Becoming Kirrali Lewis

by Jane Harrison

  ‘I’m not bad but I think you should bring Kirrali over to meet me. Today if you can. I’m at St John’s Hospital, Ward 9 North.’

  He hung up. I was stunned. Charley in hospital? I sat on the balcony where I’d taken the call. The view from my window was especially pretty that day. My apartment was high up and I could see across the rooftops to the church spires and the canopies of the trees. Things always looked different from up here.

  My fingers trembled as I dialled the college. I would have to see if they had Kirrali’s parents’ number. But when Luda answered the phone and I said it was urgent, Kirrali was summoned. It seemed she hadn’t gone away after all. I told her to meet me outside the college in half an hour. My brother had left his car with me while he was out of town so for once I was able to pick her up. I ran out of my apartment but not before grabbing a pile of handkerchiefs. Something told me I might need them.

  Outside the college, Kirrali was waiting expectantly. She jumped into the car.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know whether he’s had an accident or what. He sounded okay ...’

  ‘I’m so scared. I’m excited but terrified. I can’t believe I’m going to meet him.’

  She was looking at this event from a very different perspective to me, I realised. I was worried about Charley while she was excited to be meeting her father for the first time. I knew I had to concentrate on the latter. I gave her a potted history as we drove.

  ‘Your father’s name is Charley Jackson. We met a long time ago, obviously, and we were together for about six months.’ Six months and eight days, to be precise. ‘Anyway, I felt very strongly for him but ... how do I put this? You’ll understand when you meet him. He’s something of an activist.’

  ‘You’re starting to freak me out.’

  ‘He never knew about you, that I had got pregnant. But he was really happy to hear that you existed.’

  We had arrived at the hospital and were making our way to the ninth floor. I wasn’t sure if I had given Kirrali enough background to prepare her for Charley.

  ‘Look, Charley can be a bit abrupt. If he gives you a hard time, please don’t take it personally. He does that to everyone. Are you ready?’

  Kirrali looked nervous but she nodded and took a deep breath. The door swung open without a sound. Charley was lying on the bed. His eyes were closed and various tubes were attached to the back of his hand. My heart went cold.

  Kirrali stepped back into the corridor. She was breathing heavily. I hoped she wasn’t going to faint.

  ‘Charley always made me go a little wonky in the legs too,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘He can’t be my father,’ she whispered. ‘He’s Uncle Jacko.’

  ‘Yes, Charley does get called Uncle Jacko. So?’

  ‘Kirk pointed him out to me one night at the pub. He’s Kirk’s hero but I was too scared to meet him. Oh my God. He’s my father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Come on, Kirrali, you’ve waited a long time for this. Actually, so have I.’

  She took another deep breath and walked back through the door.

  Twenty-three

  I stepped through the door. Terrified. Charley’s eyes flickered open and he wriggled to get himself to an upright position.

  ‘About bloody time too,’ he said. ‘Kirrali, my daughter. I am so glad to meet you. So glad.’

  Charley started to cry, his flow of tears punctuated by loud, searing coughs. Without even thinking, I sat on the bed and held his hand. It was large and warm. At some point Cherie must have left the room but I hardly noticed. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. I could see me in his face.

  ‘I suppose Cherie has told you that I’m your old man. Well …’

  He coughed again — a wracking eruption — and everything seemed to go still. I had that sensation once before when I was in a car accident. Martina was driving. It was just after she’d got her licence and she spun out of control on a wet corner — the car fishtailed across the road. Everything happened in slow motion and it felt like the whole world was holding its breath until we were back on the right side of the road, safe.

  ‘Daught, I wanna know all about ya.’

  ‘I want to know about you, too,’ I said shyly.

  Charley didn’t muck around. He told me he had a problem with his ticker — ‘cardio’ something, something to do with his heart muscle being enlarged. It sounded serious but he seemed so calm. I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there holding his hand. My head was spinning. But then he shook those thoughts off and he began to tell me about his life, talking up his passion for the Essendon football team. He told me about the work he’d been involved in over the years but he mostly made a big joke of it all.

