,’ I suggested. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’ I hoped she would be interested in me, even just a little bit.
‘You said you could give me some answers,’ she said.
‘I’ll try but I can’t give you his details without warning him first.’
Her reply was barely audible. ‘Warning him?’
I dared to sneak a look at her, only to see her brushing away a tear. I wanted to comfort her but instead I looked away. It felt like at any moment she could walk out and I’d never see her again.
‘Look, I wouldn’t dream of trying to take your mother’s place,’ I said. ‘I’m just, well, grateful that you are alive and healthy and you look so beautiful and I’m feeling things just looking at you that I’ve never felt before. I’m happy and yet I’m in a state of shock.
It’s confusing.’ I looked at her pleadingly. Please, grant me a little mercy …
She sighed, ‘Yeah, well it is confusing. I suppose as much for you as it is for me. It’s just that ...’
Kirrali paused and I snuck another look at her. She had her father’s long thick eyelashes.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘It’s just that ... I’ve never had much interest in my Koori heritage but recently I’ve wanted to find out more and I just thought I’d find this family and that would make me part of the Koori community. But instead I discover I’ve got a white mother when I already have one of those.’
Her words spurted out like tomato sauce from a bottle.
‘Hell. Here I was bracing myself to explain why I gave you up as a baby but instead I have to defend myself for being white. I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do about that one. There’s been times in my life I’ve wished I was Koori if that’s any consolation.’
I thought back to when Charley rejected me. Many times I’d wondered if we might have had a chance if I had been part of his community.
She looked at me scornfully, ‘No one ever wants to be Koori.’
‘Koooreee. It’s usually gubbas who say it like that.’ I laughed, but she didn’t. Too late, I realised that I’d upset her.
‘Gubbas?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I pleaded with her.
Suddenly the door swung open, the bell tinkling furiously. It was a welcome distraction from the disaster that was us getting to know one another. A girl with scarlet hair, dripping wet, flew in like a small whirly-whirly. Her white dress clung to her, wet from the downpour. She sashayed over to our table.
‘Kirrali, I ran all the way. I had to be here for you.’
She eased into the spare seat at the table. A waitress came over with a towel and fussed over her like a royal baby.
‘Long black, please. I will die if I don’t get a coffee!’
Kirrali rolled her eyes. The waitress bustled away. I wondered if she was an actress — Martina, not the waitress.
Martina turned her blue-eyed gaze to me, ‘Wow. You’re so young. My mother is ancient compared to you! How old were you when you had Kirrali?’
She was very direct. I glanced over at Kirrali to see how she was reacting to this line of questioning. But her expression was unreadable.
‘Ah, I was nearly nineteen.’
‘Wow. That’s our age. Imagine you having a baby, Kirrali, at our age?’
Kirrali shook her head.
‘I’m really keen to have babies,’ Martina added.
‘Maybe Kirrali doesn’t want to talk about this now.’
Quick as a flash, Martina retorted, ‘Oh, Kirrali never wants to talk about anything uncomfortable.’
Kirrali scowled. At least it wasn’t at me.
‘Well, this is special. Or maybe not?’ Martina said, looking from my face to Kirrali’s. She burst out laughing. I think Kirrali kicked her under the table.
‘You two are quite different, aren’t you?’ I observed.
Kirrali managed a wan smile. ‘Opposites attract?’
‘So is her father the opposite of you?’ Martina asked, opening up her eyes innocently.
I tried not to be distracted by Martina and I turned to Kirrali. I chose my words carefully.
‘If you want to be part of a Koori community, you can be. I can introduce you to plenty of people, that’s not a problem. But you know, you are already part of the Koori community simply because you are Koori.’
‘Even if I can’t pronounce it properly?’ she challenged me.
‘That was thoughtless. And I’m sorry. Look, there is no one “Koori community”. It’s not a homogenous group of people. Things are just as fractured and complex, if not more so, for Kooris as for anyone.’
Kirrali held her cup of tea with both hands and let out a nervous laugh.
‘As for your father, I know how important it is for you to meet him. It’s too complicated to go into right now but I’ll do my best. Look, I still don’t know anything about you, about your life. I’d really love to get to know you better. Would you like to come over to my house sometime so we could talk?’
I could see her wrestling with her inner conflict.
I added, ‘I don’t even know what course you are studying.’
‘Come on Kirrali, throw her a crumb,’ urged Martina.
Kirrali shushed her. ‘Cherie? Can I cal
l you that?’
I nodded.
‘I get that you want to get to know me better. But I need to meet my father first.’
I nodded. All this would have to be on her terms.
She hesitated. ‘And I’m a law student.’
I smiled at her, grateful for that one piece of information. The two girls got up to leave and I tried to pay the bill but Kirrali insisted she pay for theirs. I didn’t want to push it — I’d vowed to take one step at a time. I couldn’t expect an instant relationship. I followed them out of the café.
Kirrali paused on the footpath.
‘Cherie, I’m sorry I said that stuff to you about not wanting a white mother. I’m pretty tactless at times.’
How thrilling to get an apology!
‘Me too, Kirrali, me too. As you have experienced.’
Kirrali gave me a slight smile and my gut did a somersault. She shook my hand and walked off with Martina who hooked her arm in hers. I watched them until they disappeared around the corner.
The sun was now shining and there was no hint of rain. My euphoria at having being on the receiving line of that one half smile was dampened by the thought of speaking to Charley and telling him what I had done.
Nineteen
When I was younger, I could never imagine myself grown up, married, with children. Around the age of sixteen, all my girlfriends started partnering up. They’d go steady for six months, then one would get a friendship ring — much admired by the others who would then put the hard word on their boyfriends to get them one.
I was never part of this scene. I don’t know how they viewed me but I saw most of the boys at school as immature and macho. They’d stretch the truth about their conquests and they called you names if you didn’t sleep with them and names if you did. It was okay for boys to sleep around but if a girl made out with a guy, she’d be a mole. I hated the hypocrisy of it all.
So after the friendship ring came the engagement ring. I lost track of the number of engagement parties I went to, although by the second year of college, the invitations had fizzled out. I was living away from home and so my contact with old school friends was limited to second-hand news about births and marriages.
The last wedding of the old crowd was Jill’s and my invitation came out of the blue. Jill and I had been close once but we hadn’t spoken in a while. I was in my early twenties, working in the city as a production assistant for a small publishing company and had started doing the odd volunteer day at the Centre. There I had met Jarrah, a Koori guy from up around Shepparton. Jarrah was one of life’s gentle souls, as laid-back as a lizard on a hot rock.
Outside the church, my old school gang stood in a huddle, sneaking sly looks at us and giggling. At the reception my ‘friend’ Susan, who was sitting next to Jarrah, turned her chair slightly away from him making conversation impossible unless he felt inclined to chat to her back.
There was one curious moment in the whole shemozzle though. An old fellow, white-haired and bent, who I think was Jill’s grandfather, shuffled over and eased himself into the seat next to Jarrah. They talked for maybe half an hour. I couldn’t hear a thing over the band’s drum rolls and guitar solos — this was the sixties — but when the old man got up to leave, he shook Jarrah’s hand with both of his. I couldn’t help notice that they both had tears in their eyes.
‘What was that all about?’ I asked.
‘That old bloke used to be a policeman in a country town. He said he remembers going out of town where the blackfellas camped in their humpies and all the kids running away when they pulled up in the police car. He and his partner found three kids and took them away. He said he wasn’t sure why they took the kids, just that there’d been complaints about them being neglected. He reckons they looked happy enough — they were just skinny fit kids, that’s all. But they’d been given their orders so they did what they were told. He said it was just the mothers there and they were all yelling. The men were away working, catching rabbits or picking vegetables, shearing, whatever they could do to earn a living. The mothers were crying, the kids were crying. He thought that the kids were sent to an institution somewhere in Melbourne, a church-run thing, or that’s what they were told.’
Jarrah paused, his voice breaking up.
‘Anyway, he remembers a woman coming down to the police station every day for weeks, demanding that her ten-year-old son be brought back. He said that after the first time she came, he couldn’t go home to his wife and kids because he felt so bad. He went to the pub and got pissed instead. He started drinking heavily after that so he quit being a policeman and began digging irrigation channels. Said he’s never forgotten that woman, her dignity and perseverance. He even remembered her name. Layla Smith.’
Jarrah stared out towards the dance floor. For a minute we both gazed at the people dancing, who were by this stage fuelled up by free grog, gyrating and generally making fools of themselves. A group of blokes were taking turns trying to remove Jill’s garter belt with their teeth and urging each other on with loud whoops. Jarrah’s story was a million miles away from this reality. With immense sorrow in his voice, more than I’ve ever heard in anyone’s, Jarrah finished telling his story.