  I told him about Kirk and how he’d pointed Charley out to me at the pub but that I was too scared to meet him.

  ‘To think. That’s crazy. I wish Kirk had introduced us,’ Charley said. ‘I would have known you for a bit longer.’

  I felt a pang for all the time we’d missed out on. I pushed away my thoughts. He wanted to know about me. I told him about my studies and where I grew up, my family. Charley had lots of questions but I didn’t feel like I was being interrogated or that there were right or wrong answers. And there were large patches of surprising silence between the two of us. Easy silences, not awkward ones. And to think I was scared of meeting this man.

  A woman came in pushing a meal trolley and gave Charley his dinner on a tray. Charley teased her, which she enjoyed. She bustled out, a smile on her face. He looked at the food under the stainless steel lids but he made no attempt to eat it.

  After a while, Cherie popped her head around the door and he waved her in. I could see her eyes were red-rimmed.

  ‘Isn’t she fantastic?’ he said admiringly, patting my hand.

  I felt a swell of pride. He liked me. But you know that old saying, ‘pride goeth before a fall’.

  ‘But the girl knows nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

  Hang on a minute, I thought. I’m a law student. I’m not just doing any arty farty course. Did he have any idea how hard it was?

  But Charley wasn’t finished.

  ‘How can a kid of yours and mine be so politically naive? She’s full of book learning. It’s all up there and not here.’ He tapped his head first and then his heart.

  Geez, I hadn’t realised that he had been psychoanalysing me with his innocent questions.

  He beckoned Cherie closer. ‘You need to introduce her around. Get her to meet a few Elders.’

  I need to know about being Aboriginal from Charley, not her, I thought.

  ‘When you get better you can teach her,’ Cherie protested. ‘Woman, haven’t they told you? I’m dying. Don’t try to pretend I’m not. Kirrali understands, don’t you, love?’

  I felt a sickening swirl of emotions and hollowness at his words but also a kind of pride that he felt I understood what was happening to him. I nodded numbly.

  ‘I’ve as much chance of pulling through as I have of becoming prime minister,’ he chuckled.

  ‘I’d like to see that,’ Cherie said. ‘Except us white fellas would all be run out of the country.’

  ‘What about me? Would I be run out?’ I asked.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, girl. You’re my bloody daughter. Of course not. You might talk like a gubba but that’s nothing we can’t fix. I’ll introduce you to your mob and they’ll teach you a thing or two. I’ve, ah, so far kept it under my hat that I’m sick so you’ve been my only visitors. But I have to tell them pretty soon.’ He sighed. ‘It’s all the wailing that I can’t stand when someone dies.’

  I shook my head. Meeting my real dad and hearing him talk about his impending death — all on the one day — was too much.

  The nurse came in and asked if we could leave while she took Charley’s vital signs.

  ‘They’re all right. They’re family,’ he said, winking at me.
/>   A few weeks earlier, I was shocked to find out that Cherie was my mother. Until a couple of days ago, Charley didn’t know I existed. This was a family? It was surreal. I started to laugh and Charley joined in. Cherie burst into tears. The nurse looked at us as if we were mad.

  I buzzed on the security door just after 9pm and bounced up the stairs to Cherie’s apartment. She’d left me with Charley and had given me the money for a taxi back to her place. Before she had even closed the door, I was bubbling over with everything he’d told me. I followed her into the kitchen where she was cooking spaghetti.

  ‘He told me what my totem was and it’s a brolga. And he tried to explain who my relatives were but there were too many of them. I asked him if he’d draw me a family tree but he said that was a kind of ‘white’ thing to do. He told me about moieties. I didn’t understand the difference between them and totems. But he explained it really easily. You see, your moiety is your skin family while your totem is …’

  ‘I know what they are, Kirrali,’ Cherie interrupted me. ‘I’ve been hanging around Koori people for a long time.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling a bit put out. ‘Why don’t they teach this stuff in school? How come it has taken me this long to find out about it?’

  Cherie sighed. ‘When I was your age, I started reading books to try and find an alternative view of history. At school, hardly anyone studied Australian history because they thought it was daggy. American history was considered much more exciting. Even if you did study Australian history, it was limited to the last two hundred years. Nothing much has changed.’

  ‘I learnt more in one afternoon with Charley than I ever did at school. It’s like he said, all my learning is book learning. He has a way of making it come to life.’

  Life. I saw Cherie wince at that word. She served up the pasta and some green stuff called pesto — I’d only ever had spaghetti bolognaise — and poured us each a glass of white wine. She steered me towards the dining table, a serious look on her face. I sat down and a sleek cat leapt up onto my knee and started kneading my thighs. ‘I didn’t know you had a cat,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me,’ she replied lightly. ‘His name is Mungi. It means “lightning” — you’ll understand if you have chicken on your plate. Not that he gets that very often. Anyway, while you were with Charley, I talked to his doctor.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Did Charley tell you what was wrong with him?’

  ‘He just said that he’d been sick for a while with that cardio thing.’

  ‘It’s called cardiomyopathy. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘I’m a law student, not a med student.’

  ‘It means his heart muscles are enlarged. Dangerously so.’

  ‘I thought he might have lung cancer — with all that coughing.’

  ‘He has picked up pneumonia which is why he’s in hospital.

  Pneumonia can be treated with antibiotics but the heart disease won’t go away. He needs a heart transplant. Look, let’s take some time to have a proper talk about it.’

  I shot her a dirty look. ‘Are you trying to freak me out? I have just met him. Let me process one thing at a time.’

  ‘I’m sorry … of course.’

  Except she couldn’t let it go.

  ‘I don’t think he has much time ...’ Cherie hesitated.

  ‘Like he said — Charley is dying.’ I was shocked at how matter-of-factly I said the words and how calm I felt.

  ‘But if he got a transplant … But he’s stubborn. He’s resisting.’ Cherie looked at me pleadingly.

  ‘He must have his reasons for not wanting a transplant. I don’t know. He said death is a part of life. He doesn’t have a problem with it. The way he explained it, it all seems so natural.’

  ‘Kirrali, you’ve only just met Charley. You don’t have such a big stake in him.’

  I couldn’t believe what she had just said. Under the table, I clenched my fists and relaxed them, and clenched them again until I could speak.

  ‘That is a ridiculous thing to say.’

  ‘I know …,’ she wailed. ‘I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.’

  Cherie started to cry and I got up and patted her shoulder. Here was I, the child, comforting her, the mother. Strangely, I didn’t feel sad. I was exhilarated, while Cherie, I could tell, was falling apart.

  ‘But I don’t want him to die. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair,’ Cherie sobbed. ‘He’s too young. He’s a one-off. There’s no one like him.’

  My arms crept around her. She rested her tear-soaked face on my shoulder. I was holding her … for the first time. My biological mother who had given birth to me and given me up. She, who had kept me a secret. She, who had never looked for me. She, who I couldn’t forgive but who needed someone to hold her.

  Cherie drove me home and most of the trip was spent in silence, each of us caught up in our own thoughts. When she pulled over outside the uni, she forgot to turn the indicator off. It clicked on and off, on and off, on and off, and as each car whooshed past, the old car trembled. I opened the door and Cherie leaned across.

  ‘Kirrali, will you at least talk to Charley about a heart transplant? Please.’ She was almost begging me.

  ‘Of course I will,’ I replied. But I wished I didn’t feel so caught in the middle. Why did it have to be me?