‘Layla Smith was my grandmother. The boy was my father. He was put in a children’s home in Melbourne, miles from all his family. He didn’t get to see any of them again until he was eighteen. My dad got beaten in that children’s home. He was a wonderful man but he was tough as nails. He couldn’t show any affection. That old man tore my family apart, or he at least played a role in it ‘cos he was just following orders. When I told him my story, he asked me if I could forgive him.’
‘Oh my God. Did you?’
‘Well, I couldn’t forgive him on behalf of the rest of my family. I don’t have that right. But for myself, I could.’
‘But how?’
‘If you stay bitter, then you carry that around every day and it stuffs you up. That old fella has suffered too. Not as much as my mob but at least he was courageous enough to come up to me and admit his part in it. He realises what they did was wrong. He isn’t clinging to this misguided idea that they were doing it for the right reasons.’
Jarrah sat there, dealing with this reminder of his family’s sad history. I gave him a hug and went to the toilet to compose myself. I didn’t want any of my old school friends to see me crying.
Jennifer, a tall redhead I had vaguely known from school, was in the bathroom reapplying her make-up. She leant towards me conspiratorially.
‘Tell me, Cherie, is it true what they say about black men?’
She pouted in the mirror as she applied a slash of red lipstick. I was disgusted but I smiled in what I hoped was an enigmatic way and walked out.
I went out with Jarrah for two years but I couldn’t bring myself to move in with him and that was the beginning of the end.
My parents were relieved. Although they were polite to him, I could tell they hadn’t taken to him. I am positive the only reason they had to dislike him was that he was Aboriginal. My parents were racist in that middle-class pseudo-tolerant way I was to recognise often. Sure, send a donation over to the poor starving Africans but tut-tut if an African family moves into the street — property values will fall.
The closest I ever came to getting married was in my late twenties. I’d been on my own for a few years, except for the odd relationship. But nothing serious. Then I met Michael. Within weeks of meeting at a friend’s barbecue, we were inseparable. Things just clicked between us. We were both vegetarians, both loved French movies and both loved cycling. He lived alone, like me, with his Siamese cat. And he was fully house-trained — Michael, not the cat. By that, I meant I didn’t have to play the little wifey picking up his socks. My parents liked him and his parents loved me.
Then one weekend in autumn, we went away to a guesthouse in the foothills of the snow country. When we arrived, the air-brushed blue sky was darkening to denim. Smoke from the fire was curling from the chimney
and you could smell the earthy rotting leaves. Underfoot, the plane tree leaves crackled and crunched.
That night, sipping port and sitting on an over-stuffed couch beside the fire, the conversation moved to the subject of kid’s names. Previously we had skirted around the issue of getting married. Now the electricity between us was palpable.
‘I like names that remind me of nature. Like Brooke and Skye and Lily,’ I declared.
‘What if it’s a boy?’ he teased. ‘You could call him Rock.’
‘Like Rock Hudson, the actor? No way. What about Moss?’
‘Too soft and squishy. How about River?’
‘No one would call their kid River! It has to be a strong name. The name of a tree? Oak. Or Forrest.’
‘I’ve got it. Gum. Or Pine,’ he offered, suppressing a grin. ‘Pine Sanders. That has a ring to it.’
We broke about laughing.
‘I’m serious,’ I insisted. ‘I’m sure we can think of a great name for a boy.’
‘Okay. The names of trees. Elm. No. Poplar. No. Ash. What about Ash? Or Jarrah? Hey, didn’t you go out with a guy called Jarrah?’
‘Yeah, he was a Yorta Yorta man.’
Michael knew I worked at the Centre but I hadn’t mentioned that Jarrah was Aboriginal. It just hadn’t come up.
‘So he was a big black man then?’ he mimicked standing on one leg, spear in hand. I threw a cushion at him and he toppled over onto the couch, laughing.
‘Actually he was more of a caramel colour,’ I retorted.
‘Imagine if you’d had a child with him. What if it was a throwback?’ he said.
I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know. It might have reverted to looking really Aboriginal. Flat nose, afro hair, that kind of thing.’
‘Well, she or he, would have been beautiful then,’ I said lightly but my stomach had that heavy feeling. ‘And anyway, not all Aboriginal people have flat noses.’
Becoming Kirrali Lewis Page 12