  Twenty-four

  So much had happened since I had moved to the city. I was living independently for the first time, studying law, working at the cinema, getting to know Kirk and forming a friendship with Erin. I had discovered both of my biological parents, my biological maternal grandparents, an aunty, an uncle and two cousins. I had been bashed by racist thugs and I had been misquoted in the newspaper. No wonder I was freaking out.

  Thinking Kirk and I might be related had been one of the biggest spin-outs. Now that I knew I was a ‘Jackson’, I desperately needed to see him and tell him about Charley. I dialled Kirk’s number and was a bit miffed when he didn’t answer. I left a message but he didn’t call back that night or the next day. I didn’t sit around waiting for his call though. I had other family duties. I had already told Mum and Dad all about meeting Cherie and my grandparents. Now I needed to tell them about Charley …

  Dear Mum and Dad

  I need to tell you about Charley, my Aboriginal biological father. But I want to do it face to face. I’ll come up to see you, okay?

  All my love, Kirrali

  I don’t know why I needed to tell them Charley was Aboriginal. He had to be, of course.

  Uni. When I’d begun, all my dreams, the sense of who I was and who I would become, were tied to my university results. Now, just a few months down the track, my results were dismal. My essays were overdue with points off for every day late. I’d been skipping lectures and relying on Amber’s notes and I could tell our friendship was wearing thin. Even my attendance at tutorials was erratic.

  One day, I was rushing to the library when I bumped into Adam. I probably looked slightly crazy. I had let my hair grow and it had sprung into a mini afro.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, not hiding his curiosity. ‘I was looking forward to a few debates with you in class. But you’ve been a no-show.’

  ‘I’m dealing with stuff.’

  Honestly, Adam was the last guy in the world who I would choose to pour my heart out to, but one hour, three cups of tea and a shared chocolate doughnut later, I had told him everything. Even a little bit about Kirk and me.

  ‘You are one hell of a good listener,’ I said, finally winding up.

  He laughed, ‘Only because you’re so fascinating. Honestly, my life is so boring. My family is so boring. What they want of me is so boring. I’m thinking of quitting.’

  ‘Quitting what — your family? That might be a bit difficult.’

  ‘No, law.’

  I groaned. Not another one. ‘Damn it, Adam. It’s hard to get into law. You’ll make a great lawyer and then you can work in a completely non-bo
ring way … unless of course you want to run away to join the circus.’

  Adam laughed. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘The circus, that is. But Kirrali, I’ve been thinking. You’ve got to spend time with your dad. If you want, I’ll be your study buddy. I’ll copy my summaries and we can discuss them. Then we’ll do revision every couple of nights. And before you say, why would I do that, just hear me out. It’ll keep me motivated, knowing that you’re relying on me to help get you through. Otherwise, I might as well start learning to walk a tightrope.’

  He was looking at me with such pure, I don’t know, enthusiasm. I gave him a hug. That was my answer. I’d let him help me — Ms Fiercely Independent. I was realising I couldn’t always stand alone and that it was good to let people help.

  When I got home, there was a letter from Dad. It was the best letter I had ever received.

  Dear Kirrali

  You could never disappoint me. And we look forward

  to hearing about your ‘other’ dad.

  Love Pa

  The next time I went to see Charley, I went on my own and I arrived at the hospital just as visiting hours were beginning. I burst into Charley’s room, not wanting to miss a moment of our time together. He was lying there, completely still, eyes open but staring. I actually thought he was dead. Then he sighed.

  ‘Hey …’

  I crept in and sat in the visitor’s chair.

  ‘Hang on while I take a slash.’

  I wasn’t sure if I should help him but I figured his pride would not take kindly to the offer so I tried to appear nonchalant while he manoeuvred himself off the bed and staggered over to the bathroom.

  I looked around. At least he had a private room. No flower arrangements — maybe that was a bit sissy for a bloke like Charley. And only one card. I peeked inside and began to read the note — You Ratbag Charley … — when I was startled by the sound of someone entering the room. I turned and came face-to-face with a big woman wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw me.